Rageh Omaar interviews Pederico Rodriguez, a victim of Argentina’s military regime, imprisoned and tortured for three years and then exiled in London for nearly thirty years.
The Gulf state of Qatar is rich in oil and gas and has a small population.
While the country’s oil revenues give citizens generous benefits, analysts say the petro-dollars are not necessarily a blessing. In effect, Qatar is a rentier state.
Al Jazeera’s Nicole Johnston, reporting from the capital, Doha, explains why an economy based almost entirely on income from oil and gas is not without its drawbacks.
Discussing the stalemate in forming a new national unity government in Lebanon after Hezbollah and its allies rejected a proposed line-up by Prime Minister-designate Saad al-Hariri. Is it the beginning of another political stand-off in Lebanon? Are there foreign elements behind the impasse or is it a purely internal matter?
In the last decade, the prevalence of malaria has been escalating at an alarming rate, especially in Africa. An estimated 300 to 500 million cases each year cause 1.5 to 2.7 million deaths, more than 90% in children under 5 years of age in Africa. Malaria has been estimated to cause 2.3% of global disease and 9% of disease in Africa; it ranks third among major infectious disease threats in Africa after pneumococcal acute respiratory infections (3.5%) and tuberculosis (TB) (2.8%). Cases in Africa account for approximately 90% of malaria cases in the world. Adolescents and young adults are now dying of severe forms of the disease. Air travel has brought the threat of the disease to the doorsteps of industrialized countries, with an increasing incidence of imported cases and deaths from malaria by visitors to endemic-disease regions.
A number of factors appear to be contributing to the resurgence of malaria: 1) rapid spread of resistance of malaria parasites to chloroquine and the other quinolines; 2) frequent armed conflicts and civil unrest in many countries, forcing large populations to settle under difficult conditions, sometimes in areas of high malaria transmission; 3) migration (for reasons of agriculture, commerce, and trade) of nonimmune populations from nonmalarious and usually high to low parts of the same country where transmission is high; 4) changing rainfall patterns as well as water development projects such as dams and irrigation schemes, which create new mosquito breeding sites; 5) adverse socioeconomic conditions leading to a much reduced health budget and gross inadequacy of funds for drugs; 6) high birth rates leading to a rapid increase in the susceptible population under 5 years of age; and 7) changes in the behavior of the vectors, particularly in biting habits, from indoor to outdoor biters.
Chinas stock market index has fluctuated wildly over the past two years. In the past month, the market has declined by some 20 percent, including a 7 percent decline this past Monday.
Roben Farzad, a senior writer for BusinessWeek, joins Daljit Dhaliwal to discuss the swings in the Chinese market and what the drops mean for the global economy.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, 2 billion people around the world are infected with tuberculosis. And over 2 million die each year from the disease.
Mumbai, India’s largest city, is confronting an epidemic of drug-resistant TB and has few ways to fight it. Extremely drug resistant TB, or XDR-TB, is a serious problem in India
Independent producer Lauren Rudser brings us this signature story on an often overlooked global health issue.
A 2007 study, the first in India to look at the prevalence of XDR-TB, found this type of TB accounts for 8% of multi-drug-resistant cases, compared with about 4% in the United States.
MDR-TB (multi-drug resistant TB) describes strains of tuberculosis that are resistant to at least the two first-line TB drugs, isoniazid and rifampicin. XDR-TB is MDR-TB that is also resistant to three or more of the six classes of second-line drugs. XDR-TB leaves patients (including many people living with HIV) virtually untreatable using currently available anti-TB drugs.
Findings from a survey conducted by the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that XDR-TB has been identified in all regions of the world but occurs most frequently in the countries of the former Soviet Union and in Asia.
Sushil Jain of the Hinduja National Hospital in Mumbai, India, and colleagues examined 3,904 lab samples at their hospital, and found that 1,274 were positive for Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Of these, 32% were found to be MDR-TB, out of which 8% were XDR-TB.
Tuberculosis can infect many sites in the body but most commonly affects the lungs. All XDR-TB cases were in patients with pulmonary tuberculosis, or TB found in the lungs, which can be spread by coughing, sneezing, laughing or singing. Repeated exposure to someone with TB disease is generally necessary for infection to take place.
Thousands of people in northern Yemen have been fleeing areas plagued by fighting between the government and rebels. Al Jazeera has fresh evidence that while the stand-off and sporadic violence continues, civilians are paying the price.
Many people have fled to the Saudi Arabian border, where some end up at the tent city of the Al-Mazraq refugee camp, from where Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra sent this report.
The war has triggered a humanitarian crisis which is attracting the world’s attention only now.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on last week that more than 25,000 people had registered as internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Saada and Amran.
The dire humanitarian situation is hitting women and children especially hard,” Daniel Gagnon, an ICRC official working in Yemen, said.
Other people are said to have fled as far as Sanaa, the capital in the country’s south, more than 185km away.
Abdel Malik al-Houthi, the Houthis’ leader, on Saturday said that displaced people should return to their homes and villages. He also called on the government to give guarantees to civilians in the north that their homes would not be targeted.
Aid agencies from the UN estimate that more than 100,000 people have been forced to flee their homes.
Fighting reignited in the north last month and has continued primarily in Saada, on the Saudi Arabian border.
Zaidi Shia Muslims are fighting for independence from a government which they say is corrupt and too close to Saudi Arabia.
Both sides have already rejected ceasefire offers from the other party.
An offshoot of Shia Islam, Zaidis are a minority in mainly Sunni Yemen but form the majority community in the north, some of whom want a return to the imamate, which was overthrown in a 1962 coup.
The conflict first erupted in 2004.
“The Most Beautiful Satisfaction is the Conquest.” — Silvio Berlusconi