Uganda simply not doing enough to save pregnant mothers -US govt health strategist
For the last two days I have been on a trip with the US Mission in Uganda to tour health projects that the US government supports in western Uganda. Two districts of Kyenjojo and Kabarole are somewhere the areas where the US government is partnering with different health facilities to support an ambitious government plan to reduce maternal deaths in four western Uganda districts by 50 percent by end of 2012. In the two days we visited 7 health centres including a regional referral hospital. Some were run by faith based organization, one privately owned and others government run.
A woman waiting in a line at Mitandi health center, a faith based center.
Uganda has one of the highest maternal mortalities in the world. At 435 mothers per 100,000 live births that translates to 16 mothers a day.
Over the years the Uganda’s political leadership have found a scapegoat in health workers blaming them for the poor healthcare delivery system despite wide research on what many see as a crumbling health system.
On the trip was President Barack Obama’s top official in charge of health at the State Department, Lois Quam who heads the Global Health Initiative (GHI).
GHI was brought in when President Obama assumed office to ensure a coordinated foreign health support.
The US government has concentrated on maternal health in these districts that have some infrastructure to gauge what difference their interventions can bring.
The programmes are on voluntary family planning, skilled care at birth as well as emergency obstetric and postpartum care. The American government provide over $400 million annually in health assistance to Uganda.
I met great doctors and health workers who work with so little to save lives. Their stories I will run in the next few days.
I was able to talk to Christopher Dorval, Senior Advisor; Strategy and External Relations at the Global Health Initiative. He says to make a big reduction in numbers of women dying due pregnancy complications, Uganda leaders must show political will. Read more…
Kisenyi; a case for urban poor in Uganda
Right in the middle of down town Kampala is a slum called Kisenyi. It’s a place with a mix of many language spoken in Uganda, Eastern Congo, Tanzania, Rwanda, Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia. The roughest Kampala neighbourhood I have ever been. We visited Kisenyi on Saturday 28th with friends, some of whom I know personally and others through twitter after @AndyKristian called us for a photo shoot. I had only passed by the outskirts of Kisenyi as a journalist. I had never seen anything like that before. In just a few minutes from the crazy crowded bus parks we were in a place where we felt visibly foreign.
It wasn’t long we were moving through the garbage, heaps of polythene bags, flowing sewage besides little wooden houses which most people sleep in. We were with a young man that runs a program for kids in that neighborhood and that’s why it was easy to move around.
Kisenyi photo by Ssozi Javie
Andy and Ed Echwalu were ready with cameras. You can’t shoot without getting the toughest kids on the block to guard you here. Before the shoot, a crowd of kids gathered, it was quite touching to see a child beg you to buy them sugarcane for 100 shillings for lunch. We were there around 1pm, most of these kids don’t easily find a meal. There are all sorts of businesses going on but survival business like selling empty water bottles. More than three quarters of the kids and youth here were intoxicated with all sorts of substances. There were a few women who came to the shooting site. There were lots of young girls too.
“Is it outrageous to want to live in peace?”
On Sunday 22nd, Uganda watched in horror as a city enforcement officer , who later turned out to be a police officer, brandished his AK47 shooting indiscriminately at a group of unarmed civilians who had gathered at a demolition site carried out by Kampala city authorities. NTV Uganda brought the news in and people I was with said you could have mistken the scene to be Mogadishu. In this video, at 5:30 you see the animal that Uganda’s security forces have become. A man using a stick, a gun and a pistol to violate citizens.
Two historic stories of Africa in 2011
As the year 2011 closed, December 7 marked a historic day in international justice. The first former head of state Luarent Gbagbo appeared before the International Criminal Criminal for crimes allegedly committed during the Dec 2010-April 2011 post election violence in his country Cote d’ivoire. Gbagbo had take over and retain power by force and trickery. Over 3000 people died in Cote d’Iviore.
He faces four charges of crimes against humanity, including murder and rape. Throughout the conflict I had kept in close touch with friends in the country and their distress was beyond what I could imagine. Everyday Africa was treated to the drama of two people claiming to have won an election. Many thought Ivory Coast could head in the direction of Kenya and Zimbabwe, where compromise had to be reached because Africa’s old men didn’t wish to leave.
Why Occupy Nigeria?
2011 was quite a year. It saw the fall of 4 dictators, three of them on the African continent. Many waited to see if the Arab spring that North Africa enjoyed would cross the Sahara and come down. There were a few protests in Uganda, Swaziland, Gabon, Cameroon and Senegal which didn’t yield a lot. Nonetheless, many African citizens had learnt a great lesson from the Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. They learnt that they could stand up to their leaders. Now that Nigeria, the largest (population) country on the continent has kicked off 2012 with #OccupyNigeria we wait to see how the government handles the situation after today’s strike and what lessons we can draw.
Photo by Esther Eshiet
The protest against President Goodluck Jonathan’s decision to remove fuel subsidies has united many who say this will suddenly more than double the cost of living for most Nigerians. This year the Ugandan government has promised to start work on an oil refinery and the sector is already hit with corruption and bribery allegations. At the heart of the subsidies debate in Nigeria is why hasn’t government invested in refineries instead of selling crude oil and import fuel at a much higher price. I asked two Nigerian friends, both are taking part in today’s protests, about the issue because Uganda government has to learn from African countries like Nigeria that have been producing oil for five decades. Here is the two responses.
Read more…
Meeting one of the ‘most influential Arabs’.
On Friday 16, I was honored to attend a public lecture in a small library in Amsterdam where Abdel Bari Atwan, named by Middle East Magazine as one of the 50 most ’most influential Arabs’, was speaking on the eve of the one year commemoration of the Arab Spring.
Atwan in Amsterdam on Dec 16. Rosebell's photo
Atwan is editor-in chief of the London-based pan-Arab newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi. He discussed the Arab spring and the future of the Middle East and North Africa beyond the ‘revolution’.
Some of my favorite quotes from the meeting:
“We Arab people were suffered double humiliation. That brought about by imperialism and another by own very own corrupt government.”
I found this quote very meaningful for not only the Arab world but also of Africa. All year long many people have been watching closely to see if there will be a sort of African spring. And every time some friends asked me when is the African Spring, I replied, we won’t have a spring, ours will be the African Harmattan! None the less there has been inspiration from the north of the continent spreading south. In many ways our realities are close to those of the MENA countries and we can only wait and see what changes and how long will they take on the African continent. Just like Atwan said “whoever knew or predicted that the Arab people would depose four dictators in just one year?”
I have very passionate Yemeni friends and Atwan said he respected the struggle of Yemen, knowing how many guns are in the hands of so many people that the country has not moved to a civil war. He applauded the choice of non-violence of the people of Yemen even when they had access to arms. And he told us a famous saying about the difficulty of ruling Yemen with its tribes system that i loved.
“Riding a lion is smoother than ruling Yemen”
Then came Atwan’s passionate talk on the events in Libya and how he disagreed with the NATO military intervention. Even though he was glad that the killing of Muammar Gaddafi has been called a crime against humanity, he decried the west for allowing impunity of rebels turned government of NTC.
I was interested in the fact the the ICC had backed off the Libya case and of recent the prosecutor had indicated that Libya’s new rulers were capable of prosecuting Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam Gaddafi. Personally i found this ridiculous, how could the killers of his father offer him a fair trial in a country has no justice system. Having spent the earlier week hearing people decry the ICC being an African court, here i was with a situation which clearly an outside court could have done better.
When I asked Atwan about this he went beyond the case of Saif to talk about his recent trip to Tripoli and how many African countries and the were silent about crimes being committed about African people, both Libyans and immigrants.
There are at least 7000 black people in Libya being tortured and living in the most inhumane conditions all these atrocities being presided over by the new regime.Yet we see no human rights papers about them. Nothing from western governments who supposed intervened on human rights grounds. I will not be surprised if we soon hear that Saif has been executed. The West is keeping a blind eye to crimes committed by rebels because of they always put their interests above anything else.
And that was from a Palestinian man who lived in as a refugee in Jordan, managed to study in Egypt and later run one of the most respected Arab media outlets from London since 1989.
Atwan said for the future of the entire region, one must not put their eyes off Egypt. He said is Egypt becomes more islamist, chances are that most of the other countries will follow suit.
No near end to violence as DR Congo election is disputed.
Photo by Edward Echwalu.
I am in Brussels where two days ago Congolese community had clashes with Police when they went out to demonstrate agains the president Joseph Kabila’s ‘re-election’ which has so far been rejected by international election observers and leading opposition candidate Etienne Tshisekedi.
The Carter Center said “we find the irregularities are significant enough to undermine the credibility of the election results.”
Again the contention is on the tallying process. Earlier the opposition had warned that the Electoral body had chosen to announce first results from Kabila’s strongholds in Katanga, a move seen by many as way to psychologically prepare the population if Kabila is finally announced as a winner. But Once again we have a Cote d’Iviore situation, both men have announced themselves as winners of the election. There are reports of government moving troops into Kinshasa and rounding up youth linked to the opposition. The situation is unpredictable and no one seems to know how this stalemate will be solved. And as tensions flare I am reminded of women of DRC, eastern DRC in particular who have endured all sorts of inhumane acts by soldiers and militias. On this day they see the little hope of having a government that can bring peace wane.
And I bring a story of Ester Munyerenkana a health worker at Panzi. I have held onto this story for quite a while. Her and other health workers daily have to deal with the end result of the broken political system and violence in Congo Read more…
Child marriages in Uganda
This week I was in Kasese taking part in validation of a study soon to be released by Isis-WICCE on child marriages in Uganda. I met Sarah Biira, 19 year old who had her first child at 13 years. Kasese is a post conflict area but has largely been ignored in terms of development. It has been under conflict since 1940s and the education of a girl child is a challenge because of poverty, cultural beliefs and loss of livelihoods to war.
Here is Sarah’s story.
Obama’s troops in Central Africa to fight LRA; will they deliver?
Many Ugandans, through various social networks, have expressed skepticism over the 100 combat troops the US deployed to Uganda to help stamp out the rebels of Lord’s Resistance Army currently operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Central African Republic (CAR) and parts of western South Sudan.
They think what they are actually here to do is secure for their country Uganda’s newly found oil.
a photo i took on Wednesday morning at Entebbe International Airport.
The mistrust and suspicion of American military interventions is well understood considering its record world over. However, I found many who are opposed to this deployment lacking much knowledge on what havoc the LRA have inflicted on the peoples of the three countries whom governments have largely ignored. And also many don’t look at what alternatives are there to stop these brutal massacres Read more…
Talking Africa Nobel Peace Prize winners with Al Jazeera
Last week, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leymah Gobwee won the the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Tawakkul Karman from Yemen for their work of bringing peace in non-violent ways in their countries. I met Leymah last year at the Man Up Campaign conference alongside the World Cup in South Africa. I have interviewed President Sirleaf twice. I thought it was very significant for African women to be recognised in the area of peace and security. Most often the image of African women is that of a victim of war and not a participant in bringing about peace.
Here is what I shared with Al Jazeera Newshour the day the winners were announced on Friday 7 October.
This week at the press briefing in Kigali, I asked President Paul Kagame what this prize meant for Africa.
I am only happy for the women of Africa. We need to go beyond this being a symbol for women. Women need attention not just in Africa but in the rest of the world. When I travel and read i see marginalisation of women. We appreciate the quest to empower women and have them as an integral part of our society on equal terms. But as we get help here in Africa, i feel we may need to take this help to some of these countries. For instance you go to discuss business in these countries and all their boards have about 20 men and one or two women. They too need help. This Prize is a reminder that we should work beyond the prize that was given for us to meet expectations of women of Africa. We need more women presidents!
In the interview I mentioned the status of women in South Sudan and I intend to write a separate post soon from my recent trip to Juba and interactions with women leaders in that country.
