Prime Minister announces special status for Cabinda

He went on to say that the antagonism that had, in the past, characterised relations between the government and Flec had given place to contacts and dialogue, through the Cabindan Forum for Dialogue, an institution that included Flec and local civil society organisations. The ongoing peace process meant that the government would adopt special political and institutional measures, with a view to granting a special status to the oil-rich province.

This, the Prime Minster continued, could take the form of strengthening provincial government and local administrative capacity by transferring powers from central to provincial level. 

These were some of the steps being taken for a definitive solution to the situation, which was evolving and would have a peaceful outcome, he concluded.

US$85 million earmarked for voter registration

Speaking at the same session, the Prime Minister said the government had already approved US$85 million for the costs of voter registration.  Referring to the government’s responsibilities in preparing for elections, he said the work of the inter-ministerial committee for elections, CIP, in preparing technical, material, logistic and administrative conditions for elections was going well.

He recalled that the amendment of the constitution and the carrying out of a general population census had not come within the timescale indicated for the tasks entrusted to the CIP, since discussions on these two issues had long been stalled within the National Assembly itself, owing to the immoveable and inflexible attitude taken by opposition deputies.

The Prime Minister told the National Assembly that the free registration of adults throughout the country had been completed.   Other electoral issues – voter registration, election dates, financing of candidates and the presidential election – were the exclusive domains of the National Electoral Commission, the President of the Republic and the Supreme Court, he said. 

Government to spend US$16.2 million on small parties

The government is to spend about US$16.2 million on allowances for political parties without parliamentary seats, following a resolution adopted by the National Assembly. A Ministry of Finance source said on 1 March that his Ministry would be paying the equivalent of US$120,000 each to 135 political parties without parliamentary seats. The source said the money would be paid in two tranches, the first of which had already started to be disbursed.

The allowances, approved by the government earlier in the year,  are to cover expenditure on premises, equipment and transport facilities, in order to enable parties to establish themselves nationally, as part of the preparations for the next elections. 

The problem of the funding of non-parliamentary parties came to the fore after the adoption of the Law on the Financing of Parties, part of the legislative package adopted by the National Assembly to permit the holding of elections.  Under the new law, there was to be no more state funding of parties without parliamentary seats.  This gave rise to protests from these parties, which demanded conditions enabling them to compete in the elections. 

Under the previous legislation, the state provided US$140,000 a year to each of the duly legalised parties, which many observers considered to be the reason for the large number of parties in the country.

During the debate preceding the passing of the current law, most of the deputies argued that the large number of political parties in the country was of no benefit at all to Angolan democracy. 

After 1991, when the multi-party system was introduced in the country, about 150 parties were legally registered in the country, but only 12 of them are represented in the National Assembly.  Most of the others have engaged in no known political activity in recent years and most people have never even heard of them.

IMF says no need for staff monitored programme

An International Monetary Fund official said in Luanda on 29 March that Angola now had sufficient resources to relaunch development and that there was therefore no need for an agreement on a staff monitored programme. 

This was the conclusion reached at the end of a two-week visit to Angola by a delegation of IMF specialists to assess progress made and economic prospects. 

The official said that Angola did not need a donor conference for the time being, that it had resources that could be used for development and that it needed only the support of donors and to strengthen institutional capacity, with a view to policy formulation.

The IMF expressed optimism about the country’s economic prospects, stressing that economic recovery was becoming more substantial, as demonstrated by the improved macro-economic indicators in 2005. 

This favourable climate, in the view of the IMF, would continue to characterise the economy in the future, provided macro-economic stability was maintained and the private sector developed.

Bridges to be rebuilt

Minister of Public Works Higino Carneiro has said that 1,300 destroyed bridges in the country are to be repaired or rebuilt in the next two years. 

Speaking to the press in Kwanza Sul Province, where he went to see work in progress on the repair of the bridge over the Keve River on the road from Waco Kungo to Alta Hama in Huambo Province, he said there were 72,000 km of roads in the country and about 6,700 bridges.  At least 30 percent of all the bridges in Angola had been destroyed, he said.

The Minister spoke of the need for proper maintenance of roads and bridges, so that they did not deteriorate a few years after they were repaired.

The bridge on the Keve River, on the Wako Kungo-Alta Hama road, which started to be repaired in December, provides an important link between Kwanza Sul and the central region of the country.  It was built in 1967 and destroyed by war in 1992.  Crossing the river is currently done by a ferry with an 80-tonne capacity. 

Miguel Andrade, head of works of Conduril, the construction company building the reinforced concrete bridge, said the work was being treated as a matter of urgency and mine clearance was being carried out at the same time.

Agreement signed on building new refinery

The state oil company, Sonangol, started the process related to the building of a new refinery in the coastal city of Lobito, Benguela Province, by signing a partnership agreement with the China Petroleum Corporation, Sinopec. 

Under the agreement, which will remain in force until the signing of an agreement on the establishment of a joint venture, Sonangol Sinopec International, SSI, Sinopec is to propose financing of the project in negotiation with Sonangol.

Manuel Vicente, chairman of Sonangol’s board of directors, said he was satisfied with the agreement and hoped the Chinese participation would provide added value through the transfer of technology.  He said refining was a priority for Sonangol and that the building work, which is to cost US$3.5 billion, would be completed as soon as possible. 

Wu Yang, vice-chairman of Sinopec, reaffirmed his country’s wish to contribute to Angola’s social and economic development and to strengthen relations between the two countries. With a capacity to refine 200,000 barrels of oil a day, the future Lobito refinery, Sonaref, should be operational by 2010, after all the problems of financing and construction are solved.

Angola, which currently produces about 1.3 barrels of oil a day, has only one refinery. Built in the 1950s on the outskirts of Luanda,   its capacity is limited to 40,000 barrels a day. The new refinery will solve the problem of supplying the domestic market with fuel, which Sonangol now has to do by resorting to imports.

The building work will be done by a South Korean company, Samsung, under an agreement signed in August 2000.

Angola is the second biggest oil producer in Africa south of the Sahara, after Nigeria.  Its oil reserves have been estimated to be 12 billion barrels.

The new Development Bank of Angola

Meeting in Luanda in mid-March, the Council of Ministers approved a decree replacing the Economic and Social Development Fund, FDES, with the Development Bank of Angola, BDA. 

All the property and personnel of FDES are to be transferred to the BDA.

According to a press release issued after the meeting, the BDA is a financial institution for the purpose of carrying out the government’s development and investment policy and providing diversified and sustained support for the country’s economic and social development. 

It is to stimulate increased productivity and investment by financing projects, programmes, building schemes and services that further economic and social development. 

The Council of Ministers also appointed a commission entrusted with creating technical and operative conditions for the bank to start its activities within six months.

President dos Santos had announced earlier this year that a development bank would be established, to be partly financed by oil revenues.

Government allocates more funds for mine clearance

The government has allocated US$2.5 million this year to support the mine clearance programme in the country.  The money is to be spent on buying equipment and means of communication and creating 15 new teams to work in different provinces.

This was revealed in Luanda on 24 March by Santana André Pitra ‘Petroff’’, president of the national inter-sector demining and humanitarian assistance commission, CNIDAH, at the opening of a CNIDAH meeting. 

He spoke of the need to establish operations rooms in some provinces, as important centres for gathering information needed by sappers, institutions, donors, election workers and others.

He said that about 2.2 million Angolans lived in areas where they were constantly threatened by explosive devices.  Moxico was the province most affected, and 90 percent of the people there had difficulties in reaching farm and grazing land. 

Petroff went on to say that CNIDAH would soon be presenting the government with a national strategic plan for 2006-2011, covering ‘humanitarian, reconstruction and economic and social development requirements’.

Addressing the closing session, João Baptista Kussumua, Minister of Assistance and Social Reintegration, said he foresaw that Angola would be free from mines, or that the situation would be fully under control, by the end of the general humanitarian demining process in 2006-2007. 

He said mine clearance would now be better controlled by registering all the devices deactivated by every operator in any part of the country, exchanging information and storing the results in a single data base. He said that increased efforts, combined with the creation of 43 demining brigades by the government, should encourage others to step up inspection and clearing work.

Minister Kussumua appealed for greater cooperation from private companies and NGOs, so that landmines could finally be eliminated from Angola.

The meeting was attended by ministers, representatives of provincial governments, United Nations agencies and the media, demining organisations and the diplomatic corps.      Mine clearance work along the 64-km electricity supply line from Kifangondo to Mabubas in Bengo Province was completed in December 2005, according to João Sebastião Quileba, liaison officer of the provincial mine action coordination office. During the work, started in August 2005 and carried out by the National Demining Institute, 253 anti-personnel mines and 21 unexploded devices were deactivated, he said.

It was now possible, he said, to start rehabilitating the line and the pylons destroyed in 1992 during the war, a project financed by central government through a Chinese credit line.        He went on to speak of other demining activities in progress in the province.

Drought affecting crops

Meeting in Luanda on 15 March, the Council of Ministers recommended the drafting of a programme to combat drought and take emergency action to lessen the effects of the lack of rain in the provinces of Cunene, Kwanza Norte, Benguela, Namibe, Huíla and Uíje. 

According to a press release issued after the meeting, the measures recommended were providing food aid, building and repairing bore holes and wells, vaccinating cattle and providing seeds.

Members of the provincial council, municipal and communal administrators, traditional authorities, church officials, representatives of political parties and civil society, bank officials and business people met in Ondjiva, capital of the southern province of Cunene, in mid-March to discuss solutions to the problems caused by drought in the region, as well as hearing a report on the current state of health and education in the province. 

Provincial governor Pedro Mutinde, who chaired the meeting, said the drought was a source of great worry and needed the special attention of the government.  Among the emergency measures he proposed were methods of harnessing river and sub-soil water, acquiring grain from Namibia and South Africa and moving cattle to areas with more favourable conditions. 

The drought in January and February this year is seriously jeopardising the start of the second planting season in Caála, Huambo Province.  

Afonso Pinto, in charge of the local extension and agricultural development programme, EDA, said the drought had caused a scarcity of the seeds they should have been using. The lack of rain had caused serious damage to maize, beans and groundnut crops, he said.  In the commune of Catata, municipality of Caála, an estimated 70 percent of grain and vegetable crops had been destroyed. 

Also in Huambo Province, Eugénio Massele, an official in the village of Betânia said that 438 hectares of peasants’ maize and bean crops had been completely destroyed by the drought. He said it had been raining only in the past four days, but he hoped this would help lessen the hunger that was already affecting families.

Following three weeks without rain in Muenga, Uíje Province, village headman Jorge Guilherme told the Angop news agency on 10 March:  ‘If there’s no rain in Muenga in the next few days the crops will die.’  If things continued this way, he continued, there might well be food shortages.

In Ekunha, Huambo Province, 41,809 hectares of maize and beans were destroyed by drought.

In Malanje Province, Simão Aires, administrator of the municipality of Cacuso said he was extremely worried about the lack of rain, which was destroying people’s food crops.  Peasants, he said, had expected a good harvest and even a surplus, but now many crops had died. 

Meanwhile, the confederation of peasant associations and agricultural cooperatives, UNACA, met to discuss the damage caused by the lack of rain and help for its members.

Desidéria Ndakupapo, provincial director of the Ministry of Assistance and Social Reintegration in Namibe, told the Angop news agency on 22 March that people affected by drought were being given food, including maize meal, cooking oil, beans, salt and dried fish, to lessen their difficulties.  She said it had started to rain, but this was no help because all the crops planted by peasants had died.

EC to finance food security programme

The European Commission signed an agreement with the government on €10 million to finance the first phase of a programme to relaunch food security. It was signed by Gilberto Buta Lutucuta, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, and Glauco Calzuola, the European Commission representative in Angola.

Speaking at the ceremony, Glauco Calzuola said the problem of agricultural development was a complex issue and the programme was an attempt to find solutions. Minister Lutucuta said: ‘The main beneficiaries of this programme will be peasant family farms.  The aim is to increase the average income of peasants and strengthen the institutional and legal framework for food security.’

Humanitarian aid requirements

The United Nations and its partners are to distribute 33,554 tonnes of food in the first semester of this year, as part of the food security programme priorities of the humanitarian assistance coordinating group. In accordance with those priorities, the government is to acquire 5,500 tonnes of assorted seeds, 1.95 million hoes, 950 machetes and 2,250 ploughs to be pulled by oxen. 

These figures were revealed at the first meeting this year of the coordinating group, which also plans to acquire 6 million doses of animal vaccines. Although an increase in production by most peasant families is expected, the meeting, which was chaired by João Baptista Kussumua, Minister of Assistance and Social Reintegration, Minars, recommended increased humanitarian assistance by the government and agencies.

With regard to health, the group concluded that malaria remained the most prevalent disease, with a total of 2.125,718 cases.  Malaria had caused 11,646 deaths in 2005 alone. Among its priorities, the government is to ensure refresher courses in respect of malaria and provide health centres with medicines.

The UN and NGOs are to distribute mosquito nets to vulnerable groups, particularly pregnant women and children under five. In the area of education priorities, it was decided to relaunch, strengthen and consolidate the national literacy and adult schooling programme, take on another 18,630 teachers and to establish a national educator prize. Although 10,000 new classrooms were built last year, the group recommended increasing the number of schools in the country, especially secondary and middle schools, and boosting the work of provincial governments in providing school meals.

In his address at the opening of the meeting, Minister Kussumua said the government and its partners were making joint efforts to change the food security situation in the five central and southern provinces affected by drought – Benguela, Cunene, Huíla, Kwanza Sul and Namibe.

In addition to providing incentives for agricultural work, he said, this year the government would step up the mine clearance programme, in order to facilitate national reconstruction and support the electoral process.

He added that special attention would be paid to the sustainable reintegration of returnees in the main areas to which they were going, especially the provinces of Kuando Kubango, Lunda Norte, Moxico, Uíje and Zaire.

National Assembly approves treaty on plant genetic resources

The National Assembly voted unanimously on 10 March to ratify the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.  This will facilitate access to genetic resources used in crop improvement, research and training. 

The treaty, which was presented to deputies by Dário Catata, Deputy Minister of Agriculture, is aimed at ensuring the conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits derived from their use, in harmony with the Convention on Biological Diversity. 

Plant genetic resources include traditional and wild plants as well as a large number of crops and forages.  They are crucial to crop improvement.  Dário Catata said Angola was ‘well endowed with these resources, but they are being lost at an alarming rate, owing to a lack of incentive to develop and conserve them.’

Commenting on the National Assembly vote, Elizabeth Matos, director of the National Centre of Plant Genetic Resources, said that in addition to technology transfer, personnel training and improvement programmes, Angola would benefit from increased promotion and retention of local varieties.  Most of the seeds used by Angolan farmers, she said, were resistant to drought and infertile soil, which was why they needed to be conserved. The treaty, she added, was the first of its kind in history to protect the rights of producers to their own seed varieties.

200,000 homes to be built

Diakunpuna Sita José, Minister of Town Planning and the Environment, announced in Cabinda on 6 March that the government would build 200,000 homes by 2008. He said legislation would be passed to regulate access to social housing and bank mortgages. The Minister, who was speaking at a ceremony to lay the cornerstone of a city of Cabinda town planning project, said the new homes would be built within the framework of cooperation with China.

He went on to say that the government would continue to encourage cooperative housing projects, as a way of ensuring the supply of affordable housing. 

Minister of Transport André Luis Brandão announced at the same ceremony that a system of sea freight transport between Luanda and Cabinda would be inaugurated later in the month.  The state, he said, would subsidise the transport of goods of businesses in Cabinda wishing to send them to other parts of the country.  This, he said, would reduce the costs of the goods sent and encourage economic activity in Cabinda.

New building projects

The government is going to spend US$80 million this year on rehabilitating 500 km of highway from Huambo to Alto Hama, Alto Hama to the bridge over the Queve River and Huambo to Kuito, capital of Bié Province. 

The ceremony at which the contract was awarded was held on 1 March, attended by Paulo Cassoma and Amaro Taty, the Huambo and Bié provincial governors.  This was part of a programme to restore highways recently approved by central government.

Minister of Public Works Higino Carneiro had arrived in Huambo Province earlier to see how work was progressing on a number of social projects in Katchiungo and Tchicala Tcholoanga. 

In Katchiungo, 65 km from the city of Huambo, he saw work in progress on a condominium of 20 homes and also visited the site where a polytechnic institute is to be built.  In Tchicala Tcholoanga, 42 km from Huambo, he visited the construction site of a 40-bed hospital which will be completed in the next three months.

The Minster also visited the building site of the Dango Vocational Agricultural School on the outskirts of Huambo, where work was started in October 2005 by a Chinese contractor firm.  He also saw work in progress on the rehabilitation of the provincial agricultural department, the Ho Chi-Min Industrial Pedagogical Institute, the National Bank of Angola and a primary school in the Benfica neighbourhood.

Polish loan for fisheries

The Polish government is to grant Angola a US$36 million loan this year to fund a number of fisheries projects, including the purchase of boats and the establishment of a fisheries institute. 

Agreements were signed in Luanda in early February, following negotiations started in Warsaw in September 2005.

The first agreement provides for a loan of US$14 million for projects in the area of education, most of which is to be spent on building and equipping a higher education fisheries institute in Namibe, on Angola’s south Atlantic coast. 

The second loan, for US$22 million, is for investment projects, mainly the building of boats for prawn fishing.

Investment in water supply systems

Starting in July this year, US$5 million will be spent on the rehabilitation and construction of new water harnessing systems in the nine municipalities of Lunda Norte Province, as part of the central government public investment programme.      This was announced to be the press on 23 March by Luís Marques, head of the local water department, who added that the water would also be treated and the supply system would be improved. 

In Menongue, capital of Kuando Kubango Province in southeast Angola, Filipe Sabino, provincial director of the energy and water department, said the entire fresh and piped water system in Menongue was going to be completely rehabilitated at a cost of US$800,000. 

Addressing a meeting to mark World Water Day, he said the money had already been made available by local government and work would start in April. 

Daniel Vapor, deputy provincial governor for economic and social affairs, appealed to the people to pay special attention to protecting the rivers in the region, since the water was used not only in Angola but also in neighbouring countries.

The people of Menongue have been drinking untreated water for the past ten years, but according to provincial government officials, that situation should be rectified by the end of the year.

90,000 families have received micro-credits

The Ministry of the Family and the Advancement of Women ensured the provision of micro-credits for 90,000 families between 1999 and 2005, according to António João, head of the department for the support of families.

He said the granting of micro-credits was one of the government’s alternatives for increasing family incomes through small businesses, so as to reduce the high levels of poverty. 

The government, he said, had signed US$10 million agreements with two commercial banks in 2005, and they were helping families to carry out small projects. António João went on to say that in view of the high rate of poverty – about 60 or 70 percent of the population – the government was going to continue to promote micro-credit projects, in order to reduce these figures in the next few years. The savings and credit bank, BPC, and the Banco Sol, he continued, were also working with other NGOs involved in increasing the scope of the work. 

Three new pre-university centres in Lunda Norte

Under a decree published in early March in the Diário da República, the official gazette, Minister of Education António Burity da Silva Neto has established pre-university centres in the municipalities of Cuango, Lucapa and Nzagi Cambulo in the northeast diamond-mining province of Lunda Norte. 

They will provide 9^th and 11^th year schooling.  Each centre has 12 classrooms and they will cater for a total of 1,296 students, in three shifts, with 50 teachers to conduct classes.

Literacy classes for women in Huambo

The Organisation of Angolan Women, OMA, launched a campaign in Huambo Province on 13 March to teach 70,000 women how to read and write during the current school year. 

The official opening of the campaign, in the village of Batânia, was attended by more than 800 women who were provided with school materials.

Maria da Conceição Pinto Wimbo, the provincial OMA secretary, urged the women to work to eliminate illiteracy among rural women.  She said there was no age limit to learning and both men and women should study after work.   No country in the world could develop, she said, without capable personnel, and OMA members had a great role to play in the transformation of Angola.

It has been estimated that there are more than 180,000 women in Huambo who cannot read or write.  About 500,000 had completed literacy courses by last year, which the OMA leader regarded as positive.

Children vaccinated against polio

At least 331,800 children aged up to five were scheduled to be vaccinated against polio in Huambo Province in March.  According to Amões Domingos Laurindo, a local Enlarged Vaccination Programme, PAV, official, the campaign would also cover the provinces of Benguela, Namibe and Huíla. He said they had 742 teams of vaccinators, 56 of which comprised members of the military command of the fourth region, UN agencies and Angolan NGOs.

Aristides Sombreiro, director of public health in Namibe Province, said that in 2005 there had been a case of polio in the city of Benguela, which was why the Ministry of Health was carrying out this regional campaign.  

As in previous campaigns, the vaccinators would go from house to house to vaccinate as many children as possible. People were advised to make sure their children were vaccinated now, even if they already had been in the past.

The number of children to be vaccinated in Benguela Province was 969,852, involving a total of 4,300 vaccinators, 436 supervisors and 99 area coordinators.  

In Huíla Province, Mateus Casselala, head of the public health department, said at least 435,068 children would be vaccinated.   He said they had 600,000 doses of vaccine available and 6,000 vaccinators to cover all 14 municipalities in the province. 

It was further reported that 30,884 children were vaccinated in Chongoroi, Benguela Province.

Animal vaccination

The veterinary services vaccinated 8,354 animals – dogs, cats and monkeys – against rabies in the city of Huambo between 9 and 21 March.  António Lenine, head of the veterinary services, said this had exceeded the figures attained in previous campaigns, when there were never more than 7,000 animals vaccinated in the whole province. 

‘The success of the campaign,’ he said, ‘was a result of the cooperation of animal owners and the work of neighbourhood coordinators and the media.’

Although the campaign had officially ended, he added, a vaccination centre would continue to operate in Huambo.  The campaign had also been extended to Caála, where 500 dogs and cats were vaccinated.  

António Lenine said the community and veterinary services were now engaged in a joint operation to round up stray dogs in Huambo and Caála, so people would not be bitten.  In April, he said, they would start to vaccinate cattle and goats.

Anti-rabies vaccination In Katchiungo, Huambo Province, started on 23 March, also to be followed by the vaccination of cattle and goats. 

Augusto Sabalo, head of the local veterinary services, said in Lubango, capital of Huíla Province, that at least 5,560 head of cattle had been vaccinated during a campaign started in February.  The aim, he said, was to vaccinate 120,000 head of cattle and 1,800 dogs.  

‘Authorities mobilised to fight bird flu’

Filipe Vissesse, director general of the veterinary research department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Minader, said on 14 March that the health authorities were fully mobilised to face up to bird flu in any of the country’s eighteen provinces. 

He said representatives of his department had attended a meeting in Congo Brazzaville organised by the World Health Organisation and another meeting in Kenya, while another delegation was on its way back from South Africa, where there had also been a meeting on avian flu.

He went on to say that the newly set up commission was working on a national contingency plan and there were already teams ready to collect samples from suspected cases and send them to specialised laboratories like those in South Africa. 

Rui Santos, president of the association of poultry farmers, AAVIL, said that, in keeping with Minader recommendations, poultry establishments in Luanda had started to keep their birds under cover and vaccinate them.  Minader had also recommended disinfection of poultry premises with appropriate products.

Rui Santos said the government needed to step up public information, so as to prevent alarm.   Some people were confused about whether or not they should eat poultry and, on hearing about new cases in the world, people became increasingly worried. 

Meanwhile the national customs directorate instructed its personnel at all customs posts to be fully mobilised to prevent the entry of birds, chickens and fertilised eggs from affected countries. 

Following a presidential instruction on 7 March, a commission was set up to take preventive steps against avian flu, owing to the real possibility of the disease spreading on the African continent.  The measures included enhanced vigilance and tracking, routine tests, monitoring the origin of birds bought and action to explain the dangers to the public.

The commission is coordinated by Gilberto Buta Lutucuta, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, and includes representatives of the ministries of Health, National Defence (army health services), the Interior, Finance, Territorial Administration, Transport, Information, Trade and Town Planning and the Environment, assisted by a working team of technicians from those ministries.

The commission was entrusted with drawing up a programme of financial requirements for acquiring logistical needs to deal with any cases in Angola. 

Sebastião Veloso, Minister of Health, and Gilberto Buta Lutucuta, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, left for South Africa on 31 March for a meeting held in Durban under the aegis of the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation and SADC to set out a strategy for preventing and fighting avian flu.

Cholera outbreak spreads

Deputy Minister of Health José Van-Dúnem announced on 3 March that there had been another nine cholera cases in Luanda since the previous day, bringing the total number of cases after the outbreak was declared on 19 February to 141, resulting in 11 deaths.  Special cholera wards had been opened in the municipalities of Kilamba Kiaxi and Cazenga. 

The Deputy Minister reported on 6 March that the number of cases had risen to 158 and that the fatality rate was 7 percent.  He said that three 5,000-litre water tanks had been installed in the Boavista neighbourhood, the major source of the disease.

More than sixty volunteers from the Angolan Red Cross went from house to house in several neighbourhoods of the capital explaining to people the care to be taken with food and water.  

Meanwhile, 126 cases of cholera and eight deaths were reported in Ndalatando, capital of Kwanza Norte Province.  Caetano José Miguel, the local director of public health, said his department was checking on deaths in outlying areas to identify suspected cases that were not hospitalised. 

In Ganda, Benguela Province, Américo Daniel, director of public health, announced that there had been eight cases of cholera, five of whom had died.  Two of those who died had come from Luanda and infected family members, he said.  He said a public health team was collecting samples, which would be sent for laboratory analysis in Luanda.

Minister of Health Sebastião Veloso went to Benguela Province on 29 March to see what help was needed.  The health authorities in Benguela announced on 31 March that there had been 194 cases of cholera in the province and 24 deaths. 

By 23 March there had been 551 cholera cases in Luanda and 18 deaths, a figure that had risen to 1515 cases and 37 deaths by 30 March. 

 At the end of the month, according to a WHO press release, suspected cases in the provinces of Bengo, Benguela and Kwanza Norte were being investigated by epidemiologists, amid fears that the disease was spreading.

Meeting on HIV/Aids

Representatives of organisations involved in fighting HIV/Aids met in Luanda on 3 March with the aim of reaching a consensus on drawing up a final report on the steps taken in Angola to achieve the 2010 target of universal access to prevention, treatment, care and support for those affected. 

The meeting also discussed the current HIV/Aids situation in Angola, identified specific obstacles to prevention, treatment and care and identified new targets. 

Deputy Minister of Health José Van-Dúnem, who opened the meeting, spoke of the need for a thorough assessment of the disease in the country and finding ways to fulfil the pledge to increase the number of people receiving treatment.

He said he hoped the meeting would help to speed things up in many respects.

Alberto Stella, the UNAIDS representative in Angola, said that the local authorities had been working very seriously and in close cooperation to halt the impact of HIV/Aids. 

He added that though the rate in Angola was only five percent, one had to be very careful with the figures, because they hid very serious realities like the situation in the region bordering on Namibia, where it was more than ten percent and there was a high mortality rate.

Referring to the 2010 target, he said that, through the stepping up of prevention, personnel training, the support of NGOs and civil society, the extension of anti-retrovirals to all the provinces and the willingness of the authorities to make resources available, Angola would be able to attain the goals.

A preliminary report was produced at the end of the meeting.  Dulcelina Serrano, director of the National Institute to Fight Aids, said it identified a number of weaknesses in the country related to human and financial resources and the work of the national commission to fight against Aids and major endemic diseases. 

Other shortcomings, she said, were related to the defence of Aids sufferers, the centralisation of financial policy in the management of available resources, and the failure to ensure sufficient publicity about decisions taken in the fight against Aids, which made it more difficult to inform the public. 

The preliminary report was to be further examined by the national technical committee for the fight against Aids.  

The national consultation that culminated in the meeting was started in 2005. 

Following this meeting, the issue was to be discussed at a regional meeting in Brazzaville and the resulting report presented to the UN General Assembly for adoption as a pledge by the countries involved.