Medecins Sans Frontieres estimates that 240,000 people are currently infected with H.I.V. in Myanmar and that 76,000 are in urgent need of antiretroviral drugs. At left, a 29-year-old man sits in his home. He learned that he was HIV-positive when he was tested for tuberculosis. His wife and their son are also HIV-positive. However, they have enough money only for him to begin antiretroviral treatment (ART).
Author: WHES
Dying, and alone, in Myanmar
JOHANNESBURG — Leading South African scientists challenged the governing party on Monday to break with its deeply flawed record on AIDS and public health, spurring the country’s new health minister to say that he and his party shared their diagnosis of systemic problems and were determined to repair them.
Investing in the future: Rice and the global financial crisis
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Kenya’s power-sharing report card: ‘unsatisfactory.’ One year after ethnic violence tore the African nation apart, the coalition government is moving slowly – or not at all – to address the problems
NAIROBI, KENYA — When Kenya’s grand coalition government formed last year – a kind of forced marriage of bitter political enemies – Kenyan voters had high hopes for what their new government had vowed to achieve: rewrite the country’s constitution, begin land reform, arrest perpetrators of postelection violence, and reconcile ethnic groups who seemed close to a tribal war.
Zimbabwe diary: Fighting cholera
More than 3,300 people have died from the worst outbreak of cholera in Zimbabwe’s history, which has infected nearly 66,000 people.The epidemic has been fuelled by the country’s economic meltdown, which has led to the collapse of the country’s water, health and sanitation systems.
Kenya: belt tightening as hunger spreads–causes include violence, high world food prices, and drought
Ninety-year-old Mary Mwelu sits forlornly outside her daughter-in-law’s home in Makueni district, eastern Kenya, wondering when and where her next meal will come from. She last had some food – porridge – two days ago.
Women in poor nations are 300 times more likely to die in childbirth or from pregnancy complications than those in the developed world, UNICEF warns
Women in poor nations are 300 times more likely to die in childbirth or from pregnancy complications than those in the developed world, Unicef warns. The lifetime risk in the poorest countries was one in 24, compared with one in 8,000 in richer countries.
Ethiopia prohibits international aid agencies and Ethiopian NGOs funded by aid agencies from working in areas including human rights, equality, conflict resolution and the rights of children
Ethiopia’s parliament has passed a controversial bill imposing tight restrictions on aid agencies.
Foreign agencies are prohibited from a number of areas including human rights, equality, conflict resolution and the rights of children.
Number of children immunized has been inflated for years
Many of the world’s poorest countries have for decades routinely exaggerated the number of children being immunized against disease, apparently driven by political pressure and, more recently, financial incentives.
Guinea worm ‘almost eradicated’
Guinea worm disease may be eliminated within two years, former US president and anti-disease campaigner Jimmy Carter has said.
