Photo: Kate Geraghty / Fairfax Media
South Sudan in Crisis
While world is focusing on the potential fallout of the referendum on secession from the north, the ongoing emergencies facing the region since the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) six years ago have been all but ignored. Throughout the region, mortality rates remain high -- one out of seven mothers die due to pregnancy-related complications -- malnutrition is chronic and regular outbreaks of preventable diseases remain a persistent threat to the lives of the population.
Photo: Kadir van Lohuizen / NOOR
Haiti One Year After
One year after a devastating earthquake killed an estimated 222,000 people and left 1.5 million people homeless, Haitians continue to endure appalling living conditions amid a nationwide cholera outbreak, despite the largest humanitarian aid deployment in the world. By the end of 2010, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) estimates that it will have spent all of the 104 million euros (R 954 million) donated by private individuals to mobilize its earthquake relief effort and respond to the cholera epidemic.
Photo: Alon Skuy / The Times
Improving health conditions in Johannesburg slum buildings
Johannesburg’s inner city slum buildings are home to approximately 250,000 people – mostly migrants from Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique, DRC and South Africa. They live a precarious existence without documentation, rights or money. Inside these informal settlements unhygienic and overcrowded living conditions prevail impacting on the health of people already facing vulnerability. Sanitation or waste management is non-existent, there is poor access to clean water, electricity and basic healthcare. Living like this is not a choice, but a symptom of desperation faced by Zimbabweans and other vulnerable migrants who are forced by their need to survive to seek refuge in the slums.