Complete Wellness

Mantoe Phakathi

MANZINI, Swaziland, May 13 2010 (IPS) – Africa cannot survive without us, is the message from grandmothers representing all corners of the continent.

March at the birth of the African Grandmothers Movement: We demand economic independence to support our families. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

More than 3,000 grandmothers marched in the streets of Swaziland s commercial hub, Manzini on May 8, demanding financial independence to provide nutritious food, decent housing, access to ongoing quality education for their grandchildren and a better life.

We demand the economic independence to support our families, said 90-year-old Judith Simelane as she read the Manzini statement, marking the birth of the African Grandmothers Movement.

Freda Shabangu (70), a grandmother of 12 whose five children have all passed away, also participated in the march. From the meagre grant equivalent to about U.S. $80 that she receives from the Swazi government every three months, Shabangu has to provide for all the needs of her grandchildren.

I m happy that for the first time grandmothers are speaking for themselves about their problems, she told IPS.

With sub-Saharan Africa accounting for two-thirds of people living with HIV and AIDS globally, grandparents, especially grandmothers like Shabangu, have had to take up the responsibility of caring for ailing children and raising their grandchildren. Unfortunately, most African nations provide little or nothing in the way of social security support for this group. They also receive little recognition their contribution to national efforts to deal with HIV.
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We must have the resources to build our own capacity to raise healthy families and assist one another, said Simelane. We call for more training in critical areas such as home-based care, HIV/AIDS education, parenting orphans, healthcare, literacy and financial management.

Supported by the Stephen Lewis Foundation, the first ever African Grandmothers Gathering brought together 500 grandmothers from 14 countries in Africa and 42 of their Canadian counterparts.

The Canadian grandmothers present here are part of thousands back home who are in solidarity with their African sisters, said Elizabeth Rennie from the Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign.

These Canadian grandmothers, Rennie added, are raising funds back home to support programmes that are aimed at giving their African counterparts a better life .

The idea of the gathering, according to Swaziland Positive Living (SWAPOL) director Siphiwe Hlophe, was conceived back in 2006 in Toronto, Canada, in response to the emerging crisis grandmothers face in sub-Saharan Africa.

This event is the beginning of a process for Africa to recognise grandmothers who have been valiantly coping with the HIV/AIDS pandemic for over two decades, said Hlophe. Ilana Landsberg-Lewis, the executive director of the Stephen Lewis Foundation, said her organisation has a philosophy that if communities were to get the money they need to start businesses, they could turn the tide around.

That s what these grandmothers are asking for, said Landsberg-Lewis. They are demanding for better policies that would support them in their communities.

Towards this end, the foundation is funding income-generating programmes for grandmothers in some African countries. In Uganda, an NGO called St. Francis is helping grandmothers establish businesses and also save their profits. The organisation has been working with 120 grandmothers since 2007. Most of these grandmothers are living with HIV/AIDS.

We give each granny 100 dollars to start whatever business they think is suitable for them, said Angela Kirabo Ashaba, St. Francis grandmothers programme officer. St. Francis removes the burden of travelling to banks and engaging in complicated paperwork by keeping grandmothers savings safe at their offices.

Besides the fact that banks are intimidating to grandmothers, said Anne Mwangi from Kenya s WEM Integrated Health Services (WEMIHS), interest generated through the traditional revolving money fund goes back to the grandmothers. It doesn t go to the bank or micro-lending company.

The organisation also helps the grandmothers decide how to spend their savings on necessities such as school fees for their grandchildren and buying food.

Conference delegates also discussed strategies for coping with HIV/AIDS through the establishment of support groups for grandmothers, disclosure of HIV-positive grandchildren, social security and violence against grandmothers.

Speaking at the official opening, Ntombi Tfwala, the Queen Mother of Swaziland, said rape of grandmothers is now common. In other cases we hear that thugs attack and rob elderly women of the little that they have, said Tfwala. I take this opportunity to rebuke these evils that are making life uncomfortable for all of us.

A good look at the grandmothers attending the gathering was enough to dispel the stereotypical image of a grandmother. Not only your typical grey-haired women, the definition of grandmothers is contextual as observed by United Nations Population Fund country representative-Swaziland Aisha Camara-Drammeh.

In the African context, particularly in Swaziland, a grandmother can either be an elderly woman irrespective of age, married or unmarried but as long as she has a grandchild, said Camara-Drammeh.

She said a grandmother could also be someone who does not have children of her own but becomes granny because of being part of an extended family.

From the above description, Camara-Drammeh said the roles of grandmothers are different and the burden felt varies depending on the situation at hand.

Adam Robert Green

LONDON, Jun 28 2010 (IPS) – A proposed anti-counterfeit trade deal between 10 countries and the European Union (EU) could create a new set of barriers to the export of generic medicines to low income countries .

Everest Panda gets medicine for her baby from nurse Khetase Kapira in the children s ward at Kamuzu Central Hospital, Lilongwe, Malawi. Credit: Eva-Lotta Jansson/Oxfam

This warning comes from Rohit Malpani, senior advisor at Oxfam America, who spoke to IPS on the eve of the ninth round of negotiations on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) taking place from Jun 28 to Jul 1 in Lucerne, Switzerland.

ACTA is aimed at tackling the trade in fake products from luxury watches and cosmetics to car parts and medicine and those persons infringing on intellectual property (IP) rights by strengthening powers of customs officials in signatory countries to seize counterfeit goods.

International trade of IP-infringing products is worth over 150 billion euro per year, according to estimates of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), representing rich countries.

Instigated by the U.S. and Japan in 2006, the ACTA negotiators now include the EU, Australia, Canada, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and Switzerland.

But, critics warn, by not clearly distinguishing between fake medicines and legal generic drugs, which are often subject to patent dispute, the agreement could lead to the wrongful seizure of generic medicines en route to developing countries.
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ACTA is not just focusing on issues related to trademark law that is, medicines that are illegally and deceptively mislabelled but will also include patent law, which means that generic drugs will be covered, explains Joel Lexchin, MD, professor in the school of health policy and management at York University, Canada.

A patent involves the exclusive right, granted by a government, to use an invention for a specific period of time.

According to Lexchin, ACTA s inclusion of patents could substantially impede the flow of generic medicines. For instance, a company could claim that its IP rights have been violated in the production of a generic drug. That drug could then be seized by customs officials when it enters the country.

According to the World Trade Organisation s (WTO s) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs), WTO members must grant exclusive patent rights on medicines.

However, they can in some circumstances allow the production of lower-cost, generic versions of patented drugs in exchange for royalties paid to the patent holder.

But, crucially, TRIPs only allows such medicines to be sold in the domestic market of the developing country that produces it. Problems thus arise when low income countries, which cannot make their own generics, import them from larger developing countries like India, and in transit they enter a country where the patent is active.

Under ACTA, a multinational pharmaceutical company can say to customs officials in the transit country: That product infringes our patent in this territory, so even though the medicine is safe and can be legally exported from one developing country to another, we still want you to prevent it from reaching its destination , Malpani explains.

Such seizures occurred after the European Commission (EC) issued a crackdown on IP infringement which led to shipments of generic drugs being wrongfully intercepted.

Companies from India dubbed the pharmacy of the developing world for its leading generics sector had HIV, cardiovascular disease and common infections drugs, on their way to African countries, turned back by overzealous EU customs officials.

A famous case concerns the antiretroviral medicine, abacavir, shipped from India with Nigeria as destination but intercepted in the Netherlands. GlaxoSmithKline, the patent-holder, did not wish to initiate a legal action but Dutch customs authorities still referred the case to the criminal courts.

Felix Addor, deputy director general of the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property, told IPS that such outcomes mean the broad approach is unworkable.

Initially we did not see how you could discriminate between different IP rights. But having analysed the various transit cases, we now advocate that ACTA should either exclude patent-protected goods entirely or at least exclude these products from any border measures.

We expect that this decision will ultimately be supported by other delegations.

Swiss pharmaceutical companies deny civil society accusations that the industry wants to use ACTA to crack down on competing generics.

It is neither the policy nor the practice of our member companies to encourage authorities to use IP law enforcement to prevent the flow of legitimate generic products, says Bruno Henggi, head of public affairs at Interpharma, which represents major Swiss multinationals including Novartis and Roche.

We advocate that ACTA excludes patents from its scope. Our companies contribute to improving access to medicines in developing countries via large-scale donation programmes, preferential pricing and voluntary licensing, as well as through extensive participation in not-for-profit partnership activities.

If ACTA includes patent-protected generics and more developing countries sign up to the agreement, generics will be obstructed. This will cause competition to be delayed, (hence) medicine prices will increase, Malpani predicts.

Ultimately, high prices for medicines encourage counterfeiters to sell those very fake medicines that ACTA is trying to stamp out.

The justification that ACTA will tackle fake medicines, which account for almost 10 percent of world medicine, is widely rejected. Wilfully mislabelled medicines are already illegal under TRIPS, and patent infringement has nothing to do with fake or dangerous medicines , Malpani argues.

Lexchin adds that, the public health problem related to counterfeits is that substandard medicines will be used or medicines will contain contaminated or substituted ingredients.

The way to address this, though, is through better regulation of the pharmaceutical supply chain from producer to end user, particularly by strengthening regulatory authorities in developing countries .

Isaiah Esipisu

NAIROBI, Jul 20 2010 (IPS) – Because of societal pressure and the criminality associated with men who have sex with men (MSM) in Kenya, Omondi Maina* married a woman. This is despite being involved in a homosexual relationship for the last 10 years.

David Kuria of the Gays and Lesbians Coalition of Kenya says hundreds of members of the coalition are married and hide their homosexuality. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

And Maina is not the only gay man in Kenya having sexual intercourse with both a homosexual man and heterosexual woman.

New research has found that the strain of HIV among gays in Kenya is 100 percent similar to the HIV strain found in heterosexuals in the country. It is unlike the clearly defined strains of HIV found among homosexuals and heterosexuals in most countries.

The study released by the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) found that MSM in Kilifi, a region along Kenya s coast, have a HIV strain similar to the one found in female sex workers, as well as in the general public.

The findings are a clear indication that sex within gays in Kenya is interlinked with female sex workers and the general public, said Dr Mary Mwangome, the lead researcher of the study: Evaluation of HIV Type 1 Strains in Men Having Sex with Men and in Female Sex Workers in Mombasa, Kenya.

David Kuria, the chairman of the Gays and Lesbians Coalition of Kenya (GALCK) says that hundreds of members of the coalition are married men and women, but on the side they engage either in homosexuality, or lesbianism.
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All gays in Kenya are stigmatised. And to avoid this, most of them end up marrying women to guise as being straight . Or even worse, because they do not want permanent heterosexual relationships, they end up hiring female sex workers for their friends to think that they are straight, said Kuria, one of the most outspoken Kenyan gay activists.

And recent studies have shown that due to the sexual link between homosexual men and heterosexual women, the dangers associated with homosexuality are directly passed on to the general public.

Anal sex is ten times riskier than vaginal sex in terms of HIV transmission. This puts MSMs at the highest risk of transmission, which is automatically transmitted to the general public if at all they engage in unprotected heterosexual affairs, said Dr Preston Izulla, a health research scientist at the University of Nairobi.

It also means that homosexuality is not traded by foreigners alone. It is present among indigenous Kenyans. We expected to find gays and female sex workers HIV strains commonly found in the Western World because of the tourism activities. But instead, we discovered that the strain found in most of the subjects was local, meaning that it was not contracted from foreigners, said Mwangome.

The study involved 211 MSM, 96 percent of whom are Kenyan citizens and 148 female sex workers, 98 percent of who are Kenyans. Out of them 23 were found to be HIV-positive. Upon testing, 17 of them were found to have a pure HIV strain that is common in the general public, while the rest had a combination of strains that are well local.

The study confirms findings in the latest Kenya Aids Indicator Survey (KAIS) published in 2007. According to the survey, 65 percent of gay men who were interviewed confessed to being involved in another affair with a woman somewhere. As a result, 15 percent of new HIV infections in Kenya was found among gays.

A commercial sex worker in Nairobi told IPS that she had a husband, yet she was involved in commercial sex.

I have been married for the past six months. But my husband knows that I work in a Casino. He married me when I was a commercial sex worker, and am not planning to stop until we are financially stable, said the 23-year-old who only wanted to be identified as Anita*. She works in a commercial sex outlet in Nairobi known as Modern Green .

But Mwangome says the findings have revealed worrying trends that cannot be ignored. The fact that there is a relationship between female sex workers, gays and the general public means that a bigger population in the country is at risk of contracting HIV. This is because such minority groups which unfortunately operate in top secret have little access to intervention, yet the chances of infection are higher, said Mwangome.

Intervention in such groups should be made a policy issue in order to attract more attention, she added.

According to Izulla, only one in 20 gays living with HIV has access to prevention, care and treatment services.

*Names have been changed.

Danilo Valladares

GUATEMALA CITY, Aug 13 2010 (IPS) – I used to work on the south coast, cutting sugar cane, and I would go all the way to Belize to pick oranges during the harvest. I went through a lot so we could get by, Héctor Pan, a Q eqchi Indian in Guatemala who has now abandoned farming to become a river rafting guide, told IPS.
The lives of Pan, his wife and their five children began to change four years ago when they and nearly two dozen other people from their native village of Saquijá, in the northern Guatemalan province of Alta Verapaz, decided to launch a whitewater river rafting service to take advantage of the rapids in the Cahabón river that runs through the area.

The Guaterafting whitewater rafting business has helped the one-time farmer and 23 other local residents boost their incomes in order to put nutritional meals on their tables every day, which many people in this impoverished Central American country plagued by an ongoing food crisis are still unable to do.

Pan belongs to the Asociación de Desarrollo de Turismo Ecológico Saquijá, the ecological tourism association in his village, which receives support from the Rural Development Programme for Las Verapaces (PRODEVER).

PRODEVER is financed by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Guatemalan government s National Peace Fund (FONDAPAZ).

On top of being one of the most vulnerable countries in Latin America, with over 50 percent of the population living in poverty and 17 percent in extreme poverty, according to United Nations figures, Guatemala is still feeling the effects of tropical storms Agatha and Alex, which left more than 100,000 people homeless and devastated the country s crops of basic grains in May and June.
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According to the Agriculture Ministry, Agatha alone the more powerful of the two storms destroyed some 296,000 quintals (one quintal = 46 kg) of 69 different agricultural products. Of that total, 87,000 quintals were corn, the most widely consumed staple food in Guatemala.

The efforts of public agencies, non-governmental organisations, private entities and international agencies have become indispensable in addressing the food crisis.

Enrique Murguía, IFAD coordinator for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, told IPS that his specialised United Nations agency is committed to achieving food security, with a focus on boosting production and generating income, connected with increased access to markets.

One example of the agency s work is PRODEVER, which since 2001 has invested 16.3 million dollars in the northern provinces of Alta and Baja Verapaz to bolster agricultural production and food security.

In a six-year period, IFAD has invested 700 million dollars in Central America, which has been nearly matched by government funds, for a total of 1.3 billion dollars, Murguía said.

Numerous other organisations are also involved in the effort to improve food security in Guatemala, such as Acción Contra el Hambre, a local NGO.

The first aid we received were payments for fixing gutters in the streets, Francisco Pérez, a farmer from the town of San Pedro Pinula in the southeastern province of Jalapa, told IPS. After that they gave us seed corn, and thank God we will be harvesting soon.

Jalapa, located in the so-called dry corridor of Guatemala, an arid region stretching from the north to the east of the country, accounted for most of the 54 malnutrition-related deaths of children that made headlines in 2009, according to the government s office of epidemiology.

We are happy because with this support we have been able to help each other a bit, Pérez added. They (the NGO) also helped us with food for underweight children, and now we are waiting for them to distribute beans to plant.

According to José Luis Vivero, Acción Contra el Hambre s regional coordinator for Central America, the NGO s work is carried out along four lines: treatment and monitoring of acute malnutrition; the Mano de Obra Intensiva (labour-intensive) programme, which provides an income to the poorest families; distribution of drought-resistant seeds; and monitoring and early warnings on food security.

Although the support of NGOs and international agencies is seen as essential, Guatemalan activists believe a greater public effort is necessary.

Nadia Sandoval of the International Centre for Human Rights Research, a private local non-profit organisation, told IPS that although Guatemala has advanced legislation on food security, the laws do not guarantee that the institutions perform properly.

The Food Security Council created by the National Law on Food and Nutritional Security, which was passed in 2005, showed during the drought that hit the country in 2009 that it has failed to fulfill its role as a coordinating and decision-making body, she said.

Sandoval also called for oversight of compliance with the minimum monthly salary of 241 dollars which, we should point out, is lower than the cost of the basic food basket, estimated at 250 dollars a month.

Facilitating access to land, preventing forced evictions, and approval of a law on integral rural development, which is bogged down in the legislature, are other aspects of the pending agenda in the fight against hunger, she said.

Lisandro Guevara, technical secretary of the Mesa Nacional Alimentaria, a multi-sectoral body that was behind the drafting of the 2005 law, told IPS that the Food Security Council should play a more active role and that the budget for fighting hunger in the country should be expanded.

Emilio Godoy

MEXICO CITY, Sep 9 2010 (IPS) – Ángel Valencia was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Mexico four years ago with a bipolar disorder. Today, after treatment, he is back in society and is an activist with the Washington-based organisation Disability Rights International.
But Valencia s success story is an exception in this country in terms of care for people with mental disorders, an issue that a broad coalition of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) included in a harshly critical shadow report on Mexico s fulfilment of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The convention has not led to changes in Mexico. Laws should have been changed and access to services guaranteed, but that has not happened, Federico Fleischmann, the head of Libre Acceso, an NGO promoting rights and opportunities for people with disabilities, told IPS.

The convention came into effect in 2008, and in May this year the Mexican state should have sent its official report to the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which monitors implementation of this international instrument. It has not yet done so, although it is hoped that it will submit a report by the end of the year.

This Latin American country with a population of over 107 million has at least 10 million people with disabilities. Of these, 53 percent suffer from motor disorders, 20 percent have diminished intellectual capacity, 18 percent are hearing impaired and the rest are visually impaired, according to figures from the Mexican Confederation of Organisations for Persons with Intellectual Disability (CONFE).

Some four million people are exposed to discrimination because of disability, according to Mexico City s Human Rights Commission.
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Psychosocial disability has been added to the classification, as a category covering illnesses like schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar, obsessive-compulsive and borderline personality disorders.

At least 15 million people in Mexico have some kind of mental disorder, according to the Public Health Ministry, including 500,000 people who suffer from schizophrenia.

The 31 state psychiatric hospitals have an in-patient population of 7,000.

The civil society report provides a big picture perspective of the situation, pointing out the shortcomings, gaps and legal irregularities that contravene international human rights law, activist Ana Yeli Pérez, of the Mexican Commission for the Defence and Promotion of Human Rights (CMDPDH), a local NGO, told IPS.

For the first time in Mexico, organisations of people with disabilities and human rights groups have joined forces to study and document the status of disabled people s rights. More than 100 NGOs worked on the drafting of the report, and will cooperate to distribute its results.

Laws related to work, education, and healthcare should have been reformed, but none of that has happened. We hope the state will fulfil its obligation to present an official report, said Fleischmann, who gets around in a motorised wheelchair.

The General Law on Persons with Disability has been in force since 2005, and last year the government presented its National Programme for the Development of Persons with Disability 2009-2012 (PRONADIS).

The programme consists of nine goals to harmonise public policies in regard to education, health and sport, as well as the legal framework related to disability; reduce discrimination; and guarantee access to places, goods and services.

To produce their alternative report, the civil society organisations carried out a nationwide survey on the state of the disabled population. In addition, the census taken by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography this May and June included four questions on the issue.

The appalling conditions at psychiatric hospitals have shocked Mexican and foreign NGOs. In 2000, Disability Rights International published a study titled Human Rights and Mental Health: Mexico , which describes the problems.

Physical restraint, dehumanising treatment, badly deteriorated infrastructure and lack of qualified staff summed up the findings of a 2008 study by the National Human Rights Commission in six of the seven federally administered hospitals.

No more psychiatric hospitals should be built in the country; psychiatric care should be decentralised so that it is given at every clinic and health centre, Valencia said.

In colonial times, Mexico was one of the first territories in Latin America to have a facility for the care of the mentally ill, the San Hipólito Hospital, founded by the Spaniard Bernardino Álvarez in 1556.

Putting people in psychiatric wards is a violation of all their rights, because they do not receive rehabilitation and have no access to healthcare, Pérez stressed.

Conditions in these hospitals were exposed in the 2007 book Los manicomios del poder: corrupción y tráfico de influencias en el sector salud (The Asylums of Power: Corruption and influence peddling in the health sector) by journalist Jaime Avilés.

In fact a Mexican, Carlos Ríos, was elected to the 17-member U.N. Committee on the Rights of People with Disabilities for 2011-2014, at the Third Conference of States Party to the Convention, held Sept. 1-3 at United Nations headquarters in New York.

Peter Boaz

WASHINGTON, Oct 2 2010 (IPS) – Global health advocates are strongly urging the Barack Obama administration to remain financially supportive of the fight against HIV/AIDS, amidst fears that economic prudence from the U.S. will reverse encouraging gains.
On Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs heard testimony from White House officials and NGO experts on the future of the President s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR.

The hearing comes ahead of a meeting next week at U.N. headquarters in New York where country representatives are expected to announce their financial commitments to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Following a joint-UN agency report on the state of HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention released earlier this week, which showed a 17 percent reduction in HIV infections over the last eight years, activists warned that a drop-off in funding under President Barack Obama could jeopardise progress.

In May of this year, Obama unveiled his comprehensive global health strategy, known as the Global Health Initiative (GHI).

Faced with the current financial crisis, the GHI extends the previous five-year, 48 billion dollar PEPFAR programme by one year but adds a mere 3 billion dollars.
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Advocates, like Paula Akugizibwe, Advocacy Coordinator for the AIDS and Rights Alliance in South Africa, are disappointed in the administration s apparent downgrading of HIV/AIDS as a health priority.

HIV is not over-funded; rather, health is under-funded, Akugizibwe told a committee hearing Wednesday in Washington.

Shifting funding from HIV will not fill the yawning gaps in resources for health this move is a cheap diversionary tactic that offers no genuine or long-lasting solutions for health systems, Akugizibwe said.

But administration officials stress that incorporating PEPFAR into the GHI is a beneficial development.

The metric that PEPFAR and all GHI programs use to measure success is not dollars spent, but lives saved, said Eric Goosby, U.S. global AIDS coordinator, on Wednesday. In order to save as many lives as possible, we have focused on making smart investments that maximize the human impact of each dollar.

Goosby also emphasised expanding country ownership and local capacity to build sustainable health care delivery systems and optimise resources.

PEPFAR s support for country ownership is demonstrated through Partnership Frameworks, 15 of which have been signed, he said. These are five-year, high-level agreements between the U.S. and partner governments that leverage our investments to obtain measurable financial, programmatic and policy commitments to HIV and health systems.

But Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, who also testified on Wednesday, took aim at some of what she called the myths and misunderstandings regarding PEPFAR [that] have gained surprising credibility.

As the Director of the International Center for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs at Columbia University, El-Sadr told the Committee that it would be unwise to stray from PEPFAR s original function.

PEPFAR supports tens of thousands of programs and sites embedded within antenatal care programs and primary care settings at health centers, district andreferral hospitals, she said. Rather than reinventing the wheel, or starting from zero, we can build on this platform.

At the heart of the PEPFAR controversy remains a reluctance of the Obama administration to commit billions of dollars in the midst of an economic recession.

Noting that the U.S. provided nearly 60 percent of donor government funding for HIV/AIDS last year, Goosby spoke of an approach that embraced working with partner governments, donor nations, the private sector, civil society, philanthropic organisations, and others.

Goosby continued that the U.S. is the largest donor to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria having contributed more than 5.1 billion dollars to date.

Like nearly all global health advocates, Akugizibwe recognises the ground- breaking achievements that U.S. support has enabled in international health, but says the current slackening of U.S. government financial commitment to HIV, rather than encouraging an invigorated response from other countries, is instead leading a regression back to the landscape where HIV was a death sentence.

Akugizibwe cited a letter that Goosby wrote to civil society organisations, which read, one country alone cannot respond to the unmet needs that are present, either globally or in any particular country Every country must take a leadership role, including providing resources to the extent of its ability.

The commitments that countries choose to make will be on display next week in New York.

Christiana Weidanz

NEW YORK, Oct 28 2010 (IPS) – It is safe to say that the candidates running in Florida for the Nov. 2 congressional elections do not have a campaign stop planned for Tallevast. Residents there believe that they have been abandoned by the government.
Most do not even know who their representative is because no one can remember the last time a representative came to speak with the community. Most do not plan to vote because they don t see the point.

For close to four decades, residents of Tallevast in southwest Florida lived side by side with the American Beryllium Company, which employed local men and women to manufacture parts for nuclear weapons. Each day, workers inhaled beryllium dust and brought it home on their clothing.

In an award-winning investigative journalism series for the Miami Herald titled Toxic Town , resident Charles Ziegler says, You came home, you brought that mess home. Along with his wife, Ziegler suffers from chronic beryllium disease, a fatal scarring of the lung tissue.

Adora Nweze, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for the state of Florida, says the Tallevast case is only the tip of the iceberg.

I can tell you this, she told IPS. This whole state is covered with stories similar to this town s. There are areas, in the Black community in particular, where people are dying of cancer. Companies are depositing their copper and all sorts of metals in their drinking water.
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Public health has been testing, she continued sceptically, but something needs to be done. This is very, very real.

Unbeknownst to Tallevast residents, toxic chemicals used in the plant, including dioxin and TCE, were seeping into the ground. By the time local regulators investigated, a poisonous plume had spread across 200 acres below the small historically Black town.

The plant was sold to defence contractor Lockheed Martin in 1996, and the leakage was discovered as the company prepared to sell the property in 2000. The state of Florida and Manatee County officials were notified but the problem was hidden from residents. State officials quietly began removing soil until a resident questioned their actions. In late 2003 information was finally released on the groundwater contamination.

Only then did the truth of this environmental nightmare begin to come to light.

By this time, nearly one person in every household had been diagnosed with a type of cancer, and many people were dying very young.

State officials later conceded that the notification provisions of our rules were not adequate and that residents should not have had to wait three years to hear about the contamination under their homes.

In 2004, the community filed four lawsuits against the multinational defence contractor to address their health and property damages. The first of these was scheduled to be heard this month but talks toward an out-of-court settlement are also underway.

I m angry, says Laura Ward, who with fellow Tallevast resident Wanda Washington leads a small community organisation called Family Oriented Community United and Strong (FOCUS). I made baby formula and cooked for my family with that water for years while people at Lockheed Martin and at the county regulatory agencies knew how harmful it was.

Ward, who has two children who have had bouts with cancer, says she is also upset because she had to learn about the contamination herself.

We ve been a community that s been overlooked for so long, observed Ward, and I think it s felt that if they continue to overlook us, we might go away.

Ward s husband, Dr. Clifford ( Billy ) Ward, the town dentist, traces his family s history on the land back to the 1890s, when the town began as a turp camp where freed slaves got jobs teasing the sap out of long-leaf slash pines and boiling it into turpentine for use in the nation s shipyards and harbours.

The first thing that went through my mind was, How could this happen? Why didn t anyone tell us? asked Cassandra Casey Brice whose grandfather, Thomas Bryant, and his brother, Eli, founded the Bryant Chapel Christian Methodist Episcopal Church a few blocks from her home.

I think about my neighbors next door, my cousin, my community, worried Beatrice Ziegler. None of us is living safe. None of us!

You just feel like you ve been robbed of your heritage and your legacy, said lifelong resident Beverly Bradley, whose hands and feet were attacked by a fungus she fears came from the plant s soil. Tallevast is us. It s like they are taking our whole lives away from us.

Reporter Ronnie Greene of the Miami Herald captured these voices of Tallevast in the groundbreaking two-part investigative story and video: Toxic Town . In August, Greene, received an award from the Sidney Hillman Foundation in recognition of his exceptional reporting. The Sidney recognises outstanding socially conscious journalism.

Today the village of Tallevast is little more than a giant environmental testing ground, Greene wrote. More than 200 wells monitor a plume that spread from an initial estimate of five acres to more than 200.

Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin said through a representative that it has no plans to relocate any of the residents, claiming the source of the chemical leak has been capped.

While Lockheed Martin did not operate the facility, it remains responsible for the cleanup associated with the contamination from the site, the company states on a website.

The full remediation process is expected to take 50 years.

Many things were surprising, but perhaps none more than the fact that the town had been polluted with a cancer-causing chemical but no one told the residents, said Greene. Not the state, not the county, not industry.

Their struggles also brought about a change in the state laws of Florida. Now state officials must tell residents within 30 days if any sorts of health hazards are found in the community.

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Dec 2 2010 (IPS) – Margot Parapar gets plenty of laughs from the audience with this joke: Now the human body is divided into five parts: head, trunk, upper and lower limbs, and condom. Using his female stage name, Cuban drag queen, comedian and health promoter Oliver Alarcón includes HIV/AIDS prevention messages in his shows.

Transvestites and other artists at the Song for Life gala. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

On-stage, I try to put my message into accessible language, so that it reaches people directly, without vulgarity and for a very mixed audience, because we are all vulnerable, the artist told IPS.

He took part in a gala titled Canto a la vida (Song to Life), in response to the global AIDS epidemic, at the Fausto Theatre in Havana Sunday.

The performance, one of the activities organised ahead of World AIDS Day, celebrated Dec. 1, was an initiative of the National Centre for Sex Education (CENESEX) and other cultural and health organisations working to promote health and respect for sexual diversity.

Tailoring one s language to each specific audience is, according to Alarcón, the key to promoting, through art, the practice of safe sex. The majority of the audience may sometimes be the gay community, or heterosexuals, or the elite. The main thing is to know at whom the message is aimed, he said.

After joining the HSH-Trans (MSM-Trans men who have sex with men and transgender persons) programme at CENESEX a year ago, Margot Parapar s stage appearances never fail to include messages on sexual health, blended with large doses of humour. You have to know all about an issue, even if your aim is to popularise it, Alarcón said about the preparation involved.
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MSM-Trans is a social network of transgender persons (transvestites, transsexuals and drag queens) and men who have sex with men (MSM), in several Cuban provinces, who are trained as health promotes by CENESEX.

On stage, in front of a rainbow flag as a backdrop, Margot states confidently: I know everything: I am a protected oracle.

Behind the scenes, the actor acknowledged the essential nature of doing research to face the global AIDS pandemic and recognise human diversity.

For his part, Leonardo León, garbed as his artistic persona Chantal, said it was important not to oversimplify issues when talking about them.

Our message must be perceived as attractive, up-to-date and close to people s hearts, he said, stressing the need to use these shows that attract mass audiences, with all their diversity, for educational purposes.

Cuba began to adopt measures against the HIV/AIDS epidemic in 1983, although the first case on the island was not diagnosed until 1986. At present official statistics indicate that there are about 13,000 HIV-positive people on the island, which has a total population of 11.2 million, representing a prevalence of 0.1 percent, the lowest in the Caribbean region.

Most heavily affected are men who have sex with men, who make up 72 percent of all diagnosed cases, Rosaida Ochoa, head of the National Centre for Prevention of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) and HIV/AIDS (CNPSIDA), told the press.

As part of their prevention and awareness-raising programmes, both CNPSIDA and CENESEX have trained voluntary health promoters, who carry out active prevention work with their peer groups as well as wider population groups, and also through local media.

The health promoters are a key factor, because as volunteers, they give their efforts and spare time to prevent STIs and HIV/AIDS. Malú Cano Valladares, founder and coordinator of the MSM-Trans programme, told IPS.

They take their health messages to their usual meeting places, as well as to schools, communities and hospitals, she added.

CNPSIDA has trained 1,700 MSM as health promoters, and CENESEX has more than 400 in the MSM-Trans group, focused on STI prevention. At both institutions, other communities with specific goals, such as the right to freedom of sexual orientation, also join in the prevention work.

The two youngest members of the Oremi group of lesbian and bisexual women, for instance, were distributing leaflets and condoms last Sunday in Havana s Paseo del Prado. People sometimes think that lesbians run no risk of contracting the virus, but they do, said Yasmín de Robles, one of the activists.

With Anaylis Noa, her partner of nine years, this young blind woman advised people to stay in a stable relationship as a means of preventing HIV/AIDS. In her view, lesbians are also vulnerable, because of the low perception of risk, when they practise oral sex or use sex toys without protection.

A recently-created group, Hombres por la Diversidad (HxD, Men for Diversity), also linked to CENESEX, carried out its first health promotion activity Tuesday, on the eve of World AIDS Day, and to commemorate the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, celebrated Nov. 25.

According to Luis Enrique Mederos, a member of the HxD group and of the technical team working with a helpline for persons living with HIV/AIDS in Havana, promoting sexual health and facing AIDS in Cuba requires tighter links between the Education and the Health Ministries, especially in order to reach the teenage population.

In the view of Luis Rondón, another member of HxD and a volunteer with the MSM-Trans programme in Old Havana under the auspices of CNPSIDA, training more health promoters, developing closer relationships of trust, and expanding the social influence exerted by the volunteers are some of the improvements needed for fighting AIDS in this country.

The orientation of sexual desire does not increase a person s risk of contracting STIs or HIV, but unprotected sexual practices and behaviours do, said a sign projected at the Fausto Theatre before the gala performance, echoing the views of institutions like CENESEX and CNPSIDA with regard to respect for sexual diversity.

Milagros Salazar

LIMA, Jan 15 2011 (IPS) – The U.S. mining and metallurgical company Doe Run has once again challenged the Peruvian government. The Renco Group, of which it is a subsidiary, notified the government of its plans to start an international arbitration process, invoking the free trade agreement between this South American country and the United States.
The U.S.-based holding company said the arbitration will be filed in 90 days if no agreement is reached. What is behind this ultimatum?

In ads published Jan. 5 in newspapers in Lima, the Renco Group said it was turning to the mechanisms provided for by the trade promotion agreement because it had received unfair treatment at the hands of the Peruvian government and had not been given protection and security as an investor, as required by the treaty.

Doe Run began to run the large multi-metal smelter in the central Peruvian highlands city of La Oroya, known as one of the most polluted places on earth, after the plant was privatised and acquired by the Missouri-based firm in 1997.

When it won the concession to operate the plant, Doe Run promised to complete an environmental improvement programme, known by its acronym PAMA, within 10 years. But the Peruvian state also assumed a commitment to clean the soil in and around the town, because the factory, which was built in 1922 by the Cerro de Pasco Corporation, a U.S. firm, was taken over by the state-run Centromin Peru in 1974.

Doe Run now claims that Activos Mineros, the state-run firm that took over Centromin s responsibilities, has refused to clean up the soil in La Oroya, and has refused to accept responsibility for the legal action brought by the citizens living in and near the town of La Oroya who claim various injuries resulting from alleged lead exposure and environmental contamination from the smelter complex.
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But it is Doe Run that has failed to fully implement PAMA and has continued to pollute in La Oroya, former deputy minister of mines María Chappuis told IPS. This communiqué is as if they were telling the government: we pollute and you clean up.

Chappuis resigned from her post in December 2004 to protest an extension of the PAMA deadline that the government granted to Doe Run.

The former official complained that the company wants the government to pay for any damages that a U.S. court could order for the families of more than 100 children with lead poisoning in La Oroya.

In late 2010, a court in St. Louis, Missouri, where Doe Run s corporate offices are based, ruled that 11 lawsuits filed against the Renco Group and Doe Run by a group of citizens from La Oroya could go ahead in that venue. The plaintiffs are suing over injuries from lead exposure and environmental pollution caused by the smelter.

If the court rules in favour of the plaintiffs, the company will have to pay reparations to the families of the children.

Doe Run committed itself, through PAMA, to reaching a target of 95 percent of children under six in La Oroya with a lead level below 10 micrograms of lead per decilitre of blood (mcg/dl), regarded by the World Health Organisation as the maximum safe limit.

But Peru s Health Ministry found that 99 percent of children under six in La Oroya had lead poisoning.

Doe Run also promised to build three sulphuric acid plants for its lead, zinc and copper processing operations. But the copper circuit plant, the most crucial, has not been completed.

As of mid-2009, Doe Run had failed to fulfil 20 percent of the PAMA programme. And since then, no progress has been made, because the company was temporarily shut down in June 2009 after declaring bankruptcy, despite soaring metals prices.

It then missed the July 2010 deadline set by the government of Alan García for proving that it had the necessary financing to restart operations and complete an environmental cleanup.

The 90 day deadline (that Doe Run gave Peruvian authorities) sounds suspicious, said Chappuis. What it is trying to do is provide enough time for the emergence of someone who yields to its pressure, as happened before, especially now, during an election year. General elections are due in April.

The former official was referring to a letter sent in October 2007 by then prime minister Jorge del Castillo (2006-2008) to then U.S. ambassador to Peru Michael McKinley, asking the State Department to intervene in a lawsuit that had recently been brought in Missouri against Doe Run Resources Corporation.

In the letter, Del Castillo asked the U.S. government to contact the Department of Justice and the St. Louis court, in order to avoid setting a disturbing precedent for investors in both countries, which would undermine legal security.

In response to criticism, the former prime minister said he had sent the message to avoid controversy in the face of the approval of the free trade agreement with the United States, which went into effect in early 2009.

If the international arbitration proceeding goes ahead, the Renco Group would become the first company to turn to the mechanisms for that purpose created by the free trade agreement.

The Peruvian government must not make another mistake, and has to act cautiously, said economist José de Echave of CooperAcción, a Peruvian NGO working for development.

In response to a query by IPS, the Ministry of Energy and Mines said The state will only pronounce itself on this matter through the legal routes.

Activos Mineros, for its part, published an insert in a local magazine, stating that it had planned to invest 35 million dollars in a cleanup plan between 2007 and 2015, and that so far 4.8 million dollars have been spent to carry out a study on soil remediation and urban cleanup actions.

IPS was also informed that Activos Mineros has already calculated how much Doe Run would have to pay Peru for the remediation, because it was reported that the contract establishes that if the company that took over the smelter did not have better environmental performance than Centromin, it would have to assume part of the costs.

If in 2004 the company had not received an extension of the deadline for completing PAMA, the firm would not have invoked the free trade agreement, which did not enter into effect until five years later, de Echave said.

He also questioned claims that a court like ICSID (International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes) has environmental sensibility, when its rulings tend to go in favour of investors.

De Echave pointed out that since the start of the negotiations of the free trade agreement, a number of organisations warned that the chapter on investment made too many concessions. And today we re seeing the consequences, he said.

Dahr Jamail

TAMPA, Florida, Mar 1 2011 (IPS) – A first-of-its-kind lawsuit alleging gross negligence and fraud has been filed in a Florida state court against Kenneth Feinberg, the administrator of the 20-billion-dollar compensation fund for victims of BP s Gulf oil spill, and the Gulf Coast Claims Facility (GCCF).
Attorney Brian Donovan of the Donovan Law Group from Tampa filed the complaint against Feinberg, his firm Feinberg Rozen, LLP and the GCCF on behalf of Pinellas Marine Salvage, Inc. and John Mavrogiannis.

The complaint alleges, in part, gross negligence, fraud, fraudulent inducement and unjust enrichment on the part of the defendants.

Feinberg and the GCCF have done more damage than the oil spill, Donovan told IPS. My client has relied on what Feinberg said he would do. They ve made promises they didn t keep. John s company was promised money they have not received.

Mavrogiannis told IPS, We re sick and tired of this runaround. I m tired of Feinberg s lies. He s made promises he hasn t kept. He s manipulating the system and that s not right.

Mavrogiannis is far from alone in not having received compensation for the severe losses his business has suffered as a direct result of BP s oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that began last April.
It was recently revealed that more than 130,000 compensation claims will be refused by Feinberg, who claims they lack adequate documentation.

State governments of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana are accusing Feinberg of delaying claims and causing great hardship to local businesses, as well as underestimating losses to coastal businesses.

Donovan believes Feinberg is simply doing what he is being paid by BP to do.

He s doing his job, Donovan told IPS, Feinberg is a defence attorney representing BP. To think otherwise is being foolish. As a defence attorney, he s doing a great job for BP. But they are saying go with us, or sue us .

Feinberg s Washington-based firm, Feinberg Rozen, was being paid 850,000 dollars a month by BP to administer the compensation fund and claims process for Gulf residents and fishermen.

A 46-page contract between BP and Feinberg detailing the arrangement was made public on Jan. 7 when it was filed in the U.S. District Court in New Orleans as part of the multi- district spill litigation against BP.

As of Jan. 15, the firm s fee, according to the document, will be mutually agreed to by the parties on a quarterly basis in advance of the first day of each successive calendar quarter. This clause has led many critics to believe that Feinberg could stand to gain from dispensing less of the fund s 20 billion dollars to claimants and tying the amount of its payments to Feinberg s success in limiting BP s liability.

Any funds remaining from the 20 billion would revert to BP under an agreement with the White House. Feinberg has told reporters, My understanding is that if 20 billion dollars is sufficient and there is money left over it is retained by BP.

In late December, Feinberg told Bloomberg Television that he anticipates about half of the fund should be enough to cover claims for economic losses.

Donovan believes lawsuits haven t been filed against Feinberg before now because of politics .

His political connections is all I can think of. I can t think of why more people won t go after Feinberg for this, because it s obvious they should, he said.

The only attorneys involved in the BP oil spill who I know are those trying to sign up victims for class action lawsuits, Donovan added. This is understandable given that Reuters recently reported that fewer than three percent of the approximately 470,000 businesses and individuals who have filed claims with GCCF have lawyers helping them negotiate.

Mavrogiannis feels their complaint is solid, Because Feinberg has lied to us on several occasions. Had he told me from the beginning he was working for BP, I would have filed suit against BP right when this happened. I believed he was impartial with no ties, but he has deceived me, and that s fraud.

If I lose my property, business, and house because I can t make my mortgage payments because Feinberg is late in paying me, who is going to compensate me for this? Mavrogiannis, whose home is close to being forclosed, told IPS. I have to take my IRA s [individual retirement accounts] out to pay my bills. I can only hang in there for another month or two then the banks are going to want their money.

Mavrogiannis lawsuit alleges, in part, The defendants employ a Delay, Deny, Defend strategy against claimants. This strategy, commonly used by unscrupulous insurance companies, is as follows: Delay payment, starve claimant, and then offer the economically and emotionally-stressed claimant a miniscule percent of all damages to which the claimant is entitled. If the financially ruined claimant rejects the settlement offer, he or she may sue.

The amount paid out so far averages nearly 16,000 dollars per claimant. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the 2009 poverty threshold for a family of three was 18,310 dollars.