Last week in DC, I had the opportunity to sit down with Mercy Ahun from the GAVI Alliance Secretariat. When I first met her two years ago, she was GAVI’s Director of Program Delivery, but recently she was named GAVI’s Special Representative to GAVI-Eligible Countries. In this role, she serves as a bridge between GAVI, countries receiving GAVI support, and donors, and she works to develop customized approaches that deliver even more effective results on the ground.
ONE is really excited that in less than 1 month, Ghana will become the first country to roll out pneumococcal and rotavirus vaccines at the same time. Especially as a Ghanaian, what does this milestone mean to you?
It’s been exciting! I remember the first time I was talking to Ghana’s EPI (Extended Program on Immunization) Manager about this, and I said, are you sure you want to do this? And he said yes—we are close to achieving MDG 5 (reducing child deaths); doing this allows us to hit two birds with one stone. And when I started looking at their vaccine programs, and saw that they already had achieved high coverage levels of other vaccines, I said yes, I think the system is strong enough to do this. And I think it is important to document the process in Ghana so then others can learn from it.
I go to Ghana about six times in a year, and we have an excellent relationship not just with the EPI Manager but with other groups in the Ministry of Health and with the partners. When we’re in Ghana, you can catch the excitement. I remember that one person said to me, “It feels like the whole world is looking at us”, and to that I just think: wow.
What does a country like Ghana need to do to prepare itself for a vaccines roll out?
This is a guest post from Peter Opondo, head of news at NTV Uganda. In this piece, he uses his encounter with President Kagame to illustrate Rwanda’s changing government. This was originally posted on ONE’s Africa Blog.
They call it “Umwiherero,” literally meaning a “retreat” or a “getaway” for a private meeting in the main local language, Kinyarwanda.
As we continue to follow the devastating famine in the Horn of Africa, we turn our attention to the west of the continent, where 15 million people in parts of the Sahel region are at risk of food insecurity. Still reeling from severe food shortages in 2010, drought-prone parts of Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, Senegal, the Gambia and Mauritania require international attention as they attempt to stave off a deeper crisis.
Dry sorghum field in Burkina Faso. Sorghum is one of the main grains in the region. Farmers in the region have seen harvests fall by 14 percent in Burkina Faso and 46 percent in Mauritania. All photos credit Irina Fuhrmann/Oxfam.
Annie Calloway of the Enough Project reports on the arrest of George Clooney, rights activists and congressmen at a Sudan protest today. This piece was originally published on the Enough Project’s Enough Said blog.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — “Al-Bashir to the ICC! Al-Bashir to the ICC!” The call-and-response rang out this morning as hundreds of people marched towards the Sudanese embassy to stand in solidarity with the people of Sudan and demand that its government abandon their weapons of mass starvation.
In the culminating event for the national day of action for Sudan, actor and activist George Clooney was joined by his father, Nick Clooney, Enough Project Co-founder John Prendergast, Martin Luther King III, Omer Ismail, Sudanese Bishop Andudu Adam Elnail, Congressman Jim McGovern (D-MA), Congressman John Olver (D-MA), Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA), Congressman Al Green (D-TX), Tom Andrews of United to End Genocide, Rabbi Steve Gutow of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Ben Jealous of the NAACP, Fred Kramer of Jewish World Watch, Rabbi David Saperstein of the Religious Action Center, Ian Schwab of American Jewish World Service, and civil rights activist Dick Gregory. The group made a series of speeches, blockaded the entrance to the embassy, and were subsequently arrested in support of the people of Sudan.
Watch Enough project’s video below (WARNING: Contains some graphic scenes, viewer caution is advised).
ACT NOW: Click here to find out how you can take action with Enough.
“We’ve seen what happens when there are no witnesses”
This powerful sentence launches a startling new four-minute video from George Clooney and the Enough Project documenting their recent trip to the Sudan’s Nuba Mountains. While filming in the mountains, they witnessed rocket attacks and aerial bombardment by the Sudanese government against the Nuban people in South Kordofan.
ONE member and Peace Corps volunteer Brandon Green will be sharing his experiences in Burkina Faso with ONE Blog readers in the series, “Back to Africa” over the next few months.
The famine in East Africa is barely over and I’m sure that many of you have already heard that a food crisis is about to hit the Sahel. Burkina Faso has officially declared itself in a state of emergency. When I arrived here last year, it was right at the beginning of the rainy season, a crucial agricultural period. During this season, men, women and children are all out working their fields. Agriculture, an important part of every Burkinabe’s daily life, takes up over 90 percent of Burkina Faso’s economy. Almost every Burkinabe family relies on their fields, to feed their families. Even though to me it seemed as if it was constantly raining, it was nowhere near enough. Corn that was supposed to be taller than me only came to my shoulders.
Toward the end of the harvest season I went over to my friend’s house for lunch. As we were talking, I noticed his wife looking over a heap of millet. They told me this was what they had harvested this year. I, of course, ignorantly congratulated them on the amount. My friend turned to me, a look of fear on his face, and told me they usually get ten times that much at least. He is responsible for six children and he’s rightfully worried about how he is going to feed them over the next few months.
Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 campaign — a campaign to bring indicted war criminal and Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) Joseph Kony to justice — struck a chord this week to the tune of more than 63m YouTube video views with more than 500,000 comments and an additional 14m Vimeo views (as of this posting). Invisible Children’s Facebook page has grown to almost 3 million likes, the Twitter hashtag #kony2012 is off the charts, and thousands of article references in Google News searches.
Invisible Children’s campaign has been hailed as both brilliant and inspiring and has been criticized as being oversimplistic, with some arguing that the campaign doesn’t dive into some of the most pressing issues around the LRA, including the need for real economic development in northern Uganda if the horrors of the LRA’s atrocities are truly to be consigned to history. But there’s no doubt that the campaign has brought the story of the LRA to enormous audiences that had never heard Kony’s name before. And Invisible Children has responded to criticisms of their campaign video on their blog with a thoughtful and credible response.
For a deeper examination into the LRA, the International Crisis Group offered a compelling analysis of the Lord’s Resistance Army titled, “LRA: A Regional Strategy beyond Killing Kony”. In their 2010 analysis, the ICG recommended “a regional problem that requires a regional solution” and suggested a strategy that covers civilian protection and national ownership for what they term as a “twenty-year-old cancer.” Learn more on ICG’s website.
You can also read more from Washington Post columnist and Senior ONE Adviser Michael Gerson’s latest piece titled “The controversy over Kony 2012.”
Right now, some of the world's biggest oil companies are fighting to keep some of their deals with foreign governments secret. Let's tell big oil we won't be bullied.
Cuts to poverty-fighting programs won't balance the budget, but they will set back progress on Canada's development priorities and risk jeopardizing existing investments.
2011 marks 30 years since the first cases of AIDS were documented. Take a closer look at the specific, achievable goals we must hit by 2015 to make this year the beginning of the end of AIDS.
