Spreading light on the struggle to combat malaria among the world’s poorest

MDG Target #6c: Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.

International responses to the health challenges of the world’s poorest have been significantly advanced as a result of the Millennium Development Goals, in particular Goal 6 ‘Combat HIV/AIDS and other major diseases’. However what progress has been made globally is matched by the work still to be done and the goals still to be achieved. The 2015 MDG target to have halted and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases is far from being realized at present and the need to combat malaria is increasingly evident.

Malaria currently threatens approximately 3.3 billion people within 109 countries, resulting in around 247 million cases and 881,000 deaths each year. Those most vulnerable to the disease are pregnant women, children 0-5yrs of age in high-transmission areas, and individuals living with HIV or AIDS. Cases are also disproportionately focused inAfrica, where a child dies every minute as a result of this preventable and treatable disease (Roll Back Malaria; Malaria Key Facts, http://www.rbm.who.int/keyfacts.html).

What stands in the way of minimizing malaria cases is the adverse impacts of poverty on the most vulnerable. It remains a fact that on average fewer children from the poorest households inAfricado not sleep under insecticide-treated mosquito nets, while children in poorer households are half as likely to receive malaria treatment as those in wealthier households (MDG Report 2010).

We find ourselves witnessing a cycle of poverty; one which impacts on individual, community, and nation progressively “Malaria disproportionately affects poor people who cannot afford treatment of have limited access to healthcare, trapping families and communities in a downward spiral of poverty.” (WHO Malaria; Fact Sheet N°94, Dec 2011).

The global response to the 2015 target has been met with increased resources and funding furthering the opportunity for mosquito nets, malaria vaccines and treatments to reach those at risk. The World Health Organisation (WHO) in conjunction with the Global Partnership for a Malaria Free World have been forerunners in this effort and for 38 of the 109 countries threatened by malaria cases have dropped by up to 50% since 2000 (MDG Report 2010). However, to see the MDG goal achieved will need further commitment from donors and international agencies- without further funding this disease will continue to plague more than half the world’s population.

Global Concern’s commitment to the eradication of malaria worldwide is reflected in our support of these organisations as well as continued efforts on our behalf to ensure the most vulnerable individuals have a greater chance of becoming malaria free.

Emma is also highlighting the issues of world poverty by fundraising during the Stampede event.

She has asked people to donate $21 for her 21st birthday.

What a great way to have fun whilst raising much needed funds to fight poverty!

Give Emma a birthday gift?

Create your own event here.

from the  www.girleffect.org

Global Concern prides itself on being a ‘grass roots’ organisation that works on the ground by walking with the poor, and enabling them to bring themselves out of poverty. We enter a community ravaged by poverty and become a part of that community, strengthening it in its fight against hunger, disease and hardship. And we don’t just offer a quick fix, we work for lasting change and our job isn’t done until the people are self sufficient and self sustaining.

Take Malawi for example. Global Concern began working in Malawi in 2003 when a severe drought affected the nation. But instead of just offering crisis intervention or bandaid solutions, GLOBAL CONCERN  began a Food Security Project that aimed to give impoverished farmers the tools and training to not only survive drought in the present, but withstand drought in the future, and without the assistance of aid.

Global Concern Malawi’s Food Security Project works with the poorest of the poor by identifying the 5 poorest communities in the region and then targeting the poorest people in these communities such as orphans, those with HIV/Aids, the elderly, the disabled, and their carers for assistance. Global Concern Malawi’s workers then do life with these impoverished people for 3 years, walking with them until they graduate from the program and walk out of poverty. During this time, they become the villagers’ friend, teacher, confidant, supporter and greatest cheer leader.

A worker conducts food security training to a village in Malawi

This year (2010-11), Global Concern  Malawi completed the second year of its 3 year program in its current 5 villages where they are impacting the lives of 1,200 farmers (366 men & 834 women) who attend training in agriculture, health and nutrition. 500 of these farmers (150 men & 350 women) received direct inputs of maize and fertiliser to assist them along with their training. And the results of all this work only 2 years into the program are astounding.

The communities maize production has more than tripled in the last two years. What’s more, food security is not just about growing more food but being more economical in how it is used so as to avoid wastage. So training in preparing appropriate quantities of food for families at meal time has actually reduced the amount of food being consumed.

Feeding centres teach mothers about nutrition and provide children with a healthy meal

For the first time in their lives, many farmers have a large surplus of crop. The temptation then arises for farmers to sell their surplus crop in order to pay for other items they need, but if they sell too much too soon then they find they go hungry in the lean months of the year whilst awaiting their next crop. So now they are encouraged to store their crop. Previously communities didn’t store up any of their crops, but now they store up the majority of it in order to insure their households against hunger. Then if they still have surplus they can sell it to pay for school fees, medical costs and other necessities.

It’s not only food security that Malawi communities are benefiting from. In 2010 Global Concern distributed around 3,000 mosquito nets to the most vulnerable members of the community, resulting in dramatic drop in malaria rates. The community’s malaria rate has more than halved in the past 2 years. Africa accounts for around 90% of the world’s malaria related deaths, of which the majority are children under 5. With your help and support, Global Concern is helping to change all that.

Mosquito nets for those with a disability

But there is still more work to do. Whilst malaria and malnutrition cases have more than halved, diarrhoea cases remain around the same. Global Concern aims to address this problem by installing pit latrines. The community currently use hand dug toilets but heavy rains cause them to become flooded and the sandy soil can cave in when people try to use them. This can be very dangerous, particularly for children, but even more, it means that without suitable toilets disease is more prevalent in the community. Global Concern provides communities with concrete so that they can build their own toilets that outlast the rains. In line with their health and hygiene training, villagers ensure that toilets have a water point outside for the washing of hands in order to prevent the spread of disease and diarrhoea.

 A hand washing station outside a toilet

You can make a difference by supporting Global Concern’s food security projects in Malawi and Zambia to build toilets in these communities. For just $250 we can provide a community with a toilet that will outlast the project. In Australia we take our toilets for granted to the extent that we have a plethora of clean toilets to choose to use at home and in public. You can provide a toilet for those who currently have no other choice, and by doing so protect a community from debilitating disease and death. You can even buy a toilet as a gift on our online gift catalogue http://gifts.globalconcern.org.au

There are literally hundreds of people’s lives represented on these graphs. These statistics demonstrate change for good. They show that we don’t just talk the talk, but we walk the walk. We’re thankful that you walk with us as we walk with the poor.

Let’s continue the journey together to see communities walk out of poverty completely.

Aaron Moore

See full article

???July 21 ,2011

Bill Gates, the man who reinvented computers, is now focusing his attention on revolutionising the humble toilet in a bid to tackle disease epidemics that kill thousands of people a year.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is pledging millions of dollars in grants to reinvent the toilet, with the foundation’s director of water, sanitation and hygiene programs, Frank Rijsberman, calling it a “huge issue for Africa”.

The aim is to boost health in developing countries by giving the 2.6 billion people who don’t have access to a flushable toilet a hygienic, safe place to dispose of their waste.

Tackling the toilet ... Microsoft founder and billionaire Bill Gates. Photo: Reuters

Speaking at a pan-African conference on sanitation in the Rwandan capital Kigali, Rijsberman said only a fraction of Africans, even in large cities, were “connected to sewers with a flush toilet”.

“In cities, people use ‘flying toilets’,” he explained. “They go on a plastic bag and then throw it in the street, which is not only gross but kids walk around and play, and come into contact with the poop and can develop chronic diarrhoea, which kills more children under the age of five than HIV/AIDS and malaria.”

Rijsberman also referenced Haiti, where by the end of last month 5500 people had died from a cholera epidemic he said was caused by “improperly disposed-of waste” from a UN peacekeepers’ base.

Giving people in Africa and other parts of the developing world access to toilets could slash the death rate from diarrhoeal disease by around 40 per cent, he said.

But the Gates Foundation not only wants to improve access to toilets, it also wants to get away from the flush toilet model that is ubiquitous in the West but isn’t a viable solution for poor countries.

“We need to reinvent the toilet. We need to come up with new technology that doesn’t put waste into drinking water, doesn’t flush it down a very expensive pipe to a waste water treatment plant where we spend lots of money to remove the poop,” Rijsberman said.

To spur the reinvention of the toilet, the Gates Foundation used the AfricaSan conference to announce $US42 million ($40 million) in grants to spur innovations in the capture and storage of waste, and to develop ways to process it into reusable energy and fertiliser.

Among the ideas being worked on are a waterless toilet, and a system that would microwave faecal matter and turn it into fuel.

The foundation says the reinvented toilet must be affordable, costing no more than five US cents a day per person. It also has to be easy to install, use and maintain.

“We have to learn to not think of poop as a nuisance and waste but as a resource that could be recycled at a cost of a few cents a day,” Rijsberman said, citing the example of Indian villagers who dry cowpats to use as fuel.

The foundation has teamed up with global partners including the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to develop new tools and technologies to improve sanitation and make toilets accessible to the world’s poor.

Rijsberman was hopeful that investments in sanitation innovation would produce several new-breed toilet prototypes within a year, with reinvented toilets hitting markets in the developing world in about three years.

AFP

Malawi – By Aaron Moore

It’s not uncommon to think that our success These are the everyday challenges of ordinary and lifestyle are the direct result of the good decisions we made, the hard work we put in and the opportunities we took advantage of in life.

But what if this wasn’t true?
Take, for instance, one of the earliest decisions made about your life,‘Where would you be born?’ It’s a decision that severely affects the rest of your life’s opportunities.
There was a 50% chance that you would be born into a set of circumstances that would limit your earning to $2.50 a day, and an 80% chance that you would be unable to earn more than $10 a day. If you aren’t in either of these categories, then you did so against the odds, for this was a decision you had no control over at all.
If you were born in Malawi, your average earning would be around $1.39 a day for a man and 84 cents for a woman.

To put that in perspective, a Coke in Malawi costs 45 cents, so after a hard day’s work all you would be able to buy are 2-3 soft drinks.
The people pictured here learn how to make new and nutritious foods such as soya milk, samousas, and different vegetable dishes. Sometimes they even use their new cooking skills to generate an income by selling their dishes.

Malawians. And these are the people with whom Global Concern Australia works, in partnership with Global Concern Malawi, to see them brought out of poverty.We do this through four main ways:
1. Water: the provision of pumps for wells and training in water and sanitation

2. Food: the provision of seed and training in agriculture to enable farmers to be able to grow enough food for their family for the rest of their lives

3. Health and Nutrition: the provision of nets for malaria and training on health issues like HIV/Aids and nutritional education on different food groups and what foods to feed children.

4. Micro-enterprise: the provision of materials and training in ways to generate an income such as soap making, knitting, chicken or goat farming and baking.

The people pictured here learn how to make new and nutritious foods such as soya milk, samousas, and different vegetable dishes. Sometimes they even use their new cooking skills to generate an income by selling their dishes.

In each of these 4 areas Global Concern makes sure its impact is of a long term nature.
We don’t just give food hand outs, we provide people with the means to get their own food for themselves into the future.
We don’t just hand out mosquito nets, we educate families in ways to minimise health risks, and generate more income to be able to buy their own nets in the future.
We don’t just talk about living a long life, we educate about HIV/AIDS and save thousands of people from dying.
We don’t just install wells, we ensure communities can repair and maintain them by themselves.
Global Concern has installed 40 wells in villages in the north of Malawi, providing fresh water to over 2,110 people.
The Chingorya well as pictured below, is located in a village in northern Malawi with a population of 480 people. Many of these people used to walk over 1km every day to collect water and carry it back on their heads. Sometimes they took water from the lake instead because it was closer but were often struck with water born disease as a result.This is the third well to be placed in this community and serves fresh water to 120 people.The villagers themselves dug the well and baked the bricks for the interior, while Global Concern provided the pump, cement and training in its use and maintenance so that fresh water will continue to be available long term.

It’s not only where you are born, but also the abilities you are born with that can have a large impact on your standard of living…

And that is why Global Concern is helping people who are disabled. Mary Mbeu, as pictured below, suffers from a disability that limits her speech and other mental faculties.

Global Concern provided her with maize, cassava and fertiliser and she regularly attends training sessions to improve and protect the yield of her crops.
Mary has 8 people in her household to look after, including one orphan, and she is extremely thankful for the support and inputs she receives from Global Concern.

Mary Mbeu proudly shows off her own cassava crop.

Erina Msonda, also being helped by Global  Concern, shows off the large roots on her own cassava crop

It has been said before that,“To whom much is given, much is expected.” The world’s wealth and opportunities have not been distributed evenly throughout the world and we have been given much. We find ourselves amongst the richest 20 percent of the world who consume 80 percent of the world’s resources. But this wasn’t through any real choice of our own. Where we were born, and the abilities we were born with were decisions that were made without our consultation but now we all still have decisions to make.

Newton, pictured below, is 45 and was born with a physical disability in his left leg.

As a result, he has learned to walk by using a large pole for a crutch. He is married with 4 children and 5 grandchildren. None of his children are married, so all 9 of them live together with Newton and his wife. Global Concern’s Food Security Program provided Newton with fertiliser, maize, cassava, soya and banana crops for planting as well as mosquito nets for his family.

But most of all, he received training to be able to cultivate his crops in such as way as to be able to provide for his family for the rest of their lives.
Despite his disability, Newton works harder than most and has even developed ways of cultivating his land by balancing on one leg and using his hoe as a crutch.

Picture – Newton and his wife.   Picture-  Newtown works to plough his field using only one leg.

“What will we do with what we are given?”

Global Concern supporters decided to use what they were given to help those who were given less. Thank you for choosing to make a difference in the lives of people like Newton and Mary. As you can see by their hard work and healthy crops, they don’t take your gifts for granted and the
difference you make lasts more than a lifetime!

by
Aaron Moore

Watch the Malawi Video