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NEWSBLOG: Behind the headlines - April 7, 2006

by Reuters
Friday, 7 April 2006 00:00 GMT

A Congolese boy has his arm measured for malnutrition in a clinic run by medical charity M'decins Sans Fronti'res in the remote town of Dubie in Congo's southeastern Katanga province, 18 March, 2006. REUTERS/David Lewis

It's World Health Day, but not really one to celebrate, more of a chance to look more closely at some of the dire situations that usually get pushed down the doom-and-gloom agenda to make way for wars and earthquakes.

In Katanga, a massive area in southeastern Democratic Republic of Congo which is chock-full of precious minerals and home to some major politicians, aid workers say thousands of children are dangerously hungry because an army crackdown on violent local militias has forced their families to run for their lives.

M'decins Sans Fronti'res says about 16,000 people have fled to camps in the town of Dubie, but there's not enough work for them, nowhere for them to grow food, and they've already sold everything except the bare minimum ' tents and mosquito nets.

MSF says the global malnutrition rate among children in camps for displaced people is 19.2 percent, and severe acute malnutrition is 5 percent. To put this in perspective, a global malnutrition rate below 5 percent is considered "normal" in most of Africa and Asia, and anything between 10 and 15 percent means there's a crisis.

There's an on the MSF website, although it still takes a couple of reads to untangle it all.

The U.N. World Food Programme has been giving out food since December, but rations are small and some of the food seems to be going missing. Congolese soldiers in the area are notoriously underfed ' you might remember some of them died from starvation not too long ago ' and an MSF aid worker saw soldiers unloading food aid. Hmmm'

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The U.N.'s World Health Report says there's a global shortage of health workers, with too many doctors and nurses from poorer countries being nabbed by the West.

South Africa tops the list of African health worker exporters, with 35 percent of its trained doctors in the West. Ghana is in the same boat, losing more than 25 percent of its doctors abroad. High percentages have left Angola, Ethiopia, Uganda, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Tanzania and Cameroon too.

The Americas has 10 percent of the world's disease burden but 37 percent of the world's health workers, and spends more than half of the world's health funds.

Africa, on the other hand, has 24 percent of the disease burden but only 3 percent of health workers commanding less than 1 percent of health spending.

There's a surprise.

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On the other side of the coin, the World Health Organisation has come up with the best analysis yet of the 'medical brain drain' - the extent to which doctors and nurses trained in developing countries are 'poached' by developed nations.

The top five poachers are all English-speaking led by New Zealand with 34 percent of its doctors trained abroad, followed by the UK (33), US (27), Canada (23) and Australia (21). WHO says that for every five doctors trained in a sub-Saharan state, one is now working in a developed nation.

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It can always get more depressing. The Wall Street Journal has found an HIV-positive woman in South Africa who wants to get sicker so her children will be eligible for welfare cash. She's not taking anti-retrovirals even though she could get them free from the government.

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Maybe this will cheer you up. Dire predictions made about HIV rates have not been fulfilled in some parts of Africa.

That's the Washington Post take on HIV rates in West Africa. It says predictions that one in three Africans would die from AIDS never came to pass. For example, new data in Rwanda suggests HIV never reached the 30 percent estimated by some early researchers, or even the 13 percent rate the United Nations forecast in 1998.

The bad news is that the AIDS Disaster Belt is a reality in southern Africa, especially Botswana, South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe.

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I don't like celebrity news, but I'll leave you with something a bit fluffier.

If you got an autograph from U.S. R&B singer Alicia Keys this week, I'm guessing you were in Mombasa. The Grammy-winner visited the Kenyan children's HIV clinic she funds there. And no, I can't tell you what she was wearing!

Hope you have a safe and happy weekend, Ruth Gidley AlertNet journalist

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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