Dear B.M. Thank you for your latest and have a nice reading here from the GRT News GRTS RADIO NEWS: TUESDAY DECEMBER 14TH 1999 Reports from the URD speak of a serious water problem being experienced at the Fatoto health centre. Our URD correspondent, who visited the centre, interviewed the nursing officer in charge, Mr Bernard Gomez, who told him that the health centre has been without a tap or well for the past two years. According to Mr Gomez, water for the centre is fetched from the local middle school, located some 500 metres away. Our correspondent also interviewed the Divisional Health Officer, Batch Samba Conteh, who confirmed his department's knowledge of the problem. But he said they are waiting for action from the Department of Rural Water Supply, which has promised to solve the problem. For Freedom Saiks I wanted to wait for Ebrimas second part before responding to yours but since there is not much to say in responding to yours I decided to do it now .By the way it was great to know that you belong to the new generation,I only hope that there are many "90s husband" out there,or do we have any choice ? You responded to my posting by insisting that ; "what i said was that 97% of all children under 12 months had access to maternal and child health(MCH) care. This is the result of a well functioning and funded program that is easy to monitor and is well targeted up and down the country ..." Again if 97% of these children did have accsee to maternal and child health care and yet still did not undergo any immunization programme then the quality of such a programme needs to be upgraded ,because part of the main objective of child health care is to, among other things, provide children with such services.If immunization is not part of this well functioning and funded programme then something is wrong somewhere.And secondly it will be great to know who was funding this programme.As said in my first posting that even during the PPP era these developments were there and that they were also claiming it to be their achievement.Yes B.M.I hold on to the fact that the size of our country and population is of great advantage especially when it comes to providing health and social services,I am not sure why you are dismissing this fact and yet still insist that statistics are important in drawing development strategies which I have no problem in agreeing with you. What I am saying,like in your statistic on the number of children who are now attending primary school, whiles these figures could even be true,you cant depend on them entirely,because it could happen that half of these children do not complete their primary education or do not go beyond this level simple because their parents are not able to provide them with the funding.And even with that,either you or someone else mention here that the teacher /students ration is unsatisfactory,how do we expect a quality education from such a situation ?I other words,these statistics do not tell among other things the quality of the education,this is what one is saying when I insisted that some of these statistics do not correspond with the realities on the ground.I must insist here again that I have never disputed the fact that statistics are not important. For Freedom Saiks > Even if Jones figures are correct that 97 % of Gambian children under the age > of 12 have undergone the immunization program,which is very doubting,might > be based on the fact that our estimated population is just 1.5 million,many > times less than that of Lagos.If we even based our arguments on these figures > it will mean that almost every Gambian child under the age of 12 have been > in contact with the health service in the country,which is very doubting. > > Hi Saiks, Just a point of observation on the above quotation attributed to me. I never said that 97% of all children under 12 year have adequate immunization. What i said was that 97% of all children under 12 months had access to maternal and child health(MCH) care. This is the result of a well functioning and funded program that is easy to monitor and is well targeted up and down the country. Nothing to do with Nigeria or size. Yes there are lies, damn lies and statistics, but statistics is just a guide to facilitate planning. In the case of Gambia, what needs to be implemented is adequate planning that is targeted to reduce poverty as sister ndey mentioned. Let me take your example of Badibu Mandory or Kerr Mama. Lets assume that Gambia family planning association in collaboration with the DOH wants to reduce the infant and child mortality rates in this area. Don't you think that it is useful to know the target population of all children under 5 in this area, resources provided and a system of monitoring their progress instituted to establish their survival rates. The number of babies born can be established and monitored. That's how statistics help in planning economy wide. As i said, the challenge is development and without planning there can be no development. So statistics are just a guide in identifying your target population. About 9 years back, i used to take my son to clinic every saturday at leman street as my wife did the cooking for the week (I am a 90s man). In Gambia on the birth of a child, you are issued with a clinic card and in villages there are trained traditional birth attendants that are taught what to do and fill in forms to deliver to the community health nurse ect. With the clinic cards, it is easy to monitor the level of vaccination in Gambia. Even countries that are not in political turmoil in Africa are studying our success in this area. So let us promote the good and see how it can be enhanced. You said that economic statistics do not correspond to the realities of the average Gambia. I think that is precisely what Ebrima showed in his article. When you make a statement like that, it is a normative statement based on your value judgment. Ebrima is making a positive statement backed with facts and figures. He is proving his point with concrete evidence to establish his assertion. This is what statistics give you that you otherwise do not have. For certain areas such as unemployment we know that it exists but we do not know the actual level. In Gambia the problem is more of underemployment that unemployment -i.e there is the tendency for more people to engage in productive employment during the rainy season. I deliberately avoided talking about inflation and other economic statistics and instead concentrated on health and education. If anything Ebrima has shown as you said in your last statement the extent of personal sacrifices needed for nation building. basil > > > > > > > > >----------------------- > > > >To text=unsubscribetext=/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the > Gambia-L > >Web interface at: > http://text=maelstromtext=.text=stjohnstext=.text=edutext=/archives/text=gambiatext=-l.text=htmltext= > > > >---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > ______________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.text=hotmailtext=.text=comtext= > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > To text=unsubscribetext=/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the > Gambia-L > Web interface at: > http://text=maelstromtext=.text=stjohnstext=.text=edutext=/archives/text=gambiatext=-l.text=htmltext= > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > ____________________________________________________________________ > Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com. > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L > Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------- B.M.Jones [log in to unmask] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------