Jerusalem, Israel Arieh O’Sullivan / The Me – Descending the Tower, the imposing new state-of-the-art inpatient hospital at Hadassah’s Ein Kerem Medical Center, Joseph Mapa was impressed. The chief executive officer of Toronto’s Mt. Sinai Hospital said he’s seen innovations he would like to bring back to Canada.

“It’s leading edge. Just the thinking behind it! Healing gardens, patient rooms, square feet, two beds per room, one bed per room, one window per patient…I mean these are huge developments,” Mapa told The Media Line. “It’s not something we wouldn’t do in the States, or in Canada, and it’s something you certainly want to see and showcased,” he adds.

Mapa was part of a first-ever delegation of CEOs from the top hospitals and medical centers across North America that were visiting Israel this week. This was the brainchild of Rafael Harpaz, director of the Economic Department for America and Africa at Israel’s Foreign Ministry.

“We think we have a lot to share with our friends and colleagues from the USA and Canada on medical technologies, cutting-edge technologies, readiness and preparedness and managing medical science through computers. I think these are areas where Israel has good experience,” Harpaz told The Media Line.

Israel’s life expectancy is much higher than the U.S. and its systems of socialized medicine ensures that everyone has access to basic healthcare while Israel spends a smaller percentage of its gross domestic product on health. There still are problems, most recently with doctors striking for higher wages last year. Its major hospitals are equipped with some of the latest medical technologies, which impressed the delegates.

“The American system has many great things, but also many things to learn from this country and I think that the level of medicine here and the level of training is every bit as good as medicine that I see now at the States,” Kevin Tabb, the CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, told The Media Line.

“In the States, for better or for worse, medicine in many ways is a business,” Tabb said. “It’s about making patients better, but it is also a financial business. But in Israel that really is not the case, and that is very interesting for people, especially for people from the United States, less so for Canada.”

Tabb said they shared data on costs and saw how care similar to that offered in the U.S. was extended with fewer resources in Israel.

“It’s amazing to see the relatively small budgets for an Israeli hospital, doing tremendous amount things, on what would be considered a pittance in the U.S. and that’s fascinating,” Tabb said.

The Tower at Hadassah is slated to be opened later this month and crews are busy scuttling around clearing away scaffolding and supplies. Not all of the floors are finished, but the fifth floor is spectacular with parquet floors and equipment still in plastic.

“This has been a tremendous exchange of North American healthcare leaders with Israeli healthcare leaders,” Amir Dan Rubin, president and CEO of Stanford University Medical Center. “While our political and reimbursement and systems are different, and the organization of our health systems are different, at the core we have common missions; taking care of patients and … research and education.”

“The challenges are similar here,” Rubin said. “We all have issues of how do we provide insurance coverage so there is the payment issue and there is the delivery system, there are access issues, there is improving quality and innovations and while our mechanisms are slightly different those themes are common.”

The group was briefed at Sheba Medical Center and is slated to visit Sourasky Medical Center, Beilinson Hospital — all in Tel Aviv — and Rambam Hospital in Haifa as well as the IDF Medical Forces center in Tzrifin where they will see the emergency unit that deploys at crises around the globe.

“We didn’t anticipate that so many of the CEOs of the big hospitals in North America would come and we are blessed with a delegation which is close to 50 top heads of hospitals and medical centers,” Harpaz said.

“We share the same challenges that we are facing in our medical treatment, and they appreciate that we are doing this, but on the other hand they are really impressed by all which Israel has to offer. And we have a lot to offer when it comes to medical technologies.”

At Sheba, the group observed a simulation of a mass casualty event, something that Israeli hospitals constantly drill for. Catherine Zahn, CEO of Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, found the spirit of Israelis compelling.

“There is a societal receptivity to open mindedness and forward thinkingness,” Zahn told The Media Line. “Like Israel, Canadians believe health care is a basic right of a citizen, a basic human right, rather than a commodity to be bought and sold. There is definitely a kinship there, but I think we have a lot to learn from the perspective of the ‘innovation nation’,” Zahn said.

“It’s also interesting to see how the situation in the Middle East, and the involvement of the military in the country actually probably contributes to that resilience and the attitude that if this doesn’t work out let’s pick up and do something else,” she added. “Picking up on the advances from military science and translating them into health care advances. Those are all very remarkable.”

These sentiments were echoed by her fellow Canadian, Mapa.

“The Israeli system is spectacular — from clinical care to service, to IT in particular, clinical technology, to crisis management,” Mapa said. “It’s state-of-the-art, I mean, its fantastic. We’re excited, but I tell you this not because I am excited, but you see it is evidence based…and that’s what turn us on. Turns me on for sure.”

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Haregeisa, Somaliland, Somalia (IRIN) – The self-declared republic of Somaliland has made key improvements in sectors such as health, education and infrastructure in the past two decades, its leaders say, despite its lack of international recognition.

“One of the main obstacles for Somaliland is lack of recognition, but my government will never give up trying to gain it,” President Ahmed Mohamed Mohamoud Siilanyo said on 18 May, when the region marked 20 years since declaring unilateral independence from the rest of Somalia.

Efforts in reconciliation, nation-building and drafting a new constitution have helped promote peace in the region, Siilanyo said.

“We have put in place a new currency and passport, encouraged democratization and multi-party elections; improved access to healthcare and education, respect for human rights, freedom of expression and facilitated a free market,” he said.

“[The rest of] Somalia has been in lawlessness during the last 20 years, and I am calling on the Somali politicians to look after their citizens and consider the problems they are living under and resolve their differences so as to give peace a chance.”

Nimo Hussein Qawdhan, deputy health minister, said increased provision of healthcare services – by the government and private sector – was one of the developments made since 1991.

Qawdhan said the maternal mortality rate was 1,600 deaths per 100,000 women in 1991, compared with 1,044 per 100,000 in 2006.

The region’s child mortality rate was 275 in 1990, falling to 188 in 1999, then to 166 in 2006, “signifying a very significant decrease, when compared to world standards”, Qawdhan said.

Qawdhan said Somaliland had also made gains in the fight against malaria. The past two years have seen the region become almost malaria-free, Qawdhan said.

The region has also de-mined large tracts of land mined between 1981 and 1991 during the war between the Somali National Army and the Liberation Movement for Somaliland as well as during the war between Somalia and Ethiopia over the Ogaden region (now known as Somali region in Ethiopia).

Ahmed Hussein Essa, a professor of science at Hargeisa University, told IRIN: “In 1992, when the people of Somaliland started returning from refugee camps in Ethiopia to their war-scorched villages, towns and cities, they came face to face with a horrible reality. Land mines were everywhere. Walking was a risky business.”

Since then, Essa said, de-mining efforts had made the region safer.

“Somaliland’s government and its people played a pivotal role in making Somaliland territory largely mine-safe in less than 10 years,” he said. “The Somaliland Mine Action [SMAC], largely funded by the UN, coordinates all mine action efforts. The government of Somaliland, although not able to sign the Mine Ban Treaty as a sovereign member of the UN, has nevertheless accepted all its obligations, including the passage of local legislation banning the use of land mines and formulating a mine policy action plan.”

Moreover, Essa added, Somaliland had destroyed stockpiles under the control of its army as well as mines confiscated from civilians.

“As Somaliland celebrates its 20th anniversary, the people of Somaliland can take heart that in mine action they can show the world a success story. School-children no longer feel afraid to play in its playgrounds,” Essa said.

Improved literacy

“Literacy rates increased from 20 percent [in 1991] to 45 percent [in 2010],” an official from Somaliland’s Ministry of Education said.

“We had only a total of 219 primary, intermediate and secondary schools in 1991, but now we have about 506 primary schools throughout the country.”

A 2010 Millennium Developments Goals (MDG) report for Somaliland put the region’s literacy rate of the population aged 15 years and above at 26.9 percent in 1999.

Besides education gains, Somalilanders also believe they have matured politically.

“The people of Somaliland have mastered how to overthrow their leaders through the ballot, not through the bullet,” Ahmed Yasin Sheikh Ali Ayanle, an opposition member of parliament, told IRIN.

Ayanle added that Somaliland’s first president, Abdi-Rahman Ahmed Ali (1991-1993), and his successors, Mohamed Ibrahim Egal (1993-2002) and Dahir Rayale Kahin (2002-2010), had helped establish peace and a respected constitution. “We hope [current] President Siilanyo will keep these efforts going.”

Some of those who fought in Somaliland’s 1981-1991 war said they were pleased with the progress the region had made.

“During the war, our mission was to overthrow [Somalia's President Siad] Barre and give the people a chance to decide their future; it is the people who decided to dissolve Somalia’s unity, hence the creation of Somaliland,” Yusuf Abdi Gabobe, a war veteran, said.

maj/js/mw

– Provided by Integrated Regional Information Networks.

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The impasse over extending taxes continues in California despite a revised budget plan from Gov. Jerry Brown that relies on an unanticipated rise in revenue. Republicans have insisted on an alternative plan that would cut compensation for state workers by 10 percent.

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CAPE TOWN, South Africa (IRIN) – Instead of providing much needed opportunities, South Africa’s ailing education system is keeping children from poor households at the back of the job queue and locking families into poverty for another generation.

By the age of eight, school children from the most affluent 20 percent of South Africa’s population are already significantly out-performing children from poorer backgrounds, according to new research by the Social Policy Research Group at Stellenbosch University.

The study, “Low Quality Education as Poverty Trap”, found that the schooling available to children in poor communities is reinforcing rather than challenging the racial and economic inequities created by South Africa’s apartheid-era policies.

Using newly available data sets, including those linking information on income with numeracy skills, the report analyzed how low-quality tuition in the post-apartheid education system is perpetuating “exclusion and marginalization”.

The government allocated R190 billion (US$28 billion) or 21 percent of its 2011/12 budget to education, but 80 percent is spent on personnel and the remainder is not enough to supply thousands of schools in mainly poor areas with basic requirements like electricity and textbooks.

Yet the top 20 percent of state schools – which largely correspond to historically white schools and charge fees to compensate for insufficient public funding – enjoy adequate facilities and attract the best teachers.

South Africa’s status as one of the wealthiest countries on the continent has not helped its educational performance – the poorest 25 percent of students ranked-th out of 15 sub-Saharan countries in reading performance, and 12th for mathematics, according to the Southern and Eastern African Consortium for Monitoring Education Quality surveys of 2000 and 2007.

“When seen in regional context, South Africa grossly under-performs, given that it has more qualified teachers, lower pupil-to-teacher-ratios and better access to resources,” the report on the study noted.

Nomusa Cembi, spokesperson for the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (SADTU), whose nearly 250,000 members make it the country’s largest public sector union, said many teachers had received an inferior education as a result of apartheid’s “Bantu” education system, which was deliberately designed to disadvantage black learners and only ended in’94 when a new democratic government came into power.

There are a host of other problems besetting schools in poor areas. According to Yoliswa Dwane, spokesperson for the education advocacy group, Equal Education, over 2,000 schools had no piped water supply, 3,600 lacked electricity, and over 90 percent were without libraries or a functioning laboratory.

SADTU and other teachers’ unions have opposed national calls for education to become an essential service, which would prevent strike action. In August 2010 a teachers’ strike closed schools across the country for three weeks, contributing to a public perception that SADTU and some of its members did not have learners’ interests at heart.

“The focus needs to be on teachers’ development,” said Cembi. “We’ve had changes in the curriculum since the new [post-apartheid] era, but we find not much focus on training teachers.”

Many teacher training colleges were closed in the late’90s after new legislation required them to merge with existing higher education institutions. Plans to transform the training colleges into university-level institutions have not materialized, leaving thousands of teachers without any specialized training.

In recent years, SADTU has called for the reopening of training colleges because the shortage of teachers has meant that some schools in poor and rural areas have had to hire individuals who do not meet the official requirement of holding a teaching diploma.

According to the report, insufficient teacher knowledge is a problem, with many teachers scoring poorly in basic reading and mathematics tests.

A large number of changes to the national curriculum, beginning with the’97 adoption of Outcomes Based Education, many subsequent adjustments, and the final decision -announced in 2010 – to scrap it, have further stressed an already failing system.

Equal Education’s Dwane said the debate needed to move past “blaming teachers” and towards how to achieve a “serious commitment to a national education programme that would spell out what needs to be done over the next 20-30 years”.

Such a plan would have to include an assessment of existing teacher knowledge, followed by a national teacher training programme, but Dwane stressed the need to consider factors beyond teacher knowledge, including teacher motivation, and a lack of community and parental involvement.

Her view was backed up by the Stellenbosch study, which identified the lack of regular and meaningful student assessments and feedback to parents as another major weakness in the education system.

“For the parents to know how their child is performing, and by proxy to know how the teachers are performing, is very helpful,” said Ronelle Burger, one of the study’s lead researchers. “Very few top-down measures can be as effective as getting the people who are affected to act to correct the problems.”

The researchers found that the job prospects of school leavers were determined not only by the number of years of education attained, but the quality of that education.

“The labour market is at the heart of inequality, and central to labour market inequality is the quality of education,” they concluded. “Policies that address inequality by intervening in the labour market will have limited success as long as the considerable pre-labour market inequalities in the form of differential school quality persist.”

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– Provided by Integrated Regional Information Networks.

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CAPE TOWN, South Africa (IRIN) – Instead of providing much needed opportunities, South Africa’s ailing education system is keeping children from poor households at the back of the job queue and locking families into poverty for another generation.

By the age of eight, school children from the most affluent 20 percent of South Africa’s population are already significantly out-performing children from poorer backgrounds, according to new research by the Social Policy Research Group at Stellenbosch University.

The study, “Low Quality Education as Poverty Trap”, found that the schooling available to children in poor communities is reinforcing rather than challenging the racial and economic inequities created by South Africa’s apartheid-era policies.

Using newly available data sets, including those linking information on income with numeracy skills, the report analyzed how low-quality tuition in the post-apartheid education system is perpetuating “exclusion and marginalization”.

The government allocated R190 billion (US$28 billion) or 21 percent of its 2011/12 budget to education, but 80 percent is spent on personnel and the remainder is not enough to supply thousands of schools in mainly poor areas with basic requirements like electricity and textbooks.

Yet the top 20 percent of state schools – which largely correspond to historically white schools and charge fees to compensate for insufficient public funding – enjoy adequate facilities and attract the best teachers.

South Africa’s status as one of the wealthiest countries on the continent has not helped its educational performance – the poorest 25 percent of students ranked-th out of 15 sub-Saharan countries in reading performance, and 12th for mathematics, according to the Southern and Eastern African Consortium for Monitoring Education Quality surveys of 2000 and 2007.

“When seen in regional context, South Africa grossly under-performs, given that it has more qualified teachers, lower pupil-to-teacher-ratios and better access to resources,” the report on the study noted.

Nomusa Cembi, spokesperson for the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (SADTU), whose nearly 250,000 members make it the country’s largest public sector union, said many teachers had received an inferior education as a result of apartheid’s “Bantu” education system, which was deliberately designed to disadvantage black learners and only ended in’94 when a new democratic government came into power.

There are a host of other problems besetting schools in poor areas. According to Yoliswa Dwane, spokesperson for the education advocacy group, Equal Education, over 2,000 schools had no piped water supply, 3,600 lacked electricity, and over 90 percent were without libraries or a functioning laboratory.

SADTU and other teachers’ unions have opposed national calls for education to become an essential service, which would prevent strike action. In August 2010 a teachers’ strike closed schools across the country for three weeks, contributing to a public perception that SADTU and some of its members did not have learners’ interests at heart.

“The focus needs to be on teachers’ development,” said Cembi. “We’ve had changes in the curriculum since the new [post-apartheid] era, but we find not much focus on training teachers.”

Many teacher training colleges were closed in the late’90s after new legislation required them to merge with existing higher education institutions. Plans to transform the training colleges into university-level institutions have not materialized, leaving thousands of teachers without any specialized training.

In recent years, SADTU has called for the reopening of training colleges because the shortage of teachers has meant that some schools in poor and rural areas have had to hire individuals who do not meet the official requirement of holding a teaching diploma.

According to the report, insufficient teacher knowledge is a problem, with many teachers scoring poorly in basic reading and mathematics tests.

A large number of changes to the national curriculum, beginning with the’97 adoption of Outcomes Based Education, many subsequent adjustments, and the final decision -announced in 2010 – to scrap it, have further stressed an already failing system.

Equal Education’s Dwane said the debate needed to move past “blaming teachers” and towards how to achieve a “serious commitment to a national education programme that would spell out what needs to be done over the next 20-30 years”.

Such a plan would have to include an assessment of existing teacher knowledge, followed by a national teacher training programme, but Dwane stressed the need to consider factors beyond teacher knowledge, including teacher motivation, and a lack of community and parental involvement.

Her view was backed up by the Stellenbosch study, which identified the lack of regular and meaningful student assessments and feedback to parents as another major weakness in the education system.

“For the parents to know how their child is performing, and by proxy to know how the teachers are performing, is very helpful,” said Ronelle Burger, one of the study’s lead researchers. “Very few top-down measures can be as effective as getting the people who are affected to act to correct the problems.”

The researchers found that the job prospects of school leavers were determined not only by the number of years of education attained, but the quality of that education.

“The labour market is at the heart of inequality, and central to labour market inequality is the quality of education,” they concluded. “Policies that address inequality by intervening in the labour market will have limited success as long as the considerable pre-labour market inequalities in the form of differential school quality persist.”

lm/ks/he

– Provided by Integrated Regional Information Networks.

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Stanford University became the latest Ivy League school on Friday to reinastate the Reserve Officers Training Corps. 

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Pro-government student activists and supporters traded bullets Tuesday morning for supremacy over a student’s dorm in a campus in Dhaka, leaving 70 hurt.

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The family of Danroy “D.J.” Henry, a Pace University student who died last year, is up in arms over the decision of a police union to honor with an award the officer responsible for the fatal shooting.

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North Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom (AHN) – British Prime Minister David Cameron criticized Oxford University Monday for its alleged racially discriminatory admission policies. Cameron claimed the educational institution admitted only one black student in the last academic year.

The prime minister also hit other elite institutions for discriminating against high school graduates of state schools.

However, senior Oxford officials denied Cameron’s allegation. They said Oxford admitted 42 black students last year – 27 were black Africans, one was a black Caribbean and 14 of mixed race. The sole black student that Cameron referred to was the one from the Caribbean.

The university explained only 452 black students across Britain met the A-level results required by Oxford’s tough minimum entry standards for the 2009-10 academic year.

The Conservative chairman of the Commons Education Select Committee, Graham Stuart, said the reason behind the low acceptance rate by elite universities in Britain of minority group members is the lack of good education at the basic level. He said the problem could not be solved by forcing universities with higher benchmarks to lower the bar, but by improving the standards of state education.

Of 16,591 students enrolled last year at Oxford who disclosed their ethnicity, 12,671 or 76 percent were white, 1,477 (9 percent) were Asian, 1,098 (7 percent) were Chinese, 254 (1.5 percent) were of other ethnicities and 253 (1.5 percent) were black.

Downing Street eventually admitted Cameron was not precise in his wording, but just wanted to emphasize that it is not acceptable for elite universities such as Oxford to have very few students from black and minority ethnic groups.

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Bangladesh authorities have imposed a ban on use of mobile phones by school teachers in class rooms.

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