News Africa Extended

News Africa Extended

47 African countries adopt plan to fight malaria

Posted: 22 Aug 2016 11:55 PM PDT

All 47 African member states of the World Health Organisation have adopted a new framework on how to deal with malaria.

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United Nations - All 47 African member states of the World Health Organisation (WHO) adopted a new framework on how to deal with malaria on the continent, which still accounts for more than 90 percent of global malaria deaths in 2015, a UN spokesman told reporters here Monday.

"They agreed on specific interventions and actions to reach the goal of a malaria-free Africa," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here.

Although previous programs have reduced malaria deaths in Africa by 66 percent since the year 2000, the continent still bears the biggest malaria burden, Dujarric said.

The disease struck 190 million people on the continent in 2015 alone, and caused 400,000 deaths, he added. In addition, more than 800 million people in Africa are still at risk of malaria.

In line with the Sustainable Development Goals, WHO aims to eliminate the epidemic from the African continent by 2030, a target that would require an estimated US$66 billion to achieve.

Some of the main challenges to tackle malaria include gaps in access to available prevention methods, the limited number of interventions available and increasing resistance to medicines and insecticides.

At the same time, weak health systems present a very high risk to malaria control and elimination. During the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, malaria control gains were lost in the severely affected countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Xinhua

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Namibian Spreme Court abolishes adultery law

Posted: 22 Aug 2016 07:03 AM PDT

Namibians who commit adultery with married people are no longer be at risk of being sued for damages, the Supreme Court has ruled.

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Gaborone - Namibians who commit adultery with married people are no longer be at risk of being sued for damages by aggrieved parties to the marriages they interfered with as third parties, the Supreme Court has ruled.

Delivering judgement in a case in which a husband was demanding N$100 000 in adultery damages from a man who allegedly slept with his wife, Namibian Supreme Court judge Dave Smuts abolished the legal grounds for adultery claims saying they were based on outdated Namibian morals and values which considered wives to be the property of their husbands.

“An examination of the origin of the action (demanding compensation for adultery) and its development reveals that it is fundamentally inconsistent with our constitutional values of equality in marriage, human dignity and privacy.

“That examination also demonstrates that the action has also lost its social and moral sub-stratum, and is therefore no longer sustainable,” Smuts ruled.

He said the court also found that grounds for adultery compensation claims were based on an archaic English legal action called “criminal conversation”, which the English courts abolished in 1970.

He said adultery claims were rooted in the “antiquated notion” that a husband enjoyed property rights over his wife, which could be interpreted as viewing wives as mere chattels and “service providers” for their male counterparts.

Smuts noted that several other countries which had inherited the adultery law from English law had long since abolished it. These include South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Scotland and Canada.

Further, Smuts said while the right to marry and found a family was a fundamental value of the Namibian Constitution, any legal action based on adultery could not protect any marriages since it did not strengthen the weakened or breathe life into disintegrating ones. He noted that in most cases, adultery resulted from, and was therefore not a cause for, the break-up of unhappy marriages.

African News Agency

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