Traveling Cat

Tourists return to Zimbabwe as economy recovers
By CELEAN JACOBSON, Associated Press Writer
Monday, November 16, 2009

The number of tourists visiting Zimbabwe this year has more than tripled, a trade official said Monday as entrepreneurs tried to lure investors to the troubled southern African country.

Emmanuel Fundira, president of the Zimbabwe Council of Tourism, said at an investment conference in neighboring South Africa that a unity government formed in February has brought political and economic stability. But full recovery is very much linked to the success of the new government, which many fear is on the brink of collapse.

Zimbabwe has a wealth of minerals and natural attractions and was once the region’s breadbasket. Many blame its economic meltdown on President Robert Mugabe’s land policy under which thousands of white-owned commercial farms were seized in 2000. Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, also is accused of undermining democracy.

Mugabe was forced into the coalition with longtime opposition leader Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai after elections last year that were inconclusive and marred by violence blamed on Mugabe’s supporters.

Tourism received a boost when a number of Western countries lifted warnings against traveling to Zimbabwe after the unity government was formed. Zimbabwe is also hoping to benefit from the football World Cup to be held next year in neighboring South Africa.

Fundira said 362,000 people had visited the country by August compared to 100,000 visitors the year before.

A decade ago, Zimbabwe earned $250 million in revenue from tourism, Fundira said. This dropped to $40 million in 2005 but has risen to $100 million since the unity government was formed.

“The economy has got so much potential but political stability is extremely key,” Fundira said.

With Tsvangirai’s party in charge of the treasury, the new government moved quickly to scrap the local currency in favor of the U.S. dollar. It also removed price controls, which had left supermarket shelves bare and fuel scarce.

Zimbabwe is rich in gold, platinum and diamonds. It has a relatively sound road and power network but infrastructure is in need of upgrading and maintenance.

“The opportunities for business in Zimbabwe are immense,” said hotelier Shingi Munyeza. “The question is: Do you get in now or later? Later is very costly. Early is very risky.”

Munyeza is group chief executive of African Sun, a Zimbabwean company that has expanded into west and southern Africa.

Munyeza acknowledges it’s not easy operating in a country where hyperinflation – now under control after the government abandoned the local currency – made it almost impossible to keep accurate financial records.

But in the last three months their hotels in the capital Harare have been 70 percent full, more than double last year’s occupancy rates.

“This time last year we were always planing for the next day to be worse than the day before,” he said. “Now this month has been better than last month.”

However, many investors fear Zimbabwe’s newfound stability is threatened.

Tsvangirai withdrew for a short period from the unity government last month, citing a surge in political violence and accusing Mugabe of undermining the coalition.

Foreign countries have said they will only lend money to Zimbabwe when there are more economic reforms and they can be sure funds will not be misused.

One entrepreneur who knows only too well the effects politics can have on business is South African Steve Tetluk. Seeing a gap in the information and technology field, Tetluk bought the rights to become Panasonic’s official representative in February.

Since then he has seen his Zimbabwe sales increase by 20 percent while a recession in South Africa saw sales there drop 34 percent. In addition, his costs are substantially lower and profits three times higher than in his South African operation.

But when Tsvangirai withdrew, the deals dried up and they have only begun firming up again since the leader returned to the unity government.

“The politics and posturing are costing the country a huge amount in terms of investment,” he said.

In Fight Against AIDS, Kenya Confronts Gay Taboo
By Nick Wadhams / Nairobi Saturday, Nov. 07, 2009

Confronted by growing evidence that sex between men is a significant driver of new HIV infections, the Kenyan government has shed a long-time refusal to acknowledge the existence of homosexuality and will launch a survey of gay attitudes and behaviors in its three biggest cities next year.

The project is considered a landmark because the government and the vast majority of Kenyan people have long refused to address homosexuality in the fight against AIDS. Sex between men is illegal in Kenya — punishable by up to 14 years in prison — and is seen by many as a Western-imported, morally wrong behavior that is limited to areas visited by tourists. (See TIME’s photos of Africa’s AIDS crisis)

But officials say the country is in the middle of a full-blown HIV/AIDS epidemic, with about 7 percent of the population now infected and only 15 percent of those people even aware that they are HIV positive. While the vast majority of HIV transmissions are through heterosexual sex or intravenous drug use, research conducted in 2007 suggests that the spread of the disease through gay sex is far more common than skeptics believe. Fifteen percent of all new HIV infections each year are thought to be among men who have sex with men. And because some men who engage in gay sex are married and do not identify themselves as gay, it is seen as one way in which the virus crosses from “at-risk” categories to the general population.

“It will be a tricky issue that is likely to polarize everybody,” Dr. Nicholas Muraguri, director of the National AIDS/STI Control Program, tells TIME. “But what we are saying is that we cannot as a country socially exclude these groups and hope that we will win the war against HIV at the same time.” (See TIME’s photos of the crisis in Kenya)

Initial media reports said the project, which was announced last week, would be a gay census — raising fears that gays could be exposed against their will and questions about whether such a count could possibly be accurate. But Muraguri says all information collected by the government will be kept confidential and officials will not seek to contact all men who have sex with men in Kenya. The government will also seek to interview both male and female sex workers and intravenous-drug users.

While Kenyan attitudes toward homosexuality are considered more liberal than the rest of sub-Saharan Africa outside South Africa, gays say they still face overwhelming hostility in the country. The law banning sex between men is a holdover from colonial times but won’t be repealed soon; one member of parliament, asked if a draft constitution in the works would enshrine gay rights, said recently that doing so would destroy the document’s chances of passing.

Anti-gay attitudes have been on full display in recent weeks as the Kenyan media have breathlessly reported on the civil ceremony of two Kenyan men in Britain. They were dubbed a shame to Kenya, their parents were harassed and The Nation newspaper’s website has been inundated with comments, most of them condemnatory.

Because of the stigma they face, gays rarely seek information about the dangers of having unprotected sex. One commonly held myth in Kenya is that HIV cannot be contracted via anal sex, when in fact that is one of the easiest ways to get it. Gays have trouble receiving treatment at hospitals, particularly if they show symptoms of sexually transmitted diseases that might lead doctors to suspect they had engaged in sex with other men.

“Some of us have gone to a public health facility and if the doctor realizes we are gay, they will draw attention to us, even from the reception, calling people, ‘Come and see a gay person, come and see a gay person,’” says Peter Njane, director of the Ishtar MSM gay health rights group in Nairobi. Muraguri’s NASCOP group, which will lead the survey with funding from the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, says those beliefs must not be allowed to impede the country’s efforts to fight HIV.

The researchers will ask a series of behavioral questions to men who have sex with men starting next year in Nairobi, the western city of Kisumu and the coastal city of Mombasa. They will also try to estimate the number of men who are HIV-positive or have sexually transmitted diseases. Such a widespread survey has never been attempted in Kenya before. In a 2004 study in Nairobi, 500 men who have sex with other men were interviewed about their health practices, and in Mombasa in 2006 and 2008, 400 male prostitutes were questioned as part of two different sex surveys.

“What we’ve primarily been slowed by is just not having the clear sense of where those populations are centered in the country and where socially and otherwise we can most effectively reach them,” Warren Buckingham, Kenya coordinator for the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, tells TIME.

Much of the gay community has largely decided to abandon the fight for gay rights for now because the hostility they face is too intense. But they hope that initiatives such as the NASCOP research will help reshape Kenyan opinions about AIDS. “As a country and as an African culture, we live in full denial of the existence of homosexuality,” says James Kamau, national coordinator of the Kenya Treatment Access Movement, which aims to increase the availability of all essential medicines to Kenyans. “Because of the cultural background, we shut our eyes, our minds and everything, yet it is happening every single day.”

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1936514,00.html#ixzz0WIGgll91

2 killed, 15 wounded in ethnic, religious violence in Kenyan slum
By Tom Odula (CP)

NAIROBI, Kenya — Two people died and 15 others were seriously wounded after machete-wielding rioters broke into violence Saturday over ethnic tensions in Nairobi’s largest slum, officials said.

The violence began after a dozen youths from the Nubian ethnic group were hired to demolish trading stalls in the Kibera slum on behalf of a church that believed the stalls were blocking its path, said Mohammad Gore, a member of a local council.

Later, Luhya tribesmen and traders retaliated by hacking to death a Nubian man in his mid-20s, Gore said.

Nubian youths then attacked people indiscriminately despite pleas from religious leaders for calm. A second person was killed, said Evans Ogwankwa, a local commissioner.

“These (the Nubian youths) are criminals and they should dealt with as such,” said Gore, who is also Nubian.

Andrew Otieno, a doctor at the Makina Clinic in Kibera, said four victims of machete violence had been brought to his clinic, he said. Several shacks were set on fire.

Nubians and Luhya have clashed before. Paramilitary police were patrolling the slum, Gore said, but officials feared Saturday’s violence could flare into a larger conflict.

Copyright © 2009 The Canadian Press.

Kenya: Experts Unveil New Malaria Testing Kits
by Gatonye Gathura and Isaiah Esipisu
2 November 2009

Nairobi — Newly developed malaria testing technologies could help shift diagnoses from the current hit or miss management to treating only the confirmed cases.

The Rapid Testing Kits, of which several brands are on display at the ongoing international malaria conference in Nairobi, take less than five minutes to diagnose a case.

The kits which are already being tested by the World Health Organisation in five countries can be widely used at community level, requiring little skills and no expensive storage systems.

Endemic areas

Current diagnoses for malaria include a microscope test, equipment that are not available in most government hospitals. Consequently any case of fever in endemic areas is managed as malaria in what is called presumptive treatment.

“This is very wasteful considering the drugs in use are very expensive. We could save enormous amounts of money if we only treated confirmed cases,” says Dr Joe Lines of WHO at a press briefing on Monday.

In a study to be presented later in the week, public health facilities across the country lack trained personnel and equipment to implement laboratory-based malaria diagnostic treatment.

When the study team from the health ministries sampled 56 facilities across the country, more than half of laboratory staff was found not to have been trained in diagnosing malaria while 77 per cent of laboratories experienced chronic stock-outs of essential diagnostic supplies.

Subsidised drugs

The use of the new and highly effective drugs has not been taken up sufficiently because of the high cost in the private sector, according to a study presented by Population Services International.

While deliberations continue on how to make the new drugs more accessible, Kenya has its fingers crossed as global financiers decide in two weeks on which country will receive highly subsidised malaria drugs.

Speaking at the ongoing international conference on Monday, the director of Malaria Control Team at the Clinton Foundation, Dr Oliver Sabot, said the Board of Directors of Global Fund would be meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in about two weeks to decide which countries will benefit from cheaper malaria drugs.

If Kenya becomes eligible for this programme, then it means that the artemesinine combination drugs like Coartem, which costs Sh500 for a dose of an adult person on the retail market could now cost as little as Sh25.

However, the experts were not sure whether Kenya’s bad record on accountability of Global Fund money would affect the country’s eligibility.

So far, only 11 countries have been invited to take part in the experimental programme, Kenya included. The other nine are from Africa, and the other one is Cambodia. They include Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Madagascar, Benin, Niger, Senegal, Nigeria and Ghana. Yet not all of them will be eligible for the programme.

Following a survey by the ACT Watch, it was discovered that only three children out of a 100 suffering from malaria access the Artemesinin Combined Therapy, which is so far the most effective treatment for malaria.

“It is a sad reality to learn that up to 97 per cent of children below the age of five suffering from malaria do not access the effective drugs for the disease treatment within 24 hours presentation of malaria symptoms,” said the expert.

The survey further found out that in most cases, people in the most affected countries sought to buy anti-malarial drugs from private clinics where the drugs were either missing or they were too expensive. In the meantime, only 40 per cent of mothers sought help from the public sector.

Effective treatment

Initially, the Global Fund has been pumping money into the public sector alone to buy drugs for managing malaria.

So far, all the government hospitals and health centres in Kenya provide anti-malarial drugs free of charge to everybody.

However, the ACT Watch says that provision of the drugs to the public sector alone has promoted either the use of artemesinin mono-therapy, or use of obsolete drugs that are no longer effective for malaria treatment.

Rolling off of a programme to provide highly subsidised anti-malarial drugs comes after a recent study in Uganda and Tanzania indicated that subsidised drugs improved uptake of the drugs in good time by more than 50 per cent.

Copyright 2009 The Nation.

Study: Man-eating lions consumed 35 people in 1898
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID (AP)

WASHINGTON — The nightly attacks by two man-eating lions terrified railway workers and brought construction to a halt in one of east Africa’s most notorious onslaughts more than a hundred years ago. But the death toll, scientists now say, wasn’t as high as previously thought.

Over nine months the two voracious hunters claimed 35 lives — no small figure, but much less than some accounts of as many as 135 victims.

It was 1898, when laborers from India and local natives building the Uganda Railroad across Kenya became the prey for the pair, a case that has been the subject of numerous accounts and at least three movies.

The death toll had been estimated at 28 railway workers and “scores of unfortunate African natives,” with the total ranging as high as 135. Delay of the railroad was even subject to debate in Britain’s House of Commons.

Scientists hoping to figure out the actual number of people eaten decided to study the remains of the two male lions, now on display at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, testing the types of carbon and nitrogen in their teeth and hair.

Those chemical ratios were compared with the carbon and nitrogen found in modern lions in the region, in lions’ normal prey animals and in humans.

Bones and teeth store carbon and nitrogen isotopes over long periods, while the ratios in hair change more rapidly, allowing the scientists to determine the long-term diet and how it changed in the lions’ last months.

Humans made up at least half of the diet of one of the lions in the last months of his life, consuming at least 24 people, they concluded. The other lion had eaten 11 people, they found.

In other words, even a century later, you are what you eat.

Researchers led by anthropologist Nathaniel J. Dominy and Justin D. Yeakel of the University of California, Santa Cruz, report in Tuesday’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

They noted that estimates of the death toll reported at the time ranged from 28 reported by the Ugandan Railway Company, to 135, claimed by Lt. Col. John H. Patterson, a British officer who killed the lions in December, 1898.

The researchers did note that their study covers only the number of people eaten, while the number killed may have been higher. They said the death toll may have been as high as 75.

The killings occurred at a time when drought and disease sharply reduced the number of grazing animals that are the normal food for the lions, the report added, while at the same time construction of the railway brought an increased number of people into the area.

In addition, the researchers said the two lions seem to have cooperated in their hunting efforts. That’s not unusual when they are after large prey like buffalo and zebra, but isn’t necessary when after something smaller, like people.

However, one of the lions had severe dental problems and a jaw injury, probably limiting his ability to hunt, they reported. So the two may have worked together, with one eating more people and the other concentrating more heavily on other prey, but also eating humans.

“These findings underscore the complexity of what lions are capable of doing, and the complex interplay of costs and benefits that determine the size of their coalitions,” Dominy said in a statement.

The research was funded by the Earthwatch Institute, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation and the UC-Santa Cruz Committee on Research.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.