Green building unveiled in Kenya

By.Thomas Ochieng API Kenya

In marking its 100th  years of banking in Kenya,Standard Chartered Bank Kenya has inaugurated a Ksh 3.3 billion state-of-the-art headquarters in, Nairobi.  The new building, which has taken three years to be completed, is the first environmental friendly building in Kenya to serve as the shared service center hub supporting the banks technology operations in Uganda,Tanzania,Zambia,Botswana and South Africa.
 
While officially launching the building the Standard charted group chairman Mr. John Peace lauded the local management team and the staff for the adherence to the green friendly policy of the Standard charted Plc Global Office Workplace Standards which are a clearly defined set of standards for all the Group’s  new buildings worldwide. “Today we are very proud to witness the completion of this environmental friendly building that caters for our today’s needs but also takes care of tomorrow” Said the Chairman. He also retariated the banks commitment towards charity by reassuring the banks longtime commitment towards aiding the handicapped in Kenya.” We have continued to support the yearly standard charted marathon that aids eye operations in this country, and last year we collected Ksh.60 million for the event” retariated Mr. Peace.  

 Mr. Wilfred Kiboro, Chairman Standard Chartered Bank Kenya said the bank was committed to building a sustainable business over the long-term and is trusted worldwide for upholding high standards of corporate governance, social responsibility, environmental protection and employee diversity. “We are proud to be associated with the economic and social development of this great nation for the last century. A market where we have been an integral part of the local economy since our entry, and one to which we remain completely committed,” said Mr. Kiboro

The Bank has an excellent franchise in Kenya and currently has 33 branches and 84 Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) strategically located across the country and employs over 1,600 staff.

Ends.

Children who received the vaccine are monitored for malaria

AFRICA: Malaria vaccine could have extra benefits

Photo: SAHIMS

Children who received the vaccine are monitored for malaria

LILONGWE, 20 June 2011 (IRIN) – The malaria vaccine that has eluded medical science for decades is now within reach, with the final phase of clinical trials underway in seven African countries, including Malawi, where the disease claims 6,500 lives a year, most of them children under the age of five.

Tisungane Mvalo, head of the research team at the Malawian trial site, which is being run in partnership with the University of North Carolina’s Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases, said the current methods for controlling the incidence of malaria in Malawi have had limited success.

“We have had a moderate reduction in infant mortality from interventions like bed nets and insecticides but malaria remains the leading cause of infant mortality,” he said. “There still needs to be an additional intervention.”

The multi-country trial of the malaria vaccine RTS,S, made by GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals, is one of the largest ever carried out in sub-Saharan Africa. With funding from GlaxoSmithKline and the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative – an NGO that develops research for malaria – 15,000 newborns and infants are being inoculated at 11 sites across the region.

The children are then monitored over a period of 36 months to assess the effectiveness of RTS,S, which in previous studies reduced cases of severe malaria in infants by 53 percent. If the results, due to be released later this, year confirm the vaccine’s efficacy in preventing malaria, it could be made available as early as 2015.

“It’s a very exciting time,” said PATH Director Dr Christian Loucq, speaking from his office in Washington. “We have estimated in our models that a vaccine like this could save hundreds of thousands of lives a year.”

The high cost of malaria

A malaria vaccine would not only save lives, it would also alleviate the great burden of the disease on health systems in economically stretched developing countries.

Dr Karl Seydel, a paediatrician at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre, Malawi, said the impact of the disease on the public health system was “overwhelming” – 5.5 million cases of malaria, equivalent to a third of the country’s population, were reported in 2010.

“It drains the resources,” he told IRIN. “We could use that money for other things; we could build more hospitals or hire more nurses.”

We have estimated…that a vaccine like this could save hundreds of thousands of lives a year

He estimated that during the rainy season, when bites from mosquitoes infected with the malaria parasite are most common, about half of all admissions to the hospital’s paediatric ward were due to malaria. The ward was designed for 150 patients but often has to accommodate twice that number.

Malawi has a good track record for immunizing children: 98 percent have received the standard vaccines recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). The addition of a malaria vaccine, even at 50 percent effectiveness, could greatly reduce the number of children needing expensive hospital care.

Malaria prevention has been less successful than was hoped. According to the 2010 Malawi Demographic and Health Survey, about 70 percent of households have bed nets, but just half the children under five are using them.

Mvalo said the adults in a household often used the nets, even though children are most susceptible to developing severe malaria. In some parts of the country mosquitoes have also started showing resistance to insecticides.

“Each control method has its shortfalls,” Mvalo said. “That is why a vaccine is a good alternative – not a replacement, but a good alternative.”

Most researchers agree that a malaria vaccine will not substitute for current preventative measures, but could greatly reduce mortality from the disease and create huge financial gains for countries where malaria is endemic. Public health researchers estimate that in such countries, malaria directly absorbs one percent of GDP, excluding indirect costs like loss of work hours.

“Solving the problem of malaria would very much help in terms of economic development,” said Loucq.

md/ks/he source www.irinnews.org

Five-year project to benefit OVC

Photo: Kate Holt/IRIN

Households caring for orphans are often forced to sell land and domestic animals to feed their families

ADDIS ABABA, 16 June 2011 (PlusNews) – Kokobe Abate is a widow struggling to raise her daughter Almaz in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. The death of her husband hit the family hard, but he had given up on life long before he died.

“Even before he passed away, he had stopped providing for us,” Kokobe said. “He couldn’t bear the idea of living with HIV. I think the guilt is what killed him – after we found out our HIV status he started drinking.”

She says the only thing that kept them from joining thousands of families living on Addis Ababa’s streets were handouts from neighbours and a ‘keble house’, a state-owned, subsidised home that her husband left behind, for which she pays 18 Birr (about US$1) per month.

“I tried to do everything out there – washing clothes for people, selling bread, and ‘injera’ [Ethiopian flat bread], and even opened a ‘gulit’ [small vegetable shop] in front of my home but I hardly made enough money even to eat a good meal once a day.”

Kokobe’s luck began to change in September 2010, when she and 13 other unemployed people in her neighbourhood were selected to work in a nearby parking lot, issuing tickets to motorists. She now takes home about 700 Birr (about $41.50) every month.

“I make money now; whether it is enough or not is another thing, but I have a regular income,” she said. “[I can buy] exercise books, uniforms, shoes and most importantly, food for both of us, and also [pay for] power and water.”

Kokobe was fortunate to find work. Millions of Ethiopians caring for orphans in an economy where annual inflation topped 34 percent in May are forced to sell their property or send young children out to beg.

Now, a new $100 million project aims to assist thousands of families caring for orphans by providing safety nets for an estimated 500,000 Ethiopian children affected by HIV/AIDS every year for the next five years.

Officially launched in May, the project is financed by the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and will be implemented by the US Agency for International Development and its partners, including the UN Children’s Fund, an international NGO, Pact, and 50 local NGOs.

Official figures estimate there are 5.5 million orphans in Ethiopia, or almost 15 percent of the country’s children. About 800,000 of the orphans have lost one or both parents to AIDS-related illnesses.

According to a 2010 study [ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21073083 ] of 334 households caring for orphans in Ethiopia’s Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region, at least 22 percent of orphans had a history of involvement in child labour, and households caring for orphans often had to sell land, household equipment and domestic animals to feed their families.

We know that this money isn’t adequate to cover… all the needs of the children, but we know that something is better than nothing

“This programme is expected to provide several service areas: nutrition, health, education, psychological support, legal support, shelter and so on,” Walelign Mehretu, the USAID Ethiopia orphans and vulnerable children programme advisor, told IRIN/PlusNews.

The programme will also build the capacity of the Ethiopian government to use improved data management systems, and a national monitoring system for orphans and vulnerable children.

Walelign noted that the average of $200 per child over the five years would not be enough to support all the needs of the targeted orphans.

“One child may only need education materials, which is an expense of once a year so the money could be adequate… of course, some children may need all the services; in that case, what the programme is anticipating is to mobilize the community and to have some other source of resources,” he said.

“The problem of orphans and vulnerable children is severe and we know that this money isn’t adequate to cover all the expense and all the needs of the children,” Walelign commented. “But we know that something is better than nothing.”

kt/kr/he source www.irinnews.org