“[Health researchers] are currently collecting information so as to identify the factors explaining the recurrence of the epidemic in districts where populations have been vaccinated”, Ousmane Badolo, head of the epidemiologic surveillance department at the ministry of health, told IRIN.

Vaccination campaigns target people between 2 to 30 years old; according to the ministry of health, 80 to 90 percent of the victims of meningitis belong to that age group.

A total of 714 people have died since 1 January out of 7,184 cases.

Several different bacteria can cause meningitis which is an inflammation of the protective membranes covering the central nervous system. The Neisseria sero-group is one of the most important to watch because it often leads to epidemics, experts say.

Badolo, the epidemiologist, said that health research teams from the UN World Health Organization and US-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have come to Burkina Faso to investigate. “This is the first time that such research is being conducted,” Badolo said, adding that at this stage he could only guess why the vaccination programmes have not worked.

“Perhaps it is because of population displacement,” he said, “for instance in gold mining areas people are often coming and going.”

The health researchers will focus their work on the districts of Réo in the central west of the country, Boulsa in the central north, Titao in the north and in Sig-nonghin a district in the north of the capital Ouagadougou.

The populations in each of those four districts were vaccinated last year yet each has reached epidemic thresholds.

A total of five out of the country’s 55 districts have reached the epidemic threshold and 14 others are on alert.

Meanwhile, 3.5 million people have been vaccinated this year out of a population of 14 million. The government said it is in the process of procuring a million more vaccines with the help of UN Children’s Agency UNICEF.

At least nine journalists drawn from various media houses in the country recently received a weeklong training exercise. The exercise saw the training of four journalists on Field Reporting and five on Web Mastering and Online Journalism.

The training was organized by The Gambia Press Union (GPU) in collaboration with The Gambia Media Support (GAMES), a Denmark-based organisation established to support the media in The Gambia.
 
GAMES project, as revealed by Mr. Madi Ceesay, the President of GPU, is a two-year project designed to build the capacities of journalists in the country. He indicated that D1.2 million has been committed to the project.

Two media experts were dispatched from Denmark as trainers.

This reporter caught up with some of the participants at the end of the training yesterday and asked them about what they thought of the training.

Abdoulie Dibba from Foroyaa Newspaper, who took part in Web Mastering and Online Journalism, said: “I am satisfied with the knowledge gained from this training. The training has added new skills to my knowledge and will enable me become more professional.”

Abba A.S Gibba, a sub-editor at The Point Newspaper who received training on Field Reporting, expressed the belief that the training has no doubt improved his skills and ability. “As in any field, you have to acquire the right vital skills and proficiency to be professional. The newfound skills and knowledge gained from this training have now given me the know-how and sheer courage necessary to practice professional journalism on a meaningful level. I want to become one of the best journalists in this country in the future,” he stated.

Meanwhile, this reporter also spoke to Mr. Ebrima Sawaneh, News Editor at The Point newspaper, regarding the training and he had this to say: “The training could not have come at a better time than now, as the country lacks a school of journalism. With such training, Gambian journalists will live up to expectations in their quest to give objective and balanced news to the Gambian people.”

Baboucarr Senghore, a senior staff reporter at The Point newspaper who is visibly excited to have received such training, said: “Such training is a major boost for the Gambian media as it will help equip journalists to report professionally. However, I would like to appeal to the organizers and most especially to the GPU to expand the project so as to enable other journalists to benefit from vital training.”

Ugandan health officials said they had an outbreak of a rare Ebola strain under control in their country but expressed concerns that the disease could resurface in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

At a news conference in the capital Kampala on 18 December, the Ministry of Health said a person "with the appropriate clinical case definition of Ebola" had been identified in an area in DRC near the border.

They said Uganda had contacted the UN World Health Organization (WHO) over the current threat.

"We have asked our people in Bundibugyo [the epicentre of the latest outbreak in Uganda] to encourage them to come over for treatment because these diseases know no boundaries," Emmanuel Otaala, the minister in charge of primary health care, said. "We are in touch with Kinshasa [DRC’s capital] through the World Health Organization and we have also contacted our foreign ministry to handle it through the diplomatic channels."

Some 127 cases of suspected Ebola have been reported in Uganda, 35 of whom have died, including five health workers. Another 39 patients, including six health workers, have been discharged from hospital after making a full recovery.

Otaala said there had been a general decline in the number of new Ebola cases, with only three cases reported in the past four days - an indication that the outbreak was now under control.

Tests on other suspected cases reported outside Bundibugyo district were negative, while the capacity of all referral hospitals to handle contagious infections had been improved, he said.

Health official Sam Okware told IRIN a taskforce set up to fight the outbreak has been tasked with convincing the public in the affected region to abandon traditional circumcision rituals, due to start shortly, until the epidemic clears.

He also said that those people discharged from hospital had been asked to abstain from sex for three months or use condoms as the virus could be carried in semen.

Virologists are investigating what triggered the latest epidemic and are specifically exploring reports that it could have started when a family of 10 people feasted on a dead goat that had been bitten by a wild animal. The 10 later fell sick.

"We have tried to look for the skin of the goat but it is not there and we are suspecting that these people might have eaten the real wild animal, but we have not made any conclusions yet," Okware said.

An outbreak of the highly contagious disease, which can have fatality rates as high as 90 percent, killed at least 170 people in northern Uganda in 2000.

A similar Ebola outbreak killed at least 26 people in DRC’s West Kasai region, in a country where the disease was first discovered in 1976.

Five years ago, Wegene Abebe was just another local peasant eking out a living in Tijo, 220km southeast of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa; today he is a prominent farmer with a steady income.

It all started when 38-year-old Wegene was approached by government agricultural experts and recommended improved seed. Although Wegene did not own a piece of land, he was offered two hectares after a preliminary assessment demonstrated his potential.

Wegene has doubled his harvest and leads a group of 13 farmers. He has also moved from a rented single room to owning a big house and four flour-milling machines.

"If you sow ordinary seed, you get 18-20 quintals [1,800-2,000kg] per hectare," he told IRIN. "But using improved seed, you get 40 to 50 quintals."

With the wheat boom, he is now dreaming of building a hotel. "I have a 700 sqm plot of land to build a 12-room hotel" he said. "The project will cost me about 350,000 Birr [US$39,000]."

Exception

Wegene’s story is, however, rare in Ethiopia where 80 percent of the population are farmers - mostly small-scale subsistence producers whose combined output cannot feed the country's 70 million people.

According to the government Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Agency, about 1.36 million Ethiopians are susceptible to food shortages this year, requiring an estimated 150,580 metric tonnes of food aid.  

Opinions differ on possible solutions to the country's food problems. An agronomist, who requested anonymity, suggested that a market-driven agricultural system could help improve the livelihoods of farmers. Efforts to improve livelihoods should not just be limited to increased production, but should also emphasise market orientation.

"Sometimes you hear a contradictory statement from the supply and consumer sides," he said. "The supplier complains of a lack of a market while the consumer and grain processors complain about a shortage of supply."   
 
This scenario, the agronomist argues, underlines the need to introduce a value chain approach; a market and technological support link between the producer and end-user. Farmers also need to diversify their crop type and activities to earn additional income.

On the other hand, the government is optimistic that the situation will improve. Abera Deressa, state minister of agriculture and rural development, said Ethiopia is on the right track to attain food security.
 
"We all believe that the right to food must be realised by making use of all the available resources," he said.
 
About 25 agricultural, technical and vocational educational training colleges have been established; so far, 50,000 graduates have been deployed all over the country as development agents, and extension services are being provided for 4.1 million farmers and pastoralists.

Initiatives

Various efforts to supplement government programmes are ongoing. In Tijo, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) crop diversification and marketing development project is promoting economic growth by strengthening the commercialisation of small farms in areas with a recognised market potential.

Tijo is in Arsi zone of Oromia region, one of the surplus grain-producing areas in the country. It is one of seven areas where the four-year FAO project started in January 2006.

More than 1,520 registered farm households are being targeted through irrigation, drainage and watershed management activities. Twenty-five farmers will also be involved in sheep farming and 50 smallholder livestock farmers in dairy production.

One dairy farmer, Hussein Defo, said he had now diversified to vegetables as well. Starting with three indigenous cows, he added three crossbreeds and six oxen for ploughing his land.

The project provided him with improved vegetable seeds and irrigation facilities. "I first began working with development agents," he said. "After four years, they recommended me for the FAO project."

He now has a heifer, increasing his milk productivity. "I [used to get] one to two litres of milk from the indigenous cows and three-four litres from the crossbreeds," he told IRIN in Tijo. "With the heifer, I get six to eight litres a day."

Using improved seeds, he has tripled his cereal production from 30 to 40 quintals of wheat, barley or peas from four hectares to 100 to 120 quintals. He is also now producing potatoes using irrigation and found a better market for his barley.

The Assela Malt Factory, the only factory that provides raw material to breweries in the country, has approached him with a proposal to purchase all his wheat.
 
Wegene and Hussein were among the six farmers singled out for awards during World Food Day celebrations in Tijo on 16 October. Witnessed by thousands of farmers who flocked to the celebrations held in lush green vegetation thanks to recent heavy rains, the winners each received 50kg of fertilizer.

"It is the right to have continuous access to resources," FAO said in a statement to mark the day, "that will enable you to produce, earn or purchase enough food to prevent hunger [and] ensure health and well-being."

A week-long African meeting on spectrum management organized by the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) in collaboration with the Department of State for Communication and Information Technology and the International Telecommunication Union got underway at the Paradise Suites Hotel yesterday.

The meeting, which brought together participants from within the West African sub-region, aims at dealing with the specifics of spectrum management, its technical and economic importance.

In her opening remarks, the Secretary of State for Communication and Information Technology, Neneh Macdoull-Gaye, underscored Gambia government’s determination towards creating a liberalized market for the telecommunication sector.

She urged participants to, in their drive towards harmonization, look at plethora of ongoing works and issues such as basic agreements on telecommunication, reference paper on transparent regulatory procedures, International Telecommunication Union allocation issues, among others.

According to Mrs. Macduoll-Gaye, the meeting will provide an opportunity for member states of Ecowas to cooperate and collaborate in ensuring that qualitative spectrum standards are maintained and incidence of interference minimized.

Speaking earlier, Mrs. Margarida Evora-Sagna, West African Representative of the International Telecommunication Union, said the ability of nations to take full advantage of ‘this natural research depends heavily on spectrum managers facilitating the implementation of telecommunication services and ensuring their comfortable operation for Information and Communication Technology all over the world’.

“Information and Communication Technology frequency demands have so much increased during last year that nowadays, the cost of having frequency spectrum became one of the main sector analysis when starting anything or making use of hydro-frequency,” she added.

In his welcome address, Mr. Alhagi B. Gaye, Director General of the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA), described spectrum management as an important aspect of development on telecommunication.

According to Mr. Gaye, radio spectrum is a scarce national resource due to its growing range of valuable uses. “Due to spectrum use being an important and key element of the communications infrastructure, effective management of this resource promotes ongoing economic and social development,” he added.

He however stressed the need for harmonization and integration sub-regionally. Thus, he said, is important because even though voluntary coordination between member states exists, national rules provide a fragmented sub- regional approach.

Rural areas in Côte d'Ivoire seem to have fallen off the map in HIV/AIDS prevention efforts, and although the HIV prevalence rates are still lower than those found in cities, experts fear they could climb.

"We have observed an imbalance in terms of the approach to the fight against AIDS in rural and urban areas," Professor Bassirou Bonfoh of the Swiss Centre for Scientific Research (CSRS) told IRIN/PlusNews.

"Attention is focused a bit too much on urban areas, while rural areas remain a reservoir for the disease," said Bonfoh, who will speak at an international conference on health in poor urban areas, to be held in Abidjan, the commercial capital, next month.

He warned that if nothing was done to address these inequities, this could cause greater complications for the country's HIV/AIDS epidemic. "Despite the strong fight against AIDS in urban areas, we cannot reach the results we seek if [this] disease eventually comes from the rural zones into urban areas."

A failed coup in September 2002 sparked months of civil war in Cote d'Ivoire, eventually splitting the country into a rebel-held north and government-run south.

The country's political and military crisis has led to huge population movements, disrupted social and health services, including health services in the war zones, and the slowdown of prevention and control programmes.

As a result of this crisis, there are disparities in both infrastructure and health coverage. According to UNAIDS, in 2005 the country's HIV prevalence stood at seven percent, one of the highest rates in West Africa.

The "extreme poverty" of the rural population made things even worse, as villagers unable to eke out a living were leaving for the cities in large numbers.

"At this level, if migration is not controlled ... [it] will exacerbate the situation as a result of their ignorance towards the pandemic," Bonfoh said.

There is also a regional dimension. In neighbouring Mali, for instance, HIV/AIDS was labelled "the Abidjan sickness" as people believed the virus had come from the formerly prosperous port city, where people migrated for economic reasons. Many local Malians do not consider they are at risk, he explained.

But efforts are underway to target the neglected countryside. According to Bonfoh, one solution has been to offer young people in rural areas the necessary tools for agricultural production. "The income they can make will allow them to take charge of their lives, and they will be less likely to migrate to cities," he said.

With literacy levels affected by poverty and the war, a rethink of orthodox information campaigns would be required. "Current communication campaigns miss a large part of the rural area," said Nathalie Konan, national coordinator for the National Agency for Support to Rural Development (ANADER), a programme funded by the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

One of the goals of the ANADER project is to educate 300,000 people about the virus that causes AIDS. More than 700 villagers are being trained in prevention techniques and an AIDS committee is to be created in each of the 12,000 Ivorian villages targeted. It also hopes to broadcast more than 300 radio programmes and 4,500 information spots in eight different languages.

"We'll keep trying as long as we can transmit messages of prevention, abstinence and fidelity to the population," Konan told IRIN/PlusNews.

Eleven staff from the Department of State for Communication and Information Technology (DoSCIT), the Department of State for Agriculture, Gamtel, GRTS and a student, have completed a training on computer repairs and maintenance at the new Computer Maintenance and Repairs Centre of DoSCIT, under the tutorship of River Huang, an IT expert from the International Cooperation Development Fund (ICDF) of Taiwan.

The centre - started operation in April this year - is an addendum to the list of computer centres established by Taiwan in Sapu in Central River Region, the Gambia Multimedia Training Institute and the Department of State for Education. It also came after a team of IT experts from Taipei implemented the e-government programme which included the installation of e-mail and web server, besides holding training on the use of the facility.

Confirming this in an interview with the Daily Observer, Dr Patrick Chang, Taiwanese Ambassador to The Gambia, said these strides complement government’s effort towards transforming the country into the silicon valley of Africa. Dr Chang said the e-government programme is now being managed by Ebrahima Jobe, who is also responsible for the portal page.

Confirming that the Computer Repairs and Maintenance Centre has been equipped with a broadband internet access and training materials, Ambassador Chang disclosed that the centre successfully repaired 20 computers. “The embassy is looking forward to more efforts for the creation of information society,” he added. “Under this programme, we would like to strengthen cooperation for creating digital opportunity centres to bridge the digital divide. We would like to reinforce the e-government programme,” he assured.

Ambassador Chang then renewed Taipei’s commitment to the Silicon Valley vision, saying “we shall continue to dispatch technical experts for a feasibility study and formulate work plan to enhance governmental effectiveness and national competitiveness. We would like to nurture IT human resources. We shall train more teachers and nurture high level of information development talent and quality manpower for local information industry”.

The Taiwanese diplomacy chief in Banjul affirmed Taipei’s commitment to provide training on computer hardware maintenance and website management. He then announced that 25 Gambian students will be dispatched in August, this year to undergo an IT programme at the National Taipei University of Technology.