POVERTY: SOMALIA: Thousands trapped between conflict and drought in Galgadud

NAIROBI, 27 April 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Abdijamal Moalim/IRIN
The current drought has made the plight of those fleeing Dusamareb even worse (file photo)

Thousands of families in Somalia's central town of Dusamareb, the regional capital of Galgadud, are caught between an unending conflict and severe drought.
Following a weekend of fighting between Islamist militia groups, hundreds of families fled the town to the drought-ravaged countryside, locals told IRIN.
On 23 April, the Al-Shabab militia attacked Dusamareb, 500km north of the capital Mogadishu, and captured it from the Ahlu Sunna Waljama'a - a traditional Sufi militia group - but withdrew on the same night.
"This month [April], we have had to flee the town three times; every night mothers make sure they have enough clothes and food ready for the children, to run if the town comes under attack," said Hawa Abdulle, a women's activist in Dusamareb.
"The problem now is there is no food or water in the countryside; the current drought has made the plight of those fleeing even worse.
"We are caught between a war and drought. If we stay, we may become victims of the fighting groups and if we run, we are likely to end up in a place with no shelter, water or food - not much of a choice."
Dusamareb, a town of about 30,000 people, has been a war zone between Al-Shabab and Ahlu Sunna Waljama'a groups since 2008.
Sheikh Abdirahman Gedoqorow, the district commissioner, told IRIN another 4,000 families (24,000 people) displaced from Mogadishu were affected by the fighting.
He said most of those displaced over the weekend had returned to their homes. "They have no choice. The rural villages they fled to are some of the worst drought affected in the area.
"We have had a very rough year and if the [expected] rains don't come we will be in very serious trouble."
Kiki Gbeho, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Somalia, said: "We continue to be concerned about civilians being caught between conflict and drought. Of more concern is the fact that we are unable to raise funds to intervene and mitigate the devastating effects of drought on people's livelihoods."
 Photo: Reliefweb : Galgadud region

Many more at risk
The number of needy Somalis is set to increase as the impact of drought deepens, the UN has warned.
At present, 2.4 million Somalis - 32 percent of the population - need humanitarian aid but with the ongoing conflict, coupled with the drought blighting crops and killing livestock, many more may fall into crisis, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit (FSNAU) and the Somalia Water and Land Information Management (SWALIM) said in a statement on 27 April.
They said Somalia could slide into an even deeper crisis due to the combination of drought, skyrocketing food prices and constant population displacement from ongoing conflict.
"The impact of the drought is affecting most parts of the country, leading to livestock deaths and increasing food and water prices, which are making it increasingly difficult for poor families to feed themselves," said Grainne Moloney, FSNAU's chief technical adviser.
Meanwhile, Gedoqorow also accused Al-Shabab of looting offices of some local NGO offices.
Abdikarim Hashi Kadiye, an official of a local NGO Towfiq, told IRIN that its offices, along with those of another NGO, were looted when Al-Shabab took the town. "They stole a laptop and a desktop [computer] from our offices."
He said there was still fear that Al-Shabab could return. "Normally people used to flee to the villages but now the villagers are coming to towns because they have nothing. Their livestock is either dead or is walking dead."
Kadiye said the economy was based on livestock, "and because of the drought, livestock is not providing meat or milk. They cannot eat or sell what is left."
Abdulle told IRIN: "If we had peace I think we would be able to manage the drought. But we have no peace and with the drought, our situation is much, much worse."
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=92593

POVERTY: ADB: "Food prices may lead Asians into poverty'

Press Trust Of India : April 26, 2011 Resurgent food prices, which rose by 10% on average in many regional economies in Asia in 2011, can push an additional 64 million people into extreme poverty, an Asian Development Bank (ADB) report says. The study, titled, 'Global Food Price Inflation and Developing Asia', by the multilateral lendin g agency, finds that a 10% rise in domestic food prices could push an additional 64 million people, out of 3.3 billion people living in the continent, into extreme poverty, based on the $1.25 a day poverty line.
"For poor families in developing Asia, who already spend more than 60 per cent of their income on food, higher food prices further reduce their ability to pay for medical care and their children's education," ADB chief economist Changyong Rhee said.
The report said the fast and persistent rise in the cost of many Asian food staples since the middle of last year, coupled with crude oil reaching a 31-month high in March, are a serious setback for the region, which has rebounded rapidly and strongly from the global economic crisis.
As per the report, if the global food and oil price hikes seen in early 2011 persist for the remainder of the year, economic growth in the region could be reduced by up to 1.5 percentage points.
"Left unchecked, the food crisis will badly undermine recent gains in poverty reduction made in Asia," Rhee added.
The short-term outlook looks bleak, as food prices are likely to continue with their upward trend because of factors such as production shortfalls, rising demand for food from more populous and wealthier developing countries and shrinking available agricultural land, the report said.
Other dampening factors behind the double-digit increases seen in the price of wheat, corn, sugar, edible oils, dairy products and meat include the weak US dollar, high oil prices and subsequent export bans by several key food producing nations.
Commenting on the current scenario, Rhee said, "Efforts to stabilise food production should take centre stage, with greater investments in agricultural infrastructure to increase crop production and expand storage facilities, to better ensure grain produce is not wasted."
The report further calls for enhanced market integration and the elimination of policy distortions that create hurdles in transferring food from surplus to deficit regions, besides, controlling speculative activities in food markets.
The ASEAN Integrated Food Security Framework, under which the 10-member ASEAN group of countries has agreed to establish an emergency regional rice reserve system, is a positive step in that direction, the report said.
http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3604033512937490051

POVERTY: Nepal: Climate Change: Community-based adaptation in action

26 April 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Peter Murimi/IRIN
Sujit Kumar Mondal and his wife Rupashi Mondal of Gopalgonj district in southern Bangladesh working in their floating garden

Nepal has become one of the first countries to consider scaling up community-based adaptation (CBA) to climate change and making it part of national development policy.
Nepal is vulnerable to rising global temperatures and has already been dealing with the impact of erratic rainfall, frequent droughts and floods, which have been affecting food security. In response the country decided to experiment with a bottom-up approach using Local Adaptation Plans of Action, or LAPAs, in 10 districts across the country in 2010.
In a joint paper on local adaptation plans, Bimal Raj Regmi, a researcher, and Gyanendra Karki, a government official, said the idea of drawing up LAPAs came out of the National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPA) process.
They noted that Nepal, as one of the last of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) to develop its NAPA, was able to incorporate elements omitted from the adaptation plans of other countries.
These include better links to climate change planning processes and mainstreaming national adaptation goals down to the local level, so that the NAPA process moved beyond regional and national consultation to include the input of vulnerable communities in the LAPAs.
The LAPAs are developed by people from various sectors in a village or district who identify local climate risks, vulnerability and needs, and focus on increasing resilience based on the geographical location and assessments made by the community using their knowledge of the local environment.
"This is particularly critical because if communities are unable to distinguish climate change risks from other risks they face, then efforts to develop adaptive capacity might become unfocused or ineffective," said Regmi and Karki.
Nepal's approach and pilot programme were cited at the recent fifth International Conference on Community Based Adaptation to Climate Change in Bangladesh, which discussed scaling up CBA.

Two ways to scale-up
Saleemul Huq, a senior fellow of the International Institute for Environment and Development, a UK-based policy think-tank, which organized the conference, said there were two ways to scale-up: vertical - up the policy chain from the community level to higher levels of decision-making as in the case of Nepal; and horizontal - by replicating projects or initiatives thousands or even hundreds of thousands of times.
Communities have been adapting to climate variability for centuries, sometimes using home-grown and sustainable methods. These measures are known as "autonomous adaptation".
In flood-prone southern Bangladesh, communities grow food on floating islands made of paddy straw and water hyacinth in the waterlogged fields.
On the edge of the Sahara, people bury staple grains in storage pits in the ground to eat in times of drought, while in other areas traditionally nomadic pastoralists are adopting a partially sedentary lifestyle as the spreading desert wipes out grassland.
NGOs have developed a number of CBA initiatives, all still in the pilot phase, but Huq noted that "quite a few NGOs like Oxfam have begun to scale up their pilots".
The UN Development Programme (UNDP) has launched pilot CBA projects in Namibia, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia.
Huq, who is part of the academic team working on the Fifth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said inputs from the conference would inform the adaptation chapters of the assessment to be published in 2014.
African countries focused on bottom-up approaches and scaling up community-led responses to adaptation at the recent AfricaAdapt symposium held in Ethiopia.
"With up to 40 million pastoralists across the African region, each pastoralist has to be an innovator to some degree to adapt to climate variability," Fatema Rajabali, the climate editor of Eldis, an online knowledge service provided by the Sussex-based Institute of Development Studies, reported.
At the symposium, Yohannes GebreMichael of the Addis Ababa University "asserted that local innovation needs to be recognized, as it provides an entry point for communities with a bottom-up approach to support climate change adaptation, starting with local capacities and ideas".
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=92585

POVERTY: PAKISTAN: Schools shut as fear drives teachers away

PESHAWAR, 26 April 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Save The Children UK
Pupils at a school in Afghanistan. Insecurity has affected school education and literacy rates (file photo)

The local school in Wana, the main settlement in Pakistani’s South Waziristan tribal agency, has been closed for several months, and the children only come to play games in the compound.
“We have no teacher at the school,” Rida Ali, 8, said. “So we just play or do chores at home.” The teacher who taught them before insecurity shut down schools in the area lives only 1km or so away, but is unwilling to come to work. The children in Wana have not attended class since November.
“Due to security issues, teachers, especially female ones, are not going to class and this affects the education of girls,” Syed Fawad Ali Shah, emergency education officer for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Pakistan, told IRIN.
According to media reports, fear of the Taliban has meant many teachers have not gone back to work even in areas like Swat, which are now clear of militants.
“I love teaching, but I will never teach again. My husband says I must not do so as it is too dangerous,” Aima Malik, 25, said from the Khyber Agency where she had taught at a school for girls from 2006 to 2009. “Fewer and fewer women are ready to teach any longer,” she added.
“It is better that they be safe and learn how to cook or sew at home,” said Maryum Bibi, a mother of two teenage daughters living in a rural area on the outskirts of Peshawar. Her daughter, Jamila, 13, dreams of being a teacher but now says: “It seems I will never even complete my matriculation.”
Abdul Monib, a secondary school teacher in the Bajaur Agency, told IRIN: “As a teacher, I always feel sad when pupils drop out before completing their education. Now so many can no longer continue because their families need them to work. Others fear the classroom because of bombings in the past at schools and refuse to come any longer.”

Literacy rates down
The insecurity is affecting literacy rates. “Barely 1 percent of women are literate in these areas,” Roohi Bano, regional manager for the Peshawar-based NGO Khwendo Kor, which works for the education of girls, told IRIN.
“It has always been difficult to find teachers in these parts. Few women are educated and families prefer them not to work. The situation that has now arisen following the reign of the Taliban will make matters even worse, with fewer and fewer women wishing to take up this work,” said Azra Khan, headmistress at a private school in Peshawar.
In some cases, she said, threats had been made even against teachers in big cities. “At least two of my teachers no longer wish to work here,” she added.
The problem is compounded by the reluctance of parents to allow men to teach girls. “My husband has insisted we withdraw our daughter from her school because there are some male teachers there. He has orthodox views and says this is unacceptable,” said Zakia Bibi, 40, from the town of Mingora in Swat.
Other factors have also affected education. “There are many families who have suffered financially, using up their savings during the displacement and unable to find jobs now, even when they have returned,” said Ahsan Ullah, 40, who runs a small shoe-making factory in the South Waziristan agency. He says he receives “dozens” of requests for jobs each week, but cannot accommodate more workers.
In the town of Mardan in Khyber Pakhtunkh’wa, Zainab Bibi, from the Orakzai Agency, wonders how to educate her four children. Her husband was part of the Taliban force in the area. “I fled on my own, with the children, in 2010, when fighting became fierce,” she said. “Some relatives helped us. I have not heard from my husband since then; my two older boys, aged 14 and 15, go out to work at an automobile workshop to bring in some kind of income – but I am desperate to see them back in school.”
Bibi is also concerned that unless they are educated, the boys may be tempted to join the Taliban. “A gun is a huge attraction for a young boy,” she said.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=92575

MALNUTRITION: Promoting small-scale planting of trees in dryland areas

18 April 2011 This policy brief was written by Henri Rueff from the Centre for Development and Environment in Bern, Switzerland, and Inam-ur-Rahim, from the University of Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan.

 Tree planting in drylands should be kept to a small scale:
Flickr/CIAT by Neil Palmer

This policy brief, published by the research network NCCR North-South, argues for policies that promote planting trees in drylands on a small scale, because large-scale projects can negatively affect local ecosystems.
International aid agencies and governments have been promoting large-scale planting for more than a century. But the practice is becoming increasingly controversial.
Advocates say it improves land control, raises its value, helps combat desertification and creates jobs. Opponents argue that planting trees in large areas means that communities using the land get evicted. New forests can also change ecosystems and negatively impact biodiversity.
Small-scale forests are a sustainable solution, say the authors. They have none of the drawbacks of large-scale projects yet benefit the environment by storing carbon and restoring degraded land. To encourage this practice, developing countries can use carbon payments as an incentive. As these payments are not high enough, farmers should be allowed to plant tree species that can also provide other services. But future research must evaluate whether using the same piece of land for different purposes brings more benefits.
Other measures could also raise the financial rewards of small-scale tree planting. These include schemes that provide dryland farmers with information about the carbon market, annual payments and microcredit, and support in using the right techniques and predicting how much carbon is stored in trees and soils.
These measures could be funded by public money. And to cut down costs for farmers, local institutions or non-governmental organisations could act as mediators to represent their interests, distribute payments from the sale of carbon credits, and keep them informed about changes in procedures.
http://www.scidev.net/en/policy-briefs/promoting-small-scale-planting-of-trees-in-dryland-areas-1.html

MALARIA: Saudi research centre to target malaria and dengue

Marwan Almuraisy : 22 April 2011
 The new centre will be based in Jazan, south of Riyadh : Flickr/Abe World!

[RIYADH] The Middle East will soon have a research centre dedicated to the monitoring and control of insect-borne infectious diseases such as malaria and dengue.
Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Health has allocated US$5.5 million as seed funding for a joint research centre to develop innovative ways to monitor, evaluate and control major diseases transmitted by vectors, with help from the UK-based Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and the Innovative Vector Control Consortium.
"We are very excited about this new venture with two world-class leaders in research and development in infectious diseases," said Saudi health minister Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz Al Rabeeah at the signing of the agreement this month (4 April).
The deputy health minister, Ziad Memish, told SciDev.Net that the centre, to be based south of Riyadh in Jazan, "is expected to open in early 2012, to act as a link between the research efforts related to infectious diseases of the three parties of the agreement".
He explained that it is part of a larger effort to build national and regional capacity in science and technology. It is envisaged as a regional centre of excellence that would help develop world-class scientists though PhD and Master's courses, as well as shorter training courses.
Staff recruitment and training will start immediately, and the first project will be to develop an Arabic version of the Malaria Decision Support System — a computer package that tracks the incidence of malaria and helps efforts to control the mosquito vectors.
"The centre will trace the infectious diseases in the [nearby] countries of the region, like Yemen, which is facing a rise in the number of patients with infectious diseases compared to other neighbouring countries," said Memish.
It could help to eliminate malaria in Saudi Arabia, he added, where just over half the population is at risk from the disease, according to the WHO. Saudi Arabia is "in the final stages" of eliminating malaria, Memish said, adding that the plan is to make the country malaria-free within four years.
Najia A. Al-Zanbagi, a professor of parasitology at King Abdulaziz University, said that the centre could help Saudi scientists do world-class research. It could help limit the spread of pathogens and "encourage attempts to provide new treatments for many tropical diseases", she said.
Nuha Zelai, a biology lecturer at the same university, told SciDev.Net the centre "is like a dream that came true just in time". She said that a well-equipped centre that specialises in disease research could make it easier and quicker to obtain biological materials for research from abroad and to carry out research projects.
The project's partners will try to raise an additional US$21.5 million, which is needed for infrastructure, education programmes and research activities.
http://www.scidev.net/en/news/saudi-research-centre-to-target-malaria-and-dengue-1.html

MALNUTRITION: Mexican trial of GM maize stirs debate

Cecilia Rosen : 18 April 2011


 Mexico is home to thousands of maize varieties : Flickr/CIMMYT

[MEXICO CITY] Mexico has authorised a field trial of genetically modified (GM) maize that could lead to commercialisation of the crop, sparking debate about the effects on the country's unique maize biodiversity.
Although Mexico already commercially grows some GM crops, such as cotton, GM maize is controversial because the country is home to thousands of the world's maize varieties that originated there.
The multinational corporation Monsanto will test a variety of maize resistant to the herbicide glyphosate on less than a hectare of land in north Mexico before it can commercialise the GM crop. Unlike experimental trials, such pilot projects do not require containment measures to prevent the spread of the GM crop.
Mexico's agriculture ministry said the project, approved last month (8 March), will occur "under the strictest biosecurity measures to guarantee the prevention of involuntary dispersion of the GM maize's pollen".
But Elena Álvarez-Buylla, head of the Union of Scientists Committed to Society (UCCS), said: "This opens up the door to contamination of native species in the most important centre of origin [of maize] in the entire world."
The UCCS stated last month (25 March) that the coexistence of GM and non-GM varieties in fields — which may happen if commercial approval is given — could contaminate the unique non-GM varieties.
"There are alternative technologies to address the non-GM maize shortage and loss of crops due to climate events. GM [crops] are not more resistant to droughts and plagues, and they threaten our food sovereignty," its statement says, referring to multinational companies owning GM technologies.
Transgenic crops were banned in Mexico until 2005, but the government has since granted 67 permits for GM maize to be grown experimentally on over 70 hectares. This would be the first trial that could lead to commercialisation if it is successful.
At the third Mexican Congress of Ecology this month (3–7 April) in Veracruz, scientists were cautious about growing GM maize.
Andrew Stephenson, an ecology professor at Pennsylvania University, United States, said the indirect effects of mixing GM and non-GM varieties are largely unknown, especially under Mexico's complex environmental conditions.
And Mauricio Quesada of the National Autonomous University's Centre for Ecosystems Research said Mexico should prioritise research on the natural diversity of local crops instead of "jumping" into GM.
But Luis Herrera-Estrella, chief of the National Laboratory of Genomics for Biodiversity at the Research and Advanced Studies Center of the National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico, said the country's legal biosafety framework should be trusted.
Mexican trial of GM maize stirs debate

http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3604033512937490051

MALARIA: Battling Africa’s Number One Killer

April 22nd, 2011
Jennifer Weiss – health advisor for Concern Worldwide, an international humanitarian organization. She currently manages Concern’s Child Survival programs in Rwanda, Burundi, and Niger. A former Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras, she holds a Masters in Public Health from Tulane University.





Mukarurangwa Cecile, a community health worker in Marebe, Rwanda visits the home of Valentine, 3, to examine the cause of his fever. Photo: Esther Havens, Rwanda.

According to estimates from the United Nations and the World Health Organization (WHO), nearly one million children do not reach their fifth birthday because they die from malaria each year. Ninety percent of these deaths occur in Africa, where malaria remains the number one killer of young children. An additional 30 million pregnant women and their newborns are also at risk of malaria infection, which may lead to stillbirth, spontaneous abortion, low weight, and neonatal death.
Pregnant women and children die from malaria because they lack access to low-cost, effective solutions to both prevent and treat the disease. Concern is working to change this through our USAID-funded Child Survival programs in Rwanda, Burundi, and Niger, which provide life-saving malaria prevention and control to a total of 1.2 million women and children.


 Josepine Mukahirwa, a community health worker of 3 years, visits the home of Tuyishime Sylvie, 26, in Gasambu to educate on the importance of using a bed net. Photo: Esther Havens, Rwanda

The most obvious way to control malaria is to protect people from being bitten by malaria-carrying mosquitoes in the first place. People are at the highest risk of being bitten at night, while they are sleeping. Therefore, sleeping under a mosquito net, which is treated with a long-lasting insecticide, is a simple solution with dramatic results: at an average cost of about $10, long-lasting insecticide treated bed nets have been shown to reduce malaria transmission by 90 percent.
Concern works with local partner and governments to provide long-lasting insecticide treated nets to the people that need them the most: pregnant women and children under 5 years of age. Concern’s cadre of Community Health Workers then provides one-on-one counseling during household visits to further encourage parents to have their young children sleep under the bed net, and answer any questions or address any challenges the family may be facing in their use.
In Rwanda, Concern’s Child Survival Program is on target to ensure that 85 percent of all households own at least one bed net, and that pregnant women and children under the age of five are sleeping under them each night.
Another life-saving prevention technology recommended by WHO is to provide all pregnant women with at least two preventive treatment doses of an effective anti-malarial drug during routine antenatal clinic visits. Intermittent preventive treatment (IPT), as it is called, has been shown to dramatically reduce maternal anemia and low birth weight, and other adverse effects of malaria during pregnancy. However, many country governments are struggling to provide this service to all pregnant women during their antenatal care visits.
In Niger, Concern’s Community Health Workers are educating mothers about the importance of IPT, and the program is training health facility staff to provide IPT, in order to ensure that 70 percent of all mothers received the recommended two doses of IPT during their last pregnancy.

 Early diagnosis of malaria is critical to ensure prompt access to life-saving treatment. Photo: Esther Havens, Rwanda

However, in 2009, only 35 percent of malaria cases were confirmed with a diagnostic test, which requires a skilled laboratory technician and appropriate equipment. Therefore, the majority of malaria diagnoses in sub-Saharan Africa are based on symptoms alone—many of which (fever, difficulty breathing, reduced appetite) are also symptoms of pneumonia. Treatment of pneumonia alone may result in death from malaria, while the unnecessary, ‘presumptive’ treatment of malaria may result in malarial drug resistance.
However, in 2010, the World Health Organization, approved the use of a a new technology, called Rapid Diagnostic Tests (RDTs), which health facility staff may use to make malaria diagnosis without the use of sophisticated laboratory technologies.
In Rwanda, Concern is partnering with the Ministry of Health to conduct the initial roll-out of this ground-breaking tool, and is already seeing improved results: from December 2010-February 2011, Community Health Workers saw a total of 2,944 cases of fever. With the help of RDT, 33 percent were confirmed as cases of malaria and treated accordingly.
For many people, even if a child has been diagnosed with malaria, the nearest health facility is a several hours’ walk away, and parents may not seek treatment until it is too late. Concern’s Child Survival programs bring malaria treatment directly to people who are most vulnerable through an approach called “Community Case Management.” Concern trains Community Health Workers to screen for and treat simple cases of malaria with locally available, effective and safe anti-malarial drugs.
Through the Community Case Management approach in Burundi, Concern is working to increase the percentage of children treated with an effective anti-malaria drug within 24 hours of registering a fever from 26 percent to 60 percent.


 Bahomwana care group meets in Gasambu village, Rwanda where they exchange ideas and discuss ways to overcome challenges to improve their work as Community Health Workers. Photo: Esther Havens, Rwanda

Following treatment, the Community Health Worker monitors sick children, and, if they are not improving, ensures that they seek further treatment from the health facility immediately.
Much work remains to be done if we are to significantly reduce the rate of death from malaria worldwide. Concern is contributing to the fight against malaria through the application of proven solutions, as well as new technologies, to reach those most vulnerable to malaria. Preventing the huge numbers of child deaths from malaria that occur each year is no longer an impossible dream.

http://blogs.concernusa.org/2011/04/22/world-malaria-day/

MALARIA: Survival prospects boosted for antimalarial mosquitoes

Barbara Axt : 21 April 2011
 Finding a way to allow GM mosquitoes to thrive in wild populations has proven difficult: Wellcome Images

A major stumbling block to using GM mosquitoes engineered to stop transmission of malaria may have been solved with a new genetic technique to ensure that they survive and propagate in natural environments.
The first genetically modified (GM) mosquito was produced in 2000 by scientists at Imperial College London, United Kingdom. Subsequent studies have shown that such modifications could be used to create mosquitoes with a reduced ability to transmit the deadly Plasmodium parasite responsible for malaria.
But finding a way to allow GM mosquitoes to thrive in wild populations has proven difficult. Without a suitable mechanism to ensure their survival, the mosquitoes would simply be out-competed by their native counterparts and die out, together with their disease-proof genes.
"Up to now — almost ten years later — no-one has really found out how to do that," Marcelo Jacobs-Lorena, a professor at the John Hopkins Malaria Institute, United States, told SciDev.Net last year.
Now, scientists at Imperial College have demonstrated a method to spread the beneficial genes through large populations, starting with just a small number of GM mosquitoes. The laboratory-based study was published in Nature yesterday (20 April).
The team bred Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes, the most important carriers of malaria, to contain a green fluorescence gene that makes them glow in the dark.
They then introduced the homing endonuclease gene (HEG) — which makes a copy of itself, ensuring all offspring end up with a copy of it as well — into around one per cent of the population.
The HEG gene, which is found in fungi, plants and bacteria, was designed to replace the glow-in-the-dark genes so that, if it spread through the population over time, less and less mosquitoes in each subsequent generation would glow in the dark.
The researchers found that in just 12 generations, the gene had spread through half of the population.
"We believe [that] in three to four years we will be able to apply this technique in native mosquito populations," Andrea Crisanti, lead researcher and a professor at Imperial College London, United Kingdom, told SciDev.Net.
Crisanti said the next step is to engineer the HEG to displace mosquito genes important for the transmission of malaria, as well as assessing the safety of the technique in human and animal populations.
The researchers plan to perform the first tests in two African countries, to be selected from a list of six that are being assessed at the moment.
"We need countries that not only have a serious malaria problem, but also clear safety and environmental legislation concerning GM organisms, and where we can work with a work with local team of scientists," said Crisanti.
Safety tests with larger populations of mosquitoes in more realistic environmental conditions will also take place, at the new EU INFRAVEC Mosquito Confined Release Facility, in Italy.
"This paper is a significant step forward," said Jacobs-Lorena. "For ten years we've known it is possible to engineer mosquitoes to make them poor transmitters of the disease, but we needed to give them some advantage over the native population. This research is a proof of principle demonstration in this direction."
http://www.scidev.net/en/news/survival-prospects-boosted-for-antimalarial-mosquitoes-.html

MALARIA: China: P. vivax seropositivity in 5 of the 6 nonhuman primate centers

Our survey showed P. vivax seropositivity in 5 of the 6 nonhuman primate centers in southern China, which is a potential health problem for bred cynomolgus monkeys. This finding also indicates the risk for infection with P. vivax for the employees of these nonhuman primate centers. Therefore, studies are warranted that assess the seroprevalence of P. vivax infection in persons who work in these nonhuman primate centers, as well as the seroprevalence of P. vivax infection in wild monkeys.
http://www.blogger.com/goog_1662268132

MALARIA: Plasmodium knowlesi in children in Malaysia

Plasmodium knowlesi can cause severe malaria in adults; however, descriptions of clinical disease in children are lacking. We reviewed case records of children (age <15 years) with a malaria diagnosis at Kudat District Hospital, serving a largely deforested area of Sabah, Malaysia, during January–November 2009. Sixteen children with PCR-confirmed P. knowlesi monoinfection were compared with 14 children with P. falciparum monoinfection diagnosed by microscopy or PCR. Four children with knowlesi malaria had a hemoglobin level at admission of <10.0 g/dL (minimum lowest level 6.4 g/dL). Minimum level platelet counts were lower in knowlesi than in falciparum malaria (median 76,500/μL vs. 156,000/mL; p = 0.01). Most (81%) children with P. knowlesi malaria received chloroquine and primaquine; median parasite clearance time was 2 days (range 1–5 days). P. knowlesi is the most common cause of childhood malaria in Kudat. Although infection is generally uncomplicated, anemia is common and thrombocytopenia universal. Transmission dynamics in this region require additional investigation.
http://www.cdc.gov/eid/content/17/5/814.htm

Malaria: The Forever War

MAGAZINE STYLE SERIES OF COMPREHENSIVE & EXCELLENT ARTICLES

Malaria—the disease that for millennia has filled cemeteries, killed kings, wrecked empires and thwarted human attempts to quash it—begins modestly enough. About 100 parasites swim in the saliva of a female mosquito.
That humble start spawns personal and global misery. The few parasites that invade a person can quickly expand to trillions, overwhelming the human body. The effect manifests in the dulled eyes of blinded children, the paroxysms of fever and chills racking the victim, the deaths of children and pregnant women, and the hobbled productivity of entire nations. Each year, malaria causes nearly 800,000 deaths and 225 million clinical cases.
Were it not such a horror, the Plasmodium parasite would be one of the wonders of the world. The resilient shape-shifter constantly adapts to its surroundings, masters sexual and asexual reproduction, slips past the immunological defenses of the Anopheles mosquito and human beings, rides in the belly of its arthropod ally to new victims…. A testament to evolutionary engineering, the parasite has a solution to every barrier it meets.
And so, Plasmodium has been virtually unstoppable. Humanity’s last global attempt at malaria’s eradication in the 1950s ended in shambles. Bright hopes were extinguished by the parasite’s resilience (and the mosquito’s growing resistance to insecticides).

However, the malaria story does not end there.
We Homo sapiens have our own brand of resilience, innovation and tricks for survival. As the following pages testify, breakthroughs in genetics, parasitology, entomology, drug development, satellite technology and other areas have summoned new hopes against our old enemy.
http://magazine.jhsph.edu/2011/malaria/intro/index.html

MALARIA: Wellcome Film of the Month

26 Apr, 2011  Yesterday was World Malaria Day and we thought we’d mark the occasion by highlighting some videos about the disease from our archive.
Mosquitoes and malaria, 1988 is one of the Moving Image & Sound department’s definitive films on the subject. The audience for many of the films in Moving Image and Sound has tended historically towards professionals in the field and this film made by a team of Wellcome Foundation Film Unit stalwarts (Dr Len Goodwin with cinematography by the late Douglas Fisher) is unashamedly technical in nature; explaining how to detect the presence of malaria parasites in mosquitoes.
In fact. two films are cunningly fused together in this one title: extracts from an earlier title from 1953, Dissection of a mosquito for malaria parasite have been sourced in order to illustrate the ‘traditional’ and somewhat laborious method (minute mosquito legs and wings are amputated, the evidence studied by sight alone under microscopes). The modern enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (or ELISA) method for detecting malaria sporozoites and oocysts in female Anopheles mosquitoes are then shown in detail. The impact of this technique relates to epidemiologists’ ability to understand the degree of infection in an area where the mosquitoes are collected (and presumably plan accordingly). ELISA is a biochemical technique and has been used to test for HIV and in the detection of illegal drugs usage. However, some controversy does surround the interpretation of the division between what constitutes a positive and a negative result.

Other films about malaria in the Wellcome Film collection:
Private Snafu vs. Malaria Mike, 1944 is a Warner Brothers film made for the US army. Using the might of Hollywood in its propaganda efforts (Mel Blanc who voiced Bugs Bunny and Dr Seuss, aka Theodore Geisel, as supervising producer), it was one of a series aimed at military personnel; providing information about how easily malaria can be contracted. The eponymous hero, Snafu makes a catalogue of errors such as not using repellent. At the end, the mosquito tells his son what he did in the war – with Snafu’s scalp hanging on the wall.
DDT versus malaria: a successful experiment in malaria control by the Kenya Medical Department, 1946 is a film with a complex provenance. It shows film footage of the campaign to check a malaria epidemic in the Kipsigis tribal reserve in Kenya by spraying village huts with DDT. It shows very sick villagers suffering from malaria with everyday life almost at a standstill. It was decided that the film could also be used for propaganda purposes and so several narrative elements have been fictionalised in the film (which is rather stilted and jarringly patronising in places).
Wellcome’s involvement in tropical medicine is well-documented in our collection. The Story of the Wellcome Foundation, 1955, is an ‘industrial’ film, shot in colour with an upbeat tone, communicating the optimism of the era. Research into malaria is revealed as beginning as early as 1901 and the film shows an image of Wellcome’s floating laboratory on the Nile. The Wellcome Building in the mid-1950s is shown to be a hive of activity at the cutting edge of research into the quest for cures for many debilitating and life threatening tropical diseases – many of which are still being pursued by Wellcome Trust-funded scientists today.

Find out more about malaria research on the Wellcome Trust Malaria website.
You can learn about the Wellcome Film project here. If you would like to make use of this archive footage in your own projects, please visit the Wellcome Library catalogue to download the original files, which are distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales licence.
http://wellcometrust.wordpress.com/2011/04/26/wellcome-film-of-the-month-malaria/

MALARIA: Ghana: Malaria Day in Ghana, a reflection of the odds

25 April 2011
Hayford Siaw, Executive Director : Volunteer Partnerships for West Africa


According to the World Health Organization report on malaria in Ghana, US$27million and US$38million was spent on Malaria in 2008 and 2009 respectively. In spite of the huge amount of money invested, Ghana still recorded very worrying figures with 3,694,671 cases in 2009 compared to 3,200,147 in 2008. Admission to hospitals due to malaria also went up from 272,802 in 2008 to 277,047 in 2009. Death due to Malaria from the records of clinics and hospitals stood at 3,378 in 2009.
It must be noted that, the National Malaria Control Program (NMCP) is on record in it strategic plan that 70% of the Ghanaian population rely on traditional medicines. The absence of data from traditional medicine providers therefore should raise concern on the number of malaria deaths and sickness that goes unreported.
The increase in the scourge of malaria should be accepted as a failure on leadership responsible for controlling and or eliminating Malaria in Ghana. Indeed, the National Malaria Control strategic plan is a failed policy program and should therefore be re-examined. There is too much wastage on personnel instead of actual resources going into interventions that will help reduce both cases of admission and deaths. Over 30% of money allocated for Malaria Control went into Human Resources alone.
Historically malaria has been the cause of deaths all over the world. Of course it is no longer a threat to the developed world and has been modified in the developing countries with the exception of Sub-Saharan Africa where it is endemic. The United States was one of the first Western Counties to eliminate malaria, due to an extended campaign using surplus military aircraft left over from World War 2 which was equipped with insecticide dispersal systems necessary to dispense DDT as a Dust or liquid. This operation was a success and by 1950 only 5 years after the end of the war the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta Georgia, declared the United States malaria free.
Mr. Robert Desowitz in his book THE MALARIA CAPERS writes; from colonial times until the 1940s, malaria was the American disease. One of the first military expenditures of the Continental Congress was for $300 dollars to buy quinine to protect General Washingtons troops. During the Civil War one half of the white troops and four fifths of the black soldiers of the Union Army were stricken with malaria annually.
The malaria mosquito has the reputation of being 9 feet tall in Sub-Saharan Africa, more feared than the mighty crocodile. The truth be told, it is just an insignificant noisy insect, a biological creature, just like us. If the humble mosquito has the ability to infect humans with a parasite, humans should reciprocate in kind and infect the mosquito with an organism, to give as well as we get from this bane of mankind.
To be more specific, I would like to propose at this time we use a biological agent known as a fungus spore. There is a product in commercial production in the United States, used on organic farms that also have applications for the control of adult mosquitoes. Research done on malaria mosquitoes has indicated only one spore has the ability to kill a mosquito. Although it may take up to 10 days to kill the mosquito, after 2 days the mosquito no longer feeds. This product is a soil fungus, most soil insects are immune to its effects. However an airborne insect like the mosquito has no natural immunity to this spore and according to research done at UC Davis in California, the mosquito will never develop immunity to this fungus. When exposed the mosquitoes were 80 times less likely to transmit malaria.
According to Dr. Kenneth D. Vernick, a microbiologist at the University of Minnesota stated a soil fungus that devoured insects, whose mosquito-killing powers were described by British scientists last year, could be used to hunt down the most malaria-susceptible bugs in any swarm and knock them out of the gene pool. He also said for unknown reasons, it weakens plasmodium-carrying mosquitoes more than it does others. Even after exposure to a 12 day old spray, 89% of the mosquitoes died.
This is good news as plasmodium falciparum is the most dangerous parasite of the four malaria parasites that infect man and the most prevalent by far in Ghana where it comprises up to 98% of infections.
This is all fine and dandy you might say, however, how is this fungus spore to be delivered to the recipient, the malaria mosquito? The same way the Americans did it 60 years ago, using aircraft equipped with insecticide, aerosol generators. This is the only effective method.
WHO writes in it 2010 report on Ghana, ‘’there is no evidence of a reduction in suspected malaria cases between 2000 and 2009, while inpatient cases in all ages increased’’.
http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=207445

MALARIA: India: Health workers in Orissa work with rural communities to raise awareness

19 April 2011

Milu Jani and his family under their new bednet. Picture: DFID

Milu Jani lives in Labangi, a small village in a remote area of Western Orissa – one of the poorest states in India. The village is around three hours from the nearest district town of Angul and part of the journey needs to be done on foot. There is no health centre, no electricity and no school in the village. Milu works as a forest guard at the Satakosia wildlife reserve, earning a mere 90 rupees (£1.20) a day.
Like most villagers, Milu has lost a loved one to malaria. His eyes tear up as he recalls his father's death last winter. Milu's father fell ill with a high fever and was tragically diagnosed with malaria only a day before his death, leaving no time for proper treatment. Malaria can be treated effectively with drugs, but treatment is most effective when administered within 24 hours of the onset of fever.
Milu knew mosquito bites can cause malaria but didn't know the deadly mosquitos were breeding in the water pools around the village. After his father passed away, Milu met a local health worker who explained the risks of malaria and how to prevent his family from becoming ill with this deadly disease.

Getting healthcare to rural communities
The DFID supported state health programme in Orissa trains health workers to help raise awareness of malaria prevention and treatment among vulnerable tribal communities like Milu's. Health workers like Suhasini Behera in Milu's village are trained in the use of diagnostic tests and how to administer appropriate medicines. They also distribute bednets and promote the proper use of nets to prevent malaria.
"It was not easy to convince people to use bed nets," Suhasini says. "People feared the nets were poisonous as there had been reports of rashes and itching from the insecticide" – misconceptions that she sought to dispel while visiting their homes.
By working with the community to raise awareness of malaria, Suhasini and her fellow health workers help to prevent people from contracting malaria and help the villagers to understand how to access treatment.

Bednets - a simple prevention tool
DFID's support to the Orissa state health programme has helped Milu and his family purchase bednets that will prevent them from contracting malaria in the future. By subsidising the cost of the nets, DFID enables poor families like Milu's to purchase two bednets for only 20 rupees (25p). The nets are treated with insecticide and last up to five years.
Milu's mother is content with her new net. "I always had disturbed sleep due to the mosquitoes. This new net has brought me a lot of comfort and I also use it for my afternoon nap".
Milu is equally satisfied. "Malaria was a huge problem in our area. Now everyone in the village is using a net. I have lost my father but now I can keep my family safe from malaria".

Key facts
DFID India has committed £100 million over 2007-12 to Orissa's state health programme to tackle malaria, among other health and nutrition initiatives. The programme increases efforts to prevent malaria, improve diagnosis and provide access to treatment for pregnant women and tribal children, who are most vulnerable to the disease.
DFID support has helped provide an extra 300,000 bed nets to young expectant mothers, to prevent anaemia and malaria-related deaths.
Orissa's state health programme has trained 20,000 health workers to use diagnostic tests, administer medicines and distribute bednets.
The state health programme distributed 1.2 million bednets to villages in February and March 2010, supported by the education and awareness activities of health workers.
http://www.dfid.gov.uk/Media-Room/Case-Studies/2011/Battling-malaria-in-India/

MALARIA: Ethiopia: Supporting rural health workers to combat malaria

22 December 2010 Extending the fight against malaria in Ethiopia
Supporting rural health workers to combat malaria


Almaz is 24 years old and has been working as a Health Extension Worker (HEW) for the last three years, in her own village which is more than an hour's drive from the nearest small town.
"The work is very hard, I have to work long hours and walk long distances but I am proud to be serving my community and have seen real changes in their health," she says.
 A health worker in Ethiopia treats a woman and her baby


Almaz is one of more than 34,000 HEWs who have been trained and deployed to deliver a 'package' of basic services to their communities, including the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of malaria, family planning and immunisation.
Ten years ago, only two-thirds of Ethiopians had access to health services. Rural areas, in particular, suffered from a lack of medical facilities and health workers. There was a critical need to bring healthcare to more of Ethiopia's people. And over the last five years, the Health Extension Programme, the flagship programme of the Ethiopian ministry of health, has aimed to do just that.
At the centre of the HEP are female health workers like Almaz who operate within local communities. In each rural "kebele" (a community of about 5,000 people), two women who have completed tenth grade are selected to become Health Extension Workers.
This national programme has helped to deliver real improvements in people's health including reducing the previously devastating impact of malaria. The HEWs teach their communities about how to prevent malaria and to seek help when they have a fever.
They have also been trained and equipped to test people for malaria at the community level, which ensures correct diagnosis and treatment. Additionally, in the last five years more than 35 million insecticide-treated nets have been distributed across the country, which are reducing the numbers of people becoming infected.

Getting healthcare to communities
The UK is supporting the Health Extension Programme through a contribution to the government of Ethiopia district level 'block grant', which pays for the delivery of services. This block grant is used by districts across the country to deliver priority services, including health and education, to its communities.
UK funding is currently supporting more than 3,900 Health Extension Workers to deliver health services to around nine million people. Additionally, the British Government provides direct support to the Ethiopian ministry of health to help it to deliver its ambitious plans to meet all of the health related MDG targets by 2015, including those on malaria.

Facts and stats
The latest World Health Organisation rapid impact assessment in four main regions in Ethiopia shows that between 2001-2004 (annual average) and 2007, confirmed malaria outpatient cases decreased by 67%, malaria admissions by 54%, and malaria deaths by 55%.
The government of Ethiopia's next five year plan includes efforts to further increase utilisation of ITNs and strengthen diagnosis and treatment of malaria.
http://www.dfid.gov.uk/Media-Room/Case-Studies/2010/Extending-the-fight-against-malaria-in-Ethiopia/

MALARIA: Kenya: How scouts are helping in the fight against malaria

Twelve-year-old Aisha Ali really is a well prepared scout. True to the motto of the Scouting movement – 'be prepared' - she is one of more than 21,000 scouts from over 1,000 schools in Kenya who are taking part in a project aimed at preventing the spread of malaria.
"I've always wanted to help others, so joining my school's scouting club gave me great pride." says Aisha.
"When this project was introduced in January 2010, I was very excited at the opportunity to serve my community."
Supported by UK's Department for International Development (DFID) and undertaken in partnership with the Government of Kenya's Division of Malaria Control, the Kenya Scouts Association and Population Services International (PSI) Kenya, the project aims to save the lives of Kenyans living in 36 malaria-prone districts by ensuring people sleep inside well tucked-in, insecticide treated mosquito nets every night, the whole year round.

Members of Kenya Scout clubs in the affected districts 'adopted' some 150,000 homes - equivalent to around 675,000 people - to teach them how to properly hang and use bednets, to avoid being bitten by mosquitoes.

Training
Aisha says 20 scouts from her school were trained about malaria; what causes it, how one can get it and how nets help prevent the spread of the disease. They were also trained on how to hang the mosquito bednets and the importance of sleeping under the nets each night.
"This is where we play an important role in malaria prevention – making sure that everyone in our communities sleeps under a net every night," says Aisha.
Each scout in the scheme is issued with a project booklet containing questions that help them to record how many people live in a home and how many of them sleep under a treated mosquito net.
The scouts are trained to ask to see the sleeping area and ensure the bednets are hung properly. They also show members of each homestead how to hang the nets correctly themselves.
"We were expected to adopt between seven and ten homes and visit them at least once a month to ensure that all the members of the households slept under a net."
One of the homes that Aisha has adopted is that of 'Mama' Hadija Hassan Mwabaha, an elderly widow who lives with four other elderly widows. Aisha recounts how she met Hadija. "I remember the first day I visited Mama Hadija. She is a clever woman and asked me a lot of questions about malaria. I told her about the anopheles mosquito. She was impressed by my knowledge and agreed to be part of our scout's project".
"I showed Mama Hadija how to hang up their nets correctly so that they are not bitten by mosquitoes. I also informed her that pregnant women and children younger than five years are at greatest risk from malaria. I have visited her every month since the first meeting. I like her because not only is she welcoming but she helps me with the project. She is a poor woman but has a very kind heart."
And Mama Hadija has equally good things to say of Aisha. "She has protected us from malaria!" she exclaims.
She goes on to explain that the program has helped to explain the dangers of malaria to the whole community and the importance of everyone using the nets every night.

Serving the community
The whole experience has been very motivating to Aisha: "I am serving my community and that makes me very happy," she says. She also has a certificate of merit from the training, is more enlightened about malaria issues, feels empowered to assist others and is glad that the training has boosted her ranking as a scout.
"When I know that I have helped prevent one more malaria case I feel so proud of my efforts," she concludes with a smile.
Of the ten households that Aisha adopted in January, nine already had the insecticide-treated nets. However not all the homes were using them correctly; over the course of the year, Aisha has assisted her adopted homes to ensure the consistent and proper use of mosquito nets.
http://www.dfid.gov.uk/Media-Room/Case-Studies/2010/Being-prepared-for-Malaria-in-Kenya/

MALARIA: Kenya: How UK aid is helping to save children's lives through a cherry-flavoured malaria drug

20 April 2011 World Malaria Day on 25 April is a chance to mark the efforts that are being made globally to tackle the terrible disease. The UK government is leading the way in pioneering innovative and effective ways of tackling malaria as set out in the recently published framework for results.


Rose and her two-year-old daughter Shanrol have benefitted from a new anti-malaria drug developed thanks to UK aid. Picture: Novartis

A preventable tragedy
Malaria is a preventable and curable disease, yet a child dies of malaria every 45 seconds. Nearly one million people die of malaria every year, mostly infants, young children and pregnant women and most of them in Africa. Malaria does not only kill, it can have long term consequences. Men and women are unable to work for long periods when they or their children become ill. Entire households can be thrown back into poverty. Severe malaria often leads to brain damage, holding back a child’s mental development resulting in lifelong impacts. But malaria can be treated effectively with existing drugs and treatment is most effective if administered within 24 hours of the onset of fever.

Life is no bowl of cherries
Rose Aluoch Ngala lives in the village of Ombeyi, 15 miles southeast of Kisumu, the third largest town in Kenya and also one of the poorest. Ombeyi is on the edge of Lake Victoria - a region where more children die of malaria than any other disease. Like many people in her village, she is a farmer. She has three young children. When her daughter Shanrol, who is two years old, became ill she was afraid. Children under five years of age die from malaria very fast.
"Her body was hot and she was not eating or playing and she was crying all the time. I took her to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with malaria and I was told that she would be admitted for three days. They kept testing now and then to find out how much of the infection was in her blood and how far the disease had gone.
"This is her fourth time to get malaria and she is only two years old. The first time she was only eight months, and I took her to the hospital where she received drip water and medicine. I fear that she could die because of this disease malaria."
Shanrol was treated with Coartem-dispersible, a new cherry flavoured malaria drug and the first to be formulated especially for children. It dissolves easily in a small amount of water or breast milk. The treatment is fast and effective and will increase the use of malaria medicines by children, saving millions of lives.

A sweeter pill to swallow
As mothers like Rose know, getting children to take bitter medicines is always difficult. Children would often spit out or vomit the life saving medications designed for adults. Now Rose and millions of mothers like her can get better treatment for their children, helping to ensure they recover quickly from this life threatening illness.
"This medicine is good because my child can swallow it fast and it doesn't have any side effects, like rashes. The fever also goes down very fast. She could speak and play quickly after taking this treatment. I have seen a big difference."

Access to life saving medicine
Coartem-d was launched in 2009, the result of a public-private partnership between Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), a non-profit organisation funded by DFID, and the pharmaceutical company Novartis. With funding from DFID and other international organisations, MMV has been able to rapidly increase access to and availability of the cherry-flavoured drug. In two years, 64 million treatments of this life saving medicine have been delivered to 35 countries.
http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3604033512937490051&pli=1

POVERTY: Barclays Capital, the investment banking arm, blamed for driving price rises through commodity trading

 Felicity Lawrence guardian.co.uk,  25 April 2011


 Selling maize in Nairobi, Kenya. Food prices around the world have risen to record levels in recent months, with campaigners blaming commodity traders for adding to the pressure. Photograph: Khalil Senosi/AP

Barclays will be targeted during its annual meeting on Wednesday by anti-poverty campaigners accusing it of playing a leading role in driving up food prices on global commodities markets.
Barclays Capital, the investment banking arm of the high street bank, is the UK's biggest player in food commodity trading, and one of the top three banking players globally, according to a new analysis for the World Development Movement.
Along with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, BarCap has pioneered new kinds of financial products that have enabled pension funds and other investors traditionally barred from commodities exchanges to bet on food prices.
Deborah Doane, director of the World Development Movement (WDM), accused Barclays of making excessive profits at the expense of millions in poor countries. "First, it was sub-prime mortgages, now it's food commodities," she said. "The lack of transparency in these markets bears worrying resemblance to the behaviour that led to the 2008 financial crash. Like any irrational asset bubble, the investors pile their money in for short-term profits, in spite of the consequences."
The WDM report estimates that BarCap may have made as much as £340m in 2010 from its activities in food speculation. Precise figures are not known because much of the speculation takes the form of over-the-counter derivatives – trades entered privately between banks and clients. Banks do not publish a breakdown of revenues within divisions, so the WDM figure for Barclays is extrapolated from other measures published by the company, such as money at risk.
Barclays declined to comment in detail on the WDM report but said in a statement: "Barclays Capital conducts a variety of investment banking activities to help our clients across asset classes and geographies." It added that it acted as "an intermediary for our clients globally" rather than trading on its own behalf.
Barclays has already found its business ethics questioned this year, with UK Uncut, the campaign group, targeting branches over its tax avoidance activities. Soaring food prices have further highlighted the role of investment banks and hedge funds in commodity price spikes. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's (FAO's) food price index has reached record levels in recent months, and steep rises in the price of staples helped trigger the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.
While a range of factors, from climate change to demand for biofuels, have contributed to food price rises, financial speculation in agricultural commodity derivatives is believed by many, including the FAO, to have magnified volatility. Others, including the banks and the OECD, argue speculation is not a significant factor.
Financial activity in the commodities markets has seen explosive growth in the last few years. According to data from the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, investment in commodity index funds rose from $13bn (£7.9bn) in 2003 to $317bn by 2008. While there are no definitive figures on how those index funds break down, it is estimated that their holdings in agricultural commodity markets rose from about $3bn to over $55bn over that period.
Producers and processors of physical goods have long used commodities exchanges to hedge against risks such as bad harvests. But much of the recent growth has been through new "structured" products invented by banks and sold to investors.
After intense lobbying, banks won deregulation of commodities markets in the US in 2000, allowing them to develop these new products. Goldman Sachs pioneered commodity index funds which offer investors a chance to track changes in a spread of commodity prices. Barclays, meanwhile, invented "collateralised commodity obligations" in 2004, which resemble the synthetic collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) of credit crisis notoriety, except that they are backed by commodity trigger swaps instead o f credit default swaps. BarCap also has a leading position in commodity index investments.
There has been concern that the commodities boom represents a new risk to financial stability. The global financial watchdog, the Financial Stability Board, has warned that it has all the hallmarks of a bubble waiting to burst.
Michael Masters, the hedge fund manager who gave testimony to the US Senate on speculation and food prices in 2008, agrees that the growth is potentially dangerous. "Financial speculation now accounts for more than two thirds of the market, and only about 30% is physical hedgers," he said. "The percentages have flipped in that period. When billions of dollars of capital is being put to work in small markets like this, it amplifies price rises and if financial flows amplify prices of food stuffs and energy, it's not like real estate and stocks – when food prices double, people starve."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/apr/25/barclays-faces-commodity-protests

POVERTY: Grameen Bank cleared of financial breaches by Bangladesh government

Reuters

guardian.co.uk,  25 April 2011

A Bangladeshi government probe has cleared microlender Grameen Bank of financial irregularities, the finance minister said, but the finding will not change the decision to fire Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus.

Yunus, 70, was dismissed by a central bank order – upheld by the high court and supreme court – on the grounds that he had overstayed in his position and refused requests to quit.
Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel peace prize, set up Grameen, which means village in Bengali, and had been the bank's managing director since 2000.
Lauded at home and abroad by politicians and financiers as the "banker to the poor", he has been under attack by the government since late last year, after a Norwegian documentary alleged the bank was dodging taxes.
Yunus denied any wrongdoing and a Norwegian government investigation later also cleared him of any malpractice.
The Bangladeshi finance minister, Abul Maal Abdul Muhith, told reporters on Monday that a committee appointed by the government to investigate Grameen Bank's operations had also found no evidence of financial irregularities.
But officials and experts said the finding would have no impact on the government's decision to fire Yunus as the bank's managing director, because he had overstayed the official retirement age for bank managing directors in Bangladesh of 60 years.
Associates of Yunus say his removal was government retaliation after he briefly considered a political career to challenge the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina.
No comment from Yunus or the Grameen Bank was immediately available.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/25/grameen-bank-cleared-irregularities-bangladesh