China will grant $7 million dollars to Kenya for development projects in the African country. It is one of a bigger package of grants and loans that China is making to the Africa as they step up aid efforts.
The agreement was unveiled during a visit to the Kenyan capital Nairobi by Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, who is on a five-nation tour of the world's poorest continent. ...
In November, China's government said it would offer Africa $10 billion in concessional loans over the next three years as the country aims to boost a relationship which is economically booming, to the discomfort of some in the West.
Beijing says it also plans to help Africa develop clean energy generation and cope with climate change, encourage Chinese financial institutions to lend to smaller African companies and expand market access for African products.
The state of Kansas recently made cuts to their Medicaid budget and it's effects are beginning to be felt. The ten percent cuts are not only being felt by the frail and disabled but for those who care for them as well. As Kansas politicians begin to go back to work for 2010, many are debating if the cuts need to be undone.
As big cuts hit Medicaid-funded programs — including agencies serving adults with developmental disabilities, physicians serving Kansans in poverty, and nursing homes caring for the frail and elderly — Kansas lawmakers on Monday will converge on the Capitol for the 2010 legislative session. Even with the drastic cuts aimed at balancing the budget, the Legislature faces a budget shortfall of between $300 and $400 million.
"There are serious questions that even if there was a legislative desire or willingness to reverse those cuts, where would they get the money?" asked Jerry Slaughter, executive director of the Kansas Medical Association. "The state can't print money like the federal government. If you don't have the money, you don't have the money."
The 10 percent cut in Medicaid reimbursement rates was part of $258.9 million in budget adjustments announced in November, although the Medicaid reduction didn't go into effect until this month. In all, the 10 percent cut is aimed at saving the state about $22 million through the end of the fiscal year. However, the loss to Medicaid providers will amount to about $66 million because the program relies heavily on federal matching funds, said Peter Hancock a spokesman for the Kansas Health Policy Authority.
It wasn't a decision that was made lightly, said state budget director Duane Goossen.
"The results from doing this are not positive things," he told the Senate Ways and Means Committee last month. "They are almost entirely negative things."
Slaughter said medical providers are having to reconsider if they will continue to accept new Medicaid patients or if they will stop serving Medicaid patients entirely. If the cuts last longer than a few months, he said he anticipates some practices may begin making decisions about cutbacks this summer. As is, he said, many physicians barely break even when serving Medicaid patients.
The Associated Press released a pretty good analysis on the global recession's effects on Dubai. People from throughout the Arab world flocked to the city for it's plentiful jobs. Once the recession hit those jobs were cut. Now Dubai is experiencing what most of the Arab world has, high unemployment and low wages.
From this AP article that we found today at NPR, we read more about the bad news that the recession brought.
It is bad news for the Arab world, where chronic economic stagnation, high unemployment and low-paying jobs have long caused frustration among workers, especially the young.
Overall, the amount of money shipped back home by workers abroad, called remittances, fell by more than 7 percent in 2009 across the Mideast and Arab north Africa, the World Bank estimates. That is the first drop in a decade.
In some countries the impact is worse: Worker remittances into Egypt have already plunged nearly a quarter over the past year, the International Monetary Fund said in October.
Arab workers go to many places for jobs, including Europe. But the oil-rich Gulf has long been the bedrock of Mideast remittances, with Dubai recently its most turbocharged engine.
Dubai built itself into a booming trade and tourism hub on the backs of foreign workers like Tamimi, whose family originally hails from the West Bank town of Hebron. Only about one in 10 of Dubai's roughly 1.5 million residents is a citizen.
Expatriate Arabs are not the only foreigners hurt by Dubai's downfall. Low-paid Indians and other South Asians provide much of the hard labor to raise skyscrapers including the world's tallest, the Burj Khalifa, which opened this week. Filipinos fill many of the service jobs.
But in per-capita dollar terms, it is the Arab world that's being hit hardest.
Overall, worker wages from the Gulf — including Dubai and other places like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait — account for a whopping 15 to 20 percent of the economy in countries like Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt that are considerably poorer than the oil-fueled monarchies of the Gulf, said Nasser Saidi, a former Lebanese government minister who is now the chief economist at the Dubai International Financial Center, a state-run banking hub.
A peace deal that calmed Sudan is in threat of ending according to aid groups that work in the country. A decades long civil war that killed 2.2 million people was ended by the peace agreement signed five years ago. New elections being held this year and a surge of violence from last year are factors that threaten the peace accord.
"It is not yet too late to avert disaster but the next 12 months are a crossroads," said Maya Mailer, a policy adviser for Oxfam, one of 10 agencies that banded together to sound the alarm in a report published Thursday.
"Last year saw a surge in violence in southern Sudan. This could escalate even further and become one of the biggest emergencies in Africa in 2010," said Mailer, a co-author of the report.
In 2009, some 2,500 people were killed and 350,000 forced to flee their homes, in spite of the 2005 comprehensive peace agreement that integrated the main southern rebel group into a government of national unity.
The isolated area – with only 50 kilometres of paved road in a territory the size of France – is out of the world spotlight, it has suffered a higher toll of death and destruction than Darfur in the past year.
"Government authorities and the UN peacekeeping mission need to act urgently to protect civilians from violence," the report says. Diminished security has disrupted livelihoods, stalled development and cut off thousands from much needed aid.
It urges UN countries, as well as the governments of Sudan and southern Sudan, to work together to beef up security, protect civilians and boost resources for emergency aid and development. A formidable task in a country headed by an accused war criminal who last year expelled some of the largest aid agencies from Darfur.
A human trafficking hotbed is located in Northern Kenya. Many head to South Africa and are shipped there for either hopes for a better life, forced labor, or for sexual exploitation.
From this article from Kenya's Daily Nation, writer Abdullahi Jamaa reveals some of the methods that human traffickers use.
And here in the North, the scale of human trafficking is alarming. “Trafficking of people is very rampant here. It is a multi-million dollar business that is getting bold in much of the Great lakes and Horn of Africa region,” says Mr Abdullahi Hirsi, the executive director of Northern Heritage, a local aid agency in Garissa.
“In the past few years alone, because of droughts, we have seen a huge number of economic refugees targeted by human traffickers with a promise of better life elsewhere,” he said. A spot-check in Garissa, Wajir and Mandera shows that the illegal business is conducted daily, final arrangements done in Nairobi.
“In Garissa, at least five persons are trafficked in each of the more than 10 buses plying the route to Nairobi. You can imagine the number of people on sale everyday — more than 50,” says an anti-trafficking activist who sought anonymity due to security reasons. “This depicts a completely worrying picture.”
Nairobi’s’ Eastleigh has been the hub of the internationally denounced trade. Economic and conflict refugees from Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Kenya are sold in the sprawling commercial centre to move to other countries. “Eastleigh is a connection point for most victims. It is where the journey starts and it is where most monies exchange hands,” says Amina Kinsi of Ngazi Moja Foundation, a lobby group in Eastleigh.
According to a recent report released by US State Department in June 2009, Kenya is a source, transit and a destination country for men, women and children trafficked for the purpose of better lives, forced labour and sexual exploitation. Victims take tedious routes to South Africa and sometimes to some European countries. Traffickers make millions of dollars every month by arranging and directing the journey to South Africa. Some victims end their travels with shocking deaths.
The cheapest illegal migration goes well over $600 while the most expensive takes more than $2,000 for a journey that sometimes takes several months. “Sometimes, you become stranded in a town where you know no one. I spent more than a week in Zambia as I had run out of cash,” said Farah, who returned from South Africa at the height of Xenophobia against Somalis.
“I reached Johannesburg after more than three weeks of journeying. It was the worst journey ever for me.” The cartel of human traffickers usually collect per-head fee at every entry point of these countries. “Traffickers use unmanned border towns, often meeting with little police and security restrictions,” says Mr Hirsi of Northern Heritage.
China has large problem with drug resistant tuberculosis. This strain of tuberculosis is usually caused by people stopping treatment, then the bacteria comes back stronger than ever. The problem is large enough in China that it threatens to put a huge dent in the country's health budget.
From the New York Times this Reuters article gives us one example of a TB sufferer and some stats.
Liu Zhongwu, a stonecutter working in southern China, for example, stopped taking his TB medication midway through a standard six-month course in 2007 because it was too costly.
"Even though one or two drugs were free, I had to pay 500 yuan ($73) a month for other drugs (to reduce side effects) and the side effects were bad, I suffered terrible gastric pain and had to stop work, I didn't even have energy to walk," said Liu.
It is precisely this sort of behavior that health experts are trying to stop because if the TB bacteria is not fully eliminated, it can mutate, resurge later and become resistant to the small arsenal of drugs that can fight the disease.
China has 4.5 million TB cases currently; and each year 1.4 million people fall ill with the disease. TB killed 160,000 people in China in 2008, according to the World Health Organization.
TB killed 1.8 million people across the world in 2008, or a person every 20 seconds. It is not only a scourge in poor countries but also in the West, where it has flared anew in the last 20 years because of AIDS, which weakens the immune system.
63,200 people joined the welfare rolls in Ontario last year. The increase corresponds with the unemployment rate in the province as Ontario was not immune to the global recession.
The social assistance caseload increased by about 20% between November 2008 and November 2009, according to the latest government figures available. ...
The Ontario government took a number of steps since 2005 to help people find work through measures such as increasing the maximum deduction for child care for working parents and extending drug, dental and vision care benefits to people leaving social assistance for work, she said.
The total number of beneficiaries -- 365,319 -- still falls dramatically short of the 1.3 million Ontarians on the dole during the last recession of the early 1990s. ...
John Clarke, of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), said social assistance rules -- by design or application -- deny many people their rightful benefits.
Fiji's economy was already in bad shape before the global economic crisis. Fiji already had almost half of it's citizens in poverty, and lacked many social services to help them. Now the numbers of children who now have to work to support families has increased as dropout rates in the country are at 66 percent.
From this IPS article, reporter Shailendra Singh focuses on the children who have bleak futures.
According to Fiji’s 2002/2003 Household Income and Expenditure Survey, an estimated 43 percent of the total population of 850,000 lives in poverty of varying degrees.
Observers believe that the situation of tens of thousands of poor families like Chand’s has become even more desperate since the global economic crisis struck in 2007. Such families are now forced to prematurely pull their children out of school and send them to work.
Fiji’s compulsory education age is 15, which is also the minimum legal age for work. The law also prohibits Fiji children below 18 from working during school hours. But just as in many developing countries with high levels of poverty and low levels of social welfare, child labour laws are either poorly enforced or ignored as strict implementation could lead to the affected family going without food.
Biman Prasad, an economics professor at the University of the South Pacific, said that despite having more than 95 percent of children in school, there are more children living in poverty and more of them engaged in child labour than before.
"The main reason why we see more students not being able to complete primary education is financial difficulties," said Prasad. "While we have made some economic progress, we are still far from achieving levels of economic growth that can effectively lead to the reduction in poverty."
More ominous for Fiji is the finding by a non-government organisation, Save the Children Fiji, of increased child prostitution. A 2009 survey of 87 adults and 104 children below the age of 18 in seven sites around Fiji uncovered evidence of more young people engaging in prostitution as a result of the economic hardships brought on by the crisis.
The results of the survey of sex workers commissioned by the International Labour Organisation have yet to be released , but a spokesperson for the international children’s charity said that many of the children interviewed had fallen into prostitution in the last two years as a result of economic hardships.
One third of the world's population has the tuberculosis bacterium, that translates to 2 billion people. Yet many people can carry the bacteria and not show any symptoms.
From this Reuters article that we found at the UK's Telegraph, writer Tan Ee Lyn gathered together some statistics on tuberculosis.
Tuberculosis is the world's seventh-leading cause of death. It killed 1.8 million people worldwide last year, up from 1.77 million in 2007. It is one of three primary diseases that are closely linked to poverty, the other two being Aids and malaria.
Some facts about tuberculosis:
* It is spread easily through the air. When infectious people cough, sneeze, talk or spit, they expel the bacteria. Just a small amount is enough for transmission. Someone in the world is newly infected with TB every second.
* Nearly all TB infections are latent, with carriers showing no symptoms and they are not infectious. However, one in 10 will become sick with active TB in his or her lifetime due primarily to a weakened immune system.
* Of the 1.8 million deaths in 2008, or 4,930 deaths a day, half a million were Aids patients. TB affects mostly young adults in their most productive years. The vast majority of TB deaths are in the developing world. More than half occur in Asia.
* The World Health Organization estimates that 9.4 million people developed active TB in 2008, up from 9.27 million in 2007 and 9.24 million in 2006. Among the 15 countries with the highest TB incidence rates in 2007, 13 were in Africa, while half of all new cases were in six Asian countries - Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan and the Philippines.
* TB is the seventh-highest cause of mortality in poor countries.
From IRIN we read about the growing food insecurity in Iraq. 80 percent of Iraq's food is imported, and this article makes the case that lack of support to local agriculture is to blame.
More and more people in Iraq are being affected by food insecurity, a senior official has said.
Reduced domestic agricultural production, inflation, unemployment and a crumbling system of subsidized food distributions have hit poor people the hardest.
“There is still a big percentage of Iraqi people who can’t secure enough food. With unemployment running at 18-20 percent they can’t buy what they need,” said Muna Turki Al-Mousawi, head of the state-run Centre for Market Research and Consumer Protection, adding that about 20 percent of Iraq’s 25 million people live below the poverty line.
Domestic agricultural production - already affected by reduced rainfall - has also been hit by a lack of government support and lax controls on cheap food imports, with which farmers cannot compete in some cases, she said.
On 31 August, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said Iraq had its worst cereal harvest in a decade and that its wheat harvest was set to fall to one million tonnes, from an average of 3.5 million tonnes per annum over the past decade. Domestic rice production also fell from an average 500,000 tons a year to an estimated 250,000 tons this year.
Iraq imports more than 80 percent of its food needs, al-Mousawi told IRIN.
The crumbling subsidized food distribution scheme which was set up in the 1990s and designed to supply basic food items to poor people as part of the UN oil-for-food programme is making matters worse. At least 60 percent of the population depends on the subsidized food, according to Iraqi Trade Ministry figures.
There are quality and distribution problems: “We have comments on the quality of the food items. And it never reaches the families in time or in sufficient quantities. Some of its items are only distributed 8-10 months a year,” she said, contrasting the current situation with that prior to 2003 when “there was a kind of stability with regard to food security nationwide as there was control of imported food and government support to agriculture.”
Government support for farmers?
After 2003, she said, the borders were opened to random imports without real scrutiny, and government support for farmers diminished, adversely affecting domestic production, which could not compete with cheaper imports.
“The government has realized these dangers over the past two years and started to support the farmers and impose restrictions on food imports, and yet we are still far from the self-sufficiency we had, as we are only producing 20 percent of our food needs,” she said.
Three draft laws which aim to protect local production and regulate imports, if approved, could dramatically improve the situation, al-Mousawi said.
Abdul-Zahra Al-Hindawi, spokesman for the Iraqi Planning Ministry’s Central Organization for Statistics and Information Technology (COSIT), estimates that about 23 percent of Iraqis live below the poverty line, meaning they earn US$66 a month or less.
“One quarter of the whole population is not a small percentage. It needs a lot of thinking and economic strategies to help change this reality and improve it,” he said.
COSIT is set to present a national five-year anti-poverty strategy to the Cabinet by the end of November.
New laws in Washington state have been put in place to limit the amount of money people can borrow from payday loan companies.
The payday loans are very short term, very high interest loans that can be borrowed against your next pay check. The borrower often writes a post dated check to the lender that they cash on the date of the borrowers next paycheck.
Some people get caught in a trap of going to these lenders repeatedly, or borrow such a large amount that their next paycheck cannot cover the high interest. So the news laws hope to ease these problems.
From The Olympian, Associated Press writer Manuel Valdes interviews a payday loan business owner.
The new law limits the size of a payday loan to 30 percent of a person's monthly income, or $700, whichever is less. It also bars people from having multiple loans from different lenders, limits the number of loans a person can take out to eight per 12 months, and sets up a database to track the number of loans taken out by people.
"I think it's going to affect (them) pretty dramatically," said (Ken) Weaver, whose Apple Valley Check Cashing stores are in Moses Lake and Wenatchee. "We don't know if we're gonna be open in six months."
The limit on how many loans people will be able to take out is what will cut into his stores' revenue, Weaver said, echoing one of the arguments from the payday industry on how the new law will cut into its business model.
But for consumer advocates who lobbied for the new law, the regulations being put in place are a step toward protecting people from falling into debt. For years, they have argued that payday lending leaves people paying off loans for a long time, often using other payday loans, and paying heavy interest.
Japan has made a grant of 1.3 million dollars US to Sierra Leone for fighting the spread of infections diseases. The grant comes at a time when the country has experienced an increase in the amount of deaths from malaria. Japan is one of the biggest contributors to Sierra Leone giving them over 20 million dollars since 1998.
From Sierra Leone newspaper Cocorioko, writer Issa Davies describes what the money will be used for.
The goal of the project is to contribute to the reduction of child and maternal mortality by one-third by 2010 through low cost, high impact interventions from health personnel, families and communities.
These interventions will focus on malaria, acute respiratory infections, diarrhoea, HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention and an expanded programme on immunization as well as maternal and child nutrition. ...
The project targets children under the age of five years, pregnant women and young mothers in all the 13 districts in Sierra Leone. About 1.1 million dollars will be used to procure bed nets and other essential drugs in order to reduce the prevalence of malaria and other preventable diseases especially among pregnant women and children under the age of five.
Food stamp usage in the US is at a record high and is rising every day. But another number within that group has taken a huge leap in the last couple of years.
The number of people using food stamps that have no cash income has risen 50 percent in the last two years. The people with no cash income ranges from those drawing on saving to those selling blood plasma for a few dollars.
Advocates for the poor say that the many without cash income is a sign that food stamps are being asked to do too much, and more income opportunities must exist.
From the New York Times, reporters Jason Deparle and Robert M. Gebeloff did some research on the issue. The article's page also includes some interactive maps on food stamp usage throughout the country.
About six million Americans receiving food stamps report they have no other income, according to an analysis of state data collected by The New York Times. In declarations that states verify and the federal government audits, they described themselves as unemployed and receiving no cash aid — no welfare, no unemployment insurance, and no pensions, child support or disability pay.
Their numbers were rising before the recession as tougher welfare laws made it harder for poor people to get cash aid, but they have soared by about 50 percent over the past two years. About one in 50 Americans now lives in a household with a reported income that consists of nothing but a food-stamp card. ...
Food stamps, officially the called Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, have taken on a greater role in the safety net for several reasons. Since the benefit buys only food, it draws less suspicion of abuse than cash aid and more political support. And the federal government pays for the whole benefit, giving states reason to maximize enrollment. States typically share in other programs’ costs.
The Times collected income data on food-stamp recipients in 31 states, which account for about 60 percent of the national caseload. On average, 18 percent listed cash income of zero in their most recent monthly filings. Projected over the entire caseload, that suggests six million people in households with no income. About 1.2 million are children.
The numbers have nearly tripled in Nevada over the past two years, doubled in Florida and New York, and grown nearly 90 percent in Minnesota and Utah. In Wayne County, Mich., which includes Detroit, one of every 25 residents reports an income of only food stamps. In Yakima County, Wash., the figure is about one of every 17.
Experts caution that these numbers are estimates. Recipients typically report a small rise in earnings just once every six months, so some people listed as jobless may have recently found some work. New York officials say their numbers include some households with earnings from illegal immigrants, who cannot get food stamps but sometimes live with relatives who do.
Discontent with government is growing in Afghanistan. Those of us in the West think that they are just upset at us, but the Afghan people also upset with their own leaders. Many view all of the development aid coming into the country as only benefiting the rich, and statistics agree with them.
From this BBC article, reporter Peter Greste tells us the malnutrition that one doctors sees that helps to fuel the discontent.
Dr Aslam Fawad is despairing. Each day he walks the malnutrition ward, watching more and more patients arrive from across this otherwise fertile farming district.
Poverty is so deep that even many farmers are unable to feed their families.
Dr Fawad does his best to help, but the dire state of the economy means that some patients keep returning, time after time.
"The malnutrition problem in Afghanistan, and especially Parwan province, is very bad. That's because of the years of fighting, the damage to our infrastructure and rising unemployment.
"It's all helped to make things worse," he said.
The statistics bear him out: officially, unemployment is about 40%, though it is probably far higher than that; of those who do have a job in Parwan, 45% earn less than $1 a day; chronic malnutrition for children under five across Afghanistan is 54%.
And perhaps most surprising of all, on a UN scale of human development indicators, Afghanistan has slipped from 117th in the world, to 181st - second from the bottom - since the Taliban were ousted.
A team of scientists conducted an experiment that looks at what improvement a solar powered drip irrigation system can have on farming yields in Africa. The researchers from Stanford University just published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They wanted to conduct the study because the effects of improved irrigation are well known for Asia, but there is very little data for Africa.
Burney and her co-authors noted that only 4 percent of cropland in sub-Saharan Africa is irrigated, and that most rural, food-insecure communities in the region rely on rain-fed agriculture, which, in places like Benin, is limited to a three- to six-month rainy season.
"On top of potential annual caloric shortages, households face two seasonal challenges: They must stretch their stores of staples to the next harvest (or purchase additional food, often at higher prices), and access to micronutrients via home production or purchase diminishes or disappears during the dry season," the authors wrote. ...
In November 2007, the research team began a close collaboration with local women's agricultural groups in two villages in rural Benin. In Village A, which draws surface water from a year-round stream, researchers worked with residents to install two identical solar-powered pumping systems. In Village B, which relies on groundwater irrigation, water was pumped from 25 meters (82 feet) below the surface. Each solar-powered pumping system was used by 30 to 35 women affiliated with an agricultural group. Each woman farmed her own 120-square meter (1,292-square foot) plot. The remaining plots were farmed collectively to fund group purchases and expenses.
The researchers also chose two control villages for comparison with Villages A and B. Women's agricultural groups in the control villages continued to irrigate by hand, allowing for comparison of the solar-powered drip irrigation systems to traditional methods. "Household surveys were conducted in both treatment and control villages upon installation (November 2007) and following one year of garden operation (November 2008), and included detailed questions concerning consumption and agricultural production, as well as other socioeconomic, health and general questions," the authors wrote.
Striking results
The results were striking. The three solar-powered irrigation systems supplied on average 1.9 metric tons of produce per month, including tomatoes, okra, peppers, eggplants, carrots and other greens, the authors found. Woman who used solar-powered irrigation became strong net producers in vegetables with extra income earned from sales -- significantly increasing their purchases of staples and protein during the dry season, and oil during the rainy season. During the first year of operation, the women farmers kept an average of 18 percent by weight -- 8.8 kilograms (19.4 pounds) per month -- of the produce grown with the solar-powered systems for home consumption and sold the rest in local markets.
"Garden products penetrated local markets significantly," the authors found. "Vegetable consumption increased during the rainy season (the time of greatest surplus for the women's group farmers) for the entire four-village sample of households."
The Fort Collins, Colorado became a very affluent area in the last 20 years. Business was booming as people came up from Denver for suburban living with nearby national forests. But the recent hard times have turned some who live in the area poor. It's a problem that many may not even know is there.
The organization Pathways Past Poverty received a write up today in the Fort Collins Coloradoan, The group has identified 12 issues that people need to solve in order to rise above the poverty line. The article focuses on affordable child care and financial education. For our snippet, we point to some statistics and reaction from Pathways to Poverty. Writer Sara B. Hansen filed the story.
According to results released this fall from the American Community Survey, the poverty rate in Larimer County has increased by about 39 percent since 2000, peaking at 12.8 percent in 2007. That means more than one in 10 people in Larimer County is living on an income lower than the national poverty guideline.
Poverty as defined by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2008 was a family of four earning less than $21,200 a year. For an individual, the poverty line was set at $10,400.
And those stats were compiled before the current recession hit Northern Colorado.
In 2009, Larimer County lost 4,500 jobs. Other workers were hit with pay cuts, furloughs and reduced hours.
Demand for services at the Food Bank for Larimer County climbed 30 percent in the past year. Neighbor to Neighbor served 30 percent more people, and the Homelessness Prevention Initiative provided rental assistance to 56 percent more people.
The need is there, but many people in Larimer County don't recognize it.
"A lot of people don't want to believe poverty is an issue in Larimer County," said Marija Weeden-Osborn, Pathways Past Poverty coordinator and community investment associate.
"Because we don't see people sitting on the corner, it's easier to believe they're not there," she said.
Social stigma prevents many HIV positive Senegalese from getting live saving drugs. The stigma of homosexuality or for even straight people with HIV forces them into hiding. So much so that AIDS drug distribution programs are unable to reach them. Several violent acts have happened in Senegal lately to reinforce the stigma.
From this CamWest News Service article, writer Peter O'Neil cites a new Pew survey on attitudes in Senegal.
Dr. Bara Ndiaye, project leader for the non-governmental organization Enda-Sante, said anti-AIDS initiatives led by government and non-government organizations are often viewed suspiciously.
"This society is very hostile toward homosexuals," said Ndiaye, whose organization works closely with MSM and sex workers on issues like safe sex, testing, treatment and nutrition.
"They assume it is promoting homosexuality."
Some Senegalese claim there had historically been a modest level of tolerance for sexual minorities in this former French colony, but a 2007 Pew Research Centre poll of 700 Senegalese respondents found that 97 per cent believed homosexuality "should be rejected" by society.
The poll had an error margin of four per cent, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Pew organization. ...
National and international health organizations desperately need to reach out to these groups to ensure they don't spread HIV to sex partners, or in the case of mothers to their children during pregnancy or while breastfeeding, according to Michel Kazatchkine, executive director of the $18.7-billion U.S. Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
He said social stigmatization represents the second-biggest barrier facing national and international bodies waging a multibillion-dollar battle against AIDS, a crisis that has been overtaken in the media by the global financial collapse, war, climate change and the H1N1 flu pandemic.
It is next only to weak government health-care systems in recipient countries, said Kazatchkine, whose organization funds Enda-Sante, Xam Xamle and Karlene.
"These people, because they're harassed, will hide," Kazatchkine told Canwest News Service.
Three different organizations are trying to provide vision to the world. Britain's AdSpecs has been at it for around 10 years, while two Dutch firms Focus on Vision and U-Specs are just getting started.
Each of the organizations are attempting to mass produce glasses at a low enough cost that they can be distributed to the poor around the world. The three groups use a couple of different technologies that can change the focus of the lenses, so that wearers can auto focus the glasses without using an optometrist.
From the New York Times, writer Douglas Heingartner compares the three outfits and the occasional competition to supply vision to the world.
The tangled provenance of the designs demonstrates the unspoken yet occasionally palpable sense of rivalry among the various camps.
“I view them as good friends,” Professor Silver, the inventor of AdSpecs, said. “We’re not competitors. I’m just rather keen on origins and facts being clearly stated.”
He said they all agreed that the developing world needed a “low-cost design that can be produced at very high volume,” conceding that “none of the enterprises around today can do that.”
But each camp is convinced that it has the best approach to supply the millions or even billions of inexpensive glasses the developing world needs.
Focus on Vision says its advantage is the unique injection-molding process that allows its Focusspec eyeglasses to be made cheaply. It was developed by a Dutch engineer, Ron Kok, who grew wealthy in the 1980s by streamlining the manufacture of compact discs and contact lenses.
Focus on Vision invited Mr. Kok to work that same magic on its glasses. “I saw immediately that you could make it simpler,” he said. “They’re designed to be easy and cheap to produce.”
The U-Specs team emphasizes its scientific pedigree. “We took more of an academic approach, or at least a scientific approach, rather than an entrepreneurial one,” said Sjoerd Hannema, who was in charge of the U-Specs project until the middle of 2009. “Having a university and an eye hospital behind it,” he said, “helps build recognition and authority around this project.”
Mr. Hannema now leads a nonprofit organization called Adaptive Eyewear, which is running a distribution project in Rwanda called Vision for a Nation. It uses a combination of U-Specs, a version of Professor Silver’s lenses and traditional reading glasses.
Although they are not made using Mr. Kok’s special production technique, supporters of U-Specs say they will ultimately cost about the same to produce as the Focusspec.
“It will be around one to two dollars, depending on the quantity,” Mr. Hannema said. “If you make a million glasses, then automatically your cost price goes down dramatically. But then the challenge is where are you going to bring those glasses? Ultimately the cost of distribution is what matters.”
Two women with a shared interest in Haiti have used their engineering skills to develop toilets that recycle wastes back into fertilizer for growing crops.
The toilets store human poop, then it is moved to a compost pile where the waste breaks down for a couple of years. After composting has killed the pathogens in the waste, the poop can then be used as fertilizer for farming.
The innovation is great way to help small farmers and gardeners afford to raise food to feed themselves. The price of buying fertilizer is beyond what most Haitians can afford.
From CNN, this video helps explain how the toilets work.
From the accompanying printed story on SOIL, writer Eliott C. McLaughlin gives us some background on how the women became so involved with Haiti.
Brownell, who has an environmental engineering master's from the University of California-Berkeley, first went to Haiti in 1998 to install solar panels at a health clinic in Le Borgne. The panels didn't arrive for two months.
"I was hanging around with not really any project to do, and I really felt like the community took me in, took care of me, even though I didn't really have much to offer them at that point," Kramer said.
She studied Creole and practiced crocheting, cooking and washing clothes by hand. The Haitians made fun of her ineptitude at the latter task, Brownell said, so she spent time "trying to perfect my skills" as her instructor's 2-year-old son, Jeffrey, toddled around the washbasin.
Brownell eventually finished the solar panel project and returned to school at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. When she went back to Haiti two years later, she learned that Jeffrey had died of diarrhea and dehydration -- a death Brownell calls "totally preventable" if Jeffrey had simply had access to clean water and safe place to use the bathroom.
"This was something that really touched my heart as a way for me to use engineering to make that connection with the social aspect of helping people to live their lives better," Brownell said.
Kramer, who studied "nitrogen cycles" while earning her doctorate at Stanford University, is a human rights observer first drawn to Haiti's political movements. She met Brownell at a Mexican restaurant in Berkeley in 2005 and quickly found common threads in their interests.
"Even with the all of these acute human rights violations that were happening in Haiti at the time," explained Kramer, "the most prevalent human rights abuse is really poverty and the fact that people didn't have access to their basic needs like food, sanitation and water."
A video from Sky News talks about rural poverty in the UK. Research indicates that 1 in 5 people in rural areas live in poverty, that translates to 1.7 million people. This story filed by Katie Stallard gives a couple of examples of people who have fallen on hard times.
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