HILLSBOROUGH CHURCH TEAM BUILD HALL IN MALAWI

HILLSBOROUGH Presbyterian Church Mission Malawi Team have safely and successfully returned from their recent trip to Malawi.
After a winter of fundraising and the team paying their own expenses, the project to build a pre-school in the Northern Malawian village of Kasoba became a reality.

With eight days of building, combined with a bible school, the trip proved to be a life changing experience for the members.

Kasoba is a village that is served by Diane Cussick, a member of the Presbyterian Church of Ireland team and no other Europeans have ever visited the area. The welcome they received was magnificent with the villagers joining in the construction of the school at every possible opportunity.

A service of Reflection and Thanksgiving was held in the church on Sunday August 31 at 10.30am. Members of the local community were welcomed to the service.

After the service tea and coffee were available and members of the team were there to discuss their experiences with anyone who wanted to find out more.

Malawi hosts a week-long SADCOPAC meet

Malawi’s National Assembly is hosting a week-long fifth annual Southern Africa Development Community Organisations of Public Accounts Commiittee (SADCOPAC),a grouping of the Public Accounts Committees of all parliaments belonging to the SADC member states.

According to National Assembly Public Relations Officer, Leonard Mengezi, the meeting will enable members to discuss and share experiences related to their work.

”This grouping meets annually within its member countries on a rotational basis to discuss and share experiences on what they have done within that year in their respective countries,” he said.

In Malawi, the group is being chaired by the opposition Peoples Progressive Movement (PPM) President Aleke Banda.

Malawi extends voter registration in three districts

Malawi has extended by a week the first phase of voter registration in three districts following technical glitches, electoral officials said Monday.

"We have extended (the exercise) by a week due to failure of equipment such as digital cameras," Fegus Lipenga, a spokesman for the Malawi Electoral Commission, told AFP.

The exercise -- which began August 18 in the three districts -- is part of a phased drive to register up to seven million voters nationwide.

Lipenga said the problems led to "a lot of congestion" and thousands of people being turned away on Sunday, the original last day of the first phase, in the three districts.

"Technical experts from South Africa are already here to sort out the problem," Lipenga said.

The drive is staggered over six phases ahead of a May 19, 2009 general election. The entire exercise is scheduled to end on November 29 in all the nation's 28 districts.

The upcoming election will be the third multi-party vote since the end of Kamuzu Banda's dictatorial rule 14 years ago.

Malawi rights groups launch “People’s Manifesto”

Malawi’s civil society groups have launched what they call a “People’s Manifesto” to articulate their social, economic and political programmes whose implementation would deliver the country’s national vision of social justice, economic productivity, reduced poverty and transparent and accountable governance.

The Malawi Economic Justice Network (MEJN) Executive Director, Andrew Kumbatira, told APA on Monday in Lilongwe that although people of Malawi have made significant progress in social, economic and political development since independence in 1964, there are many challenges which continue to limit further progress of the developments and in some cases have the effect of reversing past gains.

“If the gains of the past are to be consolidated and the people of this country are to achieve economic growth and reduce poverty and inequalities that currently characterise the lives of the majority, any government in power and any political party aspiring to govern must undertake a number of urgent interventions,” he said.

He said the People’s Manifesto articulates the minimum interventions that civil society has identified as requiring the most immediate policy attention and action by the government.

It is the sincere expectation of civil society, therefore, he said, that all political parties that are committed to people-driven development and democratic governance will incorporate the prescriptions of the People’s Manifesto into their own manifestos.

Kumbatira also said civil society will use the People’s Manifesto as a set of benchmarks against which the performance of any sitting government and promises of any political party will be evaluated.

ARVs, good nutrition perform wonders

LILONGWE, 1 September 2008 (PlusNews) - AIDS-related deaths in Malawi have dropped by 75 percent over the last four years, thanks to the availability of free antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, but better nutrition for people living with HIV would further lower the figure, officials have said.

Mc Anthony Ajabu is seven years old and one of 159,111 Malawians the government has put on ARV treatment since 2004. After his mother died from an AIDS-related disease in 2005, he was taken in by his grandfather, Roben Nangwandu, 53, a widower who works as a security guard in the capital, Lilongwe.

"We have been in and out of hospital so many times. Then one day doctors told me he was HIV-positive and immediately put him on ART [antiretroviral therapy]. Since then he has improved very much," Nangwandu said, adding that a combination of ART and nutritious food had saved his grandson's life. "Those who saw him three years ago do not believe their eyes when they see him going to school. They say it's a miracle that Mc Anthony is walking."

Every two weeks Nangwandu cycles 25km from Chinsapo Township on the outskirts of Lilongwe to the hospital. "Doctors advised me that no matter how far I live, it is important that I get medication for my grandchild in time or I would be putting his life at risk," he said.

According to Mary Shawa, principal secretary for Nutrition and HIV/AIDS, 67 percent of people who started on ARVs since 2004 are still alive. Those who did not survive may not have had access to proper nutrition and information about ART.

"We want people to appreciate that the success in reducing the high death rate that we experienced does not hinge on ARVs alone," she said. A 2001 study found that 25 percent of adults in Malawi were malnourished, of which 75 percent were HIV-positive.

The goal of the National Nutrition and HIV and AIDS Treatment Literacy Initiative, launched recently by the government, is to help Malawians better understand the links between living a long life with HIV and good nutrition.

According to UNAIDS, lack of food security and poor nutrition can hasten the progress of AIDS-related illnesses and make it difficult for patients to adhere to ARVs or benefit from treatment.

Shawa said the initiative would make information on ART and nutrition widely available to help HIV-positive people deal with some of the myths and challenges they had to face.

"We discovered that some people who are on antiretroviral drugs, or were about to start taking them, did not understand how the drugs work. They were wrongly told that the drugs cause serious side effects such as burns and painful sores," she explained.

"In one instance, a patient refused to take ARVs because he was told that they whet one's appetite and, being poor, he could not afford to buy additional food."

McBride Nkhalamba, an HIV/AIDS coordinator for Action Aid International in Malawi, said the country was on the right path to addressing some of the core issues affecting those living with HIV. "There is a need to make information on ART and nutrition widely available, particularly among women and girls," he said.

Dr Felix Salaniponi, director of the Malawi National TB Control Programme, told IRIN/PlusNews that besides the rollout of ARVs, improved strategies for detecting and treating TB patients co-infected with HIV had also helped lower AIDS-related deaths: 77 percent of TB patients in Malawi are HIV-positive.

"In the past we just concentrated on TB and did not look for other conditions such as HIV," he said.

In collaboration with the Ministry of Health, the TB Control Programme has trained clinical officers to treat patients for both TB and HIV/AIDS.

"It has become a guiding principle that every TB patient be counselled on HIV. Once we discover that a patient is HIV-positive we combine treatment and we are saving many lives," Dr Salaniponi said, noting that the death rate of TB patients had gone down from 22 percent in 2004 to 8 percent in 2008.

A u-17 soccer team go down 1-0 to Malawi at Eldorado Park

Johannesburg – The South African under-17 soccer team were defeated 1-0 by their Malawi counterparts at Eldorado Park on Saturday.

The goal that broke the hearts of the South Africans was scored by Andy Simukonda in the 65th minute. He beat goalkeeper Abram Marosha with a powerful shot after receiving a fine pass from Innocent Jere.

The home side had their fair share of missed chances, with Zenzele Zungu being the main culprit.

Zungu missed in the 30th minute when he shot wide from close range.

In the 48th minute, he was guilty of missing another chance when he shot wide following a good build-up by his team-mates.

Substitute Sanele Mkhize did well when he was introduced in the second half, but he missed one of the match‘s easiest chances after outrunning the Malawi defenders.

The South Africans were let off the hook in the second half when Malawi struck the woodwork three times.

Those shots came from Luka Milanzi and Brian Ngalande.

Malawi extends voters' registration exercise

The independent Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) Sund ay announced the extension of the first phase of the voters' registration exercise.

In a statement issued here, MEC Chairperson Justice Anastasia Msosa said all vot er registration centres for the first phase, that were supposed to close by Sunday, will now remain opened till Saturday, 6 September.

"The commission met and considered complaints that because of faulty equipment some centers opened late," Msosa said.

The commission has spread the registration exercise over six phases and the whole exercise will end 29 November.

MEC expects to register between five and seven million Malawians.

The Malawi voters' roll sparked controversy during the 2004 elections when MEC said there were at least six million voters but after the courts called for a re-count it was discovered that there were only five million voters, sparking allegations of vote-rigging.

Msosa, who is also a judge of the Supreme Court of Appeal, said that to avoid a repeat of the controversy, a fresh voters' register will be compiled.

MEC spokesperson Fegus Lipenga told PANA Sunday some centres opened two or three days later because the commission was waiting for the South African suppliers of the equipment to fly in technicians to sort out the problem.

"This forced hundreds of would-be registrants to be turned away," he said.

The issue of the voter registration exercise reached the floor of Parliament with Members of Parliament urging MEC to extend the exercise because thousands of would-be-voters would be disenfranchised because they were turned away as a result of the faulty equipment.

Some MPs even accused government of trying to under-register voters in opposition strongholds, an accusation government dismissed as unfounded.

Lipenga, however, described the voters' registration exercise as successful so far, noting that as at Wednesday last week, the commission had registered over 70 per cent of the estimated figure.

"There has been great enthusiasm in people seeking to register for the polls," he said.

Malawi goes to the polls 19 May, 2009, to elect the president and the 193-member Parliament.

The election is likely to be a three-horse race with the incumbent President Bingu wa Mutharika coming face-to-face with former president Bakili Muluzi, who ironically single-handedly anointed him as successor.

Veteran politician John Tembo, who came a close second during the tightly-fought 2004 election, is also a serious contender under the banner of the country's main opposition Malawi Congress Party (MCP).

The candidature of Muluzi, who has already served two consecutive five-year terms, is still murky with one school of thought saying he is not eligible to stand w hile others say the constitution does not bar a person who takes a breather after serving as president for two consecutive terms.

The case is currently in court.

Muluzi insists he decided to "retire from retirement" after Mutharika dumped the United Democratic Front (UDF), the party on whose ticket he contested and narrow ly won the 2004 polls.

The president said he quit the UDF to found his own Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) because Muluzi and UDF leaders resisted his tough anti-corruption drive.