POVERTY: MIGRATION: Too many migrant children locked up

JOHANNESBURG, 21 March 2012 (IRIN)

 Photo: Masoma Mohammadi/IRIN
“Detention, even for a short time, has a very toxic effect on children” (file photo)

Arun*, a refugee from Myanmar, was just eight when he was arrested by immigration authorities in Malaysia and taken to a detention camp where he spent five months separated from his mother and six-year-old sister.
“I got one small bowl of food a day. We were never allowed to go outside. In the night I had to give massages to some of the men,” he told researchers from the International Detention Coalition (IDC) which has spent the last two years collecting testimonies from refugee, asylum-seeker and irregular migrant children about their experiences of detention in 11 different countries around the world.
By the time IDC’s researchers interviewed Arun, he and his family had been released but his sister was too traumatized to eat, and she and her mother cried as Arun spoke about being detained.
“Detention, even for a short time, has a very toxic effect on children,” said Jeroen Van Hove, coordinator of the IDC’s campaign to end the immigration detention of children, which was launched on 21 March at the 19th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which has been signed by every country in the world with the exception of the USA and Somalia, states that detention of children be used "only as a measure of last resort, for the shortest appropriate period of time and taking into account the best interests of the child".
However, according to the IDC, an umbrella organization with more than 250 member groups working in 50 countries, as the use of migration-related detention has increased globally, so too has the detention of migrant, asylum-seeker and refugee children. They estimate there are tens of thousands of children in detention every day and hundreds of thousands every year.

Australia
In Australia, one of the few countries to regularly publish statistics on the numbers of children in immigration detention, there were 1,079 children in custody in January, just under half of them in prison-like facilities in remote locations such as Christmas Island. Following public pressure, Australia’s immigration minister made a commitment in October 2010 to remove most children from locked detention by June 2011.
According to Sophie Peer, campaign director for ChilOut, a local group advocating the release of all children from Australia’s immigration detention centres, the minister has kept to that commitment by a very slim margin, but the process by which children are selected for transfer to community-based accommodation where they are allowed to live a relatively normal life, remains unclear.
“It seems to us completely arbitrary,” she told IRIN, adding that the youngest child remaining in a detention facility is an unaccompanied seven-year-old who has been locked up for nine months.
When we interview the children, the overwhelming words are that they feel helpless and hopeless
She described the conditions in the detention centres, with their lack of educational and recreational facilities, as “completely inappropriate for children”. The centres’ often remote locations also make regular visits from lawyers and organizations like ChilOut prohibitively expensive.
“When we interview the children, the overwhelming words are that they feel helpless and hopeless,” said Peer. “They ask us, ‘What have I done wrong?’ To which our answer is, ‘Nothing’.”
She added that many of the children suffered from mental health issues: "We’re seeing self-harm on an almost daily basis.”
Research from numerous studies cited in a new report by the IDC, has found that immigration detention of children "has profound and far-reaching implications for their development and physical and psychological health". The longer children are detained, the more likely they are to suffer from mental health problems including anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, but there is evidence that even short-term detention has negative impacts on children.

Thailand, USA
In Thailand, detention periods for migrant children can be as long as five years. Thailand is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention and, under its immigration law, refugees and asylum-seekers living outside camps are subject to arrest and detention regardless of their age.
“Those who cannot go back to their country or who can’t be settled in third countries are kept [in detention] indefinitely,” said Veerawit Tianchainan, founder and director of the Thai Committee for Refugees Foundation (TCR), which has been negotiating with the country’s immigration bureau since 2010 for the release of asylum-seekers and refugees with children. In June 2011, they had their first major success with the release of 96 Ahmadi refugees and asylum-seekers, including 40 children, into accommodation paid for by TCR through its Refugee Freedom Fund.
Although no official figures are available, Tianchainan estimates that 100 children remain in Bangkok’s International Detention Centre where children are separated from parents of the opposite sex, conditions are over-crowded and unhygienic, and schooling is available only two days a week.
“Some of them are really desperate,” he told IRIN. “After six months they look terrible because of the conditions inside and the poor quality and variety of food.”


The USA has taken steps to improve its treatment of migrant children in detention but still averages around 9,000 unaccompanied minors a year in custody with the conditions they are kept in varying from “detention-like facilities” to well-run shelters with fewer restrictions on movement, according to Michelle Brané, director of the detention and asylum programme at the Washington DC-based Women’s Refugee Commission.
Officials complain that the average length of stay for such children, many of whom are teenagers fleeing abuse or gang violence in Mexico and Central America, has increased in recent years because of the amount of checks required before they can be released to family members, sponsors or foster families. “It’s striking a balance between detention and protection and making sure they’re safe,” said Brané, adding that unaccompanied children, in particular, are extremely vulnerable to exploitation.
The focus of the IDC’s campaign also goes beyond encouraging countries to release children from immigration detention to recommending what kind of arrangements children should be released into.
Drawing on best practices from countries such as Belgium and Japan, the IDC’s five-step model includes assigning guardians to unaccompanied migrant children or caseworkers to those with families, and placing them in community settings while their immigration status is determined. Key to the model is the goal of protecting children’s rights and best interests.
“Treating them humanely outside of detention is a big element,” said IDC’s Van Hove, “but also making sure they understand what is happening to them and that all options haven’t been exhausted for legalizing their stay.”
Brané is hopeful the IDC's campaign will put a global spotlight on the detention of migrant children. "Most people around the world don't realize that children are being detained in these conditions," she said. "My hope would be that seeing this raised at an international level will encourage governments to move on it."
*Not his real name
http://www.irinnews.org/Report/95115/MIGRATION-Too-many-migrant-children-locked-up

POVERTY: THAILAND: Rice pests multiply post-floods

BANGKOK, 12 March 2012 (IRIN)

 Photo: Sylvia Villareal/IRRI
Of pests and pesticide in Thailand: a province hit by the brown planthopper

Heavy flooding across parts of Thailand in 2011 has fuelled outbreaks of a rice pest that can decimate harvests, experts say.
The pest, known as brown planthopper (BPH), transmits two viruses that hit yields as well as eating away at rice plants.
"The floods have certainly made things worse," Kong Luen Heong, principal scientist for the Manila-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) told IRIN.
"Moreover, they will impact [on] upcoming harvests as well."
"BPH is attacking the rice bowl of the country for the eighth time in a row [over the past four years]," said Kukiat Soitong, from the Thai government's Rice Department, based in the Agriculture Ministry, adding that "150,000 hectares have already been seriously damaged in the central plains, in the basin of Chao Phraya river".
Affected provinces lost 30 percent of their rice production due to BPH in early 2010, amounting to around 1.3 million tons for the country, or more than 15 percent of the nationwide harvest, which takes place twice a year, reported the Rice Department.
According to the Thai Rice Exporters' Association, Thailand produces 4-5 percent of the world's rice, and is the largest exporter, with 10.8 million tons in 2011.
Last year's flooding, which affected more than two million people across 28 provinces and damaged more than two million hectares of farmland, worsened the longstanding pest problem by drowning natural enemies of BPH, including insect parasites and spiders.
"Because of the floods and the killing of BPH's natural enemies, farmers are more dependent on insecticides for several seasons. And the fact is that using insecticides makes BPH even stronger," added Kukiat.
Most insecticides kill BPH's natural enemies, rather than BPH itself. The brown planthopper has an "unmatched" capacity to become resistant to any molecule used against it, according to Keng Hong Tan, a retired entomology professor based in Malaysia.
He says the pest has even developed resistance to one of its own hormones when applied as a control measure.
And while IRRI and Thailand's Rice Department launched a campaign in July 2011 to ban the two insecticides most often used in rice cultivation, cypermethrin and abamectin - known to cause BPH's resurgence - the ban is unlikely to have a significant impact.
"This campaign will have limited immediate effects because of the floods," said Heong. "It will take some strong will to break the vicious circle that helps BPH."
Yet banning insecticides is the only way to control BPH outbreaks in the long term, said Ho Van Chien, director of the Vietnamese government's plant protection centre for southern Vietnam.
According to IRRI, BPH damaged hundreds of thousands of hectares across Asia, leading to hundreds of millions of dollars in lost production.
Since 2009, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam have been severely affected at least once.
"BPH puts the whole rice ecosystem in jeopardy," said Erma Budiyanto, director of plant protection in Indonesia's Ministry of Agriculture.
"There could be a humanitarian situation because of this pest in the future if insecticides remain as widely used as today," said Heong.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report/95058/THAILA

POVERTY: THAILAND: Authorities boost flood-control measures

BANGKOK, 1 February 2012 (IRIN)

 Photo: Shermaine Ho/IRIN 
Millions were impacted by the 2011 floods

The Thai government is pressing ahead with efforts to mitigate the risk of flooding during the upcoming rainy season, but greater coordination is still needed, flood experts say.
The US$9.6 billion measure was announced on 20 January as a first step, ahead of the annual May-October rainy season, at a flood forum organized by the National Economic and Social Development Board and the Asian Development Bank.
"If the same amount of water comes to Bangkok this year [as in 2011], the situation will be improved," Chusit Apiramanekal, a water resource management specialist in the Climate Risk Management Department of the Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre (ADPC) in Bangkok, told IRIN.
While no specific timeline is yet in place, the government will soon produce a master plan for flood risk reduction activities, including canal drenching, cleaning drainage systems and excavation to prevent the recurrence of last year's damage, when "most of the waterways and drainages were not functioning properly", said Ti Le Huu, former chief of water security for the Environment and Development Division at the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).
The severity of the 2011 floods, brought on by unusually high rainfall after several storms and typhoons, has underscored the need for stronger prevention efforts.
More than 675 people died and millions were affected in what has since been described as the worst flooding to strike the Thai kingdom in 50 years.
The government's 2012 Action Plan includes a budget of $3.9 billion for the construction of flood ways and flood diversion channels, which will allow 1,500 million cubic metres to flow out per second, according to ADPC. Immediate work this year would include the improvement of dykes, sluice gates and canals.
In addition, almost $2 billion will go towards converting 324,000 hectares of Chao Phraya farmland north of Bangkok into land that can retain up to 10 billion cubic metres of water to prevent the flooding of areas downstream.

Preparedness key
The damage last year was exacerbated by the "lack of preparedness of people living in the affected areas, partly due to a lack of an effective communication system to share information, especially of flood forecasts", said Le Huu.
But Le Huu downplayed the risk of similar flooding in 2012. Similarly, ADPC says there is little chance that there will be a repeat of 2011's "extraordinary" precipitation, which was 40 percent above national averages at 70,000 million cubic metres of water, according to Chusit.
"When the dams tried to release the water, the provinces downstream were already flooded. When operators tried to control it, a tropical storm hit Thailand, forcing them to release it fully," he said.
The total volume of floodwater has been confirmed at 14,000 million cubic metres by the government's Strategic Committee for Flood Reconstruction and Development, according to Le Huu.

Dam fears
While fears about the dams bursting are rampant in local media, Deltares, a Dutch think-tank assisting the Thai government in an advisory role to the Flood Relief Operation Center (FROC), says dams are now operating at a lower level to mitigate flood risks.
"During 2011 the dams were full, up to the operational limit, and dam operators had to release water at the wrong time. Latest news is that they decided to operate at a lower level, give less priority to agricultural and energy use, in favour of downstream flood protection. Hence a lower risk for dam breaks," Tjitte Nauta, Deltares' integrated water management specialist for Southeast Asia, said.
According to local media reports, dam waters have dropped from 91 percent of capacity to about 84 percent in two weeks.
Of the more than two dozen dams in the Chao Phraya River basin constructed since the 1950s, the two largest - Bhumipol and Sirikit - are located on Ping and Nang river in the northern Tak and Uttaradit provinces, and control 22 percent of all water runoff from the Chao Phraya river basin.
But policymakers need to coordinate better to improve planning and flood response, said Nauta.
"The recent floods made very clear that the governance structure for water management is too complicated and during such a national crisis one single command authority would be strongly recommended," he said.
"The challenge is to maintain the momentum of work, interest, and commitment in flood management at the top level of government," added Le Huu.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=94770

POVERTY: Super 'floodway' mooted for Thai floods

Pratchaya W: 2 December 2011  A new floodway would help prevent flooding in Bangkok
Flickr/*petitpor*

[BANGKOK] Researchers from a Thai university have come up with a proposal for a 'super express' floodway to help reduce the impact of future flooding on Thailand's capital, Bangkok.
The idea came from Chulalongkorn University's Unit for Disaster and Land Information Studies and would make use of existing irrigation canals that run in parallel to the Chao Phraya River.
Thanawat Jarupongsakul, the leader of the study, said the team proposed to widen the canals and leave a kilometre-wide stretch of empty land alongside them. Motorways running to and from Bangkok would be raised six metres from the ground on both sides of the expanded floodway to act as its dykes.
He said the project would cost about 30 billion Thai baht (around US $1 billion) but, by utilising existing canals, would be much cheaper than digging a new waterway. It would also need less energy as it would mainly rely on gravity, rather than pumps, to drain the water, he added.
The expanded floodway could hold 1.6 billion cubic metres of water and it could drain about 500 million cubic metres of water a day — equivalent of 2.5 Olympic-sized swimming pools a second.
This year's flooding in Thailand has been described as the worst ever, affecting over 2.3 million people.
Thanawat said that this is only one of the 11 non-structural measures that they are proposing to help Bangkok remain safe from severe flooding.
Other measures include: an overhaul of the disaster warning system; urban development control for Bangkok and new satellite towns; flood taxes and insurances and flood risk maps for urban development and city planning.
The researchers have also proposed: water management plans and ground water use control; climate risk and farming plans; water retention area conservation plans; disaster management plans; and a new disaster management agency.
"The floodway is good, but it alone can only partly help the city to deal with severe flooding," admitted Thanawat. "It needs to be implemented with the other measures."
A source in the government's flood command centre said that senior officials were interested he team's super floodway idea but said that long-term maintenance could be a problem given that even maintaining the capacity of existing floodways is problematic.
Sutat Weesakul, director of research projects at the Asian Institute of Technology's School of Engineering and Technology, said the idea is good in principle as the city desperately needs a channel through which the floodwaters can flow through.
But there is need for more discussion on details to ensure its effectiveness and concerns about its maintenance, said Sutat.
http://www.scidev.net/en/agriculture-and-environment/natural-disasters/news/super-floodway-mooted-for-thai-floods.html

POVERTY: THAILAND: Two days in the life of an urban flood expert

BANGKOK, 2 December 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Shermaine Ho/IRIN
Adri Verwey visiting water pumping station at the Bang Sue canal in Bangkok, November 2011

As 16 billion cubic metres of flood water bore down on Bangkok in early October, international experts flew in to help the government deal with an unprecedented potential calamity.
One was Adri Verwey, an urban flood specialist from the Netherlands, another low-lying "delta" country that has honed its international reputation for water management through investments that protect the country's highest-density areas from even unlikely catastrophes that would only occur once in 10,000 years.
Verwey has worked for the past 40 years on flood forecasting systems, mostly in Asia, and is now the senior specialist on modelling systems at the Netherlands-based water resources management think tank, Deltares.
IRIN followed Verwey and his team in the Thai government's flood command centre from 10-11 November, when three out of Bangkok's 50 districts were ordered to evacuate while rising waters threatened to overwhelm the city's hastily constructed sandbag dykes and water pumping system.
"We do not have experience in dealing with such a serious flood; many local experts have never expected a flood would happen in Bangkok," said Barames Vardhanabhuti, a lecturer in the engineering department at Kasesart University.
One of the first steps was to gather data and satellite images from multiple government agencies, and then enter the information on topography, water levels and the city's drainage system (number of water pumps, canals, drainage capacity and speed) into a multi-dimensional modelling software, which generated worst-case flood scenarios.
The result was cartoon-like images of water spreading through the city, frame by frame.

Brainstorming
With northern Bangkok already under 1.6m of water and the capacity of existing dykes far too low to handle such a massive flood, Verwey proposed using soldiers to speed up sandbagging.
The city's main 170km King's Dyke needed to be sandbagged up to 1-2m higher to save the city's business and tourist hub from flooding, said Verwey.
According to the Ministry of Interior's department of disaster prevention and mitigation, 350,000 sandbags had been produced as of 2 November. The department planned to distribute an additional 250,000 sandbags to save the country's administrative and economic heart from the deluge.

 Photo: Shermaine Ho/IRIN : Sandbagged and waiting

In case water pumps and sandbagging failed to hold back the deluge from inner Bangkok, Verwey and army officials brainstormed possible next steps: cargo containers placed in openings under the railway tracks to block water from flowing into central Bangkok? Blowing up the sea dykes near the Gulf of Thailand to quicken drainage if floodwater made it to the southern coast?
But the focus was still on gathering data and working with the army on sandbagging plans.
Verwey met the army's chief of staff and presented the plan to the prime minister, who agreed to mobilize about 1,000 soldiers to inspect 80km of The King's Dyke twice a day and to help local residents place additional sandbags.
If the dykes were not reinforced by sandbags in time, said Verwey, water sneaking under the dykes could lead to a breach up to 100m wide - causing widespread flooding across almost all areas in Bangkok; at the time only 30 percent of the city was flooded.

Water pump inspection
Besides sandbagging to hold back floodwaters, the excessive amount of water that had already inundated the northern and eastern parts of the city needed to be drained.
Verwey's team inspected three of the city's 14 water pumping stations and declared two sites functional. At the third station, the team found eight out of 45 pumps non-functioning and the remaining ones working at less than capacity.
It was almost 9pm on 11 November when Verwey waded through floodwaters to inspect the Bang Sue canal, the last barrier between the water and Bangkok's inner city. He declared all of them functional.
"We are monitoring the pumps around the clock," said the water pump station master, who had used his own money to buy a fan to cool down overheated control units.
Nearby, residents filled the waterways with lotus-shaped boats made from curled banana leaves and marigold flowers as the country celebrated Loy Krathong - an annual full-moon festival to pay tribute to the water goddess.
Verwey left Bangkok on 20 November - one day after the prime minister declared central Bangkok safe, with floodwaters receding from most parts of the city, much in line with his simulations.

But for Verwey, the job is far from complete.
"We can expect the flood to continue to recede, but it will still take quite some time before outer Bangkok is completely dry," he said. "What is needed next is a thorough analysis of what has happened and how such a flood can be prevented in the future."
In December he and his colleagues will help the government draft a new plan for water resources management for the Chao Phraya Basin - which covers 30 percent of the country and houses 40 percent of the population.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=94367

POVERTY: MYANMAR-THAILAND: Slow pace of registering migrants

MAE SOT, 5 December 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: David Longstreath/IRIN
Burmese family registers their child for a Thai birth certificate as part of a drive to issue identification documents to all children born in Thailand regardless of their parents' legal status. At Mae Tao clinic in Mae Sot, Thailand

For decades, children of Burmese refugees and migrants in Thailand could not obtain an official birth certificate, vital to access healthcare and education. Even though legislation entitling them to a formal identity has been in place since 2008, registering and coaxing forth the undocumented has been "painstaking", according to community groups.
"Birth registration is the basic fundamental right of any human being. If you don't have birth registration, you lose all your rights," said Naing Min, project director for the community-based organization, Committee for Protection and Promotion of Child Rights (CPPCR), at Thailand's border with Myanmar in Mae Sot.
With no proof of identity or age, those without birth certificates are vulnerable to abuse, exploitation and trafficking. When they grew older, their troubles are compounded: unable to get any form of identification, they cannot open a bank account or apply for a formal job.
Following the amendment in 2008 to Thailand’s Civil Registration Act of 1991, all children born in the country are entitled to birth registration and government-issued birth certificates, regardless of their parents’ legal status.
In Burmese refugee camps, more systematic birth registration - coordinated by camp and government authorities with assistance from NGOs and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) - began in September 2010, but only a fraction has been documented.
The law has taken time to be implemented, in part because of the slow pace of assigning and training government staff. It has also been a challenge to register Burmese who cannot provide any proof of identity whatsoever - not registered at birth, they have been unable to get any identity papers later in life.

Backlog
“The law in the Civil Registration Act, as amended in 2008, is retroactive. It went back for all children born in Thailand, so with Myanmar refugees in the camps, you could be dealing with 25 years of birth registrations,”," said James Lynch, Thailand's representative for UNHCR.
About 1,600 people - mostly newborns - have been registered in nine refugee camps along the border housing an estimated 150,000 people, including some 60,000 unregistered refugees, according to the Thailand Burma Border Consortium, an umbrella group of organizations providing services for migrants and refugees.
The next group to register is children born to Burmese refugees between 2008 and September 2010, and then further back to 1984 when the first major waves of refugees, fleeing violence in Myanmar, poured into Thailand.
"I'm not sure of exact numbers [left to be registered], but if you go back 25 years, it's a painstaking task, but an important one," Lynch said.
Each year, about 5 percent of children born in Thailand - about 40,000 babies primarily from poor families, ethnic minorities or migrants - are not registered at birth, according to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).

Catch-22
“The issue with the unregistered camp population is that they could report to the district office, but they fear if they’re not registered and they go to report, they might be deported, so they may be reluctant,” Lynch said.
Unregistered Burmese refugees cannot get birth certificates for their children through camp authorities and face the same problem as migrants.
"They have to go to the district office, but practically, this is difficult because they have no permission to leave the camp, and if they do leave the camp, then they can be arrested and deported, so it is a Catch-22 classic ," said Joel Harding, senior protection officer for the NGO International Rescue Committee.
It is a problem UNHCR and other agencies are working with the government to fix, but providing birth registration for even registered Burmese refugees - there are about 100,000 - is taking time.

A better future
When Ma Lay, 27, gave birth in August 2011 to her third son at Mae Tao Clinic, a health centre for Burmese refugees and migrants in Thailand, she immediately registered him. Her two older sons, six and four, were born in Myanmar, and like her and her husband, have no papers.
"For the two boys, there have been no problems yet, but for me and especially my husband, sometimes on our way to work, we run into the police and get arrested," said Ma Lay. "It makes me feel better if my baby is delivered and registered here, for my baby's future."
Some 200 babies born each month at Mae Tao Clinic are registered on site.
CPPCR now encourages people to get Thai civil birth registration, yet still continues unofficial registrations for those who do not in the hopes such documentation will help them access education and health services as well as claim land and inheritance if they return to Myanmar.
"Some are afraid to go to the office or to ask for a recommendation letter from the village chief, because they are here illegally. They don't know their rights," Naing Min said.
Over the past eight years, CPPCR has unofficially registered 180,000 children."When there was no system to recognize the children born in Thailand, we collected the information, so that when there is true democracy [in Myanmar], we can make claims for their [Burmese] citizenship," Naing Min said.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=94382

POVERTY: Thailand: Build a flood-resilient city

BANGKOK, 28 November 2011 (IRIN)
 Photo: DTU flood team
One of the few remaining refuges to keep cars dry at the height of 2011 flooding in Bangkok: elevated parkways

Less than a year after Bangkok was chosen as a "role model city" by the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) as part of the UN's 2010-2015 "Making Cities Resilient" campaign, the worst floods in half a century put that distinction to the test.
IRIN asked experts what the 3,000 low-lying cities such as Bangkok - which includes its delta neighbours - can do to improve their flood resilience.

Prioritize
A master plan capturing the city's development visions, priorities and vulnerability is the first step, said Adri Verwey, an urban flood expert at Deltares a Netherlands-based water management think-tank.
"Cities need to decide the levels of security that they want and which areas need more protection," he said.
In the Netherlands, where 26 percent of land is below sea level, cities with a high density of human and economic capital are designed to withstand a one-in-10,000-years flood, while inland, rural and sparsely populated areas are designed to withstand a-one-in-1,250 years flood.

Find higher ground
Unbalanced development is the weakest point of urban planning in many Asian countries, but Thailand's case is more extreme in that it has focused all its energy on the country's business and political capital, said Anisur Rahman, land use planning specialist at the Bangkok-based Asian Disaster Prevention Center (ADPC).
"Better planning would be developing the country with more attention given to other [surrounding] cities, so they can help share the pressure, especially in a catastrophic situation like this."
Instead of allowing new businesses to set up in and around Bangkok, future investments should be diverted to less-developed areas on higher land, said Rahman.
Lawmakers from Thailand's ruling party have submitted a parliamentary motion to move the capital to Nakhon Nayok Province - a sloping terrain with higher elevation.

Water resources management
"Store and divert" sums up all flood control strategies, said Takeya Kimio, a visiting senior adviser at the Bangkok office of Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
"Store" means building more reservoirs and retention ponds to retain water upstream and "divert" means develop sufficient canals and channels mid- and downstream to carry the overflow to sea.
For cities that are slowly sinking and have rising sea levels, governments need to regulate water resources, said Nat Marjang, a lecturer on water resources engineering at the Bangkok-based Kasetsart University.
"Before the law, which regulates groundwater extraction [in Thailand], was enforced, many factories built their own wells to extract water for industrial use. This is an important factor contributing to land subsidence."

 Photo: Shermaine Ho/IRIN

Going, going...
Bangkok is sinking by 30mm annually, according to the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration.
Combined with a rising sea level of 25mm every year, the city could be under 50-100cm of water by 2025.

Private sector role
The private sector should be directly involved in flood management, said Jerry Velasquez, senior regional coordinator for UNISDR Asia Pacific.
"What we need from them is not only corporate social responsibility and money, but their active involvement. It can be as simple as building a dyke around their factories, choosing the right locations to build factories and coming up with disaster contingency plans."
The Federation of Thai Industries estimated losses from the seven hardest-hit industrial estates could reach US$13 billion, covering 891 factories and 460,000 workers, according to local media.

Re-evaluate flood control system
Despite the extensive network of flood-control infrastructure already in place in Bangkok, experts said it largely failed to keep pace with the city's dramatic urbanization and development.
From 1985 to 2010, the percentage of the total population living in urban areas in Thailand increased from 26.8 to 34 percent, adding 10.5 million people to cities, according to the most recent UN world urbanization prospects.
While many officials believe the barrier known as His Majesty King's dyke, which runs north to south in eastern Bangkok, can save the city from flooding, Vewey said it was designed to handle only the typical annual rainfall and not a one-in-50-years flood like this year's.
As a result, pumping stations failed under the pressure.
Vewey said flood-prone countries needed to be more prepared.
"I'm impressed by the speed of sandbagging and the distribution of food and water [in Thailand], but you can't always solve problems with sandbags... It's shocking how people are unprepared for the flood. It's as if the phenomenon of flooding has been completely forgotten in Thailand," Verwey said.
Flooding in 1995 killed more than 400 people and affected close to four million, according to the government.
Investing in flood prevention is a "calculated choice", said Kimio at JICA. "There are only two options, either reduce the speed of development or invest more in flood control," he said.
Since the 1980s, the risk of economic loss due to floods in Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries has increased by more than 160 percent, outstripping the growth of GDP per capita, according to UNISDR.
Nine of the top 10 coastal flood-prone cities by 2070, including Bangkok, are in Asia, according to a recent World Bank report.
Asia accounts for more than half of the developing world's cities most vulnerable to flooding, according to UN-HABITAT.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=94319

TUBERCULOSIS: MYANMAR: Call for new government to boost health spending

YANGON/ BANGKOK, 4 April 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Contributor/IRIN: For some Burmese hospital patients, ad-hoc debt forgiveness (file photo)
With a new government recently sworn in, a former Myanmar health official is calling on leaders to invest more in healthcare for the country's poorest.
"Our country is sorely in need of a health insurance programme. The government should introduce a health insurance programme like the 30 Baht scheme that Thailand adopted for poor households," said Aung Tun Thet, former Health Ministry director-general of planning and statistics and secretary of the inter-ministerial National Health Committee from 1989-1992.
In 2001, Thailand introduced a universal coverage scheme to improve healthcare access for its poorest citizens. Low-income patients are charged 30 Baht (approximately US$1) per medical consultation. The service is free for those younger than 12, over 60, and the very poor.
Though there is no national health insurance in Myanmar, all public hospitals offer a medical cost-sharing plan - first introduced in 1993 - where patients cover medicine and laboratory fees and the state pays doctors' fees.
Soldiers in military hospitals are exempt from paying for medicine or lab tests, and tuberculosis patients are not required to pay for drugs at a public hospital.

Cost-sharing
According to state media, Health Minister Kyaw Myint recently rejected a proposal by opposition parliamentarians to boost coverage for the poor, stating that the existing cost-sharing system was sufficient.
But for Ma Oo*, mother of a nine-month-old child, medical and lab fees were unaffordable on her husband's income as a rickshaw and bicycle repairman in the economic capital, Yangon, when their baby needed an emergency operation.
"When doctors and nurses told me I had to buy medicine for the operation, I felt so sad and helpless because I could not afford it." She said nurses "scolded" her for not having the money. After realizing the child would not get the life-saving operation otherwise, Ma Oo said the medical staff asked her to sign a letter testifying her family could not afford the medication to justify not paying for drugs.
Aung Tun Thet said these ad-hoc arranagements offered some hope to poor patients. "There are some healthcare providers that give free healthcare to poor people so the poor can get treatment even if they cannot afford medical fees."
A new medical graduate who preferred anonymity confirmed that hospitals could not "deny any patient".
Instead, hospitals ask patients who can afford to do so to purchase extra medication, and even medical supplies such as syringes, to donate to the poor. A doctor working in central Myanmar who gave his name as Htway said this stock is then distributed. "We health workers always check the [leftover] drugs donated by some patients to find out whether they are still valid."
Myanmar had the world's 44th highest rate of child mortality in 2009, with an estimated 71 children dying before their fifth birthdays out of every 1,000 live births.
While government data show an estimated 66 percent of children in this age group with suspected pneumonia infections - a leading childhood killer - were taken to a health facility from 2005-2009, there is no record how many of them received antibiotics.

Stop-gap measures
A technical officer and health financing specialist at the UN World Health Organization (WHO), Riku Eloviano, said community-based health insurance plans - such as higher-income patients subsidizing care for poorer patients - "have had some positive impact in making access to care and medicines more affordable for people... They [community health insurance schemes] provide a formal expression of solidarity where [the] rich can subsidize the poor and the healthy can subsidize those who are sick."
However, she said: "These schemes often... cover only a relatively small number of the population, which means that the resources gathered through member contributions are low, which in turn hampers the ability of these schemes to act as an effective risk protection mechanism... They are often not financially viable as a long-term solution."
Rather, the government should boost medical spending to ensure everyone from "hawkers to farmers" could afford care, suggested Aung Tun Thet. "Hopefully a new government will consider investing more in the health sector."
Of WHO member countries that supplied information in 2007, Myanmar devoted the lowest percentage of its GDP to healthcare, about 1.9 percent. But this was still an increase over previous spending, according to government records.
Total government spending on healthcare increased more than 100 times from 464.1 million kyat in 1988-89 (approximately $72.4 million at the official exchange rate) to 51.7 billion kyat in 2008-09 ($8 billion).
Health administration and insurance accounted for 4 percent of total spending in 2009.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=92352

POVERTY: Thailand’s land reform proposal to fight poverty

February 20, 2011
The biggest problem in Thailand now is that real issues can get easily overshadowed and overwhelmed by what has become a complete power play, and then forgotten or cast aside by everyone who matters.
A land reform proposal submitted by the Anand Panyarachun committee with little political fanfare stands to test this malaise. We will know in the next few days if the proposal, which is worth serious attention by all, will be spurned by movements that want the prime minister to leave immediately but dont quite know why, and by a government that is trying to hang on but doesnt quite know how.
The red shirts violent campaign last year, whether it was a real grass-roots uprising as the movement claims or a Thaksin Shinawatra-sponsored agitation as alleged by the Democrat government, has brought to light the issue of economic inequality in Thailand. This forced the government, academics and civil society to look back on long-forgotten problems, one of which is the poverty associated with being landless. The embattled Abhisit government promised to act, and the Anand committee was formed.

The proposals on land reform deserve attention.
Dr. Ravi Ratnayake, Director of the Trade and Investment Division of ESCAP, said that promoting agricultural trade in the Asia-Pacific region is important for addressing poverty in Asia and the Pacific, where over 70 percent of the poor live in rural areas and have agriculture as their main livelihood.
With rising populations and the emergence of relatively affluent population segments seeking dietary diversity, the demand for food products in general, and high-value processed food in particular, has been rising. He noted there is a great potential for agricultural exports in the region.
Analyzing constraints to agricultural exports, senior policy makers, academics, exporters, logistics providers, and UN and Asian Development Bank (ADB) experts at the High-level Consultation on Facilitating Agricultural Trade in Asia and the Pacific organized in Bangkok by ESCAP this week noted that the rapid emergence of stringent private standards for food products in the West has become a major challenge. There are significant gaps in quality infrastructure and technical know-how that prevent developing countries to meet these standards. They emphasized the need for regional cooperation in building capacity and developing mechanisms for accreditation of testing facilities.
http://thailand-business-news.com/news/29142-agricultural-trade-is-key-to-poverty-reduction-and-food-security-in-asia-and-the-pacific

POVERTY: LAOS: Decision expected on controversial Mekong dam

25 February 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Tharum Bun/IRIN : Experts and activists predict tough times ahead for Mekong River communities

BANGKOK, - The proposed Xayabury Dam on the lower Mekong River promises to supply much-needed energy to the region, but at a "devastating" environmental and personal cost to surrounding communities, say activists and environmental experts.
"Millions more people in the region are likely to be adversely [affected] through changes to the river's biodiversity, fisheries and sediment flows," said Ame Trandem with International Rivers, a US-based environmental NGO.
The dam's main developer is Thai construction company Ch Karnchang.
Sixty-five million people depend on the Mekong River - the largest inland fishery in the world - for survival and its biodiversity is second only to the Amazon in South America, according to Jeremy Bird, director of the Laos-based Mekong River Commission (MRC), a regional intergovernmental advisory body on any mainstream development conducted on the river.
More than 200,000 fishermen and farmers - most of the lower riverside community - will suffer displacement and reduced earnings if the Xayabury Dam is built in Laos, states International Rivers.
Based on the 2010 Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) commissioned by MRC, "dam construction will result in irreversible environmental impacts", said MRC spokeswoman Tiffany Hacker.
Damage to fisheries "cannot be mitigated by fish passes and reservoirs", said Alan Brooks, director of the Phnom Penh-based NGO, World Fish Center.
The dam is the first of 11 hydropower dams proposed along the lower Mekong River. Though a regional agreement requires prior consultation with MRC before a project can move forward, there is no way to enforce this recommendation.
The Mekong Agreement, which recognizes the shared impacts of river development projects on neighbouring countries, stipulates that Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam must all approve major projects on the lower Mekong River.
The four governments may announce their positions on the dam by as early as March 2011, according to International Rivers.
"What happens with the Xayaburi Dam will essentially set the precedent for whether more mainstream dams are built or not, many of which will [have] devastating impacts on the region's people in terms of lost income, livelihood and food security," said Trandem.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=92037

POVERTY: Where does the poverty line truly lie?

  Posted by Andrew Chambers 19 January 2011: guardian.co.uk

Where does the poverty line truly lie? Defining deprivation isn't a mere academic exercise – it informs and creates policy. Middle-income countries such as Thailand illustrate the dangers of a simplistic approach

 Photograph: Barbara Walton/EPA: Thailand has achieved many of its millennium development goal targets, but pockets of poverty still exist.


Thailand is a development success story. The country is on target to meet or exceed all its millennium development goals (MDGs), and absolute poverty ($1 a day) is now less than 2%.
However, do these statistics accurately measure what poverty is, and what is the next step in poverty reduction for middle-income countries like Thailand?
How to define and measure poverty, therefore, is not just a dry academic debate, as these decisions greatly affect what policies are pursued.
Only a few minutes from the five-star hotels of downtown Pattaya, Soon Ton lives in a small urban slum built on dusty wasteland. She is one of the increasing numbers of Thais who have left their rural villages to seek work in the cities. Her house, which she shares with her elderly mother, is a ramshackle mix of scavenged corrugated iron and plywood. There's no running water and she only recently got electricity in her home. However, by sifting through rubbish bins she is able to collect enough recyclable material to make more than 200 baht (£4) a day. This puts her well above the MDG and national poverty lines. So, in terms of absolute measures of poverty, Soon Ton is a success story and she is not counted among Thailand's poor.
Absolute measures of poverty based on income or consumption are attractive, as they are easily understood by policymakers and the wider population. They also provide a relatively easy way to gauge poverty levels and to measure success in poverty alleviation.
However reducing poverty to income alone is too simplistic, and fails to recognise wider human and social aspects of poverty. As Soon Ton's case also shows, it risks ignoring the needs of those who are poor, but not poor enough to be below a set income line.
Thailand, as a result of its own successful anti-poverty measures, actually imports regional poverty from bordering Laos, Burma and Cambodia. It is estimated that there are between 1.8 million and 3 million documented and undocumented workers and their families in the country. Therefore it is necessary to measure poverty in wider terms than just national borders – otherwise the failure of one country's anti-poverty measures could, through encouraging migration, result in an apparent fall in poverty rates and praise for their policies.
A recent Human Rights Watch report (pdf) details that many of these migrants "escape from the tiger only to meet the crocodile" – in searching for a better life in Thailand, they unwittingly enter an even more dangerous scenario.

Exploitation and abuse
These workers are wary of official and police harassment, and so without a voice in society are extremely vulnerable to both exploitation and abuse. The report explains that many workers receive less than the Thai minimum wage, others endure dangerous working conditions and sometimes suffer physical abuse. In this case, it could be argued that the best measure of poverty is a human rights-based one – as this is a poverty caused by a violation of basic rights.
However, governments frequently show limited concern for migrant rights – especially those who are in the country illegally.
The worst poverty in the country remains concentrated in the northern area of Thailand among the indigenous hill tribe villagers. With a number of local languages, more than 3,500 villages and upwards of 750,000 people living in remote highland areas, there are significant challenges for poverty reduction. Poverty in such rural areas is often measured in terms of composite indices of access to basic services and materials, such as electricity, transport links, school access and healthcare.
However, one problem with wider composite measures of poverty is that they may involve social value judgments that could be opposed by members of the community. As some have pointed out, such composites are based on the desire to provide a "good life" – but this is a socially and culturally loaded term. Who decides what this constitutes?
This conflict of opinion frequently manifests itself as a generational split within the community itself – where the younger villagers welcome the increased opportunities to move away from their villages, while the older members worry that their cultural identity and language are being lost.
Ultimately, however, poverty reduction needs to be about more than just statistics, indicators or measures. They are all useful, but no person or group can be reduced simply to a number on a chart.
Soon Ton may be above an arbitrary poverty line, but that doesn't mean she doesn't need support. As a result, top-down targets based on MDG or other statistical measures may not always be the best approach to alleviate poverty.
Focusing on a bottom-up approach, which measures poverty through a participatory approach of dialogue with the community, has a greater potential to ensure that the poor themselves are given a voice in society and are engaged in their own development policies. That should be the ultimate yardstick to measure poverty policies in Thailand, and is the necessary next step for middle-income countries to continue with their progress in poverty alleviation.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/jan/19/millennium-development-goals-poverty-definitions-thailand

POVERTY: THAILAND-MYANMAR: Thousands still displaced along border

 Photo: Chandler Vandergrift/IRIN:
Thousands have fled fighting

BANGKOK, 25 January 2011 (IRIN) - About 10,000 people are displaced and in hiding along the Thai-Burmese border, having fled artillery fire in eastern Myanmar where fighting between the Burmese military and armed groups is expected to continue for several months, aid groups say.
The Back Pack Health Worker Team, a Mae Sot, Thailand-based, NGO that provides healthcare to conflict areas of Myanmar, said the displaced were on both sides of the border and the situation was "highly unstable".
"These people are in hiding sites rather than in officially recognized temporary shelters or holding centres. Large numbers of displaced civilians have now been sent back into Burma [Myanmar], often several times, by Thai authorities," said Back Pack in a report released on 24 January.
The displaced were scattered in about 28 different sites, including makeshift camps in the forest, along the banks of the Moei river that separates Thailand and Myanmar, as well as in villagers' homes, according to the Thailand Burma Border Consortium, an umbrella group of 12 humanitarian organizations working with Burmese refugees.
"People are trying to take shelter where they can," Sally Thompson, the TBBC's executive director, told IRIN. "When people first came across because of fighting, they did go into official centres [designated by Thai authorities]. As soon as that fighting stopped, people were sent back, so now people are reluctant to go into them because it's thought that people are being returned prematurely."

Ethnic conflict
Burmese troops have for decades waged war against armed ethnic groups, which have sought autonomy from the central government. The latest violence began after the 7 November elections, when tensions flared between government forces and armed ethnic groups that have refused to be incorporated into the country's centrally-controlled Border Guard Force.
After initial battles in the days after the election, there was sporadic conflict throughout December, according to a situation report from the Back Pack. Since 31 December, there have been almost daily skirmishes, it said.
"You've got different ceasefire groups being squeezed, and it's the Burmese attacking them, and they attack back, and until the border guard forces is resolved... we can expect to see these ongoing skirmishes, people coming across the border, back and forth, possibly through May," Thompson said.


 :Photo: Courtesy of Backpack Health Worker Team
A scene inside Karen State where scores are displaced

Aid challenges
Because most of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) are in hiding, it has been challenging for aid organizations to help those in need.
Furthermore, humanitarian groups are facing increasing restrictions and pressure has been mounting for the Karen civilians not to seek refuge in Thailand, Back Pack said.
"It's difficult to find where people are staying. We cannot register every person to find and provide them with assistance," said Mahn Mahn, secretary of Back Pack. "All the assistance needs to go through the Thai provincial and township level, but they do not want to allow civil [society] or NGOs to go through."
According to Thompson, most people are living in "very temporary" shelters, with only the basics for survival, including food and water, from local villagers, friends and local community-based organizations.
"At the moment, the understanding is that basic assistance is getting through to them," she said.
Meanwhile, Back Pack is calling on the authorities to allow the displaced to remain in Thailand for the moment.
"We request that civilians having fled the conflict on to Thai soil be allowed to remain in temporary shelters in Thai territory until it has been proven that it is safe for them to return... civilians fleeing armed conflict should not be returned to Burma unless this return is of a voluntary nature and an impartial assessment has determined that it is safe for them to return," a statement by the group said.
According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Thailand hosts 96,800 refugees from Myanmar who have been registered, and an estimated 53,000 who have not, in nine government-run camps along the border.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=91724

POVERTY: A much ignored strategy for reducing poverty?

By Dr. Rolando T. Dy, Executive Director Center for Food and Agri Business
The Philippine Star: January 16, 2011

MANILA, Philippines – Tree-crops have played a key role in the development of agriculture and poverty reduction in many ASEAN countries. (I can attest to this as an agricultural project economist in Malaysia in the late 1970s and early 1980s).
Let’s compare the achievements of these countries in the past three decades in tree crop development. Specifically, this involves area harvested, production and export. Let’s also discuss the possible impact on poverty reduction and the key success factors.
The ASEAN countries are key players in the global market for tree-crops: palm oil, rubber, coffee, cacao, coconut, and cashew.
• Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand in that order are the world’s largest producers of palm oil; the first two control some 90 percent of the world’s exports.
• Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam control most of the rubber exports.
• Vietnam ranks second in the world in coffee production and exports. Indonesia is fourth.
• Indonesia is among the top cocoa exporters.
• Indonesia and the Philippines are the top producers of coconut while the latter is the top exporter of coconut oil.
• Vietnam is the world’s leading cashew exporter.

Area expansion
Tree-crops harvested areas in Indonesia expanded 3.1-fold to 13.1 million hectares during 1980-2008, Malaysia 1.9 times, Thailand 1.7 times, and Vietnam 9.7 times. By contrast, the Philippines had its areas expanded less than 1.1 times.
Production expanded faster because of an increase in productivity, particularly oil palm in Indonesia, rubber in Thailand, and coffee and cashew in Vietnam. The Philippines was heavily dragged down by lack of progress in coconut replanting and fertilization.
Exports
Total exports expanded 13-fold in Indonesia to $22.8 billion in 2008, five in Malaysia to $17.2 billion, 12 in Thailand to $7.3 billion, and 74 in Vietnam to $2.4 billion from 1980. Meanwhile, Philippine exports moved up only 1.6 times to $1.1 billion.
During the past three decades from 1980, the ASEAN countries – particularly Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam – were game changers in the world of tree-crops. They collectively captured market shares from the rest of the world to ASEAN.
In 1980, ASEAN controlled 63 percent of the world exports of palm oil and this jumped to 87 percent in 2008. For coffee, market shares rose from seven percent to 24 percent while cacao beans from three percent to 14 percent. For cashew, ASEAN market share dramatically expanded from two percent to 20 percent.

These successes can be attributed to four countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.
Country analysis
Indonesia. The tree-crop drivers were: palm oil, rubber, and cocoa. It is now the world’s leading palm oil producer/exporter, and the world’s second largest rubber producer after Thailand. The main achievements were:
• Oil palm harvested areas skyrocketed to five million hectares in 2008 from only 204,000 hectares in 1980. In fact, if immature areas were counted, there were seven million hectares planted in 2008.
• Rubber areas rose to 2.9 million hectares from 1.6 million hectares in the same period.
• Cocoa areas shot up to 990,000 hectares from 19,000 hectares.
• Coffee areas increased to 977,000 hectares from 498,000 hectares.
Malaysia has been a tree-crops country for many years. It was the world’s largest palm oil producer until it was surpassed by Indonesia in 2005. In a similar vein, it was also the world’s largest natural rubber producer until overtaken by Thailand in 1985. The shift from rubber to oil palm was due to higher labor costs and better farm profits while the slowdown in oil palm expansion was limited by land. Thus, Malaysian firms, like Sime Darby, expanded into Indonesia.
• Harvested areas of oil palm grew to 3.9 million hectares in 2008 from 777,000 hectares in 1980. A large part of these are in Sabah and Sarawak.
• By contrast, rubber areas declined to 1.2 million hectares from 1.6 million hectares in the same period.
Thailand. The main drivers of growth were palm oil and rubber. Thailand is the third largest palm oil producer after Indonesia and Malaysia, and the biggest producer/exporter of natural rubber.
• Oil palm harvested areas rose to 462,000 hectares in 2008 from only 11,000 hectares in 1980.
• Rubber areas expanded to 1.8 million hectares from 1.2 million hectares. The high production was driven by higher farm yield.
Vietnam provides an outstanding example of tree-crop development. From negligible exports in 1980, it expanded to $2.4 billion in 2008. The leading drivers were coffee, cashew and rubber. The country posted dramatic changes since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Among the highlights are:
• Expansion of rubber harvested areas to 632,000 hectares in 2008 from only 88,000 hectares in 1908.
• Massive increases in areas to 531,000 hectares from 33,000 hectares during the same period
• Explosive growth of cashew areas to 403,000 hectares from 8,000 hectares in the same period.
Philippines. Where is the Philippines in the picture? It failed in many respects. Despite its natural endowments for tree-crops, the country has less than 300,000 hectares over 30 years as compared to millions of hectares by its more dynamic neighbors.
• Oil palm harvested areas grew to only 22,000 hectares in 2008 from 6,000 hectares in 1980, despite large potentials in Mindanao and Palawan.
• Rubber areas expanded to 123,000 hectares from 54,000 hectares in the same period (although the author doubts the figures). Compare this with experts’ estimate of the potential of at least 500,000 hectares.
• Coffee areas grew to123,000 hectares from 102,000 hectares in the same period. While the areas grew, many are senile and unproductive.
• Coconut areas, the largest of all, increased to 3.4 million hectares in 2008 from 3.2 million hectares in 1980, or a gain of only 144,000 hectares! Given that over one million hectares are senile, this is not a major movement.
http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=648446&publicationSubCategoryId=77

MALARIA: MYANMAR: Bullets not the main killer in conflict area

  Photo: Steve Sandford/IRIN Saw Kwe, a medical officer with the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army

MUN RU SHAI, 24 December 2010 (IRIN) - Saw Kwe, a medical officer with the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, pulls out a cardboard box full of Artesunate from among the rolls of gauze and drugs used for clotting war wounds.
The 15-year veteran, who has been shot and nearly blown up in past fighting, says the most common killers of civilians are found off the battlefields - not on them.
"The most deadly is malaria," says Saw Kwe, as he hands a packet of pills to a young mother in the Burmese border village of Mun Ru Shai. "We often use up our supplies of Paracetamol to help relieve fever and pain for the sick."
The drugs are much in demand for the steady stream of displaced civilians who have hiked - sometimes for weeks - to border areas in eastern Myanmar to escape the escalating fighting between government troops and ethnic armies following the 7 November elections, the country's first poll in two decades.
In Karen state, conflict and death have become a part of life in fighting that began more than 60 years ago, but deaths from military clashes account for only 2.3 percent of mortality, according to a recent report, Diagnosis: Critical.
The indirect health impacts of the conflict are much more severe, with preventable loss of life accounting for 59.1 percent of all deaths and malaria alone responsible for 24.7 percent, according to the report, compiled by the Mae Tao Clinic.
Often, the villagers caught up in the battle zones are forced to flee with little more than the clothes on their backs and a few bits of food.
Without proper shelter and lacking clean water and food, the most vulnerable - the young and old - become susceptible to preventable illness such as pneumonia and diarrhoea, which can prove fatal if left untreated.
In fact, malaria was responsible for nearly a third of deaths in children under five, while diarrhoea was responsible for 17 percent of fatalities in this age group, states the report.

Caught on the border
Hundreds of families remain displaced and in hiding on both sides of the border, afraid to go home but unable to seek protection in Thailand.
"Right now, there are no official camps for those displaced so it is very difficult to provide even clean water and proper sanitation," says Man Nah, director-general of Backpacker Health Care Workers (BPHCW), a mobile medical unit that travels across the border to provide medical care.
According to recent estimates by BPHCW, nearly 4,000 people regularly flee to Thailand from Karen State areas opposite Kanchanburi and Tak provinces, where government attacks have escalated in recent weeks.


  Photo: Steve Sandford/IRIN: Thousands of ethnic Karen are regularly displaced by the fighting, many of them children

The mobile medical teams have set up three emergency clinics providing medical assistance to civilians having sought shelter in Thailand, particularly the more vulnerable, such as pregnant women, children and the elderly.
The increase in internally displaced persons has exacerbated an already hazardous situation in eastern Myanmar where nearly half a million people are on the run, according to the Thailand Burma Border Consortium.
In cases where the patient is in a serious condition, they will be often transported across the border to the Mae Tao clinic in Thailand, which offers free basic healthcare for refugees, migrant workers and others needing medical aid.
For more complicated cases, arrangements are made between NGOs and provincial hospitals in the region.

Over-crowding
In the bustling emergency ward of the Mae Sot hospital, the burden is all too clear.
Some patients lie on makeshift beds and benches erected in the crowded hallways, an all too common scene that hospital director Ronnatrai Rueangweerayut says will continue as long as there is conflict in the neighbouring country.
"Mae Sot hospital is a government hospital that is [a] non-profit organization," Ronnatrai said. "As you know, if you have no money, you can do nothing. It means that we have to arrange the budget as well as possible so we can treat all the patients in the same manner."
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=91440

MALNUTRITION: In Northern Thailand

OUSA THANANGKUL M.D., JO ANNE WHITAKER M.D.and ELEANOR G. FORT
Department of Pediatrics, Chiengmai Hospital, University of Chiengmai, Chiengmai, Thailand

One hundred and eleven patients with protein-calorie malnutrition were admitted to the Pediatric Department of Chiengmai Hospital from January 1 to December 31, 1964, representing 9.1 per cent of total admissions. Blood chemical studies were performed and hematologic data were obtained in forty-five children, and another nineteen children were studied hematologically from January 1 to March 1, 1965. The age range, clinical behavior and biochemical results were essentially similar to the patterns reported from other countries where the disease represents a major problem.
Hemoglobin levels of less than 10 gm. per 100 ml. were found in 69 per cent of the patients upon admission. It is thought that the anemia of protein-calorie malnutrition is probably due to multiple deficiencies. The effects on bone marrow and peripheral blood of treatment with vitamin E, folic acid and iron, singly and in combination, are being investigated.
Low income is not the sole factor of etiologic significance in the development of protein-calorie malnutrition. "Displacement" of a child due to the birth of a sibling before weaning would ordinarily occur, and dietary habits which, by custom, include inadequate amounts of protein and large quantities of "overmilled" vitamin-depleted rice, are equally contributory.
http://www.ajcn.org/content/18/5/379.short

POVERTY: Poverty Increases Vulnerability to Tuberculosis (TB)

Bobby Ramakant
"So little attention has been given to the tuberculosis (TB) pandemic because it's a disease of the poor" had said Dr Nils Billo, Executive Director of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union) at the 38th Union World Conference on Lung Health in Cape Town, South Africa in 2007.
In 2010, before the 41st Union World Conference on Lung Health opens next week in Berlin, Germany (11-15 November 2010), the issues around TB and poverty have only become more severe. At the consultative workshop organized by the TB and poverty sub-working group of Stop TB Partnership in India (29-30 October 2010), it was clear that TB continues to affect society's most vulnerable - those who live in abject poverty, are marginalized or economically and socially isolated. Poverty significantly increases a person's vulnerability to the disease.
Social and economic determinants at individual, household and community levels affect a person's vulnerability to TB. Special situations such as massive population movements - the displacement of people and refugee flows - and living or working in particular conditions also increase the risk of a person contracting TB.
In developed countries, ethnic minorities and other marginalized communities are at a greater risk of contracting the disease. In Canada for instance, indigenous communities have a 20 to 30 times higher TB burden than majority ethnic groups, Dr Kim Barker and Dr Anne Fanning from Stop TB Canada had said to CNS during the 38th Union World Conference on Lung Health in 2007.
Factors such as social isolation, reduced access to health services, a lack of trust in the health system and lack of organized community voices exacerbate the risk of TB spreading. But by identifying these vulnerabilities to TB, control strategies can become more focused on reaching the people most in need.
TB is transmitted more readily in conditions such as overcrowding, where there are inadequate ventilation and malnutrition. Improvements in socio-economic conditions will therefore lead to reductions in TB incidence. This should also lead to improvements in access to care, its rational use and quality of care.
About one billion people live in urban slums and over the next 30 years that number is expected to double. In the poorest countries, about 80% of the urban population lives in slums. The poor socio-economic and environmental conditions that characterize the slums facilitate the transmission of many communicable diseases including TB. The burden of TB is often far greater in these urban settings than in rural areas.
There is also increasing recognition of the fact that TB reduces people's ability to work and earn a living and that TB control programmes have the potential to reduce poverty.
Poor TB patients in developing countries are mainly dependent on daily wages or income from petty trading and have no security of income or employment. In many studies people with TB have been found to have borrowed money, used transfer payments or sold assets because of their illness.
"We have to create jobs, find income generation alternatives for those people who are on TB treatment and need financial support to sustain them through the entire treatment course," said Dr AK Jha during the TB and poverty consultative workshop in India (29-30 October 2010). The secretariat of the TB and Poverty sub-working group of Stop TB Partnership has moved now to The Union's South East Asia office in New Delhi, India since August 2010.
At this TB and poverty consultative workshop, listening to the experiences from those fighting TB on the frontlines in high burden settings like in Nepal, Thailand and India, and from five states in India, it was evident that even where Directly Observed Treatment Shortcourse (DOTS) programmes are well established, patients with TB face substantial costs prior to diagnosis. While aggregate costs for poor people tend to be lower than for those from a higher socio-economic position, the costs as a proportion of income is much higher for the poor.
Experiences from other programmes like HIV show that it was usually health-care volunteers or members from affected communities that reached the most marginalized communities, providing them with TB and HIV care and treatment services. Home-based care (HBC) experiences for people living with HIV in most hard-hit communities provide learning lessons.
Poverty has played a leading role in accelerating the spread of TB. The poor are at the greatest risk for tuberculosis because of poor housing, poor diet, poor education and risky behaviour.
Let's combat TB by addressing the barriers faced due to poverty such as infrastructural, housing, employment, educational and nutritional deficiencies. (CNS)
http://newsblaze.com/story/20101105092111rama.nb/topstory.html

POVERTY: Factors that Help Poor People Lift Themselves Out of Poverty

 Oct. 26 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --
What factors contribute to poor people in developing countries lifting themselves out of poverty?
A forthcoming paper by economists Anan Pawasutipaisit of Thammasat University and Robert M. Townsend of MIT How the Poor in Four Thai Provinces Increased Their Net Worth During a 7-Year Period

provides important insights into what kinds of households might be most effective at moving themselves out of poverty and how they are able do it.
Their paper, which is due to be published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Econometrics, suggests that poor people who skillfully manage their assets are especially successful in improving their net worth. The authors discovered that the ability of poor families to increase their wealth was strongly related with their rate of saving and, even more so, with their ability to create a high return on assets.
This means that those households who used their existing assets most productively were more successful at pulling themselves out of poverty. Many of the successful households reinvested their money in their small businesses and farms, suggesting that they are well aware of the source of their success.
Pawasutipaisit and Townsend identified these trends through an extensive survey that was taken from more than 500 Thai households across four provinces every month between 1999 and 2005. From this data, the authors created detailed, financial accounts for each home. They discovered that, over the course of their 7-year study, poor households grew their net worth by an average of 22% per year while rich households grew by just 0.09%.
The data also allowed the authors to identify traits that the most successful households tended to share in common: more highly-educated household members, a younger age of the head of household, a higher ratio of debt to assets, and a preference for formal financial markets over informal ones. But the largest source of variation in the rate of return on assets was household-specific and uncorrelated with any of these variables. This suggests there is great persistence among the most successful households.
"The data seem to show pretty conclusively that successful households are not just lucky," observes author Robert M. Townsend. "They are doing something systematic, month after month, year after year. The next step, of course, is to figure out what the associated skills and attitudes really are."
The paper, which is titled "Wealth Accumulation and Factors Accounting for Success," has been approved for publication in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Econometrics, which is published by Elsevier. The paper is currently available on the journal's website.
Anan Pawasutipaisit is a lecturer at Thammasat University in Thailand and Robert M. Townsend is the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Their work was made possible, in part, by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation through the Enterprise Initiative at the University of Chicago where Townsend is a Research Associate and serves as the Principal Investigator.
SOURCE Consortium on Financial Systems and Poverty
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/economists-reveal-factors-that-help-poor-people-lift-themselves-out-of-poverty-105771348.html

POVERTY: World poverty seen falling sharply but patchily

 TERESA CEROJANO (AP) – Sep 16, 2010

MANILA, Philippines — It is lunchtime, but the cooking pots are empty outside Nurain Dimalao's shack. Her 7-year-old son plays amid the flies in garbage-strewn sand. She worries where his next meal will come from.






Baseco Compound, a shantytown of 50,000 people on the edge of Manila Bay, is the familiar face of poverty in villages and urban slums around the world. Yet there's also good news, albeit qualified: Worldwide, the poor are getting less poor, although not everywhere.

The share of the population of developing regions whose people live in extreme poverty is expected to fall to 15 percent by 2015, down from 46 percent in 1990, according to the United Nations. The gains stem largely from robust economic growth in countries such as China and India, the world's two most populous countries.

Ten years ago, the United Nations set eight "Millennium Development Goals" to tackle the world's most pressing humanitarian problems by halving rates of affliction in such areas as disease, poverty and lack of basic education by 2015, compared with 1990.

As leaders will hear next week at a U.N. summit in New York, the overall success in cutting extreme poverty is patchy from region to region. According to the World Bank, much of Asia already has met or is on its way to meeting the goal, and Latin America is on track to more than halve its rate from 11 percent in 1990 to 5 percent in 2015; sub-Saharan Africa is likely to fall short at a projected 38 percent. It was 58 percent in 1990.

In China, whose economy this year officially surpassed Japan's as the world's second largest, the number living below the international poverty line fell from 60.2 percent in 1990 to 15.9 percent in 2005. By 2015, it is forecast to be 5 percent.

By a U.N. measure of living on less than $1.25 a day, some 254 million Chinese remain in extreme poverty. The Chinese government uses a poverty line of $190 in annual income, or about 52 cents a day, and 40 million Chinese fall below that. Those bedrock poor are mostly farmers and nomads, mainly from minority ethnic groups in remote areas.

Farmers in central China's Funiu mountains were among the poorest just a few years ago. In Chongdugou village, families wove bamboo mats to peddle for food.

Change came as it did to many villages in China — through an idea and a road. A local official thought the area's forested mountains and waterfalls could draw tourists, so he drummed up funding to pave the dirt track that was the sole path in and out of Chongdugou. Today almost all the village's 350-plus families are involved in tourism.
In the 1990s, "people could only feed themselves, and some even starved. Children could not afford to go to school, and many could not even finish primary school," said Liu Jiandang, a 41-year-old former farmer. "Now, we've got paved roads, new houses, phones and vehicles. I run a hotel that can host 20 to 30 tourists and some rooms have TV sets, air conditioners, hot water and bathrooms."

With her profits topping 50,000 yuan ($7,000) a year, Liu can afford to send her 19-year-old son to vocational college and her 10-year-old daughter to primary school. "Our lives are so much better than before," she said.

India has not been as successful, but the United Nations says it is nonetheless on track to cut its poverty rate from 51 percent in 1990 to 24 percent in 2015. India's economy grew 8.8 percent in the second quarter of this year.

"The growth within India has been outstanding," said Caitlin Wiesen, the India country director for the U.N. Development Program. But as in most places, the prosperity is not shared evenly. "Growth needs to be job-rich and also needs to focus on agricultural productivity and production," she said.

Even if the poor comprise only 15 percent of the developing world's population by 2015, as the United Nations projects, that would still leave 920 million people in extreme poverty.

Dimalao, in the Manila slum, may well be one of them.

Twenty years ago she left her home in the impoverished southern Philippines, tired of hardship and being caught in the war between government troops and Muslim rebels.

In Manila she hoped to get a job as a maid in Saudi Arabia and join the 10 percent of Filipinos who work abroad. But without money for the high fees charged by recruitment agencies, she ended up as a vendor until she quit to take care of her two children.

Her husband, a security guard, drops by occasionally and sometimes hands her 500 pesos ($10), but he has not been paid in full in the last seven months. He too wanted to work abroad, but a job recruiter ran off with his money.

"I sometimes think of going back to work as a vendor, but I have no capital," said Dimalao, now 40. "I would like to be able to provide for my children, but I also can't work because no one will look after them."

Their situation worsened in January, when a fire razed their neighborhood. They now live in a leaky plywood-and-tarpaulin shack, vulnerable to typhoons.

The Philippines issued a progress report this month that lowered its chances of meeting three out of four poverty-related goals by 2015.

The report said 32.6 percent of Filipinos were below the poverty line in 2006, and suggested the Philippines could miss the U.N. goal for 2015, but saw a "high probability" of halving the proportion who cannot afford to buy the food they need.

The government blamed rising food and oil prices, slower income growth and faster population growth and warned that bleaker times may lie ahead.

Jacqueline Badcock, the U.N. resident representative in the Philippines, said she was disappointed with the country's slide in progress. Natural disasters such as typhoons and floods also have cut gains, she said.

U.N. officials point out that some nearby countries, such as Thailand, which has tempered its population growth, increased economic output and reduced poverty rates, already are setting bolder targets above the Millennium Development Goals.

In India, the government runs a massive social welfare program that guarantees all rural families 100 days of work a year at a wage of 100 rupees (about $2) a day.

In the village of Suwana in Rajasthan state, Vimla Sharma said her family scraped by on her husband's meager earnings from working at a temple before she signed up for the work program two years ago.

The extra money has allowed her to add a room and a kitchen to her house and send her teenage daughter to school.

"Before, we wore torn and tattered clothes," she said. The program "has made it possible for us to take care of our household needs."

She only wishes the program could be extended. "There are 100 days of work in a year," she said. "Once these 100 days are over, what will the women do?"

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MALNUTRITION: THAILAND: Insect influx threatens rice production

BANGKOK, 24 August 2010 (IRIN) - Experts warn that a significant increase in the numbers of brown hoppers, a rice pest, in central Thailand, threatens production. "The current situation is not good," KL Heong, an insect ecologist from the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) [http://beta.irri.org] told IRIN in Bangkok. "Looking at the number of hoppers caught in light traps over the last two months, it's clear that a massive immigration has occurred." Light traps are used to measure population levels of migrating hoppers within a 9.1-15m radius. On an average night, a light trap will catch 10-20 hoppers. During migration peaks (twice a year), this can rise to about 2,000 per night. Heong recently spent three days visiting fields, farmers and agricultural experts in Suphan Buri, Chainat and Ang Thong provinces where he saw traps with up to 40,000 hoppers and "nymphs hatching all over the place". Anything above 10,000 is alarming, Heong says. "This will peak around December. I expect 30 percent losses at least in most rice fields," Heong warned. The hoppers, known scientifically as Nilaparvata lugens, remove plant sap with their mouths, causing the tillers - any of the extra stems or culms in a rice plant that arise from its base - to dry out and turn brown, a condition called "hopper burn". It also transmits two viruses, "ragged stunt" and "grassy stunt", both of which render the rice crop infertile. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, from November 2008 to May 2009 (the dry season) Thailand lost 1.1 million MT of rice due to hopper outbreaks, costing an estimated US$275 million. Thailand, the world's top exporter of rice, produced more than 27 million MT in 2009, says the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. With similar insect population numbers this summer, the Ministry of Agriculture warns of at least the same losses this year. "Our estimates on production will have to be reduced," Wantana Sriratanasak, an entomologist with Thailand's Department of Agriculture, said. Pesticide use According to Heong, extensive pesticide use by farmers is the primary reason for the infestations. Pesticides have a limited effect on plant hoppers but kill off their natural predators, including several species of spiders. The insects have a high migratory ability and fast reproduction rates, exacerbating the threat. Thai authorities are looking for regional and practical solutions to manage and prevent future outbreaks. "We've been collaborating on a project for two years with China and Vietnam. Both countries still have a serious problem with outbreaks," Sriratanasak said. The focus will be on improving biodiversity while simultaneously reducing pesticide use. Vietnam lost four million MT in 2007 because of outbreaks, while China regularly loses a million hectares a year. The Rice Department is working to encourage local farmers to reduce spraying, Kukint Soitong, a senior expert in the department confirmed. "We have to change farmers' chemical use," he said, "but it's not easy."

MALARIA: Epidemiology of drug-resistant malaria

Since the first reports of chloroquine-resistant falciparum malaria in southeast Asia and South America almost half a century ago, drug-resistant malaria has posed a major problem in malaria control. By the late 1980s, resistance to sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine and to mefloquine was also prevalent on the Thai-Cambodian and Thai-Myanmar (Thai-Burmese) borders, rendering them established multidrug-resistant (MDR) areas. Chloroquine resistance spread across Africa during the 1980s, and severe resistance is especially found in east Africa. As a result, more than ten African countries have switched their first-line drug to sulfadoxine- pyrimethamine. Of great concern is the fact that the efficacy of this drug in Africa is progressively deteriorating, especially in foci in east Africa, which are classified as emerging MDR areas. Urgent efforts are needed to lengthen the lifespan of sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine and to identify effective, affordable, alternative antimalarial regimens. Molecular markers for antimalarial resistance have been identified, including pfcrt polymorphisms associated with chloroquine resistance and dhtr and drips CIhPS polymorphisms associated with sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine resistance. Polymorphisms in pfmdr1 may also be associated with resistance to chloroquine, mefloquine, quinine, and artemisinin. Use of such genetic information for the early detection of resistance foci and future monitoring of drug-resistant malaria is a potentially useful epidemiological tool, in conjunction with the conventional in-vivo and in-vitro drug-sensitivity assessments. This review describes the various features of drug resistance in Plasmodium falciparum, including its determinants, current status in diverse geographical areas, molecular markers, and their implications.

http://www.scopus.com/record/display.url?eid=2-s2.0-0036242351&origin=inward&txGid=570t1pj4m6HLiuI3ulhvnph%3a2