By Agwanda Jowi, Kenya
A twenty eight year old man has hacked to death his mother and sister in law in Ebusembe Mukhungu village in Emuhaya, Western Province in an incidence that has shocked family members.

The man, Elisha Andai is said to have committed the murders in the evening during a heavy down pour that pound the region.

Elisha’s sister in law, Joyce Omenda who witnessed the man kill her mother in law and co wife, said that the man went to bed at noon and when he woke up at 4 pm, he went to where she was sitting with her mother in law.
He stood where we were with a machete in his hand. He did not utter a word. We kept chatting with mother until the rain started falling and we went to drive the goats into their sty. She said.

Mrs Omenda said that the suspect then stood at the door and when his mother returned from driving the flock, he started pointing at his mother with the machete without saying anything.

When mother saw that he intended to kill her, she ran away but he caught up with her and slashed her hand.

She kept running and he followed her and kept slashing other parts of her body, until she could no longer run. She fell on the ground in a maize plantation and he continued to butcher her until she could no longer move, She recalls.

She said that she was looking at them from the window. When my co wife heard the commotion, she ran there and found the mother lying on the ground. She followed him and asked him what he had done and he started hacking her too.

Mrs Omenda said that as soon as the suspect made sure that his sister in law (whose husband, Ismail Omukaya works at a security firm in Nairobi and was absent during the incident), was also dead, he ran away.

â?oI called the rest of the family and we started calling the neighbours from door to door because our screams could not be heard, She said.

The suspect was arrested by police as he knocking at a neigbour’s door at 10 Pm, and took him to Vihiga Police station.

Although family member assert that the suspect usually drinks alcohol, they say that he was sober when he committed the murders and it is not clear what may have lead him to committing the act.
ENDS.

FOOD: Race is on to implement nutrition initiative

Photo: Susan Renee/Flickr

Good quality food for children also helps economies to grow

JOHANNESBURG/GRAND BASSAM, 14 October 2010 (IRIN) – �A UN initiative will push countries to design nutrition policies based on new studies that show good quality food for mothers and children in the first 1,000 days, including pregnancy, would not only save millions of lives but raise literacy and economic growth rates.

The initiative – designed with input from UN agencies, NGOs, academics and think-tanks – known by its acronym SUN (Scaling Up Nutrition) and led by David Nabarro, head of the UN High-Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis, is only likely to come together in 2011.

But already questions are being raised about the lack of consultation, and time and resources needed to see it through.

In 2009 the World Bank calculated it would cost at least US$12 billion a year to implement nutrition-specific interventions, including an investment in agriculture in the 36 countries which account for 90 percent of the global under-nutrition statistics. That amount of funding is not available at present, so SUN will look to public-private-civil society partnerships.

At least 29 countries still have levels of hunger that are �extremely alarming�, according to the 2010 Global Hunger Index (GHI) produced by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). These include countries such as Burundi, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Eritrea.

SUN spells out a two-pronged approach to reduce nutrition � directly by providing good quality food and indirectly by ensuring there are nutrition-related programmes in all government sectors, such as agriculture, education and social welfare.

It focuses on overhauling nutrition strategies and implementing low-cost nutrition interventions such as eating well-balanced meals fortified by micronutrients, and breastfeeding until a child is two years old. Studies published in The Lancet in 2008 showed that these interventions not only reduce infant and maternal mortality but boost economic growth in developing countries.

Scepticism

However, time is a concern. Purnima Menon, a research fellow with IFPRI, cited India as an example where building consensus around the focus on children�s first 1,000 days and related interventions as recommended by the 2008 Lancet studies took a year. India has 42 percent of the world�s underweight children, according to the GHI.

�There are now state-level nutrition strategies that incorporate the focus on under-twos and the interventions� but are not operationalized yet,� Menon said. �Getting country buy-in is still only the first step at the country level. Work on SUN has helped bring the global community together on this issue but the real implementation challenges lie in districts, towns and villages in the different countries, where the core interventions must be implemented.�

In the past weeks, Nabarro has been meeting country representatives and experts in the nutrition sector.

But, said Mamady Daffe, head of the nutrition unit at the Guinea Health Ministry: �They�ll never find the real solutions there because they didn�t ask the specialists who are on the ground.�

The initiative is �not a bad thing�, Daffe said, but ��if such things are not based on the realities on the ground they will always fail�.

The plan

Some countries, such as Ghana and Malawi, are already designing their nutrition policies based on The Lancet findings – the �window of opportunity� in the first 1,000 days of a child�s life.

A nutrition programme in agriculture could help farmers diversify their crops and grow vegetables and fruit, besides starch-rich staples such as maize and wheat, which would make sure people have access to a wide variety of nutrients.

The initiative does not provide details of interventions, but says it will depend on new evidence-based studies and encourages countries to develop and design their own policies.

SUN says the implementation of low-cost interventions can save the lives of a million children every year and increase the economic wealth of poor countries by 2-3 percent. Getting the nutrition right will not only help achieve the Millennium Development Goal to halve hunger and poverty, but other targets on education, gender equality, and child and maternal mortality.

Nabarro said the roadmap to implement SUN called for providing resources to at least 25 countries to initiate three steps – stock-take, build capacity and scale up action by the end of 2015. But since they are unlikely to obtain the required funds, he hoped that at least eight countries would start to receive �intensive support� for scaling up by the end of 2011.

SUN is open to all countries with an undernourished population. The initiative allows countries to pick and choose their own strategies, which could include micronutrient fortification initiatives, and nutrition objectives in agriculture, such as encouraging the production of diverse crops, including fruit and vegetables.

The third step involves scaling up programmes with local and international funding.

Menon said: �Each of these steps is important but can take a substantial amount of time and resources.�

St�phane Doyon, leader of the M�decins Sans Fronti�res nutrition team, said that while the initiative is a good plug for nutrition, it probably requires more consultation and a rigorous engagement at the grassroots.

Milla McLachlan, a nutrition consultant with the UN Children�s Fund (UNICEF), said: �I think at the moment there still is a lot of work to be done to get country buy-in and to make sure that countries feel equal partners in the SUN process and not just �Johnnies-come-lately�. So how to do that? How to work with the regional structures to facilitate? That is going to be really important.�

Nabarro said meetings and events at regional level have been planned over the next few weeks. A joint transition team – to be set up with the help of the policy-making UN Systems Standing Committee on Nutrition – will begin to work out how efforts will be coordinated. The regional meetings will be followed by global consultations over the next two months.

Africa in the lead

The African Union, through its New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), has this year begun pushing to incorporate nutrition in agriculture and other sectors. Malawi, which has one of the world�s highest ratios of chronically malnourished children, has a nutrition head in 10 of its ministries. The 2010 GHI rates Ghana as one of the 10 best performers – along with Iran, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia – in getting the numbers of hungry down since 1990.

The new focus on nutrition follows the global food price crisis in 2007-2008, which saw the number of undernourished shoot past a billion. But the GHI pointed out that political instability, conflicts and the high prevalence of HIV/AIDS have also �severely undermined� food security even where incomes have grown substantially.

Nabarro said he sees SUN as a �good opportunity for investing in food security, poverty reduction and societal empowerment�. But countries also need to fund-raise and ensure interventions are implemented effectively and in an accountable way, he said.

jk/np/cb/mw source.irinnews

BuaNews -October 14, 2010
Johannesburg (South Africa) If the targets for the new and improved plan to stop Tuberculosis (TB) are met, more than five million lives could be saved in the next five years.
The new Global Plan to Stop TB 2011-2015: Transforming the Fight – Towards the Elimination of Tuberculosis – is action oriented and, for the first time identifies all the research gaps that need to be filled to bring rapid TB tests, faster treatment regimes and a fully effective vaccine to the market.

The new plan follows the launch of the Stop TB Partnership in 2006, whose goals were to reach the MDG of halting and beginning to reverse the epidemic by 2015, and halve TB prevalence and death rates.

Re-launched on Wednesday, the new plan also shows public health programmes how to drive universal access to TB care, including how to modernise diagnostic laboratories and adapt revolutionary TB tests that have recently become available.

Speaking at the event held at Pholosho Primary School in Alexandra, Chairperson of the Stop TB Partnership Coordinating Board, Rifat Atun, said the new plan’s goals include laboratory strengthening, research and updated targets for TB care.

“The plan aims to reduce deaths and TB prevalence. If we are able to execute the plan, we need to scale up efforts in TB diagnosis, expand capacity to laboratories and develop new vaccines,” said Atun.

The plan needs $37 billion to be implemented. Already $11 million has been pledged.

Gauteng Health and Social Development MEC, Qedani Mahlangu, said South Africa was among the 22 countries which bear 80 percent of the burden of TB worldwide. However, the country had made progress in getting rid of TB, with the numbers of infected people declining.

“We’ve accepted the responsibility of scaling up the fight against TB, HIV and AIDS. We urged the Southern African Developing Community to invest in this plan to help get rid of TB. It’s possible for us to stop it,” she said.

President and CEO of the Global Business Coalition on HIV and AIDS, John Tedstrom, said the plan’s re-launch was desperately needed as TB matters to business.

“TB is bigger than anyone but combining forces, we can stop it,” said Tedstro

source.afrika.no