(b) Women’s health Matters peculiar to women inmates are not properly taken care of by the authorities. Women are not provided with, among other things, sanitary pads. In the Addis Ababa prison, the ICRC is providing women with some cloth which they use and wash to reuse. The Special Rapporteur raised serious concern about this practice and drew the attention of the women and the prison authorities to the health risks involved. (c) Sanitation In all the prisons, prisoners are not provided with either mattresses or blankets. They are required to provide for themselves. Other basic items such as soap, sheets, and detergents for clothes are equally not provided. Such items are either provided by NGOs or the Prisoners Committees. One of the biggest problems in all the prisons is the shortage of water. The problem is severe in the Harar Prison. The entire Harar Region has a perennial water problem. Water is distributed to the inhabitants of the region in trucks. In the Arba Minch prison, there is also a serious problem of water. However, in Arba Minch, the International Committee of the Red Cross is working on bringing water to the prison from a nearby river using a generator. Because of the poor water supply in most prisons, the toilets are not very clean. In the police stations, there is no water available to the detainees. They urinate in buckets and empty the content the next morning. Detainees in police cells do not bath, and as a result, they have rashes and very bad skin odour. The toilet in the Awasa Woreda Police Station is very dirty with faeces on the floor. The cells are very dirty and smelling of stale water and urine. (d) Food The main dish in all the prisons is injera – the local bread – and stew, which most of the time is made with beans, usually with no meat. Prisoners are fed three times a day with the same meal. In the Addis Ababa prison however, prisoners are provided with bread and tea for breakfast, vegetables twice a week, and meat twice a month. In Dire Dawa, and Adama prisons, expectant mothers, nursing mothers, children and sick prisoners are given special meals – meat, vegetables, milk, eggs, etc. Foreigners are provided with porridge and rice, if they do not want injera. The quantity of food is usually much but some prisoners complain about the quality, especially the stew. The process of preparing the injera seems to be hygienic – from the preparation of the turf (the raw material for the injera) through fermentation, to when the injera is made. The containers used for fermenting the turf are well covered and stored in a separate room. In the Adama Prison, there is a big store room for turf and soghorn. The room is also clean, safe for some turf flour and soghorn on the floor. 29 Report of the Mission of the Special Rapporteur on Prisons to Ethiopia 15 – 29 March 2004