During his three-day visit from 16-19 December 2008, Dr Sambo held discussions with national authorities and partners on ways and means of bringing an end to the spread of the cholera epidemic. Dr Sambo advised that beyond cholera, other specific health problems may become worse if the key social and economic determinants of health are not urgently improved. He highlighted the importance of inter-sectoral approach in the prevention of cholera and reached agreement with the Minister of Health to establish the Cholera Command and Control Centre, jointly operated by WHO and the Ministry of Health of Zimbabwe, to coordinate and boost the country’s capacity to manage the response particularly in the areas of disease surveillance, case management, water and sanitation, social mobilisation and logistics.
Poverty and health
In this article exploring the history of socio-economic inequality, the author calls for an interpretation of the current food crisis over the historical long term. As a direct consequence of an entrenched, centuries-old capitalist system, the market as a ‘modernising’ force has consistently enriched the lives of a few while impoverishing a poor majority. Understanding the food crisis rests first and foremost on re-considering humanity’s relationship to nature and championing historical narratives true to the voices and experiences of the global poorest of the poor. Up till now, analysts have been discussing the current food crisis from the perspective of the last few decades, which is very short term, suggesting that the problem is momentary and conjunctural. It is neither and has been in the making for a very long time, as far back as 1491.
This study analyses the report, Circumstances of Orphan and Non-orphan Children and their Care Providers in Mwanza, Tanzania, which sampled 1,960 children aged 6–19. It focuses on vulnerability indicators in children's living arrangements, education, paid work and psychosocial well-being, particularly girls, who are most vulnerable. Particular emphasis should be paid to girls within situation analyses. Vulnerabilities associated with widespread and chronic poverty underlie vulnerabilities related to demographic factors and household restructuring. Their complex interplay reiterates the need for AIDS impact mitigation measures to be built on a comprehensive and robust social protection programme that is driven by poverty reduction objectives.
Citizens have demanded that world leaders keep promises to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and end inequality. More than 116 million people – nearly 2% of the world’s population – mobilised at events in 131 countries on 17–19 October as part of the Stand Up and Take Action campaign. The mobilisation, which was ratified by the Guinness Book of Records as breaking the world record for the biggest mass mobilisation on a single issue, sends a clear message to world leaders that citizens want promises to end poverty to be fulfilled. At least five million additional people – many in Africa and Latin America – participated at events not submitted before the Guinness deadline. The United Nations Millennium Campaign has vowed not to stop mobilising and advocating for action until the Millennium Development Goals are achieved for the poorest people in the world.
A plan to boost food production in developing countries and provide urgent food aid was discussed by the Development Committee on 10 September 2008. The food price index rose by more than 40% last year, which has had catastrophic consequences for people in the developing world who are already suffering from malnutrition. It has been estimated that to deal with the problem in the medium term it would probably require an extra €18 billion. The EU has committed to finding €1.8 billion over the next two or three years from unspent agricultural money to be matched by money from the Member States. Some of this will be used for direct food support, given the massive fall in grain stocks. Most will be used for seeds, fertiliser and irrigation to help countries to develop and grow their own food.
A new report by Transparency International (TI) has lashed out at some of the world's poorest countries for an ‘ongoing humanitarian disaster’, and deplored the wealthiest for not doing enough to help. At the launch of their 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) on 23 September in Berlin, TI said: ‘In the poorest countries, corruption levels can mean the difference between life and death, when money for hospitals or clean water is in play, but even in more privileged countries, with enforcement disturbingly uneven, a tougher approach to tackling corruption is needed.’ The 2008 CPI is a composite index, drawing on different expert and business surveys. It scores 180 countries (the same number as in 2007) on a scale from 0 (highly corrupt) to 10 (very clean). Denmark, New Zealand and Sweden share the highest score at 9.3, followed immediately by Singapore at 9.2. Bringing up the rear is Somalia at 1, slightly trailing Iraq and Burma at 1.3 and Haiti at 1.4.
The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, has warned in a new report that the gains made in reducing extreme poverty are under threat from the rise in global food and fuel prices and global economic slowdown. In the UN’s Millennium Development Goals Report 2008, launched on 11 September, Ban wrote: ‘The largely benign development environment that has prevailed since the early years of this decade, and that has contributed to the successes to date, is now threatened. The economic slowdown will diminish the incomes of the poor; the food crisis will raise the number of hungry people in the world and push millions more into poverty; climate change will have a disproportionate impact on the poor.’
Climate change may affect health outcomes and food utilisation, with additional malnutrition consequences. This paper argues that resources for nutrition, such as agriculture budgets, are inadequate. Appropriate policies should make bioenergy development more pro-poor and environmentally sustainable. Efforts to achieve food security and good nutrition should address the underlying social, economic, cultural and political causes of food insecurity and malnutrition. Some low-income governments are now cutting excessive military spending and allocating more money to the public sector. The paper supports the so-called ‘twin-track approach’ to combating hunger and poverty: strengthening the productivity and incomes of hungry and poor people, targeting rural areas, ensuring direct and immediate access to food by hungry people and putting social safety nets in place.
Less than half of development aid approved by the European Commission is explicitly linked to international objectives on reducing poverty, a new study has found. Health and education assume a central role in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, which were approved by all of the UN’s member countries in 2000. The eight objectives include targets to substantially reduce illiteracy, deaths of mothers during childbirth and of children before their fifth birthday, and the incidence of major diseases like AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria by 2010. Even though the European Union has undertaken to finance the attainment of these goals, its executive branch or commission appears to be attaching less importance to primary education in poor countries than it did at the start of this decade, according to Alliance 2015, a coalition of anti-poverty groups.
New poverty estimates published by the World Bank reveal that 1.4 billion people in the developing world were living on less than US$1.25 a day in 2005, down from 1.9 billion in 1981. These revised numbers reflect improved household data from a greater number of countries. They are based the International Comparison Programme (ICP) and 675 household surveys covering 116 countries and spanning the period 1981 to 2005. The new numbers show that poverty has become more widespread across the developing world over the past 25 years than previously estimated, but also that there has been strong – if regionally uneven – progress toward reducing overall poverty. On the other hand, they also demonstrate that the developing world is still on track to meet the first Millennium Development Goal of halving extreme poverty by 2015.