HIV Epidemic Contributing to Global Resurgence of Tuberculosis

Soni Sangha : July 08, 2011 : Fox News Latino
Soni Sangha is a freelancer based in New York City.

 PAHO/WHO
Because Latin American doctors are misdiagnosing these patients, treatments that can cure or reduce illness and prevent death are not being administered properly. As a result, the HIV epidemic has contributed to a global resurgence of tuberculosis.

Most people in Latin America and the Caribbean who are simultaneously affected by HIV and tuberculosis are being treated for one disease or the other – but not both.
Because Latin American doctors are misdiagnosing these patients, treatments that can cure or reduce illness and prevent death are not being administered properly. As a result, the HIV epidemic has contributed to a global resurgence of tuberculosis.
Tuberculosis is the leading cause of death among HIV patients which is why this problem is being addressed by the Pan American Health Organization and World Health Organization this week. These groups are leading a charge in an area that has the highest percentage of HIV and tuberculosis co-infection outside of sub-Sarahan Africa by hosting meetings calling for more integration between independent efforts to curb HIV and tuberculosis.
Tuberculosis is a bacteria that, if the body’s immune system is functioning properly, may not show any symptoms. However, if the bacteria takes over the immune system it can spread and grow in the lungs. That may cause a cough that can last longer than two weeks, cause pain the chest and result in coughing up blood or sputum.
An HIV patient’s immune system can become so compromised that it cannot effectively combat bacterial infections. If a patient who has been carrying the tuberculosis bacteria and has never shown symptoms develops HIV, they have a very high chance of developing a severe infection.
It can be difficult to diagnose tuberculosis in HIV patients.
Tuberculosis is normally detected by injecting the skin with a protein found in the bacteria. If the skin swells, the test is positive and the bacteria is likely present. However, the immune system of HIV patients can be so weak that it might not be able to react to the tuberculosis protein, giving a false negative to the test.
Treatment of tuberculosis in non-HIV patients is relatively straightforward. But in HIV patients, it is complicated. They are on a number of drugs, some of which counteract with traditionally effective tuberculosis treatments. As a result, the drugs become useless and can even do harm to the patient. As such, tuberculosis in HIV patients has to be treated differently.
Tuberculosis and HIV co-infections are high in Brazil, Guatemala, Jamaica, Haiti, Honduras, El Salvador, and Mexico. In these and other Latin American countries, treatment for tuberculosis is free and widely available. But medications are not available for HIV patients for whom the standard tuberculosis drugs are not effective.
The Pan American Health Organization is hoping to make alternative treatments available.

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/health/2011/07/08/hiv-epidemic-contributing-to-global-resurgence-tuberculosis/#ixzz1SSMQhQ8G

POVERTY: Latin America Needs To Double GDP By 2025 To Address Poverty

Shane Romig : Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES : MAY 27, 2011
BUENOS AIRES (Dow Jones)--Latin American and Caribbean economies have grown sharply over the past 20 years, but inequality and injustice remain rampant and the region would need to double gross domestic production by 2025 to significantly reduce poverty, the president of the Inter-American Development Bank said Friday.
The IDB is the largest source of development financing for Latin America and the Caribbean, borrowing in international markets at competitive rates and passing on ...
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110527-712458.html

MALARIA: Amazon Malaria Initiative meeting

May 11 2011
For the next two days, Belize is hosting health officials from 13 South American countries on San Pedro. They are attending the Amazon Malaria Initiative meeting which affords countries of the region an opportunity to share experiences on interventions in the prevention and control of malaria.

Of special interest at this meeting is the use of Long Lasting Insecticide Treated Bed Nets. Belize has been participating in the initiative for the last several years now, and according to Dr. Jose Marenco, Head of Belize's Vector Control Unit, the Amazon countries bring with them a wealth of information on the topic of Malaria.

Dr. Jose Marenco- Head of Vector Control Unit
"Belize has been participating in this initiative for several years now. The relationship has intensified over the last 2 years actually. So it was decided that there was a need to have a meeting to review the strategy for the implementation of impregnated insecticide treated nets. It's something that Belize doesn't have much experience in. And so when we were approached about hosting the meeting, we found it important so we embraced the idea, and so we have 13 countries from South America coming to Belize to share their experience in the implementation of insecticide treated bed nets. So we have a couple of our associates from the Ministry of Health and Red Cross - we invited also - to share, listen and learn during these 2 days. Red Cross has distributed bed nets during times of disaster; we appreciate that very much. Ministry of Health has, since 2009, implemented bed net distribution also, but we do it not in a very systematic way. So learn a lot, not just to distribute them, but to monitor them, to see their residual effect - even the disposal at the end of the lifetime of the bed nets. Certainly, as we continue bringing malaria incidence down, this initiative can help us to keep the achievements so far."
http://www.7newsbelize.com/sstory.php?nid=19620

POVERTY: Peru relaxes GM rules … for now

Zoraida Portillo : 9 May 2011
 Flickr/iied.org
Peru is home to a high biodiversity of crops such as potatoes

After nine years of discussions, Peru's government has passed an agricultural biosafety regulation intended to promote biotechnological research and help the country's researchers catch up with other Latin American nations.
The Biosafety Rules for the Agriculture or Forestry Sectors will regulate the research, production and trade of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), activities that were not previously allowed apart from the import of GMOs for food and limited permission to study GM potatoes.
But the regulation, signed into legislation by the president, Alan Garcia, last month (15 April), has had a cool reception from both public and private sectors, including some scientists. Critics fear the law will open the floodgates to GMOs, jeopardising the country's biodiversity — Peru is home to many unique wild relatives of staple crops such as potatoes and maize.
The Peruvian Society of Environmental Rights has said farmers do not need GM crops to be productive and has called for the country to heed the precautionary principle of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, which Peru signed in 2004.
But Jorge Alcantara, head of genetic resources and biotechnology at the National Institute of Agrarian Research (INIA), has denied that the regulation opens the door to indiscriminate GM crop production. "On the contrary, it will regulate all activities related to the use of GMOs under strict scientific control measures," he told SciDev.Net.
Under the law, INIA will be responsible for the security of biotechnological activities in the agricultural sector and for developing GM research. Critics have said that this makes INIA "judge and the jury" for any decisions regarding GMOs.
To ease concerns, INIA has started mapping areas containing wild varieties of maize, cotton and potatoes to minimise the risks of cross-fertilisation between GM and non-GM crops in any future field trials.
If there is an application for planting GM crops close to these native varieties, "it would be very difficult to approve a release," Alcantara said.
He added that the Cayetano Heredia and San Martín de Porres universities, the International Potato Center and INIA will be the first to benefit from the law as it will allow them to conduct research.
Phytogeneticist Maria Scurrah, president of Mountain Research Initiative, Lima, told SciDev.Net the benefit of the regulation is that it will allow research with real GM cultivars, not just computer simulations.
She added there should be more investigation into both the potential benefits and the risks of GM technology for Peru, and "regulation is a good way to start doing that".
Marcel Gutierrez-Correa, director of the Laboratory of Mycology and Biotechnology at the National Agrarian University La Molina, said the regulation makes it easier to obtain research funding for crops and areas that big corporations are not interested in, such as developing GM papaya resistant to ringspot virus.
But there are moves to restrict the new law. Next week Peru's Congress is scheduled to discuss another bill that would set a 15-year moratorium on the entry of any GMOs into the country, apart from those for research purposes and drugs containing GMOs that are not available in other forms.
The environment minister, Antonio Brack Egg, who heads the movement, told SciDev.Net that a moratorium is needed "to scientifically analyse the potential impacts, and to have infrastructure and institutional capacity to face an eventual presence of GMOs in the country".
But the agriculture minister, Rafael Quevedo, said that, if the moratorium is approved, Peru will suffer trading reprisals and jeopardise free-trade treaties, without any scientific evidence of risk for either human health or the environment.
http://www.scidev.net/en/news/peru-relaxes-gm-rules-for-now.html

MALNUTRITION: GM maize contaminates non-GM crops in Uruguay

Daniela Hirschfeld : 5 May 2011
 Flickr/nchenga
Pollen from GM maize may fertilise non-GM plants

Contamination of traditional maize crops planted near genetically modified (GM) maize fields may be common in Uruguay, where the cultivation of GM maize has been permitted since 2003, scientists have said.
A study published in Environmental Biosafety Research (25 March) has found GM seedlings in three traditional maize fields. It is said to be the first report of cross-fertilisation between GM and non-GM maize in South America.
Studies on the unplanned presence of GM maize and the contamination of non-GM crops in Latin America have led to some controversial cases, such as a retracted 2001 Nature study from Mexico and a 2007 Peruvian study that led to a libel case against one of the scientists who challenged the findings and a subsequent campaign for freedom of speech for scientists.
And Monsanto's GM maize trial in Mexico has recently re-ignited the debate in the country that boasts the most diverse maize genetic resources.
But, unlike Mexico and Peru, Uruguay permits the cultivation of GM maize. The varieties MON810 and Bt11 were approved for commercial planting in 2003 and 2004, respectively.
Governmental regulations specify that GM and non-GM crop fields should be more than 250 metres apart to avoid cross-fertilisation and ensure their "regulated coexistence", and that 10 per cent of the field should be non-GM to provide a refuge area for biodiversity.
In the latest research, scientists from Uruguay's University of the Republic analysed five pairs of commercial maize fields where farmers planted GM maize at about the same time as a nearby non-GM crop.
Studying commercial fields is better than using experimental plots, which may not correspond to the real-life situation, the scientists argue.
In three cases they detected foreign genes from GM maize, the 'transgenes', in seedlings produced by seeds taken from the non-GM crops. The transgenes were presumably blown over in pollen from the GM fields.
The highest percentage of transgenic seedlings was 0.83 per cent in a field 100 metres from the GM maize field.
In one case, the cross-fertilisation occurred despite a Eucalyptus tree barrier (12 metres high, 30 metres wide) separating the fields, and another case involved cross-fertilisation between fields more than 250 metres apart.
Cross-fertilisation may therefore be "a common situation in Uruguay", the authors said, adding that the area planted with GM maize in the country is increasing.
"These results also show that the current regulation in Uruguay is insufficient and that the actual 'coexistence policy' is not well known among farmers," Pablo Galeano, the study's lead author, told SciDev.Net. "I think that to talk about 'regulated coexistence' without the necessary tools to make it viable is nothing more than rhetoric."
But Galeano cautioned that the findings may not necessarily apply to other crops or other countries.
"Cross-fertilisation depends on topography, size and orientation of fields, type of maize, wind direction during the flowering time, temperature and humidity, so it is hardly possible to generalise our results to other crops, areas or countries," he said.
Daniel Bayce, manager of Uruguay's National Seed Institute, told SciDev.Net that the findings were not representative because cross-fertilisation was detected mostly where the fields were too close, and even then "the frequency of GM contamination was very low".
http://www.scidev.net/en/news/gm-maize-contaminates-non-gm-crops-in-uruguay-1.html

MALNUTRITION: Experts say 53.5 mln suffer from hunger in L. America, Caribbean

Editor: Xiong Tong : 2011-05-06

LIMA, May 5 (Xinhua) -- A total of 53.5 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean suffer from hunger or malnutrition, experts said at an international forum here Thursday.
Juan Garcia, coordinator of the 5th work-group meeting of the Latin American and Caribbean Initiative Without Hunger, said the figure has not increased since 1990.
Experts and officials from 13 countries gathered to discuss the challenges facing regional food security and advances that have been made, hoping to make cooperative efforts to eradicate hunger and malnutrition by the year 2025.
Garcia said people affected most across the continent are still those living in rural areas as well as African descendants and indigenous people who suffer from "exclusion and inequality."
The main cause of undernutrition is not lack of food-production capacity, but access to food, Garcia said.
Six countries, Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, have approved food security laws with nine more in the process of doing so. The laws are considered as a way to ensure that local agricultural products are primarily used to feed the countries' own populations and not used for export.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/health/2011-05/06/c_13861779.htm

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: Latin America saw 41 million emerge from poverty since 2002

Nov 30, 2010 
Santiago - Latin American countries managed to get 41 million people out of poverty since 2002 and improved the distribution of income, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) said Tuesday.
Progress was particularly significant in Argentina, Venezuela and Peru, which reduced poverty by 20-30 per cent, ECLAC said.
In Brazil, Chile, Ecuador and Panama the reduction was around 10 per cent, where income distribution was also greatly improved.
'There is a generalized trend towards the reduction of poverty, with the exception of Costa Rica,' ECLAC's executive secretary Alicia Barcena said.
The progress, which still leaves Latin America with some 180 million poor, was accomplished by countercyclical fiscal and social policies.
'This is the first time in history in which Latin America managed to reduce poverty immediately after an economic crisis like that of 2008-9,' Barcena noted.
Given the good economic prospects for 2011, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay had reduced poverty rates to around 11 per cent of the population, the lowest in Latin America.
Countries like Paraguay, Bolivia, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, however, continued to have at least half their population under the poverty line.
'There are indeed very different realities in Latin America, but in all cases we see progress,' Barcena said.
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/business/news/article_1602566.php/Latin-America-saw-41-million-emerge-from-poverty-since-2002

POVERTY: Want to slash poverty? Look to Latin America.

By David R. Francis / November 22, 2010
While poverty has grown in the United States, it's been shrinking in Central and South America.
Brazilian children use new computers in their classroom. A development program in Brazil offered small amounts of cash to poor families if they sent their children to school, contributing to a swift rise in literacy and decline in poverty.

  Agilix Labs, Inc. / AP / File

One in 10 South Americans – about 38 million people – escaped poverty during the past decade. That's remarkable progress by any measure.
Contrast that with the United States, where poverty has been growing due to a decade-long stagnation of income for the middle class and the Great Recession. In 2009, the US had more poor people than in any of the 51 years since poverty levels have been estimated.
Of course, America's poor are far better off than South America's poor. And the US still has a much lower poverty rate (14.2 percent versus around 70 percent). South America remains infamous for huge income gaps between a tiny elite and masses of people making, often, just $1 or $2 a day.
Still, 10 years of growing prosperity has shrunk that gap. The credit goes to democratic leftist governments that have vastly boosted social spending to help the poor, maintains Mark Weisbrot, a left-of-center economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.
Half of that improvement comes from Brazil. Under outgoing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the nation pushed up the minimum wage a real 65 percent in eight years, helping to raise the wages of tens of millions of workers, including many receiving more than minimum wage. A program offered small cash grants to poor families if they sent their children to school.
The results? Real income per person is up some 24 percent since 2000. Illiteracy is down. Poverty has been halved since 2002; extreme poverty is down by 70 percent, says Mr. Weisbrot, pulling more than 19 million people into the middle class.
And the economy hasn't suffered. Unemployment under Mr. da Silva's presidency dropped from more than 11 percent to 6.7 percent. Income inequality has fallen considerably.
Other nations with "progressive" governments have made much social progress, notes Weisbrot. He lists Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, and Venezuela. Under President Hugo Chávez, attacked by the right in the US, oil-rich Venezuela has tripled social spending per person since 2003. Attendance at universities has doubled. Most of the poor now get health care under a government program.
The continent weathered the financial crisis relatively well. Social spending rose. So there was no big rise in poverty, says Norbert Schady, an economic adviser to the Inter-American Development Bank, speaking from Quito, Ecuador.
Moreover, prospects for continued economic progress are strong. The Institute of International Finance (IIF), set up by the world's biggest banks, forecasts 6 percent growth in gross domestic product in Latin America this year, which includes Mex­ico and Central America as well as South Am­er­ica. That growth should shrink poverty further.
By contrast, the IIF forecasts a 2.5 percent growth rate this year for the US. At that slow pace the US could see a further rise in poverty.
South America's new economic vigor is also causing a geopolitical shift. The US has long considered Latin America part of its political and economic sphere of influence. Officials running South America's left-of-center governments often charge the US with imperial ambitions.
But as US growth slows, South America's businesses have reached out to other markets. While 15 percent of South America's trade is still with the US, a greater share is tied to Europe. Also, trade within the continent is growing with a free-trade deal. So South American governments no longer feel so much under the thumb of the US.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/2010/1122/Want-to-slash-poverty-Look-to-Latin-America

POVERTY: Human development index: Equality matters if we are to reduce poverty

This year's UN human development report will for the first time include an 'Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index' to rank quality of life within nations
Sarah Boseley; Madeleine Bunting; Larry Elliott; Jonathan Glennie; John Vidal;
2010 is the 20th anniversary of the first UN human development report.

Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty Images



Twenty years ago the first UN's human development report (UNDPR) put numbers on something we all know anyway – that there are more important things in life than money. Whereas previously countries had been ranked in terms of wealth, the HDR ranked them according to human wellbeing. I have yet to find a better explanation of why GNP is such a limited measure of how a country is doing than the one given by Robert Kennedy, when he was running for president, a few weeks before he was shot:
"Our gross national product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armoured cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programmes which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
"Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.
"It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans."
Human development index rankings The HDR tried to rectify some of that, and it is still an eagerly anticipated publication. But it is also true that in recent years it has been losing a bit of its pulling power. There is little to surprise us any more. Norway is always top, and an unfortunate African country (recently Zimbabwe) is always bottom. Even the movements around the Index are not big enough to be very significant given the limitations in the methodology.
But this year, to mark the 20th anniversary of the first report, tucked away unassumingly in chapter five, is a new feature that could again revolutionise our way of assessing progress, and revitalise the HDR's mission. Alongside the regular Human Development Index, the team of researchers has added what they are calling an "Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index", or IHDI.
The HDI measures average wellbeing in a country, but not the disparities between different regions or groups within a country, which are sometimes vast. The IHDI now takes into account how human development is distributed as well. Countries which are very unequal see their human development scores suffer more than those that are less unequal.
So how does this affect the all-important rankings? In the top 20 countries, movement is limited. Inequality in health, education and income, which are the dimensions of inequality measured in the new Index, is less in countries with "very high human development". But there are some things worth noting. The USA moves down nine places, while South Korea, the incredible economic and human development success story of the past half century, also moves down 18 places (from 12th to 30th) in recognition of its high levels of inequality.
The other big losers are almost all in Latin America, the most unequal region in the world. Panama falls 20 places, Peru 26, Brazil 15, Colombia 18. Venezuela only falls one place, while Nicaragua bucks the trend, rising six places – read into that what you will.
Which are the countries moving up the scale, to take the places of these falling unequal countries? There is no clear pattern but quite a few of them seem to be from the former soviet block (Armenia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Uzbekistan).
Does any of this matter? I think so. One of the main findings of the first 10 years of the MDGs is that inequality matters. More and more people are realising that rising inequality within and between countries is one of the great challenges facing the modern world. Equality matters as an end in itself, and it matters as one of the quickest means to reduce absolute poverty.
It is very significant that this UN flagship publication is for the first time including inequality in its rankings, tentatively at first, but hopefully it will get bolder in coming years. When the HDI proper fully incorporates an inequality adjustment (ie the IHDI replaces the HDI as the main index), countries will really sit up and listen.
Governments do care about this index and where they are placed on it. Civil society will use these figures in their battles for a more just world. Crucially, when a country manages to reduce inequality, it moves up the rankings. Brazil has seen its "HDI losses" fall between 2000 and 2005 as the country has become a little more equal.
As with the HDI when it was first launched, the methodology may need some tinkering over time, and the weighting (how much importance you attach to inequality, in a number, which affects overall ranking) will no doubt be adjusted according to what is politically feasible. But the first step has been taken.
This is not the only innovation in this year's HDR, which also launches indexes in gender inequality and multidimensional poverty, nor the only interesting talking point – the document is full of fascinating analyses that challenge some widely held beliefs. But in the long term, it could prove the most important.
Twenty years ago the first UN's human development report (UNDPR) put numbers on something we all know anyway – that there are more important things in life than money. Whereas previously countries had been ranked in terms of wealth, the HDR ranked them according to human wellbeing. I have yet to find a better explanation of why GNP is such a limited measure of how a country is doing than the one given by Robert Kennedy, when he was running for president, a few weeks before he was shot:
"Our gross national product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armoured cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programmes which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
"Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.
"It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans."
Human development index rankings The HDR tried to rectify some of that, and it is still an eagerly anticipated publication. But it is also true that in recent years it has been losing a bit of its pulling power. There is little to surprise us any more. Norway is always top, and an unfortunate African country (recently Zimbabwe) is always bottom. Even the movements around the Index are not big enough to be very significant given the limitations in the methodology.
But this year, to mark the 20th anniversary of the first report, tucked away unassumingly in chapter five, is a new feature that could again revolutionise our way of assessing progress, and revitalise the HDR's mission. Alongside the regular Human Development Index, the team of researchers has added what they are calling an "Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index", or IHDI.
The HDI measures average wellbeing in a country, but not the disparities between different regions or groups within a country, which are sometimes vast. The IHDI now takes into account how human development is distributed as well. Countries which are very unequal see their human development scores suffer more than those that are less unequal.
So how does this affect the all-important rankings? In the top 20 countries, movement is limited. Inequality in health, education and income, which are the dimensions of inequality measured in the new Index, is less in countries with "very high human development". But there are some things worth noting. The USA moves down nine places, while South Korea, the incredible economic and human development success story of the past half century, also moves down 18 places (from 12th to 30th) in recognition of its high levels of inequality.
The other big losers are almost all in Latin America, the most unequal region in the world. Panama falls 20 places, Peru 26, Brazil 15, Colombia 18. Venezuela only falls one place, while Nicaragua bucks the trend, rising six places – read into that what you will.
Which are the countries moving up the scale, to take the places of these falling unequal countries? There is no clear pattern but quite a few of them seem to be from the former soviet block (Armenia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Uzbekistan).
Does any of this matter? I think so. One of the main findings of the first 10 years of the MDGs is that inequality matters. More and more people are realising that rising inequality within and between countries is one of the great challenges facing the modern world. Equality matters as an end in itself, and it matters as one of the quickest means to reduce absolute poverty.
It is very significant that this UN flagship publication is for the first time including inequality in its rankings, tentatively at first, but hopefully it will get bolder in coming years. When the HDI proper fully incorporates an inequality adjustment (ie the IHDI replaces the HDI as the main index), countries will really sit up and listen.
Governments do care about this index and where they are placed on it. Civil society will use these figures in their battles for a more just world. Crucially, when a country manages to reduce inequality, it moves up the rankings. Brazil has seen its "HDI losses" fall between 2000 and 2005 as the country has become a little more equal.
As with the HDI when it was first launched, the methodology may need some tinkering over time, and the weighting (how much importance you attach to inequality, in a number, which affects overall ranking) will no doubt be adjusted according to what is politically feasible. But the first step has been taken.
This is not the only innovation in this year's HDR, which also launches indexes in gender inequality and multidimensional poverty, nor the only interesting talking point – the document is full of fascinating analyses that challenge some widely held beliefs. But in the long term, it could prove the most important.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/datablog/2010/nov/04/human-development-index-equality-matters

MALARIA: elimination 'most feasible' in Latin America

María Elena Hurtado and Mićo Tatalović
29 October 2010


Flickr/trebol-a

Malaria elimination is most feasible in Latin America and least feasible in Central and West Africa, according to a study mapping 99 malaria-endemic countries.
Malaria elimination has been ongoing since the 1900s, Richard Feachem, director of the Global Health Group at the University of California, San Francisco, said at a press conference in London, United Kingdom, today.
Feachem said that a reasonable estimate for global eradication of malaria is 2050–2060. He was speaking at a launch of a series of papers on malaria elimination in The Lancet.
One paper examined how likely different countries are to stop transmission of Plasmodium falciparum malaria with existing control measures — and thus eliminate the disease.
The study used existing data to rank countries according to technical and operational feasibility of elimination. This included factors such as the intensity of disease transmission, the state of health systems, infrastructure, political stability, and political commitment to achieving and sustaining elimination.
A lack of data on Plasmodium vivax meant the study could only produce robust estimates for P. falciparum.
The results show that eliminating P. falciparum is most feasible in Latin America, where less than a 50 per cent reduction in 2007 transmission levels is needed to achieve elimination.This is due to economic development, improved health systems, and good accessibility to populations at risk in the region, as well as the relatively low transmission levels of the disease.
Latin American countries on the road to elimination are: Argentina, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Mexico, Panama and Paraguay. Haiti was on this list before the January earthquake.
In Africa, only a few countries — including Botswana, Djibouti and Swaziland — are well placed to eliminate P. falciparum with existing methods. In this region a new vaccine will likely be necessary for malaria elimination, said Geoff Targett, emeritus professor of immunology of parasitic diseases at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and member of the Malaria Elimination Group.
Countries in West and Central Africa face the greatest obstacles. They need a more than 90 per cent reduction in 2007 transmission levels to achieve elimination.
"Before embarking on an elimination campaign, countries must conduct a comprehensive and rigorous feasibility assessment that draws on detailed evidence that is not easily summarized at global scales," Andrew Tatem, lead author of the study and a researcher at the Emerging Pathogens Institute of the University of Florida, United States, told SciDev.Net.
Justin Cohen of the Malaria Control Team at the global health organisation Clinton Health Access Initiative said that "this work demonstrates that quantitative approaches can provide objective insights into the feasibility of malaria elimination — a sometimes contentious subject".
The Malaria Elimination Group will have its annual meeting at the Mexico–Guatemala border in ten days time "to review the Central American experience with representatives from those countries to ask about their views on what is possible for them," Feachem said.
"It will take a lot of regional collaboration, and the cross-border dimension will be critical because there are significant population movements across those borders." Such cross-border movements can import malaria cases to countries that have eliminated the disease.
http://www.scidev.net/en/news/malaria-elimination-most-feasible-in-latin-america.html

MALNUTRITION: Health Leaders Endorse Major Effort to Fight Chronic Malnutrition in Latin America and the Caribbean

 September 30, 2010
PAHO strategy targets multiple causes of stunted growth throughout the life course
Top health authorities from throughout the Americas today endorsed a major new effort to reduce chronic malnutrition, the most serious nutrition problem in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Nearly 9 million children under 5 in the Region suffer from chronic malnutrition. Some 22.3 million preschoolers, 33 million women of childbearing age, and 3.6 million pregnant women suffer from anemia. These figures are ethically unacceptable in a Region where food production exceeds the nutritional requirements of the entire population by 30 percent.
Malnutrition affects physical growth and mental development, increases the risk of illness and death and negatively affects human capital and economic well-being. In addition, malnutrition is a major factor perpetuating the cycle of poverty. Recent research suggests that malnutrition also contributes to chronic noncommunicable diseases. Low height-for-age, or stunting, is the primary indicator for chronic malnutrition and is also considered a proxy indicator for the overall living conditions of a population.
The causes of chronic malnutrition are multiple and include maternal malnutrition, poor diet, and repeated infections as immediate causes. But underlying causes such as lack of access to basic sanitation and health services, low educational levels of mothers, food insecurity, and social inequality also play major roles.
To be effective, policies and programs must address the determinants of malnutrition rather than just its effects and must intervene across the life course, rather than just during pregnancy or childhood.
The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) strategy approved today calls on countries to:
Implement policies and programs that address the social determinants of nutrition and health, emphasizing education for girls and women, food security, household income and purchasing power, housing, and adolescent, maternal and child health.
Ensure the participation and coordination of different ministries and adequate resources at the national, municipal, and local levels.
Place priority on implementing these programs in communities that have rates of chronic malnutrition of 15 percent or more.
Develop human resources to manage and implement these programs and provide health workers with training on key food, nutrition, and health issues.
Promote partnerships between the public and private sectors, academia, international cooperation agencies, and society at large, and strengthen links between national and regional initiatives geared to promoting nutrition, health, and development.
Improve nutritional surveillance by collecting data on gender, ethnicity, and geographical area to improve policymaking, forecasting and prevention of nutritional problems. Report periodically on the prevalence of chronic malnutrition, acute malnutrition, overweight, obesity, and anemia in pregnant women and children under 5.
Promote international and national sharing of information and lessons learned about successful strategies to reduce chronic malnutrition.
The strategy calls on PAHO to provide technical cooperation in all these areas to support countries' efforts.
The PAHO Directing Council meets each year to set priorities for Pan-American cooperation in health and to guide PAHO's technical cooperation programs in its Member States.

PAHO was established in 1902 and is the world's oldest public health organization. It works with all the countries of the Americas to improve the health and quality of life of the people of the Americas and serves as the Regional Office for the Americas of the World Health Organization (WHO).
http://www.pharmpro.com/News/Feeds/2010/09/agencies-and-organizations-pan-american-health-organization-health-leaders-endorse-major-effort-to-fight-chron/

POVERTY: Brazil and President Lula's approach

As Brazil's first working-class president, Lula has become a global symbol of the fight against poverty and the rise of emerging markets. The combination of market-friendly policies with expanded social welfare programs has given Lula the reputation of a moderate leftist, and his policy mix is seen as a model for much of Latin America.
-- Born in the poor semi-arid northeast, Lula moved with his family to Sao Paulo, where he shined shoes and worked as a delivery boy. He never finished high school but learned the metalworker's trade. He rose to national fame as a union leader who helped combat the 1964-1985 military dictatorship and in 1980 founded the leftist Workers' Party. He lost three presidential races before winning the October 2002 election.
-- His flagship welfare program, Bolsa Familia, has received international recognition as one of the most cost-effective ways to reduce extreme poverty and boost local economic activity. The program pays families a monthly stipend, provided they get regular medical check-ups and send their children to school.
-- Under Lula, Brazil's economy grew at its fastest pace in decades and some 20 million people emerged from poverty. He has given the central bank a free hand to conduct monetary and currency policy, but during the 2008/09 global financial crisis he stepped up government-centered economic policies, such as boosting state enterprises and low-cost loans.
-- Lula pursued a much more proactive foreign policy than any of his predecessors, acting as a mediator in regional conflicts, leading a peace-keeping mission in Haiti, and playing a key role in global trade and climate negotiations. Brazil helped foment a common front of developing nations to help counterbalance interests of the United States and Europe in the Doha trade round.
-- At home he is criticized for having turned a blind eye to corruption and becoming friendly with rogue leaders in Venezuela and Iran. A charismatic, grandfatherly figure, Lula is one of the few global leaders with a popularity rating around 80 percent toward the end of his second term.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2427652420100824

POVERTY: Poverty and Lack of Research Block Path to a Well-Fed World

I’m catching up with a great package of reports, commentary and analysis in the July 28th edition of the journal Nature on the challenging, but entirely doable, task of feeding roughly 9 billion people by midcentury (and doing so without using up the last patches of arable land). One of the best things about the package is that most of the content is freely accessible, as was the case with an important paper on feeding the world in the competing journal Science in February.
The Nature reports explore the vital role of advancing and disseminating useful agricultural practices and technologies, including but hardly limited to genetically modified crops, but also the simple reality that poverty is the main source of hunger now, not a lack of food. A central theme is efficiency, getting higher yields on small plots with fewer inputs of water and fertilizer. There’s a nice downloadable summary poster of some of the main findings.
The journal also points out the glaring lack of government investment in basic research and development on agriculture, a remarkable parallel to the other area of science that sees scant government investment despite its importance in the next few decades — energy. This Nature graph says it all (graphic by Nik Spencer, data compiled by Declan Butler):

Here are just a few of the bullet points:
1. Where the hungry people are
In 2009, more than 1 billion people went undernourished — their food intake regularly providing less than minimum energy requirements — not because there isn’t enough food, but because people are too poor to buy it. At least 30 percent of food goes to waste. Although the highest rates of hunger are in sub-Saharan Africa — tracking closely with poverty — most of the world’s undernourished people are in Asia.
2. Hunger isn’t going away
The percentage of hungry people in the developing world had been dropping for decades even though the number of hungry worldwide barely dipped. But the food price crisis in 2008 reversed these decades of gains.
3. It’s not about the bomb
Scientists long feared a great population boom that would stress food production, but population growth is slowing and should plateau by 2050 as family size in almost all poorer countries falls to roughly 2.2 children per family. Even as population has risen, the overall availability of calories per person has increased, not decreased. Producing enough food in the future is possible, but doing so without drastically sapping other resources, particularly water, will be difficult.
4. And it’s not about land
An outlook published in 2009 by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (http://go.nature.com/DdNYvk) says that current cropland could be more than doubled by adding 1.6 billion hectares — mostly from Latin America and Africa — without impinging on land needed for forests, protected areas or urbanization. But Britain’s Royal Society has advised against substantially increasing cultivated land, arguing that this would damage ecosystems and biodiversity (http://go.nature.com/YJ2jsB). Instead, it backs “sustainable intensification,” which has become the priority of many agricultural research agencies.
There are pieces focused on sustaining the Amazon rain forest as pressures for farmland rise, the importance of root research, gauging whether today’s big agricultural corporations are up to the task, assessing restrictions on genetically modified crops and much more. http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/poverty-and-lack-of-research-block-path-to-a-well-fed-world/

POVERTY: The environment remains a second-tier matter in Latin America and the Caribbean

Jul 15, 2010 (IPS) - The environment remains a second-tier matter in Latin America and the Caribbean despite being interwoven with persistent poverty and stalled economic development in the region, according to a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme.Dozens of experts from the region were convened by UNEP to contribute to the report "Environment Outlook for Latin America and the Caribbean" (GEO- LAC3), following in the steps of reports presented in 2000 and 2003. "Our intention is to provide ideas for human development with support for eradicating poverty, not to formulate an environmental policy, but rather to incorporate the environmental dimension in public policies," Mara Murillo, of Mexico, UNEP regional deputy director, told IPS from Panama. The environment "is seen as a given; it remains on the fringes of national accounts, and an effort at internalising it is required not only for valuing our ecosystems but for providing clean air, water and food for communities that are working to escape poverty," said Murillo, who presented the GEO-LAC3 report Wednesday. According to Venezuelan expert Antonio De Lisio, the environment "is still seen in this region with traditional criteria, based merely on conservation." The environment "isn't generally linked with policies for overcoming poverty, which is the big issue in Latin America and the Caribbean," De Lisio, director of the environmental studies centre at the Central University of Venezuela, told IPS. The GEO-LAC3, in considering the region's modes of development, notes that the biggest challenge is poverty, given that 35 percent of the population (189 million people) is poor, and 14 percent extremely poor. Historically, the region's development model "has been largely based upon on the provision of food, raw materials and natural resources," states the report, a model that "leads simultaneously to economic growth, social disintegration and environmental degradation, with a marked trend towards more income concentration and a less equitable share of the fruits of growth." In that context, the continued lax environmental regulation in exploiting natural resources in many countries is unable to deal with the emerging environmental tensions in the region, according to the report. In De Lisio's opinion, "the countries have done more to advertise their resources than to work towards a sustainable development model of their own that allows them to overcome poverty." "The result was a focus for a long time on the vocation for exporting petroleum from Venezuela, copper from Chile, or agricultural commodities from Paraguay," he said. The UNEP report backs that claim in that the region's insertion into the international market has been through "exporting natural resources and goods with little or no processing... Primary goods account for 73 percent of exports." As it followed this path -- often ignoring environmental variables -- the region saw its population grow 51 percent in 40 years, especially in urban areas, where expansion was largely unplanned and unregulated. This also contributed to a 76-percent jump in water demand in just 15 years, and a four-fold increase in electricity demand in the last 35 years. "Accelerated urbanisation without planning sets out one of the region's urgent tasks, likewise the loss of forest -- although the deforestation rate has begun to slow -- and vulnerability to climate change," said Murillo. GEO-LAC3 notes that six of the world's most megadiverse countries are found in Latin America and the Caribbean, but "this impressive biodiversity is being extinguished by increasing deforestation and the destruction of habitats, in which many species are endangered to one degree or another." The scientists contributing to the report warn about crossing the "point of no return" in consuming the planet's resources, stressing that it is "crucial that all sectors of society understand the importance of this limit so as to decide when to backtrack in order to operate within safe limits." In laying out the possible scenarios, the GEO-LAC3 calls on decision-makers to "systematise how an integrated approach is applied to better respond to socioeconomic and environmental problems on regional and national sustainable development agendas." The experts involved in this research underscore, for example, that investment in environmental and social sustainability should be interpreted as essential for economic development. However, they warn that some of the actions taken towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) established by the United Nations, as well as other environmental goals, "can be counterproductive." Ensuring environmental sustainability is the seventh of the eight MDGs, which the UN General Assembly established in 2000, with the target date of 2015, and 1990 as the baseline. One of the aims is to incorporate the principles of sustainable development into national policies and programmes. One example that the GEO-LAC3 cites as counterproductive is "the increased large-scale production of biofuels, mainly for trade," which competes for land and water resources, and therefore with food security and biodiversity protection. The proposal to redirect the models for growth "should have in parallel the goals of fighting poverty and creating sustainable employment, utilising the local workforce, local innovation and efficient energy use, so that employment boosts our competence as a people and our capacity for conservation," said De Lisio. UNEP official Murillo, meanwhile, stressed that the new report can be put to practical use. "We hope that people utilise it, those who formulate policies, decision-makers, academics, non-governmental organisations and the common citizen, they can all do a lot with its standards for water consumption or efficient energy use," she said.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52168

Obesity a form of malnutrition

Inter Press Service examines malnutrition and factors contributing to the rising rates of "obesity and obesity-related illness - such as type II diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, some forms of cancer and osteoporosis - in Latin America, and especially among the poorest sectors of the population."
Though obesity and malnutrition "have traditionally been viewed as opposite extremes," Cecilia Albala of the University of Chile's Nutrition and Food Technology Institute said there is growing recognition among health experts that "obesity and undernourishment are … different forms of malnutrition, she explained," according to IPS. As Albala sees it, obesity and undernourishment are the results of "'inadequate prenatal, postnatal and early infant nutrition,' followed by 'exposure to diets high in fats and calories and low in micronutrients,'" IPS writes.
http://www.news-medical.net/news/20100407/IPS-examines-malnutrition-obesity-in-Latin-America.aspx