Inter Press Service | News and Views from the Global South

Inter Press Service | News and Views from the Global South

Stay Home? Wash Hands? But 1.8 Billion Remain Homeless & 3.0 Billion Have No Access to Water Thalif Deen The relentless battle against the devastating coronavirus pandemic has been underlined by several widespread advisories from health experts – STAY HOME. WASH YOUR HANDS. WEAR MASK. KEEP SOCIAL DISTANCE. But the UK-based WaterAid and UN Habitat in Nairobi point out the paradox in at least two ... MORE > >

Without Universal Health Coverage We Are Sitting Ducks When the next Pandemic Strikes Siddharth Chatterjee We live in a different world to the one we inhabited six short months ago. With more than 4 million people infected and over 280,000 dead globally by mid May 2020, Covid-19 has ruthlessly exposed the vulnerability of a globalised world to pandemic disease. People are slowly coming to terms with ... MORE > >

Could BCG, a 100-year-old Vaccine for Tuberculosis, Protect Against Coronavirus? This week, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced it will donate A$10 million to help fund an Australian trial testing whether a very old vaccine, BCG, can be used against a new threat, COVID-19. So what is the BCG vaccine and what might its place be in the fight against ... MORE > >

The Commonwealth’s Response to COVID-19 William Ellis The Coronovirus pandemic has been an unforgiving test of advanced economies. Health systems in the United States, France, Italy, Spain, and the UK have been put under immense pressure, with shortages of doctors, ventilators, personal protective equipment and the capacity to test for the virus. ... MORE > >

On the Agenda of Iraq’s New Government: An Empty Treasury, Low Revenue, and COVID-19 Samira Sadeque Iraq’s newly-announced leader has brought hope to a country embroiled in a 17-year-long conflict, but authorities must ensure that issues such as swift and rapid response to COVID-19, security concerns, and corruption among others are addressed with urgency, experts said on Tuesday. The ... MORE > >

Malawi’s Vulnerable Shortchanged in Human Trafficking Prevention Efforts Charity Chimungu Phiri Malawi is not doing enough to enforce its laws on human trafficking, resulting in a number of cases against perpetrators being dismissed by the courts, according to a local rights group. But local officials say that this Southern African nation — one of the poorest countries in the world — just ... MORE > >

Why Some National Health Care Systems Do Better than Others Vladimir Popov In public health discussions, it is generally recognized that the social returns to health care investments are greater than the private returns, and much of such investments should be financed by the state. Also, global benefits from national health care spending are greater than just the ... MORE > >

Protecting Women’s Reproductive Health During the Pandemic Anand Grover and Ximena Casas “When I was 13… I got pregnant from my older brother… He raped me starting when I was 11,” a girl from Guatemala told one of us in 2015. She was one of the 2 million girls under 15 worldwide who give birth each year, often due to sexual violence. The Covid-19 pandemic is putting girls like her ... MORE > >

COVID-19: Zimbabwe’s Smallholder Farmers Step into the Food Supply Gap Ignatius Banda Bulawayo, Zimbabwe' second city of some 700,000 people, has experienced a shortage of vegetables this year, with major producers citing a range of challenges from poor rains to the inability to access to bank loans to finance their operations. But this shortage has created a market gap that ... MORE > >

‘Passing the Buck’ Becomes Reckless ‘Conspiracy Blame Game’ Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram Although Wuhan local authorities undoubtedly ostracized local medical whistle-blowers, notably Dr Li Wenliang, who suspected a new virus was responsible for flu-like infections in Wuhan in late 2019, official responses were apparently not delayed, and possibly even expedited, as the novel character ... MORE > >

Africa’s Health Dilemma: Protecting People from COVID-19 While Four Times as Many Could Die of Malaria Busani Bafana Experts across Africa are warning that as hospitals and health facilities focus on COVID-19, less attention is being given to the management of other deadly diseases like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, which affect millions more people. “Today if you have malaria symptoms you are in big ... MORE > >

Former Child Bride Holds Pakistan to Account for Wrongful Imprisonment in Historic Legal Challenge Zofeen Ebrahim A former Pakistani child bride, who was wrongly accused of killing her husband at 13 and subsequently spent almost two decades in prison, is making history by being the first victim of a miscarriage of justice to seek compensation from the state, say legal human rights experts. This March, ... MORE > >

COVID-19: The Digital Divide Grows Wider Amid Global Lockdown Samira Sadeque The digital divide has become more pronounced than ever amid the global coronavirus lockdown, but experts are concerned that in the current circumstances this divide, where over 46 percent of the world's population remain without technology or internet access, could grow wider -- particularly among ... MORE > >

Religion & its Discontents: Considerations Around COVID-19 & Africa Dr. Azza Karam and Dr. Mustafa Y. Ali COVID-19 has spread to many nations around the world, and has been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. In the global south, the COVID-19 pandemic has stretched the available medical and health resources, triggered economic shocks, and caused social upheavals and insecurity in many ... MORE > >

Time for the World Bank and IMF to Be the Solution, Not the Problem Franciscka Lucien and Joel Curtain The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have a historic opportunity to help stabilize a world reeling from COVID-19. Doing so will require the institutions to change course and aggressively support poor countries’ ability to invest broadly in the government services their ... MORE > >