Claudia Ciobanu
BUCHAREST, Sep 17 2009 (IPS) – At 37, Dimo Kokorkov, a carpenter from Stara Zagora in central Bulgaria is broken-hearted . Dimo says this to describe his sense of deep injustice after being systematically abused in prison because of his disabilities.
Officially diagnosed as mentally disabled, Dimo suffers from frequent headaches, nausea and loss of control over his body. According to him, his problem has been caused by the pain I endured during and since my prison term.
Dimo received a 23-year prison sentence for theft. After my mother remarried, I was left on my own, I was poor, so I had to steal in order to eat, he told IPS. I started doing the usual things, stealing copper and wires. I know what I did was not right, but the sentence was extremely u…
Amantha Perera
COLOMBO, Nov 4 2009 (IPS) – Sudarma Senevirathana s teenage daughter is at an age when she can already be given the rubella vaccine, administered free of charge by government health officials at schools.
But Senevirathana refuses to subject her twelve-year-old daughter to the injection. She can take it when she is nearer to getting married, says the mother from Kurunegala, about 100 kilometres east of the capital Colombo, I don t want to risk my daughter s life.
The rubella vaccine is given to girls between the ages of 12 and 13, the period medical experts say the body s immune system is at its strongest to fight any rubella infection. It is administered to prevent still births and other birth defects commonly associated with the rubella virus, which t…
Peter Richards
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Nov 28 2009 (IPS) – On the heels of a new report by UNAIDS that the HIV virus is now infecting Caribbean men and women at an equal rate, activist groups are urging regional leaders to eliminate laws that further the stigmatisation associated with the deadly virus.
Ahead of World AIDS Day on Dec. 1, the Commonwealth HIV and AIDS Action Group (CHAAG) this week condemned Caribbean governments for retaining anti-gay laws on their books. They are calling on both regional leaders and their counterparts in the Commonwealth, a grouping of 53 member states, most former British colonies, to take immediate action to change the situation.
This is crunch time, therefore, for the Commonwealth, said Stephen Lewis of AIDS Free World, one of th…
Natalia Ruiz Díaz
ASUNCIÓN, Jan 6 2010 (IPS) – Did you have to pay for anything? is the obligatory question these days in the waiting room at the Mother and Child Hospital in Fernando de la Mora, on the outskirts of the Paraguayan capital, where people still have doubts that the public health services are free of charge, as the government had announced.
They took great care of me. I had my baby by cesarean and the operation was free, and so was the medicine, Gloria Ramírez, who gave birth on Christmas the day nearly all public health service fees were eliminated nationwide told IPS.
The measure was one of the campaign promises of centre-left President Fernando Lugo, a former bishop who took office in August 2008.
Before I was admitted to hospital, I had p…