Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe is reported to have gone to Singapore for secret prostate cancer tests. According to a report in The Times, Mugabe flew to the Far East last week for the medical treatment which is no longer available in his run-down hospitals in Zimbabwe.
Sources in the government said Mugabe had travelled to Singapore to undergo tests for prostate cancer. According to the Times sources, the tests were carried out by one of one of Malaysia's to urologists.
Mugabe has been increasingly turning to the Far East for help since the breakdown of his relationship with the West.
As much as we don't wish poor health on anyone, it is very unfortunate that the president of the country has the privilege of going to other countries for medical treatment whilst the majority of the country just suffer in pain and die.
How many Zimbabweans have lost their lives because of poor medical attention in hospitals and clinics. Some hospitals have been forced to shut down or cut down on their operations.
There are no doctors and nurses in most hospitals, most of then have gone to other countries for greener pastures. For those nurses and doctors still in the country some of them can not even afford to go to work because of the economic problems in Zimbabwe today.
Feel free to leave your comments
Kids!
They bring joy to our lives.
We all love kids, this is shown by how we rejoice and celebrate when a baby is born.
Couples try all different things if for one reason they can't have children. Now for my fellow ZImbabweans back home, having kids is going to cost them a lot of money.
Harare City Council has just announced that with immediate effect, fees at all it's health institutions are going up by 100 percent.
The fees at all Harare City Council health institutions are also expected to go up again by 100 percent with effect from one April this year.
Consultation fees for both clinics and hospitals have increased to ZW$10 million.
Research has shown that population tends to increase more in poor communities. Poor people make more babies than rich communities. This is probably the same situation in Zimbabwe. There is poverty in most communities, there is no food, no drugs and there is poor or no service in hospitals and clinics.
Zimbabwe has got one of the highest rate of unemployment in the world. The working majority are all below the poverty datum line. Inflation rate is too high and embarasing to talk about.
I was also wondering whether this has got something to do with lack of other things to do out of work. Say entertainment,
Well most of the times there is no electricty in most suburbs in Zimbabwe, so people can not watch TV, thus they retire to bed early.
I have also head a lot of stories about Zimbabwe man's favourite drink chibuku 'scud'. Sorry I'm not going to talk about this now.
Maybe because of a lot of manual work to be done in these poor communities, maybe it's a motivation to have more babies!
Well, so why don't they use all these family planning methods around? Could it be the cost, or maybe lack of knowledge? Surely there must be traditional methods available.
Well for my fellow Zimbabweans back home, besides having to rely on community midwives. Surely how many of them will afford the $50 million maternity booking fees. As for foreigners living in Harare, well they have to pay $100 million.
Consultation fees for family health services costs $2 million. Something called Pap smear costs $10 million, Depo Provera costs $5 million and family planning pills now cost $1 million.
So, probably Zimbabwe is set for a population boom now. How many people will afford all these expenses when there is nothing to eat in the house. Well. after all there is nothing wrong in having babies.
So what do you think? Feel free to leave your comment.
A healthy fight with your partner will help you live longer. A new research has revealed that couples who bottle up anger die earlier than people who stand up for themselves.
Regulary repressing emotions can increase stress related conditions such as, heart disease and high blood pressure.
Professor Eenest Harburg, who led the research found that even when other factors such as age, weight and smoking were taken into account couples who rarely argued were less healthy. What is important is how you resolve conflict when it happens.
A row means you love someone and you care for that person. As a relationship is about two people interacting and relating to each other disagreements will come up at times.
It is important to express your anger without showing disrespect. In that way you will have constructive fights which helps resolve the conflicts. You should not be scared of arguing with your spouse. If you never argue with someone you live with, it's most likely you are sharing space than a relationship.
Knowing how far to go is the key. You should know when to walk away, get some space and come back when you are ready to make it up to your partner. You can go for a walk or even to the pub just to help the situation to calm down.
Learn to say sorry. You have to say five lovely things to your partner to make up for just one bad thing. lots of sweet talk, a nice meal or a big box of chocolate can help get your relatinship back on track.
It is important that people don't argue just to pick up a fight. Communication is very important in a relationship, don't limit yourself in a discussion, debate or even a good argument.
We are often overloaded with information in our e-mail inbox which is now takes most our time to go through. Before you realise it you are hooked onto checking your e-mails frequently. Like myself I spend more time on the Internet looking for solutions to different problems. Overtime I have subscribed to a number of newsletters and everyday I was getting loads of e-mails in my Inbox. Can you imagine how much time it takes to go through all those e-mails. Then there are personal e-mails and also junk mails to deal with.
Can you imagine going through a day without checking your e-mail. Sometimes you can be stressed, that you may miss something just by not having access to your e-mail.
I came across the following ways that can help you cure your e-mail addiction and reduce all stress caused by e-mail addiction:
Try not to mix personal e-mails and business mail - discourage your friends and family from sending things to your work e-mail account. This way you won't have to keep checking your work e-mail account even in out of work hours just to see if one of your mates has send or replied your personal e-mails.
You are responsible for the volume you receive - if you are like me and you have subscribed to so many newsletters, you may have to go through your inbox and unsubscribe to some which waste your time. Sometimes you get junk mail, try not to get into the habit of reading all the junk mail. Myself I just delete most of spam mail.
You may choose to ignore your e-mail completely at certain times. This can help you concentrate more on other work you need to do. Stop replying to e-mails out of work hours. If people know they can get an answer from you at all times they start relying on that.
Find something else to read, maybe a book or you can subscribe to RSS feeds with more valuable information. You can also read a newspaper to kill time on your journeys, instead of ending up on your mobile e-mail.
Try also to set yourself time limits. This requires a lot of discipline, but you should try to limit the amount of time you spend dealing with emails.
It is important to try and balance your work and personal life.
Feel free to leave your comment on this and other articles here.
This is one of those disturbing stories coming out of the communities of the beautiful country Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe once the bread basket of Africa can not even feed its own people. Now there are reports that some villagers are using human excrement to beat an acute shortage of fertiliser and enhance their crop yields.
"Chihota villagers have invented optional fertiliser by turning human excreta(faeces) into organic manure with urine being used in the mixture instead of ammonium nitrate," according to a report from AFP.
How can people resort to such desperation measures? This should not be hailed as innovation at the expense of the people and community's' health. Whether they will get better yields come harvest time, this should not be happening and should not be allowed to happen.
Zimbabwe is a country suffering from all sorts of problems at the moment. The country's economy is agriculture based, but the agricultural sector is nearly dead like all the other sectors of the economy. The farmers should be able to get agricultural inputs if there is to be any hope of economic recovery. Resorting to desperate measures like using human excrement for fertiliser will not help the economy.
There have been reports of donations of agricultural inputs by different organisations, but these will never get to the needy farmers. In most cases only a few people benefit from these donations. There is need to get rid of corruption in the distribution of donations.
Because of foreign currency shortages, fertiliser companies have not been able to import chemicals needed for production. Zimbabwe's economy is in crisis, inflation is estimated at 8000% even though some put it at higher figures. People have no meaningful disposable incomes to talk about, they can not afford to buy basic necessities.
The chronic food shortages affecting Zimbabwe are likely to continue due to all these problems affecting the agricultural sector.
The area of Chihota despite being only a few kilometres outside Harare, is severely under developed. No meaningful development has ever happened in this area. Maybe besides the construction of Mahusekwa dam, which I can say has never benefited most of the community. The area has such bad gravel roads that bus operators do not service some parts of the area of Chihota.
Despite all the promises from the government and from all those would be MPs, development in Chihota will always be a dream. The leaders of the area who have promised so much and delivered so little should be embarrassed an ashamed of themselves.
In the next weeks leading to elections in March, villagers in Chihota will be seeing these would be leaders quite frequently.
New year New resolutions and more greater ambitions. It surely has been a busy start to 2008. Trying to live with those resolutions we set for ourselves. But don't you think we are living in an over commercialised world? Where these companies act like big brother, they spy on what we are doing, what we like and what we don't like and try to control our lives through aggressive marketing of their products. They compete for whatever little money we have, and sometimes living us in severe debt. They don't care, after all they are in business to make profit.
We have seen the more aggressive marketing of those celebrity work out DVDs, Detox, Diet and weight loss plans. Do we really eat that much over Christmas to make us put on a lot of weight? Isn't it the same companies who advertise all those sugar foods and chocolate during the festive season.
I think the most important thing is to live a healthy lifestyle throughout the year, not just to try and lose weight in January.
I have seen women who are obsessed with their so called wobbly bits, they try all sorts of diets to achieve that perfect body. Because of their desperation for a quick fix, they run into huge debts from buying weight loss books and DVDS, gym memberships, specialist foods and supplements. Some even go through the expensive and painful cosmetic surgery.
Detox, diet and weight loss is now a very big industry. So many products come onto the market every year. Many women celebrities with their new found fame are just cashing in on their popularity with an inferior workout DVD.
Some of their workouts can also be dangerous and can cause injuries if not properly done.
Crash diets can also be dangerous because you will just put on the weight back on again. It's not easy to stick to these diet plans for a long time. It is important to live a healthy lifestyle, eating the right foods throughout the year so you do not fall into this dieting trap. A little bit of exercising helps.
It is also the over commercialisation of these celebrities and their so called perfect bodies. Some have good bodies, but some are too skinny really. However this is not a reason to demonise the women with the big body through those commercials. I do not see any think wrong in the big women, after all they are more attractive than the size zero. I call them the perfect women with the perfect body, the full house. A bit of flesh is better isn't it? I think everyone should be proud of what they are and not to let other people's views destroy your confidence, your life and leave a big hole in your pocket.
However there are some people who are really obese, they need to follow a health diet, do a bit of exercising and generally change their lifestyle. There are good plans which, when followed properly can give one a good and healthy lifestyle.
Resit those buy one get one free promotions on fast food. Eating more cooked meals and not to live on take aways.
Isn't it ironic that with all this noise about obese people, McDonald's actually recorded an increase in sales in December compared to the same period the previous year. They even started the new year with a buy one get one free promotion on the Big Mac.
Do you think we are living in a world where everything is controlled by advertising? Should women really be obsessing about their bodies? What makes advertisers think the skinny women has the perfect body?
Harare has been hit by an outbreak of diarrhoea. This follows weeks of uncollected garbage, sewage blockages and erratic water supplies.
More than 400 cases have been reported in the suburbs of Mabvuku and Tafara. Blocked storm drains and sewer pipes had resulted in pools of sewage following in the streets.
As if nobody new about these problems in Mabvuku, Tafara and other suburbs of Harare. Cleaning work only started after the visit to the areas by the minister of health Dr David Parirenyatwa this week.
Surely this work should have been done earlier, do people have to fall sick first or die before any action is taken? People are struggling to pay rent and rates for these services which the city of Harare commission is not providing. Because of corruption and mismanagement, the city of Harare is no longer the sunshine city it used to be.
So what next for Harare residents? Is it back to the village now after living in the dark without electricity for the past months? Drinking dirty water, and sleeping in the bank queues waiting for their hard earned cash.
Can you imagine how the residents of Tafara and Mabvuku can manage to walk in the dark with all the sewage flowing in the streets. Where is the un-elected Harare commission when all these problems are happening?
Should the commission running the affairs of the city of Harare remain in office?
It's that time of the year again when people set goals on what they intend to achieve during the course of the year. Goal setting is important because it gives direction to ourlives. It enables you to plan your things in a better way and also gives standards to measure how you are doing. I personally think the following goals are important and will help us enjoy life in the New Year.
Health: We should aim to live a healthy lifestyle throughout the year. It is important to watch what we eat, making sure we get a balanced diet.
A bit of exercising will help us keep the body fit and healthy. Play those old games with your kids in the park.
Build and Maintain Relationships: Whether it's your love life, friendships or family relationships we should aim to make fruitful relationships. Lets love one another, show others that you love them. Go out and do something to benefit the community and help build a happy and healthy community. Problems may arise along the way, but we should resolve and learn from them.
Enjoy Life: Go out, do all those things you enjoy. Life is too short, so make sure you make the most of the time that you get. Try to balance work life and social life. Work as hard as you can and your efforts will be rewarded.
Earn that extra income: There are many opportunities available that can help you earn that extra money. Do your own research, find those opportunities, set yourself goals and make sure by end of the year you have achieved something.
Set yourself some goals, they help give direction and better planning in your life.
For whatever reason, failure to bear children is one of the most difficult and stressful situations to be in. It becomes even more difficult for the wife if she can not conceive because traditionally she is to blame if she can not bear children for her husband. After all the husband paid all that lobola (bride price) so she can bear him children.
Couples go through a lot of pain and stress because of pressure from relatives if they can not have children. It does not matter to the relatives that it's not within their control. If the wife can not bear children for the husband, then there will be no peace, always trouble with the in laws. Only a few can accept that the husband can fail to bear children.
However there was also a secret tradition of using a sperm donor if the husband could not bear children. Even the husband was not supposed to know of this arrangement by his family to use a sperm donor.
Traditionally in the case when the husband's family acknowledge that their own son could not bear children, then it was the responsibility of the chosen few elders to convene a meeting and arrange for a suitable sperm donor to use.
The system was very much different from the western culture type of sperm donor where one can go to the different sperm banks and hospitals:
Traditionally it was mostly the husband's own young brother who would be chosen to bear children for him. It was so secret even the husband was not supposed to know that his own brother is sleeping with his wife. He was never supposed to know that himself can not bear children. It was just proper for family relations since no one could approve of someone sleeping with his wife, even your own brother.
Not even the young brother was allowed to say anything about it. He was not even supposed to have a love relationship with his brother's wife. His duty was just to bear children for the brother.
Unlike in the Western world, only the husband's brother could bear children for him. This meant the blood line of the family continues, and again the children will have the same totem (mutupo). With the western system you can end up with five children all with different totems. Totems embody the unification, collective pride and aspirations of a clan and it's ancestry.
There are major complications that can arise between our culture and the use of the modern sperm banks, regarding the social identity of a clan.
The young brother was still expected to get married and have his own family. It was not his responsibility to look after his 'brother's' children.
So was this a better way of helping couples to have children? I guess during those times the system was working very well in families. Does it work in this current world we are living in?
Fellas needing a boost in the bedroom are being told to try POMEGRANATE juice. A daily glass can act like Viagra, new research shows.
We have always known that there are so many natural herbs and fruits that are as good as Viagra or maybe better. Especially in Zimbabwe where we have different types of these herbs to improve your sexual life.
Now we have pomegranate juice, nearly half the men who drank it for a month in the American study said they found it easier to rise to the occasion. It is thought the juice is rich in antioxidants which increase blood supply to the tackle.
Just like drugs for importance, the antioxidants raise levels of nitric oxide, which relaxes blood-vessel walls.
Researcher Dr Christopher Forest, of the University of California in Los Angeles, said "Pomegranate juice has great potential in the management of erectile dysfunction."
Pomegranate have already been hailed a super fruit capable of reducing the risk of heart disease and preventing prostate cancer. The fruit is believed to have more antioxidants than any other juice, tea or red wine.
editing by ziblog
