APO News from Africa:
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Development Cooperation Alexander De Croo today signed two programmes in Benin, related to the promotion of sexual and reproductive health and rights. Belgium will be cooperating with UNICEF to help combat child marriages. With the support of our country, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) will be setting up an information project aimed at young people and women, covering sexual education and sexual violence. Minister De Croo also announced that Belgium will release a total of 60 million euros over the next four years in support of UNICEF's work and another 36 million euros for UNFPA.
The UNFPA will use Belgian funds in Benin to run the project ‘Learning about living in Benin’. The aim is to inform young people and help combat sexual violence against girls using an e-learning platform, which is also accessible via mobile telephone. Our country will donate 1.5 million euros for this purpose.
Belgium will also provide 1.17 million euros to support UNICEF in tackling child marriage in Benin. The programme Lutte contre le mariage des enfants au Benin aims to give children and young people better access to justice and better protection from violence and sexual exploitation.
In Benin 35% of girls marry before their eighteenth birthday, and almost two out of ten girls have their first baby before reaching the age of fifteen.
Alexander De Croo: “Girls who are forced to marry and become mothers at a young age miss out on many opportunities. They must leave school early and spend the rest of their life depending on others. The battle against sexual violence and child marriage is crucial if we are to help strengthen the position of girls and women. Belgium wishes to join UNICEF and UNFPA in supporting the struggle.”
Intense collaboration
With his agreement to two specific programmes in Benin, Minister De Croo also announced Belgium's intention to continue working intensely with UNICEF, the UN Children's Fund, and UNFPA, the UN Population Fund, over the next four years. Belgium has volunteered to donate 60 million euros to UNICEF over the coming four years and a total of 36 million euros to help UNFPA. Children's rights together with sexual and reproductive health and rights are key priorities in Belgium's Development Cooperation policy.
Minister De Croo announced our country's commitment in the presence of Goedele Liekens and Axelle Red, Goodwill Ambassadors for UNFPA and UNICEF Belgium respectively. They are currently all together on an official visit to Benin and Senegal, which is focused on sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Involvement from the wife of the Beninese president
Today their visits included a meeting with Claudine Tallon, the wife of the Beninese president Tallon. In early March she launched a foundation aimed at improving the position of girls and women in Benin. Her actions include a focus on better education for girls, tackling the deaths of mothers and children, and sexual violence.
As a country, Benin is the sixth most important partner country in Belgium's Development Cooperation. Next year, Belgium and Benin will agree on a new bilateral collaboration programme.
Distributed by APO on behalf of Kingdom of Belgium – Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation.
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Source: APO – Africa-Newsroom: latest news releases related to Africa
Review and Planning Meeting for Ensuring Access to Life Saving Health Care Service in South of Libya:
A review and planning meeting was arranged by WHO-Libya Office on 21 April to ensure access to life-saving health care services in the South of Libya. The meeting was attended by all directors of the 8 hospitals and all managers of health services in the 8 regions of the South, in addition to the directors of the branch of National Center of Disease Control and the Oncology Centre in Sabha. WHO, IOM, UNFPA and ICRC facilitated the meeting.
The director of the National Health Information Centre presented the alarming results of Service Availability and Readiness of health facilities Assessment done in collaboration with WHO, and identified the following major gaps in health services:
• Primary Health Care (PHC) access reduced and severe shortages of medical supplies
• Shortages of doctors in most PHCs
• Hospital in-patient capacity reduced from 920 beds in 2012 to 683.
Key health needs for the south were identified for 2017 including supply of life-saving medicines, training of nurses and doctors in specialized areas, repair of the health facilities and building the capacity of the MOH facilities to respond to the health needs of increasing number of Migrants.
Distributed by APO on behalf of United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL).
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Source: APO – Africa-Newsroom: latest news releases related to Africa
Why We are Hopeful About Improving Health in Africa, by Aliko Dangote and Bill Gates:
This week, more than 138,000 vaccinators will fan out across five African countries in the Lake Chad area in a push to eliminate polio in Africa and rid the world of this terrible disease forever.
They will take boats across fast-flowing rivers, ride jeeps along sandy ravines, walk crowded street in towns and cities and navigate cramped quarters of refugee camps to ensure that every child is immunized. Traveling for hours a day, these dedicated women and men will visit children in homes, schools, train stations, and transit points across Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, and the Central African Republic.
This also marks World Immunization Week, a coordinated effort to make sure that people everywhere understand the importance of getting immunized to protect against vaccine-preventable diseases.
And by coincidence, it was almost seven years ago that the two of us first met in a hotel conference room in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital. We were there as part of a diverse group—public officials, religious leaders, business people, polio survivors, and journalists—to discuss how we could work together to stop polio in Nigeria.
At the time, Nigeria had done an amazing job tackling polio—reducing reported cases by 95 percent in just one year. But it was still circulating in six Nigerian states. While 95 percent might seem like success, as long as a single child remains infected, children across Africa and around the world are at risk.
Thanks to the effort of so many, Nigeria’s Borno State is now the only place in Africa today where polio is still circulating. It will take ingenuity to end polio there, and it will take persistence to continue reaching children in the surrounding area with vaccines to protect them from the disease until it is eradicated. But we’re confident it can be done. And when that happens, Africa will celebrate one of the biggest victories ever in public health.
Since our first meeting in 2010, the two of us have worked together on a range of other projects to help improve health in Nigeria and across Africa.
We supported the establishment of emergency operations centers in Nigeria and other countries to keep polio from spreading. This turned out to be a blessing during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. When the disease first appeared in Nigeria—an international travel hub that is home to more than 180 million people—the staff of an emergency operations center set up in Lagos jumped into action and stopped the disease in its tracks. It’s almost unimaginable to think what would have happened without them.
In the state of Kano, we are working with the government to ensure that children can get essential childhood immunizations against tetanus, pneumonia, liver cancer and measles. And when parents bring their children into a clinic for vaccinations, health workers can address other health issues, too, like nutrition, care for pregnant mothers and newborns and malaria prevention and treatment. We have since widened the program to several other states.
Vaccines are also one of the best tools to save lives in an epidemic, such as the meningitis C outbreak happening now in Nigeria and other West African countries.
And because of the devastating impact malnutrition has on Nigeria’s children – leading to 300,000 deaths annually and causing stunted growth and development in millions more – we have expanded our partnership to include nutrition programs across 12 states.
Earlier this year, we also helped launch the End Malaria Council, a group of influential public and private sector leaders committed to ensuring that malaria eradication remains a top global priority.
Underlying all these efforts is our belief that strengthening health systems is the key to breaking the cycle of extreme poverty and disease—and kick-starting a virtuous cycle of health, productivity, and prosperity.
In our work together, we have learned a few important lessons.
First, improving the health of communities depends on a successful partnership between government, communities, religious and business leaders, volunteers, and NGOs. This ensures that everyone is rowing in the same direction. And it is essential to building trust so parents have the confidence that vaccines are safe and will protect their children from life-threatening diseases.
Second, we must keep innovating to speed up progress. This month, for example, vaccinators will test a new vaccine carrier that keeps the temperature of vaccines stable for up to five days, even in blistering heat. This breakthrough will enable vaccinators to finally reach children in extremely remote areas with life-saving vaccines.
Last, accurate and reliable data is central to any effort to improve health. Data can tell a health officer which communities are running low on vaccine supplies, where there are gaps in vaccination coverage, and which new mothers need reminders to take their babies to the health clinic to be immunized.
An Africa without polio is within reach. So is the vision of getting life-saving vaccines to every child. Success will generate more enthusiasm and support from across different sectors – government, business, civil society, the media – to tackle other killer diseases and the underlying conditions that affect people’s health, including fixing broken health systems.
We know that strengthening health systems takes time and diligence. We are optimistic that Africa can achieve the future it aspires to. That future depends on people working together—across national borders and across socioeconomic strata—to build the better world we all want.
By Aliko Dangote and Bill Gates
Distributed by APO on behalf of Aliko Dangote and Bill Gates.
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Source: APO – Africa-Newsroom: latest news releases related to Africa
