health

Sher Mohammad Jahesh and Sher Ahmad Haidar – Pajhwok Afghan News*

KABUL, May 22 2006 (IPS) – In Afghanistan, the most mined country in the world after Cambodia and Angola, landmines and unexploded ordnance kill or maim people almost daily.
The victim may be a boy sitting on the mountainside, tending the family s sheep or a truck driver who swerved to avoid a pothole. Or it could be a farmer who returned from a refugee camp in Pakistan to till his ancestral land.

Of Afghanistan s 20 million people, an estimated four percent (750,000 men, women and children) have been disabled by landmines. A legacy of the country s prolonged civil war and Soviet occupation, they were responsible for the deaths of 154 people and injuries to another 703 in 2005 alone. Many cases are beli…

Alberto Mendoza

GUATEMALA CITY, Jun 23 2006 (IPS) – Discrimination by society and employers against Guatemalans living with HIV/AIDS is deeply entrenched, say local and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), which note that they are often deprived of their basic rights to work, education and health.
Upon the mere suspicion that a person may be HIV-positive they are dismissed or demoted, or their contract is not renewed, and their rights to health care and to education for their children are denied, said Cristina Calderón of the Fernando Iturbide Foundation, an NGO working in AIDS prevention.

Some companies force their employees to undergo HIV testing, or the company has the test done without the worker s permission, Claudia Arelí Rosales of Positive P…

Haider Rizvi

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 8 2006 (IPS) – As Israeli bombs continue to fall from the skies across Lebanon, destroying homes, parks, roads, bridges, forests, hospitals and power stations, scientists say the enormous amount of toxic waste unleashed by the attack will continue to affect human lives and the environment long after the fighting is over.
The destruction is so huge that it may take a decade to recover, Zia Mian, a researcher with the Programme on Science and Global Security at Princeton University, told IPS. The consequences of environmental destruction will be felt for a long time, especially the problem of unexploded bombs and munitions.

In recent days, United Nations officials and environmental groups based in Lebanon have made similar observations…

Diego Cevallos* – Tierramérica

MEXICO CITY, Sep 9 2006 (IPS) – With skyrocketing metal prices, revenues are flowing in some Latin American countries, but labour conflicts have intensified apace in the mining sector, where workplace dangers are shared by some of the region s best paid miners and by several million poor.
Chilean miners, who earn up to 2,000 dollars a month, and miners in Peru and Mexico, whose paychecks may be no more than 60 dollars a week, are demanding their share in the bonanza.

In Chile, a three-week strike in August hit the world s largest copper deposit, and in Peru, neighbourhood protests paralysed Latin America s biggest gold mine for several days last month.

Meanwhile, in Mexico a labour dispute between miners and the government conti…

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Aaron Glantz

SAN FRANCISCO, California, Oct 4 2006 (IPS) – A U.S. soldier who went AWOL absent without leave over his opposition to the war in Iraq was incarcerated at the U.S. military s Mannheim prison in Germany Tuesday, pending an appeal in Washington this November.
A U.S. soldier who went AWOL absent without leave over his opposition to the war in Iraq was incarcerated at the U.S. military s Mannheim prison in Germany Tuesday, pending an appeal in Washington this November.

Augustin Aguayo s imprisonment comes less than a week after he turned himself in at Fort Irwin in California s Mojave Desert. Aguayo, 34, had been in hiding since early September.

He first applied for discharge as a conscientious objector in February 2004, about a year after his Army se…

Stephen Leahy* – Tierramérica

TORONTO, Nov 11 2006 (IPS) – Skin cancer, eye lesions and other infections are on the rise, a reminder that the Antarctic ozone hole continues to be a serious problem, especially for southern Argentina and Chile, where ultraviolet radiation during the spring months increases 25 percent.
The ozone layer covers the entire planet at an altitude of between 15 and 30 kilometres, and protects living organisms from the sun s harmful rays.

According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the dramatic thinning of the ozone layer over the Antarctic an annual phenomenon sprawled to an average of 29.5 million square kilometres Sep. 21 to Sep. 30.

This year s Antarctic ozone hole is the largest on record, said Ac…

IPS Correspondents

WASHINGTON, Dec 7 2006 (IPS) – The World Bank s own auditing arm has confirmed what many anti-poverty campaigners have long been saying: the Bank s projects did not adequately reduce poverty levels in borrowing nations over the past five years.
In a report Thursday, the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) said that the Bank has focused too narrowly on economic growth, leaving unemployment and poverty rates to stagnate or worsen.

The Bank has helped many countries to get onto a growth path through improved economic management, but the growth strategies have not always helped enough to improve job opportunities and living conditions of the poor, the IEG said in its study, titled the Annual Review of Development Effectiveness 2006: Getting Results .