Health

Tobacco Industry Targets Women in Asia

By Wendell Balderas and Mary Assunta
International Women’s Day on 8 March recognized and celebrated the progress women are making globally. The day also acknowledged the risks, exploitation and suffering many continue to endure.

In Latin America, the Term Leprosy Still Carries a Burden from Biblical Times

By Fabiana Frayssinet
Known scientifically as Hansen's disease, leprosy carries a symbolic burden from the past that people affected by the disease and experts from around Latin America are fighting, including the terminology used.

People Affected by Leprosy Still Face Stigma in Latin America

By Mario Osava
The First Latin American and Caribbean Meeting of Organisations of People Affected by Hansen's Disease, more widely known as leprosy, seeks to exorcise stigma and discrimination. The meeting has brought together around a hundred activists in Brazil.

Access to Water Is a Daily Battle in Poor Neighborhoods in Buenos Aires

By Daniel Gutman
"Look at this water. Would you drink it?" asks José Pablo Zubieta, as he shows a glass he has just filled from a faucet, where yellow and brown sediment float, in his home in Villa La Cava, a shantytown on the outskirts of Argentina's capital.

Break the Menstrual Taboo

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
It is time to rise up and fight a long neglected taboo: menstruation. Marking International Women’s Day, United Nations human rights experts called on the international community to break taboos around menstruation, noting its impacts on women and girls’ human rights.

A Disease as Old as Time – Eliminated but Not Eradicated

By Stella Paul
As the Executive Director of Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation (SMHF), Takahiro Nanri has been working on the issue of leprosy since 2014. Over the past few years, he has traveled across the world visiting the large number of leprosy projects that SMHF has been supporting and meeting dozens of organisations led by leprosy-affected people.

Q&A: Important to Treat Anyone Suffering from Leprosy as an Equal Individual

By Stella Paul
Discrimination against women who are affected by leprosy or Hansen's Disease is a harsh reality, says Alice Cruz is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the elimination of discrimination against persons affected by leprosy and their family members.

New Regional Secretariat to Advance Leprosy Advocacy in Asia

By Ben Kritz
Organisations of people affected by leprosy in Asia have agreed to form a regional-level secretariat to support national advocacies and represent their collective agenda at a world conference to be held later this year.

Q&A: Leprosy-affected People Live Not at the Bottom, but Outside the Social Pyramid

By Stella Paul
Takahiro Nanri is the Executive Director of Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation which has been supporting the global fight against leprosy for almost five decades. Since 2014, Nanri has been leading the foundation’s leprosy projects across the world and has deep insights into the challenges faced by the people affected by leprosy as well as the organisations that work with them.

Living with Leprosy on the Climate-Vulnerable Kiribati Island Atolls

By Stella Paul
Kurarenga Kaitire lives in Kiribati—one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations. Already vulnerable to nature, the 29-year-old mother of five has faced a series of vulnerabilities over the past decade, including facing social stigma and domestic abuse.

Leprosy Survivor Creates Hope and Support for Others Affected by Disease

By Nalisha Adams
When Ariel Lazarte from Quezon City, Philippines, was first diagnosed with leprosy in 2014, his life seemed as if it were falling apart. But now more than four years later Lazarte’s life is a huge contrast from the poverty and isolation he experienced as a person affected by leprosy.

Q& A: We Need a Holistic Approach to Eradicate Leprosy

By Stella Paul
Dr. Maria Francia Laxamana is the Assistant Secretary in the Philippines ministry of health. With nearly two decades of  work both as a senior government official and also as an expert in several non-government organisations, Laxamana has deep insight into the issue of leprosy in this Southeast Asian nation and the challenges faced by those who are affected by the disease.

A Leprosy-free Philippines by 2020?

By Stella Paul
Dr Maria Francia Laxamana, assistant secretary of health in the Department of Health, Philippines outlines her recommendations for a leprosy country by 2020.

Leprosy Detection With a Personal Touch

By Ben Kritz
Jennifer Quimno could put anyone at ease. So when she travels across the Philippines as part of peer to peer programme that helps identify new leprosy cases, people generally allow her to examine them.

First Asian Leprosy Assembly Calls for Greater Social Inclusion for the Affected

By Stella Paul
Growing up in Kathmandu, Nepal, Amar Bahadur Timalsina wasn’t allowed to attend school as a young boy because he was affected by leprosy. But decades later, after treatment and being able to re-integrate into his community, the boy who was once denied an education is now inspiringly the principal of a school of 400 students.

Leprosy Remains a Stubborn, Unseen Problem in the Philippines

By Ben Kritz
The stubborn challenge of diagnosis and treatment of leprosy among difficult to reach populations in the Philippines should soon become easier with the rollout of a mobile app connecting field health workers with physicians and clinics.

The Misconceptions of Contraception

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
In light of rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and unintended pregnancies, governments are exploring ways to tackle taboos around condoms. In a new study, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) reviews the availability and accessibility of condoms, hoping to dismantle potentially harmful misconceptions.

Bangladesh faces a challenge to ensure welfare of its aging population

By Abdur Rahman Jahangir
(IPS/UNB) – Bangladesh economy’s impressive growth trajectory over the last decade has been buttressed by the demographic dividend resulting from a large portion of its population -- around 65 percent on average -- being of working age.

A World Party

By Roberto Savio
I have been a member of the first international party: the Transnational Radical Party, founded in 1956 by Marco Pannella and Emma Bonino. Then in 1988, I was a witness of the large protest, in Berlin West, against the meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, a precursor of the “Battle of Seattle” in 1988, where 40.000 protesters disrupted the annual meeting of the two world’s financial institutions. I was even detained for a day by the police, even if was just a witness: my condition of foreigner made me automatically suspect.

Reverse Engineering for SDGs

By Kakoli Ghosh and Loreta Zdanovaite
When young people from small towns and villages seek higher education they have to usually migrate to big cities leaving their local communities behind. On completion of their degree from the Universities, they generally prefer staying in cities, in search of a good job and a successful career. Though this is a standard practice, it is also a case of lost opportunities, especially for students who pursue higher education in agriculture. Here is why.

Roma the Movie: The Hidden Drama of Domestic Workers

By Jan Lundius
Roma, a 2018 Mexican film written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón, is currently on a triumphal journey through the world. It won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, the best director and best foreign language film at the Golden Globe Awards, best director and best picture at the Critics´ Choice Awards, best film, best direction and best cinematography at the British Academy Film Awards. Furthermore, Roma has a record high ten nominations for the upcoming Academy Awards (The Oscars). Not at all bad for a black-and-white movie, which appears to have been directed by a sophisticated cineaste and custom-made for an art-house audience. Moreover, Roma deals with a highly controversial and seldom treated theme – the plight of poor, women domestic workers.
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