“Sweet 16” marriages are a cause of controversy in Malawi. Credit: Claire Ngozo/IPS

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 11 2012 (IPS) – The United Nations has launched a global campaign to abolish an anachronistic social practice still prevalent in some communities around the world: child marriages.

International conventions declare that child marriage is a violation of human rights because it denies girls the right to decide when and with whom to marry, says a released Thursday by the U.N.Population Fund (UNFPA).

The launch also marked the first International Day of the Girl Child Oct. 11 as designated by the 193-member General Assembly last year in order to recog…

Children in Araçuaí, Minas Gerais, in eastern Brazil. Credit: Rodrigo Dai – Courtesy of Ser Criança

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 14 2012 (IPS) – If a black woman and a white woman both need emergency obstetric care, a Brazilian doctor will assist the white woman because of the stereotype that black women are better at handling pain and are used to giving birth.

Because of cultural and social conventions in Brazil “blacks are seen in terms of stereotypes, and that leads to them not having the same guarantees in healthcare treatment as whites have,” Crisfanny Souza Soares, a psychologist with the , told IPS.

A is seeking to combat these stereotypes, which reflect r…

WASHINGTON, Jan 2 2013 (IPS) – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the sector’s primary regulator, has given accelerated approval to a controversial new drug for use by patients suffering from forms of tuberculosis that have proven resistant to other medicines.

Scanning electron micrograph of Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria, which cause TB. Credit: NIAID/public domain

While the drug, known as bedaquiline and to be sold under the brand Sirturo, has been lauded by many for offering a new approach to treating tuberculosis resistant to the other two main medicines in use, some are warning that the expedited approvals process circum…

In this column, Martin Khor, executive director of the South Centre, writes about Yusuf Hamied, co-owner, managing director and leading personality of Cipla, one of Indias biggest generic drug companies. He describes Hamied as the man who arguably has done more than anyone else in the world to save millions of lives of people with AIDS and other diseases.

MUMBAI, Mar 19 2013 (IPS) – I recently spent a day in Mumbai with the man who arguably has done more than anyone else in the world to save millions of lives of people with AIDS and other diseases.

Martin Khor. Credit: Nic Paget-Clarke.

Yusuf Hamied, the co-owner, managing director an…

According to a survey, one-third of Cubans between the ages of 12 and 49 believe they have little to no chance of getting AIDS. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

HAVANA, May 9 2013 (IPS) – “But I always used a condom!” was the sentence that played over and over in Jaime Roche’s mind when the young Cuban man tested positive for HIV in October.

“I couldn’t believe it. I’m an advocate of using condoms, even for oral sex,” the health worker, who preferred not to give his real name, told IPS. “This happened to me by accident: the condom broke during a casual encounter,” Roche said.

“Maybe I would have been protected if I hadn’t been with another person …

Teen mothers give birth to 81 out of every 1,000 children in Nepal. Credit: Mallika Aryal/IPS

CHAMPI, Nepal, Jul 11 2013 (IPS) – Radhika Thapa was just 16 years old when she married a 21-year-old boy three years ago. Now, she is expecting a baby and is well into the last months of her pregnancy. This is not the first time she has been with child – her first two pregnancies ended in miscarriages.

“The first time I conceived I was just 16, I didn’t know much about having babies, nobody told me what to do,” Thapa tells IPS in between assisting customers at the vegetable store she runs with her husband in the small town of Champi, some 12 km from Nepal’s capital, …

COMILLA, Bangladesh , Aug 23 2013 (IPS) – Seven months pregnant, 24-year-old Shumi Begum has travelled 220 km from her village with her paternal grandmother to consult a specialist on childbirth.

“We seek treatment here because of the good reputation of the service providers. We have had childbirth in our family in the hands of the same service providers here and for safety reasons I think this centre is still the best choice,” Shumi’s grandmother Hosne-Ara told IPS.

She was waiting at a community maternity centre here in Jafargonj in Comilla district, about 55 km from capital Dhaka.

At the crowded two-storey maternity centre popularly known as Mayer Hashi (smiling mother), a project supervised by EngenderHealth and funded by USAID, Shumi anxiously looks at…

Yvonne Shields is the community chef at Broadway Community, Inc., a soup kitchen in Morningside Heights, New York. Credit: Vadim Lavrusik/cc by 2.0

WASHINGTON, Nov 5 2013 (IPS) – Deep cuts in food aid for poor people in the United States are poised to bring higher demands on charities and food pantries across the country that provide food to families in need – and which are already overstretched.

“How are people going to feed their families?” Earle Eldridge, a volunteer at St. Anthony Catholic Church’s food pantry in Washington, told IPS on Monday. “We’re becoming a country where the government cuts such essential things as food, and we don’t know how p…

LGBT activists, human rights observers and police officers wait outside a courtroom in Uganda’s constitutional court. Many trans women have died in Uganda because of discrimination in the public health service. Credit: Will Boase/IPS

KAMPALA, Dec 16 2013 (IPS) – At an unremarkable office on Bukoto Street in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, health workers and civil society activists attend a regular meeting to offer information and advice on living with HIV and AIDS. What is unusual is that these information sessions cater to a group of around 50 transgender women.

The Come Out Post-Test Club , as the group calls itself, was established early this year as a safe space and…

Photographs of Joaquín Guzmán, alias “El Chapo”, on Interpol’s web page.

MEXICO CITY, Feb 25 2014 (IPS) – The arrest of the head of the Sinaloa drug cartel, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, will not affect drug trafficking in Mexico, but it presents an opportunity to change the country’s drug policy, experts told IPS.

The organisational hierarchy of the Sinaloa cartel “reflects the weakness of the Mexican state,” said Edgardo Buscaglia, head of the (Institute for Citizen Action for Justice and Democracy), an NGO.

Guzmán, the world’s most wanted drug trafficker until his capture in the early hours of Saturday Feb. 22, had his centre of operations in the north…