News stories by Patricia Grogg, page 7

HAVANA, Sep 19 (IPS) - Mabel Suárez, a 22-year-old Cuban woman, can’t concentrate on enjoying her youth. She helped take care of her great-grandmother for two years, and she knows that, whether she likes it or not, it will fall to her to take care of her grandparents and parents in their old age.

HAVANA, Sep 14 (IPS) - “We age much more quickly than we learn how to,” says Juan Carlos Alfonso, director of the Population and Housing Census that begins to be carried out on Saturday, Sept. 15 in Cuba. The question of aging is on many minds in this country, where important social progress has been made but acute economic problems persist.

HAVANA, Aug 30 (IPS) - The impact of Hurricane Isaac as it made its way through the Caribbean region highlighted both the fragility of some countries in the face of extreme meteorological events, which are expected to become more and more intense, and the different strategies adopted to mitigate the risk of disasters.

JIMANÍ, Dominican Republic, Aug 24 (IPS) - Getting around on market day along the muddy border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti is almost impossible for those unfamiliar with the art of dodging the trucks, motorcycles and bicycles swerving amidst the messy piles of products scattered all over, and weaving among the hundreds of people coming and going between the two countries.

SANTO DOMINGO, Aug 03 (IPS) - One of the major difficulties to overcome in climate change adaptation policies in the Dominican Republic is society’s low awareness of the risks, even though this Caribbean island nation is seriously exposed to the impacts of the phenomenon.

SANTO DOMINGO, Jul 26 (IPS) - "Nobody mourns the poor, you know." That is the grim conclusion of a resident of La Ciénaga, one of the many poverty-stricken settlements clustered along the banks of the Ozama River in the Dominican capital, and which are at the mercy of the weather.

SANTO DOMINGO, Jul 07 (IPS) - The protection and conservation of biodiversity figure among the most daunting challenges posed by climate change in the Caribbean islands, home to a wealth of endemic species of flora and fauna.

In Los Palacios, a farming community in the western Cuban province of Pinar del Río, local residents are still working hard to rebuild after the damage caused by two of the three hurricanes that hit this country in 2008. 'It was just horrible,' people here say when asked about what happened.

A well-oiled prevention system that involves the entire country, from the highest spheres of government to the most isolated rural community, makes Cuba one of the best-prepared countries in the world when it comes to preventing deaths and mitigating risks in case of disasters.

A year after the Raúl Castro government approved a programme of changes and measures aimed at making the Cuban economic model sustainable, the slow pace of implementation is a focus of debate and criticism even among its supporters, who believe it should move forward more rapidly.