A Protest a Day Keeps Progress Away in Nepal

Nepal celebrated New Year's Day with a nationwide banda, a forced closure of businesses and roads. That's no surprise: Every day there are bandas, transport strikes, labor actions and disruptive protests throughout the country. Nepalis are fed up with incompetent governance caused by political bickering and, despite a long tradition of patience and civility, are taking action into their own hands when they have a grievance.

The costs are high. Students suffer because schools find it impossible to operate for the legally required number of days in a year. Businesses suffer from reduced productive capacity and lower sales. Development work slows to a crawl with 100 or more days of forced inaction each year. And the poorest of the poor, those dependent on hourly wages or day-labor, suffer the most, sometimes to the point of going hungry when they can't work.

At least seven major protests disrupted Nepal on Monday, about par for the course recently.

Maoist cadres in Taplejung district continued a week-long forced closure of government offices over a demand that three of their activists killed in 2006 be declared official martyrs by the government. On Monday six protesters were hurt when police clashed with Maoists while trying to reopen the offices.

In Dhading district a student union affiliated with the ruling party enforced a district-wide banda after one of the student union members, 15-year-old Bir Bahadur Tamang, was hauled out of a school examination and attacked with knives and iron rods. Tamang's assailants, the UML student union says, were members of the Maoist YCL militia.

In Kailali district Maoists continued an indefinite transportation and business strike over police action to clear squatters from a community forest last month. Police allege that the squatters were motivated and transported to the forest by agitators bent on pulling down the government. The Maoists are protesting the "disproportionate violence" of the police move, which left several protesters dead and scores injured.

In Sano Thimi, outside the capital, students have locked administrators of the university there out of their offices for the last month, protesting plans to close the campus after enrollment slipped from 4,200 students to about 3,000. The university says that the school is not economically viable at that size: The students want the university to offer additional majors to increase enrollment.

And in Kathmandu, lawyers, teachers and doctors all protested on Monday, disrupting essential services and snarling traffic.

Several hundred lawyers staged a large sit-in on a major street in front of the Constituent Assembly building to protest delays in the constitution-writing process and what they call the failure of the government to enforce the rule of law in the country.

Tribhuvan University contract teachers - those without permanent appointment letters - demonstrated for a second day at the University over their demand for tenure status and what they say is a failure of the university to post job openings on a regular basis over a 12-year period. The teachers vowed more serious action if their demands were not met.

And a doctors' strike at government-run Bir Hospital entered its thirteenth day. The doctors want the government to implement an earlier agreement on pay and security at the hospital. The original strike by junior physicians has expanded since it began, and now all doctors, helpers and security guards have joined the protest. Bir hospital is the only low-cost medical facility in the capital and served approximately 12,000 poor and indigent patients daily before the strike.

Apart from the impact of the protests individually, the sheer number and frequency of them has severely disrupted the country and has led to growing public frustration and incivility here.

If Nepal could get back to only one protest a day everyone would be grateful.

By John Child in Kathmandu (http://newsblaze.com/story/20100104220449chil.nb/topstory.html )

 

 

Can you recognize this song before the chorus?

I have arrived in the US for home leave and will be here until mid-February. Have had a few re-entry issues this past week since arrival (AM/PM swap-jetlag, bronchitis and gastro resettlement), but things are getting better now. It is such a wonderful gift to be able to visit with people personally, look them in the eye, hear their voices and talk with them (and, of course, hold their babies). I can now exploit the high speed internet available in this country to post videos and pics from the last year!

This first installment is a clip from a leprosy research conference dinner held in Fukuoka, Japan in July. We were in a small boat when a couple of street singers happened to come by. I did not recognize the song until the chorus.

What is suspicious in this ad?

 

Annual staff picnic pics

 

"AIDS, malaria eclipse the BIGGEST child-killers: Diarrhea & Pneumonia

Sometimes it is difficult to understand the reality difference between what media portrays as epidemic health problems in light of what preventable deaths are occurring in populations lacking similar wealth and power (which generate media volume).

 

By MARGIE MASON (AP) – 22 hours ago

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5izfFuOGZyDVUQRBli6B_2qH-ppCQD9C2PQ9O3

HANOI, Vietnam — Diarrhea doesn't make headlines. Nor does pneumonia. AIDS and malaria tend to get most of the attention. Yet even though cheap tools could prevent and cure both diseases, they kill an estimated 3.5 million kids under 5 each a year globally — more than HIV and malaria combined.

"They have been neglected, because donor or partnership mechanisms shifted their emphasis to HIV and AIDS and other issues," said Dr. Tesfaye Shiferaw, a UNICEF official in Africa. "These age-old traditional killers remain with us. The ones dying are the children of the poor." Global spending on maternal, newborn and child health was about $3.5 billion in 2006, according to a report by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. That same year, nearly $9 billion was devoted to HIV and AIDS, according to UNAIDS.

Pneumonia is the biggest killer of children under 5, claiming more then 2 million lives annually or about 20 percent of all child deaths. AIDS, in contrast, accounts for about 2 percent. If identified early, pneumonia can be treated with inexpensive antibiotics. Yet UNICEF and the World Health Organization estimate less than 20 percent of those sickened receive the drugs.

A vaccine has been available since 2000 but has not yet reached many children in developing countries. The GAVI Alliance, a global partnership, hopes to introduce it to 42 countries by 2015.

Diarrheal diseases, such as cholera and rotavirus, kill 1.5 million kids each year, most under 2 years old. The children die from dehydration, weakened immune systems and malnutrition. Often they get sick from drinking dirty water. The worst cholera outbreak to hit Africa in 15 years killed more than 4,000 people in Zimbabwe last year. The country recently reported new cases of the waterborne disease, and more are expected as the rainy season peaks and sewers overflow. Rotavirus, a highly contagious disease spread through contaminated hands and surfaces, is the top cause of severe diarrhea, accounting for more than a half million child deaths a year. A vaccine routinely given to children in the U.S. and Europe is expected to reach 44 poorer countries by 2015 through the GAVI Alliance.

"Every child in the United States gets it, even though they have access to clean water and hygiene," said John Wecker, of the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health, a Seattle-based nonprofit that is part of the vaccine alliance. "The only effective way to prevent these deaths is through vaccination." Diarrheal diseases received more attention in the 1980s and 1990s, he said, but interest has waned or been diverted elsewhere, allowing them to creep back. "How did the leading killers end up at the bottom of the global health agenda? I don't know," Wecker said at a recent GAVI meeting in Hanoi. "We've got the tools. We're not looking for the next technological breakthrough. It's here now and it's not being used."

Death can often be prevented by giving children fluid replacement, a simple recipe of salt and sugar mixed with clean water to help ward off dehydration. Yet 60 percent of children with diarrhea never receive the concoction, according to a WHO and UNICEF report released last month. "It is so preventable," said Dr. Richard Cash, a Harvard University expert who helped develop the oral rehydration therapy 40 years ago. "Preventing the deaths is at the very least what we should be striving for."

 

The recent slapping incident

“PM 'trying' to make Begum apologize, Civil servants demand Begum's arrest, apology within five days” KATHMANDU, Nov 15: Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal has said he is working to make Minister of State for Agriculture and Cooperatives Karima Begam apologize for her mistreatment of Parsa Chief District Officer Durga Prasad Bhandari, a high-level government source said. The prime minister said this during a meeting with senior bureaucrats at his residence Sunday who met him to discuss the matter. Nepal Government Employees Organization (NGEO), which is close to the ruling CPN-UML, on Sunday issued a five-day ultimatum to the government to arrest Minister of State for Agriculture and Cooperatives Karima Begum and make her apologize for beating up the chief district officer. The organization submitted memorandums to this effect to the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers through the District Administration Offices throughout the country.

A group of government employees led by NGEO-Kathmandu President Ganesh Thapa handed over the memorandum to Kathmandu CDO Bhola Shiwakoti. NGEO has threatened stringent protests if the demand for arrest and apology are not met within the set deadline. Government offices in Parsa that were closed for five days in protest of the minister´s misbehavior opened Sunday. All government offices in Parsa remained closed for five days reopened Sunday keeping in view the plights of the ordinary people seeking government services. The offices were opened after eight different associations of civil servants on Saturday made a decision to this effect.

Last Tuesday, Begam accompanied by about 50 of her supporters had beaten up CDO Durga Prasad Bhandari at his office allegedly for sending an old vehicle to pick her up at the airport. Begum represents the Madhesi People´s Rights Forum. After the minister faced strong criticism from various sides including the government, she changed her statement and accused CDO Bhandari of misbehaving with her and "not doing people´s work".

The District Police Office, Parsa has already issued arrest warrant against Begum and sought support from police in Kathmandu Valley following a formal complaint by Bhandari´s bodyguard. Begum is in Kathmandu but police have not arrested the minister saying it is unaware of such arrest warrant. http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=11826

Nepal slips in corruption index

Kathmandu, Nepal. November 17. Transparency International (TI), the global anti-corruption watchdog, said the level of perceived corruption in Nepal worsened in the year 2008. "Malaysia, Nepal, the Maldives and Afghanistan, on the other hand, saw their scores decline, representing worsening levels of perceived corruption," TI said in its annual report released globally on Tuesday. Nepal was ranked at 121 position of the index in 2008 but this position slipped to 143 position in the corruption barometer in 2009, according to TI. Only war-ravaged Afghanistan is behind Nepal in the index among the South Asian countries. Afghanistan ranked at 179 position has highest level of perceived corruption. (Neighbouring India ranked#80) http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=11894