WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2010-09-21 Time: 16:00:01 Posted By: News Poster
By Tamar Kahn, Sue Blaine and Jocelyn Newmarch
Johannesburg – IN STARK contrast to a claim in 2005 by then health director-general Thami Mseleku that SA was on track to meet all of its Millennium Development Goals, the government’s latest progress report frankly describes the country’s many challenges.
In a further departure with the past, the report bluntly admits that the HIV/AIDS epidemic and poor management at health facilities have contributed to SA sliding backwards on many key health measures.
The draft third progress report, published on the website of the Black Sash, was compiled by Statistics SA. It reports on progress made since 1990 on the goals and targets set by the United Nations as well as domestic targets.
One of the goals is to reduce child mortality by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015. The report says the child mortality rate almost doubled from 59 per 1000 live births in 1998 to 104 in 2007. The UN target is 20.
Child health expert Joy Lawn has welcomed the government’s honesty, but says more recent data published by the UN on Friday painted a more optimistic picture of SA’s progress in tackling its child mortality rate, and put the figure at 62 in 2009. Other groups are suggesting a figure even lower, with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation reporting in the Lancet last week that it was 53.
“It’s great that they (government) are making public statements that we are off track, but I think they are being too pessimistic. We really have turned the corner,” says Dr Lawn, who is policy director for Save the Children.
Life expectancy at birth has fallen from 57,6 for males and 64,8 for females in 2001 to 55,3 and 60,4 respectively. SA is unlikely to meet the goal of 70, says the report.
The news is good on figures for immunisation under the age of one, as coverage climbed from 66% to 95% between 2001 and last year, and it is likely SA will meet the target of 100% coverage by 2015.
Millennium Development Goal six, which set the ambitious target of reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015 and providing universal access to treatment by 2010, has seen significant progress globally, with HIV levels stabilising in many parts of the world.
Although the proportion of people with advanced HIV who are on treatment rose from 13,9% in 2005 to 41,6% last year, SA will not meet the target of universal access by the end of this year. But the report says it is possible that HIV prevalence among youth aged between 15 and 24 will stabilise.
SA is also on track with its malaria targets, and the incidence of the disease has plummeted from 64600 in 2000 to 6800 in 2008. Death rates have also fallen.
Meanwhile, SA had near-universal primary school enrolment even before the Millennium Development Goals were unveiled, but schooling in SA is unequal, activists and educators said yesterday. The UN sees universal primary education and gender equity as critical to efforts to reduce poverty, increase equity and transform society.
Last year 98% of children aged seven to 15 – the compulsory school years – were enrolled in school. The 200 000 (2%) not in school were mostly in rural areas or disabled, basic education department spokesman Granville Whittle said.
This achievement is commendable, but enormous disparities exist between school quality in the generally mixed-race urban schools and township and rural areas, says Lukhanyo Mangona, a spokesman for lobby group Equal Education.
On Millennium Development Goal seven, which is to ensure environmental sustainability, figures from Stats SA showed the number of threatened species has increased from 676 in 1990 to 2458 this year. Carbon dioxide emissions have risen from 359000 gigagrams in 1994 to 433527 gigagrams in 2007. The proportion of people living in slums has remained static.
Mark Botha, head of the World Wide Fund for Nature’s Living Planet unit, says it is clear sustainable development still needs to be integrated into policy in SA, particularly in the mining sector.
Legislation does not offer sufficient guidance on when environmental concerns such as biodiversity, heritage or water management should trump mining development, he says.
A list of threatened ecosystems – a legal tool which would give threatened ecosystems the same status as endangered species – has been in draft form for the past year, Mr Botha says. But invasive alien vegetation is expanding faster than the vegetation-clearing project.
Oxfam SA director Innocent Nkata says 11,5-million households have access to clean drinking water, which means SA has surpassed its target of halving the proportion of people without sustainable water. It is also likely to achieve the 2014 goal of universal access to water.
According to Mr Nkata, although 77% of households have access to sanitation, about 9000 still use the bucket system.
SA’s first Millennium Development Goal – to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by 2014 – has not seen much progress. The Global Call to Action against Poverty’s Glenn Farred says much of the government’s anti-poverty strategy has remained in “bureaucratic limbo”.
In the first half of this decade, SA managed to more than halve the proportion of people living on less than 1 a day – from 11,3% in 2000 to 5% in 2006.
But this is misleading, as SA is classified as a middle-income country, with the measure of extreme poverty set at 2,50 a day. In this respect, SA is unlikely to achieve its goal, with 34,8% of people still living below 2,50 a day in 2006, a long way from the 21,1% target for 2015.
With Nastasya Tay
Original Source: 
Original date published: 21 September 2010
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201009210653.html?viewall=1