Oxfam: Health and Education Issues this year

This year your support will be crucial to help guarantee people’s basic rights in poor countries, such as the basic right to a quality education and essential health care, and the empowering women to secure rights for themselves and their families. Throughout 2006 there will be a number of key actions and events that you will be able to take part in to put pressure on world leaders to:

• ensure adequate money and resources for more teachers, nurses and other essential public-sector workers;
• remove user fees for essential services, such as health care and education
• fund projects such as the Global Health Fund and the Education for All fast-track initiative, so that southern governments can commit more of their budgets to health and education






Oxfam launches biggest ever Food Crisis Appeal

£20 million needed to avert crisis

Oxfam is today launching the biggest food crisis appeal in its 60-year history.

Oxfam is asking the British public to give £20 million to fund its work in East Africa, where 11 million people are in urgent need of assistance.

There are already reports of people dying as a result of the crisis and the mortality rate could increase rapidly if sufficient aid is not delivered fast, according to Oxfam's aid workers on the ground.

Although other Oxfam appeals have brought in more than this one's £20 million target, this is the first time Oxfam has gone to the public with such a large request.

"This crisis might be getting less attention than the tsunami did, but the number of people needing help is even greater," said Barbara Stocking, Director of Oxfam. "The severity of this crisis means assistance is needed on a huge scale. The British public's generosity has helped pull whole regions back from the brink in the past, we now need their help to do that again."

East Africa is in the middle of a serious food crisis. Nomadic herding communities are most at risk, with over 70 per cent of the animals on which they depend already dead in many areas. Recent rains, far from solving the crisis, have actually increased the risk of disease and are hampering the transportation of relief.

Oxfam is appealing for the public's help to fund emergency work such as providing food and water, but also to help fund longer term projects so that people can rebuild their lives and avert future crises.

"This appeal isn't designed to be just a sticking plaster," added Oxfam's Barbara Stocking. "We want to help people across the region to recover and be in a better position when the next crisis hits. With the support of the public, we can work with people to build their futures as well as helping them through the terrible situation they face today."

In total Oxfam is already helping over 500,000 people in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Somalia.



What your donation could buy

£2 will buy chlorine tablets to provide a family with clean and safe drinking water in Kenya.
£35 will provide 20 families with millet seeds to grow crops and rebuild their lives.
£40 will feed 50 children for a month in Tanzania.
How to donate

To donate to the Oxfam appeal, members of the public can:

Donate now online
Call 0870 333 2500
Donate at any Oxfam shop
ENDS
www.oxfam.org.uk