Considering the high levels of chronic poverty in the Southern Africa region, and the ongoing impact of HIV/AIDS, safety net programmes will be required to support the poorest in the community over the long term. Cash-based transfers to supplement income are likely to be the most efficient and appropriate means of doing this, though in-kind safety nets, such as vouchers for education or health costs, or for subsidised agricultural inputs, will also be suitable in some circumstances.
Poverty and health
Donor Fatigue Leaves 2.8m People Hungrier in Southern Africa
2004 ended on a grim note for many in Southern Africa, where emergency food supplies cannot meet their needs. The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) announced that it had been cutting rations to more than 2.8 million people over the past six months, as it lacked the funding to purchase additional food supplies. "There will be serious health and nutritional repercussions if people have to accept a further reduction in their meagre rations," said Mike Sackett, WFP Regional Director for Southern Africa, in a press release issued December 22.
Southern Africa must prepare for recurring drought, report says
Southern Africa should prepare itself for recurring drought, likely to strike at least twice every decade, says a new report. The report, 'Anticipating and Responding to Drought and Emergencies in Southern Africa', was prepared for the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) and noted that the region could experience a recurrence of the devastating drought of 2002/03, which resulted in a food deficit of 3.3 million mt. While the general regional situation shows some hopeful signs, the report noted the concerns of some policy experts that many households have become more vulnerable to shocks.
Analysing TB and poverty
While tuberculosis (TB) is not exclusively a disease of the poor, the association between poverty and TB is well established and widespread. Globally, the highest burden of TB is found in poor countries. Seventeen of the 22 countries that account for 80 per cent of the world’s TB burden are classified as low income and within countries the prevalence of TB is higher among the poor. This paper, produced by the EQUI-TB Knowledge Programme, analyses the existing evidence that TB causes or worsens poverty and that TB control (or elements of TB control) benefits the poor.
Poverty and social factors in relation to malaria, TB and HIV/AIDS
This review assesses the various factors that affect vulnerability to malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS infection and disease at the individual and household levels. Produced by The Lancet, it examines in particular the influence that age, sex, and genetics have on the biological response to the three diseases and looks at what effect the three illnesses have on each other. In addition, it explores the impact of poverty, livelihoods, gender discrepancies and education on all three infections.
Africa's Food and Nutrition Security Situation
An estimated 200 million people on the continent are undernourished, and their numbers have increased by almost 20 percent since the early 1990s. The result is that more than a third of African children are stunted in their growth and must face a range of physical and cognitive challenges not faced by their better-fed peers. Undernutrition is the major risk factor underlying over 28 percent of all deaths in Africa (some 2.9 million deaths annually). The continuing human costs of inadequate food and nutrition are enormous, and the aggregate costs of food and nutrition insecurity at the national level impose a heavy burden on efforts to foster sustained economic growth and improved general welfare.
Linking maternal death with poverty
This paper finds that there is a clear association between the risk of maternal death and a variety of poverty-related characteristics. Moreover there is an indication that maternal mortality is a sensitive marker of disadvantage, since non-maternal deaths did not exhibit such extreme clustering in the poorest groups. The authors demonstrate the magnitude of the poor-rich gap in maternal mortality, and should be a stimulus to setting and monitoring poverty-relevant development goals.
The Cairo consensus at 10: Population, Reproductive Health and ending poverty
This report from UNFPA focuses on world population, reproductive health and poverty ten years after the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) Programme of Action was agreed in Cairo. The report finds that many developing countries have made substantial progress in implementing the ICPD's recommendations. However, resources remain inadequate and the needs of the poorest populations are still not being met. Key challenges include the continued spread of HIV/AIDS, especially among the young, unmet need for family planning, and high rates of maternal mortality in the least-developed countries.
Food security, livelihoods and HIV/AIDS
This paper is intended both for managers and technical staff working either in food security and livelihoods or in HIV/AIDS and reproductive health who require an introduction to the linkages between the two areas, and as a guide to the many issues that need to be considered when carrying out assessments (or reviewing others’ assessments) and when planning interventions. The focus is specifically on economic impacts of AIDS, and does not address important emotional, psychological and social impacts.
The world's poor since the 1980s
Development Research Group Paper, World Bank
"The composition of world poverty has changed noticeably. Numbers of poor have fallen in Asia, but risen elsewhere. The share of the world’s poor living in Africa has risen dramatically. Not only has Africa emerged in the 1990s as the region with the highest incidence of poverty, the depth of poverty is also markedly higher than that found in other regions - suggesting that without lower inequality economic growth in Africa will have a harder time reducing poverty in the future than elsewhere. Looking forward, if the rates of progress against poverty that we have found for the last two decades of the twentieth century are maintained then we expect that the poverty rate for the developing world as a whole will fall to 15% by 2015, just short of the Millennium Development Goal of halving the 1990 poverty rate."