Health aid advocates are gearing up to lobby for more, and better, aid at the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, South Korea, in November 2011. And like many others, health aid advocates seem to be missing the bigger picture, according to this paper. While it is vital to improve aid procedures to get more aid flowing for health, this is not the only important issue: continuously overlooked are problems with the whole development model. Part of the problem is an epistemological one involving the discourse about "poverty reduction" that has seemingly supplanted earlier understandings of development. It seems, somehow, short-term "poverty reduction" has become a stand-in for actual long-term development. The author argues that, while aid advocates lobby external funders in one arena, the advocates' own representatives to the IMF executive board push a conservative monetary policy within another arena that exacerbates the ability of the aid recipients to develop. The same goes for the arena of trade policy, where the donor countries give aid with one hand while pushing for rapid and premature trade liberalisation in poor countries with the other.
Poverty and health
In this study, researchers examined the use of contraception among women in 13 countries in sub-Saharan Africa with regard to wealth-related inequity. The analysis was conducted with Demographic and Health Survey data from 13 sub-Saharan African countries. The researchers found that the use of contraception has increased substantially between surveys in Ethiopia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia and Zambia but has declined slightly in Kenya, Senegal and Uganda. Wealth-related inequalities in the met need for contraception have decreased in most countries and especially so in Mozambique, but they have increased in Kenya, Uganda and Zambia with regard to spacing births, and in Malawi, Senegal, Uganda, the United Republic of Tanzania and Zambia with regard to limiting childbearing. After adjustment for fertility intention, women in the richest wealth quintile were more likely than those in the poorest quintile to practice long-term contraception.
In a few malaria-endemic countries with high disease prevalence, especially in children, and local cultivation of Artemisia annua, the availability of recommended malaria medicines is scant. New sources of treatment could be used, drawing from traditional medicine, the autrhors of this paper argue. A popular African millet-porridge was prepared by adding dried, sieved leaves ofArtemisia annua. Artemisinin concentrations were detected by high-performance liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry. The artemisinin content of the porridge is stable and the concentration is maintained. The taste of the porridge is palatable. Authors conclude that further research is needed before proposing the millet-porridge artemisinin formulation, but such an affordable therapy could be an option in the near future (also) for children living in poor areas where access to effective antimalarial drugs is precluded.
This study involved 671 children aged 12-59 months living in the Agincourt sub-district, rural South Africa in 2007. Anthropometric measurements were taken and HIV testing with disclosure was done using two rapid tests. Z-scores were generated using WHO 2006 standards as indicators of nutritional status. Prevalence of malnutrition, particularly stunting (18%), was high in the overall sample of children. HIV prevalence in this age group was 4.4%. HIV positive children had significantly poorer nutritional outcomes than their HIV negative counterparts. Besides HIV status, other significant determinants of nutritional outcomes included age of the child, birth weight, maternal age, age of household head, and area of residence. HIV is an independent modifiable risk factor for poor nutritional outcomes and makes a significant contribution to nutritional outcomes at the individual level. Early paediatric HIV testing of exposed or at risk children, followed by appropriate health care for infected children, may improve their nutritional status and survival, the authors conclude.
This study uses updated global poverty estimates to infer that nearly half a billion people escaped extreme poverty in the five years from 2005 to 2010. However the gains have not been equally distributed, globally. Between 2005 and 2015, Asia’s share of global poverty is expected to fall from two-thirds to one-third, while Africa’s share will more than double from 28% to 60%. Although sub-Saharan Africa’s poverty rate had by 2010 fallen to below 50% for the first time and is projected to fall below 40% by 2015, at global level the authors argue that the share of the world’s poor people living in fragile states is rising sharply and will exceed 50% by 2014.
This report explores how States can and must achieve a reorientation of their agricultural systems towards modes of production that are highly productive, highly sustainable and that contribute to the progressive realisation of the human right to adequate food. Drawing on an extensive review of the scientific literature published in the last five years, de Schutter identifies agro-ecology as a mode of agricultural development with strong conceptual connections with the right to food. Moreover, agro-ecology delivers advantages that are complementary to better known conventional approaches such as breeding high-yielding varieties. In the report, de Schutter argues that the scaling up of these experiences is the main challenge today. Appropriate public policies can create an enabling environment for such sustainable modes of production, such as: prioritising the procurement of public goods in public spending rather than solely providing input subsidies; investing in knowledge by reinvesting in agricultural research and extension services; investing in forms of social organisation that encourage partnerships, including farmer field schools and farmers’ movements innovation networks; investing in agricultural research and extension systems; empowering women; and creating a macro-economic enabling environment, including connecting sustainable farms to fair markets.
The authors of this study set out to estimate the reduction in child mortality as a result of interventions related to the environmental and nutritional Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and to estimate how the magnitude and distribution of the effects of interventions vary based on the economic status of intervention recipients. They modelled the mortality effects of interventions on child nutrition and environmental risk factors, using data on economic status, child underweight, water and sanitation, and household fuels. The authors found that providing these interventions to all children younger than five years old would result in an estimated annual reduction in child deaths of 49,700 (14%) in Latin America and the Caribbean, 0.8 million (24%) in South Asia, and 1.47 million (31%) in sub-Saharan Africa. These benefits are equivalent to 30% to 48% of the current regional gaps toward the MDG target on reducing child mortality, the authors point out. Fifty percent coverage of the same environmental and nutritional interventions, as envisioned by the MDGs, would reduce child mortality by 26,900, 0.51 million, and 1.02 million in the three regions, respectively, but only if the interventions are implemented among the poor first.
At the International Conference on Leveraging Agriculture for Improving Nutrition and Health, held from 10 to 12 February 2011 in India, participants reached consensus that the way forward for improving agriculture, nutrition and health was to think and act multi-sectorally and inter-sectorally, and break down the silos among the three disciplines. Symptoms of the breakdown surfaced in 2007/2008, during the global food price crisis, said David Nabarro, the UN Special Representative on Food Security and Nutrition, when increased prices contributed to a rise in poverty and hunger around the world. Women's health was a central feature in most of the conference debates. Various speakers pointed out that a woman's well-being shaped the future of her children, especially her daughters, the mothers of the next generation. The future prosperity of a country often also rested on the shoulders of women, as agriculture not only created economic growth, they argued, but children who ate well often went on to earn better incomes. Experts said it was time to re-establish the links between agriculture, nutrition and health, and perhaps educate each sector about the objectives of the others.
From 2007 to 2009, HarvestPlus (a global NGO aimed at reducing world hunger) and its partners disseminated orange-fleshed sweet potato (OFSP) to 24,000 farming households in Uganda and Mozambique with the goal of reducing vitamin A deficiency. OFSP has higher vitamin A levels than white or yellow sweet potato. An evaluation of the intervention found a 68% and 61% increase in adoption of OFSP in Mozambique and Uganda respectively. The share of OFSP in the total area dedicated to sweet potato increased sharply as households substituted white or yellow sweet potato with OFSP. There was also a significant net increase in vitamin A intakes in young and older children and women in these countries. In some instances, this increased intake resulted in children reaching the recommended intakes for their age group. The author of the study discusses how to reduce costs of promoting and scale up of the intervention through greater diffusion of OFSP between farming communities.
Many outside South Africa imagine that after Mandela was freed and the ANC won free elections all was well. But for many the struggle against apartheid, poverty and inequality continues, according to this book. Early in 2007 hundreds of families living in shacks in Cape Town were moved into houses they had been waiting for since the end of apartheid. But soon they were told the move was illegal and they were evicted. They built shacks alongside the road opposite and organised themselves into the Symphony Way Anti-Eviction Campaign. In this book they tell their own stories, in words and photographs, of the struggle for justice.