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Vuvuzelas – the horns used by football fans celebrating last year’s World Cup – not only cause noise pollution but may also spread diseases, say experts.
A short burst on the instrument creates a spittle shower similar to a sneeze, travelling at a four million droplets a second, a PLoS One journal study shows.
In crowded venues one person blowing a vuvuzela could infect many others with airborne illness like the flu or TB.
Organisers are considering whether to allow them at the 2012 London Olympics.
Vuvuzela etiquette
Critics say they are anti-social and unsafe because of their potential to generate a din louder than a plane taking off.
People with infections must be advised against blowing their vuvuzelas close to other people”
Dr Ruth McNerney, who carried out the latest work at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said a “vuvuzela blowing etiquette” may be needed rather than a ban.
“Just as with coughs or sneezes, action should be taken to prevent disease transmission, and people with infections must be advised against blowing their vuvuzelas close to other people,” she said.
Her team investigated the vuvuzela hazard using a laser device to measure how many droplets were produced by eight volunteers using the horns.
On average, 658,000 lung particles, or aerosols, per litre of air were expelled from the instruments.
The droplets shot into the air at the rate of four million per second.
In comparison, when the volunteers were asked to shout, they produced only 3,700 particles per litre at a rate of 7,000 per second.
“When attending a sporting event and surrounded by vuvuzela players, a spectator could expect to inhale large numbers of respiratory aerosols over the course of the event,” Dr McNerney warned.
Shinyanga — In an unprecedented situation in Meatu District, Shinyanga Region, a woman delivered a child with two heads at the weekend.However, according to the district medical officer in charge, Dr Archie Hella, the child was still born because the mother was brought late to the hospital for delivery.
Ms Ngolo Magembe, 19, was brought on May 18 at around 8pm while in critical condition. This was contributed by failure for her part to regularly attend ante-natal clinics, the doctor said. According to him, during delivery the child had taken her legs out first instead of the head as is usual. Efforts by personnel at the hospital to save the child’s life proved futile as it was still born, he explained, continuing:”The life of the child could have been saved if the mother was brought to the hospital much earlier.”
He said the hospital and other health stakeholders have been emphasizing on the importance of sending expectant mothers to hospital early. However, the response was still very poor, and this had led to many avoidable deaths of mothers and children, he lamented.
He said the usual practice has been that until a pregnant mother was in a critical condition that was when relatives would rush her to a hospital, which is often too late. Dr Hella said Ms Magembe was recovering well at the hospital.
VOA Sky over Tripoli, Libya, is illuminated by explosions during an airstrike, early Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Several strong explosions have shaken Tripoli early Tuesday as NATO warplanes repeatedly bombed targets around the Libyan capital.
Correspondents on the scene describe it as one of the most intense series of airstrikes since NATO’s air campaign against the forces of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi began. More than a dozen explosions were heard in the first hour of the raids.
A government spokesman reported casualties, but that could not be confirmed.
Britain and France have decided to deploy attack helicopters to join the NATO air campaign. French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe Monday said the deployment falls within the United Nations mandate to protect Libyan civilians. He said it will take place as soon as possible.
NATO has about 200 aircraft at its disposal for the operations in Libya, but it has not used any helicopters to conduct its core mission of hitting Gadhafi forces threatening civilians.
A high-ranking U.S. diplomat is on a three-day visit to the Libyan rebel stronghold of Benghazi in what the State Department calls “another signal” of America’s support for the rebels’ Transitional National Council. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman is the most senior U.S. official to visit Libya since the uprising against Moammar Gadhafi began in February.
A State Department statement called the NTC “a legitimate and credible interlocutor for the Libyan people.”
On Sunday, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, opened an EU office in Benghazi.
Alassane Ouattara gestures during his inauguration ceremony, in Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast, May 21, 2011.
Alassane Ouattara has been inaugurated as Ivory Coast’s new president, six months after he won an election that the previous president refused to recognize.
President Ouattara took the oath of office more than three weeks ago. So Saturday’s inauguration in the political capital Yamoussoukro was more of a rally for supporters of the man who outlasted former president Laurent Gbabgo in the political crisis that followed November’s vote.
With Gbagbo under house arrest, the formal Ouattara inauguration was a chance for foreign governments to show their support for the new leader. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and French President Nicolas Sarkozy were in attendance as were the leaders of Burkina Faso, Senegal, Liberia, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Togo, and Nigeria.
President Ouattara said Ivorians now face the world, themselves, and their destiny.
The president expressed what he called his infinite gratitude to those who chose him as their president. He said Saturday’s investiture is their victory, the victory of their sovereignty.
Ouattara has moved quickly to take control of a faltering economy by reopening banks, paying overdue civil service salaries, and resuming cocoa exports. France and the European Union are providing more than $820 million in emergency assistance.
Ouattara took power Apirl 11 when former president Gbagbo was captured after U.N. and French attack helicopters bombed the presidential compound where he was holding out in an underground bunker.
President Ouattara personally thanked President Sarkozy for that intervention under the U.N. mandate. He said it allowed many lives to be saved and the Ivorian people will always recognize that French contribution.
Gbagbo rejected U.N.-certified electoral results that showed Ouattara won their November run-off. He used the military to besiege Ouattara’s hotel as members of his party’s youth wing attacked Ouattara supporters and West African immigrants from countries that backed Ouattara’s claim to the presidency.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) intends to investigate crimes by both Ouattara and Gbagbo forces. President Ouattara says Ivorian justice will prosecute anyone found guilty of human rights abuses, whether they fought for him or against him.
Ouattara said it is time to consolidate the pillars of the republic, renew its courage, and unite Ivorians to celebrate peace, without which, he says, development is not possible.
TCHIAKOULLE, Guinea — Nestled in the mountains of northern Guinea, accessible only by foot, lies the birthplace of the maid who says Dominique Strauss-Kahn tried to rape her in a New York hotel.
With no electricity nor phone lines, the village of Tchiakoulle could not be further from the bright lights of Manhattan where one of its daughters has brought one of the world’s most powerful men to his knees.
In the shadow of steep cliffs in the Fouta Djallon region, home to the Fulani ethnic group, Tchiakoulle boasts seven concrete houses, one built by the alleged victim’s sister, and a few dozen mud huts alongside a river.
The 32-year-old hotel chambermaid at the Sofitel hotel accusing the former International Monetary Fund chief of sexual assault and attempted rape “was born here, her father was born here,” said her half-brother Boubacar, 42, born to the same father.
He was speaking to an AFP journalist who tracked down the woman’s home village after rigourous cross-checking and verification with his own family in New York and those of the victim.
Boubacar said his half-sister lived in Tchiakoulle until the age of 13 before moving to Labe, the main town in the region, some 80 kilometres (50 miles) away, but returned home to get married at about 17.
The couple had a daughter, but shortly after the marriage, her husband, the son of a rich Fulani marabout, passed away.
It was then that the young women left with her child to the United States, according to her half-brother.
He said her sister Hassanatou, already living in New York, had paid for her journey with the help of her husband, a shopkeeper in the Big Apple. Hassanatou is the owner of one of the village’s seven concrete houses.
Their mother usually lives in the house, but was seeking medical treatment in Dakar at the time of AFP’s visit.
The members of the accuser’s family living in the village describe her as very pretty, but illiterate, having never been to school. She attended a madrassa in the village where she learned to recite verses on the veranda.
Her uncle, Mody, remembers a girl who was “not rebellious”, while another relative in Labe describes her as “a serious, kind girl and no one knew any trouble from her.”
The 60-year-old said that three days ago he heard “on local radio that a white man abused a girl in the United States. I could not have imagined it was my niece.”
Cut off from the world, no one in the village knew what had become of their long-lost daughter, the last of six children — three girls, three boys — born to a father with two wives.
Her father was a poor farmer, but also a respected Muslim cleric in the region until his death at age 90 in 2009. Residents of the hamlet say her family was very pious.
Unlike her sister Hassanatou, the young woman appears to have cut all ties with her home village.
“Since my sister left over 10 years ago, I have spoken to her once,” said Boubacar, her half-brother.
“It was after dad’s death. I was in Bissau. I called to give her my condolences but as soon as she saw the number she realised it was from Africa and said: “don’t bother calling me”.
“She didn’t know who was on the other end of the line but when I told her she agreed to talk to me.”
Her uncle also has had no news from his niece: “Since she left I haven’t received a letter, photos, nothing.”
Thousands of Guineans live and work abroad in other African countries, Europe and the United States because, despite its massive mineral wealth, half of Guinea’s 10 million population live in poverty.
Although 100% condom programmes can be effective in increasing condom use in commercial sex transactions, they should be implemented in ways that do not violate the human rights of sex workers or their clients.
This is one of the recommendations in a report on human rights and the Global Fund recently released by the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and the Open Society Foundations (OSF).
These 100% condom use programmes (also called 100% CUP) are a central part of national HIV responses in a number of countries, including China, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Mongolia, Laos and Myanmar.
These programmes, which are designed to ensure that condoms are used in all commercial sex transactions, usually target sex workers in brothels or entertainment establishments. According to the report, in most cases, the strategy is to make commercial sex without condoms illegal and to enforce that illegality – which means that local authorities and the police are, inevitably, integrally involved in these programmes.
The report acknowledged that evaluations have found these programmes to be effective in reducing unsafe sex in commercial sex establishments. However, the report added, although they are meant to protect sex workers and their clients, in most cases the programmes have been designed without meaningful participation of sex workers or their NGO allies. Also, sex workers’ experiences have not frequently figured in evaluations of these programmes.
Finally, according to the report, several studies have documented abusive practices in these programmes, such as: forced registration of sex workers; mandatory STI testing and health examinations at health facilities where sex workers were mistreated; repressive policing; force-marching of sex workers to health facilities with military or police escorts; and public posting of photographs of sex workers who are accused of having had sex without condoms.
In one of these studies, the report said, sex workers reported that they were forced by brothel and nightclub owners to have sex with police in exchange for the police looking the other way when 100% CUP rules were violated.
The authors argued that there are other ways to achieve the target of 100% condom use, without having to resort to mandatory and abusive measures. The report cited the example of sex worker collectives such as those in the Sonagachi neighbourhood of Kolkata, India. The authors said that these collectives have created an environment that ensures that all workers demand condom use; and that the work of these collectives has resulted in both (a) effective HIV prevention and (b) empowering sex workers to stand up to police brutality and stigma in the community.
However, the report said, it may be that these alternative strategies are not well known to CCMs. The use of 100% CUP continues to be supported by CCMs; for example, in a Round 9 Indonesia proposal, the programme included promulgating and enforcing local regulations so that regular condom use would become the norm where sex is sold.
The Legal Network and the OSF recommended that the Global Fund develop criteria that would allow it to identify and reject proposals that include prevention programmes for sex workers that exhibit a lack of human rights protections for the workers and their clients. The report said that CCMs or other applicants that propose 100 percent condom programmes should be required to provide detailed information about the implementation of these programmes, including, for example:
the nature and degree of participation of organisations that are legitimate representatives of sex workers in the design, implementation and evaluation of these programmes;
measures taken to protect sex workers against abuse by clients, police and managers of brothels or entertainment venues; and
measures taken to consider less top-down alternatives to 100% CUP.
Finally, the authors recommended that the Technical Review Panel (TRP) be fully briefed on 100% CUP and alternatives to it; and that the Global Fund invest in capacity-building for CCMs in this area, including providing them with information on best practices
Nafissatou Diallo, maid assaulted by IMF Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn
A hotel maid, Nafissatou Diallo, who says IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn tried to rape her was due to testify before a New York grand jury on Wednesday, as the French presidential hopeful faced growing pressure to resign.
A lawyer for the 32-year-old African widow dismissed a suggestion by Strauss-Kahn’s defense counsel that the incident at the luxury Times Square Sofitel last Saturday might not have been a sexual assault.
“There’s nothing consensual about what took place in that hotel room,” attorney Jeffrey Shapiro told NBC’s “Today” show, adding he believed she would testify “at some point today.”
The arrest dashed Strauss-Kahn’s prospects for the French presidency and raised broader questions over the future of the International Monetary Fund. Developing countries, looking to a succession, have questioned Europe’s hold on the post.
The United States, the IMF’s biggest shareholder, said Strauss-Kahn was clearly unable to go on running the global lender from a prison cell, whatever the legal outcome.
“I can’t comment on the case, but he is obviously not in a position to run the IMF,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Tuesday, calling for an interim head to be named.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said Europe would naturally put forward a candidate to replace him if Strauss-Kahn decided to step down.
Germany, which wants a European to keep the job, said the IMF should deal with its immediate leadership internally and it was too early to discuss a successor to Strauss-Kahn.
French officials said John Lipsky, the IMF’s American number two, whose term expires in August, would represent the Fund at next week’s Group of Eight summit in Deauville, France.
China, Brazil and South Africa questioned Europe’s right to the top job but Europeans said it made sense for them to retain the post while the Fund plays such a crucial role in helping to ease the euro zone debt crisis.
Strauss-Kahn, who denies the charges, is expected to remain in New York’s Rikers Island jail, known for gang violence, at least until his next court appearance on Friday, when lawyers may again request bail. Any trial could be six months away.
If convicted, he could face 25 years in prison. A law enforcement source said he had been placed on suicide watch, but purely as a precautionary measure.
In the U.S. legal system, a grand jury convenes in secret to hear evidence and decide whether to indict the defendant.
In the only public hint of Strauss-Kahn’s possible line of defense, his attorney Benjamin Brafman told his arraignment hearing on Monday: “The evidence we believe will not be consistent with a forcible encounter.”
However, Shapiro said his client, an asylum seeker from the West African nation of Guinea with a 15-year-old daughter, told Reuters she had not been aware of Strauss-Kahn’s identity until a day after the alleged attack.
“She didn’t have any idea who he was or have any prior dealings with this guy,” the personal injury lawyer said.
“She wants to remain anonymous because she’s very much afraid that something could happen to her physically, she feels very threatened by this,” he said of the global attention.
SET-UP?
An opinion poll in France, taken before his first court appearance on Monday and released on Wednesday, showed that more than half the population believe Strauss-Kahn was set up.
The CSA poll found that 57 percent of respondents thought that the Socialist politician, who had been frontrunner for the 2012 election, was definitely or probably the victim of a plot.
Fully 70 percent of Socialist sympathizers took that view. Most French media have dismissed conspiracy theories.
The poll findings highlighted a cultural divide, with French Socialist politicians and commentators denouncing the public parading of Strauss-Kahn, unshaven and in handcuffs, before he has had a chance to defend himself.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg agreed such a display was humiliating and would be unfair if a defendant were to be found innocent. “But if you don’t want to do the ‘perp walk’, don’t do the crime,” he told reporters.
U.S. media have criticized the French for a tradition of secrecy on politicians’ sex lives, and for showing more compassion for Strauss-Kahn than for the alleged rape victim, whose identity some French newspapers have published.
The French daily Liberation said the IMF chief had told its editors in off-record comments last month that he had just the right qualities to lead France, notably a calm manner, in contrast to conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy.
“Today I fit with everything the French people want — recognized competence, calm, international experience,” he was quoted as having said at an April 28 meeting.
EUROPEAN JOB
The IMF said it had not been in touch with Strauss-Kahn since his arrest but it would be important to do so “in due course.” Two IMF board sources told Reuters the board would ask Strauss-Kahn whether he planned to continue in his post.
In Strauss-Kahn’s absence, Lipsky is temporarily in charge of the institution which manages the world economy and is in the midst of helping euro zone states like Greece, Ireland and Portugal tackle debt woes.
The White House is considering proposing David Lipton, President Barack Obama’s international economic adviser and a former deputy treasury secretary, to replace Lipsky, whose term ends in August, sources familiar with the matter said.
Strauss-Kahn began to lose European support on Tuesday.
“Given the situation, that bail has been denied, he has to consider that he would otherwise do damage to the institution,” Austrian Finance Minister Maria Fekter said.
A European has held the post of managing director since the IMF was created in 1945, and four of them have been French.
French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde is thought to be interested in the post but her prospects have been clouded by a decision this month by a Paris public prosecutor to recommend a full-scale inquiry into her role in awarding financial compensation to a prominent businessman in 2008.
Emerging countries are starting to flex their muscle over who should succeed Strauss-Kahn, who had been expected to leave soon anyway to run for the French presidency.
China said on Tuesday the selection of the next IMF boss should be based on “fairness, transparency and merit.” It marked the first time that the fund’s third largest member has weighed in so publicly on an IMF selection debate.
South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan and a senior Brazilian government official, who asked not to be named, said the next chief should be from a developing country, pressing a case to give emerging economies a greater say in world affairs.
But Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega said the affair should not be used to press for changes in the way the IMF head is picked, telling GloboNews TV the discussion “is too premature at this point” and Strauss-Kahn was “probably one of the best IMF chiefs that we had in the past years.”
Almost every minute of every day in different parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a woman is raped. So says a new study published by the American Journal of Public Health, the AJPH. The study says the incidence of sexual assault is 26 times higher than United Nations figures.
Jocelyne Sambira reports.
Duration: 2’36”
The study examined detailed household data gathered from women between the ages of 15 and 49 living in the DR Congo.
The data shows that 400,000 women are raped every year in the Congo which translates to over a thousand raped every day, 48 raped every hour and four raped every five minutes.
Margot Wallström, the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, said the report helps to better understand the problem.
“This brings more clarity to the phenomenon of sexual violence. It also confirms what we know from before and that is sexual violence is grossly underreported.”
The rate of sexual violence quoted in the new study is significantly higher than the previous estimate of 16,000 rapes reported in one year by the UN.
Wallström explained the discrepancy between the two reports.
“We do make a distinction between conflict-related sexual violence – how it is being used as a kind of weapon of war and what is also studied here – which is intimate partner sexual violence and domestic violence. And finally I would say that there is a difference in the way we count because the United Nations also has to verify these figures. When we report, we also should do it in such a way that we can do follow-up, that there is assistance to be given to the victims.”
But the expert on sexual violence also believes it’s time to move beyond the numbers.
“As much as we want to describe the magnitude of the problem, it must take us beyond counting the number of rapes for example. It must bring us into how we can prevent it. How we can do peacekeeping better.”
More important though are the people behind the figures. Margot Wallstom again:
“I remember this young woman who I met in Walikale and she said that she had been taken out of her home the night before she was getting married and had been gang raped and her whole future destroyed in a way. And she was not only devastated but she was also angry. I could feel that that she was also furious that this could be done to her. And she said that a dead rat is worth more than a woman who has been raped.”
Critics say they are anti-social and unsafe because of their potential to generate a din louder than a plane taking off.
