Our Aids Relief Programme here at Mwandi has over 1500 people alive today thanks to affordable supplies of ARVs (antiretroviral drugs) from India. The cost of these drugs has fallen from around GBP200 a year to about GBP45 – thanks to the Indian generic drugs industry. This means that international donors, including ironically, the EU’s Global Funding, can help at least six million HIV-positive mostly people in the less-developed world.
Our programme also relies on generic medicines from India to treat other diseases and conditions. But a free trade agreement, currently under negotiation between the EU and India, could greatly restrict the ability of manufacturers in India to continue producing affordable generics that millions of people rely on to stay alive.
At the moment European Union is having trade talks with India and want to increase protection of the intellectual property rights and the commercial interests of European pharmaceuticals giants. They call it "data exclusivity" and along with this the EU is proposing an ambitious enforcement agenda. These harmful intellectual property (IP) provisions will hinder access to quality and affordable generic medicines produced in India, which have played a crucial role in scaling up HIV treatment to more than 6.6 million people across Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The Indian government has raised serious concerns, stating that the agreement could ‘impede legitimate competition and shift the costs of enforcing private commercial rights to governments, consumers and taxpayers’. The European Commission is also apparently pushing for the trade deal to be expanded to cover investments, and not only intellectual property but also an ‘investor-to-state’ mechanism.
This would allow multinational drug companies to bypass Indian courts and take the Indian government to private arbitration courts in investment disputes over intellectual property, which could also lead to the reverse of domestic health policies like tobacco warnings and measures to reduce prices of medicines
The EC are also trying to persuade India to accept restrictions on its generic medicine industry that would mean delays of up to 10 years in producing generic versions of any new, improved medicines and up to 15 years in the case of children’s versions of the same drugs. This is clearly an attack on the health of the world's poor motivated by the callous demands of profit-hungry multinational pharmaceutical companies.
It is vital that this is brought to light and stopped. The rights of people living with HIV having easy and affordable access to essential and life-saving medicine must be protected, especially for the world's most impoverished and vulnerable people.
Greed should not triumph over need.
Yesterday our Chipolopolo Boys, the Copper Bullets, aka Zambia’s National Football Team arrived back home from Libreville, Gabon, to an ecstatic welcome in Lusaka where an estimated 200 000 people thronged the streets all the way from the Airport to the Showgrounds. Winning the African Cup of Nations was something to really celebrate with pride nationwide. People all over the country, including Mwandi, wore football tops, clothes or chitenges in the national colours of green, red, orange and black. Zambia won the African Nations Cup for the first time on Sunday, beating the favourites, the Ivory Coast, 8-7 in a penalty shootout after a goalless draw in the final.
Zambia had been seen as the underdog and had to put up with all the usual patronizing and condescension from the World Soccer Establishment’s pundits at the competition. The Zambian team was considered second-rate, rank outsiders and potential also-rans. So the victory brought some joy and consolation too to this Zam-Scot after our own recent tennis, soccer and rugby disappointments.
The team had earlier paid a moving visit to the beach to commemorate the loss of the 1993 Zambian football team in a plane crash outside Libreville in Gabon where they were to play. That Zambian team was expected to win the game and qualify for the 1994 World Cup but the entire team was wiped out, except for Kalusha Bwalya, now the President of the Zambian FA. So the match on Sunday was a “Date with Destiny”.
The competition comprises of 54 teams and en route to the Championship Final Zambia eliminated Senegal, Equatorial Guinea and Ghana.
The presentation of the cup was a national occasion, to receive it were First Republican President Kenneth Kaunda, Rupiah Banda the former President, the present Vice-President Guy Scott, Kalusha Bwalya and Christopher Katongo, the Captain.
Ivory Coast (Orange): Barry; Gosso, K Toure, Bamba, Tiene; Zokora, Y Toure, Tiote; Gervinho, Drogba, Kalou.
Zambia (Green): Mweene; Nkausu, Sunzu, Himoonde, Musonda; Chansa, Lungu, Sinkala, Kalab; C Katonga, Mayuka, F Katongo.
Wednesday, 15 February 2012
Friday, 10 February 2012
The cost of a free education
While most of us in the more developed world take universal, free and compulsory primary and secondary education for granted, this is far from being the case in Zambia. This week we heard that the Government has plans to abolish all fees in schools but is hindered by the amount of public money needed to purchase maize through the Food Reserve Agency. After this is achieved, it intends to concentrate spending on education and health to improve peoples’ lives. This will not be possible either, unless, as Kenneth Kaunda pointed out recently, the mining companies raise output and pay their due taxes without equivocation or attempts at avoidance or evasion. Doing this would be a good use of their investment to help grow the economy so that ordinary citizens and their families benefit.
The Government and previous ones were committed to providing free education from Grade 1 to Grade 12, as part of the 2015 Millennium Goals. Goal Number 2 is the provision of universal primary education. To this end the Government has announced the phasing out of the Basic (G1-9) & High School (G10-12) and a return to Primary (G1-7) and Secondary Schools (G8-12). We are still unsure of the timescale for this. Cynics say this makes Goal 2 much easier to achieve. The Government is concerned that learning achievement in the present system is low.
Our High School at Mwandi has been allocated 2 Grade 10 classes this year. Nationwide, 124 333 out of 276 840 pupils will be given Grade 10 places. This is almost 45%. 68 000 boys and 56 000 girls! Not yet gender parity there! 145 000 passed in 6 or more subjects. This is 52%, up from 49% last year. There were 30 000 no shows and 20 000 failed in all subjects.
Related to all this the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection has recently published a paper ‘How free is free education?’ www.jctr.org.zm
We have little Ellie staying with us during term time this year. We have known Ellie since she was born. She was born with a club foot and had to have her right knee amputated then. She goes regularly to the Italian Orthopedic Hospital in Lusaka to have her prosthesis adjusted. She started Primary 1 in January this year. Her family lives and farms between Mabumbu and Sankalonga but Ellie cannot walk the 10km to school, hence her boarding with us during term-time, so we do have some insight into the costs incurred by Zambian families with school children.
In 2002 user-fees were abolished in Primary Schools, this was a welcomed reversal of IMF/World Bank ‘cost-sharing’ conditions in the Structural Adjustment Plan which had to be accepted to gain debt relief. These fees actually did very little to improve or expand education in Zambia. Then the Mwanawasa Government promised free education to Grade 12 and that no child should be prevented from receiving education because of fees.
The paper makes a distinction between direct and indirect costs. Education will never be entirely free and indirect costs can restrict the availability of education to poorer children as much as direct costs. There are still direct fees charged at Primary School through the PTA Levy and also Project Fees can be levied. These can range from K10 000-K30 000 per year. The indirect costs are school uniforms, shoes, textbooks, stationery supplies, transportation, ‘tuition fees’ and food for breaks and lunch. This can easily come to over K400 000 for one child.
Between 2000 and 2004 primary school attendance rose from 71-85%. This still leaves at least 15% or 300 000 children aged 7-13 not attending school who should be there. It is suggested that it is a lack of money that keeps these children away. Also it is girls who suffer most in these circumstances. Bursaries need to be more accessible and available to help the more vulnerable to attend school. In the 21st Century we need to ask ourselves is it right that a child is sent home because they have no uniform or shoes or are unable to pay the fees? Is Zambia really that poor? If we are serious about this then there needs to be higher grants going to schools that serve poorer areas for recurrent costs and rehabilitation. Our Basic School received a meagre K3m last year for 1500 pupils
In many places public education is close to collapse with over-enrolment, straitened resources, decaying infrastructure and a demoralized work-force. The 1:70 teacher to pupil ratio has remained unchanged for 10 years. The shortage of textbooks is chronic. 1 book to 4 pupils is an exceptional ratio and in many subject the teacher has the sole textbook for that class in that subject. State school teachers earn from K1m per month ($200) to around K2.5m ($500) for a Headteacher. In Grades 8 & 9, not being “Primary”, pupils are often charged around K300 000. The cost at Mwandi is K90 000.
High Schools like Sesheke will cost K1.2m per year. Our High School charges K750 000.
Vulnerable families and the schools in Mwandi have benefited greatly from the Mwandi UCZ OVC Programme that sponsors around 500 pupils at the Basic School and 90 out of 220 at the High School. The programme feeds 200 pupils daily. There is another program that helps with direct costs for children from poorer families within and outwith Mwandi with an emphasis on educational assistance for the girl child. It has put 24 pupils through Sesheke High School between 2007-11 and has helped 9 pupils in Grades 10 & 11 at Mwandi High School and others Basic Schools. We are indebted to many individuals and congregations who through their generosity make it possible to educate needy children by helping to meeting the direct and indirect costs which their families otherwise would struggle to afford.
There is an old truism, if you think education is expensive try ignorance and that there are some people who know the cost of everything but the value of nothing. Without good affordable and widely available education there will be no development, no drop in HIV/AIDS rates, no flourishing local commerce and industry, no drop in the unemployment rate and Zambia will risk becoming a stagnating and underdeveloped economic back-water.
We hope the political will is there to address this.
The Government and previous ones were committed to providing free education from Grade 1 to Grade 12, as part of the 2015 Millennium Goals. Goal Number 2 is the provision of universal primary education. To this end the Government has announced the phasing out of the Basic (G1-9) & High School (G10-12) and a return to Primary (G1-7) and Secondary Schools (G8-12). We are still unsure of the timescale for this. Cynics say this makes Goal 2 much easier to achieve. The Government is concerned that learning achievement in the present system is low.
Our High School at Mwandi has been allocated 2 Grade 10 classes this year. Nationwide, 124 333 out of 276 840 pupils will be given Grade 10 places. This is almost 45%. 68 000 boys and 56 000 girls! Not yet gender parity there! 145 000 passed in 6 or more subjects. This is 52%, up from 49% last year. There were 30 000 no shows and 20 000 failed in all subjects.
Related to all this the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection has recently published a paper ‘How free is free education?’ www.jctr.org.zm
We have little Ellie staying with us during term time this year. We have known Ellie since she was born. She was born with a club foot and had to have her right knee amputated then. She goes regularly to the Italian Orthopedic Hospital in Lusaka to have her prosthesis adjusted. She started Primary 1 in January this year. Her family lives and farms between Mabumbu and Sankalonga but Ellie cannot walk the 10km to school, hence her boarding with us during term-time, so we do have some insight into the costs incurred by Zambian families with school children.
In 2002 user-fees were abolished in Primary Schools, this was a welcomed reversal of IMF/World Bank ‘cost-sharing’ conditions in the Structural Adjustment Plan which had to be accepted to gain debt relief. These fees actually did very little to improve or expand education in Zambia. Then the Mwanawasa Government promised free education to Grade 12 and that no child should be prevented from receiving education because of fees.
The paper makes a distinction between direct and indirect costs. Education will never be entirely free and indirect costs can restrict the availability of education to poorer children as much as direct costs. There are still direct fees charged at Primary School through the PTA Levy and also Project Fees can be levied. These can range from K10 000-K30 000 per year. The indirect costs are school uniforms, shoes, textbooks, stationery supplies, transportation, ‘tuition fees’ and food for breaks and lunch. This can easily come to over K400 000 for one child.
Between 2000 and 2004 primary school attendance rose from 71-85%. This still leaves at least 15% or 300 000 children aged 7-13 not attending school who should be there. It is suggested that it is a lack of money that keeps these children away. Also it is girls who suffer most in these circumstances. Bursaries need to be more accessible and available to help the more vulnerable to attend school. In the 21st Century we need to ask ourselves is it right that a child is sent home because they have no uniform or shoes or are unable to pay the fees? Is Zambia really that poor? If we are serious about this then there needs to be higher grants going to schools that serve poorer areas for recurrent costs and rehabilitation. Our Basic School received a meagre K3m last year for 1500 pupils
In many places public education is close to collapse with over-enrolment, straitened resources, decaying infrastructure and a demoralized work-force. The 1:70 teacher to pupil ratio has remained unchanged for 10 years. The shortage of textbooks is chronic. 1 book to 4 pupils is an exceptional ratio and in many subject the teacher has the sole textbook for that class in that subject. State school teachers earn from K1m per month ($200) to around K2.5m ($500) for a Headteacher. In Grades 8 & 9, not being “Primary”, pupils are often charged around K300 000. The cost at Mwandi is K90 000.
High Schools like Sesheke will cost K1.2m per year. Our High School charges K750 000.
Vulnerable families and the schools in Mwandi have benefited greatly from the Mwandi UCZ OVC Programme that sponsors around 500 pupils at the Basic School and 90 out of 220 at the High School. The programme feeds 200 pupils daily. There is another program that helps with direct costs for children from poorer families within and outwith Mwandi with an emphasis on educational assistance for the girl child. It has put 24 pupils through Sesheke High School between 2007-11 and has helped 9 pupils in Grades 10 & 11 at Mwandi High School and others Basic Schools. We are indebted to many individuals and congregations who through their generosity make it possible to educate needy children by helping to meeting the direct and indirect costs which their families otherwise would struggle to afford.
There is an old truism, if you think education is expensive try ignorance and that there are some people who know the cost of everything but the value of nothing. Without good affordable and widely available education there will be no development, no drop in HIV/AIDS rates, no flourishing local commerce and industry, no drop in the unemployment rate and Zambia will risk becoming a stagnating and underdeveloped economic back-water.
We hope the political will is there to address this.
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