He says he understands the needs of the people of Nairobi having been born there. While MP for Embakasi he says he has seen the completion on 11 new secondary schools. He was elected Member of parliament 4 years ago, when the constituency had less than 4 secondary schools.

He believes that people identify with him because he has lived in Kibera, the slum during his young age.

Waititu went to Dagoreti high school and later took Commerce education in Punjab university in India where he remained for 5 years before returning to Kenya.
Part 1
 

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

The Assistant Minister wants to change Nairobi for the better.

End

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AFRICA: Co-trimoxazole discontinuation linked to increased malaria

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Co-trimoxazole is an antibiotic widely used to prevent opportunistic infections in HIV-positive people

NAIROBI,  – Abruptly discontinuing co-trimoxazole – an antibiotic used to prevent opportunistic infections in HIV-positive people – can lead to a higher incidence of malaria and diarrhoea compared with patients who keep on taking the drug, a new study has found. 

The research was conducted by the US Centres for Disease Control (CDC) in eastern Uganda, where malaria is endemic, and published in March 2012 by the Oxford Journal of Clinical Infectious Diseases.

The researchers found that 72 percent of the 315 cases of fever reported by study participants occurred among those who had stopped taking co-trimoxazole prophylaxis, and they were also nearly twice more likely to report diarrhoea.

“The findings most likely mean that HIV-infected persons, while on co-trimoxazole, have a lower rate of these infectious diseases, and stopping the drug increases the rate,” James Campbell, lead researcher of the study and director of science at CDC Uganda, told IRIN/PlusNews.

Many countries recommend that people who start antiretroviral therapy (ART) should discontinue co-trimoxazole when their CD4 cell count – a measure of immune strength – goes above 200, but this practice has not been evaluated in sub-Saharan Africa.

The UN World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 90 percent of the annual global total of 655,000 malaria deaths occur in Africa. The disease is also associated with a more rapid decline in CD4 cell count and a higher viral load among HIV-positive pregnant women.

Co-trimoxazole is relatively cheap, but the researchers note that lifetime prophylaxis using the drug may have cost and toxicity implications. The study was halted on the recommendation of the Data Safety Monitoring Board – an independent group of experts that advises the study investigators – after just four months, leaving unanswered questions about whether discontinuing co-trimoxazole is warranted.

Campbell said, “Important questions include the effect of more frequent malaria and diarrhoea episodes on the longer-term outcomes of HIV infection, the longer-term risks of inducing or selecting for resistant micro-organisms, and comparing antimicrobial prophylaxis to other means of reducing the risk of malaria and diarrhoea in this population.”

kr/ko/he
source www.irinnews.org

ZIMBABWE: Imprisoned youths open to abuse

Photo: Micheal Coghlan/Flickr

Zimbabwe is said to be witnessing an increase in juvenile offenders, although official statistics are not available

HARARE,  – Simon Dube*, 15, has just been released from a Zimbabwean jail after serving a three-month sentence for theft. After his arrest he was detained for two days in a holding cell in Harare, where he alleged police assaulted him to extract a confession that he stole goods from his neighbour’s home.

Dube’s mother, who declined to be identified, told IRIN that after her son’s return from jail he had become withdrawn, has frequent temper tantrums, as well as a persistent cough and symptoms of scurvy.

“He suffers frequent nightmares and often wakes up crying. He doesn’t tell us much about his experiences in jail but it is easy to see that he went through a tough time,” she said.

Dube was remanded in custody for seven weeks prior to his trial.

Dzimbabwe Chimbga, programme manager of local NGO Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR), said juveniles were jailed for numerous crimes, including armed robbery, theft, fraud, rape and murder, but his organization was “alarmed that the minors are lumped up with hard core criminals in cramped conditions” while awaiting trial, sometimes for six months.

“Zimbabwe has no policy of separating the juveniles, whether they are awaiting trial or have been convicted, and this trend is pervasive throughout the country. It is a fundamental human rights violation as it subjects them to sexual, physical, psychological and emotional abuse, not to mention the fact that the health and food situations are horrible,” he said.

Chimbga said ZLHR had received an acknowledgment from the Justice Ministry that there was a need to establish a detention facility specifically for juvenile offenders.

“Existing infrastructure in our prisons is not conducive for juveniles and female prisoners with children,” said prisons commissioner Paradzai Zimondi during a tour of prisons in 2010.

It is now generally accepted that young people commit offences due to the harsh socio-economic circumstances that are currently prevailing

Official figures on juveniles serving jail terms are not available.

Struggling to survive

“While we have not carried out a survey to ascertain the trend of juvenile crime, I would not quarrel with the fact that Zimbabwe is currently grappling with one of the highest unemployment rates, and many families are struggling to generate income, a situation that is driving children to fend for themselves and family members through criminal activities,” said Chimbga.

Caleb Mutandwa, programmes director of the local NGO Justice for Children Trust (JCT), told IRIN: “There has been an increase in juvenile crimes as seen by the number of cases we receive. It is now generally accepted that young people commit offences due to the harsh socio-economic circumstances that are currently prevailing.”

Mutandwa said his organization was piloting a programme called the “pre-trial diversion programme”, to assist in the rehabilitation of young offenders, but it was currently only available to youths who had not committed serious offences.

The aim, he said, was to “provide offenders with the opportunity to re-think their lives without going through the stigmatizing and unnerving criminal justice system.” The programme included counselling, voluntary compensation for their victims and meetings with them, as well as cautions by the police and influential community members.

*Not his real name

fm/go/cb
source www.irinnews.org

Photo: Kristy Siegfried/IRIN

Mary Lyford and her children are down to one meal a day

CHIKHWAWA,  – Mary Lyford, a widow and subsistence farmer from Mbande village in southern Malawi’s Chikhwawa District, has seven mouths to feed, besides her own, and little idea how she will sustain her family over the next 12 months.

Last September, she planted maize and sorghum on her family’s one hectare plot, but erratic rains forced her to replant in January. Dry weather again wilted her crops and like many other farmers in the region, she will harvest nothing this year.

A January survey conducted by the Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee (MVAC), which comprises several government departments, UN agencies and NGOs, estimated that 272,000 Malawians in 10 of the country’s 28 districts, all but one of them in the south, were food insecure and would need assistance through a lean season likely to extend into April and May because of the long dry spells.

The figure was up from an initial estimate of just over 200,000 partly due to a steep hike in the price of maize towards the end of 2011 caused by Malawi’s chronic shortages of fuel and foreign exchange.

Between January and March, Lyford’s household was among the lucky few in her village to receive monthly food rations from the government, with support from the World Food Programme (WFP) and international NGO World Vision. But the family received their final distribution in March and the government has yet to act on MVAC’s recommendation that food distribution be extended by a further two months and reach an additional 70,000 people.

Lack of donor funding

Coordinator of the Department of Disaster Management Affairs James Chiusiwa told IRIN that Cabinet had recently made a decision to extend food distribution into April and May, but that WFP was still in talks with its donors to source the necessary funding.

“It’s difficult to say when it could resume,” he said.

In an emailed response to questions from IRIN, WFP confirmed that it was appealing to donors for support to extend food assistance, but that it had not yet received any contributions.

Chief of Lyford’s village, Stephano Mbande, pointed out that nearly all of the 500 households in his village needed food assistance, not just the 18 that had so far benefited from food distributions, and that they would need help, not just for the next two months but until the next harvest in March 2013.

“In this area, we have a hunger situation,” he told IRIN. “We need the government to move quickly, and not just [give food] to a few people, but the entire village.”

We have a hunger situation. We need the government to move quickly, and not just [give food] to a few people, but the entire village

Chiuisiwa acknowledged that there were households in several districts, particularly Chikhwawa and its neighbouring district of Nsanje, which had not harvested anything, but that the numbers were unknown until MVAC carried out a planned rapid assessment this month. “We need that assessment to form the basis of planning for interventions,” he said.

This is the third consecutive year that this drought-prone region has experienced insufficient rains, although Lyford said that in previous years they had managed to harvest a little. Stephano Mbande said villagers had long ago sold off assets such as livestock and now mainly relied on occasional `ganyu’ (casual labour) in other people’s fields and on the plantations owned by Illovo Sugar, 20km away.

“They have to walk there and back and they get 108 kwacha [65 US cents] a day for weeding,” he said. “There’s nothing else to do. Only the youth want to go to Blantyre (Malawi’s nearby commercial capital). Most don’t get jobs and they come back.”

Diverted river hurts villagers

Until a few years ago, villagers did not have to depend on unpredictable rains to reap a decent harvest. They planted rice, maize, bananas, potatoes and cassava in the flat, swampy land near the River Shire and grew enough to eat and sell.

“When the rains were bad, we could depend on the river to provide year round,” said Modesta Dan, a 64-year-old resident of the village.

But in 2009, Illovo diverted the river to irrigate its sugar cane fields and the previously swampy land dried up. “Now we can only cultivate there when it rains,” said Dan.

Mbande said there had been no consultation with residents from the 30 villages that relied on the swampy land near the river before Illovo rechannelled the water. “Most people were using that water to farm,” he said. “It’s destroyed their livelihoods.”

Malnutrition

Several studies have identified Malawi as one of the countries most susceptible to recurring droughts and flooding caused by climate change, but Chiuisiwa said there was a need for more studies before the government could design more sustainable interventions to assist small-scale farmers.

In the meantime, Mbande said more and more children in his village were becoming malnourished and two had already died. According to staff at the district hospital in nearby Nsanje, 25 children at that facility alone have died from malnutrition since the beginning of the lean season in November.

Sophie Nyongo, a senior health surveillance assistant at the hospital’s Nutrition Rehabilitation Unit (NRU), said this year was worse than last year, but figures supplied to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) by the government suggest that admissions to NRUs in Nsanje and Chikhwawa are at similar levels as during the same period last year.

Lyford’s youngest child, a three-year-old boy, appears listless and Lyford says he is often sick. When there is no food at home, the older children skip school so they can help their mother weed other people’s fields in return for a basinful of maize.

“We ate twice a day when we got the government food,” said Lyford, “but now we eat once a day, just `nsima’ [maize-meal porridge] and wild vegetables.”

ks/cb source www.irinnews.org