IRIN humanitarian news and analysis

BANGUI, 18 June 2013 (IRIN) - A security crisis in the Central African Republic (CAR) - which began on 10 December 2012, when the rebel Seleka Alliance attacked the capital, Bangui, and continued after Seleka ousted former President François Bozizé on 24 March - is ratcheting up food prices, causing unemployment and salary payment delays, and throwing the banking system into turmoil.

KAMPALA, 18 June 2013 (IRIN) - Sexual minorities, sex workers and people who use drugs who are at a higher risk of HIV than the general population, but in Tanzania, they face widespread police abuse and discrimination in health facilities, according to the new report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Wake Up and Step Forward Coalition (WASO), a local rights group.

KUALA LUMPUR, 18 June 2013 (IRIN) - The global target of a 50 percent reduction in tuberculosis (TB) by 2015 may already have been achieved, but TB remains a neglected disease among women and young children, say health experts.

LAHORE, 18 June 2013 (IRIN) - “I don't let them drink this water,” Muhammad said, gesturing towards a group of water-buffaloes cooling off in a canal not far from Pakistan's eastern city of Lahore. “This water is from the city. All of its garbage comes into it,” he explained.

JAKARTA, 18 June 2013 (IRIN) - Efforts to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS in the Indonesian provinces of Papua, which has among the country's highest rates of infection, and West Papua are making steady though slow progress, say aid workers and government officials.

DAKAR, 18 June 2013 (IRIN) - While aid agencies agree that early warning systems offer the chance to mitigate humanitarian crises, difficulty in funding pre-emptive measures and government sensitivities in admitting a looming disaster continue to hamper early action.

JOHANNESBURG, 17 June 2013 (IRIN) - In pink tracksuit and big sunglasses, Nomvula Mokonyane, premier of South Africa's Gauteng Province, delivered a combative warning to the drug dealers of Eldorado Park that had the crowd buzzing: “Leave, your days are numbered!” But then a distraught mother, urged to speak but unable to, brought everyone back down to earth with the news that her addict daughter had just died.

JUBA, 17 June 2013 (IRIN) - Tens of thousands of people have been cut off from water, food and medical care in South Sudan's Jonglei State, after fleeing violence between rebels and the government in Pibor County. They now face escalated risks as the rainy season starts, but aid agencies say the government has denied humanitarian access to these populations.

TRIPOLI, 17 June 2013 (IRIN) - Doctors in Libya say they are seeing a “growing” number of patients with drug problems and a corresponding risk of HIV infection, in a post-Gaddafi era marked by limited law enforcement and government capacity.

KAMPALA, 17 June 2013 (IRIN) - A mobile phone-based health programme designed to improve access to sexual health information and boost safe sex in rural central Uganda had the opposite effect, according to the findings of a Yale University study published in May.

JOHANNESBURG, 14 June 2013 (IRIN) - The absence of accurate climate prediction models should not dissuade countries from choosing the best ways to adapt to a changing climate, says a new report published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences.

DAKAR/NIAMEY, 14 June 2013 (IRIN) - West African and Sahel countries are setting up measures to minimize flood damage as the annual rainy season approaches. The African Centre of Meteorological Applications for Development (ACMAD) in a seasonal weather outlook says near-average or above-average rainfall is likely over the western Sahel, which stretches across Mauritania, Senegal and western and central Niger.

QARAH, SYRIA, 13 June 2013 (IRIN) - Syrian rebels injured in the battle of al-Qusayr have struggled to access healthcare. Some have ended up in a makeshift hospital in Lebanon.

DHAKA, 13 June 2013 (IRIN) - The Bangladesh government has started work on delivering piped water to more than three million Dhaka slum dwellers by the end of 2014, say officials.

NAIROBI, 13 June 2013 (IRIN) - Least developed countries (LDCs) will continue to have access to affordable medical technologies for an additional extra eight years before they are required to implement the World Trade Organization's Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) Agreement, following a series of negotiations.

ABIDJAN, 13 June 2013 (IRIN) - About a third of Côte d'Ivoire's cashew nuts are smuggled abroad every year, robbing the country of a valuable income stream.

SITTWE, 13 June 2013 (IRIN) - One year after Myanmar's worst sectarian violence in decades, tension between the Buddhist ethnic Rakhine and Muslim Rohingya communities in the country's western Rakhine State remains high.

EL QAA, 13 June 2013 (IRIN) - In Lebanon's Beka'a Valley, bordering Syria, some farmers have abandoned their fields as the fight between Syrian rebels and government forces has spilled onto their territory. Those who can still harvest have trouble selling their crops because export routes to and through Syria have been interrupted. Some are now resorting to selling their animals to make ends meet.

NAIROBI, 12 June 2013 (IRIN) - The UN and the African Union must step forward and take decisive action to stop Sudan from committing war crimes against civilians in Blue Nile State, says a new Amnesty International report, dismissed as “false” by Khartoum.

KAMPALA, 12 June 2013 (IRIN) - Uganda has run out of most antiretroviral drugs (ARVs), HIV testing kits, drugs to treat opportunistic infections and several crucial diagnostic tools for HIV care, according to a recent Ministry of Health stock status report.