| Here is your weekly update from Malaria Nexus. You'll find all the latest news, articles and podcasts which we've added over the last week below. Paul-André Genest, PhD Managing Editor, Malaria Nexus
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Wednesday, 3 October 2012
MALARIA: Weekly Update from Malaria Nexus
MALARIA: malarial parasite strains - severe malaria
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/250854.php
Scientists have shown for the first time that severe strains of the parasite, which cause the most harmful malarial infections, are harder to kill with treatment than less harmful strains.
Scientists have shown for the first time that severe strains of the parasite, which cause the most harmful malarial infections, are harder to kill with treatment than less harmful strains.
POVERTY: MAURITANIA: Foreign subsidies sour domestic milk industry
ARI HARA/JOHANNESBURG, 1 October 2012 (IRIN) - Women are pioneering Mauritania’s fledgling dairy industry and trying to get Mauritanians to support local small producers, but they face steep competition from the heavily subsidized European milk sector.
Ari Hara, a women's cooperative in Ari Hara Village, turns milk into sweetened yoghurt, which is supplied to shops in the nearest town, Boghé, 350km southeast of Nouakchott. Since the cooperative was established in 2009, it has helped its members - who practise farming and pastoralism - ensure their families have enough to eat in times of drought.
"I still remember the day I could buy 50kg of rice for the house with my own money," Ramata, a cooperative member, recalled, beaming.
They could increase sales if they had the capacity to market their yoghurt in towns farther away, for which they would need better roads and a refrigerated van. The local NGO Association mauritanienne pour l’auto-développement (the Mauritanian Association for the Self Development, AMAD) raised about US$30,000 to help Ari Hara set up the business, but it does not have the funds to help them expand.
But it is not only Ari Hara that should extend the reach of its dairy products - the entire country should, as well, experts say.
The Mauritanian market is flooded with cheap milk products imported from Europe.
Sixty percent of the population depends on the livestock sector in some form for income, and the sector contributes almost eight percent to the country's GDP, yet the country imports 65 percent of its milk requirements, a joint report produced by the NGOs Intermon Oxfam , ACORD and AMAD noted.
“It would be ideal if the government were to identify villages that had the capacity to produce enough milk to set up similar ventures,” said Sy Moussa of AMAD, which continues to provide technical support to Ari Hara.
“People should also buy Mauritanian milk and milk products," Moussa said.
Creating a dairy industry
 Sixty percent of the population depends on the livestock sector in some form for income, and the sector contributes almost eight percent to the country's GDP, yet the country imports 65 percent of its milk requirements |
"She did not like the idea of making milk from imported powder, as others were doing. She saw semi-pastoralists, who would sell their milk outside the city - it was good-quality, fresh milk. She felt she had to help them and make that milk available to people in the cities," said Maryam Abeiderrahmane, Nancy's daughter, who now runs Tiviski.
"She had to struggle to find the funds, and finally La caisse centrale de coopération économique [Central Fund for Economic Cooperation] lent her about a million French francs [about US$195,000]."
But money was not the only problem. Perhaps the biggest was milk collection, as the pastoralists could not sustain a supply throughout the year, particularly during dry conditions. To address this, Abeiderrahmane created an NGO called the Association of Milk Producers of Tiviski (APLT), which offers animal feed on credit at low prices and recovers the loans in milk payments. APLT also provides veterinary care and medicine, as well as extension services related to animal hygiene and feeding.
She also had to address the stigma attached to selling milk. "Selling milk was [regarded as] something to be ashamed of, because it was seen as something only the poorest and most desperate people would do," said a UN Development Programme (UNDP) paper, which used Abeiderrahmane's efforts as a case study. "She had to convince the pastoralists to sell, to organize," said Maryam.
"At the same time, Tiviski needed to convince some urban people [who preferred European imports] that it was perfectly acceptable to consume locally produced milk and milk products," the case study said.
Today, Tiviski, which means ‘spring’ in Arabic, collects between 10,000 to 20,000 litres of milk a day from about 1,000 pastoralists. "The only condition is that the milk should not contain any water and the container it is brought in should be clean," said Maryam. Tiviski now also sells goat and cow's milk.
The UNDP paper indicates Tiviski’s dairy-production model could be scaled up in Mauritania and perhaps replicated elsewhere in the region to improve the livelihoods of semi-nomadic herders.
Unable to compete
But European milk products continue to stifle domestic dairies like Tiviski.
Poor producers in Mauritania are unable compete with the heavily subsidized milk sector in developed countries in Europe and elsewhere, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) noted it is report Why has Africa Become a Net Food Importer?Between 1986 and 2007, industrialized countries provided at least $20 billion worth of support to their milk sectors, the report noted.
"The government does not provide us any protection from them. We could also do with some subsidies for fodder, which we import for our suppliers," Maryam said.
 Photo: Jaspreet Kindra/IRIN |
| The women of Ari Hara village in Mauritania's Brakna region with sachets of sweetened drinking yoghurt produced in their cooperative |
"Regional production is therefore unable to meet domestic market demands. In Burkina Faso, nearly one out of every two litres of milk consumed in the country was imported in 2006, and in urban areas the figure was as high as 9/10 litres. European subsidized milk powder accounted for half of the cheap imports. Today, unfair market conditions continue to undermine local milk production," the report noted.
The European Commission, in an effort to mitigate the impact of its subsidies, in 1984 introduced a quota on the amount of milk that it could produce, which would inhibit dumping surpluses in developing countries’ markets. The Commission also banned export subsidies for dairy farmers in 2008. However, in 2009, when production slumped and milk prices hit a record high, it reintroduced export subsidies for dairy farmers, and its quota arrangement is expected to be eliminated in 2015.
"Combined with the EU’s current practice and further market-orientation of the sector, this raises serious concerns that the external impacts of the EU’s milk policy may even worsen," said the Concord report.
But the local milk sector also needs to get organized, and government support will be critical to their efforts. Between 30 and 40 percent of locally produced milk in West Africa is wasted or lost because pastoralists do not have the knowledge or the capacity to process their surplus, pointed out Anthony Bennett, a dairy expert at FAO.
Reversing this trend could very well save lives. Jean-Bosco Mofiling, from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Mauritania, noted that helping pastoralists realize the potential of marketing and selling their surplus milk could make them more resilient, better enabling them to withstand the region’s increasingly frequent droughts.
jk/rz
Theme (s): Economy, Environment, Food Security, Gender Issues, Governance, Health & Nutrition, Natural Disasters, Sahel Crisis,
[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]
POVERTY: SOMALIA: Floods displace thousands in Beletweyne
Photo: Manoocher Deghati/IRIN
The night’s rain was equivalent to the area’s yearly average rainfall (file photo)
The worst affected areas are around the town of Beletweyne, the provincial headquarters of Hiiraan.
"Flooding in Beletweyne took place late at night between 27 and 28 September… While flooding along the river wateris not uncommon at this time of year, the amount of rainfall over such a short period could not have been anticipated. There was 188mm of rain overnight," Russell Geekie, head of public information for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told IRIN in an email.
The night’s 188mm of rain is equivalent to the area’s yearly average rainfall.
"We estimate that 3,500 families have been displaced from Beletweyne town… A number of people have been killed in the flooding," he added. Fatality estimates range from six to over 20.
Government officials in the area have urged aid agencies to assist the population, expressing concern about the possibility of waterborne diseases if help is not forthcoming.
"We are homeless and, worst of all, do not have food to eat and let alone medical care, so we are requesting the agencies to come and help us," said Asha Elmi, a resident of Beletweyne whose home was destroyed by the floods.
Humanitarian response ready
According to OCHA's Geekie, the main humanitarian needs include temporary shelter, latrines, fresh water and food.
| Floods will likely destroy crops, delay the harvest, and contribute to outbreaks of malaria and other waterborne diseases |
The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) has also been in the area, distributing food and moving flood victims to higher ground.
Further floods expected
Geekie warned that the 'Deyr' rains, the short rains that typically fall between October and December, have only just begun, and that there is risk of further flooding and suffering.
"While this is expected to have an overall positive impact on the humanitarian situation in Somalia by contributing to an expected above-average harvest, the short-term consequences that we are witnessing are very serious," he added. "According to the Somalia Water and Land Information Management (SWALIM)… the rains will have the potential to bring suffering to hundreds of thousands of people living around the Shabelle and Juba rivers. Floods will likely destroy crops, delay the harvest, and contribute to outbreaks of malaria and other waterborne diseases."
SWALIM, which is managed by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, is working to alert communities about possible floods and how to mitigate their consequences. Mitigating measures include closing intentional breaches in riverbanks, which are used to irrigate crops.
The service has also warned of possible flooding in other areas of the country, including the town of Jowhar - 90km north of the capital, Mogadishu - where the river level is at "full crest", and other riverine towns in the Lower Shabelle Region and in central and northeastern areas of the country.
hb/kr/rz
Theme (s): Early Warning, Health & Nutrition, Natural Disasters, Refugees/IDPs,
[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]
POVERTY: SRI LANKA: Too many jobless youth in former war zone
COLOMBO, 1 October 2012 (IRIN) - Finding paid work - especially for youths - is still difficult in Sri Lanka’s former conflict zone in the north even after three years of peace and massive infrastructure projects, experts say, pointing to the region’s anaemic private sector as a main cause.
Although official employment data for the region is unavailable, experts in the area estimate that up to 30 percent of the north’s population is unemployed, as opposed to a national rate of 4 percent. Based on the most recent census in 2001, 28 percent of the country’s population is between the ages of 10-24, and there are some 280,000 youths in the former war zone, according to a 2012 government estimate.
Most people who work in what is known as the Vanni - which includes the districts of Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu plus parts of Jaffna, Vavuniya and Mannar - do so only sporadically, according to a March 2012 report released by the government, UN Children’s Fund and the World Food Programme.
“Daily labour was the most common income generation activity [when the study was conducted], this being the main source of income among 37 percent of the population,” it said.
The main problem is a near non-existent private sector there, said Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, the principal researcher at Point Pedro Institute of Development, based in Jaffna District.
“[The] bulk of the development activities are large-scale public investments in infrastructure… employing skilled and semi-skilled labour from the south, as well as under-employed Sri Lanka Army personnel.”
Private companies have reported a “wait-and-see” strategy on investing in the north, still viewing it as a risky frontier, given the shortage of skilled workers, lack of investment incentives and unknown returns.
Sivathambu Navarathanaraja, secretary of the Kilinochchi District Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture, said while government and humanitarian agencies provide vocational training and other assistance like farm equipment and seeds, youths in the Vanni still struggle.
Few companies in north
Only a few companies have ventured into the region. Cargills Ceylon, a large supermarket chain and agriculture processing company, is building a beverage processing plant in Ariyar Nagar village in Kilinochchi District, while there are plans to set up a garment factory with assistance from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in the same area.
“There is very little by way of companies setting up operations here. For most who get training the best option is self-employment or leaving the region,” Navarathanaraja said, though Anushka Wijesinha, an economist at the quasi-government think-tank Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) in the capital, Colombo, said there is not yet a noticeable trend of youths leaving the north.
The risk is real, said Navarathanaraja, given that job creation is likely to be “painfully” slow.
Even though the Northern Province’s economy grew by 27 percent in 2011, according to the Central Bank, this has translated into few new jobs, said Sarvananthan and Wijesinha.
Both attributed the spike to the region’s large-scale infrastructure projects and low starting point following a decades-long conflict. Fighting peaked in early 2009 before the government declared victory in May that year.
 Photo: Amantha Perera/IRIN |
| Road boom has done little to boost jobs |
The government’s infrastructure investment preference nationwide is machinery over people in the belief this method is quicker and more cost-effective.
“Unleash” private sector
IPS’s Wijesinha said more incentives should be given to local investors in the Vanni. “Rather than waiting for big investments into the former war areas from outside the region or outside the country, which may naturally take longer, what is needed is to unleash the potential of the local private sector, ease their constraints and help them invest and grow,” he said.
Vishu, a 32-year-old unmarried man from Kilinochchi, who preferred to go by one name, said he had tired of looking for work and left for the south 15 months ago, where he now works in a small grocery shop on the outskirts of Colombo.
“I make a decent income, which I would not have been able to do had I remained in Kilinochchi,” he said. Vishu earns about US$150 monthly, while the national mean income in 2009-2010 was around $279.
He said many youths and young adults who belong to the Tamil ethnic group and primarily live in the north are not able to speak the language of the country’s largest ethnic group, the Sinhalese, which leaves them with limited job options.
“Not many in my village speak Sinhala or English. Without them you will be lost in Colombo.”
ap/pt/cb
[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]
MALNUTRITION: LAOS: Insect farms run into trouble
VIENTIANE, 3 October 2012 (IRIN) - Promoting consumption of edible insects in Laos may help boost protein-anaemic diets, say health experts trying to create regional health standards for insect production, harvesting and consumption.
Working with the Laotian Health Ministry, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) launched an “edible insects project” in Laos in 2010 with a two-year budget of US$475,000 to boost insect production and harvesting for consumption.
Scheduled to end in April 2013, the project aims to provide poor households with an affordable, culturally-acceptable, protein-rich food complement. It has trained 120 farmers to breed house crickets, weaver ants and palm weevils (common edible insects of choice among Laotians), as well as mealworms which had only been used as animal feed but FAO now wants to introduce as human food.
Weaver ants are semi-bred on trees before they are fed additional food, while the other insects are bred inside special containers at the National University of Laos in the capital Vientiane.
Data poor
However, there has been a problem with data collection, said Vansilalom Viengxay, acting head of the food and control division in the country’s Health Ministry. “The Ministry of Health has very few data on the edible insect project because FAO is the owner and the relevant body on the edible insects’ project.”
If enough data is gathered about edible insects (from the project, nationwide, or other edible insect projects worldwide) ministry representatives will present the information at the FAO/World Health Organization Coordinating Committee for Asia (CCASIA) meeting due to take place in Tokyo on 5-9 November 2012. The committee recommends international standards to the two UN agencies on “products of interest to the region” that may have an international market.
Nationwide data on edible insects are scarce, said Purushottam Mudbhary, FAO’s representative in Laos. “There is no codex alimentarius [international food standards] for insects yet and the problem is that there are not enough data on insect trade because most insect trade is informal.”
Protein rich
FAO studies have shown insects are a protein-rich digestible source of food for people as well as feed for chickens and fish, said Paul Vantomme, senior forestry officer at FAO’s Forest Products and Industries division in Rome.
One hundred grams of grasshopper meat contains 20g of protein, which is only 7g less than an equivalent portion of beef, while 100g of the common house cricket contain four times more protein than the same amount of chicken, according to FAO.
Based on the most recent government figures available from 2009, almost half of children under five and 56 percent of pregnant women in Laos had anaemia - most commonly caused by iron deficiency - qualifying the situation as a “severe” public health emergency, according to the UN Children’s Fund.
Insect nutrition depends on “what insect is being eaten, the manner in which the insects are cooked and the daily requirements needed for the individual based on size and age,” said Patrick Durst with FAO’s regional office for Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok.
In Asia insects are not eaten as a regular and substantive source of protein - as with chicken, fish or tofu - but more commonly as snacks, he added.
Weaver ant eggs, crickets, grasshoppers and cicadas are the most frequently consumed insects in Laos, according to FAO. A2010 national survey by the Vientiane-based Institut de la francophonie pour la médecine tropicale said 95 percent of Laotians surveyed reported eating insects harvested in the wild and some 87 percent said they would eat more insects if available.
Next steps
The Lao government has no plans to continue the project once FAO funding ends, Somchit Akkhavon, deputy director-general in the Health Ministry’s Department of Hygiene and Prevention as well as project director of the edible insects’ project, told IRIN.
“Edible insects are not a priority for the Ministry of Health or for the Ministry of Agriculture. Keeping the knowledge and the tradition are important, but there are no plans for taking over the project. While some [insect] farms might continue to operate on their own terms, others might have to shut down due to the end of funding.”
As interest and cash wane in Laos for edible insects, academic interest elsewhere in entomophagy (the consumption of insects) grows. A group of biologists from Imperial College London recently formed a group called Bugsforlife “to understand the potential of edible insects as an environmentally friendly solution to malnutrition in impoverished regions,” wrote one of its members, Mariangela Veronesi.
The group recently completed fundraising to work with the Wama community in the West African country of Benin “to understand how they traditionally gather, sell, cook and consume insects… In addition, to avoid the risk of over-exploiting natural stocks of edible insects in the case of the expansion of this practice, we shall devise methods for insect breeding that can be applied locally and in other communities.”
fm/pt/cb
Theme (s): Health & Nutrition,
[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]
POVERTY: ZIMBABWE: Life without a destination
GOROMONZI, 3 October 2012 (IRIN) - For more than a decade, farm worker Maria Bhamu, 48, and her 10-year-old grandson have wandered across Zimbabwe's Mashonaland East Province, enduring a string of evictions in the aftermath of the country’s fast-track land reform.
Their itinerant life began in 2001, a year after President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF government began implementing the land reform programme, which saw thousands of white farmers - who employed an estimated 320,000 to 350,000 farm workers - displaced to make way for landless black Zimbabweans.
Her husband was seriously injured when their employer’s farm was taken over; he later died. Bhamu settled on a nearby farm where she was hired as a labourer, but several years later, that farm was also taken over.
She now lives in a plastic-and-cardboard shelter in rural Goromonzi, about 40km southeast of the capital Harare. Her grandson begs for food and money nearby. The police have warned her that they intend to destroy her makeshift shelter.
“Since 2001, when our employer was chased away by the war veterans, I have been moving from one place to another and, as you can see, this is where I have ended up. Who knows, you might find me gone if you return tomorrow, but then, I don’t know my next destination,” Bhamu told IRIN.
| First, it was black people invading white farmers’ land and now it is resettled farmers against their black comrades |
“Since the beginning of the land reform programme, things have not been stable. First, it was black people invading white farmers’ land and now it is resettled farmers against their black comrades, but it is us [farm workers] who suffer the most,” Bhamu said.
Unknown number of IDPs
Thabani Nyoni, spokesperson for Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition (CiZC) - an umbrella organization of more than 350 NGOs - told IRIN, “Even though we don’t have specific figures of affected former farm workers, I can vouchsafe that the numbers are disturbingly high. The land reform programme created a number of problems for farm workers, problems that still persist.”
Although the government has called for a more comprehensive nationwide survey of internally displaced persons (IDPs), one has yet to be conducted, contributing to “the lack of information on the scale of continuing internal displacement,” said a December 2011 report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).
| Whenever ownership disputes arise, the workers are disregarded |
Nyoni said a tense political atmosphere is complicating humanitarian interventions, because the displacements mostly involve high-ranking officials. Aid agencies and members of civil society fear being labelled political enemies for helping out farm workers, he said.
A 2008 report by IDMC noted, “Indeed, so sensitive is the issue of displacement in Zimbabwe that IDPs… are not even called IDPs but instead have come to be referred to as ‘mobile and vulnerable populations’”.
Women and children
After her husband died, Bhamu tried to find shelter at her home town, Mutoko, but the community leadership turned her down. “The headman said he could not give me a place to build a home because I left the area a long time ago. He also said I did not have an identity card, which I lost when we moved from one place to another, but I think he gave me all those excuses just because I am a woman, and they think I sympathise with whites,” she said.
| Read more |
 The mean season for gays |
| Security sector reform key to peaceful elections |
 Out of Sight - Blind migrants in Johannesburg |
Women and children are worst affected by the displacements, Nyoni observed. “Women, who [are] about 50 percent of the victims, face the burden of adjusting to new situations through livelihood activities such as fetching firewood, looking for food and caring for the children, who suffer the shocks that come with violence-related movements,” he said.
About 10 families that were ejected in April from a farm in Norton, about 50km west of Harare, have set up camp along a nearby river, joining about 100 other people living in an informal settlement there.
“The government should give us land to build our own houses,” Ben Bhauleni, 30, one of the evictees, told IRIN. “We don’t have money to join housing cooperatives, and we fail to understand why we should continue to be victims of other people’s disputes over the farms."
fm/go/rz
Theme (s): Children, Governance, Refugees/IDPs,
[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]
MALARIA: AMFm under scrutiny
Is showering a country with low-cost malaria drugs the best way to stem the disease? As a US$463-million pilot programme to test the strategy in seven African countries winds down, public-health experts are questioning whether the approach makes sense given shrinking global health budgets and a steady decline in malaria prevalence.
Although no official decision has been announced about whether to continue the programme, known as the Affordable Medicines Facility – Malaria (AMFm), many of those familiar with it have told Nature that it must change or be phased out after this year.
“For me, the problem is that it has not been proven that the AMFm made a difference to malaria,” says Alan Court, senior adviser to the United Nations special envoy for malaria. “There has to be a public-health purpose or else there is no purpose.” Court is chair of the working group expected to recommend a path for the programme’s future on 14–15 November during a board meeting of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which is based in Geneva, Switzerland, and oversees the AMFm.
When the AMFm was conceived in 2004, malaria rates in developing countries were skyrocketing, in part because the malaria-causing parasite Plasmodium falciparum had become resistant to the drug chloroquine. Officials worried that resistance would also develop to artemisinin — a newer and more effective drug— if people did not combine it with other therapies, but such combinations were much more expensive than either chloroquine or artemisinin alone ... more ...
.http://www.nature.com/news/malaria-plan-under-scrutiny-1.11509
.http://www.nature.com/news/malaria-plan-under-scrutiny-1.11509
Tuesday, 2 October 2012
MALNUTRITION: Americans throw out 40% of food, study says
Forty per cent of the food in the U.S. ends up in the trash, according to a new report. (iStock)Related Stories
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Nearly 40 per cent of food in the United States ends up in the trash, according to an analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council.
That amounts to $165 billion of uneaten rations each year and nearly 20 pounds of wasted food per person every month.
In its report on food waste, the environmental advocacy group says that the U.S. food system is inefficient with food being tossed at almost every link in the supply chain, from production and packaging to restaurants and households. The average American wastes 10 times as much food as someone in Southeast Asia.
American families throw out approximately 25 per cent of their groceries, a loss of $1,365 to $2,275 every year for a family of four.
People who frequent restaurants aren’t any less wasteful. On average, diners leave 17 per cent of their meals uneaten and 55 per cent of these potential leftovers are not taken home.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, American households, restaurants and caterers altogether discarded 126 billion pounds of food in 2008 alone. Grocery stores threw away 43 billion pounds of food, mostly unsold fruits and vegetables.
The excess is taking a toll on the environment, the report says. In addition to wasted resources during production, rotting food makes up the single largest component of landfills across the U.S.
The report encourages consumers to reduce waste by not overbuying at the grocery store, understanding expiration dates and eating their leftovers
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