| Fifteen southern African
and Indian Ocean Island countries recently adopted a health co-operation framework and an
action plan that will guide joint disease prevention and control efforts among the
nations. The framework was negotiated by the countries’
experts in communicable diseases and signed by ministers of health, local government and
home affairs. It marked the establishment of the fifth epidemiology bloc in Africa.
Specific areas of co-operation would include surveillance, strengthening public health and
clinical laboratories, communication systems, research and management of epidemics and
international co-operation. |
Diseases targeted for
prevention include sexually transmitted infections, HIV/AIDS, cholera, malaria, polio,
tuberculosis, meningitis, measles, rabies, plague, anthrax, influenza and a host of other
emerging and re-emerging diseases. In an interview at the end of the meeting,
Zimbabwe’s Minister of Health and Child Welfare, Dr Timothy Stamps, said the protocol
was the first standardised effort to control epidemics in the region. “We need such concerted efforts because some viruses and diseases are
now resisting drugs from our books and we need to do more research,” said Dr Stamps. |
The meeting was
a welcome move as it would enable communicable diseases to be controlled through regional
efforts. This would ensure co-ordinated efforts and resources within the context of an
inter-country plan for disease prevention and control as member states have been
encouraged to show commitment and political will to come up with national plans of action.
SADC
peacekeeping
centre opened |
| Southern African leaders
have been urged to have the political will for a timely intervention in conflicts in the
region in order to make peacekeeping exercises effective. Speaking at a recent opening
of the SADC Regional Peacekeeping Centre in Harare, Zimbabwe, the Representative of the UN
Under Secretary-general for Peacekeeping Operations, Dr Leonard Kapungu, praised southern
Africa for pursuing the coordination of peacekeeping training as this would help make such
operations effective.
Construction of the centre, situated adjacent to Army Headquarters in Harare, was
sponsored by the Danish government. The official opening was attended by officials from
the SADC Inter-State Defence and Security Committee. SADC countries “are fully aware
that coordination between military and civilian components is essential for the
effectiveness and overall success of a peacekeeping operation”, said Kapungu.
“Peacekeeping operations are now being given tasks that vary from monitoring
cease-fires to monitoring elections; from creating safe and secure environment to
protecting the delivery of humanitarian assistance; from assisting in the disarmament and
demobilization of ex-combatants to monitoring and training local Police Forces,” he
added.
TheDanish State Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ellen Margrethu Loej,
said that SADC has proved to be sound supporters of peacekeeping as demonstrated by the
establishment of the Peacekeeping Centre. Denmark funded the construction of the SADC
Peacekeeping Centre. |
Health ministers sign co-operation
protocol
DRC: Ilunga new rebel leader
Angola: Concern over humanitarian
conditions
SADC peacekeeping centre opened
The ideology of militarism and human
security
SADC Day to be marked by commemorative
essays
SADC dance festival postponed to
next year
Cosafa Castle cup under way
Cricket: SA, Zimbabwe shine at
world cup |
| The rebel Rassemblement
congolais pour la democratic (RCD) recently named medical doctor Emile Ilunga as its new
leader replacing the ousted Ernest Wamba dia Wamba. The
change was announced after a special congress of 50 RCD founder members and 22 military
commanders in the their capital Goma, the Rwanda News Agency (RNA) reported. The news
agency said the aim of the congress was to solve an internal power struggle which
intensified two months ago, culminating in Wamba transferring his base from Goma to
Kisangani. Another top official, Lunda Bululu, was also ousted from the leadership.
One of the new leader’s urgent tasks is to try and unify the
movement and resolve the squabbles that rocked the former leadership, RNA said. |
Other news organisations
quoted RCD official Bizima Karaha as saying Wamba’s exit was the “only way”
to resolve the leadership struggle. The movement also retained military commander
Jean-Pierre Ondekane and Moise Nyarugabo as first and second vice-presidents respectively.
Ondekane told AFP Ilunga was “an experienced man who has run military campaigns and
worked in politics”. Reacting to the reshuffle,
Uganda’s senior presidential adviser for media and public relations John Nagenda told
IRIN recently that the move “is none of our business”. “It does not concern
us, it is for the Congolese to decide,” he said.
In Nairobi, DRC embassy official Deo Safari said Wamba’s departure “casts a
shadow on the negotiation process”. |
| Humanitarian officials in
Angola are worried about the besieged government held city of Malanje because shelling by
UNITA rebels has made it impossible to conduct a humanitarian assessment mission and has
also brought a stop to emergency food deliveries. Malanje,
some 450km east of the capital, Luanda has been the scene of sporadic shelling for nearly
six months during which the city has been crammed with tens of thousands of internally
displaced people. |
Insecurity along the road
has forced the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP)
to temporarily stop food deliveries to the town which was the only major provincial
capital still served by road deliveries until recently when the humanitarian community has
been forced to fly food to other besieged provincial towns because landmines and attacks
along the roads had made them too dangerous to use. The
situation has forced humanitarian staff in Malanje to provide what food stocks remained
only to children, pregnant women, elderly people, the disabled and the sick. |