The Kenyan government is to start offering free medical services to poor patients at small public hospitals across the country from next month, health officials said on Monday. ”Effective July 1, patients will not be required to pay for diagnosis and treatment, at public health centres and dispensaries only,” said James Nyikal, the national director of medical services.
”The toll on children is most worrying,” says James Elder, communications officer for the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), about the situation in Darfur, western Sudan. He noted that; ”There are high levels of malnutrition, especially among children. Many of them have died of malnutrition, but it is difficult to get the number of those dead due to the lack of monitoring logistics.”
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A meeting of more than 187 church leaders from across Africa has highlighted the role of female clergy in fighting the Aids pandemic that has swept the continent. The four-day gathering, which ended on Friday, was organised by the All Africa Conference of Churches to explore ways of stepping up efforts to curb the spread of HIV.
A society free of female genital mutilation, also known as female circumcision, appeared distant this week after a group of women’s rights activists accused medical personnel of carrying out the practice. The activists made the allegation in Nairobi, Kenya, on Monday, after a meeting of former circumcisers organised by Equality Now.
Calls for Kenyan officials to clamp down on abortion were sounded anew last week, during a mass for 15 aborted foetuses discovered near a river. Authorities seek to assure the public that they are taking steps to prevent a repeat of this situation, but a question mark is hanging over why the government has failed to enforce anti-abortion laws.
With large-scale retrenchments of about 21Â 000 workers looming over Kenya’s civil service, union officials say they have presented research to the government showing that the ranks of public employees are already being substantially thinned by retirement and other factors.
The discovery of the remains of 15 aborted foetuses by a river in Nairobi has led to the arrest of a gynaecologist and triggered an intense debate over abortion, which is illegal in Kenya, as it is in most African countries. Gynaecologist John Nyamu, who runs two reproductive health clinics in the Kenyan capital, was arrested last week along with two nurses who worked at the health centres.
What had been the star of the world summit on sustainable energy two years ago in Johannesburg can be seen next to the highway to Pretoria. A huge solar collector gleams in the sun on the grounds of the South African Development Bank. But the high-tech has a flaw: The round disc is rarely correctly positioned, so that it usually points earthwards, rather than towards the sun as it is supposed to do.
Deals paving the way for an end to 21 years of civil war in southern Sudan have prompted international praise, tempered by fresh warnings about a humanitarian catastrophe in the western region of Darfur. The United Nations has called the conflict in Darfur the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
Khartoum is continuing a campaign of ”ethnic cleansing” in the western region of Darfur, despite having signed a peace accord with rebels to end 21 years of civil war in the south, an international rights group warned on Thursday. ”In the western part of the country, the Sudan government is taking a terrible step backward,” Human Rights Watch said.
Fifteen foetuses, believed to have been illegally aborted, were found dumped in garbage bags and cardboard boxes near a river in Nairobi, Kenya, police said. Police had no details about who left the foetuses just off the main highway from Nairobi to the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa, but they suspect they had been illegally aborted.
As the clock ticks closer to the deadline for introducing a new Constitution in Kenya, Atsango Chesoni for one is filled with anticipation at the coming change. The women’s rights activist and official at Bomas Katiba Watch says the country’s existing Constitution discriminates against women, especially on the issue of property rights — and that change in this matter is long overdue.
Sudan’s government and main rebel group will on Wednesday sign key deals on the remaining political issues standing in the way of a final accord to end 21 years of civil war, the Kenyan foreign ministry said on Tuesday. ”The protocols represent a major step towards the achievement of a final comprehensive settlement to the conflict,” the ministry said in a statement.
Kenya’s government has announced a plan to cut more than 20 000 jobs in the civil service sector in order to make it more efficient, local media reports said on Thursday. Kenya’s National Security Minister Chris Murungaru said the layoffs will start next month and end in 2007.
Negotiators trying to patch together a peace deal to end Sudan’s 21-year war are working to resolve two last key issues before they can sign a final agreement, a rebel spokesperson said on Wednesday. The two issues were how to share political power in two disputed areas of central Sudan and what percentage of posts the rebels would get in the national government.
"The stability of any government is measured by the freedom it gives to the press," says Kenyan media activist Mitch Odero, adding that a "clean" government should not be worried about the press. But recent statements by Kenyan authorities indicate that they have a less sanguine view of the country’s journalists.
At least 204 people were killed and 70 injured when militias attacked a cattle camp in southern Sudan, the United Nations said on Monday. The UN said the attack, carried out by militiamen from the local Murle tribe, took place on May 1 near the town of Akobo in Eastern Upper Nile region, close to the border with Ethiopia.
One million people are being denied basic health care in Burundi as a result of a cost-recovery system adopted in 2002, the relief organisation Médécins sans Frontières (MSF) said on Thursday. According to a survey by MSF, the system denies one-fifth of the population access to medical consultations.
The notion that the truth will set you free has enduring appeal in developing countries that are newly free of repressive governments. But Kenya is discovering that setting up a truth commission to probe human rights violations is less straightforward than it might appear.
Former Ugandan rebel leader Alice Lakwena, who is in exile in a northern Kenya refugee camp, has demanded 000 from Uganda before she returns home. An official said she wanted the Ugandan government to give her a resettlement fee and accommodation before she returns.
Ministers from Africa’s Great Lakes and Horn of Africa regions were on Tuesday due to give legal muscle to their commitments to stemming an alarming proliferation of small and light weapons. A Kenyan Foreign Ministry official said the regions’ 11 states would sign a protocol in Nairobi on Tuesday.
At least 50 000 people have been forced to flee their homes in southern Sudan because of militia attacks and fighting between government and rebel forces. The clashes over the past few weeks have occurred despite an October 2002 ceasefire between the government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army.
Africa’s Anglican archbishops have vowed not to receive donations from western churches which support the ordination of gay priests. ”We do not want any money from the Episcopal Church of the United States of America. This is not rhetoric. It is not a matter of a joke. We mean what we say,” the chairman of the Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa, Nigeria’s Archbishop Peter Akinola said, as the other clergymen nodded in affirmation.
Rebels in Sudan’s western Darfur region say government-backed Arab militias have broken a recent ceasefire agreement and as a consequence they may pull out of planned peace talks, media reports said on Friday. A rebel spokesperson said 32 civilians had been killed and several villages torched on Wednesday.
When Mwai Kibaki became Kenya’s third president little more than a year ago, a Gallup International survey found that the country’s people were the ”most optimistic” in the world. Euphoria had greeted Kibaki’s victory over the autocratic Daniel arap Moi, who had ruled the country with an iron fist since Jomo Kenyatta’s death in 1978. But the elation has faded.
At least 114 people have been found dead following recent floods in Djibouti, the Red Cross said on Thursday. ”Two villages have been particularly affected. We estimate 10 000 people have lost their homes or their property,” Steve Penny of the International Red Cross Federation said.
Africa’s Anglican bishops were due to hold a two-day meeting in Nairobi from Wednesday to mull whether they can continue accepting donations from provinces that support the ordination of homosexual bishops, an official said on Tuesday. ”They might even refuse such cash,” an official said.
The President of the island-nation Seychelles, Albert Rene, stepped down on Wednesday, 27 years after seizing power in a coup. His successor, Vice-President James Michel, was to be sworn in later in the day, local media reported. Michel is the longest-serving minister in the government.
A high-profile Kenyan opposition lawmaker was on Wednesday charged in court with corruption in connection with a land transfer deal that cost a state firm 272-million shillings (about ,5-million), police said. William Ruto was charged together with a former commissioner of lands, Samuel Mwaita.
A mother of seven has been kept locked up in a Kenyan hospital for a year because she cannot pay her medical bill, local media reported on Tuesday. The woman was admitted to a hospital in the town of Meru last April after a domestic quarrel, and shortly after gave birth to twins.
Floods caused by heavy rains have forced an estimated 2 000 people out of their homes in western Kenya and claimed the at least four lives, officials said on Monday. The government and the Kenya Red Cross Society have advised people living in flood-prone areas to move to higher grounds.
The United Nations Security Council has given Secretary General Kofi Annan the go-ahead to plan for a peacekeeping mission in the war-torn Central African country of Burundi, the UN News Service said. ”It is my intention to immediately begin preparations,” Annan wrote in a letter to the Security Council, released late on Monday.