Access to poor quality and inexpensive food that are high in fats and refined carbohydrates have the potential to expose children to obesity. Fighting obesity could translate into a decrease in the number of adults who suffer from non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and heart disease. In this edition of NGO Pulse, Lauren Graham, a senior researcher at the University of Johannesburg’s Centre for Social Development for Africa, writes that with the current drought and increased food prices, it is becoming more expensive and difficult for families, especially those in poor communities, to afford and opt for healthier food baskets. Graham, who argues that it is easy and cost effective to prevent obesity and overweight, adds that: “Obesity is not necessarily driven by overeating, as is commonly thought.” She notes that children who grow up in poor communities are at high risk for obesity and ‘hidden hunger’ since they have no option but to consume food that lacks the right balance of nutritious meals.
Poverty and health
Within a rights-based paradigm, wheelchairs are essential in the promotion of user autonomy, dignity, freedom, inclusion and participation. This paper described a group of 94 Zimbabwean wheelchair users’ satisfaction with wheelchairs, wheelchair services and wheelchair function in a mixed method, descriptive study using the Quebec User Evaluation of Satisfaction with Assistive Technology for adults and children and Functioning Every day with a Wheelchair questionnaire. Qualitative data were collected through two focus group discussions (22 participants) and two case studies with participants purposively sampled from those who participated in the quantitative phase. More than 60% of participants were dissatisfied with the following wheelchair features: durability (79%), weight (76%), ease of adjustment (69%), effectiveness (69%), safety (67%), reliability (67%), and meeting user needs (61%). Similarly, more than 66% of participants were dissatisfied with various services aspects: professional services (69%), follow-up (67%), and service delivery (68%). Although 60% of participants agreed that the wheelchair contributed to specific functions, more than 50% of participants indicated that the features of the wheelchair did not allow in- (53%) and outdoor (53%) mobility. Findings indicate high levels of dissatisfaction with wheelchair features and services, as well as mobility. It is recommended that minimum service standards are set incorporating evidence and good practice guidelines for wheelchair services and management of wheelchair donations in Zimbabwe.
The Commission for Social Development concluded its fifty-fourth session approving three draft resolutions for adoption by the Economic and Social Council. One on Africa’s development, while traditionally endorsed by consensus, required a rare vote to address the United States’ concerns over language around trade issues, and more generally, “the right to development”. The Commission approved a draft on “Social dimensions of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development” by 29 in favour, to 12 against, with no abstentions (document E/CN.5/2016/L.5). This emphasizes that “increasingly unacceptable” poverty, inequality and social exclusion in most African countries requires social and economic policies to be devised through a comprehensive approach. African countries are encouraged to prioritize structural transformation, modernize smallholder agriculture, add value to primary commodities and improve public and private governance institutions.While the United States’ delegate, whose delegation had requested the vote, said her Government would vote against the text, as it viewed the World Trade Organization (WTO) as the main venue for trade negotiation, and could not support a text calling on WTO members to conclude the Doha Round of trade negotiations and improve market and duty-free access, South Africa’s representative, associating with the Group of 77, said South Africa would continue to advocate for social development as part of the global agenda.
The South African Government recently set targets to reduce cardiovascular disease (CVD) by lowering salt consumption. The authors conducted an extended cost-effectiveness analysis to model the potential health and economic impacts of this salt policy. They used surveys and epidemiologic studies to estimate reductions in CVD resulting from lower salt intake; the reduction in out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditures and government subsidies due to the policy and the financial risk protection (FRP) from the policy. The authors found that the salt policy could reduce CVD deaths by 11%, with similar health gains across income quintiles. It could save households US$ 4.06 million (2012) in OOP expenditures (US$ 0.29 per capita) and save the government US$ 51.25 million in healthcare subsidies (US$ 2.52 per capita) each year. The cost to the government would be only US$ 0.01 per capita, so the policy would be cost saving. If the private sector food reformulation costs were passed on to consumers, food expenditures would increase by <0.2% across all income quintiles. Preventing CVD could avert 2000 cases of poverty yearly. The authors concluded that, in addition to health gains, population salt reduction can have positive economic impacts—substantially reducing OOP expenditures and providing financial protection, particularly for the middle class. The policy could also provide large government savings on health care.
The sanitation sector in South Africa is currently regulated by three policy documents, namely the White Paper on Water Supply and Sanitation (1994); the White Paper on a National Water Policy of South Africa (1997) and the White Paper on Basic Household Sanitation (2001). These documents provide procedures, rules and allocation mechanisms for sanitation, implemented through laws, regulations; economic measures; information and education programmes; and assignment of rights and responsibilities for providing services. After several years of implementation, a number of challenges and unintended consequences were identified. The regulatory responsibilities were unclear, shifting between departments. Devolving responsibility for implementation to local government resulted in significant changes in the sector. Increased urbanisation is noted to increase stress on urban sanitation systems, but so too is changing human settlement in rural areas placing increased strain on small and limited sanitation systems. The department thus argues for policy review to address these challenges to deliver sanitation.
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human right to water and sanitation, Léo Heller, and the Chair of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Waleed Sadi, welcomed the explicit recognition of the ‘human right to sanitation’ as a distinct right, together with the ‘human right to safe drinking water’ by the UN General Assembly in December. Over 2.5 billion people still lack access to improved sanitation - the sanitation target under Goal 7 has been missed by one of the widest margins of all the 18 targets under the Millennium Development Goals. One billion people practise open defecation, nine out of ten in rural areas across the world. The experts explained that while sanitation does not necessarily have to be water-borne, governments tend to focus on this type, rather than on-site sanitation such as pit latrines and septic tanks, which are still widely used. As a result, individual households which rely on on-site sanitation often have to operate the entire system themselves, including collection and disposal, without government support. “The right to sanitation also requires privacy and dignity,” the experts stressed. In the UN General Assembly resolution, adopted by consensus on 17 December 2015, Member States recognized that ‘the human right to sanitation entitles everyone, without discrimination, to have physical and affordable access to sanitation, in all spheres of life, that is safe, hygienic, secure, socially and culturally acceptable and that provides privacy and ensures dignity.’ “We urge all Member States, in both their national budgeting and international development cooperation, to target the allocation of resources to sanitation in particular to the most marginalised and disadvantaged groups and individuals, as those living in urban informal settlements and in rural areas,” the experts said.
Agenda 2063 - The Africa We Want is a flagship campaign of the African Union. This policy argues for using the opportunity offered by urbanisation and the demographic shift to fulfil the vision of an African renaissance. With urbanisation firmly on the agenda across Africa there is a need for a constructive policy dialogue on what exactly urbanisation in Africa might mean. To support such a process the Cities Alliance secretariat has awarded a grant to the African Centre for Cities (ACC) at the University of Cape Town to establish an independent think tank dedicated to this issue. In this video Gustave Massiah, an Urban Specialist with the United Cities and Local Governments of Africa, discusses the key challenges facing African urbanisation in a post-industrial period. Gustave sees the main challenges of African urbanisation to be those faced by the continent as a whole: inequality, unemployment and the resistance of external exploitation. He proposes a new conception of informality based on the dynamism and power of the individual. With no obvious answer to informality, society then has to review its definition of informal and to better understand people's own experience of their conditions.
The author argues that psychological violence of colonialism today only exists as a re-enactment, or a reframing of the original physical warfare between colonialist and colonized bodies. He argues that contemporary images and representation still repeat the violence within popular culture, within academic curricula, literature, mainstream music, art, architecture, theatre, that pervades the contemporary world in ways that continue to suppress imagination.
The author raises that the covert violence, the risk, the uncertainty and the possibility of daily life in Kinshasa resides in the gap between official visions and unofficial reality. Using two cases in which water is being turned into land, Filip De Boeck reveals the need to envision a ‘near future' that hyphenates dream and reality; a plan predicated on incremental transformation rather than destructive, radical, exclusionary change.
Agricultural experts and policymakers have formed a new institution to promote sustainable food systems in Sub-Saharan Africa and to deal with the challenges posed by climate change. The African Ecosystem Based Adaptation for Food Security Assembly (EBAFOSA) which aims to advocate for sustainable ecosystem-friendly agricultural systems was formed during the 2nd Africa Ecosystem Based Adaptation for Food Security Conference held in Kenya on 30-31 July, 2015. Africa loses about six million of productive land a year through deforestation, with almost 65 per cent of the continent’s land being under pressure from land degradation, the conference heard. The EBAFOSA will work towards achieving food security, ecological productivity, job creation, poverty reduction, value addition and sustainable industrial development in Africa.