HEALTH: Haj Pilgrims Get Polio Drops in Int’l Eradication Plan

Global Politics Online / IPS

Zofeen Ebrahim

KARACHI, Nov 13 (IPS) – As the first batches of Haj pilgrims from Pakistan arrived at Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah airport for the current pilgrimage season they were, regardless of age, administered oral polio vaccine (OPV).

Saudi Arabia, a polio-free country, is taking every precaution to prevent transmission of the crippling, paediatric disease from visitors belonging to four countries — Pakistan, Nigeria, India and Afghanistan — where the wild polio virus is still circulating.

”Pakistanis will be administered OPV, regardless of age and vaccination status, on their arrival in Saudi Arabia,” the national manager for the Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI), Dr Hussain Bux Memon, told media.

Terming it a ”good policy” to prevent the international spread of polio,” Dr Ni’ma Abid, polio team leader for the World Health Organisation (WHO), in Pakistan, told IPS: ”It might be useful to show that a leading Muslim country is asking for polio drops to be administered as a prerequisite for Haj which means that the vaccine doesn’t contain haram (forbidden) ingredients,” he said.

He averred that polio can occur in adults and thus OPV should be administered to adults as well. ”Adults can also transmit the infection without being affected by the disease.”
… Continue Reading

Popularity: 81% [?]

FINANCE: Corporate Vows Tested in the West Bank

Global Politics Online / IPS

Ida Karlsson

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 12 (IPS) – A company that is a member of the U.N. Global Compact for corporate social responsibility has ties to production in an Israeli settlement on the West Bank considered illegal by the United Nations.

A spokeperson for the company, Vileda, an international household products firm, said he was unaware of the contract with a manufacturer in the West Bank, Plasto Polish. However, a representative of Plasto confirmed in a telephone interview with IPS that the company was a subcontractor for Vileda.

”Companies have a social as well as a legal responsibility and must therefore take no part in the illegal occupation,” Merav Amir of the Coalition of Women for Peace (CWP), told IPS. ”In order to comply with international human rights law, companies should make sure that their businesses have nothing to do with the occupation.”

CWP is an Israeli feminist peace organisation that carries out grassroots research, and has built a database with information about companies in industrial zones within the occupied territories. An IPS investigation revealed that Vileda appeared in both that database and the list of U.N. Global Compact participants.
… Continue Reading

Popularity: 97% [?]

DRC: The Cost of War

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS

Stephanie Kale

KIGALI, Nov 8 (IPS) – War is expensive. The costs include not only the millions of dollars spent on military equipment and maintaining an army, but the financial and psychological toll it takes on the everyday lives of people caught in the crossfire.

When fighting takes place where civilians live, as it is in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, farming, housing, health care, businesses and education are all interrupted in armed conflict, and the long-term effects in the North Kivu region have been devastating.

Ten year-old Immacule arrived at Kibati refugee camp 12 kilometres north of Goma on Oct. 27 after her family fled their village fearing attacks by Tutsi-led rebels.

She said she misses going to school. ”I want the government to find peace for us so that I can return home and go back to school.”

Since fighting resumed in August between the rebel National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP) and the Congolese army, 250,000 people have been displaced in the North Kivu Region.
… Continue Reading

Popularity: 69% [?]

PERU: Free Trade Opens Environmental Window

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Saturday, November 01, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Milagros Salazar* – Tierramérica

LIMA, Nov 1 (IPS) – Legislative decree 1090, which modifies Peru’s forest policy, is worrying U.S. trade authorities because it contravenes environmental clauses of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that is to enter force between the two countries in January 2009.

The decree, which in June amended the Forestry and Wildlife Act, leaves 45 million hectares — or 60 percent of Peru’s jungles — out of the Forestry Heritage protection system — a step that runs counter to the FTA forestry annex.

That was one of the 10 observations made by the Office of the U.S Trade Representative, Susan Schwab, in a meeting with delegates of the Peruvian government earlier this month in Washington, according to Sandro Chávez, president of the non-governmental Ecological Forum (Foro Ecológico).
… Continue Reading

Popularity: 100% [?]

RIGHTS-COLOMBIA: Extrajudicial Killings Under Scrutiny

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Thursday, October 30, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA, Oct 30 (IPS) – The dismissal of 20 officers and seven noncommissioned officers for extrajudicial executions of civilians presented as battlefield casualties ”is a triumph for human rights organisations and for Colombian society as a whole,” said Reynaldo Villalba of the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers Collective.

Villalba urged the Attorney General’s Office to carry out an in-depth investigation, ”not only of the fired officers but especially of those who were not fired, who remain hidden and are responsible for these policies.”

The three generals, 11 colonels, four majors, one captain, one lieutenant, six sergeants and one corporal who were sacked were posted in the northern departments (provinces) of Santander, Norte de Santander, Arauca and Antioquia.

The second and seventh army divisions both lost their commanders, Generals
José Joaquín Cortés (Santander, Norte de Santander and Arauca) and Roberto Pico (Antioquia).

The third general who was cashiered is Paulino Coronado, commander of the 30th Brigade. The scandal was triggered by the discovery of bodies of missing men in the remote district of Ocaña in Norte de Santander, which is in his jurisdiction.
… Continue Reading

Popularity: 100% [?]