An Overview from Down Under - Helen is a retired journalist living in Sydney, Australia. She will be bringing the NFP readers regular comments on current social, environmental and political topics from an Aussie's perspective.
A handful of committed men and women are working to build a hospital and make childbirth safe in the arid Afar region of Ethiopia. Spearheading the initiative are the trio of Valerie Browning, an Australian nurse, her East African husband Ishmael, and her nephew Andrew Browning, an obstetrician and gynaecologist. Theirs is an inspiring example of what can be achieved by just a few individuals dedicated to a worthwhile cause.
The new 28-bed hospital is due to open in early 2011 and will provide safe, modern maternity and child care for the minority Afar people, who live in the impoverished lowlands of eastern Ethiopia. Here, infant mortality and, for women, death in childbirth and the disability of fistula are age-old problems. Valerie, Ishmael and Andrew and their small international team of supporters in the Barbara May Foundation – which Andrew set up in 2010 – are bringing hope, medical and financial assistance and starting a new chapter in health care for the Afar.
In November 2010 Sydney barrister Helen Cox, a director of the Barbara May Foundation, visited the hospital and project area in Mille, Ethiopia, and met Andrew Browning. She will report on progress to fellow Barbara May Foundation members in Australia at a meeting this February.
The most startling thing about the WikiLeaks revelations has been the reaction to them. Whether or not you support what WikiLeaks and its editor-in-chief Julian Assange have done, the response raises very serious questions about freedom of information, transparency in government and the independence of the judiciary.
The above three are central planks of any healthy democracy. Regimes which do not allow freedom of information, transparency in government and independence of the judiciary frequently fall into the category of rogue states. We may applaud or deplore what WikiLeaks has done, but if we throw out the cherished foundations of our democracy in order to persecute Julian Assange, then we are doing our whole societies a very grave disservice.
And while we speak of the persecution of Julian Assange, why are the editors-in-chief of The New York Times, The Guardian in Britain, El Pais in Spain and Der Spiegel in Germany not also being pursued and vilified? That would seem consistent since these respected publications have also published leaked US Embassy cables.