The new agreement comes after promising results from early stage clinical trials showed that the GSK TB vaccine candidate known as M72/AS01_E^* has an acceptable safety and reactogenicity profile and demonstrated an immune response.

This novel research and resource-sharing agreement between the largest non-profit TB vaccine biotech and one of the world’s leading research-based pharmaceutical and healthcare companies marks advancement in the race to develop new vaccines against TB, a global infectious disease killer.

“This partnership signals our commitment to building innovative collaborations to develop and deliver new TB vaccines,” said Jim Connolly, President and Chief Executive Officer of Aeras. “We will never reverse the spread of the global TB epidemic without new vaccines as part of the solution.”

“When considering the massive public health impact and costs to society of neglected diseases including tuberculosis, global financing for R&D remains critically low in this area,” said Jim Connolly.

“Working in partnership with GSK – sharing resources, capabilities and know-how – affords us the opportunity to conduct this pivotal, multi-country proof of concept trial, getting us that much closer to potentially one day having a TB vaccine that could protect adolescents and adults from one of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases.”

TB continues to kill 1.4 million men, women and children annually, despite the widespread use of the currently available TB vaccine, Bacille Calmette-Guèrin (BCG), in TB endemic countries. BCG prevents some forms of TB in infants but does not prevent pulmonary TB, which accounts for the majority of infections and deaths among adolescents and adults.

The GSK vaccine candidate developed under this new agreement is being designed to be used in addition to BCG.

AUTHOR: Henry Neondo
URL: http:// www.africasciencenews.org
E-MAIL: neondohenry [at] yahoo.com

The denial of medical treatment is a way by which Iranian authorities put pressure on political prisoners.

Zanyar and Loghman Moradi are two political prisoners who, under torture, signed a document holding them responsible for the murder of a regime official that took place in a Kurdish city in Iran.

According to a report by Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran, Zanyar and Loghman Moradi been subjected to torture and threatened with rape.

Neither of these two political prisoners have been allowed visits with their families in more than six months.

AUTHOR: Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam
URL: http://iranhr.net/
E-MAIL: amirymoghaddam [at] gmail.com

Antimalaria medicines have been administered prophylactically to approximately 175,000 children between three months and five years of age inKoutiala District in southern Mali and in two areas of Moissala District in Chad, through an intervention known as seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC). Children in that age group are among the most vulnerable to death from malaria due to weaker immunity. Preliminary results show more than a two-thirds drop in the number of simple malaria cases in the intervention area in Mali and up to an 86 percent drop in Chad. A significant decrease of cases of severe malaria is also being recorded.

“While we need to continue evaluating the broader impact of SMC, in terms of its overall effect on a population’s health, the initial results of our intervention show a spectacular decrease in the number of malaria cases,” said Dr. Estrella Lasry, a malaria specialist at MSF. “The bottom line is that we are seeing a correlation with our intervention: more than half the beds in the pediatric ward of the hospital in which we work in Mali are empty, something we have never seen in prior years during peak malaria season, when bed occupancy was typically over one hundred percent.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommended SMC in March, 2012, based upon research carried out in multiple countries in the Sahel region of Africa that experience high seasonal malaria. The intervention consists of the intermittent provision of a full course of treatment of an anti-malaria medication during peak malaria season, with the aim of preventing new cases of malaria. Different drugs are used to treat people in the area who test positive for malaria.

The MSF projects were launched in July and will last until October, the period of high malaria transmission, and mark the first time MSF has carried out a large-scale SMC program. Some 165,000 children in Mali and 10,000 in Chad take a total of three tablets of amodiaquine and one ofsulphadoxine/pyrimethamine over a three day period once a month. Children who are ill at the time of a distribution, and who test positive for malaria, receive artemisinin-based treatment and are excluded from that month’s distribution.

The areas in Mali and Chad were tested for resistance to the SMC drugs prior to the initiation of the intervention. No resistance was discovered among the representative sample tested. Further resistance surveys will be conducted periodically in Koutiala and Moissala.

In Mali, MSF teams observed a 65 percent drop in the number of simple malaria cases in the weeks following the distribution of treatment. Additionally, the number of malaria-associated hospitalizations plummeted from an average 247 per week to 84. In southern Chad, results were equally encouraging; in two health zones in Moïssala, the decrease in the number of simple malaria cases was between 72 percent and 86 percent, compared to cases recorded in the weeks prior to the first SMC distribution.

“This prevention strategy could be an extraordinary public health tool, particularly for protecting children, who account for the vast majority of malaria deaths,” said Dr. Lasry. “We can draw on our projects in Chad and Mali to assess the feasibility of employing this strategy in other contexts.”

Additional malaria prevention methods, such as bed net distributions, insecticide spraying, and adequate diagnosis and management of malaria must continue to be supported and implemented in endemic countries, MSF said.

According to the WHO, an estimated 650,000 people die from malaria every year. Ninety percent of cases occur in Sub-Saharan Africa, mainly among young children.

MSF is running projects for the treatment and prevention of the most deadly diseases in young children in Mali and Chad. Since the beginning of 2012, more than 12,000 people have been treated for malaria as outpatients and 3,500 sick and/or severely malnourished children have been hospitalized in Koutiala district in southern Mali. In the Moïssala district in Chad, more than 18,000 people have received malaria treatment in MSF-supported facilities or from non-medical health workers in villages who have been trained by MSF.

AUTHOR: Shout Africa
URL: http://www.shout-africa.com
E-MAIL: news [at] shout-africa.com

The new U.N. report ranks the leading causes of child death as pneumonia, premature birth, diarrhea, childbirth complications and malaria. The report also shows that as deaths to all children under age five have dropped, those occurring in the first month of life have declined more slowly. As a result, newborn deaths now account for 43 percent of child deaths — up from 36 percent in 1990. Overall, the vast majority of child deaths — 83 percent — now occur in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia.

Save the Children said it is a critical time for Americans to help maintain momentum following a “Child Survival Call to Action,” convened in June by the U.S. government together with UNICEF and the governments of India and Ethiopia. Healthier children are the foundation for more productive, prosperous and stable communities, which benefit everyone, the agency said.

“We know where the children are that still need basic care to survive birth complications and childhood disease, and we know how health workers can save them,” Miles said. “It’s an issue everyone can get behind because every beat matters.”

AUTHOR: Cassandra Clifford
URL: www.bridgetofreedomfoundation.org and http://children.foreignpolicyblogs.com
E-MAIL: Cassandra [at] btff.org

At a recent meeting of the CSOs, the groups proposed the amendment to the Bill and called for removal of clauses that seem to create barriers to reproductive health rights of women.

These CSOs were in agreement that it was necessary to have a health law in place to help the realization of the right to health for Kenyans as provided for in the Kenyan Constitution, 2010.

However, they were quick to point out that the health Bill should give direction on how the right to health and the underlying determinants of health will be realized by all Kenyans including the vulnerable and marginalized people.

The Health Rights Advocacy Forum, a Nairobi-based NGO says the Taskforce on the Implementation of the Constitution in the Health Sector received inputs and comments from Stakeholders in the month of March 2012 and according to sources from the Ministry, they have been working on them to date.

Unfortunately, says an officer at the HERAF, there has been no communication on the progress of the same to stakeholders and at some point civil society has had the impression that the process had stalled or the task force working on the Bill is doing it alone.

Further, the source adds, there have been concerns on stakeholder’s engagement in the development of the Bill. The Bill was drafted by a consultant and stakeholders have only been called upon to give comments on the already developed Bill. “Moreover, despite giving their comments, there has been no feedback from the taskforce on whether their inputs are relevant, have or have not been considered,” adds the source.

According to Prof Joseph Karanja of the University of Nairobi, the 67-page Bill has good intentions but it also has some contentious issues that the committee has included. The worst bit of it, says Prof Karanja is the refusal by the committee members to ignore objections and proposals from other stakeholders working outside the government. “Although they are few, but they have wider implications,” said Prof Karanja.

He said the bill is generally aims to establishing structures for improving Kenya’s health systems and not to manage certain health conditions.

He singled out some section early in the bill that talks of family planning and tries to name abortion as a method of family planning.

“The Bill is singling out abortion as a method of family planning but leaves out all other health conditions. “It looks as if there is an ulterior motive to create barriers against abortion. This is contrary to the new constitution.

He said the way the Bill is put, it implies Kenyans will be denied the right given by Article 26 of the constitution and stigmatises abortion. Yet the ministry health guidelines on family planning don’t cite abortion as a method of family planning.

Article 26 (4) of the constitution permits abortion except when in the opinion of a trained health professional, there is need for emergency treatment, or the life or health of the mother is in danger, or if permitted by any other written law.

The CSOs also hit out attempts by the Bill drafters to say that abortion is notifiable disease condition like cholera, ebola, tryphoid and TB. “This is quite wrong,” said Prof Karanja.

The CSO members have called for the deleting the section that brings in the issue of abortion in the Bill.

The way out, says Prof Karanja is for the committee to wait for the proposed Termination of Pregnancy Bill which aims to shed light into how abortion is to be managed. This is in line with the way how all other medical conditions have been treated.

As it reads, say health experts, the proposed Health Act negates Article 26(4, 43(1) and (2) as it adds another obstacle of licensing.

The committee working on the Bill is composed of some technocrats at the ministry of health and it is said to ignore comments from the professional societies such the Nurses’ Council of Kenya, the Kenya Medical Association, and others.

Prof Karanja says that the process of selecting them was selective and brings together only a few people with like-minds who ignore others with opposed views.

The CSOs say the entire Bill has been developed with little consultation and comments, recommendations and proposals from professional bodies are ignored.

But the Minister for Medical Services, Prof Anyang Nyong told members of the civil society not to be worried.

He said the Bill is still under vey early stage of drafting.

He adds that after the drafting, the Bill will be sent to the Committee on Implementation of the Constitution which is required by law to provide a minimum of 30 days to allow public comments and additions.

“It is at this stage that members of the civil society will be needed to bring in their recommendations and memoranda,” he said.

Kenya has an estimated 360,000 abortions every year, 20,000 of these end up in admissions with complications which in turn result in 2,000 maternal deaths

According to studies by the International Planned Parenthood Federation, for every woman who dies, six others are left with complications which can be severe leading to loss of reproductive organs like uterus.

Experts now say with broad interpretation of Section 26 of the Constitution, there is no longer any reason a woman should die of pregnancy-related deaths. “The provision of the constitution now negates the notion that abortion is illegal in Kenya,” say experts.

According to experts, while all African countries have post abortion services, none ever asks questions on unsafe abortion.

Most abortion laws in Africa are inherited from former colonial masters but most have either been amended or are in the process of being amended as they were originally meant to save women from abuse by the medics 200 years ago.

While Kenyan official line still appears against abortion, some countries like Ethiopia, Zambia and Ghana seem to have some lax approach to abortion.

In Ethiopia for example, the law allows abortion on medical, mental, age (below 18 years) and is allowed without any other requirements. In Ghana, the law allows abortions for rape, incest.

In Zambia, abortion can be procured on socio-economic grounds. South Africa offers abortion on demand. It is only in Lesotho and Swaziland where abortion is still prohibited.

But the irony is, says an expert at IPPF, all over Africa, post-abortion care is provided for in government hospital facilities yet no one asks where abortion is initially done. This, says the source is a misnomer. “Post abortion is more costly compared to attempts to provide safe abortion.”

According to IPPF, there are estimated 210 million pregnancies every year. 46 million of these pregnancies are either spontaneously aborted or induced. 20 million pregnancies that are aborted are classified as unsafe. Of these, 4.3m occur in sub-Saharan Africa where 90% of abortions are considered unsafe.

Studies also show that by making abortion legal, you don’t increase the number of abortion.

In many studies, the number will increase initially…but this is explained by the fact that many women will not opt to go for the official healthcare facilities to procure abortion. But in the long-run the number drops due to the added family planning services.

AUTHOR: Henry Neondo
URL: http:// www.africasciencenews.org
E-MAIL: neondohenry [at] yahoo.com

Women prepare food for participants outside the Tribunal, credit: James Rodriguez

“A few years ago, our people, the people you can see around you, we began to realize what was happening,” Maudilia López told the hundreds gathered to attend the first ever People’s Health Tribunal in San Miguel Ixtahuacán, Guatemala. The event was packed, even as some attendees spilled out of the entrance of the crowded room, others shuffled to find a spot.

The International Peoples’ Health Tribunal (IPHT) took place on the second floor of the parish hall of San Miguel Ixtahuacán, a municipality in Guatemala’s Western Highlands of roughly 60,000 people, a majority of whom are Maya-Mam. San Miguel Ixtahuacán is the main site of the Marlin mine, an open pit gold mine that is one of the most important projects of Canadian gold mining giant Goldcorp Inc.

The gathering, held on July 14-15, was the result of an organizing effort originating from communities affected by the Marlin mine. Also present were people affected by Goldcorp’s Los Filos mine in Mexico and its San Martín mine in Honduras, as well as representatives from throughout Central America (El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Panama), who provided a regional examination and critique of the resource extraction model and its effects on communities.

“For now, we will ask, before this community, that you will swear to arrive at a conclusion based on what you have heard people say,” López continued, turning her attention to the panel of judges in front of her.

Sitting in front of the audience were the Tribunal’s twelve judges on a panel comprised of prominent human rights defenders and ecologists, health specialists, and scientists from five different countries. Among them was Robert Goodland, a Canadian Tropical Ecologist who worked for 23 years as an environmental consultant to the World Bank; Dr. A. Chicas, doctor, public health specialist, and Secretary of the Ethics Board for the Medical Profession in El Salvador; Jesús Lara Chivarra, indigenous authority of the Wixarika Nation (Mexico) and member of the Wirikuta Defense Front; Yolanda Chalí of the Association for Community Health Services of Guatemala; and Rachel Sieder from the Center for Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology, Mexico. They travelled from both north and south to listen to dozens of ordinary people, technical experts, women, men, mine workers, indigenous leaders, and even children, tell how open pit mega-mining has impacted their lives.

While the tribunal carried on, women prepared large pots of caldo and heaps of tamalitos to feed the hundreds of attendees. Community radio stations from San Marcos, Huehuetenango, and Guatemala City transmitted the event live. An independent media room on the first floor prepared materials to be disseminated internationally as the first day of testimony officially began.

People’s Health Tribunal: What is it?

The IPHT was modeled off of a popular practice of public justice known as Permanent People’s Tribunals, which have been used throughout the Americas to denounce harms caused by multinational corporations that otherwise enjoy full impunity from national and international legal systems. The IPHT was unprecedented in that it marked the first attempt by a popular tribunal to tackle the issue of health systematically.

The tribunals are meant to give voice. They provide a space for people to speak out, have their grievances heard, and hear the grievances of others – a space for information to be systematized and for experiences to be transmitted and shared with a broader public. Their results are not legally binding, but they aim to break the impunity of corporations, at least symbolically.

The premise of the IPHT, which was inspired in part by a study conducted by registered nurse and doctoral student Susana Cajax, was to look at the holistic health impacts of open-pit mining in the region. Despite the mining industry’s long history of accumulation through dispossession in the Americas, little attention has been paid to determining the extent of impacts on human health. The communities and the organizers of the event were determined to approach health in a different way, focusing both on physical health as well as the psychosocial health of individuals and communities as a whole.

As for physical health impacts, clear commonalities emerged from the three Goldcorp mines used as case studies: respiratory diseases, skin diseases, increased instances of cancer, premature births, an increase in birth defects and miscarriages, and physical violence such as assassinations and government repression.

The psychological and social dynamics are more abstract. What people described as impacts on the social fabric of their communities, on their psychological state, and on their ability to exercise self-determination over their lives are often neglected. These problems stem from the initial imposition of mining projects, a violation of the right to free, prior, and informed consent upheld by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the right to be properly consulted, as protected by the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) Convention 169.

As Mexican representative Gustavo Lozano explained:

This is also about psychosocial health. Communities live with great anxiety because they’ve lost control over their own lives. This directly impacts their dignity. In fact, we could say that this is one of the definitions of dignity. All of a sudden, you don’t know what will happen with your life. The mining industry is like a trauma for communities. They bring us irreparable harms, harms that have no price, that last for hundreds of years. But they also bring repression… They bring us martial law, military bases, criminalization in the form of unjustified arrest warrants and drug trafficking charges, personal threats to our lives, and even rape.

According to Cajax, the tribunal was designed to value the popular knowledge of communities, since scientific studies conducted by Western institutions are not sufficient to understand the complexities of health impacts or how people are experiencing them.

ged from the three Goldcorp mines used as case studies: respiratory diseases, skin diseases, increased instances of cancer, premature births, an increase in birth defects and miscarriages, and physical violence such as assassinations and government repression.

The psychological and social dynamics are more abstract. What people described as impacts on the social fabric of their communities, on their psychological state, and on their ability to exercise self-determination over their lives are often neglected. These problems stem from the initial imposition of mining projects, a violation of the right to free, prior, and informed consent upheld by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the right to be properly consulted, as protected by the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) Convention 169.

As Mexican representative Gustavo Lozano explained:

This is also about psychosocial health. Communities live with great anxiety because they’ve lost control over their own lives. This directly impacts their dignity. In fact, we could say that this is one of the definitions of dignity. All of a sudden, you don’t know what will happen with your life. The mining industry is like a trauma for communities. They bring us irreparable harms, harms that have no price, that last for hundreds of years. But they also bring repression… They bring us martial law, military bases, criminalization in the form of unjustified arrest warrants and drug trafficking charges, personal threats to our lives, and even rape.

According to Cajax, the tribunal was designed to value the popular knowledge of communities, since scientific studies conducted by Western institutions are not sufficient to understand the complexities of health impacts or how people are experiencing them.

“You can’t understand health without understanding reality,” said Cajax. She said her research also consisted of gathering qualitative evidence in order to understand peoples’ experiences. She found that people were stressed about their health and well-being, which resulted in “a strong psychological suffering on a collective level.”

“There’s a lot of alcoholism and a rise in HIV/AIDS, increased violence against women, domestic violence,” added Cajax. “And of course the physical harms also have a profound psychological effect.”

Dr. Juan Almendares, Honduran doctor and founder of the Honduran Science Academy, has been conducting community health analyses in the Siria Valley of Honduras, where Goldcorp’s San Martín mine operated from 2000 to 2008 (initially as a Glamis Gold operation). During expert testimony at the tribunal, Almendares noted the importance of taking a more holistic approach to health by incorporating popular knowledge into analyses.

“If we want to analyze health, we need to talk about not just one system, but all the systems…We need to integrate science, spirituality, and the social conscience,” he said. “Knowledge isn’t just created in universities, but also among people…We need to listen to each other, to listen to each other’s knowledge and wisdom.”

Dirty Business in Guatemala

“They’ve always wanted to buy my land and they’ve always threatened me for not wanting to sell it. Once I had my grandson in my arms and they put a machete to my neck. It wasn’t until my grandson cried, that is what saved my life,” testified Diodora Hernandez, who has repeatedly refused to sell her land to Goldcorp.

Hernandez explained the threats to her life that have resulted from the mining company’s presence in her community. In 2009 she was shot in the eye by two former mine employees, but survived the attack. “This is what they have done and continue to do,” she continued, “and I have committed no other crime than not wanting to sell my land.”

In addition to facing pressure, threats, and coercion from mining company employees to sell their land, communities surrounding Goldcorp’s Marlin mine used the tribunal to denounce the health, environmental, and human rights violations that the mine has caused, which stand in stark contrast to the picture the company has painted to shareholders and the media.

Marlin is one of Goldcorp’s most important and lowest-cost projects in Latin America, with an estimated total of 1,250,000 ounces of extractable gold. It was constructed in 2005 by subsidiary Montana Exploradora, with the help of a $45 million dollar World Bank loan and without the free, prior, and informed consent of the affected Maya-Mam communities.

“The No. 1 and most important factor is that we are operating the mine to international standards from the very beginning,” said GoldCorp CEO Chuck Jeannes in May 2011 in response to allegations of human rights violations and environmental damage. Jeannes earned $11.4 million in total compensation that year, making him one of Canada’s top ten highest paid corporate executives. This was only a year after the Inter American Commission on Human Rights issued precautionary measures for 18 of the communities around the mine, calling on the Guatemalan government to suspend Marlin’s operations immediately to safeguard the health and safety of the population. However, Guatemala did not comply, and the Marlin mine continues to operate without community consent.

Many in San Miguel Ixtahuacán and Sipacapa, the two municipalities touched by the Marlin concession, attribute the severity of community divisions and social conflict they are now experiencing to this initial lack of consultation. In fact, to formalize their position in response to the Guatemalan government’s failure to uphold its international legal responsibilities, on June 18, 2005, communities in Sipacapa had held a referendum on the mine. The result was an overwhelming rejection of the mine: 2,486 people voted against the mine, 35 in favor, and 32 abstained. The vote was deemed non-binding by Guatemala’s highest court after Goldcorp placed a legal challenge against the referendum.

In the years following Goldcorp acquired Glamis Gold (which initially brought the mine into production), numerous media reports, studies, and testimonies have come out offering evidence that the mining project has in fact been causing harm to the integral health of the communities.

A man affected by Goldcorp’s San Martin mine in Honduras shows his skin problems at the Tribunal

An analysis of Goldcorp’s Environmental and Social Impact Assessment conducted by Etech International found “mine wastes have a moderate to high potential to generate acid and leach contaminates.” It also found “existing data suggest that tailings seepage may be migrating to the drainage downstream of the tailings dam” and “that water treatment will not address leakage of contaminants into groundwater.”

Inaccurate environmental impact assessments appear to be an industry-wide problem. In December 2006 EARTHWORKS, an extractive industry watchdog, conducted a study of 25 mines in the United States, where regulations and oversight far exceed those of its Central American neighbors. Earthworks found “76 percent of studied mines exceeded water quality standards, polluting rivers, and groundwater with toxic contaminants, such as lead, mercury, arsenic and cyanide.”

In 2010 Physicians for Human Rights released an independent study of the Marlin mine and determined “some residents living near the mine have relatively high levels of lead in their blood and arsenic in their urine.”

Political persecution and criminalization were also denounced as contributing factors to the psychological and social trauma within affected communities. Throughout the life of the Marlin mine thus far, at least 15 arrest warrants have been issued against community members who are opposed to the mine. They have been subject to various allegations, including sabotage, harboring intentions to commit a crime, and sedition. Eight of the persecuted community members were women, some of whom had to flee their community to avoid being detained.

But Gregoria Crisanta Perez, who had two separate arrest warrants issued against her in 2008, testified, “We live from the earth. We eat beans and corn. I’d give my life to defend everything that sustains us.”

Toxic Legacy in Honduras

“We must defend life with life itself! We come from the Siria Valley to give our testimony on how we have been gravely damaged by Goldcorp’s San Martin mine,” declared Carlos Amador, from the Siria Valley Environmental Committee in Honduras, during the Tribunal.

Amador spoke about how communities in the Siria Valley have been affected by and struggling against the environmental destruction and subsequent health problems associated with Goldcorp’s mining activities.

“Why do the transnational mining companies who come from Canada only care about money, money, money, and don’t care about us people,” added Amador. “We are suffering from 10 years of destructive mining. They are killing us slowly. [And] the Honduran government is helping them.”

Since 2004, independent studies have concluded that Goldcorp’s San Martin mine in the Siria Valley, department of Francisco Morazán, Honduras, has been a source of contamination of both the environment and of the bodies of local residents. These studies have shown dangerous levels of toxic chemicals, such as cyanide and arsenic, heavy metals such as lead, and the occurrence of acid mine drainage.

In a May 2006 article for London’s The Independent, journalist Andrew Buncombe noted that Goldcorp’s San Martin mine “highlights how – with the world’s most accessible gold reserves having already been taken – mining companies are now using highly destructive and toxic methods in the developing world to feed our enduring demand for this precious metal.”

Buncombe also pointed out that the methods of mining that Goldcorp uses, which can “produce up to 30 tons of toxic waste for each ounce of gold produced,” have been dismissed as a source of health problems by the company. He quoted one company official as linking health problems to local Hondurans’ “bad diet.”

In another public hearing in Guadalajara, Mexico in 2007, the Latin American Water Tribunal, an autonomous, independent and international organization of environmental justice, ruled that Goldcorp’s subsidiary in Honduras, Entre Mares, was “guilty and must take responsibility for inappropriate use and contamination of water sources in the [Siria Valley] region and for causing harm and risk to the ecosystem and to human health.”

There have also been reports of dead cattle showing up near the mine, skin diseases, miscarriages, birth defects, while lead and arsenic were found in the blood of local Hondurans living downstream from the mine which exceeded internationally permissible levels. Furthermore, in 2010 the government filed criminal charges against the company for water contamination “based on evidence from aid agency CAFOD” in 2009.

“Despite Goldcorp’s continual denial, this new information provides irrefutable evidence that the San Martin mine has caused pollution in Honduras. This is the latest in a long list of problems at the mine,” said CAFOD’s Extractives Policy Analyst Sonya Maldar in 2009. “Goldcorp must clean up its act so that the people of Siria Valley are not left with a toxic legacy when the company leaves Honduras at the end of the year.”

In 2008 the company started the so-called reclamation process at the site. In the company’s closure plan, missing was any program to effectively address people’s health problems from surrounding communities affected by the mine.

The judges read their verdict at the closing of the Tribunal
But the experiences of community members speak for themselves. Olanda Occosta testified at the tribunal about how she has lead and arsenic in her blood and is losing her hair.

Rodolfo Arteaga, a former Goldcorp worker, testified at the Tribunal that he was diagnosed with “serious bronchitis and a lung infection” leaving him unable to work and that he suffered psychologically from the destruction of his community, Old Palo Ramo, where he had lived for 37 years before being forced to resettle. “My community was founded in 1880,” he explained. “All it took was for a company to come in in March 2000 to destroy it in just a few days.”

Finally, Angel Torres, another former mine worker of 8 years who burned cyanide containers for the company, developed chronic leukemia and became unable to work. He testified at the tribunal that 36 of his fellow mine workers were suffering from severe illnesses and that some had become sterile, adding that women who had worked inside the mine serving food had developed uterine cancer. “We need all of the organs in our bodies,” he declared. “The mining company has done absolutely nothing for us.”

A Future Foretold in Mexico

Los Filos, the largest Gold Mine in Mexico located in the state of Guerrero, went into operation in 2007. Mexico joined the world’s top ten gold producers last year in the middle of a mining boom despite a floundering economy and a “drug war” that has left upwards of 39,000 people murdered and thousands more disappeared. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out in a July 18 article, at Los Filos, “More than 70,000 metric tons of earth daily are removed with explosives and bulldozers, then trucked to a nearby site where cyanide pools are used to extract the mineral.”

Writer and photographer David Bacon, in a July 25 article in Truthout, noted that “the amount of land given in concessions reached 25 million hectares at the end of [former Mexican President Vicente] Fox’s presidency in 2006 and then more than doubled, to 51 million, in just the first four years of his successor Felipe Calderon.”

“In Mexico, in the last 12 years with a more conservative administration, we’ve seen the authorization of 26,000 mining concessions throughout the country,” stated Miguel Angel Mijangos, from the Mexican Network of Mining Affected-Communities (REMA) at the Tribunal. “It’s practically one third of all of Mexico. That’s the size of the expansion we’re seeing in Mexico, and it’s similar to what’s happening in Central America and other parts of the Third World.”

In January 2007 the mine was met with protests and encampments to block its construction. According to an article in Peace Brigades International’s (PBI) 2011 Mexico Project Newsletter, the company failed to properly consult and inform the community about the scope and potential consequences of its project from the outset.

Mijangos, from Guerrero, Mexico, testified that as of June 2012, six years since the mine started operations, it is estimated that 100 percent of households in Carrizalillo have at least one family member suffering a mining-related illness.

“I came here for my children, more than anything,” said Petra Maturana, a mother of two, affected by Los Filos mine, “because they’re more affected than me, and because they’re the ones who will be here in the future.” Maturana testified at the Tribunal that her first child was born with a deformation of the cranium. She also said that she suffered from a rash and blisters on her body.

“The truth is that almost all the money that a miner makes goes to pay for their child’s health problems. They’re not benefitted that much in the end,” said Maturana. “On the one hand, it’s good that they’re earning well, but on the other hand, they’re spending money on their illness, and it’s the children who are getting the most sick”

Mijangos also pointed out the way in which Goldcorp takes advantage of local conditions to reach lowest-common-denominator contracts with communities that maximize its profits.

“Goldcorp, in Carrizalillo, to extract one ounce of gold, invests $430. That’s what it costs, and they sell it at $1,600. Here in Guatemala, they invest $19. Between $430 and $19, there is an abysmal difference,” said Mijangos. “There they give you more, and here they give you absolutely nothing. But even what they give us there is not enough for us to heal, and that’s clear.”

Maturana added at the Tribunal, “The truth is that I’m scared to stay. Because if the mine is young and even so it affects us, imagine what it will be like with more time…I would like to leave, but I have nowhere else to go.”

Towards a Regional Movement: M4 Against the Mining Development Model

On July 15th the Tribunal’s judges demanded that Goldcorp pay reparations to the victims of its mining activities, compensate communities for past, present, and ongoing damages to health and the environment, and suspend all operations in Mesoamerica. They concluded with the following verdict: “…We find Goldcorp guilty for its activities in Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico, which we find to be seriously damaging to the health and the quality of life, the quality of environment, and the right to self determination of the affected Indigenous and campesino communities.”

The day following the Tribunal, representatives from Mexico, Costa Rica, Panamá, El Salvador and Guatemala gathered to announce the inception of the M4 movement. M4 refers to the Mesoamerica Movement Against the Mining and Extraction Model. It is a project of regional coordination for the advancement of territorial and national defense against mining and other imposed development models.

Grace Garcia, a representative from Costa Rica, shared the success of a country-wide campaign to pass a national ban on open-pit mining.  José Acosta shared the difficulties faced by the Salvadoran movement after Canadian company Pacific Rim sued the government of El Salvador through a closed-door arbitration process included in the Central American Free Trade Agreement’s (CAFTA) investor rights provisions. The suit was filed when the state denied the company’s extraction license due to local and national opposition to mining. Olmedo Carrasquilla of Panamá spoke of alternative development models being implemented by communities. All confirmed their belief that mining is “the single most contaminating and human-rights violating activity in Mesoamerica” and reaffirmed the need to end it. As Gustavo Lozano, representative from the Mexican Anti-mining Network (REMA) stated:

Our analysis is that mining companies have transnational strategies and we have to coordinate transnati onal struggles to confront transnational mining. The M4 has organized itself precisely to generate understanding of each of our struggles and therefore be able to unite. It is a young movement. We have started by carrying out actions in Canada at the shareholder meetings of the mining companies. We are going to bring the tribunal’s sentence to our governments and to international institutions because we cannot allow these companies to act as the new colonizers of our lands.

Nely Rivera de Silva, who works with the Center for Research on Investment and Trade in El Salvador, and who served as an expert witness in the Tribunal, said that the Tribunal served as a vehicle for education, organizing, and liberation.

“We are here because we want to build movements that will help us stop the construction of mining projects, not only in El Salvador, but everywhere,” said Rivera de Silva.

She also added that international solidarity from the North is also necessary.

“People from Canada and the U.S. have to put pressure on their countries to stop the colonial domination of our communities,” said Rivera de Silva.

Beth Geglia is an activist and independent documentarian from Washington DC. She lived in Guatemala from 2007-2009 working on human rights and environmental justice issues. She has worked on campaigns around mining in Guatemala with the Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala and the Center for International Environmental Law.

AUTHOR: Cyril Mychalejko
URL: http://upsidedownworld.org
E-MAIL: cmychalejko [at] gmail.com

According to Dr Micheal Kiptoo, Director, KEMRI, the training aims to strengthen the capacity of health care workers from public, private and NGO sectors involved in the management of TB, TB/HIV coninfection and drug resistant TB.

It will involve intensive and exercise based modules combining presentations, exercises, practical and site visits.

The training brings together 21 participants from 13 regional countries namely, Eritrea, Namibia, Liberia, Lesotho, Malawi, Ghana, Botswana, Gambia, Swaziland, Mozambique, Uganda, Tanzania and host country, Kenya.

The Who estimates that 70% of the estimated 36.1 million people in the world with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa and 84% of deaths due to AIDS-related illnesses occur in the region with TB being the major killer of people living with AIDS.

AUTHOR: Henry Neondo
URL: http:// www.africasciencenews.org
E-MAIL: neondohenry [at] yahoo.com

CDC Director Peter Kilmarx with community activist Chamunorwa Mashoko

The United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC-Zimbabwe) is assisting Zimbabwe in developing an alcohol policy to help curb the spread of HIV and AIDS, a senior U.S. Embassy health official said on Tuesday.

“Alcohol use is related to both risky sex and poor retention and care for people who are HIV infected,” said Dr. Peter Kilmarx, head of CDC-Zimbabwe during a U.S. Embassy-sponsored Food for Thought (FFT) presentation on Tuesday. “Some of the work we have been involved in is related to developing an alcohol policy for Zimbabwe, (and) some of that will be trying to address the policy interventions designed to reduce the risk of infection to HIV,” said Kilmarx whose organization implements several HIV research and prevention projects funded by the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

Kilmarx co-facilitated a discussion session focusing on new and emerging trends in HIV prevention with community activist Chamunorwa Mashoko, a Global Advocacy for HIV Prevention 2012 Advocacy Fellow.

Zimbabwe has witnessed declining HIV prevalence in recent years. Figures for HIV+ pregnant women declined from 25.7 percent in 2002 to 11.6 percent in 2009, according to Zimbabwe Antenatal Care Surveillance. The speakers, representing both scientific and community views on the subject, attributed this to ‘behavior change and death.’

The discussion looked at known methods of preventing HIV transmission, including condom use, abstinence, and HIV testing. The speakers also covered treatment as prevention, male circumcision, Pre- Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) and the use of microbicides as a proven prevention tool. Post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) is short-term antiretroviral treatment to reduce the likelihood of HIV infection after potential exposure, either occupationally or through sexual intercourse.

Kilmarx, who has authored over 90 scientific research articles on health related issues, highlighted some recent studies that have been conducted on each prevention measure.

Discussing new microbicide prevention methods, Mashoko, who was part of the initial microbicides research team, said such interventions will remain a dream due, in part, to limited resources and competing needs.

“This will remain a pipeline dream for African women,” said Mashoko. “In as much as we cannot implement our own studies, what more (can we do) about committing resources to an HIV negative women? The initiative (use of microbicides) is commendable (but) on the ground it will take more years for us to implement.”

Microbicides are compounds that can be applied inside the vagina or rectum to protect against sexually transmitted infections (STIs) including HIV. They are sold as gels, creams, films, or suppositories and sometimes include spermicidals (contraceptives).

Speaking on treatment, Mashoko called for the phasing out of substandard first line regimens for AIDS treatment. “While it looks like it is cheaper, people on treatment are subjected to a lot of side effects that make them end up in hospital,” said Mashoko who also called for the total elimination of pediatric HIV.

Kilmarx highlighted that new U.S. government funding for HIV/AIDS includes $18.6 million to enable the government of Zimbabwe to provide anti-retroviral medication for an additional 60,000 new patients. The treatment coverage in Zimbabwe is 500,000, which represent 40 percent of the total population of people living with HIV/AIDS.

AUTHOR: Shout Africa
URL: http://www.shout-africa.com
E-MAIL: news [at] shout-africa.com

According to Olende, the move has necessitated by the increasing attention malaria is receiving from many international agencies.

“Although still neglected, we however feel that many others have now come to take it up and it is time we paid our attention to others that are yet to be featured prominently,” she said.

She said the move will be effected in 2014 and will also include stopping technology transfer and sustained access activities.

Global pharmaceutical markets figures between 1975-2004 shows that only 1.3% of new drugs have been developed targeted at the most neglected diseases (17 in number) which account for 12 per cent of the global disease burden.

Olende said the neglected diseases primarily affect developing countries and lie outside the world market.

Since its inception in 2003, DNDi has built robust portfolio for sleeping sickness, leishmaniasis and Chagas disease and expanded this to include two new disease areas: paediatric HIV and helminth infections, with a specific focus on filariasis.

AUTHOR: Henry Neondo
URL: http:// www.africasciencenews.org
E-MAIL: neondohenry [at] yahoo.com

According to Dr Mulure, donor funding has become unreliable adding that the only sustainable way in the fight against the disease that is caused by a parasite (Plasmodium falciparum) and transmitted by mosquitoes is through raising local funds.

Dr Mulure pointed to Tanzania, Zambia and South Africa as countries in Africa who have shown that it is possible for governments to set aside budgets within their own resources to wage war against malaria.

He said that although African governments may be looking to the West for support, yet, malaria is still an African problem and the solution to it lies within the continent.

According to Dr Mulure, although Malaria is preventable and treatable, yet nearly 800,000 lives are lost to the disease every year, mostly children under 5 years old and pregnant women.

He said 80 per cent of the 300-500 million clinical cases per year are reported in Africa and that 90 per cent of the estimated 1 million deaths per year occur in Africa.

He said most of the older treatments (e.g. chloroquine) are no longer effective anymore because of resistance.

Yet global mechanisms such as the Affordable Medicines Facility – an innovative financing mechanism designed to expand access to the most effective treatment for malaria, artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) ends at the end of the year due to lack of funds.

Through the facility, the Global Fund, as host and manager of the AMFm, has negotiated with drug manufacturers to reduce the price of ACTs, and to require that sales prices must be the same for both public and private sector first-line buyers.

As a result, private importers now pay up to 80 percent less than they did in 2008-2009. The Global Fund pays most of this reduced price (a ‘buyer co-payment’) directly to manufacturers to further lower the cost to eligible first-line buyers of ACTs purchased from manufacturers.

This means that first-line buyers only pay the remainder of the sales price for the ACTs. First-line buyers are expected to pass on the highest possible proportion of this price benefit so that patients are able to buy ACTs across the public, private, not-for-profit and for-profit sectors at prices that are less than those of oral artemisinin monotherapies and competitive with the prices of CQ and SP.

AMFm Phase 1 which is set to end this year, is being implemented through nine pilots in eight countries: Cambodia, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania (including Zanzibar) and Uganda.esides the challenge of funding.

Dr Mulure added that the issue of poor quality drugs, emergency of resistance to available drugs and long and complicated supply and procurement chain as well as lack of accurate data especially in the private sector are still challenges that those leading the war against Malaria still contend with.

Innovations and partnership

Dr Mulure however cited some few innovative ways countries have adopted to record some noted successes against malaria. “Coupled with global partnership, winning the war against malaria appears achievable,” he noted.

Countries such as South Africa, Tanzania, Jamaica, Madagascar, Zanzibar, Rwanda and Kenya have seen malaria incidents drastically reduced by use of indoor residual sprays, distribute insecticide treated bednets, early diagnosis of suspected cases as well as treat identified cases with artemisinin combination therapy.

A participant from Zimbabwe said his country has adopted such mechanism as levying every working person some tax that is spent to fighting diseases such as HIV.

Tanzania’s sms for life programme—which brings together mobile phone provider, IBM, Novartis and other partners and uses mobile phones to track weekly stock outs of ACTs and quinine in rural health–is proving a success and many countries are thinking copying the programme in bid to heighten their efforts in eliminating malaria.

AUTHOR: Henry Neondo
URL: http:// www.africasciencenews.org
E-MAIL: neondohenry [at] yahoo.com