JUNE 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Doctors and other health workers will leave Kyrgyzstan for better paid jobs in Kazakhstan and Russia now that the country has joined the Kremlin- led Eurasian Economic Union, media quoted Kyrgyz health minister Talantbek Batyraliyev as saying. Kyrgyzstan’s health service is already in a precarious states.
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(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)
MARCH 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – With a conflict in Yemen between a pro-government alliance that includes various Arab states and Iran-backed rebels worsening, Tajikistan has asked Russia for help repatriating 44 Tajik doctors.
Abdulfaizov Atoyev, a Tajik foreign ministry spokeman, said: “The country is taking all relevant measures to evacuate our citizens.”
Media has reported that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE are preparing for a ground invasion of Yemen.
Doctors and nurses from Tajikistan often travel abroad to work in hospitals and clinics. Remittances from these migrant workers keep the Tajik economy afloat. Russian companies like Zdraveksport and Tekhnoeksport specialise in sending Tajik doctors to Gulf countries. In Yemen, they mostly work for the Red Cross/Red Crescent.
Last October a Tajik nurse was kidnapped in Yemen.
Medical studies represent a climbable social ladder in Tajikistan, as well as providing a route to work abroad. Moving to another country has been a lucrative option for Tajik medics who also want to support their family at home.
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(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)
MARCH 16 2015 (The Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan has admitted that it is on the brink of losing control of a measles outbreak with up to 250 suspected cases of the disease reported every day, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said.
Responding to the outbreak, which has been becoming increasingly aggressive over the past year, Kyrgzstan announced that it would vaccinate 2m people under the age of 20.
WHO laced its statement with thinly disguised criticism of Kyrgyzstan’s late response to the epidemic.
“The outbreak, which began in early 2014, has caused over 11,300 suspected cases to date and continues to increase by 120–to 250 suspected cases every day,” WHO said.
“The country’s decision to initiate the mass immunization campaign comes in the wake of a call on 25 February 2015 by WHO Regional Director for Europe Zsuzsanna Jakab for policy-makers, health-care workers and parents to immediately step up vaccination against measles across age groups at risk to stop the outbreaks.”
The measles epidemic and the apparent slow response of the Kyrgyz authorities to deal with it has done damage to Kyrgyzstan’s already tarnished international image.
Bishkek needs its vaccination programme to work.
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)
MARCH 11 2015 (The Bulletin) – Religious leaders in Kyrgyzstan issued a statement saying that it was not un-Islamic to vaccinate children against the measles virus, the Eurasianet website reported. This is important because health experts have blamed fears vaccinations were anti-Islamic for a surge in measles in Kyrgyzstan
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(News report from Issue No. 222, published on March 11 2015)
MARCH 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) -Citing Kyrgyzstan as one of the countries worst affected by a surge in measles, the World Health Organisation (WHO) called for a mass vaccination to prevent the disease spreading. WHO said Kyrgyzstan had 7,477 new measles cases since the start of 2014, out of 22,000 recorded in the Europe region.
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(News report from Issue No. 221, published on March 4 2015)
FEB. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Measles in Kyrgyzstan is on the rise because parents are opting their children out of the vaccination for religious reasons, media reported quoting government doctors. Figures quoted by the media said that the number of confirmed measles cases in Kyrgyzstan rose to 3,400 this year from 200 last year.
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(News report from Issue No. 218, published on Feb. 11 2015)
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)