DAKAR, 21 December 2007 (IRIN) - CONTENTS:

BURKINA FASO: Cancer and respiratory diseases worsening CHAD: Thoughts on the pending EU/UN mission from UN's top humanitarian official CHAD: Tales of the war wounded from an ICRC surgeon GUINEA-BISSAU: Testing without treatment – an island's dilemma MAURITANIA: Donor funds needed to clear landmines NIGER: Botched birth survivors battle fistula NIGER: Where childhood ends on the marriage bed NIGER: Army, rebels commit abuses against civilians, rights groups say SENEGAL: Disabled students conquer daily challenges SENEGAL: Stiffer penalties for drug traffickers SIERRA LEONE: Government probes unrest in diamond-mining area WEST AFRICA: Slight drop in malnutrition but food remains scarce AFRICA: Halfway to 2015 education goals, progress not fast enough

BURKINA FASO: Cancer and respiratory diseases worsening

A World Bank funded study shows that increased air pollution caused by motorbikes and dust is causing some 200 new cancer cases in the Burkina Faso capital, Ouagadougou, every year.

Increased levels of benzene in the atmosphere are the primary cause of the disease, according to a government report, "Air Quality in Ouagadougou". Benzene is a cancerous substance contained in motorcycle fuel, which is a mix of lubricant and petrol.

"The situation is alarming regarding the high concentration of benzene contained in the motorcycle fuel used by most people here," the director of sanitation and pollution prevention at the ministry of environment, Zephirin Athanase Ouedraogo, told IRIN.

The air quality study was conducted by the World Health Organization in partnership with the Ministry of Environment and Quality of Living, between November 2006 and March 2007 using monitoring stations set up all over the 2 million-strong city.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75927

CHAD: Thoughts on the pending EU/UN mission from UN's top humanitarian official

Aid organisations are struggling to provide assistance to around half a million people in the east of Chad at a time when numerous rebel groups are launching offensives against the army.

The EU was supposed to have started deploying troops to the east at this time to protect humanitarian operations and civilian populations and the UN was supposed to send police trainers to ensure security within the various communities. But the arrival of these international security forces has been delayed.

IRIN spoke with the UN Humanitarian Coordinator and Resident Representative in Chad Kingsley Amaning about the current situation. The following are excerpts:

Are you disappointed that the international forces have not arrived yet?

Certainly. We are unhappy that the international forces are late in their deployment. While we are waiting we are witness to combatants on both sides being massacred on the area boarding Sudan. Reports from the east indicate that the clashes between the government forces and the rebel groups were very bloody. And all this is occurring in the 21st century.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75906

CHAD: Tales of the war wounded from an ICRC surgeon

The number of casualties in the latest fighting between the government and rebels in eastern Chad has been so high that the International Csommittee of the Red Cross (ICRC) surgical team in the country was unable to cope, and a second team had to be sent out from Geneva.

"As soon as I arrived [on 2 December] I was presented with plenty of wounded," the head surgeon of the back-up team, Amilcar Contreras, told IRIN while on a break from performing surgery at La Liberté Hospital in N'Djamena. "Some had been there for almost a week waiting to be operated on while others had just come in."

Contreras said he quickly set up a "triage" system to prioritise the most urgent cases.

"I had to deal with some pretty terrible things, like one guy who had a piece of shrapnel lodged in his eye," Contreras said. "The only solution was to remove the eye completely and I had to do it fast otherwise [infection would spread and] he could have lost the sight in his other eye."

But Contreras first had to get the patient's consent to remove the eye, and that was not easy. "He said he wanted to seek traditional treatment instead. I had to convince him that no one could possibly save the eye and if I didn't remove it the dirt inside would remain trapped there and his condition would worsen."

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75933

GUINEA-BISSAU: Testing without treatment – an island's dilemma

Saico Djau is deeply frustrated. He is a laboratory technician and HIV counsellor at the Marcelino Banca hospital on Bubaque Island, the second largest in Guinea Bissau's Bijagos Archipelago. After testing people he informs them of their status but for those found to be HIV-positive there is little more he can do.

Antiretroviral treatment is not available on any of the Bijagos islands. He can only give people the news and send them back to their villages, scattered on 80 islands, where some 35,000 people live.

Pregnant women return home with the likelihood that they will pass the virus to their babies.

"I feel so bad about it," Djau told IRIN. "I have no way of helping a pregnant woman to have a healthy baby."

Antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) are available in the capital, Bissau, and two other towns on the mainland. But Bubaque is five to six hours away by motorised canoe from Bissau and the life-prolonging drugs cost more than what most of Bubaque's residents can afford.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75971

MAURITANIA: Donor funds needed to clear landmines

Some 400 km north of Nouakchott at the border with Western Sahara is the village of Boulanouar. Only the passing of trains transporting minerals out of the desert region disturb the peace and quiet of the cattle herders there. But beneath the sand lie deadly land mines, relics of a brutal desert war over the Western Sahara territory in the 1970s.

"Since the war with the Saharawis we have lived with the problem of mines," said Hamoud Mohamed, a local government official in Boulanouar. "Of the 7,000 people in the commune, at least a dozen are handicapped. They lead their lives with difficulty."

According to mapping conducted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in conjunction with the newly formed national demining agency, at least 60 communities in Mauritania are affected by mines.

The biggest mine fields are around the towns Nouadhibou and Bir Mohgrein, said Jim Sawatsky, a UNDP advisor to the demining project.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75943

NIGER: Botched birth survivors battle fistula

Niger is one of the most dangerous places in the world to give birth.

Thirty women lolling on mats outside a non-governmental organisation (NGO) recovery clinic in Niamey might well wish they had not been so lucky to survive.

They are alive, but, having endured an agonising labour lasting two or three days and finally having had their dead children cut out of them, they have been left with fistula, a tearing of the tissue that develops when blood supply to the tissues of the vagina and bladder and/or rectum is cut off during prolonged obstructed labour.

When the tissue dies a hole forms through which urine and faeces pass uncontrollably.

Fistula is the ultimate symbol of childbirth gone wrong because of poor health care access and the high prevalence of men marrying under-age girls in Niger.

Ostracised

Many of the women here have been ostracised by their families and communities, and even been banned from using public transport because of their smell.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75970

NIGER: Where childhood ends on the marriage bed

Fifteen-year-old Hadjo Garbo's child-like features belie a history more tragic and life-altering than many adults four times her age will have experienced.

Two years ago this petite girl, who likes to fiddle with her elaborately braided hair and once dreamed of being a housewife, was married to one of the older men in her village in the Dosso region of southwest Niger. She was just 13 years old.

The marriage was consummated, and by 14 she was pregnant with her first child. But before her 15th birthday she had lost the baby - and her husband.

Hadjo's anatomy proved unready for the task of delivering a baby and after an excruciating three-day labour, the unborn foetus was cut out of her, stillborn.

The horrific labour left the girl with what gynaecologists call an obstetric fistula, a tearing of the tissue that develops when blood supply to the tissues of the vagina and bladder and/or rectum is cut off during prolonged obstructed labour. The condition mostly affects child victims of underage marriage.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75932

NIGER: Army, rebels commit abuses against civilians, rights groups say

Nigerien army and rebels in the country have yet to formally respond to charges by rights groups that both sides are committing abuses against civilians.

"To my knowledge, there have been no crimes," said Oumarou Boubacar, an army commander in Agadez in northern Niger where the crimes are alleged to have taken place.

"We are an evolved army. We respect humanitarian law," he told IRIN by phone on 20 December.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International released statements on 19 December accusing the Nigerien army of extrajudicial killings, mostly in reaction to rebel raids. HRW said the rebels have used landmines and robbed civilians.

The rebel Nigerien Movement for Justice (MNJ) has attacked government outposts in the isolated north, purportedly to seek a greater portion of Niger's uranium revenues and more equitable treatment for the ethnic Touareg living in the area.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75956

SENEGAL: Disabled students conquer daily challenges

On the campus of Cheikh Anta Diop University in the Senegal capital Dakar, physically handicapped students can often be seen crawling unaided up concrete staircases or across dirty bathroom floors.

With a few exceptions – such as the main library and a new amphitheatre – buildings on the sprawling, sandy campus have no handicap accessibility.

"Users of hand-powered or motorised wheelchairs have to crawl to access certain buildings," the disabled students association said in a recent letter to the authorities. The association compiled a list of their grievances and proposed solutions and presented it to university officials at the beginning of the school year.

Serigne Diop, a government official, says he cannot erase from his mind what he calls an "unbearable" image. "I saw a severely handicapped student trying to make it up a spiral staircase on crutches. I think she did not want to crawl so as not to get her clothes dirty," he said. "Other students passed by her without bothering to help at all."

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75929

SENEGAL: Stiffer penalties for drug traffickers

In Senegal drug traffickers stand to face 10 to 20 years of hard labour, double the current punishment, under a new law adopted in parliament.

"We will take every measure to combat drug trafficking," Justice Minister Cheikh Tidiane Sy said recently before the National Assembly, which passed the law on 30 November. The Senate adopted it on 14 December.

The law now awaits promulgation by President Abdoulaye Wade.

Senegal and neighbouring countries, particularly Guinea-Bissau, have become an epicentre for the transit of cocaine from Latin America to Europe. The trafficking is threatening the stability and development of West Africa, The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in a recent report.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75953

SIERRA LEONE: Government probes unrest in diamond-mining area

The Sierra Leone government has called for an inquiry into unrest over diamond-mining operations in the east of the country after residents were killed in protests last week.

The government has ordered operations suspended at Koidu Holdings Mining Company's site in the town of Koidu in Kono district, according to a 17 December statement. A 10pm to 6am curfew remains in effect in the area.

Youths stormed the Koidu Holdings site on 13 December, setting fire to surrounding bushes, company administrator Sadiq Sillah told IRIN.

Residents were protesting the mining operations' impact on living conditions, saying the company has failed to compensate affected families.

Koidu residents said police shot and killed protesters but police officials say demonstrators were armed and police acted in self-defence.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75952

WEST AFRICA: Slight drop in malnutrition but food remains scarce

With levels of malnutrition in West Africa slightly lower in 2007 than the previous year, the overall amount of money aid organisations are requesting from donors for the 2008 Consolidated Appeal Process (CAP) for the sub-region is also lower, UN officials say.

"There is less of a malnutrition crisis this year but [structural] problems of food security are still a serious concern," Hervé Ludovic de Lys the regional head of the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs told IRIN at the launch of the 2008 CAP which called on donors to provide funds for projects costing a total of $312 million.

"The good news is that improving food security is cheaper than treating malnutrition," he said.

The largest part of the 2008 CAP, which is almost $40 million less than in 2007, concerns projects related to food security as well as nutrition.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75928

AFRICA: Halfway to 2015 education goals, progress not fast enough

Critics say donors at a recent high-level meeting failed to make firm funding commitments for improving education, particularly in impoverished, fragile and war-torn countries, making it highly unlikely the world will meet ambitious education goals by the 2015 deadline.

"I cannot be very optimistic," Koïchiro Matsuura, director-general of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), said at a press conference on 13 December in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, at the close of the three-day meeting of the High-Level Group on Education for All, which brought together education ministers, donors and development partners.

While developing countries agreed to allocate 10 percent of budgets to education, donor countries could not agree to include a specific percentage of budgets for education aid, instead pledging "to work to maintain and increase levels of funding to education" and to prioritise low-income, fragile and emergency and conflict-affected states.

"Obviously it's a major disappointment that we don't have a commitment to achieve a particular amount," said Nicholas Burnett, director of the 2008 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, which identified an annual US$11 billion funding gap in external aid for education in order to reach the goals in time.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75907

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