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Ethiopian to Introduce New Frequencies to Brussels
Ethiopian Airlines will increase frequencies to Brussels from the current three to six flights a week effective October 28, 2007 and the service to Amsterdam will be discontinued effective same date.
As part of a reorganization effort to rationalize costs in Europe, Mr. Busera Awel, VP Commercial, said, “Since its inauguration on June 5, 2006, Brussels has performed above expectations, and additional frequencies to Brussels will give passengers more options to different places in Africa.” With the new schedule, Ethiopian will offer six weekly connections from Brussels to Bujumbura, Dar es Salaam, Entebbe, Johannesburg, Kilimanjaro, Kigali, Lusaka, Nairobi, and Ethiopian’s newest African station Zanzibar. Other connecting stations include Brazzaville, Douala, Djibouti, Harare, Khartoum, Kinshasa, Libreville, Lilongwe, Luanda, and Sana’a.
In addition to the passenger services, Brussels will continue to be the Ethiopian Airlines’ European cargo hub, with daily service to Addis Ababa.
About Ethiopian
Ethiopian Airlines will be the second airline in the world to take delivery of the Boeing Dreamliner 787.
A couple of months ago Ethiopian Airlines won the 2007 Africa Business Award of The African Times–USA for its significant contributions towards the development of air transport in Africa. In September 2006 it was awarded “African Airline of the Year” for the year 2006 by African Aviation Journal for its financial performance and overall profitability, passenger growth, route network expansion, fleet modernization, in-flight services, and overall customer care.
One of the largest airlines in Africa, Ethiopian - www.ethiopianairlines.com – made its maiden flight to Cairo on April 8, 1946. With the addition of new flight services to Bahrain, Sana’a, Abu Dhabi, Ethiopian currently provides seamless services to 50 destinations spread around the globe. It will also serve Zanzibar effective October 28, 2007 which brings the airline’s total routes in the African continent to 30.
Ethiopian Airlines has placed an order for ten 787 Dreamliners – a revolutionary aircraft with unprecedented passenger comfort. The first two of these aircraft will be delivered in September and November of 2008, making Ethiopian the first to operate the 787 in Africa.
PR & Publications
September 05, 2007
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Watch Interview Clips with Ethiopian Airlines CEO Ato Girma Wake
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Ethiopia detains 107 people over the past 2 months
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — Ethiopia has detained 107 of its citizens over the past two months without charge, according to an opposition lawmaker who said he believed the detainees were suspected of links to a southern insurgency.
File Photo: Addis Ababa 2005
Opposition lawmaker Bulcha Demeksa said Wednesday he had compiled the figure of those detained since July in Addis Ababa and southern Ethiopia from reports from family members.
Ethiopian law provides that any one arrested should appear in court within 48 hours and be charged.
Federal police officials could not be reached for comment Wednesday and repeated calls to other government officials went unanswered.
Bulcha said his total of 107 included three staff members of the Ethiopian Human Rights Council in Nekemte, 220 kilometers (137 miles) west of the capital, that the council said were arrested on Aug. 23 and had not been taken to court since.
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Hiwot Emishaw, an official of the group, said, "They were allegedly arrested for disseminating papers to incite violence. Our organization is saying they have not been engaged in such an act."
Bulcha told The Associated Press he suspected the detainees have been held on suspicion of belonging to the Oromo Liberation Front, which has been fighting for greater autonomy in southern Ethiopia. One of the detainees, he said, was a 63-year-old man.
The Oromo make up a third of Ethiopia's 77 million people, and have been the center of dissent against the ruling Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front.
Bulcha, whose Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement party is a minority in parliament, said that he had complained to government officials, but has not received any response.
The Somali State Regional government said Wednesday that an aid agency's observations about human rights violations in eastern Ethiopia were "distorted."
On Tuesday, officials of Doctors Without Borders said they had seen Ethiopian soldiers chase women and children from wells in the desert and block civilians from getting medical care in the Ogaden region, where a rebellion is brewing.
"These distorted and unrealistic reports are certainly in violation of the code of ethics they are committed to in their line of duty as neutral bodies," the regional state government said in a statement posted on the Foreign Affairs Ministry website.
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Ethiopian opposition leader takes fight abroad
Wed 5 Sep 2007, 20:42 GMT
By Timothy Gardner
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The man who was elected mayor of Addis Ababa said he is not sure whether he can hold public demonstrations there, so he is visiting the United States and Europe seeking support for a new era of democracy in Ethiopia.
"It is very difficult to know what it means to be engaged in political struggles in Ethiopia," Berhanu Nega, deputy chairman of Ethiopian opposition party Coalition for Unity and Democracy, or CUD, told Reuters in an interview in New York.
"Can you organize demonstrations, can you organize discussions? All this is not answered."
Nega won the mayoral race of the capital city in 2005, but was jailed in November of that year after a government crackdown on a protest about the general elections where at least 193 civilians and six police officers died.
The elections, the freest yet in Ethiopia, had raised hopes of democracy after decades of feudalism and dictatorship.
Now Sub-Saharan Africa's second most populous country after Nigeria awaits to see whether the government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and the CUD will reconcile, or if there will be more authoritarian rule.
After Nega's release nearly two years later in July, Zenawi said Nega and other CUD members who had won seats in parliament and Addis Ababa's city council would be free to run for office in the future.
But Nega said it's too early to tell whether he will run in any future election.
"Most of the institutions that are necessary for democratic order don't seem to be operating right now," he said, adding that Ethiopia's judiciary, security forces, and election boards were all under control of Zenawi.
SERIOUS PROBLEMS
He said the government has so far reneged on the release agreement, facilitated by traditional elders, that CUD leaders would meet with the government and third party negotiators on how to broaden democratic institutions.
"Clearly what's at stake, so long as the bitter disagreement continues, is that it keeps the country from addressing its really serious problems such as overpopulation, looming famine, soil erosion and flooding," said Donald Levine, an expert on Ethiopia at the University of Chicago.
Until CUD knows whether it can hold public forums, it is meeting internally and working with the international community to raise support, said Nega, who this week will address academics at The New School for Social Research in New York, where he studied for an economics degree.
In addition, Nega will lead a delegation of fellow opposition members, who were also jailed after the protest, to visit New York, Washington, and Atlanta. For about a month they will visit Ethiopians who have relocated to the United States. He hopes the delegation will also meet with members of U.S. Congress and officials at the State Department to urge them to look closely at the Zenawi administration.
The longer it takes for the government and the CUD to come together, the greater chance violence could spread through the country from places such as the remote Ogaden region where the government is leading a crackdown on rebels, he said.
"If we don't fill the political space in this discussion with the commitment to settle this impasse peacefully, then these other forces are going to be the ones (the) government has to deal with," he said.
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Britain launches global plan to boost healthcare in poor countries
LONDON (AFP) — Prime Minister Gordon Brown launched an international initiative Wednesday to improve the quality of healthcare in some of the world's poorest countries.
The International Health Partnership (IHP) aims to build stronger health systems in the developing world and make it easier for struggling nations to deal with international partners.
"Our vision today is that we can triumph over ancient scourges and for the first time in history conquer polio, TB, measles and then with further advances and initiatives, go on to address pneumococcal pneumonia, malaria and eventually HIV/AIDS," Brown said ahead of the official announcement at his Downing Street office.
"Today we come together -- donor governments, health agencies and developing countries -- with the certainty that we have the knowledge and the power to save millions through our efforts."
The IHP brings together bodies like the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with the governments of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Norway and Canada.
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The first wave of developing countries which will hook up with the IHP is Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Zambia, Cambodia and Nepal, all of which will commit to prioritizing health issues.
Officials say that over the next couple of years, the seven countries will identify particular problems in their national health systems before working with international partners to address them.
The project does not involve new funding but the British government says that global aid for health has doubled since 2000.
"This is about making what we do more effective, adding up to greater than the sum of its parts... It's about getting a bigger bang for your buck," said a senior British government source, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Barbara Stocking, the director of charity Oxfam, welcomed the launch of the IHP but said it needed extra cash to achieve its goals.
"This initiative will only succeed if enough countries get behind it and if it mobilises additional aid to provide co-ordinated and expanded state health provision," she said.
International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander said the IHP was being launched with the world community "seriously off track" in its aim of meeting United Nations Millenium Development Goals, particularly on health.
The goals, set in 2000 and which are due to be met by 2015, include tackling disease and reducing child mortality rates, and those involved hope the IHP can kickstart these efforts.
Officials expect that other countries, both donors and developing countries, will get involved as the IHP evolves.
The United States has not signed up for the IHP but has been involved "in quite close discussions from the start" over its development, the source said.
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ETHIOPIA: Government boost for universal primary healthcare
ADDIS ABABA, 5 September 2007 (IRIN) -
Ethiopia has stepped up recruitment and training of primary healthcare providers and is building more health centres in an effort to make such care available for all by 2010, health minister Tewodros Adhanom said.
"The target of 2010 is fast approaching," the minister told reporters in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa on 4 September. "But it is possible to achieve this [the universal provision of primary healthcare]," he added.
Ethiopia has employed 17,000 health extension workers countrywide and their number is expected to rise to 24,000 - 80 percent of the required 30,000 - by December 2007, under the country's health extension programme.
About 3,200 health centres are needed - one for 25,000 people. There are only 635 health centres at present.
"We have secured the finance for the construction of 1,000 health centres which will be built next year," said Tewodros. "The regions will build an additional 1,000. That will make the target reality," he added.
Most of the resources for the expanded healthcare improvement programme will come from donors, the minister said. "But because donors have different and often complex rules and reporting requirements for the projects they offer to fund, and because we lack the staff to manage projects in accordance with their rules and requirements, we cannot actually make use of all the health funding that donors offer us," he added.
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The Ethiopian programme falls under the International Health Partnership, officially launched by the UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown on 5 September, whereby aid donors have committed themselves to fund health programmes in developing countries to help them achieve three key Millennium Development Goals – cutting childhood and maternal mortality rates and fighting disease, including malaria, TB and HIV/AIDS.
Paul Ackroyd, representative of Britain's Department for International Development in Ethiopia, lauded the country's healthcare plan.
"Ethiopia has a very good plan for health and is making spectacular progress against some of the biggest killers," he said. "In two years it has distributed over 90 percent of the 20 million bed nets needed to protect all of those who are at risk of malaria," said Ackroyd.
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Partners pull together to bring healthcare to rural Ethiopia
Teguada’s busy weekTeguada Terefe is 25 years old and a mother of two children. She is a HEW in Libo Kemkem Woreda in Amhara Region. After tenth grade, she was selected to be trained as a HEW in her district’s training school. Teguada successfully completed the course and for almost two years has been working at the health post in her kebele - a post that provides health services to 6,670 people.
Each week, on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, Teguada goes from house to house to teach community members about family planning, distribute bed nets for malaria prevention, create awareness of the importance of hygiene and sanitation, and give first aid training. She visits mothers with newborn babies, teaching them about breastfeeding, immunisation and how to prepare nutritious meals. She also shows households how to construct latrines and improve hygiene, and demonstrates how, by keeping their homes clean, they can combat the flies, mosquitoes and parasites that carry disease.
Source: DFID
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Ethiopia rights group says government has detained activists
ADDIS ABABA (AFP) —
A human rights organisation in Ethiopia said Wednesday that the government has been holding three of its members without charge for more than two weeks in the west of the country.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO) said three members of its branch in Nekemte, 220 kilometres (135 miles) west of Addis Ababa, were detained on August 23 after police came to search their homes.
"Three of our members in Nekemte have been detained without an arrest warrant for 16 days," Tesfaye Desalegn, the group's public relations officer, told AFP.
"They were looking for arms and papers they claimed were used to incite violence, but even though nothing was found, they haven't released or tried them yet," he added.
Regional security officials have not responded to appeals, he added.
In a statement, the group urged the government to either release the three or press charges against them.
Nekemte lies in the Oromo region, where rebels have been battling the government for years.
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EthioBlog is the first Ethiopian blog. During the June and November 2005 Carnage in Addis Ababa, nazret.com was the first website to post first hand eyewitness accounts from ground zero in Addis. Be part of the largest Ethiopian News website and join in as a contributor.
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