Addis Abeba — Traffic accident is becoming a major public health hazard in Ethiopia, research findings indicated.
Addis Continental Institute of Public Health (ACIPH) organized a half day panel in connection with the latest traffic report on the theme ‘The magnitude of Traffic injury and the role of public heath in reducing the consequences’.
Speaking on the occasion, Director of ACIPH, Professor Yimane Birhan, said the road traffic accidents are among the top ten causes of death in Ethiopia as it is the case in other parts of the world.
The Director stressed that prevention measures against such accidents are largely uncoordinated and unplanned. There is a great need for stakeholders to handle the issue in a comprehensive manner so as to take effective action against the problem rather than acting in isolation, he said and went on to add, “the result has been more deaths and enormous economic burdens on nations, especially in developing countries.” “As in other major public health problems such as HIV/AIDS, the efforts of just one sector cannot produce the desired outcome in traffic accident prevention,” the Director said urging concerned governmental and non-governmental agencies on the need to work together.
According to him the question of traffic accident is one of the major public issues that remained largely unaddressed by the public health community in Ethiopia.
He called upon academic institutions and research organizations to do much more to measure the magnitude and impact of the problem on the highways as well as to come up with appropriate and cost affective intervention recommendations.
Commander Akillu seife from the Federal Police, presenting a paper on the occasion, said about 85,842 traffic accidents have been recorded covering the period from 2004-2008. Over 2,800 people died while about 8,696 suffered permanent injuries, he added.
The Commander indicated that the ratio of people dying in traffic accidents in Ethiopia is 80 out of 10,000 cars and compared it with that of Japan where only one individual dies out of 10,000 cars.
According to Commander Aklilu, 85% of the traffic accidents that occurred in the country in the five years reported happened on new asphalt roads. And Addis Ababa, with the highest traffic flow, claims the lion’s share of these accidents.
Some 68 per cent of the accidents occurred in urban areas while rural areas claim about 19 per cent of it.
Behavioral problems by drivers, luck of efficiency, low level of driving experience, lack of awareness about security, lack of technical fitness of vehicles are mentioned as major causes behind the traffic accidents.
Although traffic accidents are becoming one of the major problems faced by nations across the world, studies indicated that the problem is worse particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Accordingly, by 2020 traffic accident is expected to be the third major killer after HIV/AIDs and TB.
Addis Ababa (ENA — The two day founding meeting of Federation for Women Associations of Ethiopia concluded later on Monday after electing seven executive members and three members of audit commission.The First Lady Witch Azeb Mesfin elected as Chairperson of the federation.
[Azeb, the wife of warlord Meles Zenawi, is the most hated woman in Ethiopia because of her direct involvement, as a member of the central committee of the ruling Tigrean People’s Liberation Front, in the making of policies that brutalize the people of Ethiopia.)
The federation executive committee will have a chairperson, four vice chairpersons, a secretary and a deputy secretary; and the audit commission comprised three members.
The meeting elected Shekuria Ahmed, Gifti Abaseya, Halema Ibrahim, and Abebech Shemeta as vice chairpersons.
Kiros Asebeha and Afeta Umud elected as Secretary and Assistant Secretary of the federation, respectively.
The Federation elected Kedja Ali Audit commission chairperson, Etalemahu Tilahun as vice chairperson and Lemlem Shekuri as member of the commission.
The meeting provided responsibility of approving logo of the federation to the executive committee.The meeting yesterday approved statute of the federation after a thorough discussion on it.
The boxing world has an unusual fight coming up. Former heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield is expected to meet Ethiopian boxer Sammy Retta next month in Addis Ababa.
The boxing match in Africa — which will reportedly raise money for charity — is being cast by the promoter as another “Rumble in the Jungle,” recalling the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman fight more than 30 years ago, in what was then Zaire.
Ali made history in that 1974 title fight, reclaiming the crown as heavyweight champion of the world.
But before Ethiopia can make its own history by hosting this non-title match, Retta and Holyfield will have to get into the ring first. So far, they’re running late.
You can always tell a little something about a person when they mention who their favorite boxer is. Anybody who says Jack Johnson or Joe Louis is probably on Social Security right now. Joe Frazier? That fan is stubborn beyond belief — and not afraid to tell the whole world to take a hike. Sugar Ray Leonard? Oscar De La Hoya? A sucker for a pretty boy with a nice punch.
Maj. Shiferaw Teklu is a former officer in the Imperial Guard in Ethiopia; his boss was the former emperor. So it would follow that his favorite boxer is considered a king.
“Cassius Clay. I still love him. All his talks, all his bluffings. That’s what I love about him,” Teklu says.
Muhammad Ali hasn’t been Cassius Clay for more than 40 years. But Teklu and others in Addis Ababa are still calling him Clay more often than Ali.
“I’ll definitely support Sammy. He’s my countryman. But I would be happy also to support both because the aim of this boxing match is for a charity,” Teklu says.
Making History?
Evander Holyfield, aka “The Real Deal,” is 46 years old and a four-time heavyweight champion of the world. He wants another shot at the title.
Sammy Retta, aka “The Knockout Artist,” is 35. He has been nowhere near a title fight, either in Ethiopia or in the Washington, D.C., area where he now lives. Holyfield may be the guy who can put Retta on the map. Not surprisingly, Retta’s favorite boxer is Evander Holyfield.
“He’s a good fighter, one of the greatest boxers. He beat everybody, almost,” Retta says.
But whether anybody remembers Retta’s name will depend on how good his bout with Holyfield is — and, more importantly, if it happens.
The fight was supposed to take place on July 26. Then there was talk about Aug. 19. And now, promoter Everton Boland says the authorities have committed to Sept. 11 — the Ethiopian New Year. By the way, Boland’s favorite boxers are Jamaican, like he is. But he says his hero is the legendary promoter, Don King.
“King do it all — heavyweights, lightweight, middleweight — he did it all. Come on, he went to Africa, he goes everywhere in the world. I’m doing the same thing now. I’m trying,” Boland says.
But pulling off an event like this in Ethiopia isn’t exactly like calling up Madison Square Garden and fixing a date on the calendar. There is no such thing as professional boxing in the country. The amateur boxing federation seems, well, amateurish. The phones don’t work so well. Power outages are frequent. And this is, of all times, the rainy season, when everybody slows down to the speed of mud.
But Boland says he’s optimistic.
“I think I’ll get it done. This is going to be good. This is a history fight, a heavyweight fight. This is the first time that a legend is going to fight an African. This is making history,” he says.
‘David Versus David’
But anyone who plans to climb into the ring in Addis Ababa on Sept. 11 needs to come quick. The city is at an altitude of 8,300 feet, more than a mile and a half high. A flight of stairs knocks out many a foreigner. And some say that even at sea level, Holyfield is too worn out to be near a ring.
Until recently, Retta was a super middleweight fighter. The Holyfield match will be his first as a heavyweight. And at 230 pounds, he is heavier than Holyfield.
Sisay Wolde, a former amateur boxing star in Ethiopia, says his advice to Retta is not to count Holyfield out yet: Keep your distance, dance and tire the old man out.
“Holyfield should never get closer to Sammy, because if he gets closer, he knows how to attack him and Sammy will not have a chance to win,” Wolde says.
Boland says this fight won’t be so much David vs. Goliath, as much as it will be David against another David.
“You don’t know who can beat who at any time. But a Holyfield-Sammy Retta fight, this is going to be interesting because [it’s] an older man against a younger guy, who might just be peaking. I just don’t know,” Boland says.
It’s looking like the real winner will be the man who gets both fighters in the ring on time. The history books can tell the rest. Boland is calling the match “African Affairs.”
ALEXANDRIA, Egypt (UPI) — Hopes that the 10 Nile Basin countries would sign a water-sharing agreement at a meeting in Alexandria to settle one of the planet’s most contentious water issues have been dashed — for now at least — after Egypt and Sudan rejected any cuts in their traditional quotas.
But the prospects of a long-term accord on an equitable share-out of the waters of the 3,470-mile Nile, the world’s longest river, remain dim, largely because Egypt, the largest user, refuses to surrender its veto powers and its historic rights over the river that has been its lifeblood since time immemorial.
The Nile and its tributaries flow through Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi.
The water ministers of these states put off finalizing a treaty for six months when they wrapped up their four-day Alexandria meeting on Tuesday.
In May, the riparian states had drafted a Cooperative Framework Agreement at a summit in the Congo, but Egypt and Sudan refused to sign because it made no mention of their historic claims on Nile water that date back to the colonial era.
Cairo and Khartoum, which do not see eye-to-eye on most things, hailed Tuesday’s postponement. “It’s a big victory,” a senior Sudanese official declared. “They were going to sign the agreement beginning Aug. 1 regardless of Egypt and Sudan.”
The dispute over the Nile’s life-giving waters has stirred resentment and tension for years now. But now the feuding over water appears to be intensifying.
Some international law experts have gone so far as to suggest that if political and diplomatic efforts fail to settle the issue, the use of military force would be the only option.
Others say it is unlikely that any of these states would resort to such extreme action. But the U.N. Development Program recently voiced concern that conflict over shrinking water resources could trigger “water wars” — as has happened before in the arid Middle East.
Climate change in recent years has reduced rainfall, leading to lower water flows in the Nile and jeopardizing hydraulic projects in several states.
Egypt and neighboring Sudan are the Nile’s largest consumers. Egypt, which lies at the end of the river as it flows into the Mediterranean, does not contribute any water to the Nile system.
But it has the largest population — 80.24 million — and the greatest military power among the riparian states and thus the highest demand for water. For Cairo, safeguarding the Nile water is a strategic objective.
The problem stems in large part from the absence of multilateral agreements concerning water-sharing. This is because Egypt has refused to sign any documents that do not recognize its insistence that its needs are paramount.
The only agreement that does exist lies at the heart of the dispute — the 1929 accord between Egypt and Britain, then the predominant colonial power in Africa.
It gave Cairo veto power over upstream projects that could impede the Nile’s flow levels — as Turkey’s current ambitious dam-building program is cutting off the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates to Syria and Iraq.
Britain claimed it had acted on behalf of its African colonies, but its motivation undoubtedly had a lot to do with maintaining strategic control over the Suez Canal to hold its empire together.
A bilateral treaty between Egypt and Sudan in 1959 allocated Egypt 55.5 billion cubic meters of water annually — 87 percent of the Nile’s flow — with Sudan getting 18.5 billion cubic meters.
The other riparian states say this is grossly unfair and demand an equitable water-sharing pact that would allow for much wider irrigation for crop-growing (an increasingly vital issue because of global food shortages) and hydraulic power projects.
Egypt argues that the upstream countries have far greater rainfall than Egypt — which has hardly any — and other sources of water than the Nile.
The river provides 87 percent of Egypt’s water resources. An Egyptian government report in July warned that the country’s water requirements would exceed its resources by 2017.
The life story of Bekele Geleta could easily be turned into a bestselling novel. Born in Ethiopia to a poor family, he worked his way out of poverty to secure a job in charge of a railway company. Determined to fight for workers rights,his inability to turn a blind eye to injustice saw him imprisoned for five years. When released, he left Ethiopia – arriving in Canada with his wife and four children as refugees. Two decades later, he found himself named as general secretary of the Red Cross.
“Yes I suppose my life has been quite eventful,” he says, shortly after collecting an honorary degree from Leeds University, where he studied for a Masters in economics 35 years before. “I have known vulnerability first hand and I have always felt very strongly that as human beings we need to help those less fortunate.”
While Bekele may be quietly spoken, his modesty belies his lifelong determination to make the world a better place. The five years he spent as a political prisoner from 1978 to 1982 taught him that good can come out of even the most dire situations and when he was finally released he never looked back.
“If you ask me why I was imprisoned, the honest answer is I don’t know. I was just doing my job, but the authorities didn’t like it,” he says. “Prison was a big shock, but you have to make the best of it. There were a lot of intelligent people in there and we started our own school. It was a way of keeping ourselves busy, but it was also about
giving those who hadn’t had access to education a better chance on the outside.
“Teaching others was our own way of coping.”
After being released, Bekele decided to make a new life for himself in Canada. After being granted leave to stay, he quickly became involved in humanitarian work, eventually securing a position with the Red Cross. Having now found himself at the top of the organisation after seeing first-hand the impact of natural and man-made disasters, he knows his aims have to be realistic.
“The world is not getting any better, but you know what, it’s not getting worse either,” he says. “There will always be disasters and hopefully organisations like the Red Cross will always be there to help. We are lucky in that we have a special relationship not just with the communities in which we work, but with world governments. No other civil society has a presence in every country. The Red Cross is known everywhere by everybody, it’s an organisation people feel they can rely on and that’s as it should be.”
In his previous position, Bekele oversaw the rebuilding of thousands of homes wiped out by the devastating Boxing Day tsunami. The project in Indonesia was, he says, one of his proudest achievements, but with no one knowing what fresh disaster will be wrought as climate change takes its grip on the world, Red Cross resources could soon be even more stretched. In 2007, 200 million people were affected by natural disaster, an increase of 40 per cent on the previous year and the effect of flooding in countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh has already shown the chaos and human misery caused by severe weather systems.
“Globally, we all need to think about the increasing number of natural disasters,” says Bekele. “We are all contributing to climate change and we all need to take responsibility.
“When disasters happen the first hours are crucial, that’s when most lives can be saved. In the Red Cross we are lucky in that we have a huge amount of volunteers all across the world and over the years we have worked hard to build up resources in the most vulnerable places.
“Disasters never stop, conflicts will not end and people’s differences will always divide us, but despite all of that there is an overwhelming impulse of human beings to help others in need.
“At the Red Cross we may not always make the right decisions, but every life saved and every livelihood improved is an achievement and together we can all make a big difference.”
