Global Developments: Briefs
FrontLines - July 2010
Bangladeshi
Schools Expand
Curriculum
DHAKA, Bangladesh—
Science, English, and computing
classes will be made
mandatory in Islamic religious
schools as part of an overhaul of
the Bangladesh education system,
a government official said
June 22, according to Agence
France-Presse.
The reforms are part of
efforts to bring the country’s
madrassas, which are considered
by critics to be a breeding
ground for militants, into the
mainstream schooling
structure.
Bangladesh already funds
some madrassas in exchange
for control over the curriculum
and greater flexibility over
admittance—including allowing
girls to study at the 16,000
traditionally all-male
seminaries.
Nearly 3 million, mostly
poor, pupils attend state-sponsored
madrassas, accounting
for 10 percent of the country’s
total student population. A further
2 million students attend
unrecognized religious
schools.
Killer of USAID
Employees
Recaptured
KHARTOUM, Sudan—Sudanese
security officers have
recaptured one of four men
who escaped from prison after
being sentenced to death for
the murder of USAID employees
John Granville and his
Sudanese driver Abdelrahman
Abbas Rahama, the Khartoum
daily Akhbar al-Yawm reported
June 22, according to Reuters.
“The National Intelligence
and Security Service has captured
the escaped prisoner
Abdel Raouf Abu Zaid
Mohamed Hamzah, who is
one of the four men sentenced
to death for the murder of
[the] U.S. diplomat,” said the
paper, quoting “reliable
sources.”
Granville and Rahama were
shot as they drove home from
New Year celebrations in Khartoum
early on Jan. 1, 2008.
Campaign to Help
Newborns Breathe
Because as many as 800,000
babies die each year due to difficulties
breathing just after childbirth,
USAID and other donors
have started the Helping Babies
Breathe campaign, an international
effort to prevent birth
asphyxia. The campaign was
launched in Washington in June.
Helping Babies Breathe is an
initiative of the American Academy
of Pediatrics, USAID, the
National Institute of Child
Health and Human Development,
and Save the Children.
The campaign will train health
ministries in about 10 countries in
Africa, Asia, and Latin America
where USAID has maternal and
newborn health programs. Save
the Children is implementing it in
18 countries. The curriculum may
eventually be used in most of the
68 countries where 90 percent of
mother or newborn deaths occur
and where 46 percent of births
lack a trained attendant, the Washington
Post reported June 20.
The goal is to teach midwives
and traditional birth attendants in
poor countries how to help the
small percentage of newborns
who need assistance in starting
to breathe.
With a dry towel, a suction
bulb, and a mask, a baby can be
assisted with first breaths. A doll is
used for training in how to assist
those with breathing difficulties.
Experts predict that training in
how to assist newborns with
breathing problems and to perform
newborn resuscitation could
reduce deaths from birth asphyxia
by about 30 percent and deaths
attributed to premature birth by up
to 10 percent. They say 500,000
lives a year might be saved.
Child Mortality
Rates Rise in Africa
NAIROBI, Kenya—Ten African
countries have halved their poverty
rates over the last two
decades, but child mortality rates
have increased in six sub-Saharan
nations, a report on the United
Nations’ Millennium Development
Goals released June 22 said,
according to the Associated Press.
The countries that halved their
poverty rates since 1990 include
Ethiopia and Egypt as well as
post-conflict Angola. However, in
Nigeria and Zimbabwe, the proportion
of the population living in
extreme poverty has risen.
Sub-Saharan Africa was the
only region in the world with
increased under age 5 mortality,
which has risen in Cameroon, the
Central African Republic, Chad,
Congo, Kenya, and Zambia.
Thirty-four of the world’s 36
countries with child mortality
rates above 100 per 1,000 births
are in sub-Saharan Africa. The
others are Afghanistan and
Myanmar.
The Millennium Development
Goals Report Card, which was
sponsored in part by the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation, was
released to coincide with meetings
of G-8 and G-20 countries in
Canada June 26.
Buffett, Gates Press
Billionaires to Donate
Warren Buffett and Bill Gates
are pressing fellow billionaires
to commit at least half their
wealth to charity.
Buffett and Gates started a
drive called “The Giving Pledge”
to encourage high-profile philanthropic
promises, according to
the initiative’s website, Bloomberg
reported June 16.
A pledge of the majority of an
individual’s fortune is “an understandable
and quite reachable
bar for the wealthiest—many
will exceed it,” according to a
document posted on the website.
Buffett, the world’s third-richest
person and chairman of Berkshire
Hathaway Inc., has pledged
more than 99 percent of his wealth
to philanthropy. The greatest part
of his fortune, estimated in March
at $47 billion by Forbes magazine,
is given in annual installments to
the Gates Foundation.
“Bill and Melinda Gates and
I are asking hundreds of rich
Americans to pledge at least 50
percent of their wealth to charity,”
Buffett wrote in a pledge on
Fortune’s website.
Buffett said 1 percent of his
wealth is enough for him and his
family, and “neither our happiness
nor our well-being would
be enhanced” by keeping more.
Buffet seeks about $600 billion
in commitments, Fortune said,
based on the calculation of half
of the $1.2 trillion in net worth
of the 400 richest individuals
compiled by Forbes magazine.
“It would easily double or triple
the amount of philanthropy in
America,” said Melissa Berman,
president of Rockefeller Philanthropy
Advisors, a non-profit
organization that has advised the
Gates Foundation on “The Giving
Pledge” initiative.
Zambia AIDS Funds
Blocked
The Global Fund to Fight
AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria
said it had blocked the disbursement
of $137 million to the
Zambian Ministry of Health
since August after finding evidence
of spending the ministry
could not account for, the New
York Times reported June 17.
The fund, a major international
donor, concluded that
the ministry was “not able to
safely manage grants” and
demanded the return of $8 million.
The fund’s statement,
confirming a Reuters report,
is likely to heighten concerns
that government corruption
is deepening. The United
Nations Development Program
will take over management of
grants originally provided to
the ministry, the fund said.
USAID, Agriculture
to Start Borlaug
Fund
Secretary of State Hillary
Rodham Clinton announced
the creation of the Norman
Borlaug Commemorative
Research Initiative, the Voice
of America reported June 30.
The initiative is a cooperative
venture of USAID and the
Department of Agriculture.
The two agencies will combine
their resources, knowledge,
commitment, and expertise to
work together to reduce hunger
and poverty.
To pay for the initiative,
the Department of State has
requested a nearly 50 percent
increase in funding for international
agricultural research in
2011.
Already, U.S. scientists are
partnering with counterparts in
other countries to develop technologies
such as drought and
disease-resistant seeds of staple
crops and rice that will flourish
even when submerged in water,
or conversely, rice that keeps
growing through long droughts.
The new initiative bears the
name of Norman Borlaug, the
U.S. agronomist and Nobel Prize
laureate who is considered to be
the father of the Green Revolution.
His work saved over a billion
people from starvation.
From news reports and other
sources.
★
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