The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "world health organization" ...
-
The Secret Behind the Sanctions
A Progressive Magazine investigation reveals that "contrary to the Geneva Convention, the U.S. government intentionally used sanctions against Iraq to degrade the county's water supply after the Gulf War." The story reports on documents of the Defense Intelligence Agency proving "the United States knew the cost that civilian Iraqis, mostly children, would pay, but it went ahead anyway." The article describes multiple death cases, mostly of children, that resulted from the degraded water supply. The author points out that "over the last decade, Washington extended the toll by continuing to withhold approval for Iraq to import the few chemicals and items of equipment it needed in order to clean up its water supply."
Tags: disease; epidemics; chlorine purification; pollution; United Nations; World Health Organization; Baghdad; protein deficiency; irrigation; irewar03
-
Crying AIDS: Does sloppy research exaggerate the extent of Africa's crisis?
An investigation by Toward Freedom Magazine of the AIDS epidemic in Africa reveals that sloppy research may inflate the reported number of AIDS cases on the continent. The World Health Organization estimates that 23.3 million people in Africa have AIDS. However, that estimate is "based on the most fragile of foundations. [The WHO's] definition of AIDS in Africa differs decisively from AIDS in the West. The WHO's clinical definition of AIDS in Africa is not based on an HIV test but on the combined symptoms of prolonged fever, persistent cough and others; none of which are uncommon in Africa."
Tags: AIDS; Africa; research methods; data collection; inaccurate; World Health Organization
-
The Next Tobacco War: The Worldwide Assault on Cigarette Smuggling
"As a criminal industry, cigarette smuggling is so profitable that even Colombia's drug lords and Italy's mafia groups have gone into it in a big, and often violent, way. But the real perpetrators, according to allegations explored at length in this story, are the major tobacco companies, which have not only tolerated the smuggling, -- but have actively organized, promoted and encouraged it, in cooperation with some of the worlds' seediest business partners. Big Tobacco's evident goal: to undermine public policy in many countries, especially in the West, where high taxes and duties are used to reduce smoking among adults and prevent it amount young people.
Tags: tobacco; smuggling; organized crime; racketeering; WHO; World Health Organization; money laundering; taxes; tariffs; general trade
-
The Global Willowbrook
The story documents a small organization called Mental Disability Rights International, which travels worldwide to document the treatment of the mentally disabled. The group's aim is to get the U.S., European nations, the U.N. and the World Bank to include the care of mental patients among the other human rights when considering foreign aid and trade decisions.
-
Killer Pox in the Congo
Discover Magazine reports that "The last documented case of smallpox occurred in 1977. Now a deadly kin of the virus is spreading out of the forest and into villages....This was not smallpox but monkeypox, a disease first identified in 1958, when it was found spreading among Asian and African monkeys that had been captured for laboratory research....Monkeypox did not easily spread from person to person....(But) new outbreaks of the disease indicate that it could be breaking free of its natural confines and spreading from person to person ... it could become a major threat...."
Tags: contagious disease; world health organization; WHO; center for disease control; CDC; biological weapons
-
The Deadly Trade in Fake Medicines/I.G.
CBS News 60 Minutes' two-part investigation of the international pharmaceutical industry begins with an examination of how counterfeit and substandard medicines are shipped around the world- with the unwitting help of the World Health Organization, which is supposed to eradicate this deadly trade. The second part looks at international drug companies, which critics say bore some responsibility for he shortage of a critically important drug in the United States.
Tags: VIDEOCLIP TAPE TRANSCRIPT pharmaceuticals; profiteering; fraud
-
The new face of Medicare
U.S. News and World Report documents how arch-criminals, including veterans of the drug trade, took advantage of Medicare's lax oversight and internal controls to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from federal and state medical programs each year.
-
Winning the war against malaria
Every 12 seconds, a child dies of malaria. Technology Review reports that new initiatives to prevent and treat malaria could save the lives of one-fourth of these children by the turn of the century.
-
Formula For Greed
The Columbus Guardian investigates plans by Ross Products Division of Abbott Laboratories, the largest manufacturer of baby formula in the United States, to expand into the international market by establishing its own private Foreign Trade Zone in downtown Columbus. State and local officials have lent support to the plan despite serious questions about Ross's past business practices, about how infant formula is marketed in underdeveloped countries and about the possible economic consequences for central Ohio. (June 13 - 19,1996)
-
The Controversy Over Infant Formula
The New York Times Magazine reports that "the controversy and confusion (about infant formula) .... reached the scale of global conflict earlier this year when the World Health Organization voted 118 to 1 to adopt a nonbinding code restricting the promotion of infant-formula products.... At the center of the increasingly bitter conflict are babies, millions of babies with the shriveled limbs and the distended bellies that signal shiorkor, the Ghanian term for malnutrition that has become part of the medical literature.... (Critics ) charge that aggressive marketing of formula has contributed to a vast shift away from breast milk, the safest and most nutritious food for infants...."