Africa

Analysis: What is a famine?

by IRIN News May 13, 2010

Aid agencies and donors have warned of the possibility of a famine in Niger, evoking images of the last food crisis in the Sahelian country in 2005. Some media organizations have already pronounced the current crisis a famine. So, what exactly is a famine? ...

The wavering war on AIDS (opinion)

by New York Times May 13, 2010

The global war on AIDS has racked up enormous successes over the past decade, most notably by providing drugs for millions of infected people in developing countries who would be doomed without this life-prolonging treatment. Now the campaign is faltering....

Dinavance Kamukama, 28, front right, with her cousins in Kampala, Uganda. She is on a waiting list for AIDS medication. Uganda is the first country where major clinics routinely turn people away, but it will not be the last. In Kenya next door, grants to keep 200,000 on drugs will expire soon. An American-run program in Mozambique has been told to stop opening clinics. There have been drug shortages in Nigeria and Swaziland. Tanzania and Botswana are trimming treatment slots, according to a report by the medical charity Doctors Without Borders.

In Uganda, AIDS war is falling apart–prevention is failing and there is no new money for anti-retroviral drugs

by Donald G. McNeil Jr. New York Times May 9, 2010

KAMPALA, Uganda — On the grounds of Uganda’s biggest AIDS clinic, Dinavance Kamukama sits under a tree and weeps. Her disease is probably quite advanced: her kidneys are failing and she is so weak she can barely walk. Leaving her young daughter with family, she rode a bus four hours to the ho...

White House is being pressed to reverse course and join landmine ban

by Mark Landler New York Times May 7, 2010

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration, under intense political pressure from Capitol Hill and elsewhere, is engaged in a vigorous debate over whether to reverse course and join an international treaty banning land mines, administration officials said this week....

HALO Trust Mozambique: An instructor teaches new recruits about landmines. The instructor is holding a small mine, known as a “toepopper”, designed to blow a foot off.   Photo: Guy Oliver/IRIN
Most women in sub-Saharan Africa give birth with no skilled health worker present. Photo: Anne-Isabelle Leclercq/IRIN

Global: The worst places to be a mother

by IRIN News May 7, 2010

Eight of the bottom 10-ranked countries in Save the Children’s annual Mothers Index, which ranks the best and worst places to be a mother, are in sub-Saharan Africa, says the NGO. ...

A woman and her baby at the government hospital in Makeni, Sierra Leone. In Sierra Leone one in five children die before age five and one in eight women die from pregnancy-related complications, according to the UN Children’s Fund. Photo: Nancy Palus/IRIN

Sierra Leone inaugurates free health care for women and children, but major gaps in health care services remain

by IRIN News April 27, 2010

Donors and NGOs welcomed the Sierra Leone government’s launch on 27 April of free health care for some 1.5 million women and children, but health experts say it is just one step in a long, complex process as critical gaps in the health system remain....

Campaign to eradicate polio makes real progress in countries most affected, Nigeria and India

by Celia W. Dugger New York Times April 6, 2010

JOHANNESBURG — A decade after the world’s original deadline for eradicating polio, the most tenacious bastions of the crippling virus — Nigeria and India — have recently shown remarkable progress in halting its spread, giving even some of the antipolio campaign’s severest doubters hope tha...

Hugh Masekela, 70, performing his “Songs of Migration,” a revival of, and tribute to, the music made by migrants who moved to Johannesburg to dig for gold in the early and middle years of the last century. Mr. Masekela is still haunted by the music that was everywhere during his childhood — wafting into his home as a musical group rehearsed nearby, rising in churches and school halls, and echoing across townships. When he returned to South Africa in 1990 after 30 years in exile, he said, “It wasn’t there anymore.”  Hear a song “Coal Train.”

Music, infused with sorrow and joy, in honor of migrants to South Africa

by Celia W. Dugger New York Times March 18, 2010

JOHANNESBURG — Hugh Masekela, the legendary trumpeter, blew his horn, sang with bluesy fervor and boogied across the stage on his puffy, 70-year old knees in his “Songs of Migration,” a revival of the music made by those who came from all over southern Africa to dig for gold and search for wor...

Mariama Adao and her last-born child. Photo: Anne Isabelle Leclercq/IRIN

Miriam Adou, who each year makes the trek from south to north Niger to work as a migrant laborer, and this year for the first time, brought 6 of 8 chi...

by IRIN News March 3, 2010

Mariama Adao, aged 40 and a mother of eight, makes the 400km journey from Matameye in the south of Niger to Agadez in the north almost every year to make ends meet between growing seasons. However, this year’s poor harvest forced her to leave earlier - and bring six of her children with her. ...

  • World Hunger Education
    Service
    P.O. Box 29015
    Washington, D.C. 20017
  • For the past 50 years, since its founding in 1976, the mission of World Hunger Education Service is to undertake programs, including Hunger Notes, that
    • Educate the general public and target groups about the extent and causes of hunger and malnutrition in the United States and the world
    • Advance comprehension which integrates ethical, religious, social, economic, political, and scientific perspectives on the world food problem
    • Facilitate communication and networking among those who are working for solutions
    • Promote individual and collective commitments to sustainable hunger solutions.