Interview with Curtis Ellis, documentary filmmaker
SAN DIEGO, California, Apr 9 2008 (IPS) – Browsing through the aisles of the local supermarket, few consumers fully grasp the role corn plays in their daily lives.
Curt Ellis (right) and Ian Cheney taste their harvest in Greene, Iowa. Credit: Sam Cullman
Corn, it turns out, stands at the top of the food pyramid aside from its status as a vegetable. U.S. farmers grow mountains of the high-yield crop as a base ingredient for thousands of…
Keya Acharya
KOLKATA, May 19 2008 (IPS) – Ranjini Gupta who works with the urban development department located in the heart of this bustling city snacks occasionally at the street food stalls nearby unmindful of food safety concerns.
One can t really attribute any serious health issue from eating at these stalls, says Gupta, a doctoral student on solid waste management at Kolkata s prestigious Jadavpur University. There are other eating places in this city where food hygiene is of far lower standards than that of the street food vendors, she avers.
Gupta, like many other people who live and work in Kolkata, are beneficiaries of a successful project to turn this eastern metropolis cheap, mouth-watering variety of ready-to-eat street foods into a safe and hygienic exp…
Shailendra Singh
SUVA, Jun 18 2008 (IPS) – Beyond the fabulous palm-fringed beaches and cascading waterfalls of the islands of the Pacific is a sordid reality child labour and commercial sexual exploitation of children.
Lack of reliable data makes it difficult to assess the magnitude of the problem, but rough estimates by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) suggest that with growing poverty child workers make up an estimated 19 percent of the labour force in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and 14 percent in the Solomon Islands.
A recent Asian Development Bank (ADB) report has predicted that an additional 5 percent of people in the Pacific or some 50,000 people would slip into poverty because of high oil and food prices.
According to economist and former Fiji go…
Thalif Deen
STOCKHOLM, Aug 22 2008 (IPS) – A spectre is haunting the cities and villages of most developing nations, warns a senior official of a World Bank-affiliated organisation.
It s the spectre of a food, fuel and water crisis, says Lars Thunell, executive vice president of the Washington-based International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank group.
I believe we are at a tipping point, he said, because the scarcity of water poses a threat to the food supply just when the agricultural sector is stepping up production in response to riots over food prices, growing hunger, and rising malnutrition.
Speaking at the conclusion of the weeklong Stockholm International Water Conference Friday, Thunell said the growing demand for water is outpa…
Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Oct 23 2008 (IPS) – Irregularities like delays in notifying 25 people that they were HIV-positive, which led to the deaths of at least two of them, have cast a shadow on Chile s exemplary image in the field of AIDS prevention and treatment.
A local TV station reported earlier this month that 25 people who tested positive for HIV in 2004 were not immediately notified by the city hospital in Iquique, in the northern Tarapacá region.
Shortly after the broadcast, the La Tercera newspaper put the number of people who tested positive for HIV but were not notified at once as high as 100.
The facts came to light with the Jul. 10 death of 34-year-old Dearnny Aguilar from pneumonia. Since she had not been promptly informed that she was HIV-pos…
Matthew Cardinale
ATLANTA, Georgia, Dec 15 2008 (IPS) – As Democratic President-elect Barack Obama prepares to take office in a few weeks, he faces a hungry nuclear industry that wants to be included in his energy plan.
Nuclear energy provides almost 20 percent of the United States electricity. Credit: Nuclear Energy Institute
At least 31 new plants have been proposed throughout the United States, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission…
Pilirani Semu-Banda
LILONGWE, Mar 20 2009 (IPS) – Water has become the very essence of economic development for a rural community of Ngolowindo, in Malawi s lake district of Salima, where households are reducing poverty thanks to irrigation.
Irrigation and cooperative farming have improved the livelihoods for the Ngolowindo Horticultural Cooperative Society Credit: Pi…
Ebrima Sillah
BISSAU, Apr 17 2009 (IPS) – The most recent cholera outbreak in Guinea-Bissau killed 225 people before it was brought under control in February; 14,000 people were infected by the water-borne disease, most of them in the capital, Bissau.
There have been seasonal outbreaks of cholera in Bissau in each of the past five years due to poor water infrastructure and a reliance on open wells.
Jose Manuel Ramos, a water engineer at Bissau s Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources which is also responsible for water management, told IPS that neglect and a lack of investment has left most of the capital s sewage system damaged with dirty water from ruptured pipes polluting ground water.
He said the sewage and water pipes in the city were laid in the coloni…
Cam McGrath
CAIRO, May 18 2009 (IPS) – Egypt s parliament is set to review a long-overdue draft law to regulate organ transplant operations. If passed, the legislation could make more human organs available for transplant, and curtail the country s booming organ trade.
We ve been operating for 30 years in Egypt without any organisation, relying on local and personal efforts to regulate organ transplants, says Dr. Mahmoud El-Meteini, head of the Liver Transplant Unit at Wadi El-Nil Hospital. Things cannot continue like this. We need a law to organise all transplant centres, and shut down the bad ones.
Egypt currently has no legislation regulating organ transplants, only doctor union rules and health ministry guidelines that have proven difficult to enforce. An uncond…
Ntandoyenkosi Ncube
CAPE TOWN, Jul 20 2009 (IPS) – Health experts and scientists have accused the world s wealthiest countries of abandoning the goal of universal access to HIV prevention, care and treatment by 2010.
Kenyan nurse preparing ARVs for a patient in Kenya: drug shortages an…