Norway is to increase its contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria by NOK 75 million, making the total Norwegian contribution NOK 450 million per year. This is equivalent to an increase of 20%, and it means that Norway will donate almost NOK 1.4 billion to the Fund over the next three years.

�The Global Fund is an effective mechanism for the joint financing of programmes to combat HIV/AIDS in developing countries.�The Fund�s investments help to improve health conditions for mothers and children, and it has also achieved impressive results in other areas of central importance to Norwegian foreign and development policy,� Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr St�re commented.

�Despite the increased pressure on development funds at this time, we have decided to increase Norway�s contribution to the Fund by 20% because we have seen that its work is producing results,� Mr St�re said.

The Global Fund currently provides two-thirds of international funding for anti-tuberculosis and malaria programmes, and one fifth of international funding for programmes to combat HIV/AIDS. The Fund finances almost 60% of AIDS treatment worldwide. It also supports preventive measures, and works to strengthen developing countries� health systems.

�In many ways, the Fund�s work reflects the great gender equality struggle of our times. In southern Africa, the HIV infection rate among young women is on average about three times higher than among men of the same age, and half the deaths among women of childbearing age are due to HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. The consequences for the young women of today, and for the countries affected, can be catastrophic. The Fund�s work is therefore crucial, and our additional contribution reflects this,� Mr St�re commented.

Norway�s increased contribution has been announced prior to the Fund�s third replenishment and pledging conference, to be held in New York in October.

�The resources the Global Fund has at its disposal are of decisive importance to achieving the health Millennium Development Goals. We hope that other countries will follow suit and increase their allocations to the Fund,� Mr St�re said.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is a partnership between governments, civil society, the private sector and affected communities. Norway has been a donor since the Fund was created in 2002, and it is the largest contributor in per capita terms.

Source.mfa.no

The more likely scenario is that, in the absence of authoritative statistics, the population figure for Kibera was entirely made up to suit the interests of particular groups. And because no one publicly challenged the figures, a lie became the truth.

Let me confess at the outset that I am among those people who have published inflated population estimates for Kibera without having any solid evidence to back up the figures.

In the 2007 edition of the “State of the World” report published by the Worldwatch Institute, for instance, I stated that population estimates for Kibera ranged from 400,000 to 600,000.

These figures were based on documents published by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), where I had worked for several years.

One such report published jointly with the government in 2001 estimated Kibera’s population to be 377,624. This figure was close to the one cited by the then Permanent Secretary for Planning, Mr David Nalo, who, in a 2002 unpublished technical report, estimated the number of Kibera residents to be around a quarter of a million.

The latter figure is close to that of the Map Kibera Project, which in 2009 used a mapping technique to come up with a fairly accurate population estimate of between 220,000 and 250,000 for the settlement.

But some time after 2004, when the Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme (a project implemented jointly by the government and UN-Habitat) was launched, population estimates for Kibera started to rise dramatically, and before we knew it, the slum was being touted as one of the largest in Africa, a claim both UN-Habitat and the government appeared to endorse.

A UN-Habitat brochure entitled “UN-Habitat and the Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme” published in 2007 states that “Kibera…is the second largest informal settlement in Africa” and “the estimated total population in the settlement ranges from 600,000 to 1,000,000 inhabitants”.

NGOs added fuel to these figures, and by 2009, Amnesty International was reporting that one million people lived in what had by then probably become the most filmed, researched, photographed and visited slum in the world.

Before we knew it, the figure spread like a virus, giving Kibera the unenviable reputation of being the biggest slum in Africa, if not the world.

However, even within UN-Habitat, there was no consensus on what the actual figure might be, nor was there any attempt to conduct a survey to determine the population. Quite often, the figure varied depending on which section of UN-Habitat was publishing it, and for what aim.

This problem was compounded by the fact that there was no official publicly-available database within the organisation that could provide numbers for the settlement, which meant that different sections within the same organisation used different figures.

The inflated figures were not challenged, perhaps because they were useful to various actors. They were useful to the government and to UN-Habitat, who probably used them to solicit more donor funds for slum upgrading.

They were particularly useful to NGOs, which used them to “shock” charities and other do-gooders into donating more money to their projects in Kibera.

(In a brilliant expose of the numbers game, Nation writer Muchiri Karanja found that there are between 6,000 and 15,000 NGOs working in Kibera alone. In other words, there is at least one NGO for every 30 residents.)

Journalists too, used the figures to write up stories on the horrors of urban Africa.

But these “stakeholders” need not lose heart. As a Nation reader satirically stated, if they try hard enough, they can still “uplift Kibera to be the biggest slum in Africa”.

source.afrika.no

Followers of former Prime Minister Cellou Dalein Diallo’s Union of Democratic Forces in Guinea (UDFG) and veteran opposition figure Alpha Conde’s Rally for the People of Guinea (RPG) party fought in separate clashes on Saturday and Sunday.

The electoral campaign was “provisionally suspended pending a meeting Monday between the government and the two candidates who have already given their agreement for this meeting,” the government said in a statement.

Guinea’s Information Minister, Aboubacar Sylla, said “all those who for whatever reason do not respect the ban on demonstrations during this suspension of the election campaign will be brought before the courts of the republic”.

Diallo and Conde are due to face each other in presidential elections on 19 September. In June’s first round vote Diallo won 43.69 per cent whilst Conde took 18.25 per cent. Most political parties claimed that the vote was handled fraudulently.

The June vote was Guinea’s first democratic poll since independence from France in 1958. The country is currently led by a military junta headed by General Sekouba Konate.

The weekend’s violence followed Friday’s announcement that the head of the National Independent Election Commission (CENI) had been convicted of fraud.

source.afrika.no

More witnesses are expected to testify on behalf of Government, which is defending the claims it is facing, when the trial resumes.

The three women, whose identities may not be revealed in terms of an order issued by the High Court, are suing Government for N$1,2 million each.

They claim they were sterilised without having given their informed consent for such a far-reaching medical procedure to be performed on them.

Two directly conflicting versions on the issue before the court have been unfolding so far in the testimony heard by Acting Judge President Elton Hoff.

The three women are claiming that the operation each of them was to undergo when they visited a State hospital to give birth, was not properly explained to them before they were required to sign documents in which they gave their consent for the sterilisation to be done.

They are also claiming that their HIV status – all three of them are HIV positive – prompted the State medical personnel involved in their operations to carry out the sterilisation. This, they claim, was an infringement of their constitutional rights, such as the right to dignity and the right to privacy.

The first plaintiff in the case underwent a sterilisation at Oshakati State Hospital in June 2005. She was 26 years old at that stage, and had delivered her second child by caesarian section when the operation was carried out.

The second plaintiff was sterilised at the age of 33 at Katutura State Hospital in December 2007. She is the mother of three children.

The third plaintiff, now 44 years old, had given birth to her seventh child when she was sterilised at Katutura State Hospital in October 2005.

In her testimony during the trial she claimed the sterilisation she was about to undergo was never explained to her before she was given consent forms to sign.

The medical doctor who performed that operation, Dr Godfrey Sichimwa, however testified last week that he explained the procedure to the plaintiff before she signed the consent form.

The reason for her sterilisation was that she was at quite an advanced age, which raised the risk for complications during future pregnancies, he said.

According to her health records, though, the explanation would have taken no more than ten minutes before she signed the consent form, senior counsel Dave Smuts, who is representing the plaintiffs, told Dr Sichimwa during cross-examination.

Dr Sichimwa’s response was that it was indicated on her health passport that the issue had already been explained to her previously as well. In any event, he said, a sterilisation and its consequences and risks can be explained to a patient within ten minutes.

He could not recall if he told the plaintiff that she could refuse to be sterilised, Dr Sichimwa said. When Esi-Schimming-Chase, who is representing Government, asked him what he would have done if she had said she did not want to be sterilised, he answered: “I would have respected her wish.”

A nurse who was involved with the signing of the consent form, Erica Kamberipa-Tjimbundu, conceded that because it was indicated on the third plaintiff’s health passport that she would be sterilised, medical staff might have assumed that the procedure had been properly explained to her previously.

The third plaintiff also claimed that no explanations in her home language, Oshiwambo, were given to her, neither just before she signed the consent form nor during previous visits to the hospital.

However, Dr Tshali Ithete, who saw her when she visited the hospital in March 2005 and asked for her pregnancy to be terminated – something that was not done – told the court that he spoke to her at length in Oshiwambo to explain various options to her, before he referred her to the hospital’s gynaecology department.

With respect to the second plaintiff, Dr Celeste de Klerk testified that when she discussed different family planning options with the patient about a month and a half before her operation, the patient opted to be sterilised.

She would have had to actually agree to have the procedure done at a later stage, Dr De Klerk said.

The trial started in June, and continued from the start of this month.

Smuts is being assisted by Natasha Bassingthwaighte. They are being instructed by the Legal Assistance Centre. Schimming-Chase is acting on instructions from the Government Attorney’s office.

source.afrika.no