Student nurse to aid Africans

Needy Samburu drawing help

Emily Donoghue will be getting a different kind of education this summer.

Later this month, the MassBay Community College nursing student will travel to a remote region of northern Kenya, where she will be living and working with the Samburu people as part of a humanitarian aid and community service program sponsored by Kenya Aid and Relief Effort.

Ms. Donoghue was invited to come on the trip by her anatomy professor, Tina Ramme, who is president of the relief organization.


“Emily was selected to participate because she demonstrated compassion, integrity, and a willingness to sacrifice her personal comfort in order to assist some of the most marginalized people in East Africa,” Ms. Ramme said.

Ms. Ramme traveled to Kenya initially to help protect the lions, but changed her focus to the Samburu people when she learned about their plight.

“The Samburu District has recently been devastated by one of the worst droughts and famines in a century, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of people and the loss of over 85 percent of the region’s livestock, the only form of income in this area,” Ms. Ramme said.

Ms. Donoghue and seven other volunteers will be living and working with the Samburu assisting with emergency food distribution, critical health care services and clean drinking water projects, and helping to rebuild a local primary school.

In addition to working to repair the school, Ms. Donoghue said, she will present the school with school supplies she has collected before her trip.

“I have all kinds of materials to bring with me,” she said. “I’m bringing backpacks, posters, crayons and pencils.”

As part of their efforts, Ms. Donoghue said, the volunteers will be bringing food and water for the tribe from Nairobi.

“We are collecting money and will use it to buy rice and beans and water to distribute when we get there,” she said. Money also is being collected for a communal fund to assist the tribe during emergency situations, such as when food and water are scarce.

“We’re also raising money to buy solar panels to be used on solar ovens,” Ms. Donoghue added. “The women do all the cooking over open fires in their huts, with no ventilation, and many of them have respiratory problems. So we’re trying to provide them with a communal hut to cook in.”

Ms. Donoghue may get to see first-hand the effects of the open fire cooking as well as other tribal ailments because she also will be working in the tribe’s health clinic, assisting patients with malaria and other conditions.

“It’s a huge deal for them to have a clinic,” Ms. Donoghue said. “They’re in such a remote region.”

Ms. Donoghue said she is accepting tax-deductible donations of any amount to assist the Samburu people. Donations may be sent to the Lion Conservation Fund, Conservation KARES Program, P.O. Box 380 170, Cambridge, MA 02138.


http://www.telegram.com/article/20080712/NEWS/807120334/1008/NEWS02

Rural Kenya gets first zero emission community power centre

The first power-generating centre using environmentally friendly hydro and solar power has been inaugurated in a Kenyan village 150 kilometres north-east of Nairobi by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO).

Apart from generating electricity, the new centre in Kibai village in Kenya's Kerugoya division, promotes the use of Light Emitting Diode (LED) lamps to replace kerosene lamps that contribute to respiratory illnesses in children and women who use them on a daily basis, according to a statement issued in Accra on Wednesday by the UN Information Centre.

Kibai villagers have begun using the centre for phone and lamp charging as well as accessing the internet, a rare phenomenon in rural Kenya, where only 10 per cent of the population has electricity.

The statement said UNIDO was calling on communities without access to electricity to submit proposals for similar initiatives in Kenya for consideration by international donors.

The project is part of the "Lighting Up Kenya" programme led by UNIDO and other UN agencies with the objective of eliminating kerosene from home lighting, and using electricity for income generation

Article paru dans la presse kenyane de ce jour...un probleme sensible au Kenya et dans toute l'Afrique


EU plan to woo health workers from Africa extremely callous

The European Union plan to develop a “Blue Card” to attract highly-qualified migrants to meet its labour needs raises several urgent concerns, particularly for African governments grappling with critical shortages of health workers.

The International Organisation for Migration says Africa has already lost one third of its human capital and continues to lose skilled personnel at an increasing rate, with an estimated 20,000 doctors, university lecturers, engineers and other professionals leaving the continent annually since 1990.

The organisation estimates that currently, 300,000 highly-qualified Africans are in the diaspora, yet at the same time Africa spends $4 billion annually to employ 100,000 Western experts.

The effects of this brain drain are felt directly in key social sectors in Africa, particularly education and health.

Ten years ago, there were 1,600 doctors in Zambia; only 400 are left now. In Kenya, 90 per cent of the medical personnel migrate to the West every year.

There are more Ethiopia-trained doctors practising in Chicago alone than in the whole of Ethiopia, and more Malawian-trained doctors practising in Manchester than in their motherland.

Largely as a result of this massive haemorrhage of personnel, Africa has only three per cent of the global health workforce, despite bearing 25 per cent of the world’s diseases.

The health workforce is undoubtedly the driver of health systems. Immigration of this precious resource from Africa has resulted in severely weakened health systems that can barely provide services, leave alone pursue the aspirations of the Millennium Development Goals.

The proposed EU Blue Card, a special residence permit granted to immigrants, is only bound to aggravate the situation, legitimising labour movements to Europe at the expense of low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

An exodus of health professionals will create even greater global imbalance, with host countries creating reservoirs of healthcare professionals to replenish their ageing workforce, while African countries have to put increasingly greater pressure on health systems that are already stretched to breaking point.

Ultimately, further depletion of Africa’s intellectual property will reverse gains made in eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, reduction of child mortality, improvement of maternal health, and the fight against HIV and Aids, malaria and other diseases.

The EU must consider the moral and ethical implications of its proposal before introducing the Blue Card. I would ask the EU to have an exclusion clause for health professionals.

But free movement is a human right, and African health professionals will move to Europe anyway, with or without the Blue Card.

Moreover, we cannot ignore globalisation, and the need for African health professionals to contribute to ameliorating the global burden of disease while enjoying the fruits of their hard work.

The challenges of stemming the brain drain are daunting, but certainly not insurmountable. But the efforts must be collaborative between African and Western governments and institutions that recruit from Africa.

To contain the health workers still on the continent and attract others from the diaspora, African governments must vigorously address the “push” factors that lead to migration.

They must provide health professions with employment, competitive salaries and incentives such as good housing, and career development, and health facilities with the necessary basic requirements.

Europe, too, must be proactive in ensuring that African health systems are not robbed of valuable human resources without compensation and restitution.

Support could be extended to programmes that train health workers for the African context, such as Amref’s’ Diploma in Community Health course, and the eLearning Programme that trains nurses virtually, allowing them to learn and work at the same time.

If Europe must recruit from Africa, it should invest in building the capacity of training institutions to enable Africa to train enough health workers for itself and to meet Europe’s needs.

With expanded physical and fiscal space, the EU could contract individual African countries to produce health workers for them.

Ultimately, both the EU and African governments must implement policies that address health workforce densities, the weakened African health systems and resultant inequities, and the global diseases burden.

written by : Dr Ngatia, Director for Capacity Building at the African Medical and Research Foundation (Amref)

l’horticulture rapporte plus que les safaris




L’horticulture, qui englobe toute activité économique liée aux fruits, légumes et fleurs, est devenue une des premières sources de richesse au Kenya. Ce pays, réputé jusqu’à aujourd’hui pour accueillir chaque année des milliers de touristes en quête de safaris exotiques, exploite donc au maximum ce secteur nouvellement rémunérateur. Ce boom dans l’économie s’explique non par une productivité accrue mais par la croissance des prix à l’exportation. Parmi les clients, l’Union Européenne s’intéresse aux produits frais, tandis que les pays scandinaves sont particulièrement friands des fleurs fraîches. Comme le thé, l’horticulture représente donc pour le Kenya une manne incontournable, employant deux millions d’employés, principalement des femmes.

A lethal mix of drought, expanding conflict,

rising food and energy prices, disease, and high poverty is pushing

children and their families in the Greater Horn of Africa to the brink

of disaster. Actions and policies are needed now to avert grave human

suffering.

In Kenya, an estimated 1.2 million people are in need of emergency food

assistance and many of those are children. Pastoralist populations in

the arid and semi-arid north are particularly affected, but food

insecurity is growing, an aftershock of the post- election violence

which displaced people (77,000 remain cut off from their farms and

livestock) and interrupted the agricultural cycle. High fuel and

agricultural input costs and disappointing rains in much of the country

are worsening the situation.

Throughout the Greater Horn, malnutrition is compounding the risks to

survival that children routinely face, including pneumonia, diarrhoeal

diseases and other infections. Recent years have seen an increase in

acute watery diarrhoea and cholera in many of these countries affecting

tens of thousands of children.



To stop and reverse the trends auguring another major humanitarian

disaster, the international community and donors will need to fully

support the responses of governments in the region to stabilize the

situation and enable timely and effective responses. Resources and

actions are required to ensure relief supplies and basic services,

including health care and sanitation for affected populations. And

systems are needed to clear and distribute food and non-food relief

supplies.



“By taking these critical actions, governments and their international

partners can make a huge difference in the coming months,”


SOURCE : United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)


voir : http://appablog.wordpress.com/2008/07/02/kenya-uganda-eritrea-djibouti-act-now-to-avert-impending-humanitarian-crisis-and-soaring-child-deaths-in-the-greater-horn-of-africa-unicef-urges/


"L'Afrique de l'Est victime d'un mélange mortel de calamités"

L'Afrique de l'Est est victime d'"un mélange mortel" de calamités, à base de guerres, de sécheresse et d'augmentation des prix, a averti mercredi le Fonds des Nations unies pour l'enfance (Unicef).

"Un mélange mortel de sécheresse, de conflits qui prennent de l'ampleur, d'augmentation des prix des produits alimentaires et de l'énergie, de maladies et de grande pauvreté pousse les enfants et leur famille au bord du désastre en Afrique de l'Est", estime l'Unicef dans un communiqué.

L'agence de l'ONU évalue à 1,2 million le nombre de personnes, dont de nombreux enfants, ayant besoin d'aide alimentaire d'urgence au Kenya.

voir : http://www.7sur7.be/7s7/fr/1505/Monde/article/detail/334205/2008/07/02/-L-Afrique-de-l-Est-victime-d-un-melange-mortel-de-calamites-.dhtml

THIS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE



I'm very sure, this never happened to me before
I met you and now I'm sure
This never happened before

Now I see, this is the way it's supposed to be
I met you and now I see
This is the way it should be

This is the way it should be, for lovers
They shouldn't go it alone
It's not so good when your on your own

So come to me, now we can be what we want to be
I love you and now I see
This is the way it should be
This is the way it should be

This is the way it should be, for lovers
They shouldn't go it alone
It's not so good when your on your own

I'm very sure, this never happened to me before
I met you and now I'm sure
This never happened before (This never happened before)
This never happened before (This never happened before)
This never happened before (This never happened before)
This never happened before

BY PAUL MC CARTNEY


Pour ecouter :


http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/3/13/1811927/Paul%20Mc%20Cartney.wma

Deja dans l'Antiquite romaine, les politiciens avaient pour slogan : Pour mieux diriger et regner, donnez des jeux au peuple.

Plus de deux mille annees plus tard, c'est toujours d'une efficacite evidente...

Rien ne mettra donc un frein a ce que je qualifierais, ou d'inertie, ou de betise humaine ???!!!

161 000 dollars US pour la préparation du Kenya aux JO de Pékin

Le gouvernement kenyan a annoncé, samedi, qu’il mettrait plus de 100 millions de shillings (161 000 dollars) à la disposition de ses athlètes pour leur permettre de préparer les Jeux olympiques (JO) et les Jeux paralympiques, prévus à Pékin, en Chine, en août prochain.

En annonçant la nouvelle à Nairobi, alors qu’il honorait de sa présence les préparatifs des Championnats nationaux d’athlétisme, le président de la République, Mwai Kibaki, a salué les bonnes performances de l’athlétisme kenyan sur le continent et sur la scène internationale.

« Je ne doute pas que la détermination de ces hommes et femmes nous permettront d’envoyer davantage de sportifs aux Jeux de Pékin », a-t-il ajouté, indiquant que tout sera mis en œuvre pour que la préparation des représentants kenyans se passe dans de bonnes conditions, afin de permettre au pays de remporter beaucoup de médailles aux JO 2008.

COMMENTAIRE : QUEL GASPILLAGE EHONTE !!!

Kenya appeals for UN food aid

Kenya is seeking more than a billion dollars in emergency funding from the United Nations, to counter a food crisis that has helped drive inflation to over 30 percent.

The money would be used to buy free fertilisers for farmers, and provide credit and other assistance to the fishing and livestock sectors.

Kenyan ministers will establish an Agricultural Development Fund which will receive an annual set share of the national budget in a bid to cushion the country's 35 million people from future shortages.

The food shortage has been worsened by months of post-election violence that killed 1,500 people and displaced hundreds of thousands more.


Kenya is seeking more than a billion dollars in emergency funding from the United Nations, to counter a food crisis that has helped drive inflation to over 30 percent.

The money would be used to buy free fertilisers for farmers, and provide credit and other assistance to the fishing and livestock sectors.

Kenyan ministers will establish an Agricultural Development Fund which will receive an annual set share of the national budget in a bid to cushion the country's 35 million people from future shortages.

The food shortage has been worsened by months of post-election violence that killed 1,500 people and displaced hundreds of thousands more.






Kenya is in urgent need of 1.1 billion dollars in emergency funding to tackle a food crisis that has driven inflation to over 30 percent.

The funds will be used to support the agricultural sector by buying farmers free fertilizers, creating credit lines and assisting the fish and livestock sectors.

Kenyan ministers are to establish an Agricultural Development Fund which will receive an annual set share of the national budget in a bid to cushion the country's 35 million people from future shortages.

Millions in Kenya are now in the midst of a food shortage worsened by months of post-election violence that killed 1,500 people, displaced hundreds of thousands and crippled the mainstay tourism and agricultural sectors.

If some serious steps are not taken to combat the current food crisis, it is likely to worsen as the Kenyan population continues to grow.

Three UN agencies have recently pledged 7.6 billion shillings to Kenya to help farmers and boost the school feeding program.

Steep global food and fuel prices have worsened overall inflation in the east African nation, pushing it to 31.5 percent in May, the highest since the mid-1990s when the economy nearly collapsed.

According to the World Food Program, the 50 percent rise in food prices in Kenya since the start of 2008 has led many people to drastically reduce their daily diets, eating only one meal a day, cutting down on protein-rich food and opting for cheaper vegetables such as kale.