12 September 2009 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: Faced with an unprecedented onset of flooding and destruction in West Africa, the World Food Program (WFP) has begun distributions of food rations to the hundreds of thousands of victims in Burkina Faso, Niger and Mauritania. “We are really going through a very bad period right now,” Judith Melby, a WFP public information officer in Dakar, Senegal, told MediaGlobal. “The rainy seasons started quite a while ago, and there has been the normal, steady wet period, but there has also been very intense bouts of rain. Clearly the water has no place to go. Streets are flooded, homes have been destroyed, and hospitals have been evacuated.” The WFP has already provided 50,000 flood victims in Ougadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, with food rations, but hopes to reach 125,000 people in the region. In Niger, the WFP is distributing food to 41,000 people who were left homeless and hungry after a dyke near the northern town of Agadez gave way. The WFP is also planning to distribute food in Mauritania to approximately 11,500 villagers who live near the banks of the flooded Senegal River. “It happened so suddenly that in terms of preparing, it has been difficult,” Melby said. “No one knew that this huge number of people were going to be in need, and always in dealing with situations like this, it is the most vulnerable [low-income rural farmers, women and children] who are the most affected.” Melby has worked in West Africa for ten years, and says that only recently has she begun to witness such extreme cases of climate shifting and weather extremes. She mentioned the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark this winter, saying, “Right now, just looking across the continent of Africa, you can see climate change at its worst. At the eastern horn, there are horrendous droughts, and then there are these examples of extreme flooding in West Africa. This is certainly the kind of extreme weather that we have to look forward to unless action is taken,” she continued. “2007 was certainly the worst year for flooding, but the unpredictability is just getting increasingly bad. It affects everyone and everything, especially those who are most vulnerable to begin with.” Amy Lieberman

Leaders aim to eliminate Malaria-related deaths by 2015

11 September 2009 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: Among the challenges facing developing nations in Africa, malaria is one of the deadliest. However, African leaders plan to finally stop the disease in its tracks. On September 23rd, during the General Assembly meeting at the United Nations in New York, leaders from the continent, called the African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA), will meet with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and discuss one of the boldest actions taken against malaria in the modern era. According to Robert C. Orr, who serves as the UN Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Coordination and Strategic Planning, the announcement by the leaders will include two primary disease-reduction targets. First, the leaders intend to have disease-prevention functions completely under control in Africa by the end of 2010. Additionally, the leaders will announce the even bolder initiative of “near zero deaths by malaria by 2015.” Orr, who spoke on matters regarding the upcoming General Assembly and issues surrounding it, explained that the ALMA and the Secretary-General hope to make their ambitious targets reality through several initiatives. He told MediaGlobal that these programs would include “mobilizing partnerships” with regional actors, and a broadened effort to implement “spraying and bed nets” and increased availability of therapies. The joint push by the UN and African leaders is an extension of the sixth Millennium Development Goal (MDG), which calls for eradication of malaria and deadly diseases. Despite recent concerns over progress of the MDGs and their completion, Orr was confident that malaria could be neutralized in Africa, citing successful examples of UN activity in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda. Additionally, he lauded the progress being made in Zanzibar, which he identified as being “one of the worst” cases of malaria prevalence. Ryan Dicovitsky

Low-carbon Asian industries share best practices with developing neighbors

11 September 2009 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: The most effective way to promote green industry in Asia’s developing nations is to show case studies from similar or neighboring countries, according to Arab Hoballah, a speaker at this week’s International Conference on Green Industry in Asia. The Manila-based conference brought together about 1,000 leaders in politics, business, and science to discuss carbon-efficiency, particularly for low- and middle-income nations in the Asian and Pacific regions. Small and medium enterprises in developing countries in Asia have not, by and large, shown an interest in transitioning into resource-efficient and low-carbon practices. These businesses tend to view greening industry as a luxury for wealthy countries, or as a European trend. “People do not realize the great opportunities they have in going towards resource efficiency and looking at the economic benefits from that side,” Hoballah, who is the Chief of the Sustainable Consumption and Production Branch of the United Nations Environmental Programme, a sponsor of the conference, told MediaGlobal. “If I come and tell them I have an excellent example [of an energy efficient practice] in Germany, they will say, ‘It’s Germany, it’s far away from my concerns and my system.’ But if I tell them their neighbor is doing it, then they say, ‘Fine, I should also be able to do it.’” Much of the focus of the conference was on showcasing local practices that have proven successful, such as a bank in the Philippines that created a niche in providing loans with extremely long repayment schedules to the building industry for green building initiatives. Letting companies repay loans based on the time-scale of returns on energy efficiency became a lucrative adjustment for the bank. This model has now been repeated in China at the local level, and it is highly successful, according to Hoballah. Molly Slothower

Counterfeit malaria drugs kill thousands in Africa

11 September 2009 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: The World Health Organization (WHO) has stepped up their efforts to combat the creation and distribution of counterfeit malaria pills in Africa. WHO estimates that upwards of 2,000 children a day are being killed as a result of taking these phony medications. Dr. Lembit Rago, Coordinator of WHO Essential Medicines and Pharmaceutical Policies, told MediaGlobal, “Usually products in high demand, price or sizeable market are counterfeited; malaria drugs fulfill all these criteria…[Counterfeit malaria pills] may contain no active ingredients, may contain wrong active ingredients or even correct active ingredients.” There is usually a low amount of active ingredient, like the pain reliever paracetamol, in fake malaria medications, according to Rago, in order to “cheat qualitative screening tests that just react to the presence of certain actives, and thus may mimic false positive results.” The ingredient may soothe malaria symptoms temporarily, but the disease remains unaffected. It is also possible that counterfeit drugs contain harmful or strange chemicals, like sildenafil, normally contained in the anti-impotency drug known as Viagra. Rago continued to say that, since malaria kills, counterfeit pills that provide no treatment “kill as well. Low quantities of actives can also contribute to raising resistance and losing valuable drugs in the long term.” As far as steps being taken to combat this practice, Rago reported, “There is no one magic bullet. It is a complexity of measures and cooperation of all concerned parties that works the best. The key is effective market control and functioning regulatory systems, including good cooperation between different enforcement agencies.” WHO continues to work on this growing problem. Alison Walkley

Culturally appropriate research needed to reduce suicides in developing countries

11 September 2009 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: The Suicide prevention initiatives must be culturally relevant, according to Brian Mishara, the president of the International Suicide Prevention Association. But while between 75 and 85 percent of the one million annual suicide casualties take place in low and middle-income countries, the vast majority of research on suicide prevention takes places in the richest nations. The theme of this year’s International Suicide Prevention Day, “Suicide Prevention in Different Cultures,” was designed to spread awareness that a one-size-fits-all approach does not work when it comes to preventing the loss of life due to suicide. For example, the most common method of committing suicide in Central and South America and Asia is ingesting pesticides, while this is a very rare occurrence in the United States and Western Europe. Therefore, giving lockboxes to rural farmers to secure their pesticides and banning the most lethal pesticides is a critical step to reduce suicide in some nations, but would make little impact in others. Financial constraints make finding solutions to suicide problems difficult in the developing world. “I just got back from Guiana and the health minister is working on developing a national suicide prevention plan, but his frustration is the health budget. They have an HIV/AIDS problem. They have to run the hospitals. So issues like suicide take a back seat,” Mishara told MediaGlobal. Only two percent of budgets worldwide go to mental health issues, but these issues make up more than 20 percent of the global health burden, according to the World Health Organization. Sometimes solutions are not pursued because of the all-too-common view of suicide as taboo. “In a large number of countries in the world today, someone who attempts suicide will be thrown in jail rather than being treated for mental health problems, or given help for the other difficulties that they have,” said Mishara. Molly Slothower

WMO and WFP partner to fight hunger and prevent catastrophe

9 September 2009 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: Recognizing the tremendous threats of climate change and the value of cooperation, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the World Food Program (WFP) intend to share data on climate and weather patterns. At a press conference at the World Climate Conference in Geneva on September 2nd, representatives of the two organizations announced a data-sharing agreement in which the WMO will provide weather information and analytic assistance to the WFP. The information will prove invaluable to the WFP, which must have as much data as possible to help prepare for emergencies and predict where a hunger shortage will occur. Maria de Mar Requena Quesada, of the WFP’s Climate Change Coordination Office, described the real-world results of the agreement to MediaGlobal, explaining, “An innovative flood alert system is under testing in Bangladesh and Zambia. In both countries, the main final users are the national government and disaster management stakeholders. The system is currently in use and provides input to facilitate enhanced coordination and decision making.” The announcement of the agreement signaled an extension of ongoing cooperation between the two organizations. The WFP already uses WMO data, and a recently signed Memorandum of Understanding has strengthened the partnership. In addition to providing climate data, the WMO will provide its analytical expertise to the WFP. Queseda emphasized the need for stronger cooperation, adding, “The awareness that climate-related data is of increasingly critical importance for vulnerability analysis, food security and disaster preparedness, as well as the understanding that new approaches and technological developments are required to move forward in knowledge and information management.” Ryan Dicovitsky

Universal literacy: daunting, but imperative

8 September 2009 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: As the world celebrates International Literacy Day, there remain 776 million adults, mostly women, who lack the most basic literacy skills. These are skills that would otherwise give these adults the “tools with which to improve their livelihoods, participate in community decision-making, gain access to information about health care, and much else,” said the United Nations Secretary General in a message to mark the day. While many people often quote the recent significant increase in universal primary school enrolment as reason to believe the younger generations are less likely to reproduce similar adult-illiteracy rates, Robin Horn, a Lead Education Specialist for the World Bank, said this is far from guaranteed. Although universal primary enrolment has soared all over the world since this was established as a Millennium Development Goal in 2000, “going to school didn’t translate to acquisition of basic literacy for the millions of newly enrolled students,” Horn told MediaGlobal. Much of this has to do with the fact that the focus has almost exclusively been on access to schools without enough emphasis on creating the conditions in the classroom for literacy, Horn said. “The thinking was: if you first deal with access, an incredibly challenging issue on its own, then we can worry about learning later.” The truth is, however, later is too late for most children. “When kids miss the time when learning is easiest –age six, seven and eight– it makes it hard to correct in the future,” the World Bank official explained. However challenging, “we must do a better job paying attention to initial literacy teaching and acquisition through measurement and assessments,” Horn said. The World Bank, through which a large percentage of development funding for education is channeled, plans to bring this issue to the forefront as it continues to play a significant role in educating the world’s most vulnerable people. Raquel Thompson