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On the one hand, South Africa is trying to prevent the emigration of doctors and other medical personnel, and on the other, one IOL headline suggests that we would be better off if the youth went.
Youth must go and make SA a better place
Or maybe it has another meaning.
'Thousands of children raped in SA every day' - IOL
I am not sure I trust IOL's stats, considering that they have elsewhere given us statistics on the religious/racial demographics of 282% of our population. But I am sure that rape is unfortunately a big problem in South Africa.
This article quotes a psychologist as saying, "Ninety-nine point nine percent of their life is about survival." I am sure that is another statistic that is made up, although, unlike the 282% of our population, it's unlikely that they intended it to be a real statistic. More likely it was intended as hyperbole.
" ... the best therapy option for a child rape survivor in an impoverished community is to take them out of their environment where their basic needs of food, safety, and shelter are met."
If this had been seen by an editor, the ambiguity there would have been removed.
But the police can be as bad as IOL in the cases of rape.
When I was doing my community service year as a doctor in the Limpopo province, the police arrived with a rape victim and a rape kit for taking the relevant samples.
When I opened the rape kit to begin taking samples, there were already specimens in the box. The tubes for blood contained blood, the gloves had clearly been used, and so forth. I noticed that the handwriting was that of a colleague of mine, and the name on the specimens and box was that of a rape victim seen by him about 3 weeks before - I remembered the name because two of us were with him in casualty at the time.
So the police had taken the used rape kit, and put it back on the shelf for reuse later - not sending it away for the proper forensic analysis.
I am sure that happens quite often.
When I sent them back to the police station to collect an unused rape kit, they came back with a kit used to collect blood and semen from a male. I wanted to collect blood, semen, and a variety of other specimens from a female, and so I had to improvise with the kit I had - who knows what I would have ended up with if I'd sent them back a second time.
From looking around on the web, it looks like IOL's blunder with the statistics (which, as I write, have not been corrected) is a case of copying errors out of other articles without thinking about what gets written or published. Who copied whom, and what the original source of the errors is, I haven't a clue.
My two initial posts on this mess-up are here and here.
Most of SA accepts euthanasia, study finds - IOL
From News24.com and the Daily Dispatch, we see equally silly statements, while some [see red text] at Health.iafrica are at least correct. [IOL is now partially corrected as I write this, due to my initial message to them - see green text. I quote the original here.]
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Seventy percent of those who agreed were Christians, 89 percent Muslims or Hindus, 65 percent Ancestral or other, while 58 percent of the respondents had no religion. |
Seventy percent of those who agreed were Christians, 89% Muslims or Hindus, 65% Ancestral or other, while 58% of the respondents had no religion. | Seventy percent of those who agreed were Christians, 89 percent Muslims or Hindus, 65 percent Ancestral or other, while 58 percent of the respondents had no religion. | Seventy percent of those who agreed were Christians, 89 percent Muslims or Hindus, 65 percent Ancestral or other, while 58 percent of the respondents had no religion. |
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Of those in favour of such a decision, 87% were white, 56% black, 88% Indian and 70% coloured. | Of those in favour of such a decision, 87 percent were white, 56 percent black, 88 percent Indian and 70 percent coloured. | Some 87 percent of whites polled were in favour of such a decision, 56 percent of black respondents were in favour, 88 percent of Indians, and 70 percent of coloured people. |
| Almost 60 percent of people holding this view were black, 35 percent white, 56 percent Indian and 47 percent coloured. | Almost 60% of people holding this view were black, 35% white, 56% Indian and 47% coloured. | Almost 60 percent of people holding this view were black, 35 percent white, 56 percent Indian and 47 percent coloured. | Almost 60 percent of people holding this view were black, 35 percent white, 56 percent Indian and 47 percent coloured. |
| Of those who agreed, 37 percent was Black, 60 percent was white, Indians constituted 50 percent of those who agreed and 49 percent was Coloured. | Of those who agreed, 37% were Black, 60% White, Indians constituted 50% and 49%were Coloured. | Of those who agreed, 37 percent were black, 60 percent were white, Indians constituted 50 percent of those who agreed and 49 percent was coloured. | Of those who agreed, 37 percent were black, 60 percent were white, Indians constituted 50 percent of those who agreed and 49 percent were coloured. |
How on earth does this sort of drivel get past their editors???
I don't know who got their information where, but someone needs a maths lesson.
These are the notes I left via their contact pages. 00:34, 4 Sept 2005.
In the article on euthanasia at http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,,2-7-1442_1761536,00.html, there are some horrendous errors in the statistics. I would suggest a complete revision of the paragraphs with statistics about races/religions of respondents. I don't know how this got through the editorial process!
Stephen
In the article on euthanasia at http://www.dispatch.co.za/2005/09/01/Leader/lp1.html, there are some horrendous errors in the statistics. I would suggest a complete revision of the paragraphs with statistics about races/religions of respondents. I don't know how this got through the editorial process!
Stephen
[ failed: bad config on their site, resent to links found here with all 3 urls below, and 2 of the addresses on this page failed delivery ]
In the article on euthanasia at http://www.dispatch.co.za/2005/09/01/Leader/lp1.html and at http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,,2-7-1442_1761536,00.html and at http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=79&art_id=qw1125317886470B261, there are some horrendous errors in the statistics. I would suggest a complete revision of the paragraphs with statistics about races/religions of respondents. I don't know how this got through the editorial process!
Stephen
In the article on euthanasia at http://health.iafrica.com/healthnews/477298.htm, there are some horrendous errors in the statistics. I would suggest a complete revision of the paragraphs with statistics about races/religions of respondents. I don't know how this got through the editorial process!
Stephen
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