POVERTY: PAKISTAN: Anti-polio drive moves to tribal agencies

PESHAWAR, 29 March 2012 (IRIN)

 Photo: Kamila Hyat/IRIN
Some 14 cases of polio have been reported across Pakistan so far this year

Pakistan, which has reported 14 cases of polio this year, is focusing its anti-polio drive on tribal agencies along the Afghanistan border where militant violence has affected eradication efforts, say officials.
Last year, 198 cases were confirmed - the highest for any country in the world, despite the government’s launch of a National Emergency Plan against polio in 2011 and the setting up of a task force to combat the disease.
“Frankly speaking, this is very embarrassing for us as a nation. India’s success is pointed out at every meeting,” a health department official in Islamabad, who asked not to be named, told IRIN.
India has remained free of new cases for a year, and been removed from the list of polio endemic countries by the World Health Organization (WHO). Pakistan remains on the list alongside Nigeria and Afghanistan.
One area where attention is being focused is Bara `tehsil’ (administrative unit) in the troubled Khyber Agency, one of seven tribal agencies along the Pakistan-Afghan border. Here, militant violence has consistently impeded vaccination drives.
At a meeting in Islamabad in March, experts warned that displaced persons moving out of the Khyber Agency and into camps such as Jalozai, could trigger a crisis by spreading the disease.
The first anti-polio drive in nearly three years began in Khyber and Bara `tehsils’ on 25 March, according to Mazhar Zeb, the officer in charge of administration in Khyber Agency. Vaccination began at Jalozai Camp, near Peshawar, the next day.
“Since September 2009, most of Bara tehsil had not been vaccinated against polio,” Sona Bari, a spokesperson for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), told IRIN. "Vaccination points are being set up wherever people are moving so that children can be reached.”

Children up to 15 being vaccinated
Bari also said the age of vaccination had been raised to cover a wider population, and “locally suitable” methods were being used to raise awareness.
Children up to 15 are being vaccinated, rather than those aged up to five, as is the usual practice. Some 38 cases of polio have been confirmed in Bara since 2010. But as movement continues out of the Agency, there is concern also about reaching people moving to camps.
“The campaign in IDP [internally displaced persons] camps is very important,” Elias Durry, a WHO spokesperson, told IRIN in Peshawar.
Duniya Aslam Khan, a spokesperson for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), told IRIN that “as of 17 March, a total of 126,605 IDPs have arrived from Bara. Of the total displaced, 82 percent of IDPs do not reside at camps.”
Despite the vaccination points set up by WHO and government health teams to reach people on the move, it is uncertain if all the people moving to different places, usually to live with relatives, are being reached.
“The situation here is quite chaotic. Members of the anti-polio teams are fearful, and people trust no one. This makes the work of reaching everyone in Bara very hard,” Zarina Bibi, a member of one of the over 70 teams working in the area, told IRIN. She also said it was unclear where people were going - with some even moving to places as far off as Karachi.
Recent US drone attacks and a sense that people are more concerned about saving themselves from violence in their home areas than having their children vaccinated, have added to the difficulties.
Others know what they want: “I want my three children, aged four, six and nine to be vaccinated. No team has come here yet, but I hope it will happen soon,” said Arif Khan, 35, from his village in Bara. “I have seen the effects of polio, and want my children saved. It is not their fault there has been no campaign here for so many years.”
http://www.irinnews.org/Report/95200/PAKISTAN-Anti-polio-drive-moves-to-tribal-agencies

POVERTY: PAKISTAN: Sharp rise in human trafficking in Sindh Province

KARACHI, 21 March 2012 (IRIN)

 Photo: Groundreporter/Flickr
The traffickers pay the families for allowing their children to be taken away, but often exploit the children like slaves (file photo)

Pakistan’s Sindh Province has recorded a sharp increase in reported cases of human trafficking since the beginning of the year, and the trend could continue unless the authorities take action to contain it, say activists.
Some 190 cases have been reported in the province in the first two months of 2012, according to Zia Ahmed Awan, chairperson of Madadgaar Helpline, an NGO helping women and child victims of abuse and trafficking. In 2011, the NGO recorded 288 cases.
Families receive a payment for allowing their children to be trafficked: Traffickers pick up women and children from villages with the promise of getting them jobs in cities. However, once a certain amount has been paid to the family, the traffickers exploit the woman or child, often treating them as little more than slaves. .
“Most of the victims are from Bangladesh and Afghanistan, where poverty and strife have made it difficult for people to meet their basic needs,” Awan said. “Combine this with illiteracy and unemployment, and you will have people willing to sell their children.” (he is talking about the reported cases here)
She urged the Pakistani government to devote more resources to fighting trafficking and drafting new legislation to ban it.
Talking to IRIN, an official of the Ministry of Human Rights in Sindh blamed poverty. “Poverty forces people to give away their children,” said the official who requested anonymity. “In big cities like Karachi, Hyderabad, Larkana you will find kids as young as five being employed as servants. The constitution grants protection to minors but sadly no one is willing to take up this matter.”
After the floods in 2010 and 2011, poverty increased in Sindh and many families dependent on farming had no other option but to send their children to bigger cities, say aid workers.
“How do you curb human trafficking and bondage when some of the most influential figures - even those in the women ministry, human rights and child protection committees - have young children as servants?” asked a social worker in Sindh who only identified herself as Aswa.
“A child of seven or eight years is available 24/7 to clean your house, carry your groceries and do other chores, for Rs. 1,000 a month,” she said. “For the same amount of work an adult servant would easily charge Rs 4,000 a month. Most people carry out the worst possible abuse of these children and if the child runs away, false cases of theft are lodged,” she said.

Call for police vigilance
Awan of Madadgaar Helpline called for increased police vigilance. “Our police personnel need sensitization trainings as often they can’t differentiate between human smuggling and child trafficking. As long as there is a feudal system in the country, we will have human trafficking and child labour,” he said.
Pakistan is listed as “a source, transit, and destination country” for trafficked persons, according to the US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons report for 2011. Pakistan's largest human trafficking problem, according to the report, is that of bonded labour. Concentrated in Sindh and Punjab provinces, it is particularly common in brick kilns, carpet-making, agriculture, fishing, mining, leather tanning, and the production of glass bangles.
According to the International Labour Organization, more than 12 million people are trafficked each year worldwide. An estimated 70 percent of those trafficked are females under 25.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report/95117/PAKISTAN-Sharp-rise-in-human-trafficking-in-Sindh-Province

POVERTY: PAKISTAN: Abducted and forced into a Muslim marriage

KARACHI, 27 February 2012 (IRIN)

 Photo: Tariq Saeed/IRIN
Hindus marking a ritual occasion feel increasingly threatened in Pakistan

Sixteen-year-old Ameena Ahmed*, now living in the town of Rahim Yar Khan in Pakistan’s Punjab Province, does not always respond when her mother-in-law calls out to her.
“Even after a year of `marriage’ I am not used to my new name. I was called Radha before,” she told IRIN on a rare occasion when she was allowed to go to the corner shop on her own to buy vegetables.
Ameena, or Radha as she still calls herself, was abducted from Karachi about 13 months ago by a group of young men who offered her ice-cream and a ride in their car. Before she knew what was happening, she was dragged into a larger van, and driven to an area she did not know.
She was then pressured into signing forms which she later found meant she was married to Ahmed Salim, 25; she was converted to a Muslim after being asked to recite some verses in front of a cleric. She was obliged to wear a veil. Seven months ago, Ameena, who has not seen her parents or three siblings since then and “misses them a lot”, moved with her new family to southern Punjab.
"The abduction and kidnapping of Hindu girls is becoming more and more common," Amarnath Motumal, a lawyer and leader of Karachi’s Hindu community, told IRIN. “This trend has been growing over the past four or five years, and it is getting worse day by day.”
He said there were at least 15-20 forced abductions and conversions of young girls from Karachi each month, mainly from the multi-ethnic Lyari area. The fact that more and more people were moving to Karachi from the interior of Sindh Province added to the dangers, as there were now more Hindus in Karachi, he said.
“They come to search for better schooling, for work and to escape growing extremism,” said Motumal who believes Muslim religious schools are involved in the conversion business.
“Hindus are non-believers. They believe in many gods, not one, and are heretics. So they should be converted,” said Abdul Mannan, 20, a Muslim student. He said he would be willing to marry a Hindu girl, if asked to by his teachers, “because conversions brought big rewards from Allah [God]. But later I will marry a `real’ Muslim girl as my second wife,” he said.
According to local law, a Muslim man can take more than one wife, but rights activists argue that the law infringes the rights of women and needs to be altered.
Motumal says Hindu organizations are concerned only with the “forced conversion” of girls under 18. “Adult women are of course free to choose,” he said.

“Lured away”
Sunil Sushmt, 40, who lives in a village close to the city of Mirpurkhas in central Sindh Province, said his 14-year-old daughter was “lured away” by an older neighbour and, her parents believe, forcibly converted after marriage to a Muslim. “She was a child. What choice did she have?” her father asked. He said her mother still cries for her “almost daily” a year after the event.
Sushmat is also concerned about how his daughter is being treated. “We know many converts are treated like slaves, not wives,” he said.
According to official figures, Hindus based mainly in Sindh make up 2 percent of Pakistan’s total population of 165 million. “We believe this figure could be higher,” Motumal said.
According to media reports, a growing number of Hindus have been fleeing Pakistan, mainly for neighbouring India. The kidnapping of girls and other forms of persecution is a factor in this, according to those who have decided not to stay in the country any longer.
“My family has lived in Sindh for generations,” Parvati Devi, 70, told IRIN. “But now I worry for the future of my granddaughters and their children. Maybe we too should leave,” she said. “The entire family is seriously considering this.”
*not her real name
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=94969

POVERTY: PAKISTAN: Quetta's Hazara community living in fear

QUETTA, 7 February 2012 (IRIN)

 Photo: Hazara News Pakistan
Hazaras protest killings in Quetta, Pakistan

Widespread fear of harassment, discrimination and killings has prompted some Hazara community members living in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan Province in southwestern Pakistan, to consider leaving the country, even by illegal means.
“Over 600 Hazaras have been killed since 2000,” Abdul Qayuum Changezi, head of the Hazara Jarga, a group representing Hazaras, told IRIN. Media reports speak of dozens recently killed in attacks on the community in Quetta and in other parts of the province.
The Hazaras constitute a distinct ethnic group, with some accounts tracing their history to central Asia. Almost all belong to the Shia Muslim sect, speak a dialect of Farsi, and are concentrated in central Afghanistan and some parts of Pakistan. There are some 6,000 to 7,000 Hazaras in the country, according to a Hazara chief, Sardar Saadat Ali.
In Quetta, many of them live in Alamdar Road. Close by, Ali Hassan, 55, and his two sons, both in their 20s, were engrossed in a fierce argument in their small house - when IRIN visited - about leaving the country, even if illegally.
According to the two, there is too much discrimination against the Hazaras for them to have a future. “It is simply too dangerous to live here. Besides, Hazaras get no opportunities in education or for jobs, because of the bias that exists,” said Ibrar Ali, 21, the younger of Hassan’s sons.
However, their parents were terrified of allowing them to try and leave, mainly because of an incident in December last year in which at least 55 Hazaras from Quetta were killed when a boat carrying some 90 illegal immigrants to Australia capsized off the coast of Indonesia.
“The boat was overloaded with over 250 people, including children and women,” said Nasir Ali, whose brother was on the ill-fated boat, but survived.
“Persecution”
Following the incident, the autonomous Human Rights Commission of Pakistan demanded a government inquiry. In a statement, HRCP chairperson Zohra Yusuf said the fact that “Hazara young men chose to leave Pakistan by taking such grave risks is a measure of the persecution the Hazara community has long faced in Balochistan.”
The statement also urged the government to act against those illegally ferrying people out of the country in exchange for large sums of money, and demanded it “take urgent steps to find a way to put an end to the persecution of the long-suffering Hazara community”.
The New York based monitoring body Human Rights Watch (HRW) has also condemned the sectarian killing of Shia Muslims in Pakistan, and has noted: "Research indicates that at least 275 Shias, mostly of Hazara ethnicity, have been killed in sectarian attacks in the southwestern province of Balochistan alone since 2008." HRW Asia director Brad Adams says a start can be made to ending such killings "by arresting extremist group members responsible for past attacks”.
Anger within the Hazara community runs deep, and has been growing.
“The news of the killings and the desperation of the community is terrible. I weep often when I read of what is happening. I want to return to Quetta, because I love my home town; I want to be close to my parents and live there with my own family. But my fiancé and I ask if it will be sensible to raise our children in a climate of death,” Mina Ali, a medical student from the Hazara community currently based in Karachi, told IRIN.
Her fiancé, also a Hazara, is keen to try and flee the country, whether “legally or illegally”, Mina said.
“Genocide”?
Statements to the media from top government officials, including the chief minister of Balochistan, have also been perceived as insensitive in their failure to strongly condemn killings that some commentators have described as a “genocide”. Others in Pakistan are demanding that the International Court of Justice look into the matter.
Hazara chief Sardar Saadat Ali, a former provincial minister, told IRIN most Hazaras in the country were based in Quetta but there were “also some in Hyderabad [in Sindh Province] and other Baloch districts”.
Ali, who has lost close relatives including his brother in targeted killings of Hazaras, said: “We can expect nothing from the government; so we act for ourselves. I personally went to Indonesia to bring back the bodies of the young Hazara men who had died in the boat tragedy. They were fleeing because of the security situation and in search of a chance to gain an education.”
Hazaras, he added, were being targeted on “both ethnic and sectarian grounds” by extremist groups - mainly the sectarian Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Sipah-e-Sahaba, which have origins in the Punjab. He was also concerned about further persecution if the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan.
“I don’t understand much about politics, but I worry constantly for my grown children, and their children," said Zareen Bibi, 60, a Hazara resident of Quetta. "Too many Hazaras have died, for no reason - and this inhumanity has to end. We all deserve dignity and the right to life."
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=94806

POVERTY: Pakistan:Violence, Death Stalk Child Domestic Help

KARACHI, Jan 26, 2012 (IPS) -Zofeen Ebrahim
 Credit:Fahim Siddiqi /IPS

A Pakistani child domestic worker.

 "He was a happy child, my younger brother," Mohammad Ramzan, 18, reminisced, his voice steeped in sadness.
Eldest among six siblings, Ramzan is still coming to terms with the murder of his 11-year-old brother, Shan Ali, who worked as a child domestic worker in a posh locality in the national capital, Islamabad.
Ali was allegedly strangled by his employer, Atiya Al Hussain, on Jan. 5, for neglecting her child.
She and her husband, Mudassar Abbas, told police that Ali had committed suicide, though the autopsy suggested the boy had been strangled to death.
"The woman has since confessed that Ali neglected her seven-month-old son while she was trying to catch up on her sleep and had, in a fit of anger, strangled him," Ramzan told IPS over phone from Islamabad, where he works as a security guard in an office.
Many wealthy households employ children, some even as young as six, a practice not prohibited by law in Pakistan.
Because of the invisible nature of this issue and the difficulty in accessing domestic child workers, no recent nationwide study exists. In 2003, UNICEF reported that eight million children, under 14 years of age, were engaged as labourers in brick kilns, carpet weaving units, agriculture, small industries, and in homes.
An International Labour Organisation (ILO) report in 2004 estimated that around 264,000 children were engaged in domestic labour in Pakistan.
Child domestic workers can often been seen sitting meekly in the corner of expensive restaurants keeping an eye on a sleeping baby while the employer’s family enjoys a sumptuous dinner. They accompany rich kids to birthday parties, but do not take part in the celebrations.
"In Pakistani culture it was once considered an act of charity to employ poor children," explained Samar Minallah, an anthropologist and a documentary filmmaker.
"In the past, there was a culture of entire families of employees being looked after by feudal lords. With time we saw this disappearing and the child was separated from his parents and employed in a nuclear family setup," she said.
In many cases, said Minallah, the child is the only worker in the house. "I witnessed this in many posh urban areas," Minallah told IPS. Recently she made a film ‘I have a dream’, on the dark reality of what she calls the "worst form of exploitation of children."
"Many families prefer to employ young boys and girls because there are women and daughters in the house. They feel safer around them," explained Ramzan, who does not find children working in whatever capacity of any consequence or even hazardous.
Sending children off to work in homes could mean additional income, says Anees Jillani, an advocate at the Supreme Court of Pakistan. "And then there is the additional incentive of having to feed one less mouth and more space in the room that they call home," he explained.
Over the years, however, the Pakistani media have been consistently reporting on the abuse and violence that child domestic labour often suffer at the hands of their employers.
In the last two years, the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC), a non-governmental organisation, has documented 18 cases of extreme violence inflicted by employers, resulting in the death of 13 children and serious injuries to five.
To date not one employer has been charged as guilty. "The perpetrators usually buy off the poor parents in out-of court settlements," said Jillani, who is also a child rights activist. Last year, a six-year-old Laiba’s body was found in a deserted place in the eastern city of Lahore, in Punjab. She was beaten to death by her employers for urinating on the kitchen floor.
Taqi Usman, 12, was clubbed to death by his employer for not feeding her dog. In most cases, domestic workers were penalised for being just who they were - mere children.
In 2010, when 12-year-old Shazia Masih, a maid in an advocate’s house died, the media coverage was intense. The paltry sum of 720 rupees (eight dollars) a month in return for washing dishes, mopping floors and cleaning toilets helped pay off her family's debts.
There were 17 blunt injuries on Shazia's forehead, cheeks and scalp and she died after the wounds inflicted on her by the employer became infected.
"Clearly the profiles of the employers suggest that this has nothing to do with literacy levels. It is a reflection of how far a society tolerates injustice and exploitation," said Zarina Jillani, who works for SPARC.
Reacting to such cruel deaths, SPARC urged the government to take immediate steps to ban child domestic labour in line with laws that already prohibit children from being employed in hazardous industries.
SPARC’s Jillani considers domestic labour even more hazardous than factory work because of its "hidden nature, slavery like conditions, the complete control of the employer and the absence of a protective parent or adult and the potential for all kinds of abuse."
While the country has ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Child, advocate Jillani rues there is no legal validity for it in the country. "The ILO has lately introduced a domestic labour convention but Pakistan is yet to sign it," he told IPS.
SPARC believes that the answer lies in extending existing labour laws to domestic work and making education compulsory.
Ramzan, who is completely unlettered like the rest of his siblings, says: "We don’t have the choice or the luxury to attend school. We all work, and the more hands there are, the easier it is to feed the many mouths."
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106560

POVERTY: PAKISTAN: Girls fight for the right to education

PESHAWAR, 7 December 2011 (IRIN) -  Photo: Groundreporter/Flickr
Pakistani girls are becoming agents of change in the fight for education

Armed with only a slightly used copy book sent by her aunt from Peshawar, the capital of the northwestern Khyber Pakhtoomkhw’a province, Azeera Gul, 12, is fighting for the rights of girls to an education.
Although her school in the tiny town of Kabal in the Swat Valley is still in a ramshackle state after being burnt down during the Taliban insurgency in 2008, which ended in 2009 after a Pakistan military operation, Gul insists she wants to become a school teacher and educate other girls in her village.
Gul is not alone in wishing to bring change to her valley. One story that galvanized the international media is that of Malala Yousafzai. In 2009, she began campaigning from her remote village in Shangla in Swat against the Taliban for the right to education for girls.
She was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize, presented annually by the Dutch organization KidsRights, for her pioneering efforts to raise awareness about the treatment of girls in her homeland. Though she did not win the award, her nomination brought home the problems of Swat to millions in the country and won her national recognition with an award from the prime minister.
“This award is a great prize for me. I want education for the girls of Swat,” Yousafzai, now 13, told IRIN.
She is not the only young campaigner. “I want to become a doctor,” said Ludia Bibi, 14, in Mingora. “That is the only way I can help people here and make sure women in particular get the care they need.”
Maria Toor Pakai, 19, grew up in South Waziristan, where women rarely venture out of their homes. She defied tradition by playing squash and is today a top-ranked national player.
There are so many little girls here who could change the future
“I knew my daughter was different and wished to encourage her,” said Maria’s father, Shamsul Qayyum Wazir, who took her to Peshawar in 2002, eager to grant her the opportunity she would have been denied at home. “We had received threats from the Taliban warning us to stop her playing,” he told IRIN.
Today, Pakai lives and trains in Toronto, her story inspiring others. “I always think of the hard rocks of my land, and how tough they made me,” she said.
But while such young women have fought back, others find it harder to do so. “I want my daughters to have a better life than I do, but it is hard here,” said Ujala Gul, 40, a mother of three girls who lives in a village near Saidu Sharif, the capital of Swat. “I am afraid they will end up as powerless housewives just like me, subservient to their husbands.”

Determination
Even so, the girls seem more determined than the boys given the harder struggle that lies ahead for them and the struggle they have had to gain any education at all.
“I feel I must do something with my life. Things here must change, otherwise lives for girls and women will never ever change,” Samira Ahmed, 12, told IRIN. She is helping to run classes near Kabal for girls who are not able to go to school.
“There are so many little girls here who could change the future. I have educated daughters and I know they can change the lot of a family. That’s why I want to help all those that I can,” said Mullahzai Tauqir, 65, a grandfather and retired teacher who now runs voluntary classes for out-of-school children near Mingora. “I think my efforts and theirs will one day make a real difference and create real change here.”
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=94418

POVERTY: PAKISTAN: SWAT women face dual burden

MINGORA, 6 December 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Sarah Naqvi/Flickr
Women in Swat Valley are struggling to keep their households running (file photo)

Women in the Swat Valley in the Khyber Pakhtoonkh'wa province are working harder than ever to keep their households running.
To some extent this makes them happy, allowing them to reclaim lives put on hold during the militant Taliban reign, which ended in July 2009 after a military operation, allowing tens of thousands of IDPs to return.
"We are no longer compelled to wear the suffocating blue burqas imposed by the Taliban; the girls are back at school and women are again working in the cosmetic factories, the schools and so on from which they were forced out," Aqila Khan, 42, a social activist, who once again is wearing a white chador, told IRIN in Mingora, the principal town of Swat.
But though militancy has receded, women in Swat face a double burden. The devastating floods of 2010, followed by less intense but still damaging flash floods in 2011, took a big toll on agriculture, chiefly the maize crop. "This was our main money-earning crop," farmer Riaz Khan told the media in the town of Kabal in Swat.
The District Coordination Officer of Swat told IRIN that "reconstruction work in the valley following the floods was well on track". Bridges have been built by the military with foreign donor support and some efforts have certainly been made to restore livelihoods.
But still things are difficult and women frequently bear the brunt. "Lots of men work in the tourist industry here. Hotels and cafes were washed away in the 2010 floods, destroying all they had built after the militant conflict, and then there were major agricultural losses in both 2010 and 2011," Aqila Khan said.
Many women are struggling simply to put food on the table. "I sold the bangles I received for my wedding 10 years ago. It was all the gold we had but my husband had lost his job as a hotel waiter, and with the money we bought hens, goats and began replanting vegetables," Salma Bibi, 30, told IRIN.
Her problems are not over, however. "My husband is out all day looking for work. He is desperate. I tend our three young children, the animals, look after the fields, fetch water from a stream [7km] away from our village near Mingora, cut timber to cook and perform all the household chores. Other women work like me too to bring in money - but by the end of the day we are worn out. Look at my cut, torn hands," she said displaying her palms.

Taliban concerns
"I worry about the militants coming back because my sister and I were forced out of college for nearly two years and we cannot seem to catch up again. This means we cannot help our elderly parents by earning an income in the coming years," said Zaitoon Bibi, 18. Her brothers struggle to restore their fields and replant the peach trees they lost.
Many other women must take on the dual burden of earning an income and running the household as their husbands try to rebuild homes, lives and livelihoods. Given the acute losses experienced by the tourism industry, which employed tens of thousands, people are asking for more help.
"We have received no compensation and no help from anyone. We know that right now it is our wives who are keeping the households running. But this is unfair on them. We have to find a way to get back to work, and we believe the authorities must somehow help us," said Sharaft Ahmad, 36, whose wife works as a schoolteacher, as well as looking after the household and cattle.
"Things cannot continue like this for ever. We also live in fear of another disaster and somehow normality has to be found here so that families can live with some peace of mind and without continued strain," he said.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=94400

MALARIA TB AIDS: Pakistan may downsize programmes

December 05, 2011
A meeting is likely to be held in Planning Commission on December 7 to decide the fate of National Aids Control Programme (NACP).
The meeting would also take decisions regarding downsizing and regularisation of the employees working under health sector.
The Malaria Control Programme, National TB Control Programme and Expanded Programme of Immunisation (EPI) would also came under discussion in the meeting.
Well-placed sources told Business Recorder here on Saturday that due to the lack of funds, it has been decided that the above-mentioned health programmes would be downsized especially the NACP.
"The decision regarding regularisation of some employees working on contract basis in NACP would also to be taken in the meeting," the sources added.
Minister for Religious Affairs Syed Khursheed Shah is likely to chair the meeting.
NACP was established in 1986-87 with focus on diagnosis of cases that came to hospitals, but progressively gained community focus.
Its objectives are the prevention of HIV transmission, safe blood transfusions, reduction of STD transmission, establishment of surveillance, training of health staff, research and behavioural studies, and development of programme management.
Pakistan is the second largest country in South Asia that stands only a few steps behind India and Nepal in terms of HIV epidemic.
Until recently Pakistan was classified as a 'low prevalence high risk' country but now Pakistan is in 'concentrated phase' of the epidemic with HIV prevalence among more than 5 percent injecting drug users (IDUs) in at least eight major cities.
Sources revealed that on the directive of the Planning Commission, the senior officials of NACP have prepared a list of 14 employees that are likely to be terminated from their jobs when the process of downsizing would be started.
After the devolution of the Health Ministry to the provinces, it was decided to devolve the National AIDS Programme and it was placed in the devolution list.
But the programme was revived on November 14 due to unknown reasons.
Now it has been decided to downsize the programme by reducing the total number of employees from 30 or 32 to 15 or 16.
The employees have not been provided their salaries for the last 5 months.
Sources said that the employees working under NACP might go for a strong protest after downsizing.
http://www.brecorder.com/general-news/single/599/172/1257972/

POVERTY: PAKISTAN: Girls desperate for education in rural Balochistan

QUETTA, 29 November 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: IFRC :
Most girls in rural areas of Balochistan are out of school (file photo)

Gehava Bibi, 9, is very excited. She is visiting the city of Quetta, capital of the southwestern province of Balochistan, with her father to buy some basic school supplies. She has never held a pencil or piece of chalk. “This seems like magic,” she told IRIN as she awkwardly drew a few squiggly lines across a piece of paper offered to her by the shop-owner.
Bibi has never been to school; there is no educational facility in her village in the Bolan district, some 154km southeast of Quetta, and like 90 percent of women in rural Balochistan, according to official figures, she is illiterate.
However, recently, an elderly villager, who had spent many years in the southern port city of Karachi, has returned to Bolan and offered to provide the girls in the village with some basic education.
Fazila Aliani, a social activist, educationist and former member of the Balochistan provincial assembly, recently told the media the reason for the lack of educational facilities was the “insurgency” in the province, “while a lack of necessary funds, absence of a well-defined education policy, lack of girls’ schools, acute shortage of teaching staff, and poverty are other factors which contribute to the backwardness”.
She said that except for Quetta, educational institutions were “non-existent in Baloch-dominated areas of the province”. Aliani also said foreign donors seeking to set up schools in Balochistan struggled to do so because of the lack of security and government resistance.
Another reason is the reluctance of teachers to venture into districts they see as dangerous. Strikes by militants on targets that include security personnel occur frequently in Balochistan, with one of the most recent killing 14 members of the Frontier Corps force in the district of Musakhel.
There have also been attacks on teachers, such as one in October, when four female teachers in Quetta had acid thrown at them as they left school. A December 2010 report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch reports the killing of 22 teachers in Balochistan between January 2008 and October 2010.
The attacks on teachers aggravate what is an already grim literacy situation for girls. “I used to teach at a private school in the town of Khuzdar in Balochistan. But it is now just too dangerous to live in the province as a Punjabi settler, and my family and I have now moved back to Gujrat in the Punjab province even though we had lived in Balochistan since I was a small child,” said Amina Bano, 28. Other teachers too have moved away.
Balochistan’s literacy figures for women are the lowest in the country, standing at 14.1 percent, compared with more than 35 percent each in Sindh and the Punjab and 18.8 percent in Khyber Pakhtoonkh’wa.
The Chief Minister of Balochistan, Nawab Aslam Khan Raisani, has repeatedly condemned the targeting of teachers, and said those involved were “depriving future generations” of education.
“The lack of development in the province is a reason for the lack of education for girls. It is also fuelling the frustration and anger which has created the nationalist insurgency,” Fareed Ahmed, provincial coordinator in Balochistan for the autonomous Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, told IRIN.
But while nationalist unrest and lack of development have plagued Balochistan for years, this offers no comfort to girls – and their parents – desperate for an education.
“On our television screens, we see girls sitting in classrooms and learning. Their future will be a better one, and unlike me, since I am also uneducated, they can teach their children in the future. Why can’t it be the same for our daughters?” asked Abdullah Jan, 40, father of Gehava Bibi and two other girls, who wants them all to be educated.
“We are trying to do what we can, but we need help,” he said.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=94331

MALNUTRITION: Pakistan: Mobile clinics protect children from malnutrition

David Youngmeyer, UNICEF
SINDH PROVINCE, Pakistan (July 11, 2011) — The battle against child malnutrition in Pakistan's flood-affected Sindh Province is reaching even the smallest, most isolated villages with the help of UNICEF-supported mobile health teams.
They make regular community visits to identify malnourished children and pregnant women. They give medicines and vital nutritional support such as take-home supplies of ready-to-use therapeutic food, which is essential for malnourished children. They also reinforce healthy behavior such as breastfeeding, basic nutrition, and good health and hygiene.
UNICEF correspondent Chris Niles reports on efforts to prevent malnutrition in the aftermath of Pakistan's floods.
Hajani is one of the mothers who attended a clinic operating in the small village of Suleman Kehari, in Thatta District of southern Sindh Province. Wearing a traditional dupata scarf, and cradling her young son in her arms, Hajani looks happy to share her own experience.
"Before coming to this center, my child would not eat anything," she says. "I got this food for my child from here. I give him one sachet every day. He has now started to take milk too and has started to gain weight."
The clinic is run by UNICEF implementing partner Merlin. It is one of 226 mobile health teams and 84 static health units which UNICEF is supporting throughout southern Sindh. UNICEF rapidly scaled up its nutrition interventions after a recent survey by the Sindh Department of Health identified critical levels of malnutrition among flood-affected children in Sindh Province.

Emergency malnutrition rates

© UNICEF Pakistan/2011
A mother and her child in Suleman Kehari village in southern Sindh Province, Pakistan. The entire village was displaced but has now returned home. With high malnutrition rates, UNICEF is helping to ensure mothers and children have adequate nutrition.

The survey found that the Global Acute Malnutrition rate—which indicates the number of moderately and severely malnourished children—among children between 6 and 59 months old was more than 21% in southern Sindh. For children in northern Sindh, the rate was about 23%. These rates are well above the World Health Organization’s 15% emergency threshold which triggers a humanitarian response.
Child malnutrition is the single biggest contributor to under-five mortality, increasing the risk of infections and slowing recovery from illness. Dr. Ayesha Riaz, UNICEF Nutrition Early Recovery Working Group Coordinator for South Sindh, says that the mobile clinics provide an important way to reach children and mothers, even in remote areas.
"The clinics go to where families are and assess the nutritional status of children and mothers in the community. Once we have identified cases of need, we can provide assistance such as take-home supplies of therapeutic and supplementary food, health and hygiene sessions, and on-going monitoring to ensure progress," she says.
UNICEF Representative in Pakistan Dan Rohrmann, who visited the health clinic at Suleman Kehari village, was impressed with the work that is being done to improve child malnutrition rates.

Nutrition vital for future
© UNICEF Pakistan/2011 A health worker examines a child in Suleman Kehari village in southern Sindh Province, Pakistan. Malnutrition rates are very high and UNICEF has established a mobile clinic to keep mothers and children healthy.

Last year's monsoon floods had a devastating impact on Sindh Province. Huge numbers of displaced families had little food or food that was of poor nutritional quality. Food security continues to be an issue as the floods wiped out many family's livestock and crops.
"We know that the effects of malnutrition on children under three years of age can have a big impact on their later life, affecting cognitive development, educational attainment and later economic productivity. It is vital that children have access to high standards of healthcare and that they can grow and develop into healthy adults," he says.
UNICEF is working closely with the Government of Sindh and other partners to improve the nutritional status of children and women. Nutrition is also a key focus of the UN Delivering as One Program, where UNICEF pools its resources and expertise with other UN agencies to maximize results for children and families.
http://www.unicefusa.org/news/news-from-the-field/unicef-food-security-pakistan.html

POVERTY: PAKISTAN: Preparing for the monsoon

ISLAMABAD, 22 July 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Kamila Hyat/IRIN

Tents in Pakistan. The fact that many people live in indequate housing puts them at greater risk when calamity occurs

Muhammad Gul has built a stone wall around his home in a village near Mingora, the main city in Swat Valley, in Pakistan’s northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa, and hopes it can keep away rainwater during the just-started monsoon season.

“My house was badly damaged last year,” he told IRIN. “But this year I have put up a wall to protect it,” he said pointing to the 1.5m tall circular wall.
The 2010 monsoon rains flooded vast tracts of land across the country, affecting over 20 million people. The floods caused extensive damage to property especially in Sindh Province, and killed at least 1,200 people.
Mingora was one of the areas devastated by the floods.
This year, the Met Office has predicted a normal monsoon season. “There is little fear of floods this year,” Muhammad Riaz, chief meteorologist in Lahore, told IRIN. But Gul is apprehensive and is not taking chances.
The rains have started, according to the Met Office, and strategies are in place to ensure that even if the rains flood parts of the country, the harm can be minimized, the government says.
Sixty-five percent of Pakistan's annual rainfall occurs between June and September. The monsoon season begins in July and intensifies in the middle of the month.

Flood plans
“Two plans for floods have been worked out, including a plan for the worst scenario under which a maximum of six million people could be affected and a likely scenario under which 2.2 million people could be probable victims,” Ahmed Kamal, spokesman for the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), told IRIN.
“Detailed contingency plans have been worked out ahead of the monsoon and we have spent most of 2011 doing this,” he added.
All stakeholders, he said, have been taken on board - including the Pakistan Meteorological Department, Irrigation Department, Federal Flood Commission and the director generals of the Provincial Disaster Management Authorities - to minimize risks.
Since the start of the month, the NDMA has also been conducting training workshops for officials in various parts of the country on flood preparedness.
Major humanitarian agencies, too, say they are well-prepared. “We have a contingency plan in place, our warehouses are stocked with provisions to meet any flood emergency and we are coordinating on the ground with our local partners, though right now we can talk only hypothetically and have to go with what the Met Office is saying,” Michael O’Brien, spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said.

Lessons learned?
There is also evidence that lessons have been learnt from the devastation of last year. “We have received orders to build new dykes where needed, repair old ones, ensure they are not breached as happened last year when influential people tried to save their own lands by deliberately diverting water to other areas,” an irrigation official in Sindh Province who asked not to be named told IRIN.
He also said people living “near waterways” would be moved immediately if there was any danger of flooding.
But according to the Karachi-based NGO Urban Resource Centre, people who live in inadequate housing - often made of clay, timber and bits of cloth - remain vulnerable because the poor quality of their homes adds to risks people face during rains. It estimates that 50 percent of people in big cities live in shanty dwellings.
"People are hoping and praying the monsoon will show mercy on them this year as they are still picking up the pieces of their lives," said Ijaz Habib, nutrition specialist for the NGO Merlin. "What happened last year was like nothing anyone has seen before."
According to Ea Suzanne Akasha, psychosocial delegate with the Danish Red Cross: “Some people are still afraid of the sound of running water. Some are having trouble falling asleep and staying asleep. Some now fear the next flood is going to come and they don’t know how they are going to cope.”

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=93299

MALNUTRITION: Pakistan: Loss of livestock, poultry results in malnutrition

Shahid Shah : July 08, 2011


 Loss of livestock and poultry in floods of last fiscal year has resulted in malnutrition of millions of people in the country.

Analyst and Head of Institute of Social Movements Pakistan Zulfiqar Shah told The News that there was not a situation of starvation as food was available to the flood-hit people, but there were cases of malnutrition as people were not receiving milk and its bi-products due to loss of hundreds of thousands of animals.
Livestock sector has emerged as a priority sector only recently. In the rural areas, livestock is considered a securer source of income for small farmers and the landless.
According to the latest Economic Survey of Pakistan, livestock is the best hope for poverty alleviation as it can uplift the socioeconomic conditions of our rural masses.
The livestock accounted for approximately 55.1 percent of the agriculture value added and 11.5 percent of GDP during 2010-11.
Official figures show that an estimated 187,000 large animals, 253,380 small ones (total 440,380 animals) and 9.94 million poultry were lost to the floods.
The total loss in livestock (large and small animals) and poultry stood at 0.3 percent and 1.6 percent, respectively.
The steps taken by the government included establishment of emergency relief camps, treatment and vaccination of animals, and supply of fodder in the flood-affected areas. In these camps, 7.2 million animals were treated and 7.9 million animals were vaccinated.
One official document says that the overall thrust of the government’s livestock policy is to foster “private sector-led development with public sector providing enabling environment through policy interventions and capacity building for improved livestock husbandry practices”.
The emphasis will be on improving per unit animal productivity and moving from subsistence to market-oriented rearing and commercial livestock farming to meet the domestic demand and export surplus.
The objective is to exploit the potential of livestock sector and use it as an engine for economic growth and food security for the country, leading to rural population empowerment and rural socioeconomic development. Livestock sector’s prospective role towards rural economic development may well be recognised from the fact that 35-40 million rural people depend on livestock.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=56474&Cat=3&dt=7/8/2011

POVERTY: Islamic Microfinance Model to help alleviate poverty

ISLAMABAD, Jun 13 (APP):

Speakers at a seminar here called for following interest free Islamic microfinance model in order to eliminate poverty from the country. The seminar was organized on Monday by Al-Huda Centre of Islamic Banking & Economics (CIBE) and AKHUWAT.
The aim of the seminar was to choke out the plan of poverty alleviation on national and international scale to lessen poverty, social welfare and to tackle other problems pertaining to it.
Delegates from Malaysia, Yemen, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Mauritius and other countries participated in the event who spoke on various topics of Islamic microfinance i.e. methodology of poverty reduction, Zakat, Shariah implications, Dard-e-Hasna, Waqf models, latest trends of Islamic microfinance, technological application of poverty alleviation and usage of Islamic microfinance in non muslim societies.
Speakers said poverty has risen as one of the most crucial problems of the decade hitching fastest development of the countries on national and international level.
Islam is the only religion that takes the responsibility of poverty alleviation as one of its main obligations. Zakat, Ushar, Waqaf, Fitrana, Qard-e-Hasna, Murabaha, Ijarah, Musharaka etc have the qualities to sustain society from the plague of poverty.
“This was the major reason of worldwide recognition of Islamic microfinance as a sustainable source of lessening poverty from the society.
It is a pleasurable factor that more than 2 million beneficiaries are taking the edge of Islamic microfinance worldwide”, speakers added.
Speakers said that internationally, microfinance was considered a viable prospective to alleviate poverty but its sustainability was related to high interest rates. “Islamic Microfinance Model like Akhuwat interest-free micro-lending is not less than a miracle as it has proven all the existing viewpoints regarding microfinance wrong by providing interest free funding to the poor”, Athar Axeem Khan, an economist said.
Dr. Amjad Saqib, Executive Director Akhuwat said that so far the organization has provided funding in the shape of Qarz-e-Hasna worth of Rs. 1.1 billion to 94,000 families. He said that the recovery percentage remained 99.85 per cent.

http://ftpapp.app.com.pk/en_/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=142051&Itemid=49

POVERTY: Head of USAid: one of his biggest challenges is to persuade Americans that foreign aid is in their interests

Madeleine Bunting 15 June 2011
Rajiv Shah is one of the most powerful men in development policy – and one of the youngest. He arrived at the helm of the US development agency USAid just short of 37, as the highest ranking Indian-American in any presidential administration. Six days into the job, Haiti's earthquake struck and he was plunged into an intense three months of one of the biggest US aid initiatives in recent decades.
Nor has the pace or intensity of the job eased much since, but in London on Tuesday he was delighted as an audience of academics and activists – not usual enthusiasts for US aid policy – at the London School of Economics congratulated him several times for his commitments on food and health initiatives, in particular the US pledge of $450m to the Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunisation (Gavi) on Monday.
The appreciation must make a change from the fierce battle in Washington over USAid's budget, which is the target of a House of Representatives bill for $121m in cuts. At a time of economic hardship in the US, opinion surveys show aid's unprecedented unpopularity. One of Shah's biggest challenges right now, he told the Guardian, is persuading the American people that aid is in their interests.
"On the logo of USAid, it says "from the American people", but our work has to be seen as "for the American people", Shah argues. "Development is a fundamental part of our national security. It is extreme poverty – the realities of access to water and food – which creates the long-term drivers of our insecurity. Most wars are fought over scarce resources, and that is going to accelerate in the future. The food spike of 2008 led to food riots and instability. Bob Gates [the outgoing secretary of state for defence] has said, 'It is cheaper to do development than to send soldiers'. Admiral Mike Mullen [chairman of the joint chiefs of staff] is one of our strongest advocates."
In fact, the Pentagon has been a stalwart defender of USAid's budget in the current battles on Capitol Hill. An interesting contrast to the UK, where the defence establishment has been eyeing the aid budget with envy – and some resentment. Shah's defence of aid in terms of national interest reflects Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's overhaul of US foreign policy, which was spelled out in the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review late last year. Shah in part attributes the increased emphasis on aid to the experience of Afghanistan and Iraq, where the military has recognised the crucial role of governance and development to an exit strategy.
On Afghanistan, Shah is defiant of the many critics. Last week a congressional report damned USAid's programme there, and said much of the $18.8bn of funding had been "poorly spent" and was unlikely to prove durable. Afghanistan and Pakistan are the top two recipients of USAid by a large measure.
"It's been costly. We've lost 300 people working for USAid or our partners in eight years and it's cost a lot of money, but we have gone from 900,000 children in school to 7 million. Two and half million of them are girls. Health access has gone from 9% to 64% with huge falls in morbidity. Five million have moved out of poverty, with economic growth rates of 8%-10%. Agricultural productivity is up by 50%-70%. A huge amount has been achieved.
"Now our challenge is how to make that sustained as we embrace the transition. It's been a tough environment, and we have trebled staff in Afghanistan to improve accountability and audit our partners because of concerns about corruption."
But the subject that is probably closest to Shah's personal interests is food security. For seven years, he was director of programmes at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on agriculture. And well before that, he remembers as a small boy visiting India for the first time with his parents from his home in suburban Detroit and experiencing with shock the slums of Mumbai and the acute human suffering he saw there. That childhood experience is what has driven his career.
"The 2008-09 food crisis pushed 100 million people back into poverty. We have been here before. In the late 60s, Paul Ehrlich was warning of a population bomb in which millions would starve, but that led to US agronomist, Norman Borlaug and his work on the green revolution – which has saved hundreds of millions of lives. We have learned a lot now about the environmental degradation it caused.
"But Africa was bypassed, and in 2006 the US was spending only $240m of its aid budget on agriculture, less than 3%. We have now increased that to $1.2bn in a programme, Feed the Future, which is working in 20 countries. The aim is to lift more than 18 million out of poverty and ensure that 7.1 million children are no longer malnourished."
Shah sees a big role for the private sector in this programme but also emphasises that the biggest impact on poverty will come from reaching small-scale women producers. USAid is working with co-operatives in countries such as Uganda.
"This is a structural challenge in global development: there are agrarian economies where large numbers of families devote 70% of their income to food, and that makes them highly susceptible to price shocks. A huge risk."
He believes that the right combination of technology and political will can have a huge impact in tackling this challenge, and points to the past as a reminder of what aid can achieve. "The Marshall plan for Europe after the second world war, the green revolution and oral rehydration are three examples of initiatives which have saved millions of lives. The last was the invention of USAid when diarrhoea was ravaging families in many developing countries and much of the effort was focused on extending healthcare services. But a simple rehydration solution given to mothers has empowered them to save their children's lives. It's one of the greatest success stories of aid. Not only does it save lives, it reduces the disease burden of stunted development."
On such subjects, Shah is a powerful advocate for aid, but question him on controversial aspects of US development policy, such as subsidies to US cotton farmers that hit west Africa so badly, and he becomes vague – an indication of how USAid can find its work undermined by other government department policies such as on trade or agriculture.
He was also evasive about the International Aid Transparency Initiative, which the US has not signed up to. Instead, he points to a new website he has set up to track all USAid spending, but he acknowledges it doesn't track other US government departments' aid spend.
He has instituted a big reform of USAid, but perhaps even more influential on policy has been the Arab spring. He admits that it has shaken up how the agency works and who it works with. There needs to be a greater focus on smaller, grassroots organisations instead of larger, well-established institutions; less bureaucracy and fewer rules; more flexibility and risk-taking to back innovation. At the same time, Shah repeats frequently that he wants to show results for every taxpayer dollar spent. It all adds up to a demanding agenda.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2011/jun/15/rajiv-shah-america-aid

POVERTY: Salt-loving plants in Pakistan 'potential biofuel sources'

Saleem Shaikh : 1 June 2011
 Institute of Sustainable Halophyte Utilization (ISHU), Karachi
Salt-loving grasses could be potential biofuel sources on saline lands

[KARACHI] Perennial grasses that thrive in saline areas can not only help reclaim vast stretches of unproductive land but can also produce biofuels without compromising food production, according to a study in Pakistan.
A team of scientists led by Ajmal Khan, director of the Institute for Sustainable Halophyte Utilization at the University of Karachi, has identified several salt-loving grasses such as Halopyrum mucronatum, Desmostachya bipinnata, Phragmites karka, Typha domingensis and Panicum turgidum, whose stems, branches and leaves can be fermented into alcohol. Their findings will be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Biomass and Bioenergy.
These 'halophytes' grow quickly throughout the year in saline soils, inland and coastal marshes, and deserts. They do not need fresh sowing every year, or fertilisers and pesticides; are hardy, and produce good quality biomass.
Pakistan has about 410 known salt-loving plants, and some can also replace wheat and maize straw in cattle feed.
"These plants do not compete for good quality water and productive farmlands. They can be potentially used to produce large amounts of biomass while grown with brackish water on saline land, without competing with conventional agriculture,” Khan told SciDev.Net. "They could also help reduce carbon dioxide emissions by absorbing carbon dioxide to make food."
Khan said the soluble sugars and some of the woody tissues in these plants could be converted into alcohol. "Our candidate species may be able to produce more than 55 per cent of the biomass for alcohol. Our estimates are that we can produce about 70,000 kilograms of biomass per hectare annually — or 70,000 litres of alcohol per hectare can be obtained annually," he said.
Khan’s team recommended that the Pakistan government set up incubation to study the feasibility of wider application, and save some of the US$3.1 billion the country spends each year on petroleum imports.
However, a major drawback is the high cost of biofuel production from these plants. The scientists did not give precise comparisons with costs for conventional fossil fuel petrol.
Non-food biofuel plants also need increased investment in national research in the sector and promotion among potential investors, said Arif Alauddin, chief executive officer of the government's Alternative Energy Development Board, which promotes use of energy sources such as wind, biogas and solar energy.

http://www.scidev.net/en/news/salt-loving-plants-in-pakistan-potential-biofuel-sources-.html

MALNUTRITION: Pakistan: Chickpea replaces peanut in new supplementary food recipe

June 03, 2011

Ready-to-use foods have become an important weapon in fighting child malnutrition, since their early development in Malawi, and subsequent endorsement by major NGOs and UN agencies.
A new variant in production in Pakistan replaces a key ingredient, peanuts, with chick peas which saves money, stimulates the local economy and fits better with local tastes, according to the World Food Programme.
Child malnutrition is a long-standing problem in Pakistan, and according to the World Bank the number of children who are underweight or stunted “is of particular concern since Pakistan has long been considered self-sufficient in diverse agriculture produce and refined foods”.
A study by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) early this year, following the devastating floods of 2010, found “critical levels” of malnutrition among flood-affected children. It also found significant evidence that malnutrition, one manifestation of acute poverty and deprivation, was linked to feudalism and the country’s class structure.
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) is distributing a chickpea-based ready-to-eat supplementary food, known as “Wawa Mum” or “Good food, Mum”. The fortified paste is more acceptable to local people than those prepared with peanut butter, a food item rarely used in the country. [Note: the original version of this article - and its headline -wrongly referred to Wawa Mum as a therapeutic food, but it is better described as a supplementary food].
The paste contains a rich vitamin and mineral formulation blended with the cooked chick peas and each packet is designed to meet the daily nutrient requirements of children in the targeted age group.
“The chickpea paste is being distributed to children suffering from moderate malnutrition. It comes ready to use, in 50-gram packets, is produced locally and is meant for children aged 6-36 months and suffering from moderate malnutrition,” WFP spokesman Amjad Jamal told IRIN.
Three factories are currently processing 200 tons per month which is enough for four million packets of the paste. The WFP hopes to raise that number to 500 metric tons by June and to 1,000 tons by the end of the year, by contracting two additional factories.
The foods, he added, had been provided in four provinces through NGO partners and treatment centres such as government-run Basic Health Units (BHUs) since September 2010, when the post flood situation led to a greater focus on nutrition. Doctors and health workers at government health centres and those working with NGOs identify children in need of dietary supplementation.
“It is not uncommon to spot malnourished children in communities everywhere,” Faisel Aziz, who volunteers with the charitable Edhi Foundation in Balochistan, told IRIN.
WFP reports that the chick pea formulation may soon be available in Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Ethiopia.
http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?idCategory=33&idsub=128&id=54944&t=Pakistan%3A+++Chickpea+replaces+peanut+in+new+supplementary+food+recipe

POVERTY: PAKISTAN: Selling children to pay off a debt

LAHORE, 6 June 2011 (IRIN) -

 Photo: Kamila Hyat/IRIN
Feeding children has become harder for impoverished families, some of whom can no longer afford to provide a decent meal for them

Muhammad Ahsan gave his son away to his employer, a brick-kiln owner, after failing to pay back money he had earlier borrowed, but feels embarrassed that the boy has ended up working as a domestic helper in the latter’s home in Lahore.
“I owed him Rs.100,000 [US$1,176] I had borrowed and couldn’t afford to pay back,” Ahsan said. “He agreed to write off the amount if I `gave’ him my 10-year-old son, Sajjad, to work in his house as a domestic worker, washing dishes and cleaning floors.
“I am ashamed because I have in fact `sold’ my son, and ended his schooling to do so. But perhaps I can now afford to educate my two younger sons.”
His story is not unique. Despite laws that forbid it bonded debt labour is common in Pakistan. The US government, in a 2009 report describes Pakistan as a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labour and sexual exploitation.
Pakistan's largest human trafficking problem, according to the report, is that of bonded labour. Concentrated in Sindh and Punjab provinces, it is particularly common in brick kilns, carpet-making, agriculture, fishing, mining, leather tanning, and production of glass bangles. Estimates of victims of bonded labour vary widely, but together with those in forced marriages and women who are traded between tribal groups to settle disputes or as payment, are likely to exceed one million, it said.
The Karachi-based NGO the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research, in a 2003 study, found that over half a million people were working at brick kilns as bonded labourers. More recent data is hard to come by.
The Pakistani National Coalition Against Bonded Labour, which is made up of a group of local NGOs, describes the practice as “one of the least known forms of slavery today but responsible for enslaving millions of people around the world”.
Apart from paying debts, parents also sell, or attempt to sell, children for other reasons.
In the southern Punjab town of Vehari, Ghazala Bibi, once stood at a city square for over seven hours, seeking “buyers” for her three children, Mahnoor, aged nine, Abdullah, seven, and Masooma, four. “My husband is a drug addict and I can no longer manage to feed my children,” Ghazala, a domestic worker, said.
She said that by selling them, she hoped they would gain a better life.
In another case reported in November 2010, four children in Vehari put up a banner offering themselves for sale to pay for a kidney transplant required by their mother, Aqsa Parveen, 35. The provincial government of the Punjab intervened and arranged to bear the costs of the surgery.
“I believe some people stage `mock’ sales, simply to obtain charity. But even in such cases the people are generally desperate and believe they have no choice,” Sumera Jabeen, a community health worker, told IRIN. She also said more people were sending children out to beg for food.

More pushed into poverty
In a report released in April, the Asian Development Bank noted that a food price hike of over 10 percent in the first few months of 2011 had pushed another 6.94 million Pakistanis into poverty. It noted that the price of wheat had risen by 10 percent this year and rice by 13.1 percent.
“We can no longer manage to offer our five children even a single decent meal. Prices are too high, I was recently laid off from my factory and now do only odd jobs, earning around Rs. 6,000 [US$70] a month. Almost the entire amount goes on buying food,” Fareed Ahmed, a textile factory worker, told IRIN.
There have also been reports of parents attempting to sell children - in one case from Quetta, the capital of Balochistan Province, simply for a bag of wheat flour.
“There is no doubt at all economic conditions are getting tougher for people. Prices are indeed rising by the day and people struggle to manage. But persons who stand by the roadside, trying to sell children, are essentially staging a drama-seeking media attention and hoping someone will give them money,” Anwar Kazmi, a spokesman for the charitable Edhi Foundation, told IRIN from Karachi.
A member of the district administration in Vehari who asked not to be named, agreed. “The problem is that politicians rush to give money to these people and gain publicity, which is why people stage these stunts - but this is no solution. What we need is a strategy to create a social safety net for the destitute, generate employment and also to control inflation,” he said.
According to the National Coalition Against Bonded Labour, those affected essentially forfeit their right to employment, to move freely, and to sell his or her labour at market value. These actions violate internationally recognized human rights.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=92904

POVERTY: Pakistan: Economic Survey to miss official poverty figures

June 02, 2011

ISLAMABAD: The Economic Survey 2010-11, to be launched by Minister for Finance Dr Abdul Hafeez Sheikh today (Thursday), will not possess any official figures of people living below the poverty line in Pakistan as the PPP-led regime has been unable to complete a poverty survey in its over three years rule, The News has learnt. Having no official poverty figures in the country, the Planning Commission’s Centre for Poverty Reduction and Social Policy Development’s National Project Manager Yasin Junjua has resigned from his post citing personal reasons as the sole cause for leaving this organisation at this crucial juncture. “Yes, my resignation has been accepted by the competent authority,” Yasin Junjua confirmed while talking to The News here on Wednesday.
However, official sources in the Ministry of Finance confirmed to The News that the Planning Commission in consultation with relevant authorities sent a detailed analysis on poverty trends to be incorporated in the Economic Survey for 2010-11 but there was no official poverty figure because there was no survey done. Thus, the exact figures could not be unveiled in the upcoming Economic Survey.
However, referring to UNDP’s multidimensional indicators of poverty for Pakistan by CPRSPD, it stated that in terms of deprivation of different indicators around 52 percent fell below the poverty line. The CPRSPD also dwelt upon assessments on poverty done by the Panel of Economist and Task Force on Food Security in its working paper. But it is fact that there has been no official poverty figure in Pakistan since 2005-06 when the Musharraf regime had calculated that 23.9 percent of the population was living below the poverty line.
Although, the poverty survey was done in financial year 2007-08 on the basis of which the poverty was assessed sliding down from 23 percent to 17.2 percent which was also validated and released by the World Bank but the PPP led regime refused to endorse it on the ground that these results were contrary to the ground realities.
The poverty survey called Pakistan Social and Living Standard Measurement (PSLM) portion of Household Income Expenditure Survey (HIES) was due in the last financial year 2009-10 to collect data from 77,000 households from all four provinces but the government did not provide funds to the Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS).
During the ongoing financial year 2010-11, the HIES portion of PSLM was underway and at one stage it faced a blow when the government stopped its funding for the second half but the strong worded communication sent by the FBS to the Planning Commission paved the way for releasing of funds so the survey exercise continued without any interruption.
“We expect that the data of ongoing survey of PSLM will be forwarded to the Planning Commission by September 2011 after which the authorities would be able to come up with latest poverty figures,” a senior official of FBS told The News.
The sources said that the Planning Commission was working on different proposals to bring changes in methodology for calculating poverty as in Pakistan the Consumer Price Index (CPI) based inflation was used to come up. Under the much touted Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), the poverty scorecard survey all over the country was underway but the economic experts did not consider this ongoing survey as alternate to HIES portion of PSLM because the survey done by FBS provided comparable data of households to analyse real time changes occurred in level of poverty in households over certain period of time.
http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=6427&Cat=13&dt=6/2/2011

MALNUTRITION: Bangladesh: Bio-fortification: Way to fight malnutrition

Md Julfikar Islam
Renu Begum, an 18-year-old village girl gave birth to a dead child last month. At the eleventh hour of her delivery she was taken to the Thana Health Complex. Though she came out alive, the doctors could not save her child. When asked, the doctors blamed lack of zinc and calcium in the mother's body for the cause of the stillbirth. Renu's case is one of many.
According to preliminary studies by the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh ICDDR-B, seven out of 10 women in Bangladesh do not get enough zinc in their diets.
Shortage of zinc is a significant public health nutrition problem for children under five in the country that leads to a "pervasively high prevalence of stunting [low height-to-age ratio]," said Tahmeed Ahmed, the head of nutrition department and senior scientist at ICDDR-B.
At this juncture, I am so euphoric to learn that the researchers of Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) is going to introduce a type of high-zinc content rice very soon that can reduce the deficiencies of zinc in human body. The process they followed to innovate this type of rice is called bio-fortification.
Bio-fortification is a method of breeding crops to increase their nutritional value. It differs from ordinary fortification, because it focuses on making plant food more nutritious as the plants grow, rather than having nutrients added to the food when it is being processed. This is an improvement on ordinary fortification when it comes to providing nutrients for the rural poor, who rarely have access to commercially fortified food stuff.
The researchers of BRRI used the selective breeding method. They tested seeds selected from hundreds of thousands of rice strains chosen for their naturally high zinc content. Then they used cross-breeding between the zinc-rich rice and widely grown rice varieties to see what takes root in Bangladesh's soil and climate.
Not only rice the other food grains like potato, sweet potato, maze and wheat also can be fortified with these micronutrients. Now it is our turn to think about this technology and implement it seriously.
Why actually this bio-fortification method is chosen to introduce zinc-rich rice? In this method the nutrients become an inseparable part of the grain. As the poor people cannot afford to eat animal products, which are naturally rich in zinc and eat only one or two varieties of food most of the time they lack proper amount of zinc.
Moreover, according to local NGO, Bangladesh Rice Foundation, more rice is consumed per person in Bangladesh than in any other country where it is considered a staple food. But the existing types of rice do not have the amount of zinc people require.
It is also important to justify the commercial viability of this zinc-rich rice. If you cannot make any product commercially profitable, the product will be out of the market within a very short time. The target market of this type of rice is rural children, women and men suffering from malnutrition. The people living in the slum areas can be the target market of this product. By enriching the quality it can also be reached to the middle-class people of the cities.
Though preliminary research and development cost can raise the price of the seed of the rice, but widespread cultivation of the rice can help reduce the price. If the market price of this seed is higher than the existing hybrid seed, farmers will be discouraged to procure it. So, here government can extend a helping hand by subsidising this special seed until the seed producers can reach a position to offer a competitive price.
Moreover, it is very important to create awareness among the risk-averse farmers about the rice that it will not need any extra effort to produce this type of rice. If the production, pricing and overall marketing of the rice is successful only then we can hope to make it sustainable and minimise the health hazards for the lack of zinc and other micronutrients.
http://www.thefinancialexpress-bd.com/more.php?news_id=137151&date=2011-05-28

TUBERCULOSIS: in animals and humans

 May 3, 2011 : Muhammad Yasin Tipu

According to an estimate, Pakistan has a population of about 34.3 million cattle and 30.8 million buffaloes. Among the diverse bovine pathogens, mycobacteria are highly significant, especially among farm animals. Apart from mortality, it is estimated that the animals affected with tuberculosis lose 10 to 25 percent of their productive efficiency. Bovine tuberculosis is not only a threat to animals, but it is also a zoonotic and public health problem. Mycobacterium bovis, the cause of bovine tuberculosis, and mycobacterium tuberculosis, the cause of classical human tuberculosis, are genetically and antigenically very similar and cause identical clinical disease in humans. The disease is a major problem and causes more causalities worldwide than Malaria and HIV.
Tuberculosis is present worldwide with an extremely high prevalence in Asian countries, where 60 to 80 percent of the children below the age of 14 years are infected. The largest number of cases occurs in the Southeast Asian region, which accounts for about 33 percent of the cases globally. The bovine type may cause as high as 25.8 percent of tuberculosis in human beings.
In Europe, according to reports, mycobacterium bovis is the cause for almost 50 percent of cervical lymph adenitis cases in children. In addition, it is the major cause of human gastrointestinal tuberculosis in the developing countries, where bovine milk is not pasteurised before use. In Pakistan, however, tuberculosis is prevalent at epidemic proportions in both human beings and animals. Unfortunately, there are various aspects of this disease that still need to be analysed. It is hypothesised that bovine tuberculosis may be prevalent in Pakistan due to the use poorly pasteurised milk. Certainly, the existing situation calls for a comprehensive programme to address this problem in order to save the livestock, and particularly the human population at risk.
The key factors that can control tuberculosis are rapid detection, adequate therapy and contact tracing to arrest further transmission. Bovine tuberculosis infection in cattle is usually diagnosed in the animal on the basis of delayed hypersensitivity reactions. But after the animal dies, it is diagnosed through a post-mortem examination, and histopathological and bacteriological techniques. Bacteriological examinations may comprise the demonstration of acid-fast bacilli by microscopic examination (provides presumptive confirmation), and the isolation of mycobacteria on selective culture media and their subsequent identification by cultural and biochemical tests. Culture is gold standard, but a lot of time is required for this slow-growing organism. Serodiagnosis of tuberculosis also has many limitations
http://nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Opinions/Columns/03-May-2011/Tuberculosis-in-animals-and-humans