Building capacity for improved veterinary epidemiosurveillance in southern Africa

A workshop to produce recommendations on training requirements for improved epidemiosurveillance of livestock diseases in southern Africa was organised at the Department of Veterinary Tropical Diseases in the Veterinary Faculty of the University of Pretoria. It was attended by 23 persons representing 10 different southern African countries. The majority of the participants were actively involved in veterinary epidemiosurveillance and many of them were members of the SADC Epidemiology and Informatics Subcommittee. Discussions focused on (i) epidemiosurveillance networks and their 2 main components, i.e. (ii) diagnosis and (iii) information flow. The debates were guided by 3 questions; (i) what are the requirements for an effective network, (ii) what cannot be achieved with existing capacity and (iii) how can the current capacity be improved. Workshop participants developed lists of realistic capacity building needs, which were divided into structural needs and training requirements. Structural needs mainly concerned communication means and quality assurance. With regard to training, the need for appropriate continuing education of all actors at the various disease management levels (non-professional, para-professional, professional) was expressed. Special emphasis was put on capacity building at the lowest level, i.e. the livestock owner and the para-professionals at the community level. At the international level, it was felt that special emphasis should be put on building capacity to improve the understanding of international agreements on trade in animals and animal products and to improve the capacity of negotiating such agreements

Spaces, times, and critical moments:a relational time-space analysis of the impacts of AIDS on rural youth in Malawi and Lesotho

Southern Africa's AIDS epidemic is profoundly spatially and temporally structured; so too are the lives of the young people whose families it blights. In this paper we draw on qualitative research with AIDS-affected young people in Malawi and Lesotho, and recent work theorising time-space in human geography, to examine how time-spaces of AIDS-related sickness and death intersect with the time-spaces of young people and, importantly, those of their relations with others to produce differentiated outcomes for young people. We also explore the time-spaces of those outcomes and of young people's responses to them. We conclude that a relational time-space analysis of the impacts of AIDS on young people helps explain the diversity of those young people's experiences and allows AIDS to be contextualised more adequately in relation to everyday life and young people's wider lifecourses and their relationships with others. Moreover, the research points to the significance of the time-space structuring of society in shaping the outcomes of familial sickness and death for young people

Young AIDS migrants in southern Africa:policy implications for empowering children

Many AIDS-affected children in southern Africa engage in migration when household members fall sick or die from AIDS, or because they are sent to assist relatives. Despite this, little attention has been paid to the consequences of these movements for children’s lives. Multi-method research, conducted in Lesotho and Malawi, revealed that children sent to live with kin commonly move over long distances and between urban and rural areas. They are generally not consulted or informed about these migrations and face a range of associated difficulties, particularly with integrating into new families and communities. Severed family ties exacerbate the difficulties faced by children who end up in institutions or on the streets. This paper advocates that policy approaches for those affected by AIDS should be children-centred and take into account the implications of migration at three levels. First, many of the difficulties children face could be overcome if they were familiar with the place and people they were moving to. Second, children would be better able to cope with new situations if they were included in family discussions with decision-makers regarding their migration preferences. Third, maintaining ties with kin would ensure that children do not become distanced from their family and cultural heritage, which is essential for post-institutional support