(irin) More people are turning to family planning in Tanzania’s semi-autonomous island of Zanzibar as the government seeks to improve access to reproductive healthcare. Funding, however, remains a challenge. “We have been moving on well in the recent months as the turn-up for family planning by both men and women is impressive. Acquiring enough contraceptives for our clients remains the biggest challenge,” Hanuni Ibrahim Sogora, the director for family planning in Zanzibar’s Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, told IRIN. Health officials say a culture of polygamy and low male contraceptive use has limited the number of women accessing reproductive healthcare services. “The major problem is a lack of male involvement in family planning. For example, if a mother comes to the clinic with her baby, there is no harm if the husband can escort her because whatever information is given is important for both,” Kassim Issa Kirobo of the Zanzibar reproductive health programme, told IRIN. “The men say we are busy looking for a livelihood.” Kirobo, the programme’s behaviour change officer in charge of communication and information, said: “The women may also want to use the [family planning] services but the men have the last word.”

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IRIN - Kenya has set its sights on halving the prevalence of infant diarrhoeal disease – which kills dozens of children daily – within five years, using new treatments and by boosting preventive measures.

Every Kenyan child under five has an average of three episodes of diarrhoea annually, according to the 2008 Demographic and Health Survey.

“With 86 children dying every day, diarrhoea is the third leading cause of death among under-fives in Kenya. It is unacceptable, but we can stop this!” said Beth Mugo, Minister for Public Health and Sanitation, at the 31 March launch in Nairobi of national policy guidelines.

The new guidelines, she said, complemented the government’s Child Survival and Development Strategy with a package of interventions based on using a new type of oral rehydration salts (ORS) containing lower concentrations of glucose and salt; zinc supplements to reduce the frequency of episodes; selective use of antibiotics; and encouraging prevention through breastfeeding.

“With exclusive breast feeding, vitamin A supplementation, strengthened routine childhood immunization, proper hygiene and access to improved water supplies, we can curb the number of deaths,”said David Okello, country representative of the World Health Organization (WHO).

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IRIN – Tens of thousands of refugees living in Kenyan cities will continue to suffer police harassment, lack of protection, violation of their human rights and discrimination, as long as the government fails to properly implement recent legislation, says a report by the Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG), International Rescue Committee (IRC) and Refugee Consortium of Kenya (RCK).

“The rights of such refugees to move freely within Kenya and reside in urban areas are currently unclear,” Sara Pavanello, a researcher with HPG at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), said during the launch of Hidden and Exposed: Urban Refugees in Nairobi.

“Urban refugees are often very mobile and are reluctant to come forward, making them a largely hidden population,” she said in Nairobi. “As the world urbanizes, refugees are increasingly moving to cities in the hope of finding a sense of community, safety and economic independence. Yet what many actually find are precarious living conditions and harassment, discrimination and poverty.”

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(IRIN) – Clashes between government troops and Islamist insurgents have displaced more than 55,000 people from Mogadishu since the beginning of February, with many of them heading out of Somalia to neighbouring Kenya, according to the UN Refugee Agency. In the border town of Liboi, people told IRIN by phone that 300 to 400 Somali families were waiting there to be registered as refugees. In all, almost 570,000 Somalis are refugees and most of them live in camps in Kenya. “Staying in Mogadishu now is like a death sentence: you are not safe; your neighbour is not safe,” Hawo Sheiikh Ali, one of the refugees, told IRIN on 22 March.

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(IRIN) – All Pherebonia Nyiramatabaro, 85, wants is land where she and her 15-year-old grandson can grow a few crops. Nyiramatabaro, living in a two-roomed hut in Juru A camp in the Nakivale Refugee Settlement, southwestern Uganda, is one of thousands of Rwandans hit by a Uganda government directive barring refugees from cultivation.

Under a pact between the Rwandan and Ugandan governments, Rwandan refugees were given until August 2009, with a month’s grace, to voluntarily repatriate. Only a few thousand left, however, and many returned to the camps, claiming they had not “been well received at home”. Officials of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Uganda say the Ugandan government has agreed to revisit the decision barring Rwandan refugees from land cultivation. However, the directive is still in force.

Nyiramatabaro is one of those who refused to leave for Rwanda. “At my age and after all my children have died, what or who am I going back to Rwanda for? I fled my home in Butare [province] in 2002 when I could no longer stand the hostility; I walked all the way to Tanzania from where we later walked to Uganda; I have no intention of ever going back to Rwanda

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IRI – Madagascar’s transitional government is allowing the export of illegally harvested precious hardwoods as a source of revenue to keep itself afloat. Conservationists say the cost is incalculable, and the huge Indian Ocean Island stands to lose its status as one of the world’s biological hotspots.

Groups like the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and Conservation International (CI) say illegal logging in Madagascar exploded in the aftermath of a political crisis that replaced President Marc Ravalomanana with Andre Rajoelina, current leader of the Transitional Authority, in March 2009. 

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IRIN – Eastern Uganda’s mountainous district of Kapchorwa has huge agricultural potential, but farmers perennially suffer crop losses due to vermin, poor or non-existent storage and drying facilities, and lack of transport, say officials.

“This area can feed the entire northern Uganda and southern Sudan because with proper handling, a farmer can produce up to 4.2 metric tons of cereals from an acre [0.404 hectares] of land,” said Wilson Chemsto, chairman of the 3,000-member Kapchorwa Commercial Farmers’ Association.

Official district statistics indicated that about 51,000 tons of cereals were produced in 2008, but 40 percent was lost to vermin or became rotten because of poor storage facilities and humid conditions.

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