Kate - WAHA International

Date : May 14, 2010 17:41

At WAHA International, we believe that midwives could play a much greater role than at present to improve maternal and neonatal health and help move us much closer to achieving MDGs 4 & 5.

WAHA International works in collaboration with local partners, including university teaching hospitals and health professionals associations, to implement fistula treatment and care projects in Africa and Asia. Over the last 12 months, we have provided surgeons, conducted training, and donated equipment and materials to hospitals in Kenya, Cameroon, Senegal, Tanzania, Zambia, Somaliland, Ethiopia and Nigeria. In the coming two months, we'll also be operating in Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Eritrea. (Details of our projects can be seen on http://www.waha-international.org and www.facebook.com/waha-international)

As well as training surgeons to treat fistula, we believe that it is essential to put more focus on fistula prevention, if we are to achieve the dream of eliminating obstetric fistula in the future.

Midwives can play a major role here, by promoting access to emergency obstetric care and by encouraging early diagnosis and referral to fistula treatment where it is available. Midwives could have a potentially huge impact on reducing the number of new cases each year by encouraging the systematic use of Foley catheters when a new case of fistula occurs.

Data from one of the world's most experienced fistula surgeons, Dr Kees Waaldjik, at the Nigerian National Fistula Treatment Project (supported by WAHA) and President of the International Society of Fistula Surgeons has shown that the use of catheters after the initial onset of fistula can cure an astounding 25% of all new cases, without the need for complicated, expensive and largely unavailable surgical treatment!

This simple intervention that can be implemented by midwives could have a major impact in the reducing the burden of fistula worldwide if it was more widely adopted.

We'll be posting daily updates from the conference on our website as it gets underway. http://www.waha-international.org

Naguib

Date : November 4, 2009 22:10

Bonjour à tous,

Je souhaiterai intervenir sur le commentaire de Youssou n'Dour. Et je suis absolument d'accord, je dirai même plus que la culture est essentielle au bon développement. La culture c'est avant tout de la curiosité, de l'ouverture d'esprit, de la découverte, c'est ce travail intellectuel qui permet au gens de se réveiller, de mettre en marche sa créativité. La coupe de monde 2010 en Afrique du Sud, est un événement historique et culturel sans précédent, pour ce pays. Plus les gens auront accès à la culture, plus ils auront envie de s'impliquer dans le monde.
Mon raisonnement est peut-être pueril car je ne suis pas professionnel mais c'était sincère :)

Merci

Gabrielle Pfeiffer

Date : October 29, 2009 15:51

Documentary film on Ryszard Kapuscinski

I understand you are organizing a series of lectures which are linked to the writings of Ryszard Kapuscinski.

I am an independent filmmaker who has made a 1-hour documentary on Kapuscinski, which was been screened and broadcast around the world. I would like to bring this film to your attention with the hope that you may be interested in screening it at your upcoming programs, or that any of your participants may be interested in seeing it individually.

You can watch a brief excerpt from the film on youtube at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHPq5p50y94

and you can find out further information about the film, which I shot with Kapuscinski in 5 countries, at this website:

www.kapuscinskithemovie.com

and you can find out more about me and my work at:

www.gabriellepfeiffer.com

I would be thrilled if your participants would be interested in seeing my film.

Thank you for your kind attention. I wish you great success with this forum.

Gabrielle Pfeiffer
documentary filmmaker

Marie

Date : October 27, 2009 10:17

Bonjour,

J'étais à Stockholm pour ces journées européennes du développement et c'était un événement vraiment très intéressant mais il s'y passe tellement de chose en même temps qu'il est difficile de tout couvrir. Il est donc très intéressant de pouvoir regarder ces interview après coup.

Je ne serai pas à Copenhague, avez-vous prévu de faire la même chose ?

Bonne continuation !

Luis Conde-Costas

Date : October 25, 2009 02:58

My comment comes mainly as a response to what I heard and experienced in the EDD session called BEYOND AID: IS OUR AID FOCUS TOO NARROW? I thank Ms. M. Langen for giving me the opportunity to comment.

First of all, I found the panelists open-minded, self-critical and willing to enter controversial territory. Bravo! Second, cultural anthropologists, sociologists of development, political scientists and other people representing views and disciplines crucial to any development project were regrettably absent from a panel, which, if constituted by experts in various economic and financial matters, nonetheless exhibited a somewhat orthodox or reductionist conception of development. This takes me to the third point, basically that the concept of development remains too closely tied (i) to what it means for us in the western world to be "developed", (ii) to a framework structured by the reigning international political economic system as well as suspect domestic political structures, and to (iii) methodological practices which presuppose the first two points and which tend to measure preponderantly economic indicators relevant especially to point one above. As many speakers and panelists pointed out throughout EDD, it is crucial to get a sense of what communities and nations undergoing "development" gauge by that concept. The fourth and last point I would like to air is succinct: development is above all a social question (of great complexity!), hopefully not reduced to a one-dimensional reading.

Regardless of sincere and commendable intentions, we must resist the temptation to exogenously engineer the future of any human community.

CB

Date : October 24, 2009 14:08

Je trouve que vous faites un travail formidable de couverture en direct de l'évènement ! Bravo pour les interviews et articles que vous postez en continu.