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Senegal: SDE assures residents of normal water supply soon

(Photo: worldvision.org) July 5, 2011 Residents of several districts of the Senegalese capital have been experiencing water shortage for some days now, a situation described as very difficult during this hot season. The Senegal Water Company (SDE) has put the problem on equipment breakdown in the north of the country due to heavy rains last weekend. It said there is a power circuit breakdown in the drilling system. These installations supply 60 percent of the water Dakar needs, according to Sheik Tidiane Fall, SDE Communications Director. The shortage was triggered by the heavy rainstorm that fell around Louga in Northern Senegal, said Mr Tidiane Fall, adding This storm started a short circuit. We have several strategic boreholes in that area and a very important water treatment plant by the lake nearby, so all those installations came to a standstill from 21.00pm to 5.00am. He said the water company was working on getting supplies back to normal in the districts hit by the shortage. Our crisis committee has been working non-stop to run our distribution system, we even used water trucks to supply severely hit districts. Meanwhile, residents of the affected areas have expressed their dissatisfaction over the water shortage. Some told WADR that they have to wake up very early in the morning just to fetch a little water from their taps, while others say they walk long distances to get this precious liquid.
http://wadr.org/en/site/news_en/1302/Senegal-SDE-assures-residents-of-normal-water-supplysoon.htm

Senegal: Water Woes Continue for Senegalese


By Alpha Jallow, 15 September 2013 Dakar In several suburbs in the Senegalese capital Dakar people have been facing an acute shortage of tap water. Residents who can't afford bottled water are forced to drawn water from a dug-out well, which poses potential health problems. The situation is yet to be resolved. The state water company Sngalaise Des Eaux (SDE) says it main supply pipe is broken, but is working to fix the problem. The most affected areas are Grande Yoff, Percelle Assainis and Rufisque. In Grande Yoff, women and children have to walk up to three kilometers to get drinking water. "The situation is worrying. How can we take care of our homes and children without portable water? I am not feeling well all these days but i have to company my kids in search of water. We wake up early in the morning in search of water to other neighborhoods" said Isatou Diop, a resident of Grande Yoff in the suburbs of Dakar. In Rufisque, situated some 30km from Dakar, many residents have now turned to traditional wells to draw water. But the wells also have a limited supply of water, leading people to protest on Saturday. They shouted anti-Government slogans and called on the water company, SDE to resolve the situation without delay. Last year during the same period, many districts in the capital experienced a similar problem for almost a week.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201309150401.html

Political cost of defending gay rights in Africa


DAKAR, 18 July 2013 (IRIN) - US President Barack Obamas recent call for equality for gays during his Africa tour drew assurances by his Senegalese counterpart that the country was not homophobic. Yet dismantling anti-gay laws and attitudes carries huge political and religious risks few leaders in the continent are willing to take, rights groups say. President Macky Sall told his guest that Senegal was not ready to decriminalize homosexuality, which is punishable under the countrys laws by up to five years imprisonment or fines between US$200 and $3,000. President Obamas visit made us understand the presidents [Sall] position about decriminalizing homosexuality, said a Senegalese activist who preferred to be identified as DD. President Sall added that the country is not homophobic, but if that is the truth, Id like to know exactly what homophobia means to him, continued DD, who heads an organization that aims to prevent HIV transmission among homosexuals. Before he [Sall] was elected, he pretended that he would resolve the issue socially, but now he has shown his true colours. But even if the debate is not in our favour, we are at least talking about it. The Pew Global Attitudes Project found in a June study that 96 percent of Senegalese thinks homosexuality should not be accepted by society. In Senegal, people are prosecuted, hounded, [their bodies] exhumed because of their sexual orientation, said Djamil Bangoura, who heads an organization for Senegalese lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people (LGBTI). Political will While external pressure may have limited effectiveness in changing homophobic attitudes in Africa, South Africa and Brazil have taken the lead in certain UN resolutions on LGBTI rights, Human Rights Watch LGBTI researcher Neela Ghoshal told IRIN. This shows that it is no longer Africa against the West. Rwanda is also debating more about homosexuals rights. It should take a bigger role in the debate. Among the 37 African countries where homosexuality is criminalized, Senegal is notorious for convicting and jailing gays, Ghoshal said. The responsibility of decriminalizing homosexuality rests upon the political class to influence the society, argued Ghoshal. A president cannot simply change the law, but he can explain to the citizens the obligation to respect and ratify international human rights treaties, she said. But fears of political, social and religious backlash undermine the political will to defend gay rights in places like Senegal, said Aboubacry Mbodji, the secretary general of the African Rally for Human Rights (RADDHO). No head of state is willing to commit [to defending gay rights] for fear of losing voters support or the support of marabous [traditional religious leaders] who have a huge political influence in the country, Mbodji said.

In Senegal, some recently radicalized people - extremist marabous - are at loggerheads with moderate religious brotherhood and urge for the lynching of homosexuals. Certain interpretations of the Koran have added to the anti-gay laws, said DD, noting that other countries are more lenient. In Morocco, an Islamic and a very religious country, homosexuality is tolerated, even if its just by allowing gay bars. All depend on the mentality of the political leadership. Some leaders prefer just to govern and not touch on this [gay rights] debate. Others [are like Zimbabwes] President Mugabe, who likes to exploit the issue during national crises to deflect attention, said Damian Ugwu, the Africa programme coordinator at International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC). In Malawi, for instance, President Joyce Banda failed to hold on to a pledge to open debate about gay rights once she took power, said Ugwu. He also explained that anti-gay bills in Nigeria and Uganda have fuelled an intense debate between rights activists and religious fundamentalists. The right to live Senegalese NGOs involved with LGBTI limit their activities to health matters, leaving rights issues to a handful of local and international activists, said Bangoura. Many homosexuals live in hiding for fear of the law. There are public health consequences, according to RADDHO, which says that HIV prevalence among men who have sex with men (MSM) in Senegal is 21 percent while the national prevalence is about 1 percent, largely because discrimination against homosexuals hinders their access to health services. Changing mentalit[ies] is a protracted struggle, more complicate[d] than a simple decriminalization [of homosexuality], DD said. People tend to think that homosexuality does not exist in the country, that it originated from the West. A Senegalese should stand and declare that I am a homosexual. Moreover it is not about legalizing marriage or adoption by gay couples, but simply having the right to live. Mbodji says, It takes time for changes to happen. In the West, acceptance of LGBTI people took several years, and even the recent legal reforms in France and the US did not stop certain groups of people from protesting. But the fact that there is debate at all on a topic that was considered taboo a few years ago indicates there has been some progress, contends IGLHRC. http://www.irinnews.org/report/98436/political-cost-of-defending-gay-rights-in-africa

Rethinking mental health in Africa


KAMPALA, 2 September 2013 (IRIN) - As African countries strive to meet the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015 and plot a new development agenda thereafter, health experts are gathering evidence across the continent to make a case for a greater focus on its millions of mentally ill. Experts say investing in mental health treatment for African countries would bolster development across the continent, but national health priorities have been overtaken by the existing MDG structure, which has specific targets for diseases like malaria and HIV, placing them higher on countries' agendas than other health issues. "Everyone is putting their money in HIV, reproductive health, malaria," says Sheila Ndyanabangi, director of mental health at Uganda's Ministry of Health. "They need also to remember these unfunded priorities like mental health are cross-cutting, and are also affecting the performance of those other programmes like HIV and the rest." Global experts celebrated the passing of a World Health Assembly action plan on World Mental Health Day in May, calling it a landmark step in addressing a staggering global disparity: The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates 75-85 percent of people with severe mental disorders receive no treatment in low- and middle-income countries, compared to 35-50 percent in high-income countries. The action plan outlines four broad targets, for member states to: update their policies and laws on mental health; integrate mental health care into community-based settings; integrate awareness and prevention of mental health disorders; and strengthen evidence-based research. In order for the plan to be implemented, both governments and donors will need to increase their focus on mental health issues. As it stands, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the world's biggest bilateral donor, will only support mental health if it is under another MDG health priority such as HIV/AIDS. Meanwhile, mental health receives on average 1 percent of health budgets in sub-Saharan Africa despite the WHO estimate that it carries 13 percent of the global burden of disease. "Mental health hasn't found its way into the core programmes [in developing countries], so the NGOs continue to rely on scraping together funds to be able to respond," Harry Minas, a psychiatrist on the WHO International Expert Panel on Mental Health and Substance Abuse and director of the expert coalition Movement for Global Mental Health, told IRIN. "Unless we collectively do something much more effective about NCDs [non-communicable diseases], national economies are going to be bankrupted by the health budgets." The post-MDG era According to a May report from the UN Secretary-General's High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, the MDGs have overseen the fastest reduction of poverty in human history. "Mental health hasn't found its way into the core programmes [in developing countries], so the NGOs continue to rely on scraping together funds to be able to respond" Yet it also acknowledges that they have done little to reach the world's most vulnerable. The report says the MDGs were "silent on the devastating effects of conflict and violence on development" and focused too heavily on individual programmes instead of collaborating between sectors, resulting in a largely disjointed

approach to health. Experts say without a more holistic approach to global health in the new development era, the world's most vulnerable will only be trapped in that cycle. "The MDGs were essentially a set of vertical programmes which were essentially in competition with each other for resources and for attention," said Minas. "We've gone beyond that, and now understand we're dealing with complex systems, where all of the important issues are very closely interrelated." Poverty and mental illness In Africa, where many countries are dealing with current or recent emergencies, WHO sees opportunities to build better mental health care. "The surge of aid [that usually follows an emergency]combined with sudden, focused attention on the mental health of the population, creates unparalleled opportunities to transform mental health care for the long term," say the authors of the report Building Back Better: Sustainable Mental Health Care after Emergencies, released earlier this month. In a study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders in July, researchers in northern Uganda - which, starting in the late 1980s suffered a two-decade long war between the government and the rebel Lords' Resistance Army - monitored the impact of group counselling on vulnerable groups such as victims of sexual and domestic violence, HIV-infected populations, and former abductees of the civil war. It found that those groups who engaged in group counselling were able to return and function markedly faster than those who did not receive counselling, while reducing their risks of developing long-term psychiatric conditions. "We need to be mentally healthy to get out of poverty," Ethel Mpungu, the study's lead researcher, told IRIN. The link between mental illness and persisting poverty is being made the world over. According to a 2011 World Economic Forum report, NCDs will cost the global economy more than US$30 trillion by 2030, with mental health conditions alone costing an additional $16 trillion over the same time span. Access to mental health services remains a key challenge in Africa "It really is around issues of development and economics - those things can no longer be ignored," says Minas. "They are now so clear that ministries of health all around the place are starting to think about how they are going to develop their mental health programmes." Putting mental health on the agenda As mental health legislation is hard to come by in most African countries, Uganda is ahead of most on the continent with its comprehensive National Policy on Mental, Neurological and Substance Use Services, drafted in 2010. The bill would update its colonial era Mental Treatment Act, which has not been revised since 1964, and bring the country in line with international standards, but is still waiting to be reviewed by cabinet and be voted into law. Uganda is also part of a consortium of research institutions and health ministries (alongside Ethiopia, India, Nepal and South Africa) leading the developing world on mental health care. PRIME - the programme for improving mental health care - was formed in 2011 to support the scale-up of mental health services in developing countries, and is currently running a series of pilot projects to measure their impact on primary healthcare systems in low-income settings. Research shows that low- and middle-income countries can successfully provide mental health services at a lower cost through, among other strategies, easing detection and diagnosis procedures, the use of non-

specialist health workers and the integration of mental healthcare into primary healthcare systems. Although a number of projects have shown success in working with existing government structures to ultimately integrate mental health into primary health care, the scaling up of such initiatives is being hindered by a lack of investment, as the funding of African health systems is still largely seen through donor priorities, which have been focused elsewhere. "Billions of philanthropic dollars are being spent on things like HIV/AIDS or water or malaria," said Liz Alderman, co-founder of the Peter C. Alderman Foundation (PCAF), which works with survivors of terrorism and mass violence. "But if people don't care whether they live or die, they're not going to be able to take advantage of these things that are offered."
http://www.irinnews.org/report/98680/rethinking-mental-health-in-africa

West Africa flood round-up


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Photo: Pierre Peron/OCHA This year's flooding less severe than in 2012 (file photo) DAKAR, 17 September 2013 (IRIN) - Floods have killed 84 people, displaced 40,445 and affected 323,396 in West Africa this year, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), while 34,000 hectares of agricultural land has been damaged. Guinea, Sierra Leone, western Mali and parts of southern Senegal have been the most affected. The extent of the flooding and related damage is far less than in 2012, when three million people's homes were flooded and 1.4 million people were displaced in Nigeria alone. While rainfall has been average to above average across much of the region, there have been deficits in some areas, especially in and around the Gulf of Guinea, with Benin, Ghana, Liberia, western Nigeria and Togo most affected, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Food security experts fear harvest prospects will decline in affected areas. Niger Niger is the most seriously affected country in the region, with 75,000 people in need of humanitarian assistance, according to a government statement released in early September. In the capital, Niamey, some 3,000 gardeners and farmers who planted along the Niger River lost their harvests, according to the Federation of Nigerien Market Gardeners' Cooperatives (FCMN). According to the government, 70 wells across the country have collapsed or been submerged, and 13,000

irrigation ditches and dykes have been destroyed, including some that were built following extensive flooding in 2012. "We watched the river water rise quickly. Within hours all of our vegetables were flooded," said Salifo Lompo, a market gardener in Komo, a Niamey neighbourhood. In the Bangabana neighbourhood on the bank of the river, a dyke that had been built to stop flooding in one set of fields instead caused flooding in the neighbouring fifth district, according to residents, causing members of the two communities to come to blows. The government eased tensions by pumping water from the area. Thus far, the government has released US$124,000 to respond to the crisis and called for international and national support. Nigeria According to OCHA, 7,924 people have been displaced and 81,506 have been affected in Nigeria's Abia, Zamfara, Bauchi and Kogi states. According to NOAA, high water levels at the Kainji, Shiroro and Jebba dams in southern Kebbi and Niger states have elevated the risk of floods along the Niger River. The Ministry of Health, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and State Emergency Management Agencies, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) are responding to the needs of flood-affected people. NEMA will set up two camps for displaced people in Bauchi State. "The magnitude of the floods requires a joint strategic action plan, as we must go far beyond emergency response measures given the reality of the anticipated flood of this year," Francis Doukpola, chairman of Bayelsa State's post-flood management committee in the Niger Delta, said on 2 September. In 2012, Nigeria experienced its worst flooding in 40 years, with 1.44 million people displaced and 30 out of 37 states affected. Benin Some 10,000 people in Benin have been displaced by floods, among 33,000 affected, and 21,000 hectares of land are thought to have been damaged, according to OCHA. Critical needs include tents, food and health supplies. The National Civil Protection Agency and UN Resident Coordinator's office are coordinating flood response, says OCHA. Burkina Faso In Burkina, 602 homes have been destroyed by floods, and 6,712 people have had their homes, businesses or fields flooded. Gambia According to the Gambian government, 216 people have been displaced by floods and two killed.

Guinea Guinea's capital, Conakry, was heavily flooded, affecting 11,106 nationwide. Mali Mali's capital, Bamako, has experienced consistent, heavy rains, causing severe flooding in some neighbourhoods, according to the government and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Two rain storms hit the city, causing severe flooding, according to IOM. Some 37 deaths have been reported, 20,000 people have been displaced, and 280 homes have been destroyed. IOM, aid groups and government agencies are distributing assistance in communes 1 and 4, which were the worst affected. Mauritania In Mauritania, 2,305 people were displaced among the 4,225 whose homes, fields or businesses were flooded. Countrywide, close to 800 homes have been damaged or destroyed, according to OCHA. In Mauritania - as well as in Niger, Mali and northeast Chad - there is risk of an increase in locust infestations as a result of heavy rains, according to the World Food Programme. Senegal Between 73,500 and 105,000 homes have been flooded, mainly in and around the capital, Dakar, as well as in Fatick and Kaolack in central Senegal, and in Kedegou in the southeast, according to OCHA. The government is pumping floodwater from towns across the country, and is spraying mosquito repellent to try to control disease outbreaks. UNICEF, World Vision, the Senegalese Red Cross and other partners are distributing assistance to the most vulnerable.
http://www.irinnews.org/report/98775/west-africa-flood-round-up

Can the B-word beat malnutrition?


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Photo: Yaajeende/IRIN One of the new orange flesh sweet potato varieties introduced to Senegal DAKAR, 25 September 2013 (IRIN) - While fortifying staple foods, such as wheat flour and salt, has become routine in urban parts of malnutrition-prone West Africa, bio-fortification - the breeding of more nutritious vegetables, grains and pulses - is still a relatively new phenomenon for the region, but it is set to explode over the next decade, say food security experts. The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) houses HarvestPlus, a programme that breeds varieties of sweet potato, cassava, plantain, corn, rice and other staples enriched with vitamin A, zinc and iron - the nutrients that the World Health Organization says people in developing countries are most deficient in. Projects using these plants to tackle malnutrition are taking place across Asia and in Africa, including Mozambique and Uganda. In Senegal, food security NGO Yaajeende, supported by USAID, has teamed up with HarvestPlus to reintroduce the vitamin A-rich orange-flesh sweet potato to the country (it died out for reasons that remain unclear) and to replace the currently used millet seed with iron-enriched pearl millet. Eventually, they hope to introduce zinc-enriched rice and vitamin A-enriched orange corn. We want to reach a point where you see more orange sweet potato than any other kind in Senegal, Todd Crosby, head of Yaajeende, told IRIN.

He added, We hope to have replaced existing millet seed with bio-fortified millet by our projects end, in five to 10 years time. Bio-fortification technology was introduced to Africa several years ago, but take-up is expected to accelerate, with the involvement of not just governments, research institutes and nonprofits, but huge multinational corporations as well. Nestl, for example, has long worked in micro-nutrient fortification and is now embracing bio-fortification, with plans to integrate vitamin A-enriched cassava and iron- and zincenriched rice varieties from Nigeria and Madagascar, respectively, into its future product lines. In 2008, the Copenhagen Consensus identified bio-fortification as one of its top five solutions to global development challenges. Nutrient deficiencies According to IFRPRIs Global Hidden Hunger index, released in June 2013, 18 of the 20 countries with the highest micronutrient deficiency rates are in sub-Saharan Africa. Micronutrient deficiency is often called a hidden hunger because it goes unnoticed. Stunting consequences are much more in-our-face. But problems appear with severe anaemia, or with vitamin A deficiency, that may cause children to become blind. Before that, you dont know how serious it can be, said Kinday Samba, the World Food Programmes (WFP) West Africa nutrition advisor. High malnutrition and stunting rates are normally accompanied by high deficiency in vitamins and anaemia, she added. Three-quarters of children under age five and 56 percent of women aged 15 to 49 are iron-deficient in Senegal, in line with startlingly high iron deficiency rates across West Africa. In its more moderate forms, anaemia can causes lethargy, impairs development and can cause irreversible brain damage; in its most severe form, it can kill. Each year, 1.1 million children under age five die from lack of vitamin A or zinc. Extreme zinc deficiency causes abrasions on the skin and other types of ill health, and vitamin A deficiency results in visible eye damage in approximately three million pre-school age children globally. From white to orange Substituting white sweet potato seedlings for the orange variety took two years to scale up. HarvestPlus gave the Senegalese Agricultural Research Institute (ISRA) 150 seedlings of 25 varieties, which ISRA turned into 8,800 plants. Yaajeende distributed these to women farmers through a network of some 5,000 mother-to-mother clubs and also to commercial farmers and traders, targeting the countrys two largest production zones: Sadel in Matam Region in the northeast and Aroundou in Bakel Region in the east.

By targeting these zones, which produce and market 80 percent of the countrys sweet potatoes, they hope to eventually supplant white sweet potatoes altogether. You need to understand the market before you can make the change, said Pape Sene, senior technical adviser and former head of Yaajeende. This involves

figuring out where the bulk of a crop is grown and traded, who is growing it, and how it reaches local, national and regional markets. HarvestPlus also supplied a few bags of pearl millet to ISRA a couple of years ago, which ISRA turned into 2,400kg of seed, or enough to supply 600 hectares, each of which can produce 1-1.5 tons. By the projects end, they will have replaced a less nutritious form of millet with the iron-enriched variety, estimates Crosby.

Supplements, fortification and bio-fortification Fifteen years ago, international agencies started giving doses of vitamin A as part of their health efforts, and watched childrens mortality significantly drop. Now, most African countries engage in some sort of vitamin A supplementation for children aged six to 59 months. Another approach to filling nutrition gaps in Senegal is fortification. The National Alliance for Food Fortification (COSFAM) has been working with NGOs Helen Keller International, Micronutrient Initiative and the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, to fortify cooking oil with Vitamin A and flour with folic acid, for several years. Those involved in bio-fortification do not knock these approaches but say people also need to learn how to take charge of their own nutrition needs to steer themselves to better health. Bio-fortification is sustainable and relatively cheap, as only an initial seed injection is needed, Crosby stressed, and it is not vulnerable to the kinds of supply-chain challenges that can complicate mass supplement campaigns. Its a way of people taking control of their nutritional destiny through agriculture, said Crosby. Its affordable nutrition. Fortified foods are accessible in cities but are often less so in rural areas, say market analysts. However, encouraging farmers to grow more nutritious crops does not mean that people - particularly women and children - will eat them. Education, behaviour-change initiatives and public health awarenessraising are all needed. To reduce nutrient deficiencies in Senegal, we need a comprehensive approach that deals with its multiple causes, said WFPs Samba. These include poor diet diversification, lack of consumption of animal products, malaria, parasites, feeding in the first months of life - all of which might result in anaemia. People must also be encouraged to change how they cook vegetables - to avoid over-cooking them, which depletes their nutrients, said UNICEF nutritionist Helene Schwartz. Receptivity to change Unless people manage their own change, nothing will work, said Sene. Yaajeende targets mothers clubs with education about better nutrition and healthcare as well as gardening and farming techniques and business opportunities, he said. Thus far, Senegalese in both rural and urban areas have been receptive to using fortified foods where they are available, said UNICEF regional nutrition specialist Roland Kupka, citing uptake of iron- and folic acid-

enriched flour and vitamin A-enriched cooking oil. Yaajeende hopes that Senegalese consumers will embrace orange sweet potatoes as well, given that they are softer and sweeter than the white. But to boost acceptance, they plan to launch a Mangez Orange - Eat Orange - campaign later this year, pushing all orange fruit and vegetables from papayas to carrots to orange corn. Farmers are also expected to welcome the enriched millet seed, which matures in 60 rather than 90 days. To have long-term traction, fortification and bio-fortification must be proactively led by governments, and clear policies be outlined to guide its development, said Banda Ndiaye, director of the Micronutrient Initiative in Senegal. This requires a shift in mind set, from thinking of agriculture as a means to end food insecurity to seeing it also as a means to combat poor nutrition. Nutrition-led agriculture - taking an epidemiological approach to it - is still a very new concept," said Crosby. And to ensure bio-fortification remains locally owned, national or regional research institutes must be empowered to bring it to scale before multinationals step in and take over, he warned.
http://www.irinnews.org/report/98823/can-the-b-word-beat-malnutrition

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