By MediaGlobal
DRUG-RESISTANT TUBERCULOSIS AT ALL TIME HIGH, SAYS WHO
26 February 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: Of the estimated 9 million new cases of tuberculosis (TB) every year, half a million are multidrug resistant (MDR), according to a report released by the World Health Organization (WHO) this week. The largest-ever study on drug-resistant strains of the disease, the report is based on data collected between 2002 and 2006 on 90,000 patients across 81 countries. Tuberculosis is considered multidrug-resistant when it does not respond to standard treatments using first-line drugs over six months. While MDR-TB incidence is not increasing everywhere, a number of countries in the developing world have shown a marked increase in the proportion of TB cases that are drug resistant since the last WHO report was published in 2004. Generally speaking, said Abigail Wright, WHO tuberculosis expert and principal author of the report, “Increases in resistance are due to weakness in health systems.” MDR-TB tends to develop when patients are not given, or do not complete, a full course of treatment. Once MDR-TB has emerged, it can also be passed between individuals. To treat MDR-TB can take two years, and requires drugs that are a hundred times more expensive than the first-line treatments. “Given that drug resistance is more expensive and much more difficult to cure [than drug-sensitive tuberculosis], it places an enormous burden on the public and on the health system,” Wright told MediaGlobal. In order to effectively face this threat, the WHO estimates that US $48 billion is needed. Currently there is a financing gap of $2.5 billion. The investment, Wright said, is necessary for both humanitarian and practical reasons. “Because TB and drug-resistant TB affect the public, and this disease does not honor any borders, governments and health systems of all countries must take drug resistance seriously,” she said.
SOUTH AFRICA INUNDATED WITH ASYLUM SEEKERS
26 February 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: South Africa received 46,000 new applications for asylum during 2007 and warned that those numbers could increase sharply in coming years, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) reported. In its annual report, South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs said only 5,879 of the 45,673 new applications were decided in 2007, leaving 39,758 still to be processed. They join 49,275 applications from 2006 that are also awaiting a decision, leaving over 89,000 applications from the last two years unprocessed. While most applicants came from across the African continent, asylum seekers arrived from 54 countries around the world, including 1,982 from Bangladesh and 918 from Pakistan. The top five countries of origin were Zimbabwe (17,667 applicants); Democratic Republic of the Congo (5,582 applicants); Ethiopia (3,413 applicants); Malawi (3,341 applicants); and Somalia (2,041 applicants). Due to its relatively strong economy and liberal policies toward asylum seekers, South Africa has been a magnet for both refugees and migrant workers hoping to improve their lives, UNHCR reported. “Asylum seekers are allowed to work while awaiting the decision on their application – a position that makes South Africa more generous than many countries – so they have most of the rights of citizens after applying for refugee status or when they gain it. There are no refugee camps and asylum seekers are free to live where they wish,” Jack Redden, the UNHCR’s Field Media Officer for South Africa, told MediaGlobal. The government report admitted that it had problems handling the high volume of applications but said it was working to increase capacity. UNHCR is working closely with the South African government on its handling of asylum applications, monitoring the procedures to ensure they conform to international standards and assisting in the training of additional staff to handle the surging numbers.
A Zimbabwean refugee sells hard-boiled eggs to hundreds of asylum
seekers in Pretoria, South Africa. Source: UNHCR. Photo: © UNHCR/P.Rulashe
FUNDING FOR FAMILY PLANNING DECLINING, SAYS UNFPA
26 February 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: Funds for family planning are declining, Purnima Mane, Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) told MediaGlobal. “UNFPA has acknowledged that in general family planning is getting the short shrift in funding. And that is a very dangerous trend,” Mane said. In 1995, more than half the money spent on population assistance went to family planning initiatives. In 2004 that amount had fallen to less than ten percent. “Resources are not that limited,” Mane said, citing the relatively high amounts of money allocated for the prevention HIV/AIDS by national governments and international donors. Family planning, including access to contraceptives, is central to many aspects of development and gender equality. “Women’s empowerment has many components, and one of them is women’s access to decisions related to their pregnancy. Unwanted pregnancy is a huge problem for many women, and one of our missions is that every birth should be a wanted birth,” she said. “We want to ensure that women have access to education—which is also linked to access to contraception—access to possibilities for employment, and of course access to reproductive health in general. Maternal health is also a huge problem—even when women decide that they want to have a child, often they’re not able to have a successful delivery because services are not available.”
NEW FUNDING TO HELP VACCINATE CHILDREN AGAINST TROPICAL DISEASES
26 February 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: The U.S. has pledged $350 million combat the seven most common deadly tropical diseases affecting developing countries. The cost of treating these neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) is relatively low, but delivery and training costs vary greatly and must sometimes be sustained over an extended period of time. As Henrietta Allen, of the Department of Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases of the World Health Organization, told MediaGlobal, “For some of the NTDs, treatment must continue for years, ideally until the sanitation situation has improved or transmission in the environment has dropped below a level deemed to be a public health problem.” Immunizing children against common diseases including measles, polio and diphtheria costs $20 to $30 per child. The NTD vaccines, in comparison, are often donated and have shipping and training costs ranging from $0.05 to $1. More effective drugs and administration techniques have been developed in recent years, allowing the WHO and its partners to focus on coordinating vaccination programs with more integrated programs, like the NTD initiative, in order to fully protect young populations against disease and sickness. The vaccination program will target lymphatic filariasis, schistosomiasis, blinding trachoma, onchocerciasis, and three types of soil-transmitted helminthiases (STH).
UN AGENCIES UNITE TO ELIMINATE FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION
27 February 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: Expressing their commitment to the elimination of female genital mutilation (FGM), ten United Nations agencies pledged today to support governments, communities and women and girls in abandoning the practice within a generation. The UN has called for a major reduction in many countries by 2015, the year set for achieving the Millennium Development Goals. “If we can come together for a sustained push, female genital mutilation can vanish within a generation,” said UN Deputy Secretary General Asha-Rose Migiro. “But this goal demands both increased resources and strengthened coordination and cooperation among all of us.” Between 100 and 140 million women and girls worldwide are believed to have undergone FGM, and an additional 3 million girls are at risk of undergoing the procedure every year, according the UN’s statement, which also points out that female genital mutilation is a manifestation of unequal relations between women and men, with roots deeply entrenched in social, economic and political conventions. “The fact of the matter is that FGM is neither chronic nor endemic. Rather, it is a practice. As with many such practices, it requires time, concerted effort and dedication, together with a great deal of information and awareness raising which is done in a culturally sensitive manner,” Azza Karam, UNFPA Senior Culture Adviser, told MediaGlobal. “It will not be eliminated overnight. But it will diminish in importance and frequency eventually.”
CHAD’S FOREIGN MINISTER DENIES USING CHILD SOLDIERS
28 February 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: The government of Chad no longer uses child soldiers, Foreign Minister Ahmad Allam-Mi told MediaGlobal at a press conference at UN Headquarters on Tuesday. “The security and defense forces of the Chadian state do not have any child soldiers,” he said. While Allam-Mi’s statements reflect Chad’s official policy, they came in sharp contrast to an assessment released Thursday by the U.S. Department of State, which cited reports that the central African nation continues to use child soldiers, violating an agreement signed with Unicef, the UN children’s agency, last year. Allam-Mi acknowledged that under-aged combatants have been used in the recent conflict between Chadian and rebel forces, but fixed the blame on the opposition. “The rebel movements do have child soldiers, unfortunately,” he said. “Children are used in their operations.” According to the State Department document, an interim assessment of the 2007 Trafficking in Persons Report, Chad’s military has released some 400 child soldiers since May 2007, in accordance with its agreement with Unicef, but stopped demobilization efforts in July.
NIGERIA’S FIRST BIOFUEL REFINERY BREAKS GROUND
28 February 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: This week marked the official groundbreaking of Global Biofuel Limited, an integrated alternative fuel processing facility in Arigidi, Nigeria. Construction on the plant comes in the wake of the Nigerian Government’s national biofuels policy, put in place in 2007 in the hopes that plant-based fuels could provide Nigeria with sustainable wealth, energy and employment. While the refinery is Nigeria’s first, all across Africa the biofuel industry is booming. As oil prices continue to climb, many governments are seeking alternative energy sources, both for domestic use and export. “Africa is the continent with the largest potential for biomass production for bioenergy, and [is] therefore particularly attractive for future biofuel development,” Erwin Northoff of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) told MediaGlobal. Biofuels, however, are made from plants that often serve as the staple food for millions of people. When these crops are used for alternative purposes such as biofuels, their supply decreases worldwide, raising food prices. While Northoff believes that biofuels have the potential to benefit African communities, he remained concerned about the potential impact of such efforts on food security. “In most countries, the poorest – even in rural areas – are net consumers of staple foods,” Northoff said. “A rise in the price of staples linked to increased demand for biofuel production will therefore make the poorest more vulnerable.”
EQUAL LAND RIGHTS FOR WOMEN DECREASE RISK OF AIDS
28 February 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: When women are allowed to own, inherit and control property, they are better able to cope with the effects of HIV/AIDS on their communities and are less likely to become infected themselves, says Elizabeth Mataka, United Nations Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. The majority of those infected with HIV in Africa are women. This is as a result of the vulnerable position a woman is placed in when she does not own the land she lives on, Mataka said. “It’s because of a lack of empowerment,” she told MediaGlobal. “Possessing land gives you independence to make options for your life. If you have land as an asset, that makes you make decisions to protect yourself. You don’t have to remain in a risky situation because there’s nothing else.” In this way, Mataka said, land “can be a tool [for women] to protect themselves against infection.” However, even when women have equal rights to property under the law, these laws are often not implemented at the community level. Many practices, such as stripping a woman of her property after her husband dies, are rooted in traditional cultural beliefs. This, Mataka said, is no reason to permit what she calls a clear violation of women’s human rights. “I think culture is not cast in iron,” Mataka told MediaGlobal. “Culture is a living organism that undergoes change. And that change must take into account the realities of the time in which we live.”
EMERGING DEMOCRACIES GIVE WOMEN LEADERSHIP OPPORTUNITIES
29 February 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: While women’s participation in government worldwide is increasing, their share of leadership positions remains small, according to data released Friday by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU). As of 1 January 2008, women held less than 18 percent of all parliamentary seats and just over 16 percent of all ministerial positions. Of the world’s 192 heads of government, only eight are women. Yet among countries with newly formed or reconstituted governments, women’s participation tends to be far higher. Rwanda, whose government went through significant changes following the 1994 genocide, claims the world’s highest percentage of women in parliament—nearly 49 percent. “Sometimes you have to look for strategic opportunities,” said Carolyn Hannan, Director of the Division for the Advancement of Women. “In such a reconstruction process there are reconsiderations of constitutions, legislation, election processes, and it is possible to use those processes strategically to ensure that women come in in greater numbers in government.” Even women from societies where girls receive little or no schooling can become equal participants in government, British MP Hillary Armstrong told MediaGlobal. “Many women will not have had formal education, but they will have had experience in their communities which is incredibly valuable to a politician.” International support for women leaders is crucial, Hannan told MediaGlobal, adding, “You do need to go beyond just getting the numbers right to make sure women are able to participate effectively.”
ICELANDIC PRESIDENT ADDRESSES CLIMATE CHANGE CONCERNS
2 March 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: What better place than Iceland to talk about global warming? The President of Iceland, Ólafur Ragnar Grímmson, spoke to UN reporters recently about the impact of climate change his nation and the rest of the world. “We can prevent pending disaster if we have the will to fundamentally transform our countries’ energy systems,” said the President. Iceland, a nation that prides itself on ahead-of-the-curve environmental innovation, has experienced some of the most immediate effects of climate change. Grímmson stressed the importance of using geothermal energy and the sun, both of which are plentiful resources that have been used in Iceland for years. “I refuse to accept that we are so special in Iceland that only we can do this,” he continued. Referring to the need for more technological research by developing nations, Grímmson stated, “It is our moral obligation to share what we have accomplished. We have to make our technology and business practices available for study by other countries.” The President told MediaGlobal that Iceland has been working with Djibouti to help the country decrease its oil dependence. It was his hope that Djibouti would become a model for developing African nations in their quest for cleaner energy.
Contributors: Sheana Laughlin, Joseph Deaux, Adelia Saunders, Sarah Long and Christina Rodenhizer
MediaGlobal is a leading provider of information on global development issues facing vulnerable countries in Africa and Asia. Leaders of developed countries, the global media (with media in developing countries), policymakers in donor countries, non-governmental organizations, Permanent Representatives of Missions to the United Nations and key personnel in the United Nations Secretariat, its agencies and managers in the field worldwide read MediaGlobal’s newswire stories. Contact: media@mediaglobal.org . United Nations, Room S-301, New York, NY 10017. Tel: (212) 963-9878. Fax: (609) 716-1297 Website: www.mediaglobal.org
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