by Afsana Rashid
- Indian-administered Kashmir -

• Lal Mandi's Gingko struggles for survival; a section of its bark fell off after poor pruning. Photograph by Afsana Rashid. •

The Ginkgo, South Asia’s oldest tree, is located in Lal Mandi’s Kitchen Garden of the Agriculture Department. The species is believed to be 270 million years old, as old as the dinosaurs, while the tree itself is more than 200 years old and is eight feet. The life span of Ginkgo biloba can be as long as 3000–4000 years or even more.

Fida Ali Alamgeer, the Floriculture Development Extension Officer, claims that the Ginkgo is alive and growing, though some experts in the field think otherwise. As evidence, he says that projections of the tree contain Parenchymatous cells, which help in its growth. He says the absence of foliage at the apex gives the false impression that tree is dead.

As the park is located in a low lying area, rain and snow accumulate into a pool of water. Fida says that the Ginkgo grows best in acidic soil, while stagnant water changes the pH value of soil from acidic to alkaline, resulting in slower growth.

Since the stagnant water in the park has retarded the tree’s growth, a two-feet-high mound of earth was formed around the tree. Dense suckers have sprouted on the raised mound, and experts hope to plant them next year under suitable climate conditions.

by Afsana Rashid
– Indian-administered Kashmir -

While the world has progressed by leaps and bounds in technological advancement, the Kashmir valley remains rooted in cultural tradition. The state of Kashmir abounds in ancient literature, language, religion, arts, crafts, dance, and music. Its culture is steeped in story telling, philosophy and folklore, even when it comes to medicine. In the Kashmir valley there are hundreds of families who turn to faith healers for solutions to their problems, especially those with psychiatric issues. Researchers Dr. Mushtaq Ahmad Margoob, a leading psychiatrist of the valley, and Huda Mushtaq, point to the decades long conflict in Kashmir for the phenomenal increase in the region’s psychological problems.

“My family, including my children, treated me like a lunatic a few years back when I could not cope up with certain problems. Consequently, I tried many doctors, including psychiatrists, but nothing worked,” says Hajra, a woman in her mid-forties.

by Melissa Hahn
- USA -

Just before Christmas, we locked up our apartment in Krakow and walked across the Rynek towards the train station. Crossing the main square in the early morning drizzle, overburdened by our luggage and breathless from our brisk pace, I was about to turn the corner onto ulica Floriańska when something pulled at my reins. For a moment, I looked back at Kościół Mariacki (St. Mary’s Cathedral), and found myself frozen in place, unable to continue. Sparkling in the silence, it captivated me as if I was seeing its red brick and uneven turrets for the last time.

by Katie Thompson
- USA -

Elections invite a whirlwind of campaign promises: some that are feasible, some that are not, and some that will be forgotten on Inauguration Day. One of the most prominent issues for the Democratic candidates has been healthcare reform, a campaign promise the American people definitely won’t let the new president forget. In the United States, the National Coalition on Health Care says 47 million people are without health care coverage. In addition, according to Consumer Reports, 43% of Americans who have health insurance coverage say their coverage is inadequate to deal with an expensive medical emergency. Clearly, healthcare is an issue that requires a solution. The real question is whether a national healthcare plan is a feasible solution. I would argue that it is not.

by Eva Sohlman
- Sweden -

Former CIA director Jim Woolsey eagerly leans across the table in the swanky restaurant of the Carlton-Ritz Hotel in Washington, D.C. The seriousness of the matter he’s discussing is reflected in his sharp, almost transparent blue eyes.

”The United States’ dependence on oil makes us very vulnerable from a security and environmental perspective. Why buy oil from Islamic theocracies, which sponsor terrorism against us? We are fighting a war against terror, but are paying for both sides. How smart is that?” asks the sprightly 66-year-old Woolsey.

by Natasha Dokovska
- Macedonia -

“I have seven children, I don't work, neither does my wife. For many years I thought about selling my kidney so I could give my children a better life, but just recently I found someone to buy it,” says 40 year old Ekrem. He explains that it was not a difficult choice because the 1,000 Euro ($1,465 USD) he got as compensation for the lost kidney will enable him to mend some holes in his home, pay electricity bills, and get enough firewood to last for the rest of the winter.

“Fortunately this was not a cold winter so we managed to keep warm with what we've got, otherwise we would have frozen to death,” says Ekrem.

Ekrem is one of the many Macedonian citizens who see selling their organs as a chance to save themselves from poverty. He does not consider the consequences. According to a Macedonian organization that works with people with kidney diseases, for Ekrem and about a hundred other Roma citizens in the country, it is the only way to offer a modest life for their children.

by Imelda V. Abaño
- Philippines -

At the December UN conference in Bali, Indonesia, experts and concerned people alike discussed how poor women in developing countries bear the brunt of climate change in a wide range of ways. They have to walk to fetch water or wood for fuel and carry it back to the household. They have to work longer hours in the fields to till the soil, which has hardened due to severe drought, and yet they receive fewer benefits because of low wages and low crop production. And despite their efforts, they have little decision making power because in these areas, women are considered merely as housewives. In India, as one example, women have very little bargaining power when marketing their crops. When children or spouses fall ill from diseases, it is women who care for them. It is women who will do without or with less when food is scarce.

"Life has been hard, since heavy rains always wash away many of our crops and cause flooding in our village," said Mariana Dau from a farming village in Sumatra, Indonesia who talked about how climate change has affected their family’s life and also their financial security.

by Michelle Chen
- USA -

Angela Greene has a tough job: she and her workcrew scale the rooftops of Richmond, California to run wires, lay racks, and bend metal piping. Yet in the end, when she unfurls a gleaming solar panel over her community, it feels easy to save the planet.

After being laid off from her former job at a printing business, Greene went through a vocational training program and then joined Solar Richmond, an organization that is bringing sustainable energy along with new jobs to the heavily black and Latino port city.

by Nomi Prins
- USA -

The movie, Atonement, is a heart-breaking love-story, a historical WWII saga. Without giving away the ending, which must be seen to be adequately felt, it tells the tale of two lovers’ lives irrevocably changed by false testimony against one of them - for a crime he did not commit. Thus, it’s also a condemnation of unreliable witnesses, the willingness of people to believe the worst, particularly of those in a lower economic-class, and the havoc that a false accusation and conviction can wreak upon human life. It’s a film and message that every judge, jury member, and prosecutor should see and consider before convicting or sentencing anyone accused of a crime.

by Rose-Anne Clermont
- Germany -

When we think of children killed by their parents, we may recall a news documentary about a poor Indian family with an unwanted girl. Or, the media has helped us conjure the image of a Chinese family terrified of violating the government’s one-child policy. For those of us in wealthy, western countries, it is easier to believe that infanticide and child killings are tragedies unique to poor and quickly developing nations.

• Infanticide and child killings in Germany have cast a light on a phenomena that was previously considered a problem of developing nations. Photograph by Marian Steinbach. •

Every newspaper in Germany has run a headline similar to “How Could This Happen?” or “Who Will Protect the Children?” Politicians have given swift reactions to the recent tragedies. Chancellor Angela Merkel has urged Germany to develop “a culture of looking” at families in potential crisis and has scheduled a conference on December 19th to address child protection in Germany. Family Minister Ursula von der Leyen is pushing for mandatory medical check-ups so that children, especially those being abused and neglected, don’t fall through the cracks.

by Pilirani Semu-Banda
- Malawi -

Veronica Yakobe has been living a nightmare for more than two decades. Twenty-three years ago, during a prolonged labor when giving birth to her fifth child, the unborn baby was pressed so tightly in her birth canal that blood flow was cut off and the surrounding tissues died. Then a hole or fistula broke through the vaginal walls between the bladder and rectum. Obstetric fistula is serious medical condition which usually occurs during home births or in poorly equipped local clinics when access to emergency obstetric care is not available. Unfortunately, that was the case for Veronica. She has been unable to control her bodily functions since, and leaks urine and feces uncontrollably. In a bitter irony, after all that struggle, her baby was still-born.

by Sarah Wyatt
USA

“The Arctic is not a wilderness or a frontier. It is our home. It is our homeland…Our entire way of life as we know it may end in my grandson's lifetime."

• The unprecedented melting of the polar ice caps threatens the Inuit way of life. Photograph by Ville Miettinen. •

Sheila Watt-Cloutier has been warning the world about the degradation and shrinking of the polar ice for years. She should know: she and her people, the Inuit, live in the Arctic. For them, the situation is far from academic. As she has said more than once, “It is a matter of livelihood, food, individual and cultural survival.” Some 170,000 Aleuts, Indians, Eskimos, Métis and other indigenous people live north of the Arctic Circle in Russia, Alaska, and Canada.

by Halimah Abdallah Kisule
Uganda

• A roadside billboard in Zambia encourages the community to spray.
Photograph by Valentina Baj. •

In Uganda alone, 50 million man-hours are lost per year and 43% of school absenteeism can be attributed to malaria. The country’s Ministry of Health spends 10% of its annual budget on malaria efforts; 23-40% of all outpatient clinic visitors and 50% of all inpatient admissions are for malaria. And pregnant women are especially at risk: they are four times as likely to contract malaria than their non-pregnant counterparts; malaria can also lead to miscarriages. Over 100,000 people in Uganda die preventable deaths each year.

by Imelda V. Abaño
Philippines

• Opening session of the conference. Photograph courtesy of AIS 2007 •

by Imelda V. Abaño
Philippines

• A child living in poverty on the island of Boracay, Philippines.
Photograph by Jenny Webber •

by Janelle Weiner
USA

Women in the US make a lot of choices before their babies are born, from which foods to eat, to which birth preparation class to take, to how to decorate the nursery. For most, however, there’s no question where their babies will be born: a “bun in the oven” means feet in the stirrups for a delivery in the hospital - accepted as the safe, modern location for giving birth.

But studies show that giving birth at home can be just as safe and can even lead to more positive outcomes for both mother and child.

by Imelda V. Abano
Philippines

"I was working on our small vegetable farm in our backyard when I felt the earth tremble. I looked up and saw the landslide coming towards me.

• Typical home in the mountainous Mangyan village, an area in the Philippines prone to landslides. Photograph by Dylan Walters •

Ever since a massive landslide triggered by heavy rains buried an entire village in the Southern Philippines on February 17, 2006, 28 year-old Raquel cannot believe she and her two children survived the terror.

by Natasha Dokovska
Macedonia

In the past, if a woman wasn’t a virgin, she would surreptitiously pour animal blood on the bed after consummating her marriage. Today, this tradition has been replaced in Macedonia with a more sophisticated ruse – hymen repair surgery. This procedure is recognized medically as plastic surgery and is easily performed, taking only thirty minutes to one hour to repair a broken hymen.

by Viktorija Plavcak
Slovenia

Two weeks ago in Celje, the third largest city in Slovenia, a fifty-year old man, barely able to drive himself to the hospital, walked into the ER in the middle of the night complaining about shortness of breath and severe chest pain. He worried that he was going to suffocate. Unfortunately, he had no doctor’s referral, and even worse, his medical card was invalid. Well aware of these facts, Bojan Kajtna was prepared to pay for his medical examination. Nevertheless, the attending nurse instead referred him to the health center just around the corner to fetch the required referral, a technicality that would allow him admission into the hospital. Unfortunately, Bojan never reached his destination. Just a few steps from the ER, he collapsed and died.

by Hayward Hawks Marcus
USA

• Mast Cells. Photograph by Ed Uthman •

No, they’re not angels - at least not in the literal sense. They are our cells, and just like those legendary guardians, they work night and day without rest on our behalf, doing the countless tasks needed for bodily maintenance, including supply, communication, renewal, repair and defense.

By Lara Vogel
USA

Though meant as a break from the hectic pace of my eight-month trip around the world, it had been an intense few weeks. Leaving Europe and Northern Africa behind, I spent July in Mumbai exploring its hospitals to help decide if I had what it takes to head toward medical school back home.

By Esther Nakkazi
Uganda

The number of pregnant women in Uganda accessing Nevirapine, the drug that stops mothers from passing HIV to their newborn babies, is rapidly growing with all districts in the country now offering the service.

Health officials say by the end of last year all 74 districts in the country were offering Prevention of Mother-To-Child HIV Transmission (PMTCT) services at III and IV level Health Centre (HC) facilities, compared to only 50 districts that were offering them in 2005.