Category: News

{{A group of doctors from the Kanombe Military Hospital have concluded their five-days medical service to the community of Kamonyi district.}}

The Military doctors had a target of treating 500 members of the community but actually managed to treat 530 by the end of their service.

5patients were referred to Kanombe Military hospital for treatment of Heart and abdominal complications.

Major Dr. King Kayondo, leader of the military doctors during the 5days campaign told Kamonyi residents that most of the cases treated in their community included dental infections,gasto and those that affect breathing system.

Kamonyi residents expressed their gratitude to the service by the military doctors.

{{President Paul Kagame has urged Rwandans to work hard without waiting to be given aid. }}

“If someone is giving you aid it means they are carrying your baggage and will drop it any time they wish.”

Kagame made the remarks during community work today at Nduba in Gasabo district where he joined the area residents on a monthly Umuganda (community work).

Meanwhile the visiting US Permanent Ambassador to UN, Susan Rice participated in the monthly community work-{umuganda}.

{{Zimbabwean government has denied presence on their soil of Protais Mpiranya, a fugitive of the 1994 Rwandan Tutsi genocide.}}

A principal director in the Immigration office Clemence Masango said Mparinya is not in the country.

Mpiranya the former commander of the Rwandan Presidential Guard who allegedly masterminded the genocide is wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for war crimes.

“We do not have him in our records. Interpol wrote to us on the matter and investigations were carried out. He is not here,” Masango told a Parliamentary portfolio committee on defence and security yesterday.

Masango was answering questions on the deportation of Zimbabweans from neighbouring South Africa and Botswana.

He said the deportations are not a strange thing saying it is an ongoing process which is often carried out by countries, including Zimbabwe, to flush out unregistered foreigners.

Reports linking Mparinya with Zimbabwe caused a diplomatic tiff between Harare and Kigali with the later accused of deliberately hiding many genocide fugitives including Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam who is wanted in Ethiopia for crimes against humanity.

Masango told parliamentarians that investigations were still in progress but so far indications are that the fugitive is not in the country.

In a press interview, Prosecutor General Martin Ngoga said while Rwanda government was not aware of the communication between the UK and Zimbabwe, it was becoming increasingly clear that Zimbabwe was harbouring Mpiranya.

“I am not privy to the communication between the UK and Zimbabwe but I would not be surprised because it is getting increasingly believable that Mpiranya is in Zimbabwe.”

“Zimbabwe must cooperate to get him apprehended and brought to justice,” Ngonga said.

Mpiranya is accused of crimes against humanity during the 1994 war. He is also accused of killing ten Belgians guarding the first Rwandan female Prime Minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana in 1994.

He is also accused of distributing weapons to the militia and to certain members of the civilian population with the intent to exterminate the Tutsi.

{{The EAC secretary General Ambassador Richard Sezibera has affirmed EAC’s support for the ongoing initiatives aimed at pacifying Somalia.}}

Amb. Sezibera confirmed that the country’s security situation would feature on the agenda of the EAC Heads of State Summit meeting due 30 November in Bujumbura.

“EAC is committed to finding a long term solution to Somalia so that its people can find the peace and stability they deserve,” the Secretary General stated.
Meanwhile EAC is working on harnessing the potential of Lake Tanganyika by attracting investments to the lake basin, the EAC Secretary General Ambassador Richard Sezibera said today.

While briefing journalists attending the EAC-GIZ Advanced Media Training on Reporting on Regional Integration, which is currently on in Bujumbura, Amb.Sezibera said attracting investment and increasing awareness of the importance of the Lake Tanganyika basin would be top on the agenda at the Lake Tanganyika Development Conference which opens next Monday in the Burundian capital.

Amb. Sezibera said that in addition to raising awareness about one of the region’s most important shared trans-boundary natural resources, EAC would also use the 28-29 November conference to woo investors to the basin, which presents opportunities in transport and communication infrastructure; tourism; agri-business and fisheries; trade and industry; and investment-led research among others.

“We want people to be fully aware of the potentials available in the lake, which is shared by four countries; Tanzania, Burundi, DRC and Zambia. There are lots of potentials that need to be tapped in the lake through investment as it is in other lakes in the region,” he told journalists.

The Secretary General challenged media in the region to play an active role in ensuring East Africans are involved in the integration project by providing a medium for citizens to interface with their leaders to discuss pertinent EAC issues and in the process address fears and reservations towards integration, some of which Amb. Sezibera said result from a lack of information.

“When the people are aware of the Community, see it and feel its presence, they would appreciate more and acknowledge its benefits and prospects,” the Secretary General said.

Amb. Sezibera, who also addressed himself to various EAC-related subjects ranging from trade to the economy and regional security, emphasized the need for the Partner States to speed up work towards the East African Monetary Union, which he said would put the region on a firmer economic footing.

“Currency fluctuations [in the region] are a reflection of underlying economic fundamentals. A monetary union with the accompanying economic and financial integration would make our region more competitive,” he said. “But that’s not enough,” he added, noting that the region needed to boost industrial growth, food production and energy generation, among others.

He also affirmed that the region was committed to tackling Non Tariff Barriers, which slow down intra-regional trade and declared that these had now been reduced by at least half from 59 a few years ago.

Amb.Sezibera reiterated the bloc’s commitment to conclude the Economic Partnership Agreements with the European Union and explained that any delays were because the EAC negotiators “wanted to get the right EPA for East Africa”.

{{The president of the National Women Council Francesca Tengera has said that new findings indicate that even men have been brutally domestically violated.}}

Tengera was speaking to igihe.com in a separate interview after addressing the press at the launch of 16 days of campaign against gender based violence.

She said that available statistics indicate that at least 94 men were brutally beaten by their spouses though women are still largely violated brutally with 430 women violated this year.

“Women are not only the victims but men too. this year only 430 women were brutally beaten by their spouses and 94 men in the same way,” Tengera gave part of the statistics.

Physical assaults were found to be among the leading form of domestic violence resulting to loss of lives with 83women and 60 men killed this year.

Tengera said that there are still lack of one’s awareness on their rights is making the matter worse; “just imagine 20 women and 31 men committed suicide simply because they couldn’t stand being tormented and others divorced and left family because they didn’t know where to present their cases.”

“Women are most affected that’s why we intend to focus more on sensitizing them on their rights, especially on owning property,” she said.

Emmanuelle Ingabire the focal point of gender based violence at Pro-Femmes Twese Hamwe a women rights activists Non-Governmental Organization, called for the abolition of laws and cultural practices that oppress women.

“Rights over land for instance is a major issue, I can’t believe there are areas where women up to now are denied fair shares of land during inheriting process, a similar practice is seen in men who deny their women to own property like houses, cars etc,” Ingabire remarked.

Prior to the campaign’s launch there was a walk from Kacyiru roundabout to the Amahoro national stadium, in the afternoon that involved high profiled women leaders in the country followed by a football match between high ranking women leaders from the government versus their counterparts from civil society.

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{{Four people were yesterday rescued alive from a big coltan mine hole after a landslide at Nyarusange sector, Muhanga district in the Southern Province, igihe.com has learnt.}}

At the moment three people are still missing and have not been recovered from the landslides that almost covered the mine.

According to reliable information, the victims were mining coltan by the time heavy rain fall started causing wetting of the sorrounding soils that fell and covered the path to their way out.

Before the mine tunnel was covered the four managed to escape the huge ambushing soils and survived death and as per now there is no information about the fate of the rest who seems to have been buried by the soils inside the mine.

Beatrice Uwamariya, Nyarusange sector’s Executive Secretary told igihe.com that more efforts are being invested to rescue the victims.

“Since yesterday after the incidence we have been trying our best to rescue the missing people but we had to stop because of heavy rains and resumed work today very early in the morning with the help of police,RDF staff and the residents,” she said.

Uwamariya said that there is a chance of the victims being still alive because there is a resistant rock inside and that they may be hiding in it for protection.

According her, it’s not the first time such incidence happened because even in August this year 6 people also survived death narrowly as a result of landslide.

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{{In the morning of today Nov. 25, at around 9hrs000 at Kinamba-Gisozi junction at the bridge, a body was found roped arms and legs, placed into a sack and drowned in the flowing river under that bridge.}}

By the time {igihe.com} reached at the scene, this body was not yet identified and our reporter found a crowd of terrified people plus the National Police taking pictures and trying to take rescue.

When contacted Police Spokesperson Supt. Theos Badege who wasn’t yet aware of the saga said that normally when such incidents happen, police has to take action very fast.

‘When such incidence happens, we try to identify the person in case it’s possible, investigate the reasons behind the death, and who did the act as well among others before we take action,” Badege said.

Badege promised to give detailed information after confirming the act and after identifying the victim.

{{Sub-Saharan African countries that invest in training doctors have ended up losing $2 billion as the expert clinicians leave home to find work in more prosperous developed nations, researchers have said.}}

A study by Canadian scientists found that South Africa and Zimbabwe suffer the worst economic losses due to doctors emigrating, while Australia, Canada, Britain and the United States benefit the most from recruiting doctors trained abroad.

The scientists, led by Edward Mills, chair of global health at theUniversity of Ottawa, called on destination countries to recognize this imbalance and invest more in training and developing health systems in the countries that lose out.

“Many wealthy destination countries, which also train fewer doctors than are required, depend on immigrant doctors to make up the shortfall,” Mills’ team wrote in a study, which was published in the British Medical Journal.

“Developing countries are effectively paying to train staff who then support the health services of developed countries.”

Experts say the migration, or “brain drain,” of trained health workers from poorer countries to richer ones exacerbates the problem of already weak health systems in low-income countries battling epidemics of infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis (TB) and malaria.

{{CRITICAL SHORTAGE}}

The World Health Organization adopted a code of practice in 2010 on international recruitment of health personnel that highlighted the problem of doctor brain drains and called on wealthy countries to offer financial help to poorer ones affected.

The code is seen as particularly important for sub-Saharan Africa, which suffers from a critical shortage of doctors and has a high prevalence of diseases such as HIV, TB and malaria.

The latest United Nations global HIV/AIDS report released on Monday found that 68 percent of the around 34 million people worldwide who have the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS live in Africa.

Using various data including published reports on primary and secondary school spending from UNESCO, Mills’ team estimated the cost of educating a doctor through primary, secondary and medical school in nine sub-Saharan countries with some of the world’s highest rates of HIV.

The countries studied included Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The research team then added the figures together to estimate how much the origin countries paid to train doctors and how much the destination countries saved in employing them.

The results show that these governments spend between $21,000, the figure for Uganda, and $59,000, in South Africa, to train a doctor, only to see them in many cases migrate to richer countries.

“Among the nine sub-Saharan African countries most affected by HIV/AIDS, more than $2 billion of investment was lost through the emigration of trained doctors,” the researchers said. “Our results indicate that South Africa incurs the highest costs for medical education and the greatest lost returns on investment.”

The findings suggested the benefit to Britain was around $2.7 billion, and to the United States was around $846 million. Australia was estimated to have benefited to the tune of $621 million and Canada was $384 million better off.

{{The National Confederation of Cooperatives of Rwanda (NCCR) has embarked on capacity building of its members. Part of the training will be conducted by experts from the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA).}}

NCCR Director, Augustine Gatabarwa, noted that the training is among benefits of Rwandan cooperatives inclusion to ICA, which approved the membership during a general meeting held from 14 to 18 November in Mexico’s Cancun city.

During a Press Conference, Gatabarwa waved a flag showing membership confirmation from the global cooperative alliance.

“Being a member of ICA will contribute a lot in growth of Rwandan cooperatives, with technical support of ICA which is also an independent, non-governmental organization that unites, represents and serves co-operatives worldwide,” he pointed out.

The director general of RCA Damien Mugabo urged representatives of cooperatives to urge their members to work harder since their contribution at the international cooperative was essential.

He also announced that the UN had dedicated next year for the growth of cooperatives worldwide and encouraged local cooperatives to be orderly and do away with corrupt members.

“We should utilize ICA resources, getting technical assistance for example, getting key contacts and information on best practices,” said Mugabo.

ICA started in 1895 to provide an effective global voice and forum for knowledge, expertise and coordinated action about co-operatives.

It consists of international and national co-operative organizations from all sectors of the economy including agriculture, banking, fisheries, health, housing, industry, insurance.

Currently, ICA has over 250 member organizations from 100 countries, representing approximately 1 billion individuals worldwide. In Africa, only 13 countries were represented in ICA and now, they are 15 including Rwanda.

{{The local governments’ retreat that kicked off today on November 24, 2011 at Kigali Serena Hotel discussed business development and access to finance as key points.}}

The Minister of Local Government, James MUSONI, said,“We are going to have a face to face debate between various stakeholders focusing on; policy and legal framework, Implementation process and procedures and Finding collective solutions to existing barriers to economic development and burning questions from different stakeholders”.

More than 170 participants attended the first day of the ongoing retreat. They discussed about industrialization, small and medium enterprises, cross border trade, access to finance, infrastructure development and urbanization, and ICT development and application in local governments, among others.

Plenary sessions presentations were dominated by the Ministry of Commerce and Trade followed by the Central Bank (BNR), Ministry of Infrastructure and that of ICT.

Participants shared experiences and challenges on the ground, especially concerning cross border trade, tourism, SMEs and investments promotion and industrialization.

Though challenges persist, all participants conceded that a lot has been achieved in all sectors and reiterated their commitment towards working as one team serving one people and one nation.

The Minister of Commerce and Trade, Francois KANIMBA, said, “this retreat is very important because it enables all stakeholders engage in open debates reconciling policy issues with field challenges, which is very important for both leaders and managers at every level”.

“We expect that, this retreat will help us to identify gaps and share common understanding and commitment to deliver as one team, especially in local governments”, Minister Musoni asserted.