Pambazuka News 391: Cyber democracy: an African perspective

Doctors in Burkina Faso say fistula is being under-reported, and are launching a new project to offer free surgery to some of the affected women. According to the government’s statistics, there were just 54 cases of fistula in Burkina Faso in 2007. But Aboubakar Coulibaly, a doctor in the national health system, said “Cases are being under-reported.”

More than a million people are at risk of starvation in Uganda's semi-arid and remote northeastern regions and over 40,000 children are suffering acute to moderate malnutrition, a government official said. Musa Ecweru, Uganda's state minister in charge of refugees and disaster preparedness, said prolonged dry conditions after flooding in the region last year had led to a 90 percent crop failure. Plants had failed to germinate under very hot conditions.

Prison conditions in Benin are so deplorable that they were, alongside police brutality, one of two reasons that compelled the international human rights watchdog Amnesty International to list the country in its annual State of the World's Human Rights report for the first time in 2008. Prisons suffer from overcrowding, cases of unjustified detention, a lack of trained prison staff and lack of adequate food, according to the report.

here is a growing belief among men in Swaziland that circumcision provides complete protection against HIV, a perception that worries non-governmental organisations (NGOs) battling the highest HIV prevalence rate in the world. In recent years circumcision has been lauded by Swazi public health officials as a procedure that reduces the rate of HIV transmission by about 50 percent, but it is far from the silver bullet solution some men see it as.

Experts fear presidential elections scheduled for November may be destabilised following the withdrawal of the opposition African Party for the Independence of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC) from the national unity government on 25 July.

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