ENVIRONMENT: Modified Habitats Pose Threat of Zoonotic Diseases

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Diego Cevallos

MÉRIDA, Mexico, Dec 3 (IPS) – A breakout of yellow fever among monkeys caught authorities in Argentina and Brazil, and the Pan-American Health Organisation (PAHO), off-guard in October.

As in dozens of cases that occur every year, the outbreak was the result of growing interaction between wild animals and humans and changes in habitats, which is generating new diseases and reviving old ones.

Ebola, encephalitis, avian influenza, pulmonary hemorrhagic syndrome, viral hepatitis, leptospirosis and HIV, the AIDS virus, are just a few of the diseases that according to scientists emerged from the relationship between animals and humans, and that claim thousands or even millions of lives a year while generating huge economic losses around the world.

”Climatic factors and human activity that is increasingly destructive and close to wild animals trigger diseases that in the past we could not even imagine, or that we believed had disappeared,” Silvia Alonso, a researcher with the Royal Veterinary College at the University of London, told IPS.
Read more

Popularity: 26% [?]

HEALTH-AFRICA: Breaking the Cycle of HIV Transmission

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Zahira Kharsany interviews DAVID ALNWICK, UNICEF HIV Advisor

JOHANNESBURG, Dec 1 (IPS) – According to the United Nations Children’s Fund, early diagnosis and treatment greatly increase survival rates for HIV-positive newborns. but fewer than one in ten infants born to HIV-positive mothers in 2007 was tested for HIV within two months of birth.

”Children and Aids: Third Stocktaking Report 2008”, released by the United Nations Children’s Fund on World AIDS Day, warns that without the right treatment, half of children with HIV will die before their second birthday.

The UNICEF report focuses on what is known as the four ”Ps”. These are the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, providing pediatric treatment and care, preventing infection among adolescents and young people, and protection and care of children affected by AIDS.

UNICEF Regional HIV Advisor for east and southern Africa, David Alnwick, discussed the findings of the report in these key areas with IPS reporter Zahira Kharsany.

IPS: What has the outcome been?

David Alnwick: Progress! Progress has been slow with implementing key priorities, particularly preventing infants born to mothers with HIV from becoming infected themselves. But many countries have done really well in last year or so on this.

In East and Southern Africa — about 30 percent of all pregnant women get an HIV test — and if positive, most get some help to prevent transmission. About half of all health centres provide routine HIV tests to pregnant women. This is far from good enough — but it does represent real progress, a doubling over the last few years, and hopefully it will double again in the next year.

Also there have been new scientific breakthroughs on children who are infected, in spite of efforts to prevent and many countries despite big obstacles are now rolling out ‘early infant diagnosis’, testing kids for the virus at six weeks of age, and putting them on treatment immediately if infected. These are good beginnings, but needs a lot more support.

IPS: What needs to be done?

DA: We need to break the cycle of transmission. We’ve been concentrating on aid prevention in general but especially prevention in women and girls. The report takes stock of countries and we at UNICEF are optimistic that good progress is being made.

But still only one third of all women are tested for HIV. This is not good but it is a lot better then before. It means that countries and governments are taking it seriously. There are optimistic signs that there is progress.

UNICEF has good hopes that effective services for mums already infected will be rapidly scaled up and that children will be protected to maximum extent possible, and where not possible, helped with treatment.

IPS: What concerns are there?

DA: UNICEF is very concerned in East and Southern Africa about the lack of progress with primary prevention of HIV infection, particularly in young women around the time that they become pregnant. This needs much more emphasis, much more radical approaches, much more government support at highest level. We are seeing these signs but much more can be done to prevent HIV infection in girls and women in southern Africa.

Our biggest concern is that even though there has been an increase in prevention from mother-to-child the tap is not being turned off. The infection in women and girls is not lowering. We hope that things will become better with improved medical technologies and government assistant. But we’ve got to do more. It’s not only the job of UNICEF, but all non-governmental organisations, civil society and governments to do more.

IPS: There’s a new emphasis amongst AIDS campaigners on ”knowing your epidemic”, that is to say analysing the local situation in terms of who is infected and what factors are driving the epidemic, and then acting on this information. How does UNICEF view this approach?

DA: Yes – we fully support ‘need to know the epidemic’. The days for generalised approaches are over.

The intriguing thing in southern Africa is that the evidence is clear that it is not just poor or un-educated girls who are infected. In fact women in southern Africa are — according to the World Economic Forum — among the most empowered women on the continent. We need to ask ourselves is, what is happening that young women in Southern Africa have used this relative empowerment, this relative freedom, wealth, mobility, to practice sex lives that are now becoming as risky as men’s sex lives have been for many years, that is several different sex partners at same time for example.

It is not the lack of empowerment that these women and girls are infected. Statistics show that those that are infected are now the educated ones with disposable incomes. The old story of it being those who are poor and live in poverty and have to sell themselves to make some money is not true. It is those who are educated that are becoming infected. I for one believe that we need to look at the process. The most empowered are the ones most at risk. We must ask ourselves why this is so.
All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Popularity: 19% [?]

AUSTRALIA: Do More Regionally to Stop HIV/AIDS Gov’t Told

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Stephen de Tarczynski

MELBOURNE, Nov 28 (IPS) – While HIV infection rates remain relatively low in Australia, the peak non-governmental organisation representing the country’s community-based response to HIV/AIDS wants the government to do more to fund prevention measures here and in the region to counter rising infection rates.

”We made such massive, excellent inroads early on into the HIV epidemic in Australia and our real concern is that we’re actually starting to see all that investment go to waste as infection rates start to climb,” says Graham Brown, president of the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations (AFAO), the nation’s peak HIV-response body.

A report released in September by the University of New South Wales’ National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research (NCHECR) shows that the number of new human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) diagnoses in Australia has increased each year since 1999, when 718 people were reported to have been infected with the virus. In 2007, there were 1,051 newly-diagnosed cases of HIV, representing close to a 50 percent increase on the late 1990s.
Read more

Popularity: 18% [?]

HEALTH-AFRICA: Who Is To Blame for the Crisis?

Global Intel Net / IPS

Kristin Palitza

BAMAKO, Nov 18 (IPS) – Health systems on the continent are riddled with inadequate policies, strategies, lack of institutional capacity, poor scientific review mechanisms and weak funding for research in the public and private sector, said Luis Sambo, regional director of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in of Africa.

What makes matters worse is a ”human resource crisis throughout the continent, based on lack of training, capacity shortages and migration of skilled health carers, Sambo further explained. Other challenges are limited access to technologies, such as Information Communication Technology (ICT), and weak physical infrastructure,” he added.

Sambo was speaking at the WHO Global Ministerial Forum on Research for Health which opened in Bamako, Mali, on Monday.

Although African health experts generally agree with Sambo that the continent’s health systems face many challenges, many place the blame for the situation not on a ”knowledge gap”, as Sambo put it, but on the control of international institutions, such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), on national policy making in developing countries.
Read more

Popularity: 18% [?]

ZAMBIA: New Spending On Rural Health

Global Intel Net / IPS

Danstan Kaunda

LUSAKA, Nov 15 (IPS) – Child Mortality Drops, But Rural Areas Lag Behind

In an attempt to drastically reduce child mortality rates and boost maternal health, the Zambian government last year allocated a substantial budget to the public health sector. This move has resulted in a notable drop in child deaths, researchers say.

However, most progress has taken place in Zambia’s cities, while in rural areas health service provision has improved little.

In its 2007/2008 national budget, the Zambian health department received the largest share — 11.5 percent — of the total national budget. The money has been used to scale up services in public health care sector, with focus on boosting paediatric care.

In Zambia, the main causes for high infant and child mortality are diarrhoea, malnutrition, malaria, HIV and acute respiratory infections.
Read more

Popularity: 15% [?]

ENVIRONMENT: Where That ”Recycled” E-Waste Really Goes

Global Intel Net / IPS

Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Nov 14 (IPS) – Is your old TV poisoning a child in China? Or your old computer contaminating a river in Nigeria?

Without a law banning export of toxic electronic waste in the United States, there has been no way to know if old cell phones, computers or televisions originating there didn’t end up in some poor village in the developing world, where desperate people pull them apart by hand to recover some of the valuable metals inside.

A small group of people have now allied with a few responsible recyclers to ensure e-waste can be treated responsibly by creating an e-Stewards certification programme. Announced this week, e-Stewards are electronics waste recyclers that are fully accredited and certified by an independent third party.

Such accreditation is crucial in an industry that often makes fraudulent claims. Currently even when e-waste (electronic trash) goes to a ”green” recycler, the chances are high that toxic stuff from the developed world ended up in a huge pile in the middle of some village.
Read more

Popularity: 23% [?]