POVERTY: Gates Foundation unveils new agricultural policy

Yojana Sharma : 8 November 2011
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the world's largest donors to international agricultural research for development, has announced tighter priorities for its funding for Africa and South Asia, concentrating on key target countries and crops.
In Africa the focus will be on Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda. These countries will benefit from significant investment "to translate the movement [of research and development (R&D)] from the lab to farmers' fields," said Prabhu Pingali, deputy director of the foundation's Agriculture Development Division.
In India work will focus on the two poorest states, Bihar and Orissa, and there will be a separate programme in Bangladesh.
"This doesn't mean that we don't care about other countries but it certainly means that these are the areas where we would see significant investments from our side and see spill-over benefits to other countries," Pingali told a seminar on the foundation's agricultural policies portfolio at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in the United States, last week (2 November).
Pingali said the country focus was part of a two-pronged approach, with the second prong concentrating on international research, policy and advocacy, and stepping up global funding for improvements in collecting and analysing data on agricultural production and improvements.
Funding for the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme and some other agencies will also be strengthened.
The Gates Foundation's US$1.7 billion of agriculture research funding until 2010 had been geared towards smallholder agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. But Pingali said there was a need to be more targeted. In particular, he said, the foundation wants to understand the entire value chain "from molecule to mouth" and work out what are the necessary investments.
Within the selected countries, work on R&D, agriculture policy, and access to markets will be more closely interlinked on a crop by crop basis, he said. Grants made to these countries will be based not just on technological interventions to reduce productivity gaps in certain crops but also the infrastructures, institutional reforms and policy changes required to improve productivity.
"It's a much more proactive, bottom-up approach to grant-making," Pingali said.
Pingali said the foundation would be putting more money into country policy work, particularly in the target countries to improve agricultural productivity; in capacity-building, such as analytical capacity and overall capacity to manage and run large scale agricultural transformation; and in analysis and data, such as better metrics to analyse environmental consequences and the connection between agriculture and nutrition in poor communities and better post-harvest data.
But he stressed that funding would be based on the countries' own priorities and plans.
Pingali said the foundation had needed to 'recalibrate' its funding for agricultural research because of the entry of many new donors and players into the sector in the wake of the world food crisis in 2008.
"We also felt that countries themselves are beginning to have much sharper visions of what they wanted to see in their agriculture sectors and we wanted to make sure that our work complements the visions of the countries and supports their efforts."
But he admitted that many African countries had been excluded "because of governance issues".
"Governance did come into it as a criteria, initially at least, in excluding certain countries," he said. And some middle-income countries had been included as "you could be in middle income country status and still have enormously high levels of poverty".
He added that middle-income countries were important because of "spill-over benefits to other countries, which you would not be able to get if you targeted only the least developed and the low-income countries".
http://www.scidev.net/en/agriculture-and-environment/food-security/news/gates-foundation-unveils-new-agricultural-policy.html

MALARIA: Anti-malarial treatment available to millions of poor Nigerians at a fraction of its normal cost

 January 31, 2012   2 Millions of poor Nigerians will gain access to the most effective combination treatment for malaria at a fraction of its current cost, following the successful conclusion of negotiations between the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) funded Partnership for Transforming Health Systems (PATHS2) and a variety of international and national stakeholders in Nigeria this week.
PATHS2, in collaboration with the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), will provide life-saving anti-malaria treatments to health facilities based largely in rural communities in the five Nigerian states of Lagos, Kaduna, Jigawa, Enugu and Kano, the latter state recently driven by terrorist bomb attacks.
A course of treatment will be provided for as little as 60 Naira (approximately 25 pence in Sterling), in comparison to previous costs of nearly 20 times as much, making the drugs affordable to even the poorest Nigerians, many of whom still subsist on less than US$1 a day.
The Affordable Medicines Facility for malaria (AMFm) is an innovative financing mechanism to expand access to affordable ACTs—Artemisinin-based Combination Therapies. ACTs are the medicines recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as the most effective malaria treatment.
The AMFm is hosted and managed by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (the Global Fund), with key financial support provided by UNITAID, DFID and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and with technical support provided by the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI).
International manufacturers of ACTs receive a subsidy directly through the AMFm initiative almost to the tune of 95% which in turn is passed on by Nigerian pharmaceutical manufacturers, the First Line Buyers of ACTs. Acting as second line buyers, PATHS2 will distribute ACTs through primary health centres in the five Nigerian states in which it currently works, which have a total population of approximately 37 million, representing around 22% of the population of Nigeria as a whole.
Artemisinin-based Combination Therapies were introduced in Nigeria in 2005 for the treatment of uncomplicated malaria due to the increased resistance to chloroquine and sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine – also known as mono-therapies - which were older malaria medicines grown less effective due to the development of resistant strains .
PATHS2 has supported the significant reduction in prices of ACTs by bringing First Line Buyers and PATHS2 states together to discuss their requirement and support the signing of annual contracts between the states and First Line Buyers. The First Line Buyers are pharmaceutical companies in Nigeria who buy directly from WHO certified manufacturers outside the country. In Nigeria, there is currently no domestic manufacturer of AMFm drugs.
The First Line Buyer supported under AMFm will sell Artemisinin/ Lumefantrin (Pack of 24) for just 50 Naira to PATHS2 States health facilities and patients will get it for about 60 Naira, compared to its previous cost, which was as much as 2,000 Naira (£8-00). This pricing makes it the cheapest price available anywhere in the country.
It is estimated that 70% of all disease incidence in Nigeria is related to malaria. The World Malaria Report of 2008 recorded 57,506,430 cases of malaria across Nigeria, causing 225,424 fatalities.
http://www.news-medical.net/news/20120131/Anti-malarial-treatment-available-to-millions-of-poor-Nigerians-at-a-fraction-of-its-normal-cost.aspx

MALNUTRITION: Australia: Gates grant helps work on childhood malnutrition

8 November 2011

Shu Ning Bian (right) demonstrates his device.

If Shu Ning Bian's undergraduate engineering project comes to fruition, newborn babies in the developing world will stand a better chance of staving off malnutrition.
Shu Ning is part of a team, led by Dr Alistair McEwan from the School of Electrical and Information Engineering, to receive a US$100,000 grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to further develop a non-invasive, solar-powered device measuring body fat in newborns.
Monitoring body composition helps detect newborn malnutrition, a key to reducing infant mortality worldwide. Non-invasive machines currently available are expensive, bulky and unsuitable for use in areas where there is an unreliable electricity supply and little technical expertise.
The Grand Challenges Explorations grant gives Dr McEwan, Professor Heather Jeffery from the School of Public Health and Shu Ning the resources to further test the efficacy of their prototype.
Shu Ning's work on the device came from his search for an Undergraduate Honours Thesis Project, a requirement of his degree. "This spoke to me because it makes the world a better place and involves hands-on work," he says.
Involved from the project's inception, Shu Ning helped write the grant application and was instrumental to building a prototype. Central to the device is an embedded computer running a small algorithm, developed by Shu Ning to measure body fat.
Utilising infrared technology and other off-the-shelf components, the device is solar-powered and the intention is to build a model costing less than five dollars per unit.
"It won't fix malnutrition by itself," says Shu Ning. "But it will allow more people to detect malnutrition early." This will allow for much earlier intervention and more efficient use of scarce healthcare resources in developing countries, he says.
Currently unnamed, the device is being tested for accuracy at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. While results to date are encouraging, they are preliminary and more data needs to be collected to advance the project. Funding from the Grand Challenges Exploration grant allows the team to hire a research nurse to develop a more structured and robust patient testing program, delivering solid results to advance the program.
Like all grants from the Grand Challenges Exploration program, this one could potentially receive a follow-on grant of US$1 million from the foundation.
Dr McEwan oversees the University of Sydney's bioelectronics program, combining electrical engineering and biology to make inexpensive physiological monitors that reduce the strain on public health budgets.
http://sydney.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=8141

MALARIA: African leaders must invest in malaria prevention

July 25, 2011

In a Daily Caller opinion piece, Richard Tren, director of Africa Fighting Malaria, highlights a finding in a recent malaria report that the U.S. government and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation "were responsible for 85% of the steep increase in malaria funding between 2007 and 2009." But "[i]f 30 African heads of state were to give up their private jets, a fund of well over $500 million could be generated," Tren writes.
"Several benefits would arise were African leaders to put their money where their mouths are. First, it would help U.S. congressmen to convince the remarkably generous but hard-hit U.S. taxpayers that we have true partners in the fight against malaria and that it is worth appropriating money for this noble cause. Second, it would probably help to reduce the bias in R&D funding, directing money to areas, such as improved vector control, that are recognized as more important for African countries. Third, it would help in creating a much-needed culture of accountability and responsiveness in African politics," according to Tren (7/22).
http://www.news-medical.net/news/20110725/African-leaders-must-

MALARIA: Scientists report stinky sock smell helps fight malaria

Katharine Houreld : 13 Jul 2011 : Associated Press
What do mosquitoes like more than clean, human skin? Stinky socks. Scientists think the musky odor of human feet can be used to attract and kill mosquitoes that carry deadly malaria. The Gates Foundation announced on Wednesday that it will help fund one such pungent project in Tanzania.
If they can be cheaply mass-produced, the traps could provide the first practical way of controlling malaria infections outside. The increased use of bed nets and indoor spraying has already helped bring down transmissions inside homes.
Dutch scientist Dr. Bart Knols first discovered mosquitoes were attracted to foot odor by standing in a dark room naked and examining where he was bitten, said Dr. Fredros Okumu, the head of the research project at Tanzania's Ifakara Health Institute. But over the following 15 years, researchers struggled to put the knowledge to use.
Then Okumu discovered that the stinky smell — which he replicates using a careful blend of eight chemicals — attracts mosquitoes to a trap where they can be poisoned. The odor of human feet attracted four times as many mosquitoes as a human volunteer and the poison can kill up to 95 percent of mosquitoes, he said.
Although the global infection rate of malaria is going down, there are still more than 220 million new cases of malaria each year. The U.N. estimates almost 800,000 of those people die. Most of them are children in Africa.
"This is the first time that we are focusing on controlling mosquitoes outside of homes," said Okumu, a Kenyan who has been ill with the disease himself several times. "The global goal of eradication of malaria will not be possible without new technologies."
Some experts worry eradication is unrealistic because of the lack of an effective malaria vaccine and because some patients have developed resistance to the most effective malaria medicines.
"This is an interesting project," said Richard Tren, the director of health advocacy group Africa Fighting Malaria. "But there is no magic bullet. We are going to need a lot of different tools to fight malaria. Certainly we need to solve the problems of insecticide resistance and preserve the effectiveness of malaria drugs that we have at the moment."
Other scientists — including some funded by the Gates Foundation — are also researching equally novel ideas, including breeding genetically modified mosquitoes to wipe out malaria-spreading insects and creating a fungus that would kill the parasite.
Okumu received an initial grant of $100,000 to help his research two years ago. Now the project has been awarded an additional $775,000 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Grand Challenges Canada to conduct more research on how the traps should be used and whether they can be produced affordably.
Okumu said more research was needed to find the right place to put the traps. Too close would attract mosquitoes near the humans and expose them to greater risk of bites, but the devices would be ineffective if too far away.
The current traps are expensive prototypes but Okumu hopes to produce affordable traps that can be sold for between $4 and $27 each. He said they hoped to develop the devices so they would work at the ratio of 20 traps for every 1,000 people.
Edward Mwangi, who heads an alliance of 86 aid groups working to eradicate malaria in Kenya, said keeping costs low was key to developing successful technology in the developing world.
He said the current interventions such as the treated nets and malarial drugs had managed to reduce the child deaths caused by malaria in Africa by 50 percent.
"It's African innovation for an African problem being developed in Africa," said Dr. Peter A. Singer, the head of Grand Challenges Canada, one of the project's key funders. "It's bold, it's innovative and it has the potential for big impact ... who would have thought that a lifesaving technology was lurking in your laundry basket?"
http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/bbd825583c8542898e6fa7d440b9febc/Article_2011-07-13-AF-Stinky-Feet-Malaria/id-60b37ee97d624c86b01b8f4f254ed036

MALARIA: African Countries Debate Using DDT in Anti-Malaria Efforts

July 12, 2011 : Sanday Chongo Kabange : Lusaka, Zambia

African Countries Debate Using DDT in Anti-Malaria Efforts : Some propose using pesticide in tightly controlled conditions

Photo: VOA - A. Fortier

African children watch a play on malaria prevention at the Mbosse health clinic.

The chemical pesticide DDT has been banned by most countries for use in agriculture, but some continue to use it indoors to kill insects that carry malaria.
In Zambia, it’s an important part of the government’s malaria control program, and the controlled use of DDT spray has led to a reduction in malaria cases over the years.
Other African countries are facing a rise in the number of cases and several African governments are considering the carefully monitored use of DDT as part of their strategy against the disease.
In Malawi, for example, the Department of Health may undertake a DDT spray program in malaria prone-areas.
There is no doubt that DDT is very effective in killing mosquitoes. The problem lies in what other effects DDT may have on human health, wildlife, environment, horticulture and crops.
Malawi’s secretary of health, Chris Kang’ombe, was part of a delegation that visited Zambia to learn how the use of DDT has helped reduce malaria there.
Kang’ombe is convinced that DDT can help reduce the spread of malaria in Africa -- if handled under controlled conditions by trained personnel and monitored by government agencies.
He says, “DDT is used for indoor spraying. It is used to only spray within, inside the house, dwelling houses. What we have learnt (from Zambia) and we know from our experience here (in Malawi), the other chemicals [are active for] up to about two or three months, whereas with DDT you are talking of six months plus. So in terms of “residue effect,” it (DDT) is better, and also eventually the cost of indoor spraying…will be much cheaper, more cost effective than using other chemicals. “
While authorities in Malawi are still considering using DDT in malaria control, a thorny issue has arisen.
The Tobacco Control Commission is against the idea of using the pesticide. Tobacco is the mainstay of Malawi’s economy, and there’s fear that Western consumers will not buy it if there are any traces of DDT on the crops. So the commission will likely require careful monitoring if Malawi is to start using DDT in malaria control.
Similar views are shared by Uganda’s Network on Toxic Free Malaria Control. The network is against the use of DDT as a malaria control strategy.
“We have no law specifically for DDT,” says Network Secretary General Ellady Muyambi . “ We have no trained manpower. We do not have equipment in terms of transportation facilities, in terms of storage facilities, in terms of disposal facilities, in terms of laboratories for chromatography. We do not have the capacity. We are still relaying on donor funding and we are saying why can’t our country use its own resources to deal with its own problems, especially these ones like malaria.,” says Muyambi.
Also involved in the DDT debate is Kenya, another country debating whether to use the pesticide.
Shrikant Bhatt professor of medicine at the University of Nairobi in Kenya explains why the controlled use of DDT should be reintroduced. “We are almost getting defeated by the pandemic that is occurring due to malaria. [Anti-malarial] drugs are gaining resistance [to the parasite]. You know we have very few drugs which we can use as effective means of controlling malaria. So, I think we do not have any option but to reintroduce DDT in a limited way, [like] spraying DDT indoors or using it in endemic areas we should be able to contain the malaria pandemic,” he explains.
The International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE), also based in Kenya, is taking different approach.
John Githure a researcher at the centre says “ICIPE is largely concentrating on how we can come up with innovative ways or even using available products to kill the mosquitoes at larval stage. “
One such product uses soil-dwelling bacteria called bacillus thuringiensis, or BTi.
Githure says ,”we are trying to introduce that in Africa and ICIPE have of course gone ahead to construct a demonstration factory that will be able to at least make the product BTi available, affordable and accessible to the community to use for mosquito control.”
Meanwhile, the government and various organizations including Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation are encouraging free distribution of insecticide-treated mosquito nets and sleeping under bed-nets as short term measure for malaria control.
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/pan/African-Countries-Debate-Using-DDT-in-Anti-Malaria-Efforts--125426193.html

Malaria: Gates Foundation infographic

Very attractive "infographic."
Essentially promotion -- but in a good cause!
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/infographics/Pages/we-can-end-malaria.aspx

MALARIA: Staying the course on malaria research

JOHANNESBURG, 28 June 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Wendy Stone/IRIN
Lack of testing leads to frequent misdiagnosis in Africa

 Funding for malaria research and development has quadrupled in the past 16 years - new drugs, diagnostics and insecticides have been developed and a vaccine is in the final stage of testing - but the constantly adapting malaria parasite means the pipeline of new products and technologies needs to keep flowing.
A new report, "Staying the Course? Malaria Research and Development in a Time of Economic Uncertainty", analyses the progress that unprecedented levels of funding has achieved in recent years and warns that the future of the global fight against malaria depends on better coordination among a larger number of donors and ensuring that the money is more evenly spread.
Currently, the lion's share of research and development (R&D) funds goes to developing new drugs (38 percent), vaccines (28 percent) and basic research (23 percent), while research into diagnostic tests receives a paltry 1 percent of funding, and product development for controlling malaria-carrying mosquitoes (vector control) just 4 percent.
Partly this is because developing and testing new drugs and vaccines is much more costly than developing diagnostics and vector control products, but David Bell, head of the malaria diagnostics programme at the non-profit Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND), believes it also reflects donor preferences.
"It's easy to sell the idea of a drug or vaccine because it saves lives. A diagnostic test also saves lives by stopping a child being given the wrong drug and ensuring they receive the right drug... but it's harder to sell that to donors," he told IRIN on the phone from Geneva.
Bell described his field as "grossly underfunded". This has slowed the development of new diagnostic tools and made it difficult to ensure the quality of existing tests for detecting malaria - in sub-Saharan Africa, where the use of diagnostic tests is not widespread, patients presenting with a fever are often misdiagnosed with malaria and treated for the wrong disease.
The report, published by the global health non-profit, PATH, and the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, estimates that funding for diagnostic tests needs to quadruple and remain at US$50 million per year for the next four years.
Some of the most pressing needs are for the development of rapid tests for less common types of malaria; a way to screen pregnant women with low levels of malaria parasites that can still harm a foetus; and more sensitive tools for detecting a potential resurgence of the disease in areas with low prevalence.
"The problem in areas where mortality [from malaria] is very low because interventions have worked, is that people lose interest and there's a danger we'll see a rebound in malaria, so we need to have these new tools to manage that," said Bell.

Vector control neglected
Spraying insecticides and treated bed nets have yielded impressive results in reducing the malaria burden in many parts of the world, but vector control has been neglected in recent years - just when resistance to the one class of insecticides licensed for use with bed nets, pyrethroids, has become widespread.
"There are very few locations [in Africa] where there isn't [pyrethroid] resistance," said Janet Hemmingway, CEO of the non-profit research group, Innovative Vector Control Consortium (IVCC). "If resistance is sufficiently strong, a treated bed net is of no more use than an untreated one."
Developing a new active ingredient is a seven-year process because of the need for long-term toxicology reports, but IVCC is looking at several agricultural insecticides to determine whether they could be "re-purposed" for malaria control.
"We know there's nothing ideal, but there could be something that would hold the fort for a few years while we get some new active [ingredients] through [the process]," said Hemmingway.
IVCC is also developing a simple point-of-use test to determine whether a net has been treated properly, and another for monitoring insecticide resistance in mosquitoes - but even with a five-year, $50 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and a further $28 million from other donors, they still face a $100 million funding shortfall.

More donors needed
Total funding for malaria R&D reached $612 million by 2009, up from $121 million in 1993, but nearly three-quarters of that amount was provided by nine organizations, most of them public and philanthropic, and just two organizations - the Gates Foundation and the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) - accounted for half of all funding, and most of the increase in funding in recent years.
According to the report, funding for malaria R&D only needs to increase by 2 percent per year to meet the goals agreed by the international malaria community in the 2008 Global Malaria Action Plan (GMAP). After 2016, earlier investments should start paying off and funders can begin to scale back their contributions. However, this best-case scenario depends on donors coordinating with each other to ensure funds are distributed more evenly.
The Roll Back Malaria Partnership hopes to achieve this during two donor meetings later in 2011. "We need to ensure the main donors are aware of the poor distribution of funds," said executive director Awa Marie Coll-Seck.
"We're hoping new donors will come along - it's important to diversify," she said, insisting that the goal of eradicating malaria from the world, set out in the GMAP, was still within reach.
"All the elements are in the pipeline - a vaccine, insecticides, diagnostics. The more results we see, the more we think it is possible," Coll-Seck told IRIN. "But the malaria parasite is always changing and adapting; you need to always be developing new tools to stay ahead of it."
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=93090

POVERTY: KENYA: Tackling aflatoxin - if the price is right

NAIROBI, 30 June 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Kate Holt/IRIN : Aflatoxin is not always obvious, and maize that looks normal could actually be infested with high levels of the fungus (file photo)

A treatment that could control a deadly fungus, aflatoxin, from infecting maize is being tested in Kenya in a project donors hope will result in a commercially viable product with regional application, officials say.
However, farmers expected to buy and use the bio-control agent, known as Aflasafe, want financial incentives to rid the market of what is often an invisible attacker.
The UN World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that literally billions of people in the developing world are chronically exposed to aflatoxin, which causes cancer, suppresses the immune system, retards growth and causes liver disease as well as death in both humans and animals, according to the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), a partner in the 18-month project.
Aflatoxin is not always obvious, and maize that looks normal could actually be infested with high levels of the fungus, which thrives under poor storage conditions.
Testing will focus on creating a locally successful hybrid of fungi, which, when applied to crops in the field, "crowd out" the toxins. Scientists expect to know by December 2012 which combination is best for Kenya, which has a particularly virulent strain found nowhere else in Africa.
But the project also needs to answer some key questions about how to market aflasafe.
"Can the farmer afford it? Can she see a return on investment? We need a mechanism by which she can recognize value,” said Prem Warrior of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is providing the project’s $1.2 million budget.

Cost
For farmers, the question of affordability and added value is central, and could determine whether or not they use the product, no matter how effective it is.
There is currently no quote for the cost of Aflasafe, since no one is producing it at scale, Ranajit Bandyopadhyay, a principal investigator with IITA, told IRIN.
However, Bandyopadhyay estimated it would cost a farmer US$10-12 per hectare. The average farm in Kenya is just less than 2.5 hectares, according to Acumen Fund, a non-profit global venture firm.

 Photo: Jane Some/IRIN : If farmers do not get higher prices for treated crops, some may not be willing to pay out of pocket for Aflasafe (file photo)

Steve Collins, chief of party for the Kenya Maize Development Project, said Kenyan commercial farmers could afford to pay but small-scale farmers would require subsidies to get started.
Wilson Songa, the permanent secretary in Kenya's Agriculture Ministry, said there needs to be a plan to take Aflasafe from a handout to something farmers can buy on their own.
He said the Aflasafe project would immediately "touch the lives" of the 46 percent of Kenyans who live in poverty. "Some of the farmers are too poor to buy the product," said Songa. "We will ensure that the product gets to them free of charge initially."
Songa said 450 trainers would be sent out to provide education and information to farmers.
"We needed a project like this yesterday," said Songa. "The whole region is waiting."
The Ministry of Agriculture also promised to buy up 2.3 million infected bags of maize last year, but did not, saying it did not have the funds. It is unclear where it will find the money to pay farmers to start using Aflasafe.
If farmers do not get higher prices for treated crops, some may not be willing to pay out of pocket for Aflasafe.
"The farmers take on the cost and yet they don’t always benefit in terms of market price," said Paula Bramel, IITA's deputy director.

Better yields
"We have been going out and talking to farmers to see what they’d be willing to spend," said Collins, whose organization surveyed 2,300 farming families in eastern and western Kenya. “They would be prepared to pay if they could get a better price.”
Collins said there was a good chance they could do so because protecting maize from aflatoxin also results in a better product, less likely to be rejected by traders.
Fungus-free crops will also yield more grain. Collins said yield per unit could be doubled, tripled, or maybe even quadrupled.
Paula Bramel, IITA's deputy director, said there is currently no low-cost testing method in Kenya, and the government does not regularly test maize for aflatoxins. For the 70 percent of farmers in Kenya who trade informally, even government testing might provide little incentive to pay out of pocket for Aflasafe.
"The only way it will get to scale is if famers have a direct financial incentive," said Kola Masha, the managing director at Doreo Partners, a venture capital and consultancy firm tasked with developing a commercial strategy for Aflasafe.
Regulating the market is key for this to succeed, he said, because it is the only way farmers would be able to profit from compliance. The only other way to create incentive is to turn Aflasafe into a product that also increases yield, for example by bundling it with fertilizer, he said.
Masha said a "very aggressive outreach programme" would be the final step in ensuring farmers grow and consumers demand aflatoxin-free crops.
Farmer Henry Zoka and his wife Patricia Maitha grow maize, beans, kale, and other crops on their farm 50km west of Nairobi. They are not sure if their maize has ever been infected with aflatoxin.
Zoka said the decision about whether or not to buy Aflasafe “would depend on the cost.” He said he would spend 1,000 shillings ($11.4) a season on the treatment. "We feel if we could get assistance it would be better."
But Aflasafe alone might not even be enough to combat the deadly fungus.
"There's no silver bullet in terms of a solution," said Collins. "That’s why you have to take a holistic approach."
Education, training, and communication about correct farming and storage practices are just as important as bio-control agents like Aflasafe, he said.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=93105

PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative to collaborate with GlaxoSmithKline and Crucell in development of second-generation malaria vaccine

Project will combine two promising vaccine approaches to potentially improve immune responses
WASHINGTON, DC, June 7, 2011 — The PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI) announced today that it has entered into a collaboration with Dutch biopharmaceutical company Crucell N.V. and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). This collaboration is aimed at developing a second-generation vaccine against malaria—a deadly disease that kills close to 800,000 people annually, most of them young children under age five in Africa. MVI drives the development of malaria vaccines by joining its scientific, managerial, and field expertise with companies, universities, and governments to test potential malaria vaccines and invest in those with the most promise.
The new project will bring together two promising vaccine approaches in an effort to develop a malaria vaccine that may have the potential to improve on the efficacy of GSK’s first generation RTS,S vaccine candidate. In this collaborative effort, a single dose of Crucell’s weakened recombinant adenovirus Ad35.CS.01malaria vaccine approach will be administered, followed by two doses of GSK’s RTS,S malaria vaccine candidate in a Phase 1/2a clinical trial that is expected to begin later this year. This would be the first test in humans of this “heterologous prime-boost” approach against malaria.
“We are at an important moment in malaria vaccine development,” said Dr. Christian Loucq, director of MVI. “For the first time, we have a malaria vaccine in late phase development in the form of the RTS,S vaccine candidate. This new collaboration, though in the early stages, gives us the opportunity to test an approach with the potential to substantially increase efficacy and move us closer to the internationally agreed upon goal of an 80 percent effective second-generation vaccine by 2025.”
The RTS,S vaccine candidate is currently in the midst of a large-scale Phase 3 clinical efficacy trial. If all goes well in Phase 3 testing, the World Health Organization (WHO) has indicated that a policy recommendation for RTS,S is possible as early as 2015, paving the way for countries to make a decision about implementation through their national immunization programs. The RTS,S trial, which is the outcome of a decade-long collaboration between MVI and GSK, involves 11 sites in seven African countries.
Crucell and MVI first began working together in 2007 to develop adenovirus-based vaccines targeting malaria and are currently collaborating on another heterologous prime-boost approach. Crucell’s Ad35.CS.01 was recently tested in a Phase 1 clinical study in the United States.
RTS,S is a circumsporozoite protein (CSP)-based pre-erythrocytic P. falciparum malaria vaccine candidate that incorporates GSK’s AS01 adjuvant. Crucell’s Ad35.CS.01 vaccine approach uses a weakened, recombinant adenovirus (a type of virus associated with the common cold and other mild respiratory infections) to deliver a malaria antigen to the immune system.
In preclinical studies, the regimen to be evaluated under the new MVI-GSK-Crucell collaboration has shown enhanced immunogenicity when compared to either vaccine candidate given alone.

About the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI)
The PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI) is a global program established at PATH in 1999 through an initial grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. MVI's mission is to accelerate the development of malaria vaccines and ensure their availability and accessibility in the developing world. MVI's vision is a world free from malaria. For more information, please visit www.malariavaccine.org.

About PATH
PATH is an international nonprofit organization that creates sustainable, culturally relevant solutions, enabling communities worldwide to break longstanding cycles of poor health. By collaborating with diverse public- and private-sector partners, PATH helps provide appropriate health technologies and vital strategies that change the way people think and act. PATH’s work improves global health and well-being. For more information, please visit www.path.org.

POVERTY: The new Gates Charitable Foundation half billion dollars headquarters

May 23, 2011 : By Kristi Heim


The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's philanthropy is literally reshaping Seattle, from the new headquarters opening across from Seattle Center to the burgeoning corridor of biotech and health institutes in nearby South Lake Union.

 STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES
An atrium with four stories of glass is a central meeting place for Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation employees and visiting groups. The new headquarters is flooded with window light, a design feature intended to save energy and inspire creativity.


 The new Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation headquarters
Gates campus

In 2006, a team from Seattle's NBBJ architecture firm met with Melinda Gates to review drawings of buildings for a new Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation headquarters the architects had created according to her specifications. Melinda Gates had taken the lead in planning the $500 million campus. For inspiration, she toured a host of notable buildings, from the Wellcome Trust charity in London to biotech giant Genzyme in Cambridge, Mass., and the Finnish Embassy in Washington, D.C.
She envisioned the new headquarters as a model of durability, green design and workplace efficiency. But when NBBJ's plans for a set of unassuming rectangular buildings were unveiled, Gates thanked the team for delivering what she had asked for. Then she sent them back to the drawing board.
"The first one kind of looked like a traditional office building," Gates said, recalling her reaction. "It was kind of a yawner. Even the neighbors kind of went, 'Well, that's it?' "
The space Gates once envisioned as "humble and mindful" needed to be bold. It needed to make a statement reflective of the foundation's own expansive ambitions.
Its goals include eradicating age-old scourges such as malaria and polio, producing the first HIV vaccine and preparing every student in the U.S. to graduate from high school ready for college and a career.
The new campus, which will be showcased in a series of opening events in early June, has two dramatic, glass-walled structures that curve like boomerangs, with arms stretching out in different directions.
"I wanted something that's rooted in the Northwest," Gates said. But it also needed "to be iconic and represent the work we do. And the work we do is global; it reaches out to the world."

From family to global
The foundation has made a dramatic transition from a small family philanthropy run from Bill Gates Sr.'s basement into the world's largest charitable foundation. With its own $37 billion endowment and a long-term gift pledged by investor Warren Buffett, its coffers have grown to more than $60 billion — more than the market value of Boeing. Now its philanthropy is literally reshaping Seattle, from the brand-new headquarters across from Seattle Center to the burgeoning corridor of biotech and health institutes in nearby South Lake Union.
Part of nearly $3 billion the foundation gives away each year has fed the growth of more than a dozen local institutes devoted to researching malaria, HIV and tuberculosis and developing vaccines. About 30 percent of the grants goes toward U.S. programs, including education and addressing homelessness in the Pacific Northwest.
But most of the funded work ultimately takes place far from Seattle, aimed at diseases and conditions that affect poor people in South Asia and Africa. Gates said the new campus is her personal project, a kind of coming-out party to show the foundation's global mission is not remote from the local community.

Low-profile history
Over the past 10 years the foundation has been operating from a nondescript office building in Eastlake without any sign of its name outside, later expanding into four other generic-looking buildings nearby.
As the organization grew, it took on some of the fortresslike corporate culture and heavy public-relations messaging of its founders' Microsoft roots, which grantees and others say can be difficult to penetrate.
At the same time, the foundation has just three trustees, Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett, and no board of directors. Instead, it operates advisory panels with a handful of outside experts for each of its three main programs — global health, global development and U.S. education — but the meetings and reports are not made public. Despite its humanitarian intentions, its power to influence policy without a public process has raised concern.
The Gates Foundation says it's trying to be more transparent, posting more information about its work on its website and using blogs and social media.

Center-stage location
That change of mindset is reflected in the new headquarters. Melinda Gates said she chose a location in the heart of the city to be more visible and to help connect the campus with the surrounding neighborhood. Some foundation events, including its annual meeting, will be held across the street at Seattle Center.
The campus entrance along Fifth Avenue includes nearby benches, bike racks, an outdoor screen for video art and a viewing pavilion for the public to look in on the inner campus. "We really wanted the foundation to feel transparent to people when they came here," Gates said. "The idea was to have a place where people could understand our work but also understand what they could do."
A museum-style visitor's center will open this year with hands-on exhibits about clean water and other global issues, a kind of tourist destination for do-gooders. Visitors will get a chance to lift two buckets and experience what it's like for millions of women and children in the developing world to carry water.

Talk about a contrast
From the Space Needle, the building invites comparison with Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's Experience Music Project
Science Fiction Museum, just up the street, said Knute Berger, a local writer and editor-at-large of Seattle Magazine.
"If you ever wanted to get a quick contrast between Bill Gates and Paul Allen, look down at this thing that looks like a crushed Coke can," he said. "It's such a contrast with the clean, sharp lines of the Gates paper-clip place across the way. One is very button-down. One is very rock and roll."
Almost 50 years after the Seattle World's Fair marked the jet age and the dawn of other new technology, the campus echoes the scientific initiative the fair embodied, Berger said.
Between the Space Needle and the biotech hub of South Lake Union, "the Gates Foundation is an actualization of those aspirations," he said.

Gold-plated charity?
Some have questioned whether it's right for the foundation to spend $500 million on office space for 1,500 workers when the 3 billion people the foundation aims to serve live on less than $2 a day.
Adding a visitor's center, striving to achieve environmentally sustainable design, and cleaning up the site, formerly a bus-refueling station, contributed to the higher cost, Gates said.
The city of Seattle sold the property to the foundation for about $54 million and helped pay for some of the cleanup, add a new parking garage and relocate some facilities, finally netting about $32 million.
The Gateses gave $350 million more of their own money to the foundation in 2009 to cover most of the building cost. They have contributed $28 billion to the philanthropy so far. In the end, "Everything from the foundation is going back to the world," Gates said. "You can imagine in some form that building will go back to the world."

Built to last
While typical commercial buildings change hands every seven years, this one was built to last for a century, said NBBJ Managing Partner Steve McConnell.
The thick facade of natural Jura limestone, imported from Germany, even has marine fossils in it. The floors are only half as wide as in a typical downtown high-rise, placing employees no more than 30 feet from daylight and promoting face-to-face interaction.
A 1.2 million-gallon storage pool underneath the plaza holds enough rainwater to supply toilets and irrigate plants, reducing the foundation's demand for city water by more than 70 percent. A 750,000-gallon tank chills water at night to cool the buildings during the day, cutting back on electricity use.
The upfront investment the foundation made in energy-efficient buildings will pay for itself in less than 30 years, according to Arup, the project's lead engineering firm.

Center of global impact
The new campus opens at a time the Gates Foundation's size, scope and influence are shaping global and national agendas. The largest private philanthropy in history, it is making a mark not only by mobilizing unprecedented assets but also by trying risky approaches and tracking results.
It's shaping Seattle by meshing the region's core of expertise in life sciences with its own mission and money. Local institutes funded by Gates are creating low-cost diagnostic devices and designing new vaccines.
Researchers at the nonprofit Seattle Biomed are testing one of the world's first malaria-vaccine candidates on volunteers in Seattle.
Two blocks away, global-health nonprofit PATH expanded into a gleaming office tower after receiving $1.1 billion in Gates grants over the past decade to develop low-cost vaccines and other health solutions. Last year, it introduced a meningitis vaccine for children that reduced the cost from $50 a dose to 50 cents and offers better protection.
The Gates Foundation helped create a new Department of Global Health at the University of Washington to train students, and a UW Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation to analyze the effectiveness of funding.
Adding a philanthropy headquarters as a central part of the landscape makes a statement about Seattle's identity, says McConnell, of NBBJ.
"For the foundation to become visible," he said, "may awaken the public about the significance and the commitment behind these ambitious programs to create a better world."
Gates said she hopes to help the foundation's employees, who hail from 37 countries, do their best work.
"If having a space where people can collaborate better leads to that, then I think we've achieved our mission."

Kristi Heim: 206-464-2718 or kheim@seattletimes.com
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2015116661_gatescampus22.html

MDG: Bill Gates' Speech to the Sixty-fourth World Health Assembly

http://allafrica.com/stories/201105180924.html

MALARIA: Africa: Cheap Malaria Drugs to Flood Africa Soon

Yinka Shokunbi : 30 April 2011
With the renewed determination of the international community to sweep out malaria out of Africa, a new initiative to put affordable and effective anti-malaria drugs within the reach of people in often remote communities in Africa is making rapid progress.
In four implementing countries - Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar and Nigeria - life-saving malaria treatment can now be bought in private stores and pharmacies for as little as 50 U.S. cents as against previous cost which was up to 20 times as much.
The Affordable Medicines Facility - malaria (AMFm) gets key financial support from UNITAD, the United Kingdom and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, technical support from members of the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership and it is hosted by the Global Fund.
The initiative, which began last year, is being piloted in eight countries - Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania (including Zanzibar), Uganda and Cambodia - to enable lessons to be learnt before a potential global rollout.
AMFm aims to make anti-malarial drugs, known as artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs), available as widely and cheaply as possible. About 225 million people fall ill with malaria every year and 780,000 die from the disease.
Although the World Health Organisation (WHO) specifically recommends ACTs as first-line treatment for Plasmodium falciparum malaria, the most deadly form of the disease, the drug accounts for only about one in five of all treatments taken for malaria and until recently, it has only been available for free or at low cost in public health facilities.
Most people buy anti-malaria treatments in private shops and pharmacies where ACTs were not available at an affordable price before the launch of AMFm. These shops sell older, cheap medicines such as chloroquine and sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine, which are no longer effective because the Plasmodium falciparum is increasingly resistant to them.
The objective of the AMFm programme is to drive out these ineffective therapies by bringing down ACT treatment costs drastically and making the drugs more accessible to millions of people.
According to the executive director of the Global Fund, Prof. Michel Kazatchkine, "We are making further progress in fighting malaria in Africa by providing affordable treatment to millions of people through the Affordable Medicines Facility for malaria," said executive director of the Global Fund.
"The Affordable Medicines Facility - malaria is a major step forward. It uses innovative financing methods to save lives by providing affordable and effective medicines to more people in need through the public, NGO and private sectors."
For the innovation to work, the Global Fund first negotiates a discounted price for ACTs with drug manufacturers and then pays most of the reduced price on behalf of importers from the private, NGO and public sectors, leading to an average sales price of less than 10 cents.
The reduced prices allow private wholesalers to sell the ACTs to retailers at a profit. Pharmacies and stores in turn sell the drugs to patients and caregivers with an additional mark-up, while keeping the retail price affordable.
The AMFm was introduced in the country in March 2011, ACTs that are not co-paid by the AMFm cost about 1,000 - 1,500 Naira (US$ 6.70 - 9.50) per adult treatment.
The Society for Family Health (SFH), a not-for-profit NGO started distribution of AMFm co-paid ACTs in Nigeria in March 2011.
Under AMFm, SFH will sell a full course of treatment for children aged under-five years in private health facilities and outlets at US$ 0.20. The adult course of treatment is expected to sell for US$ 0.80.
In the eight countries where the AMFm is being implemented, governments are supporting the initiative with public awareness campaigns and training for ACT providers.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201105021732.html

MALARIA: Sustain 'Fragile' Successes in Fight Against Malaria

29 April 2011
Robert B. Zoellick and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: Robert B. Zoellick is President of the World Bank Group; Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is President of Liberia, and the incoming Chair of the African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA), which comprises African Heads of State and Government working to end malaria-related deaths in Africa.


We have encouraging news out of Africa this week of World Malaria Day, as we take stock of the illnesses and deaths caused by this longtime scourge.
Eleven countries in Africa had slashed the number of confirmed malaria cases, malaria-related hospital admissions or deaths by more than 50 percent by end 2009. When 2010 data becomes available we expect it to show that even more countries have shown similar progress.
In a region that has borne a heavy malarial burden of death and debilitating illness, part of the good news stems from the fact that approximately three-quarters of the people at risk of contracting malaria were using insecticide-treated mosquito nets by the end of 2010. With a decisive push, the goal of protecting Africa’s population with bed-nets and effectively preventing the fevers and crushing headaches that are the dreaded symptoms of malaria appears within Africa’s reach.
Even as we mark what may be a turning point, we know that malaria is an ancient foe we can never underestimate. Although global deaths from malaria have fallen from nearly a million a year in 2000, the disease continues to exact a great toll, killing 781,000 people across the world in 2009. More than 90 percent of these deaths occurred in Africa, where the disease accounted for about one in six child deaths.
The collective success is substantial, but is also fragile and must be sustained. The consequences of losing the focus on malaria would be deadly. Mosquito bed-nets last about three years and a failure to replace the over 300 million nets blanketing Africa over the coming three years could lead to resurgent malaria illness and deaths.
Just this past year, Zambia faced a resurgence of malaria in a few provinces when mosquito nets were not replaced in time. Deaths and illness increased within months. Rapid action to address this increase has since been taken by the Zambian government, together with the World Bank, UN Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Stanbic Bank, the African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA), and the UN Special Envoy’s Office.
While funding is important, it is really the partnerships that have been built with citizens, governments, and healthcare providers as well as the increasing reliance on and use of science, technology and the body of global knowledge on what works that can accelerate progress in this area.
For instance, beyond the wide distribution of mosquito nets, ending malaria deaths will require making sure that effective diagnosis and timely treatment become available to every patient. Health authorities need to keep better track of where malaria still exists and which drugs produce the best health outcomes. We want funding to be effective, not simply throwing money at the problem.
In the wake of the financial crisis, we face difficult choices with limited resources. In Liberia, the priority is to end deaths from malaria above many other pressing needs, for both health and economic reasons. As a result, Liberia is on track to protect its entire population by year’s end.
Liberia is not alone. Thirty-nine African countries have united against the disease under ALMA, chaired by Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete. We have determined that the only way we can overcome the disease is through working together. No country is an island when it comes to malaria; mosquitoes do not respect borders.
In mobilizing the money, the bed nets, and the treatment, and in strengthening supply chains for lifesaving medicines, our bedrock guiding principle must be stronger accountability. ALMA’s flagship accountability initiative is a simple tool, commonly employed in the private sector: a scorecard. Currently under development with our partners in the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, the scorecard will track progress, identify what is working, what is not, and highlight where intervention is required. We will further expand the use of new technology platforms, such as SMS and Twitter, to reach hundreds of millions of people to create positive pressure at all levels, and to encourage demand for transparency, accountability and results by citizens.
Africa’s partners, including the World Bank, are committed to ending deaths from malaria. Last year the Bank pledged US$200 million to anti-malaria efforts in Africa, largely to provide bed-nets to families in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Sierra Leone and Zambia. This helped to close emergency gaps. Consistent with the priorities of African countries, we expect new financing mobilized from the latest replenishment of the International Development Association, the Bank’s fund for the poorest countries, to be committed to the fight against malaria, including through our work on helping African countries build stronger health systems.
So, as we take inspiration this World Malaria Day from African countries that now have malaria in retreat, we also need to recommit to finish the job. Allowing hard-won gains to be reversed cannot be an option.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201104290828.html

MALNUTRITION: Gates' Foundation Backs GM

20 Apr 11 - John Kariuki John Kariuki is vice-president of Slow Food International and currently works in his homeland of Kenya on Slow Food’s projects for biodiversity and food sovereignty.


Efforts to expand the use of genetically modified (GM) crops in Asia and Africa were given a major boost last week with the announcement of a significant investment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has pledged $US18.6 million. The grant will fund projects aiming to develop modified varieties of rice and cassava, intending to produce greater quantities of one or more nutrients to tackle malnutrition.
Since its beginnings 30 years ago, GM technology has claimed to be able to feed the world and eradicate malnutrition. However in this time, we have only seen the number of hungry and malnourished grow, along with new problems and ramifications of a technology that we do not yet fully understand. While we can transplant a gene from one species to another for its desired characteristics, we cannot yet know how to predict or contain its results.
In Kenya and many other African countries, more and more people are turning to the traditional knowledge of communities as the key to solving problems of nutrition, and see the spread of GM crops as a new sickness of the land. Traditionally, communities have reduced their vulnerability to the effects of climate change and crop failure by relying on biodiversity in food supply. A dry season might destroy maize one year so instead we survive on cassava. With GM crops, which require large surface areas for planting and an intensive monoculture system, we don't have this safety blanket. Diversity in food choices also ensures that diets are varied enough to contain the required macro and micronutrients for good health, reducing the incidence of malnutrition.
As part of the funding, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will support the BioCassava Plus project in Nigeria and Kenya to manipulate an increased production of beta-carotene, iron and protein in cassava which is an important crop in many parts of the world. Several communities in Kenya depend on cassava as a staple food as it survives in adverse conditions. The introduction of BioCassava will interfere with and wipe out farmers’ extensive and tireless efforts to preserve and exchange traditional varieties of cassava that are well adapted to particular local agro-climatic conditions.
Furthermore, by influencing farmers to grow the same variety, the introduction and proliferation of GM crops also pose a problem of freedom, reducing producers’ autonomy by creating economic dependence on seed suppliers. In most cases, GM crops also require high external inputs such as chemical pesticides and fertilizers, which, as well as generating their own threats to human health and the environment, are often out of the financial reach of poor small-scale farmers. This creates a cycle that further impoverishes the farmers and turns them into slaves who are no longer in control of their own destiny, having to turn to the shops at every planting season.
The funding will also have a massive impact on farming autonomy and sustainability in Asia, where it will support the Philippine Rice Research Institute and the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute to engineer GM strains of “golden rice” to provide high levels of beta-carotene to decrease vitamin A deficiency in the local population.
To solve the problems of our times, we need to support and build on indigenous food systems, not stamp on them and wipe them out. The answers lie in the traditional agricultural knowledge that is held in the hearts, minds and hands of our small-scale farmers.
http://www.slowfood.com/international/food-for-thought/focus/94034/gates-backs-gm/q=89337D?-session=query_session:42F942010a41b1B38FhYj1F718DC

MALARIA: MYANMAR: Anti-malarial drug resistance "hotspots" identified

BANGKOK, 19 April 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Wikipedia
Malaria is a leading cause of death in Myanmar

Health experts had barely finished one project to contain anti-malarial drug resistance along the Thai-Cambodia border when their attention was drawn to Myanmar, where early warning signs suggest a waning influence of the anti-malarial drug Artemisinin.
Malaria is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in Myanmar and a leading cause of deaths in children under five, says the UN World Health Organization (WHO).
Resistance to the previous standard treatment for malaria, chloroquine, was first reported in the 1950s along the Thai-Cambodia border. By the 1980s it had spread to sub-Saharan Africa, which has the world's highest rate of malaria mortality.
Evidence of resistance emerged from Southeast Asia once again in 2007, this time to Artemisinin, one component of the combination therapies used worldwide to control malaria. Donors, starting with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, pumped US$22 million into the border from 2009.
Charles Delacollette, coordinator of the Bangkok-based Mekong Malaria Programme with WHO, said while those huge multi-country efforts have worked to bring down reports of malaria infections, "what we are seeing along the Thai-Myanmar border seems equally serious ... to what we had at the Thai-Cambodian one".
He continued: "Myanmar is still struggling to get needed funds and support to scale up malaria control operations. The situation is not good in some areas of eastern Myanmar, with hundreds of thousands of people displaced [due to ethnic conflict].
"In some areas, there is still limited access to quality co-formulated anti-malarial drugs - Artemisinin monotherapies are still in use despite efforts of the Ministry of Health and NGOs to make [more effective combination] drugs available. And you have substandard drugs floating around."
On-going security concerns and access problems to remote communities are two weaknesses in the country's fight against malaria, according to the government's most recent funding proposal to The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Health facilities are poor - if not non-existent - in eastern Myanmar, said Amnat Khamsiriwatchara, a Bangkok-based deputy director of a malaria surveillance informatics project funded by Gates Foundation along the Thai-Cambodia border.
"Most - if not all - patients of not just malaria cross over into Thailand for care where they know the health facilities are far better."
Khamsiriwatchara said his project would expand in October to record health data from Burmese migrants crossing into Thailand for healthcare with funding to Myanmar from The Global Fund.

Response
The Global Fund recently committed $19 million to fight malaria in Myanmar.
The government's vector-borne disease control programme and the Department of Medical Research for upper Myanmar are expected to set up a new sentinel site close to the Chinese border to monitor drug efficacy. There are seven sites under government supervision in the divisions of Thanitharyi and Bago, and the states of Mon, Kayin, Eastern Shan, and Kachin, which border Thailand and China, as well as Rakhine, which borders Bangladesh.
The multi-donor consortium Three Diseases Fund and the Gates Foundation have pledged an additional $12 million to fund the country's recently adopted Artemisinin-resistance containment strategy.
At a meeting earlier this month in Myanmar, health experts and donors identified three tiers of "hotspots", with the highest priority being all 10 townships in Thanitharyi Division and Shwe Kyin township in Eastern Bago Division. Tier 2 includes all townships in Kayin, Kayah, Mon and Shan States and all townships in Eastern Bago Division except Shwe Kyin. Tier 3 is the rest of the country. Interventions are expected to begin in part of Tier 1 townships in April.
According to WHO, in 2008, there were 247 million cases of malaria and nearly one million deaths - mostly among children living in sub-Saharan Africa where the disease accounts for 20 percent of all childhood deaths.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=92516

MALNUTRITION: Cash boost should help bring fortified rice and cassava to market

Anjali Nayar : 14 April 2011 : Nature

Golden rice (right) provides more vitamin A than normal rice.International Rice Research Institute

Nearly US$20 million in new grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will be spent on getting nutritionally enhanced rice and cassava to market and decreasing malnourishment in Asia and Africa.
The grants will help in the development, testing and marketing of Golden Rice, which is fortified with vitamin A, in the Philippines and Bangladesh, and BioCassava Plus, a tuber fortified with vitamin A, iron and protein in Kenya and Nigeria.
In rich countries, people generally have access to a diverse diet and to foods that have been fortified with various essential nutrients, but these items are often unaffordable or unobtainable in the developing world.
People in poor nations, especially farmers, often only have access to what they grow. In parts of Asia, people rely on rice for 50–80% of their daily calories, and around 70 million Africans rely on cassava. It's no surprise then, that vitamin and mineral deficiencies affect more than two billion people worldwide, and contribute to around 7% of deaths and 10% of the disease burden in low-income countries, according to Juan Pablo Pena-Rosas, coordinator of the Micronutrients Unit at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland.
Biofortified, or nutritionally enhanced, staple crops could thus greatly reduce the death and disease burden related to nutritional deficiencies, according to Lawrence Kent, head of agricultural development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington. Several research groups are working on fortified varieties of bean, rice, maize, sweet potato, cowpea, peanut, wheat, pumpkin and banana.
"I'm optimistic that biofortification can help to improve people's health and lives because we are using sustainable foods that people already grow," Kent says.

Lab or field?
Plants can be fortified either through conventional plant breeding or using biotechnology to alter its genome and increase its nutritional yield, explains Pena-Rosas.
The firm HarvestPlus in Washington DC, which released orange sweet potato containing 50% of the daily vitamin A requirement in Uganda and Mozambique in 2007, uses traditional breeding techniques. Both Golden Rice and BioCassava Plus are genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and have attracted their fair share of negative attention from the anti-GMO lobby. "Anything that involves biotechnology involves a level of controversy," explains Kent. "But we need to be open and data-focused."
The Gates Foundation grants will help to generate the data needed for Golden Rice and BioCassava Plus to meet food safety and environmental regulations. "These crops will not be used by farmers or consumers until they pass tests for biosafety in each country," says Gerard Barry, who coordinates the Golden Rice Network at the International Rice Research Institute in Los Baños in the Philippines.
Golden Rice is expected to receive regulatory approval in the Philippines in 2013 and in Bangladesh in 2015, according to Ingo Potrykus, a retired geneticist at the Institute of Plant Sciences in Zurich, Switzerland, and one of the rice's inventors. BioCassava Plus should follow a few years later — the team hopes to obtain approvals by 2017, according to Martin Fregene, a plant geneticist and the director of the BioCassava Plus Program, based in St Louis, Missouri.
"As long as we can show that [these products] add value and are safe, there is no mother who would not want to use them to increase the health of her kids," says Fregene.
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110414/full/news.2011.233.html

MALNUTRITION: Donald Danforth Plant Science Center receives grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to work on cassava in Nigeria and Kenya

 April 14, 2011,
 Donald Danforth Plant Science Center

The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center said late Wednesday that it has received an $8.3 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to advance its work on the cassava plant in Nigeria and Kenya.
Funds will be used to support Phase II of BioCassava Plus, a project that aims to reduce malnutrition by increasing the nutritional value of cassava, a staple crop consumed by more than 250 million sub-Saharan Africans and nearly 700 million people worldwide. Martin Fregene will serve as the lead investigator.
Those who depend on cassava for food often suffer from chronic malnutrition, or insufficient intake of essential nutrients and vitamins including pro-vitamin A, iron and protein. According to the World Health Organization, this malnutrition often leads to blindness and other illnesses, disability and death for an estimated 250,000 to 500,000 children each year.
“Beta-carotene, the precursor to vitamin A, and iron are contained in various foods today, but those foods are scarce, unavailable, or too expensive for many people in Nigeria and Kenya,” Fregene said. “Increasing nutrients in local cassava varieties will make it both accessible and affordable for communities to improve their own nutrition.”
In Phase I of the project, researchers were able to develop cassava plants that have 30 times as much beta-carotene, four times as much iron and four times as much protein as traditional cassava. These increased levels reflect what is needed to provide the minimum daily dietary requirements for a child.
The enhanced cassava created by the BioCassava Plus project will be available to farmers in the same way it is being offered today and will have no royalty fees. This means farmers will be able to freely multiply, save and share their planting materials, Danforth officials said.
http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/news/2011/04/14/danforth-center-gets-8m-from-gates.html

POVERTY: SOUTHERN AFRICA: Taking the risk out of subsistence farming

 Photo: Mujahid Safodien/IRIN
A field of maize in Lesotho destroyed by the recent flooding

JOHANNESBURG, 8 March 2011 (IRIN) - Farming is a risky business anywhere in the world, but especially if you are a subsistence farmer in southern Africa, where a few weeks of too much or too little rain can wipe out your one hectare of maize and your ability to feed your family in the coming months.
Thousands of small-scale farmers are faced with this scenario after heavy rains fell across much of the region between mid-December 2010 and February 2011. Government and NGO assistance could take months to reach them, if at all, and many will struggle even to afford seed for the next planting season.
Farmers in the developed world insure their crops against multiple hazards, including extreme weather, but in Africa insurance premiums are beyond the means of most small-scale farmers. Insurers are also reluctant to take on the cost and complexity of designing suitable policies and assessing claims in often remote areas.
But what if the premiums were affordable, and insurers did not have to investigate each individual claim but could rely on meteorological data to trigger payouts?
Weather index-based insurance, a form of micro-insurance, has been generating a buzz in development circles because it has the potential to provide a level of social protection to farmers and their families in flood- and drought-prone developing countries.
Unlike traditional insurance, which requires evidence that a crop has been damaged or destroyed, index-based insurance automatically pays out according to a pre-determined meteorological measure, such as a certain number of days without rain.
"We thought, ‘How can we take away the risk of drought so banks lend to farmers so that they can increase inputs and yield?’" said Richard Leftley, CEO of MicroEnsure, a UK-based company that started offering weather-index insurance in partnership with the World Bank, to groundnut farmers in Malawi in 2004.
The results were impressive. Having insurance allowed the groundnut farmers to secure small loans, making it possible for them to buy better seeds and fertilizer, and eventually increase their yields by as much as 300 percent.
Initially the insurance payouts were triggered by rainfall levels, but as drought is not primarily determined by how much rain has fallen, but by how many days crops have received no rain, farmers started being compensated after a certain number of "dry days".

More weather stations needed
Index-based insurance relies on weather data to process claims, so farmers have to live within 20 km of a weather station to be insured.
MicroEnsure now runs index-based micro-insurance schemes in Tanzania, Rwanda, India and the Philippines, but a scarcity of functioning weather stations in Malawi has prevented it from reaching more than about 850 farmers, or from expanding to other countries in the region.
The only country in the region with a large number of weather stations and a well developed insurance sector is South Africa, but Shadreck Mapfumo, MicroEnsure's vice-president for agricultural insurance, said most farming there was done by commercial farmers and there was little demand for micro-insurance.
"There's phenomenal demand in other countries in the region, but… [they do not have] the infrastructure," said Mapfumo.
Governments were often willing to build more weather stations but lacked funding. Even when donor funding was secured and more weather stations had been built, three to four years of data were required before an index-based insurance product could be designed and sold.
"Part of the solution... would be a combination of weather stations plus some form of satellite data," said Mapfumo. Index-based insurance schemes in other countries, such as the Philippines and Ethiopia, used information from satellites.

Affordability
Persuading small-scale farmers to pay even very low premiums for insurance they might never use was another challenge, said Leftley.
Policies typically cost about 10 percent of the value of the insured crop, but after finding that most subsistence farmers were only willing to pay 3 percent to 5 percent, MicroEnsure redesigned its products to cover farmers only during the crucial planting and harvesting seasons.
The low cost of policies means that MicroEnsure has to keep overheads to a minimum by partnering with banks, micro-finance organizations and NGOs to act as its sales arm. The company also has funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has eased the pressure on its weather-index insurance to generate an immediate profit.
In developed countries agricultural insurance is usually subsidized by government. Doubell Chamberlain, of the Centre for Financial Regulation and Inclusion, a non-profit think-tank based in Cape Town, said most micro-insurance schemes for farmers in Africa were subsidized by NGOs, credit providers, or the distributors of agricultural inputs such as fertilizer.
Leftley is hopeful that micro-insurance for farmers in disaster-prone developing countries could be recognized as a way of adapting to the effects of climate change, allowing access to funding set aside for mitigation to build more weather stations and subsidise premiums.
In the meantime, a programme led by the World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC) has helped expand access to index-based insurance for farmers in Kenya and Rwanda, and is currently conducting a feasibility study in Zambia.
Mapfumo cautioned that the insurance did not protect small-scale farmers from other risks, such as low prices for their maize crops, which could prevent them from repaying loans.
"For weather-index schemes to really work well, you have to make sure farmers are getting other assistance," he told IRIN. "In years where you don't have drought, farmers might still not do well because they don't know how to properly look after their crop."
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=92136

MALNUTRITION: DFID and Gates team up for agricultural research

28 February 2011: Yojana Sharma

 New funding will help develop wheat varieties resistant to emerging strains of stem rust disease: Flickr/CIMMYT

A windfall of US$40 million to fund global research on a deadly strain of wheat rust that is threatening the world's wheat supply was announced yesterday by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK Department for International Development (DFID).
It is part of a new collaboration between the two organisations that will see US$102 million invested into agricultural research and the rollout of technologies to small farmers to help manage crop diseases and food security over the next five years.
Cornell University in the United States will receive US$25 million from the foundation and US$15 million from DFID over five years, for research on wheat varieties resistant to emerging strains of stem rust disease such as Ug99 which, began in Uganda and is spreading. It is now found in Ethiopia, Iran, Kenya, Sudan, and Yemen.
"Against the backdrop of rising food prices and wheat in particular, researchers worldwide will be able to play an increasingly vital role in protecting wheat fields from dangerous new forms of stem rust," said Ronnie Coffman, principal investigator at Cornell's Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat (DRRW) project.
DRRW, led by Cornell, involves 18 universities and research institutes around the world including national research centres in Ethiopia and Kenya, the Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre, the International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas in Syria and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
It also collaborates with scientists and farmers in 40 countries where new stem rust resistant varieties have been distributed for testing and evaluation.
Andrew Bennett, president of the Tropical Agricultural Association, told SciDev.Net: "There is a need to move very quickly. Rusts like Ug99 mutate fast and are carried on the wind. Ug99 has already arrived in Iran and it is not a great distance to get to Pakistan and India, the bread basket of South Asia. It is very important that resistant material is not only developed but deployed."
Leaf and stripe (yellow) rust also threaten wheat crops. But virulent stem rusts such as Ug99 are the most feared because they can quickly lead to the loss of an entire harvest.
The Global Cereal Rust Monitoring System at the FAO in Rome suggests that Ug99 variants are also threatening major wheat-growing areas of southern and eastern Africa, the Central Asian Republics, the Caucasus, the Indian subcontinent, South America, North America and Australia.
George Rothschild, chair of the European Forum for Agricultural Research for Development (EFARD) and a former head of the International Rice Research Institute, told SciDev.Net: "It is an exciting initiative to see substantial resources going into this research at a time when resources are very, very tight."
But he warned that such plant diseases tend to evolve rapidly, because there is a need for a broad range of rust-resistant wheat varieties, both traditional and genetically engineered.
Scientists and policymakers "must make sure they don't end up with a dominant variety or one strain" which would accelerate the development of resistance.
"Getting resistant crops out there is very important but in doing that it is vital that farmers do not give up their traditional varieties. The traditional varieties can be used as basis to cross-breed using the resistant genes to get the anti-rust properties in," Rothschild said.

Andrew Bennett is the chair of SciDev.Net's board of trustees.

http://www.scidev.net/en/news/dfid-and-gates-team-up-for-agricultural-research.html