LUSAKA, Zambia — The fight against corruption in Africa’s most pivotal nations is faltering as public agencies investigating wrongdoing by powerful politicians have been undermined or disbanded and officials leading the charge have been dismissed, subjected to death threats and driven into exile.
Author: WHES
High food prices force Kenyan slum dwellers to go hungry
Millions of people who live in Kenya’s sprawling slums are among those worst hit by the food price crisis, yet they receive far less humanitarian attention than other demographic groups, according to officials, who pointed in particular to the plight of malnourished children in such settlements.
Mexico flu sparks global action
The international community is better prepared than ever to deal with the threatened spread of a new swine flu virus, a top UN health chief has said. As the UN warned the outbreak might become a pandemic, Dr Keiji Fukuda said years of preparing for bird flu had boosted world stocks of anti-virals.
Burkina Faso: largest measles outbreak in more than 10 years
While health officials undertake vaccination campaigns across West Africa to control meningitis and polio epidemics, measles has overtaken both diseases in Burkina Faso in the biggest outbreak the country has seen in more than a decade, according to the Ministry of Health.
Few resources, little hope, for those with HIV in Myanmar (Photo essay)
Medecins Sans Frontieres estimates that 240,000 people are currently infected with H.I.V. in Myanmar and that 76,000 are in urgent need of antiretroviral drugs. At left, a 29-year-old man sits in his home. He learned that he was HIV-positive when he was tested for tuberculosis. His wife and their son are also HIV-positive. However, they have enough money only for him to begin antiretroviral treatment (ART).
Dying, and alone, in Myanmar
JOHANNESBURG — Leading South African scientists challenged the governing party on Monday to break with its deeply flawed record on AIDS and public health, spurring the country’s new health minister to say that he and his party shared their diagnosis of systemic problems and were determined to repair them.
Investing in the future: Rice and the global financial crisis
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Kenya’s power-sharing report card: ‘unsatisfactory.’ One year after ethnic violence tore the African nation apart, the coalition government is moving slowly – or not at all – to address the problems
NAIROBI, KENYA — When Kenya’s grand coalition government formed last year – a kind of forced marriage of bitter political enemies – Kenyan voters had high hopes for what their new government had vowed to achieve: rewrite the country’s constitution, begin land reform, arrest perpetrators of postelection violence, and reconcile ethnic groups who seemed close to a tribal war.
Zimbabwe diary: Fighting cholera
More than 3,300 people have died from the worst outbreak of cholera in Zimbabwe’s history, which has infected nearly 66,000 people.The epidemic has been fuelled by the country’s economic meltdown, which has led to the collapse of the country’s water, health and sanitation systems.
Kenya: belt tightening as hunger spreads–causes include violence, high world food prices, and drought
Ninety-year-old Mary Mwelu sits forlornly outside her daughter-in-law’s home in Makueni district, eastern Kenya, wondering when and where her next meal will come from. She last had some food – porridge – two days ago.
