Source:

04/09/08 - Executive Mansion

London –

resident Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has told a conference on Women’s Health in London, that Liberia welcomes any assistance by individuals and institutions, willing to provide short-term volunteer services in all medical areas, especially in maternal and child health care. The President said Liberia needs physicians and nurses, pharmaceuticals, drugs and supplies, as well as basic diagnostic equipment. In many instances, the Liberian leader noted, ‘our need such as in medical equipment, represent your waste.’

Delivering the keynote address Monday at a 2-day Women’s Health Conference, held at the Queen Elizabeth ll Conference Centre in London, President Johnson Sirleaf spoke of progress in the health sector of the country, in spite of the awesome challenges of overall post conflict reconstruction in the sector.

Recounting the moderate achievements in the health sector of the country, an Executive Mansion dispatch quotes the President as speaking of the commencement of a vigorous program of rehabilitating the country’s hospitals and health centres throughout the country, equipping them to provide services for women, both during pregnancy and child birth, and providing medical equipment and supplies to four of Liberia’s rural regions.

In general, the President informed the Conference,  that her government has concentrated on four key areas, which include policy and planning; health infrastructure rehabilitation; human resource development; health care services delivery, health care strengthening and administration and resource mobilization.

In the area of policy and planning, the Liberian leader said, government has formulated a National Policy and developed a National Health Development Plan that incorporates the care values and key program priorities of improving the country’s health infrastructure, human resources development, primary healthcare, including maternal and infant mortality and fistula management, health support system, monitoring, evaluation and health financing.

“We have developed and adopted a Strategic Plan on national Reproductive Health, a National Health Promotion Policy and five-year plan, including a National Orphanage Guidelines.

In improving infrastructure, we aim at operationalizing some 550 health facilities as compared with the current 354. However, more needs to be done as we continue to face challenges in reversing the high maternal mortality and morbidity in Liberia.

Our human resource development goals seek to train doctors and nurses, and health care workers at improved national training institutions. We ask them to make the sacrifice of service, but we know that we need to compensate them commensurate with the sacrifice we require of them,” the President indicated.

She also spoke of the need to make the country’s health facilities accessible to all citizens at a cost that they can afford. “Our citizens should not have to choose between dying and receiving medical care.”

With barely seven years left to the 2015 benchmark date of the Millennium Development Goals, President Johnson Sirleaf said, her government’s aim is to reduce maternal mortality by 75 percent;  “commit ourselves to create the environment at all levels of our national health system to support and promote maternal and neonatal health; provide professionals for all of our rural health services at all levels of our health delivery system; make quality health care services available and accessible to all pregnant women; build relationships across our national health system to enhance networking among communities throughout the country and improve healthcare delivery to all women.”

As delegates gathered to examine ways of improving maternal health, the President emphasized, “we must match our works and enthusiasm with concrete actions.  Improving maternal health and achieving the rest of the Millenniums Development Goals may elude us if we, both weak and strong nations, do not collaborate to rescue the most important pillars of our human society: Our mothers, our sisters, our daughters, our nieces. In the developing world, their very survival is threatened and we need to take action to save them.”

In the past two years, the Liberian leader noted, government has undertaken a number of concrete steps to deal with a debilitating health problem with continues to confront women during child birth. With the assistance of expatriate volunteer doctors from the hospital, Mercy Ships, she disclosed, 351 women have undertaken surgery for fistulae conditions with an estimates success rate of 95 percent. A Fistula Unit has been established at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Medical Center, the main public teaching and referral hospital in the Capital, Monrovia. JFK was itself affected by the 14-year crisis and has begun a slow and costly journey of recovery with the restoration of essential medical services.

Additionally, the President said, a fistulae management and care has been integrated as part of the core curricula for medical and nursing institutions operated by the JFK Hospital.  Since fistula surgery began in late 2006, approximately 400 cases have been treated at the hospital and in its outreach program. The success rate is 98 percent. Fistula management is gradually being introduced as part of the reproductive health services in all secondary health facilities throughout the country.

The Liberian leader applauded the contribution of philanthropist Ann Gloag and the Gloag Foundation of Scotland who contribute to Mercy Ships and have agreed to renovate a wing of the JFK hospital as dedicated space for a Fistula ward. Philanthropist Gloag and her Foundation, the President said, have played a vital role in assisting government to address some of the health care needs of the country.

Madam Gloag, who also spoke at the Women’s Health Conference, confirmed plans to renovate two floors of the JFK hospital which will provide for more than 150-beds, fifty of which she said will be dedicated to a fistula unit. The renovation, she said will be completed in November this year. The President was guest of Ms. Gloag during a one day visit to Scotland on Saturday.

The Conference held under the theme, ‘Women’s Health in the 21st Century, was also addressed by the wife of British Prime Minister, Mrs. Sarah Brown. Convened by the University College London (UCL) Institute for Women’s Health, the Conference was intended to discuss issues affecting women’s health and to advance solutions to address the problems.

Pod koniec XIX wieku przybyli z Ameryki i Karaibów Murzyni (nazywali siebie Amerykanoliberyjczykami) toczyli walki z ludnością tubylczą. Oni, ex-niewolnicy, wyzwoleni przez litość, pracę, gotówkę, wojnę lub ucieczką, znający ból pracy pod batem - gnębią odwiecznych mieszkańców terenów, które oni nazwali Liberią (Liber – z łac.wolny).

Wtedy już Amerykanoliberyjczycy stanowili elitę w swoim kraju będąc 5% warstwą społeczną. O wpływy w Liberii walczyły różne światowe mocarstwa, od USA poprzez Francję, Wlk.Brytanię czy Niemcy. Przez ponad sto lat krajem rządziła Prawdziwa Partia Wigów (The True Wig Party: 1878-1980). Generalnie podczas rządów tej partii sytuacja w Liberii się polepszyła. Nierówności zostały w jakimś stopniu zniwelowane, kraj się rozwijał, w porównaniu do reszty Czarnego Lądu całkiem nieźle.

W 1980 prezydent państwa został zastrzelony. I tu zaczynają się lata wojny domowej. Marionetkowe rządy, rebelianci, siły stabilizacyjne, walki o wpływy, wybory etc. Skąd my to znamy? Jednym z prowyderów krwawych walk „wyzwoleńczych” był Charles Taylor, wykształcony w USA człowiek (Bentley College k.Bostonu), który wracając do Liberii z banicji pełen był lewicowych ideałów, które chciał wprowadzać w życie. I wprowadzał.

Dalej mamy kolejne walki, kolejne powstanie, kolejne ofiary (w sumie 200 tysięcy na 3 milionową Liberię). Taylor zostaje prezydentem w wyborach ustawionych, sieje anarchię i bezprawie. W wyniku walk doprowadza stolicę do ruiny: cofa zacofaną i tak stolicę Monrowię do XVI wieku niszcząc instalacje wodociągowe i elektryczne.

Na szczęście wszystko kończy się dobrze. W 2005 roku odbywają się wybory. Jest masa żołnierzy ONZ więc uznajmy je za uczciwe. O fotel prezydencki walczy m.in. George Weah, legendarny zawodnik AC Milan, żywa legenda, uznawany za pół-boga w Liberii. Najlepszy piłkarz świata z roku 1996 dochodzi do II tury wyborów, w których przegrywa z Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (pierwszą kobietą u władzy w Afryce).

USA umarzają Liberii prawie 400 milionów dolarów długu. Liberia otrzymała pomoc także ze strony Unii Europejskiej (130 miliony Euro). Obecny dług Liberii wynosi 4 miliardy baksów.
I rośnie.

  

  

  

Ideas for a new medium are easy. It was more difficult to think of something that is doable for me and combines the values and lessons of the class -- such as serving low-end customers or nonconsumers, and putting a priority on people's "jobs to be done" and their priorities (making it easy for people to do what they want to do, in the way they want to do it), while still making it journalism (well-rounded meals).

The obvious nonconsumer market is youth. Much is already marketed to 15-35-year-olds. It's smarter to think younger.

But the same lessons can be applied to just individuals but larger markets -- such as underdeveloped countries. So I poked around and found a model for expansion, by Alfred Sirleaf, in Monrovia, Liberia. Lydia Polgreen of The New York Times wrote about him, so I wrote to her to see if she knows how I might be able to contact him. 

In the meantime, here's part of my class paper.

Chalkboard Net

            Chalkboard Net would use chalkboards to bring journalism to people who live on less than $10 a day.

            It would provide news and media service to people with little or no access to traditional mass media and telecommunications. The project would serve those handicapped by poverty, illiteracy, remote location or insufficient infrastructure.

Need

            While many people in industrialized countries suffer from information overload, there is much less available for people who need it the most, especially in failed states or war-torn countries.

            In 30 countries, there is not even one radio for every 10 people. Even if people had money, in some areas there is no newspaper or telecommunication service, or even electricity. For example, for at least 14 years in the capital of Liberia, the only electricity available has been through private generators.

            Phone lines go to only about 5 percent of the country's population. Service outside Monrovia is negligible.

            Liberia's infrastructure was destroyed during rebellion and civil war in most of the 1990s and early 2000s. The country is rich in natural resources, but much human capital has been lost. The civil wars killed about 7 percent of the population, and many businessmen fled the country.

            Broadcasters and publishers were damaged by violence and have little money to pay employees.  

Model

            Chalkboard Net would be based The Daily Talk, a chalkboard "newspaper" in Monrovia, Liberia. (New York Times story by Lydia Polgreen, at http://tinyurl.com/yqbeg9)

            The Daily Talk is produced by Alfred Sirleaf, who writes news and editorials inside a small plywood building he constructed. For people who can't read, he sets up items as symbols to illustrate the news.

            His work includes challenging the government to provide people with basics such as electricity and water.

            Like most people in Liberia, his income is minimal. He does get occasional gifts of cash or phone cards.

            Sirleaf uses several newspapers and a network of tipsters. Although he has no formal journalism training, his work irritated the government enough that he was briefly jailed and his newsstand was once torn down.

            "Daily Talk's objective is that everybody should absorb the news," he was quoted in The New York Times. "Because when a few people out there make decisions on behalf of the masses that do not go down with them, we are all going to be victims."