Kathmandu, 16th December 2010 (IPS) - For the last 17 years, Keshari Maharjan has been going door to door in the outskirts of the Nepali capital to tell people about the services available at health centres in their communities, as well as about how to prevent certain diseases. It hasn’t always been easy for Maharjan and other community health volunteers like her. Indeed, she says, "It was very difficult those days when people suspected (us) of various ill intentions." Yet they must have been doing something right all these years. According to Maharjan herself, she has noticed that there has been improved awareness about sanitation, diseases, and health centre services in the la...

VIENTIANE, Lao PDR, 26 November 2010 – Asia Pacific governments and UN officials have agreed to accelerated efforts towards eliminating the transmission of HIV from mothers to their newborn children at a meeting in the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos.This week’s 8th meeting of the Asia-Pacific Prevention of Parents-to-Child-Transmission (PPTCT) Task Force in Vientiane was an opportunity to highlight the encouraging progress that has been made around the region to reduce the number of babies becoming infected with HIV through mother-to-child transmission.In India, authorities are moving towards universal antenatal testing while China is expanding the package of routine services for...

Dhaka, 21 November 2010 - Community-based treatments may hold the key to whittling down high rates of severe acute malnutrition among children under five in Bangladesh. A pilot scheme on this is being run by the NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which hopes to evaluate it by May 2011.Half a million children suffer from severe “wasting” - or acute malnutrition - in Bangladesh. Due to starvation or disease they are far under the weight of healthy children their height, according to a 2009 survey conducted by the UN and the government. The public health system has failed these children, according to a 2008 government report on the treatment of severely malnourished children.“Active ca...

Lebanon, 17 November 2010 - For the first time under the United Nations Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process, a government is having to respond to human rights recommendations made by children, based on their own experiences.Lebanon was reviewed at the UPR session in Geneva, Switzerland on Wednesday. Several of the recommendations made were based on a report prepared by four World Vision Children’s Councils in Lebanon. The UPR process examines the human rights record of every country, and governments must respond officially before the international community to all recommendations presented.Hassan, a 16-year-old from one of the Children’s Councils that wrote the report, attended the r...