IDEALS

SAO TOME, (Aug. 11, 2009) IPS/GIN – Zinaldina dos Reus, Zizi to
her friends, is washing clothes by a stream near the airport in S
o TomÇ. Her toddler plays nearby. Zizi, 21, can’t remember the last
time she or her husband had malaria. She credits the free bed nets
and anti-mosquito home spraying regularly supplied countrywide
since 2004.

Then she frowns: “They haven’t come this year to spray, they are
late. I wonder why.”

Bureaucratic delays plagued the indoor residual spraying program
(IRS) throughout 2008 when the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS, Malaria
and TB took it over from the Taiwan International Cooperation and
Development Fund. IRS is now contracted to the local NGO
Zatona-Adil, which started spraying in July, nine months later than
planned. Read the rest of this entry →

RANGOON, (Jun. 3, 2010) IPS/GIN – The only son in his family, Maung
Maung Oo was forced to marry when he was 24 years old. By then, he
had been carrying on a sexual relationship with a man for four
years – which he continued even after his marriage.

For the next 14 years, Oo led a double life. But in 2005, he
finally decided to be true to himself: He left his wife and three
children for his male partner.

“My wife was so shocked when she learned of my affair with a man,”
says Oo. “But I can’t change how I feel though I have the body of
a man.”
Read the rest of this entry →

BUENOS AIRES, (Aug. 22, 2009) IPS/GIN – Keeping a hospital
appointment in the Argentine capital is a far less fearsome ordeal
for transgender persons when they are accompanied by trained health
promoters who, like them, have chosen a different gender identity.

“It’s easier to communicate among ourselves than with hospital
staff,” Valeria Ram°rez, a transgender promoter with the city of
Buenos Aires’ Program to Facilitate Access to the Health System for
the Transgender Population, told IPS.

In place since 2007, the strategy has increased the frequency of
consultation and health check-ups by this marginalised community,
as well as boosting the immune systems of those infected with
HIV/AIDS. Read the rest of this entry →

CAIRO, (Aug. 23, 2009) IPS/GIN – Muslims marked the start of the
fasting month of Ramadan Saturday, but the global H1N1 pandemic
has put a damper on religious festivities throughout the Middle
East.

“Everyone is worried about swine flu,” says Anwar Mohamed, a Yemeni
antique dealer. “We have been told to avoid crowds, but everywhere
there are crowds.”

Arab governments have taken measures aimed at reducing the spread
and impact of the H1N1 virus, which has infected over 5,000 people
in the region, and killed at least 30. Authorities have implemented
border surveillance, quarantine procedures and swine flu awareness
campaigns. They have also sought to restrict activities that draw
large crowds, including religious gatherings and pilgrimages. Read the rest of this entry →

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, (Aug. 24, 2009) IPS/GIN – Before, Zimbabwean
families would take their ill relatives to rural clinics where
medication was readily available and payment plans lenient. But now
they are taking them there to die.

Millions of Zimbabweans already have no access to basic health
care, and the health services have been in decline over a number
of years. But the three-week strike by doctors has magnified their
dire circumstances. The situation has forced many families to make
life and death decisions about their loved ones. Read the rest of this entry →

STOCKHOLM, (Aug. 19, 2009) IPS/GIN – Dr. Bindeshwar Patak, the 2009
Stockholm Water Prize Laureate and founder of a grassroots
sanitation movement in India, recounts the days before his
country’s independence in 1947 when toilets were a rare sight in
remote villages and towns under British rule.

An English woman, who was planning a trip to colonial India, wrote
a letter to the owner of a small guesthouse who was also doubling
as the town’s schoolmaster. She was concerned as to whether the
guesthouse contained a WC. Read the rest of this entry →

MEXICO CITY, (Aug. 17, 2009) IPS/GIN – Alejandra Gomez is facing
prosecution in the southern Mexican state of Puebla for having an
abortion. The 20-year-old’s case is symptomatic of a wave of
anti-abortion legal reforms adopted by a number of states in this
country.

The reforms are seen by activists as a backlash against the April
2007 legalisation of first-trimester abortion in Mexico City.

Except in the federal district, abortion is illegal in Mexico,
although the 31 states all make exceptions on varying grounds, such
as for victims of rape or in cases in which the mother’s life or
health is at risk or there are serious fetal deformities.
Read the rest of this entry →

JUBA, Sudan, (Aug. 14, 2009) IPS/GIN – In the war-devastated South
Sudan, a region with a population of over eight million people,
Yeneneh Mulugeta is the only permanent ophthalmologist.

Dozens visit the eye clinic in the semi-autonomous region’s capital
every day from across the South trying to have their sight
restored, mostly old and silent, waiting their turn with a helper.
The Ethiopian doctor has performed hundreds of cataract operations
- removing the protein build-up that covers the eye – that
miraculously bring back sight. Read the rest of this entry →

BALI, (Aug. 14, 2009) IPS/GIN – Why is the popular drug Viagra so
praised for its virtues, while the condom is vilified by
conservative religious groups among others the world over?

Both are ‘external’ technological interventions that relate to
sexual activity. They are among the most prominent tools in the
area of reproductive health and sexuality. Read the rest of this entry →

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, (May 18, 2010) IPS/GIN – Abdul Wahid’s wife
had been unwell for two years, showing symptoms of a chronic
infectious disease such as prolonged coughing, before she finally
decided to see a doctor.

By then it was too late. Her illness had developed into full-blown
tuberculosis (TB). “Her doctors said she needed to undergo
prolonged and expensive treatment for her tuberculosis,” said
Wahid, a shopkeeper in Mardan, one of the 24 districts of the
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan.

He admitted that his wife, Jamila Begum, 24, did not seek immediate
treatment for lack of female doctors and for fear of being
ostradised by her community should she confirm her suspicions that
she was suffering from TB.
Read the rest of this entry →