FEB. 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tribesmen in Yemen have released a Tajik doctor they kidnapped in October, media reported. Gulrukhsor Rofieyva, 36, was working for a Russian company when she was kidnapped. It’s unclear why her captors released her but they had demanded the release of tribesmen held by the government.
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(News report from Issue No. 218, published on Feb. 11 2015)
JAN. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Global Fund, a Switzerland-based health organisation, said corrupt suppliers had swindled $5m from an HIV/AIDS awareness project in Kazakhstan. The corruption highlights the extent of the problems facing foreign companies and organisations in Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 217, published on Feb. 4 2015
>>Laws important in country with little formal health education>>
JAN. 9 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The World Health Organisation (WHO) is lauding a move by Kyrgyzstan to increase tax on cigarettes and to make it law to publish garish images of the damage smoking can to people’s health on packets.
Kyrgyzstan’s parliament ratified the news laws at the end of last year, WHO said. The laws will equalise the tax on cigarettes with neighbouring Kazakhstan.
“Tobacco taxes for different types of tobacco will increase as of 2015 and are expected to increase to the level of tobacco taxes in the neighbouring Kazakhstan,” WHO said in its statement.
“As of 2014, tobacco taxes in Kyrgyzstan are 2-1/2 to 12 times lower than in Kazakhstan.”
The pictures that will be carried on cigarette boxes from 2016 show how smoking gives people cancer and other diseases.
This is an important step. Tightening regulations on smoking and educating the general public on the dangers of smoking is seen as a civilising step and a marker of a country’s development.
For Kyrgyzstan, where cigarettes appear to be clamped to the lips of men walking down a street and the purple fog of tobacco smoke fugs many bars, this is a big step indeed. Public health is often overlooked in Kyrgyzstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
DEC. 5 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Police in India arrested three women, two from Turkmenistan and one from Uzbekistan, for being sex workers, the Times of India newspaper reported.
The newspaper reported that the number of women arrested from Central Asia who have been sex workers has increased over the past few years.
One of the Turkmen girls arrested said she had moved to Delhi four years ago to work as a translator but that sex work was far better paid. She said that she had been sent to work in different cities in India by middlemen.
India has become something of a magnet for women who end up either in the sex trade or adult slavery and Central Asia is a particularly strong recruiting ground.
“Experts estimate that millions of women and children are victims of sex trafficking in India,” a US State Department report this year said.
“A large number of Nepali, Afghan, and Bangladeshi females the majority of whom are children aged nine to 14 years old and women and girls from China, Russia, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, the Philippines, and Uganda are
also subjected to sex trafficking in India.”
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(News report from Issue No. 212, published on Dec. 10 2014)
SEPT. 20 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – An influx of migrants to Almaty looking for jobs has reduced the quality of public healthcare in the city, Kazakhstan’s deputy PM, Gulshara Abdykalikova, told media. Ms Abdykalikova specifically said that the quality of doctors and nurses needed to be improved.
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(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)
JUNE 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Doctors and nurses will receive a 28% salary rise next year, media quoted health minister Salidat Kairbekova as saying. Medical workers have long complained that they are underpaid, especially since a 20% devaluation of the tenge this year. Nurses in Kazakhstan are currently paid $436/month; doctors $620/month.
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(News report from Issue No. 190, published on June 25 2014)
YEREVAN/Armenia, JUNE 25 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — This was the third time that 34-year-old Anoush, who was pregnant, and her mother-in- law had taken a bus from their village to Yerevan.
They wanted to find out if Anoush would keep the baby and this depended on what medical staff would say.
“My husband and his family want a boy. They want a boy to inherit their family name,” said Anoush.
This is Anoush’s fifth pregnancy, she has two daughters already. If medical staff told her that she was expecting a boy she would keep the baby. If it was a girl she wouldn’t.
Selective abortions are still relatively commonplace in Armenia for women from the villages. There, the pressure is on to produce a son as an heir.
A project prohibiting sex selective abortion will be introduced by the Ministry of Health as it has become a major concern to the government.
A recent UN-sponsored said selective abortion was damaging the normal demographic make-up of Armenia. According to research in 1993 the ratio of male to female newborns was 106 to 100. In 2012 the ratio has widen to 114 boys for every 100 girls.
Donara, a 50-year-old doctor, said that many women were being forced into abortions by their husbands or the family of their husbands.
“Today couples are parenting to one or two children and they want one of them be a baby boy. Perhaps the problem would be solved if they had better social conditions,” she said.
Some of the debate in Armenia has focused around not telling mothers what sex their baby is expected to be until after 30 weeks of pregnancy.
For Anoush, though, there was joy and relief as the doctors confirmed that she was finally expecting a son.
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(News report from Issue No. 190, published on June 25 2014)
SEPT. 22 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan has introduced extra tests and is buying new equipment to increase the competency of its medical professionals, media reported.
Analysts have said that the quality of health care in Kazakhstan has not kept pace with economic development in the country over the past decade. Last year, government officials said that many medial staff in rural parts of Kazakhstan had never received formal training.
Now, according to the Tengrinews website, the government has introduced a series of tests for health carers. It reported that since Sept. 2, 300 doctors and nurses in Astana and Almaty have been sitting a 3-1/2 hour theory test followed by an hour-long practical exam.
This is part of a nationwide strategy to improve the level of healthcare in the country.
In its 2013 report on global competitiveness, the World Economic Forum generally rated Kazakhstan highly. The big exception was the quality of its healthcare which the report said was poor.
Kazakhstan’s minister of health, Salidat Kairbekova, admitted that too. Answering a question at a parliamentary committee meeting he said that some medical staff didn’t even know how to use a computer mouse properly.
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(News report from Issue No. 153, published on Sept. 25 2013)
SEPT. 3 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — President Ilham Aliyev’s team have been highlighting Azerbaijan’s jump up the ranks of the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness annual report.
It’s an election year, after all, in Azerbaijan and the WEF report is significant.
In an interview, Elnur Aslanov, head of the Mr Aliyev’s information centre, said Azerbaijan had moved to 39th position in the rankings from 48 last year because of the social and economic policies of the president.
It’s an impressive statistic. Azerbaijan has jumped from 55th position in 2011 and now lies above several EU states.
But it’s also worth looking at the detail.
The reason Azerbaijan ranks so highly in the WEF index is its high score for macroeconomic stability. Azerbaijan’s energy wealth gives it a healthy government debt ratio, a decent government budget balance and strong gross national savings. Azerbaijan also has relatively low inflation, another positive.
The report, though, also details serious shortcomings. These were mainly in the health and education sectors. Notably amongst these was the ranking for school management — 133rd in the world, out of 148 countries.
Significantly, too, of the business executives interviewed for the report nearly a quarter said corruption was still the biggest problem for doing business in Azerbaijan.
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(News report from Issue No. 151, published on Sept. 11 2013)
AUG. 28 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s parliament will consider legislation that will force couples to take a series of health tests for HIV and other infections before they marry, media reported. A number of countries already insist on these tests, including some parts of Russia. Human rights groups criticise the tests as invasive.
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(News report from Issue No. 150, published on Sept. 2 2013)
