Weekending Sunday, 16 March 2008

SOLAR ENERGY IS KEY TO POWERING AFRICA’S FUTURE, SAYS SACHS

10 March 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: Solar power has the potential to provide Africa with sustainable energy, said Jeffrey Sachs, internationally renowned economist and special advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. As Africa continues to develop and fossil fuels become increasingly expensive, the demand for alternative energy sources has never been greater. “Africans need electricity,” Sachs told reporters at UN Headquarters last week. “Ninety percent of African villages don’t have it.” Sun is a plentiful resource in many African nations, and, unlike other alternative energy sources such as biofuels, harnessing its power has virtually no environmental impact. Furthermore, because solar power can run off of individual panels, it can offer a localized solution to providing power to Africa’s largely rural population. While the panels necessary for harnessing solar energy are an expensive investment, their cost is becoming less of an issue, Margo Buchanan of the United Nations Development Programme’s MDG support team told MediaGlobal. “In many cases where the demand has a good match with solar power production so that storage solutions are not needed immediately, the only bottleneck to deployment is access to low cost capital [or] finance,” she said. “This, along with carbon credits, can already make solar [power] viable and cost competitive in some situations. So we have an excellent starting point.” The next step, she said, is to “create demonstration plants and strengthen private sector capacity to deploy more solar power.” If Africa is to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, including the establishment of sustainable energy sources by 2015, immediate action is needed, Sachs said. “There is nothing more to say now in terms of promises,” he said. “We just have to do now.”

VACCINATION EFFORT VIRTUALLY ELIMINATES DEADLY DISEASE IN UGANDA

10 March 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: Uganda has virtually eliminated Hib meningitis in children under five years old, thanks to a wide distribution of the Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) vaccine, according to a study released this week by the World Health Organization (WHO). Hib is the leading cause of pneumonia and meningitis around the world, and is responsible for the deaths of nearly 400,000 children every year, most of them in the developing world. While the Hib vaccine has existed since 1991 and is a standard part of the infant vaccine regimen in wealthy nations, its high cost has kept it from being widely used in the developing world. With a price about seven times higher than that of each of the six standard vaccinations currently given to children in developing countries, the Hib vaccine is prohibitively expensive. The program in Uganda was supported by the GAVI Alliance, a public-private partnership devoted to making vaccines available and affordable in developing nations. Only five years after the Hib immunization program was implemented in Uganda, the WHO estimates that the incidence rate of bacterial meningitis due to the disease has dropped to approximately zero, preventing as many as 30,000 cases of severe Hib disease and 5,000 child deaths. “This report from Uganda will certainly contribute to supporting the view that Hib immunization should be sustained in all African countries,” Dr. Patrick Zuber, group leader for new and under-utilized vaccines at the WHO, told MediaGlobal. “We are seeing now that new vaccines can be introduced and deliver convincing benefits within a few years.” The success of this program, he feels, should inspire other developing nations to follow Uganda’s lead. “Uganda’s immunization program has made noticeable progress over the past few years,” he said, adding that “the addition of new vaccines is just one way of enhancing the impact that the vaccine delivery system can have on public health.”

INJURY A LEADING KILLER OF ASIAN CHILDREN, SAYS UNICEF

11 March 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: A new study reveals that Asian children are at great risk of dying from injuries, such as drowning and road accidents, said the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). The Alliance for Safe Children (TASC) and UNICEF worked together to collect data over the last seven years. Surveys conducted in Bangladesh, China, the Philippines, Thailand and Viet Nam indicate that injury accounts for a high number of deaths and disabilities among children in these countries, with drowning taking the heaviest toll. “It is not the leading cause of death, but [it is] one of the leading causes of death for children over one years of age. The bulk of childhood deaths still occur in the first month and the first year of life,” Shantha Bloemen of UNICEF told MediaGlobal. While the first month of life is still the most dangerous for Asian children, reports UNICEF, the survey confirms that the risk of dying from injury increases after infancy as children grow more independent and interact more with their environments. “This evidence overwhelmingly confirms that injury is and has been a major killer. It is now time to make it a public health necessity and to reverse the tide of child injury related deaths,” said Pete Peterson, President of TASC, in a recent press release. Together UNICEF and TASC are calling for the expansion of child injury prevention programs, which include campaigns for better road safety, increased supervision, swimming lessons and household safety education to prevent suffocation, falls and poisoning.

DEVELOPING COUNTRIES URGED TO EXPAND SERVICES TO PROTECT CHILDREN FROM HIV/AIDS

11 March 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: Countries must address the critical need to scale up services for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization and the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF). All three health organizations recently met in Washington, D.C. to discuss the global spread and effects of the disease and to urge countries to prioritize PMTCT in their grant proposals to the Global Fund. UNICEF reports that 90 percent of all new HIV infections in children are the result of mother-to-child transmission and that there are large global inequities in treatment and access to PMTCT services. “One of the greatest challenges, and this is where the Global Fund is so important, is building and finding the resources in these countries in order to provide access to PMTCT. And having the word out that these kind of services are available and that they are very effective,” Pamela W. Barnes, President and Chief Executive Officer of EGPAF, told MediaGlobal. Even with the most basic treatments, mother-to-child transmission can be reduced by up to 40 percent, Barnes explained. By working toward the World Health Organization guidelines, a more sophisticated regimen, transmission rates could be reduced to below 10 percent. The Global Fund is a partnership among governments, civil society, the private sector and affected communities, and works to address issues of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. The Fund started accepting applications for grants last week.

CHADIAN POLICE TO BE TRAINED TO PROVIDE SECURITY TO REFUGEES

13 March 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: The humanitarian situation in Eastern Chad is dire, Kingsley Amaning, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Chad, told reporters at UN Headquarters on Thursday. Twelve camps containing 250,000 Sudanese refugees are taxing the environmental and logistical resources of a region that can only sustain a population of 20,000, and an additional 80,000 Chadians have been displaced across the country as a result of violence and insecurity. While camps for the displaced are often vulnerable to attacks by belligerent groups, “nobody has directly attacked the camps—yet,” Amaning told MediaGlobal. “I hope that means that they understand and respect the humanitarian work that we’re doing.” A European Union peacekeeping force is expected to be operational by the end of the month, and, together with UN troops, will begin training Chadian police forces to provide security to the camps. “We are hoping that [police] will be in place before any of the rebels depart from their so far laudable habits,” Amaning said. Less than two percent of a UN appeal launched in December requesting US$240 million to support humanitarian efforts in the region has been received. “It’s not enough to provide them food,” Amaning told reporters. “It is important that we work to provide them with a basic minimum environment that allows for decent life.”

WHERE DEMAND IS HIGHEST, HEALTH WORKERS ARE SCARCE

14 March 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: The rising demand for health workers across the globe is crippling the medical systems of the Least Developed Counties (LDCs), as doctors and nurses leave the world’s poorest countries in search of better salaries and higher medical standards. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which has been at the forefront of health organizations voicing concerns about the exodus, announced this week that a shortage of health workers throughout Asia and Africa will have devastating effects. The statement came as part of the “Health Workers for All and All for Health Workers” Declaration and Action Plan. Omar Gharzeddine, a media officer at UNFPA, told MediaGlobal that the agency is “supporting the call that came out of that declaration.” Hedia Belhadj, Deputy Director of UNFPA’s Technical Support Division said, “UNFPA wants to ensure that each and every country in the world has the necessary health workforce that would address the health needs of its people.” Gharzeddine further stressed that the problem worsens when health workers, trained in the LDCs, leave their nation of origin in search of better paying jobs in developed nations. He described this phenomenon as a “medical drain.” Belhadj added, “To be successful, we need to work with health providers from the private sector and reach out to other fields, such as education and labor.”