Focus on HIV-Aids cost family planning a decade, says UN population chief
October 24, 2011 No Comment
Babatunde Osotimehin says it was hard to talk about cutting birth rate as families lost their children The international community has “made a mistake” with the intensity of its focus on the global HIV-Aids epidemic and lost ground on family planning issues as a result, according to the head of the United Nations population agency. In an interview with the Guardian as the world population reaches seven billion, Babatunde Osotimehin, the executive director of the UN Population Fund (UNPF) , said efforts to expand family planning services in the developing world stalled for a decade while global health organisations turned their energies to fighting HIV-Aids. “We made a mistake. We disconnected HIV from reproductive health. We should never have done that because it is part and parcel,” he said. About 60 million people have been infected with or died from HIV-Aids in the 30 years since the virus was first identified in the US. Meanwhile, the global population is due to hit seven billion on 31 October. About 1.8 billion are young people, the vast majority of whom are living in the world’s poorest countries. By criticising decades of development policy by the UN and world governments, Osotimehin’s remarks are hugely controversial. Experts on HIV-Aids and population challenged his views. “I find it difficult to understand how any development leader can believe that funding for Aids in Africa was a distraction from other priorities. Aids was, and continues to be, a make-or-break emergency in much of sub-Saharan Africa,” said Siddharth Dube , a former senior adviser at UNAids and a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute in New York. Erika Larson, an international policy advocate for Population Action International , said: “There is no doubt that the incredible investment in a rapid response to address the HIV/Aids crisis has saved many lives.” Osotimehin, a doctor and former health minister in Nigeria who is the father of five children, suggested HIV-Aids was a bigger setback than the policies of George Bush – who cut funding to the UNPF and other family planning efforts. He said family planning was already “off the radar” at the time because of the preoccupation with HIV-Aids. “A lot of us that were trained and had skills in reproductive health moved to HIV and the world believed at the time that HIV … could be solved as an emergency. You could wipe it off and come back to business as usual,” he said. He had found it difficult to talk about family planning at the height of the HIV-Aids crisis. “It was going to be impossible for me to stand up in a country where young men and women are dying and to say ‘Excuse me I think you need to cut down on birth rates’. It was just not kosher,” he said. “You couldn’t begin to tell people ‘You know, you are still having too many children,’ when they had just lost their kids.” The international community was not working to integrate its programmes on HIV-Aids and family planning, said Larson. But it was a challenge. “Often times, the HIV and reproductive health communities were pitted against each other, but it was the woman who had to visit three different clinics to get what she needed,” she said. “Family planning has a role in fighting the HIV-Aids epidemic, especially in preventing unwanted pregnancy among HIV-positive women and reducing mother-to-child transmission. Family planning should be available to all women, regardless of HIV status.” Osotimehin said the international community was regaining momentum in its efforts to make family planning services available to women in all countries. He rejected setting a population target and did not attach much importance to the symbolic value of world leaders limiting their own family size. Instead, he viewed family planning as an integrated part of development. “It’s not just about population. It’s also about consumption,” he said. He argued it was crucial for developing countries to devote a larger share of their own resources to family planning and health. The 20 countries projected to have the fastest population growth are the poorest in the world, but Osotimehin argued that they could not continue to rely on development assistance for health and family planning programmes. “A country must take ownership of the welfare of its people at some point,” he said. HIV infection Sexual health Aids and HIV Health United Nations Population Suzanne Goldenberg guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Focus on HIV-Aids cost family planning a decade, says UN population chief
October 24, 2011 No CommentBabatunde Osotimehin says it was hard to talk about cutting birth rate as families lost their children The international community has “made a mistake” with the intensity of its focus on the global HIV-Aids epidemic and lost ground on family planning issues as a result, according to the head of the United Nations population agency. In an interview with the Guardian as the world population reaches seven billion, Babatunde Osotimehin, the executive director of the UN Population Fund (UNPF) , said efforts to expand family planning services in the developing world stalled for a decade while global health organisations turned their energies to fighting HIV-Aids. “We made a mistake. We disconnected HIV from reproductive health. We should never have done that because it is part and parcel,” he said. About 60 million people have been infected with or died from HIV-Aids in the 30 years since the virus was first identified in the US. Meanwhile, the global population is due to hit seven billion on 31 October. About 1.8 billion are young people, the vast majority of whom are living in the world’s poorest countries. By criticising decades of development policy by the UN and world governments, Osotimehin’s remarks are hugely controversial. Experts on HIV-Aids and population challenged his views. “I find it difficult to understand how any development leader can believe that funding for Aids in Africa was a distraction from other priorities. Aids was, and continues to be, a make-or-break emergency in much of sub-Saharan Africa,” said Siddharth Dube , a former senior adviser at UNAids and a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute in New York. Erika Larson, an international policy advocate for Population Action International , said: “There is no doubt that the incredible investment in a rapid response to address the HIV/Aids crisis has saved many lives.” Osotimehin, a doctor and former health minister in Nigeria who is the father of five children, suggested HIV-Aids was a bigger setback than the policies of George Bush – who cut funding to the UNPF and other family planning efforts. He said family planning was already “off the radar” at the time because of the preoccupation with HIV-Aids. “A lot of us that were trained and had skills in reproductive health moved to HIV and the world believed at the time that HIV … could be solved as an emergency. You could wipe it off and come back to business as usual,” he said. He had found it difficult to talk about family planning at the height of the HIV-Aids crisis. “It was going to be impossible for me to stand up in a country where young men and women are dying and to say ‘Excuse me I think you need to cut down on birth rates’. It was just not kosher,” he said. “You couldn’t begin to tell people ‘You know, you are still having too many children,’ when they had just lost their kids.” The international community was not working to integrate its programmes on HIV-Aids and family planning, said Larson. But it was a challenge. “Often times, the HIV and reproductive health communities were pitted against each other, but it was the woman who had to visit three different clinics to get what she needed,” she said. “Family planning has a role in fighting the HIV-Aids epidemic, especially in preventing unwanted pregnancy among HIV-positive women and reducing mother-to-child transmission. Family planning should be available to all women, regardless of HIV status.” Osotimehin said the international community was regaining momentum in its efforts to make family planning services available to women in all countries. He rejected setting a population target and did not attach much importance to the symbolic value of world leaders limiting their own family size. Instead, he viewed family planning as an integrated part of development. “It’s not just about population. It’s also about consumption,” he said. He argued it was crucial for developing countries to devote a larger share of their own resources to family planning and health. The 20 countries projected to have the fastest population growth are the poorest in the world, but Osotimehin argued that they could not continue to rely on development assistance for health and family planning programmes. “A country must take ownership of the welfare of its people at some point,” he said. HIV infection Sexual health Aids and HIV Health United Nations Population Suzanne Goldenberg guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
A previously unreleased Common track materialized on the web last week, tiding us over until his album, The Dreamer, The Believer , drops in December (pushed back a whole month(!)). No telling when this track came to be, but does it matter? Perhaps it would if the track was a throwaway, but “Let’s Move” is anything but. Common brings back some smooth, old-school beats, accompanied by pretty compelling… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : The Huffington Post Discovery Date : 18/10/2011 14:44 Number of articles : 2
Continue reading …
• Vatican thinktank wants global authority to police markets • Economy needs people-centred ethics, cardinals argue If Vatican cardinals have yet to join the Occupy Wall Street protesters on the barricades, a document released by the Holy See calling for a “world authority” to crack down on runaway capitalism suggests some are seriously considering it. Written by the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and released on Monday, “Towards reforming the international financial and monetary systems in the context of a global public authority” suggests a beefed-up United Nations could police the financial markets and inject a dose of ethics to replace rampant profiteering and reduce inequality. The pamphlet claims that in combination with a “central world bank”, such an authority would help restore “the primacy of the spiritual and of ethics”, as well as “the primacy of politics – which is responsible for the common good – over the economy and finance”. Financial transactions would be taxed to promote global development and sustainability, while “virtuous” banks helping out the “real economy” would qualify for state subsidy should they need it. Presenting the document at the Vatican, the council’s secretary, Bishop Mario Toso, said the 1944 deal on international finance signed at Bretton Woods had failed, while the G20 group of nations was unable to rein in deregulated markets. The document also says the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is no longer up to the job of stabilising the global financial system. Toso admitted that these ideas appeared to sympathise with those of ” los indignados “, the Spanish protest over mass youth unemployment, but stressed that the document was built on existing Vatican teaching, notably Pope Benedict XVI’s 2009 encyclical , which criticised free market fundamentalism. According to the pamphlet, Benedict had singled out the moral as well as economic and financial roots of the crisis. “To function correctly the economy needs ethics, and not just of any kind but one that is people-centred.” The pope, it adds, “himself expressed the need to create a world political authority”. The document also picks up on the pope’s denunciation of a new “technocracy”, and raises concerns over automated trading. “Seventy per cent of financial transactions are today performed in milliseconds by algorithms,” said Leonardo Becchetti, an Italian professor of economics, who helped draft the document. The document adds: “The speculative bubble in real estate and the recent financial crisis have the same origin in the excessive amount of money and the plethora of financial instruments globally.” Letting Lehman Brothers fail, thanks to a “liberalist approach, unsympathetic towards public intervention in the markets”, only worsened the crisis, it adds. Looking ahead to the G20 conference in Cannes on 3 and 4 November, Cardinal Peter Turkson, the head of the pontifical council, said the pope would be keeping a close eye on proceedings and looking for “a clear vision of economic, social, cultural and spiritual aspects”. Global economy Vatican Italy Religion Catholicism Economics Occupy movement Banking reform Banking Financial sector Tom Kington guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
NTC leader announces committee to look into circumstances of death and officials order halt to public viewing of corpse Libya’s new government has bowed to international pressure and announced an investigation into last week’s killing of Muammar Gaddafi, as officials in the coastal city of Misrata ordered a halt to public viewing of the dictator’s decomposing corpse. Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, head of the ruling national transitional council (NTC), said a committee had been set up to look into the circumstances of the deaths of Gaddafi and his son Mutassim in Sirte, the scene of the regime’s last defiant stand. He said Libyans would have preferred to see the deposed leader stand trial and be held accountable for his crimes. New evidence of atrocities emerged with a report that the bodies of 53 Gaddafi loyalists, some of them bound and shot in the head, had been found in Sirte. No arrangements have yet been made for Gaddafi to be buried and the Misrata council has refused to release his body to his relatives. Al-Arabiyya TV reported that it was possible he would be buried at sea, and local residents were refusing to have him interred even in a special cemetery set aside for “invaders”. A third body in the Misrata meat storage facility is that of the old regime’s army commander, Abu Bakr Younis. Guards finally closed the doors on Monday as people queued up to have a look at the grisly scene inside. Libyan TV channels continue to screen video footage of Gaddafi’s final moments as well as scenes of rebel fighters squatting around his corpse and cursing him in the cold store. Monday’s newspapers showed yet more gory images on their front pages. “We have formed a committee to investigate how Gaddafi was killed during the clashes with his supporters while arresting him,” Abdel-Jalil said in Benghazi. “All Libyans wanted to prosecute him over what he did to them, from executions to imprisonment, corruption, wasting their money. Those who have an interest in killing him before prosecuting him are those who had an active role with him.” Observers suggested the NTC move had been prompted by expressions of concern from the US, Britain and other countries about the rule of law and human rights in post-Gaddafi Libya. John Jenkins, the UK ambassador, saw Abdel-Jalil in Benghazi before Sunday’s ceremony marking the formal liberation of the country. Mahmoud Jibril, the NTC prime minister and the man credited with securing western and Nato support for the rebels, had already said he was in favour of an investigation. Abdel-Jalil indicated that the NTC still held to the initial official explanation that Gaddafi may have been killed in “crossfire” with his own men – a view many of his own officials do not appear to believe. Privately, most defend the killing. Ordinary Libyans canvassed in Tripoli and Benghazi since last Friday seem largely indifferent to the international concerns about how Gaddafi was killed or about the propriety of leaving his corpse on public display. “You think it’s bad?” one Tripoli resident said. “Gaddafi was very bad. And we suffered from him for 42 years.” Many expressed sentiments of raw vengeance. Ahmed al-Atrash, a university lecturer, said: “I don’t care how Gaddafi was killed. But I do wish he had been captured alive because it would have been interesting to hear what he had to say about everything he was involved in.” Farida, a lawyer, said: “I was sorry that his life ended so easily. He should have been brought to justice and faced the families who suffered because his troops raped their women or killed their men, or made to explain how he used money to manipulate people. Forget the 42 years, I’m just talking about what happened since February 17 [when the revolution began].” Detailing apparent evidence of a new atrocity in Sirte, Human Rights Watch said the 53 bodies were found on Sunday on the lawn of the abandoned Hotel Mahari, which saw heavy fighting last week as NTC forces battled for control of the town. “This requires the immediate attention of the Libyan authorities to investigate what happened and hold accountable those responsible,” said HRW’s Peter Bouckaert. “Some had their hands bound behind their backs when they were shot. This latest massacre seems part of a trend of killings, looting and other abuses committed by armed anti-Gaddafi fighters who consider themselves above the law. It is imperative that the transitional authorities take action to rein in these groups.” Disputes over the circumstances of the killings and the disposal of the bodies appear to reflect tensions between the rebel brigades and the NTC leadership. Western diplomats say the disarmament and demobilisation of the brigades – and their integration into the security forces of the new Libyan government – is the biggest single challenge of the coming months. HRW said it believed the hotel had been in the hands of anti-Gaddafi forces from Misrata before the killings, and it remained in their control until the fighting in Sirte stopped on 20 October. “The evidence suggests that some of the victims were shot while being held as prisoners, when that part of Sirte was controlled by anti-Gaddafi brigades who appear to act outside the control of the NTC,” Bouckaert said. Muammar Gaddafi Libya Middle East Africa Ian Black guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …The American Civil Liberties Union is suing immigration agents and Nashville police officers for allegedly busting into two apartments without a warrant last year in order to round up illegal immigrants. One of the plaintiffs said he asked the agents if they had a warrant and one of them responded, “We don’t need a warrant,
Continue reading …Goldman Sachs contributing thousands to help honor Occupy Wall Street? It sounds like some kind of dystopian dream. But it nearly happened… Earlier this month, the People’s Federal Credit Union, a small lender serving the poor of New York City, sent out an invitation for a fund-raising dinner to mark its 25th anniversary. One of
Continue reading …
Facing international pressure, Libya’s interim leader has ordered a probe into the death of Moammar Gadhafi. Mustafa Abdul-Jalil also suggested that the ousted dictator may have been slain by his own supporters. WARNING: GRAPHIC VIDEO. (Oct. 24)
Continue reading …
Click here to view this media Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said Sunday that saving the jobs of police and firefighters was not the role of the federal government. CNN’s Candy Crowley reminded the Kentucky Republican that a recent Gallup/ USA Today poll found that 75 percent of Americans supported President Barack Obama’s plan to provide additional money for teachers, police and firefighters. “Republicans helped not break a filibuster, if you will, in a procedural vote,” Crowley explained. “You basically got rid of that jobs bill which would have given money to the states, designed to hire or retain fireman, policeman and teachers. When we look at the polling, 75 percent of Americans supported that and yet, the Republicans were against it. So, how do you justify that in your mind?” “Well, Candy, I’m sure that Americans do,” McConnell remarked. “I certainly do approve of firefighters and police. The question is whether the federal government ought to be raising taxes on 300,000 small businesses in order to send money down to bail out states for whom firefighters and police work. They’re local and state employees.” “The question is whether the federal government can afford to be bailing out states. I think the answer is no.” “The fact is that when you do ask people about this surtax on millionaires, and small businesses as you put it but millionaires in general, people support that, when it comes to not just firemen, policemen and teachers but also the infrastructure bill that’s coming up, which you’re also opposed to, as I understand it, which would help put people back to work on roads and bridges and rebuilding and that sort of thing,” Crowley noted. “It seems to me that politicians are always talking about doing the will of the American people, and that the Republican Party can be seen at least politically as going against that.” “Yeah, these bills are designed on purpose not to pass,” McConnell asserted. “I mean, the president is deliberately trying to create an issue here. Look, the American people don’t think, I’m sure, that it’s a good idea. Four out of five of the so-called millionaires are business owners, over 300,000 small businesses in our country that hire people. I don’t think the American people think that raising taxes on business, small business in the middle of this economic situation we find ourselves in is a particularly good idea.”
Continue reading …
Oh, I had hoped we heard the last of Rahm Emmanuel on the national scene. No such luck : Registered nurses from across the U.S. today condemned Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel for his decision to arrest nurse volunteers, as well as peaceful protesters, in a late night crackdown, Oct. 22 at the Occupy Chicago protest. National Nurses United is asking supporters to call Mayor Emmanuel’s office at 312-744-5000 and demand they immediately drop all charges against the nurses and other protesters and stop the harassment and arrests of the nurses and others peacefully exercising their free speech rights. Apparently, they’re still in jail, actually holding general assemblies. And from what Greg Mitchell is reporting, there’s more : From Occupy Chicago: “They still haven’t released the nurses who were arrested last nigh(t).” You may recall the human chain around the medical tent. ” One of the holding cells with about 30 men had no working sink. Their requests were ignored for 5 to 6 hours….An epileptic girl needed her meds. We yelled for an hour before anyone came and then they ignored for another hour….We yelled for about sixteen hours to make a phonecall before they finally let some of us…This protester asked different police officers 86 times politely to make a phone call. Ignored all night….. “We were given no food until noon today after yelling for hours they gave us a bologna sandwich…..Most of those of us who were in jail were not even allowed a phone call even though we asked for one repeatedly…..Two of the people who did get a phonecall report that the bondsmen were playing videogames instead of working on our paperwork….None of the men were given toilet paper for the past twenty hours. ” Denying meds? Refusing to allow them their right to a phone call? No toilet paper? Funny, I don’t remember this kind of treatment of the armed tea party participants . Oh yeah, Rahm needs a call from you. It’s about time he remembers who he’s supposed to be working for.
Continue reading …