MALNUTRITION: Guatemala: Malnutrition, Violence, and Investment

April 14, 2011



Several recent reports do not put Guatemala in a positive light. First, the European Union published a study that found that Guatemala has the highest rate of child malnutrition in all of Latin America. Almost 50% of children under the age of 5 suffer from chronic malnutrition. The EU's Rafael Señán Llarena added that Guatemala's malnutrition rate is higher than that of Haiti and among the five worst in the world.
Second, the Mutual Support Group (GAM) voiced its preoccupation with the continued violence in the country. During the first three months of the year, there were a total of 1,240 victims of violence, including 116 women and 3 girls. 874 of the victims were killed while the remaining 366 were "only" injured.
On the positive side, this number is a decrease from the 909 deaths reported during the first three months of 2010. However, on the negative side, both February (295) and March (304) murders increased after a "calm" January (275). GAM is also worried about the increase in massacres and the number of lynchings.
These numbers include some of the 22 police officers who have died so far this year (some off duty). At least 60 officers were killed last year.
Finally, Guatemala fell eight places (86th to 94th) in the World Economic Forum's Global Information Technology Report's rankings. 138 countries were in the survey.
According to the report, the country is at a disadvantage in terms of the number of days to enforce a contract, the perception of the effectiveness of the laws, the preparation of ICT staff, the quality of education in mathematics and science as well as the quality of the educational system in general.
[The country] also received low scores on the issue of the importance of these technologies in the vision of the Government, intellectual property rights, the acquisition of technologies, production of computers as a percentage of imports and the number of procedures to open a joint-stock company.
One last thing - Rigoberta Menchu's Winaq Political Movement officially became the 27th political party certified by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) for this year's election. I thought that this had already occurred, but I guess not. Menchu sees Winaq's successful formation as a poltical party as an achievement for the indigenous people of Guatemala and all the Americas.
http://centralamericanpolitics.blogspot.com/2011/04/malnutrition-violence-and-investment.html

POVERTY: How the war on fake drugs risks harming the poor

Wednesday 2 February 2011


A new Oxfam report warns that the strategy against counterfeit medicines suits the interests of big pharma and rich countries, but will not safeguard the poor against fake and sub-standard drugs, and could hinder their access to cheap quality medicines


Antibiotic pills. Photograph: Murdo McLeod



There is a lot of talk about the dangers of counterfeit medicines these days and, indeed, counterfeit drugs are dangerous things. But, says Oxfam in a new report today, the war on fake drugs in the developing world is being waged in a way that may suit the big pharmaceutical companies but poses very grave dangers to the health of the poor.
Fake drugs and sub-standard drugs, such as antibiotics with too little of the active ingredient to do any good, are sold all over the developing world. They can do real harm, but the strategy against counterfeits will not stop much of that trade, according to Oxfam, because its focus is to strengthen the patent system. Patents prevent legal copies of new drugs from being made for a period of up to 20 years - but many of the fake and sub-standard drugs going around in Africa and Asia are not in patent anyhow.
Oxfam says rich countries, which are pushing for stronger patents in the interest of the pharmaceutical companies which contribute to their GDP, should instead be helping poor countries to strengthen their drug regulatory and policing systems. This is how Rohit Malpani, senior policy adviser, puts it:
Poor countries are facing a crisis of substandard and falsified medicines that can harm or even kill those who take them. Yet rather than help poor countries address the problem to ensure safe, effective and quality medicines for all, rich countries are putting commercial interests ahead of public health in these countries.
The European Union and the United States continue to focus almost exclusively on eliminating counterfeit medicines which form only a small part of this public health problem – but which are a serious concern for their multinational companies. They have used the crisis in medicine quality in developing countries as an excuse to push for new intellectual property rules that will boost the profits of pharmaceutical giants at the expense of affordable medicines for the poor.
Oxfam is particularly critical of the European Union, but also of the World Health Organisation. There is confusion between counterfeits and generics - legally-made, cheap copies of medicines that, particularly in the case of Aids drugs, have saved lives in the developing world. A WHO-led initiative called IMPACT (International Medical Products Anti-Counterfeiting Taskforce) is unclear on the difference between them. The report says:
IMPACT proposes an expansive definition of counterfeit medicines that confuses conterfeits and generic medicines, and over-emphasises police action to ensure the safety and efficacy of medicines.
At the same time, the multinational pharmaceutical industry has exerted pressure on individual countries, such as Kenya and Thailand, to change their national laws and law enforcement priorities in ways that endanger access to generic medicines.
Generic medicines are vital to the health of the poor. Enforcing patents, in a way that might restrict their manufacture, will do more harm than good, says Oxfam. Instead, developing countries should be helped to strengthen their own monitoring and regulation so that the drugs their citizens use are safe and effective.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/sarah-boseley-global-health/2011/feb/02/pharmaceuticals-industry-drugs

POVERTY: The silence on EU subsidies is a gift to Eurosceptics

Julian Glover guardian.co.uk, Sunday 26 December 2010

By not fighting to reform the common agricultural policy pro-Europeans are helping their opponents, as Cameron well knows
Here's a jolly game for a bank holiday walk. It's called guess the farming subsidy. Anyone can play, and the genius is that you don't even have to be in the countryside to take part.
Strolling past the Guardian's offices in Islington? Locals received €291,071 in payments from the common agricultural policy over the last decade, in part thanks to the borough's ability to export isoglucose from the previously unknown sugar beet fields of Clerkenwell and Barnsbury.
If you are somewhere where you can see real sheep, cows and crops, the game becomes even more fun. Perhaps the Queen has asked you to stay for Christmas. If so, you'll want to know that Sandringham Farms received €3,309,318, including supplementary aid for growing durum wheat (but then Prince Charles does have his quirks).
Do have a go while you can, though. The game may not be so easy to play next year. Not because the CAP's abuses are waning, but through the simpler expedient of covering things up. Programmers and researchers at the farmsubsidy.org website, who have processed the data, are being foiled by a European court of justice ruling, which recently decided that the names of subsidy recipients should be private. Most governments have already removed from their websites information that allows campaigners to name names.
The detailed truth is particularly embarrassing: but with the CAP even the broad totals are startling enough. A subsidy bill of around €55bn a year. A distorted system that means Greek farmers get paid €560 a hectare, but Latvians only €90. A rigged market which means the biggest agribusinesses get the most money and small farmers, who mostly do less harm to the environment, a smaller share of the cash.
The disaster is overfamiliar, so it is ignored. Only pro- and anti-European zealots and environmentalists really care either way. A few years ago, a minister resigned from the UK government, promising to devote himself to the campaign for CAP reform – and of course nothing more was ever heard of him.
There have been bursts of change – decoupling, in Eurospeak – which tied money to land, not production, and removed the worst excesses. Nitrogen fertiliser use has fallen by a third since 1998; some unsustainable crops have gone; and some landowners – charities in Britain included – do use their payments to improve the environment. But not the majority. Rising payments in eastern Europe have lured US grain barons, who are rewarded with EU taxpayers' cash; Poland has been paid to ship pork scraps to Africa.
2011 was supposed to be the year for CAP reform: officials in Brussels slipped out a sensible policy paper last month. But even this contains options for the status quo to continue, or for there to be no policy on agriculture at all. The authors know Europe too well to expect better when governments work out a deal in the coming year.
So, I think, does David Cameron, which is why he is conniving at an arrangement that will keep the CAP in its present form. One of the apparent puzzles of his government is why such an unshakable Eurosceptic is doing so little to cause trouble in Brussels. Liberal Democrats like to think that they have toned down his outrage, and perhaps they have.
But there is another reason too. Like Karl Marx, Cameron has come to understand the revolutionary power of internal dialectical contradiction. Or, in the more traditional phraseology a Tory might choose, "give a man enough rope and he'll hang himself". It suits the Tories to give the Europeans rope.
Cameron dislikes the European Union more than most people realise. But it does not follow that on matters European he feels he must behave in a crassly Eurosceptic manner. If you think that the federalist dream is dead and the institution itself is heading for some form of collapse (as any open-eyed observer might do), then the logical thing is to just wait.
So it was no surprise when just before Christmas it was reported that Britain had done a dirty deal with Germany and France to save the CAP. This country will agree to leave agricultural subsidies essentially unchanged in return for the continued toleration of the British budget rebate. The losers will be eastern European states (the Poles have already denounced "British perfidy, the British lie") and, in the end, the EU itself.
A deal to save the rebate will buy Cameron some peace among his backbenchers at home. Farming friends will be happy too. As beneficiaries of sterling's fall against the euro (the currency in which subsidies are set), they are alone in the UK at not suffering from spending cuts. But a Eurosceptic who truly thought that Europe was a growing force would not be content, as Cameron is, to let the CAP rot continue. Apathy will carry the day: the EU is losing what remains of its momentum and courage.
In 2011 it is pro-Europeans who need to act. They ought to be fighting for CAP and budget reform (as, to be fair, Tony Blair tried to do in the last round of budget negotiations). But for the most part all we get is a lethal silence. The apparent solidity of the Brussels institutions hides shaky foundations.
For some, Europe will always be an affair of the heart. They know what they feel regardless of the facts. But for most, the case for the EU rests on practicalities. It needs to do things well, or at least more effectively than when they are done apart.
Can Europe still claim this to be the case? Perhaps with the bailouts – but then they are driven by the need to save the euro, a currency without a cause. Certainly not with the CAP, which makes up almost half the EU's budget. If, over the next year, the British government ducks a fight over the EU budget, some will take it as a sign that the fire has gone out of the Eurosceptic fight. The truth is the opposite: Cameron has recognised what it means for the sceptics to have won.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/26/eurosceptics-subsidies-cap-cameron

MALNUTRITION: Chad: Nutrient-Rich Algae Help Fight Malnutrition

4 August 2010
A nutrient-rich indigenous produce holds out the hope of a better life for the impoverished women who harvest it on the edges of Lake Chad, and may also one day make a contribution to fighting malnutrition.
Under a $1.4 million project funded by the European Union and run by FAO the women are gathering and processing increasing quantities of a remarkable produce known locally as Dihé, a variety of the blue-green algae called Spirulina.
Dihé is a rich source of protein, iron and betacarotene and can enhance the nutritional value of diets that are poor in these nutrients.
In Chad Dihé is customarily harvested by vulnerable women of the low "Blacksmith" caste from the shallow pools of water where it forms at certain times of the year. Launched in 2007, the project showed them how to do the job more efficiently and hygienically, and how to process, package and market the produce.
Traditionally, Dihé is filtered out directly on the sandy ground near the Wadis (river beds, where conditions are suitable for the development of natural Spirulina), dried into a thin biscuit and subsequently made into a bitter-tasting sauce.
According to Mahamat Sorto, the project's coordinator in Chad, ten tons of improved Dihé have now been produced and sold through pharmacies and groceries in the country, generating 50 million CFA Francs (-75,000) of profits for 500 women.
He estimated that production can be increased tenfold while maintaining the delicate ecological balance which allows the algae to grow under natural conditions. In order to reproduce naturally in the open, it needs a very specific environment - such as that of the brackish water pools that form on the north-eastern shore of Lake Chad at the end of the rainy season. It also needs daytime temperatures of 35-37C dropping to 15-20 C at night.
Commercially-produced Spirulina currently has a rising niche market as a dietary supplement. The algae are grown commercially in anaerobic digesters but Sorto claimed the naturally-produced Chad variety has better nutritional value. It is also 100 times cheaper than the produce retailed in developed countries.
However, prior to broader promotion and marketing further tests on the product may be needed and international certification obtained.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201008050089.html

MALNUTRITION: BURKINA FASO: Vital role for local food

OUAGADOUGOU, 6 July 2010 (IRIN) - Local food - like sesame, tamarind and certain leaves - is a vital tool in the fight against malnutrition, say aid workers training families in northern Burkina Faso. Communities who know the nutritional value of local food, and have the means to conserve and use it, are far less vulnerable, say the NGO Eau Vive and local health workers. "Nutritional foods are all around us, right here," said Balima Léopold, health worker in the town of Dori, northern Burkina, who has worked with Eau Vive to show villagers how to incorporate locally available ingredients into meals. "For example, there are leaves rich in vitamin A for making a good sauce for children." Health workers train local women in making porridge fortified with foods including tamarind, soumbala (a local bean), fish and baobab fruit, Koné Blandine, a midwife and nutrition trainer in nearby Gorom-Gorom, told IRIN. The women in turn teach fellow villagers. Eau Vive also shows people how to get the most nutritional value out of milk from their livestock. "A lot of milk is produced in the Sahel region [where most families raise animals] from July to September," Eau Vive country director Juste Hermann Nansi told IRIN. "But most people discard any surplus for lack of a way to conserve it." The NGO - as part of a three-year "sustainable food security" project funded by the European Union - is teaching villagers to make a cheese that keeps longer than milk and provides a nutritious supplement to meals. Local products properly conserved can help improve the nutritional value of meals particularly during the dry season, said Maïmouna Sanon/Traoré with the European Union in Burkina. "The use of local foods is appropriate in Burkina's Sahel region because they are at hand, adapted to people's eating habits and accessible to the most vulnerable... The ultimate goal is to prevent malnutrition." Food aid dependency For Eau Vive's Nansi and health workers in northern Burkina the promotion of local foods is also a way to combat dependence. "The Sahel region regularly faces drought, water shortages and malnutrition, and this has meant almost perpetual outside assistance. That affects people's mentality," Nansi said. "If our approach proves effective people will have less need for outside help to fight malnutrition." Eau Vive and health workers said initially it was difficult to get villagers motivated about their approach. "We asked them to come to our demonstration with local ingredients," nutrition trainer Koné told IRIN. "At first they were disappointed that we were not coming with bags of food but in time they have seen that they have good nutritious foods at hand." Health worker Balima said: "Education is the only means to show people that they must not count on outside aid." Monotonous diet Still, nutrition experts say local diets are generally deficient in essential nutrients, and local food promotion projects have yet to be applied on a large enough scale to broadly reduce malnutrition. "A lot of communities in this region have a tendency towards a very simple monotonous diet and we are always working to increase the variety of foods they use," said Robert Johnston, nutrition specialist with the UN Children's Fund's (UNICEF) West and Central Africa office. Fortified products - produced either locally or outside - will continue to be an important tool in reducing child malnutrition in the region, he said. "You find [fortified spreads and fortified cereals] throughout West Africa," he said, adding that an important role for UNICEF, the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization is to ensure that such products are safe. "I think most of us cannot see a way around the use of products to satisfy the micronutrient and nutrient needs of infants in the entire region." He said promoting a diversity of foods in infants' diets is necessary and beneficial, but stressed that the foods should be accessible and already part of caregivers' feeding habits. Eau Vive currently does nutrition work in 104 villages in northern Burkina; its activities include infant growth monitoring, and education on malnutrition's causes and treatment. A 2007 Eau Vive study in the region showed that families did not understand children's nutritional needs, Nansi said. "Many do not make the link between what people eat and their health." He noted that hygiene and access to water play a considerable role in proper nutrition and well-being. "It is not enough to solve the issue of accessibility to food."

MALNUTRITION: Expectations of need in the Sahel

DAKAR, June 2 (Reuters) - The European Union sent an extra 24 million euros ($29 million) of aid on Wednesday to help millions facing hunger across the Sahel region of West Africa, but an aid agency said much more was needed to avert a crisis.Failed rains have left over 10 million people at risk in Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso and other countries in the semi-arid belt stretching across the southern edge of the Sahara."It is clear the situation in the Sahel is getting worse," EU Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva said in a statement, adding the emergency aid would be used for food programmes, treating child malnutrition and other healthcare.Niger last month forecast that 3.3 million people, or 22 percent of its population, would face severe food shortages, with a further 3.8 million vulnerable to a lesser degree.Aid workers are already reporting tell-tale signs of food shortages, such as a growing migration of families from the countryside to cities, and increases in the number of child beggars on the streets.Georgieva is due to travel to Niger later this week, the latest top international aid official to visit the region.Despite the rising expressions of concern, Niger has only received around half the 146 million euros it is seeking to tackle the crisis, while a Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) request for $11.8 million for Chad has yielded $2 million.British aid agency Oxfam welcomed the EU cash but urged European capitals to make further contributions.Life in the Sahel is among the most precarious in the world but this year's food shortages are seen hitting especially hard.UNICEF expects this year to treat 378,000 children for severe malnutrition and 1.2 million for moderate malnutrition in Niger alone, compared to a typical annual total of 300,000 cases in the country in recent years.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKLDE651255._CH_.2420

POVERTY: India: the cheese industry and free trade

India is facing strong pressure to open up its markets to cheese and other dairy produce from Europe, even though the New Delhi government has expressed fears about how small farmers could be forced into deeper poverty as a result.Because its dairy sector employs 90 million people, India has advocated that milk and cheese be excluded from the scope of the free trade agreement under negotiation with the European Union. EU officials nonetheless stepped up their efforts to have India's agricultural markets liberalised during the latest round of talks, which took place in the last week of April. A Brussels source said that moves to open up all agricultural sectors are under discussion. "It has not yet been decided which products will be liberalised and India's sensitivities will certainly be taken into account as negotiations progress," the source told IPS. Anti-poverty activists complain, however, that the EU has displayed scant concern for the plight of India's rural poor until now. While India's dairy sector is of critical importance in providing work and income to farmers, particularly those who do not own land, Europe's cheese- makers have been adamant that protections offered to India's poor should be dismantled. In 2007 -- the year that talks aimed at reaching an EU-India free trade agreement were launched -- the European Dairy Association contended that the taxes levied by the Delhi authorities on imported food were "unrealistically high." But critics of the EU's trade strategies argue that scrapping such tariffs would leave India's farmers unable to withstand competition from European imports. Often those imports have been highly subsidised and can be sold at lower prices than domestically produced food.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51292

Biofuels: the EU viewpoint and the refutation

The anti-poverty head of the European Union refused to acknowledge that bio-fuels raised food prices to make millions more hungry. This claim was made despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary. The EUs commissioner for development aid Andris Piebalgs issued a position paper published on April 21st. In it, Piebalgs defends the EU's policy of using food for energy. Piebalgs formerly served as the EUs Energy Commissioner.From the IPS, writer David Cronin reveals more from the paper and the reaction to it.
"I can clearly state today that biofuel policy has done no damage in the developing world," Piebalgs told IPS. "The focus is right."Holding the energy portfolio in the European Commission from 2004 until last year, Piebalgs was one of the most zealous defenders of an EU strategy that at least 10 percent of all journeys undertaken on the bloc's roads by 2020 should be powered by biofuels.Since that goal was set in 2007, it has encountered stiff opposition from environmental campaigners and food policy analysts. The World Food Programme has held the greater use of biofuels at least partly responsible for a spike in the prices of basic groceries that has pushed the number of people who suffer from chronic hunger and malnutrition beyond a billion. Food crops used for cars and trucks include wheat, maize, soy, sugar and palm oil.Piebalgs' stance contrasts with the findings of several studies undertaken at the Commission's request. An environmental impact assessment on the EU's biofuels policy issued last month cast doubts on whether it will help slow down the pace of climate change. The assessment calculated that raising the proportion of biofuels used for road transport above 5 percent in the next decade would do more harm than good to the global environment as many forests would be sacrificed to create room for biofuel plantations.The Commission has so far refused to make public a series of other documents relating to the biofuels target."Evidence is building that the EU's biofuels policy is leading to the destruction of forests and rural areas, as well as pushing up food prices," said Adrian Bebb from Friends of the Earth. "It is crystal clear that the EU's policy on biofuels is not sustainable and it is only a matter of time before the EU needs to change that policy. Quite clearly, though, some commissioners are still in denial."Earlier this year ActionAid predicted that an additional 600 million people would join the ranks of the world's hungry by 2020 unless the EU scraps its biofuels target. Anne Catherine Claude, a campaigner with the organisation, said that Piebalgs is "probably afraid" of admitting the impact of biofuels because he does not wish to upset the large energy and agribusiness companies who have a vested interest in keeping the target. The Union's objective was originally set after EU officials consulted an advisory panel comprising representatives of such firms as Shell, Abengoa, Total, British Sugar, Nestlé and Volvo.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51152