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HEALTH-SOUTH AFRICA: HIV-Related Deaths Slow Economy

If there was no HIV/AIDS, South Africa would have 4.4 million more people than
today, the size of a major city. This significant slow-down in population growth
is causing a slow down in economic growth and resulting in social ills,
researchers warn.

Southern Africa – INTER PRESS SERVICE

Tags: Africa, Deaths, Economy, HEALTHSOUTH, HIVRelated, Slow

Iraq Allies Accused of Failing to Investigate Civilian Deaths

Experts in public health from six countries, including the UK, today castigate the British and American governments for failing to investigate the deaths of civilians caught up in the conflict in Iraq.

Twenty-four experts from the UK, the US, Australia, Canada, Spain and Italy say the attitude of the governments is “wholly irresponsible”. They say the UK government’s reliance on “extremely limited data” from the Iraqi ministry of health is “unacceptable” because it is likely to seriously underestimate the casualties.

Their hard-hitting statement, published online by the British Medical Journal, comes nearly five months after the Lancet published a household survey of civilian deaths in Iraq which estimated that about 100,000 civilians had died – most of them women and children.

The study caused controversy and was dismissed by the British government as unreliable, partly because the authors admitted that, under the difficult circumstances, it could not be precise.

The experts lambast the government for criticising the data without conducting inquiries of its own. “The obvious answer to removing uncertainties that remain is to commission a larger study with full official support and assistance, but scientific independence,” they say.

“Counting casualties can help to save lives both now and in the future by helping us to understand the burden of death, and residual burden of injury, disease and trauma across the entire population,” the experts say. “We have waited too long for this information.”

The Iraqi ministry of health data is not complete. Among the reasons for this are that only violence-related deaths reported through the health system are counted and deaths in the first 12 months of the conflict are not included.

Among the 10 experts from the UK who have signed the statement are Klim McPherson, visiting professor of public health epidemiology at Oxford University, David Hunter, chair of the UK Public Health Association, and Sian Griffiths, immediate past-president of the faculty of public health at the Royal College of Physicians.

There are seven eminent physicians from the US, three from Australia, two from Spain and one each from Canada and Italy.

“Monitoring casualties is a humanitarian imperative,” they say. “Understanding the causes of death is a core public health responsibility, nationally and internationally. Yet neither the public, nor we as public health professionals, are able to obtain validated, reliable information about the extent of mortality and morbidity since the invasion of Iraq.”

In a commentary in the BMJ, Professor McPherson says that public access to reliable figures is important. “The policy being assessed – the allied invasion of Iraq – was justified largely on grounds of democratic supremacy. Voters in the countries that initiated the war and others – not least in Iraq itself – are denied a reliable evaluation of a key indicator of the success of that policy. This is unacceptable.”

Understanding the burden of death, disease, injury and trauma aids the proper planning of war and health and will help governments assess the humanitarian implications of conflict, he says.

“The plain fact is that an estimate of 100,000 excess deaths attributable to the invasion of Iraq is alarming. That is already half the death toll of Hiroshima. Apart from the practical arguments, the principled ones stand and will always stand. Have we not learnt any lessons from the history of sweeping alarming numbers of deaths under the carpet? This is not something about which there can be any political discretion 60 years after Auschwitz.”

The Foreign Office said yesterday it believed the figures from the Iraqi ministry of health were the most reliable because they were based on head counts not extrapolation.

Tags: Accused, Allies, Civilian, Deaths, Failing, Investigate, Iraq

Road Deaths Should Be Treated As a Global Disease, Say Campaigners

Road accidents claim more lives in the world’s poorest countries than malaria or tuberculosis, say campaigners urging governments to treat fatal crashes as a global disease.

The Commission for Road Safety, chaired by the former Nato chief Lord Robertson, will today call on the G8 countries to support a $300m (£160m) 10-year plan to tackle the 1.2 million deaths and 50 million injuries on the roads every year. Experts forecast a 65% surge in fatalities by 2020.

Countries with low or middle incomes account for 85% of casualties, and a disproportionate number of the victims are young males who are often the main breadwinners. Poor people tend to be more vulnerable as they are more likely to be pedestrians or cyclists.

Lord Robertson said: “In 2005 millions of people, and the leaders of the G8, responded to the call to Make Poverty History. Yet many of the gains for development won in 2005 will be at risk if action is not taken to reverse the growing epidemic of road traffic death and injury.”

Africa has the highest road mortality rate of any continent, with 28 deaths for every 100,000 people, followed by the Middle East, where the rate is 26 for 100,000. In wealthy European countries 11 people die on the roads annually for every 100,000 of population.

The commission, which includes the Formula One champion Michael Schumacher, said road safety was a glaring omission from the UN millennium development goals, which included tackling poverty, HIV, maternal health, child mortality and access to education.

Saul Billingsley, a spokesman for the FIA Foundation, a Paris-based global motoring group, said: “The problem with road safety is that there was no lobby organised when the millennium development goals were being set. Malaria, Aids and tuberculosis quite rightly occupied a lot of attention. We want to get road safety recognised as a global disease on the same scale as those others.”

The new fund will be used to incorporate safety measures into new roadbuilding schemes, improve driver training and provide expertise to governments in developing countries.

Britain has been asked to give $2m a year, quadrupling the Department for International Development’s existing spending on road safety. Tony Blair has offered qualified support to the initiative.

At a glance

More than 3,000 people die daily in road crashes worldwide. The Commission for Global Road Safety wants donors to road projects in developing states to give 10% of the aid for safety measures. Deaths are predicted to rise by 80% in middle- and low-income countries in the next 20 years. Poor families suffer most: a Bangalore study found 71% of poor urban families suffering a road crash had not been in poverty until then.

Tags: Campaigners, Deaths, Disease, Global, Road, Should, Treated