Day: August 30, 2022

A new Human Rights Watch report says that in nearly one-third of African countries, teenage girls who become pregnant face “significant legal and policy barriers” to continuing their formal education.

Human Rights Watch said Tuesday it examined more than 100 laws and policies concerning education, gender equity, and reproductive health, that are detrimental to the education of teenage mothers.

Adi Radhakrishnan works with the rights group’s children rights division. He says some African laws have pushed young mothers out of school.

“It’s shocking to understand how governments are undermining girls’ education and effectively closing the door on girls’ futures… These are students who are denied their basic rights to education for reasons that have nothing to do with their desire or their ability to learn and they are not supported by their government,” Radhakrishnan said.

Researchers found that at least 10 African countries have no legal means or measures to protect adolescent girls’ education when they are pregnant and become mothers.

Several countries, including Sudan, impose punishments on teenage girls who have sexual relationships outside marriage. For those girls, going to school while pregnant raises suspicion and exposes them to possible criminal prosecution.

Hannibal Uwaifo is the head of the African Bar Association. He says cultural norms are mostly to blame for young mothers not continuing with their education.

“The issues have to do with families, society, and the community. I don’t think there are any specific laws that bars people going back to school,” Uwaifo said. “I think we need to deliberately encourage African girls to return back to school. We need to actively and deliberately campaign that this teenage pregnancy doesn’t mean they should give up schooling or give up formal education otherwise, if there are any laws which are in place saying a teenage mother cannot go back to school, we would like to know about them and work on them.”

On the positive side, Radhakrishnan says 38 countries in Africa have laws that protect the education of pregnant and young mothers.

“Far more countries have positive frameworks than countries lack them or have discriminatory measures. We have seen students excluded because teachers do not know whether the positive law exists, or parents don’t know there are great lessons to be learned … countries across Africa draw positive practices from their neighbors and develop useful guidelines that make sure that all girls — regardless of pregnancy or motherhood status — all girls are able to access education in Africa,” Radhakrishnan said.

Human Rights Watch urges authorities in countries that lack such laws to create legal frameworks that affirm girls’ right to education. The advocacy group also encourages countries that already have laws and policies to fully implement them so young mothers — and their children — can benefit.

Source: Voice of America

Half of health care facilities worldwide lack basic hygiene services with water and soap or alcohol-based hand rub where patients receive care and at toilets in these facilities, according to the latest Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) report by WHO and UNICEF. Around 3.85 billion people use these facilities, putting them at greater risk of infection, including 688 million people who receive care at facilities with no hygiene services at all.

“Hygiene facilities and practices in health care settings are non-negotiable. Their improvement is essential to pandemic recovery, prevention and preparedness. Hygiene in health care facilities cannot be secured without increasing investments in basic measures, which include safe water, clean toilets, and safely managed health care waste,” said Dr Maria Neira, WHO Director, Department of Environment, Climate Change and Health. “I encourage Member States to step up their efforts to implement their 2019 World Health Assembly commitment to strengthen water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services in health care facilities, and to monitor these efforts.”

The latest report, “Progress on WASH in health care facilities 2000–2021: special focus on WASH and infection prevention and control”, has for the first time established this global baseline on hygiene services – which assessed access at points of care as well as toilets – as more countries than ever report on critical elements of WASH services in their hospitals and other health centres. For hygiene, data are now available for 40 countries, representing 35% of the world’s population, up from 21 countries in 2020 and 14 in 2019.

The newly established global estimate reveals a clearer and more alarming picture of the state of hygiene in health care facilities. Though 68% of health care facilities had hygiene facilities at points of care, and 65% had handwashing facilities with water and soap at toilets, only 51% had both and therefore met the criteria for basic hygiene services. Furthermore, 1 in 11 (9%) of health care facilities globally have neither.

“If health care providers don’t have access to a hygiene service, patients don’t have a health care facility,” said Kelly Ann Naylor, UNICEF Director of WASH and Climate, Environment, Energy, and Disaster Risk Reduction (CEED). “Hospitals and clinics without safe water and basic hygiene and sanitation services are a potential death trap for pregnant mothers, newborns, and children. Every year, around 670 000 newborns lose their lives to sepsis. This is a travesty – even more so as their deaths are preventable.”

The report notes that contaminated hands and environments play a significant role in pathogen transmission in health care facilities and the spread of antimicrobial resistance. Interventions to increase access to handwashing with water and soap and environmental cleaning form the cornerstone of infection prevention and control programmes and are crucial to providing quality care, particularly for safe childbirth.

Coverage of WASH facilities is still uneven across different regions and income groupings:

Facilities in sub-Saharan Africa are lagging on hygiene services. While three-quarters (73%) of health care facilities in the region overall have alcohol-based hand rub or water and soap at points of care, only one-third (37%) have handwashing facilities with water and soap at toilets. The vast majority (87%) of hospitals have hand hygiene facilities at points of care, compared to 68% of other healthcare facilities.

In the Least Developed Countries, only 53% of health care facilities have access on-premises to a protected water source. To compare, the global figure is 78% with hospitals (88%) doing better than smaller health care facilities (77%), and the figure for eastern and south-eastern Asia is 90%. Globally, around 3% of health care facilities in urban areas and 11% in rural areas had no water service.

Of the countries with available data, 1 in 10 health care facilities globally had no sanitation service. The proportion of health care facilities with no sanitation services ranged from 3% in Latin America and the Caribbean and in eastern and south-eastern Asia to 22% in sub-Saharan Africa. In the Least Developed Countries, just 1 in 5 (21%) had basic sanitation services in health care facilities.

The data further reveals that many health care facilities lack basic environmental cleaning and safe segregation and disposal of health care waste. The report is being launched at World Water Week taking place in Stockholm, Sweden. The annual conference, which runs from 23 August to 1 September, explores new ways to tackle humanity’s greatest challenges: from food security and health to agriculture, technology, biodiversity and climate.

Source: UN Children’s Fund

The first shipment of Ukrainian grain to Africa since Russia’s invasion arrived in Djibouti on Tuesday. The grain will be distributed in Ethiopia to help the drought-stricken nation cope with worsening hunger that threatens to become a famine.

Mike Dunford, East Africa regional director for the U.N.’s World Food Program (WFP), spoke to reporters at the port.

“The food on the [U.N.-chartered ship] Brave Commander will feed 1.5 million people, for one month in Ethiopia,” he said. “So, this makes a very big impact, for those people who currently have nothing and now WFP will be able to provide them with their basic needs.”

A Russian blockade of Ukraine’s seaports forced Ukraine to halt nearly all deliveries of grain, which sparked worries of a worldwide food crisis. Russia invaded the country in February.

A settlement between Kyiv and Moscow that was mediated by the U.N. and Turkey in July, known as The Black Sea Initiative, saw a resumption in exports of wheat, other foodstuffs, and fertilizers from three Black Sea ports at the beginning of August.

The WFP said 150,000 tons of additional wheat grain from Ukraine will be sent in the coming weeks thanks to funding provided by the United States.

In landlocked Ethiopia, where the grain is now headed, more than 5 million people have been displaced because of conflict. A total of 17 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance as the Horn of Africa endures another year of drought.

Dunford said the Black Sea Initiative is a step toward easing the situation.

“We’ve already seen a reduction of 15% in wheat prices globally, since the Black Sea Initiative commenced,” he said. “What we want to see is more food flowing. We need, from WFP’s perspective, millions of tons in this region. In Ethiopia alone, three quarters of everything that we used to distribute originated from Ukraine and Russia.”

There are concerns the resumption of exports from Ukraine may not be enough to make a dent in the crisis.

Adullahi Halakhe, with the Washington-based advocacy group Refugees International, said the amount of grain arriving to Ethiopia is not enough.

“When you consider over 20 million people are in need of humanitarian aid, food inflation stands at 40%, I think this is very important,” he said.

Humanitarian organizations say parts of Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region may be in a state of famine, because of the conflict there and a de facto humanitarian blockade imposed by Ethiopia’s federal government.

Although limited aid was entering the region, renewed fighting between the government and Tigrayan forces that began last week led to the U.N. announcing Monday that it has suspended aid convoys into the region.

Source: Voice of America

MADRID— Spanish police said Monday they had fished the bodies of seven suspected migrants from the country’s southeastern Mediterranean coast since Sunday night.

“The guardia civil pulled out seven lifeless bodies off Alicante and Murcia” after spotting them “floating in the sea on Sunday afternoon August 28 and the morning of Monday 29th,” a police statement read.

The corpses were taken for autopsies to determine their age, sex and nationality, as well as cause of death, the police said, adding it appeared they were all north Africans who had tried to reach Spanish soil in an unseaworthy boat.

Saturday saw one man rescued slightly further up the coast after he tried to reach Spain on a boat six metres long and without a motor.

Police are investigating if his case is linked to those of the dead seven migrants.

From Jan 1 to Aug 15 Spain registered a total of 16,378 migrants arriving by sea.

At its shortest, the route to Spain from the Moroccan coast is around 100 kilometres, but migrants often come from much further afield, with the distance from Mauritania more than 1,000 kilometres as the crow flies.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK