The five-year $362.6 million grant to Lesotho seeks to increase water supplies for industrial and domestic use, to mitigate the devastating affects of poor maternal health, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and other diseases by substantially strengthening the country’s health care infrastructure and human resources for health capacity, and to remove barriers to foreign and local private sector investment. Mozambique’s five-year $506.9 million Millennium Challenge Compact aims to reduce poverty levels through increased incomes and employment by improving water, sanitation, roads, land tenure, and agriculture. This program is expected to benefit about five million Mozambicans by 2015.
Poverty and health
Board of Directors for MCC approves Poverty Reduction Grants for Lesotho and Mozambique
Millenium Challenge Corporation, 27 June 2007
Comment on the Millenium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Lesotho compact funding lack of focus on human resource capacity and health systems
Lynch S: Medecins Sans Frantiers (Lesotho)
Medicins Sans Frontiers comment on limitations in the Millenium Challenge Corporation funding of poverty reduction programmes. They note that the allocation of funding almost entirely to capital costs with no resources for recurrent costs, such as salaries, will constrain implementation in low income countries.
Further details: /newsletter/id/32453
Diminished mental and physical function and lack of social support are associated with shorter survival in community dwelling older persons of Botswana
Clausen T, Wilson AO, Molebatsi RM, Holmboe-Ottesen G: BMC Public Health 7:144, 5 July 2007
Mortality rates for older persons in Botswana have been unavailable and little is known of predictors of mortality in old age. This study may serve as a precursor for more detailed assessments. The objective was to assess diminished function and lack of social support as indicators of short term risk of death. Older community dwelling persons with diminished cognitive or physical function, solitary daily meals and living in a small household have a significantly increased risk of rapid deterioration and death. Health policy should include measures to strengthen informal support and expand formal service provisions to older persons with poor function and limited social networks in order to prevent premature deaths.
Zimbabwe's children enter new phase of hardship
Schlein L: Voice of America News, 18 July 2007
The UN Children's Fund says the children of Zimbabwe have entered a new phase of hardship. UNICEF says millions of children are missing out on their most basic needs because of a severe drought and the dramatic deterioration of Zimbabwe's economy. The unprecedented hardship facing Zimbabwe is biting particularly hard among children and quality health care in the country's schools has all but collapsed.
Even more children are dying in Botswana
Inter Press Service, 18 June 2007
While Botswana has succeeded in decreasing its poverty rate, it is unlikely that the country will achieve the United Nations' fourth Millennium Development Goal of decreasing child mortality rates by two thirds by 2015. Figures have shown an increase in child mortality between the 1990s and the 2000s. A 2001 report by the government's Central Statistics Office (CSO) on population and housing indicates that in 1991, infant mortality in Botswana stood at 48 deaths per 1,000 live births. This figure increased to 56 deaths per 1,000 live births by 2001. Over the same period, under-five mortality increased from 63 to 74 deaths per 1,000 live births. The United Nations Children's Fund's figures for the under-five mortality rate in Botswana are worse than the Botswana government's official figures, rising from 58 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 116 in 2004. The high prevalence of HIV/AIDS is one of the factors behind this phenomenon.
Hunger exacerbating child mortality
Banda I: Inter Press News, 24 May 2007
The fourth of the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) seeks a two-third reduction in the deaths of children under five by 2015. But the issues related to the first MDG, the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, will push the reduction of child mortality in Zimbabwe beyond the target date of 2015.
New strategy adopted on diseases of poverty: WHO-based tropical disease research programme to focus on emerging diseases
World Health Organisation, 22 June 2007
The WHO based Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) has adopted a new strategy for strengthening and expanding research to prevent and control 'infectious diseases of poverty'. The strategy builds on the programme’s 30-year record of developing new drugs, delivery strategies and enhancing research capacity in countries where parasitic tropical diseases are endemic. The new plan addresses some of the emerging disease challenges facing developing countries, such as TB-HIV co-infection.
Poorer health and nutritional outcomes in orphans and vulnerable young children not explained by greater exposure to extreme poverty in Zimbabwe
Watts H, Gregson S, Saito S, Lopman B, Beasley M, Monasch R: Tropical Medicine & International Health 12 (5): 584-593, May 2007
This paper describes patterns of association between different groups of young orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) and their nutritional and health outcomes; and develops a theoretical framework to analyse the determinants of child malnutrition and ill-health, and identify the different mechanisms which contribute to these outcomes in such children.
It is based on statistical analysis of data on 31 672 children aged 0–17 years (6753 aged under 5 years) selected from the Zimbabwe OVC Baseline Survey 2004. Differences in exposure to extreme poverty among young children by OVC status were relatively small and did not explain the greater malnutrition and ill-health seen in OVC.
A pro-poor critique of pre-payment water meters in South Africa - The Phiri story
Dugard J: Critical Health Perspectives 2 (2), 2007
Responding to the multiple violations posed by prepaid meters (PPMs) in Phiri, in July 2006 an application was launched in the Johannesburg High Court by five applicants, on behalf of themselves, their households and all residents of Phiri who are in a similar position to the applicants, as well as everyone in the public interest. The application, supported by the Coalition Against Water Privatisation and defended by the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS), seeks to have PPMs declared unlawful and it asks the Court to order Johannesburg Water to provide everyone in Phiri with a FBW supply of 50lcd and the option of a conventional meter at the cost of the City of Johannesburg. The applicants and their supporting organisations believe that the case will be critical to securing the constitutionally- guaranteed rights of poor people to dignity, healthcare and sufficient water.
Botswana: Stigma deprives orphans of aid
Integrated Regional Information Network, 29 May 2007
The stigma of being labelled poor is inhibiting struggling foster families in Botswana, who are looking after already vulnerable children, from accessing welfare, a new study has found. The study, which focused on the plight of orphans and vulnerable children in Palapye, one of the largest villages in Botswana, located 275km north of the capital, Gaborone, found government assistance was "crippled" by the reluctance of families to register children for state aid. It cited an official as saying, "Some parents do not want to show they have orphans".