World Tuberculosis Day - March 24

Today is World Tuberculosis Day.

Last week, the WHO released it’s newest study on the disease, reporting that while TB cases have been slowly falling since 2003, a drug-resistant strain of TB (MDR-TB) is on a steep rise. Worldwide we can expect about 9 million new cases of TB this year, and 500,000 new cases of MDR-TB.

Learn more at the World TB Day site.

And scroll though the ONE Blog’s “TB” tag for our recent postings.

Including:

• Alexandra Fullem’s (of the the Global Health Council) excellent account of the Congressional briefing in honor of World TB Day on the 13th and the status of TB overall.
• A summary of the WHO’s February report on TB and MDR-TB
• A LA Times editorial urging world leaders for more funding to fight the drug-resistant strain of TB.

And more.

News Round Up

Marking World Water Day, the UN stresses that improving sanitation would have enormous health and economic benefits in developing countries.

Reuters: Better sanitation has huge economic spin-offs

In Bangladesh, where 40 percent of the population live in poverty, food prices have increased by nearly 100 percent over the past year alone.

Reuters: U.N. says help poor nations as food prices rise

A Business Day op-ed argues that while many development analysts focus on subsidies to farmers in rich countries and the damage it inflicts on the world’s poor, more attention should be paid to the fact that the world’s poorest countries impose the highest barriers against trade with each other—70 percent of the world’s trade barriers are imposed by governments in poor countries on people in other poor countries.

Business Day: Rising food prices, protectionism and the poor

The Wall Street Journal highlights that rising food prices and a weak U.S. dollar are having a negative effect on domestic American food charities.

WSJ: A run on banks: Food Charities Feel the Pinch

Menendez Monday

Great report back from Ross of SetonHall University of ONE students and members lobbying Senator Robert Menendez last Monday.

“Last week the luck of the Irish was with the ONE Campaign. New Jersey members of ONE and our partner organization CARE met with Senator Robert Menendez to discuss his support for several anti-poverty bills going through Congress. For my part in the meeting I thanked the senator for co-sponsoring and voting for the Biden/Lugar amendment to the FY09 international affairs budget which, as many of you might know, restored $4.1 billion dollars…”

Read the rest on the ONE Campus Challenge Blog.

World Water Day 2008 (T- 3 days)

Our friends at Water Advocates compiled this list of upcoming World Water Day events.

Beginning Sunday, March 16 through Saturday, March 22, restaurants will invite their customers to donate a minimum of $1 for the tap water they would normally get for free. These donations to UNICEF will go towards improving access to safe water and sanitation facilities in schools and communities, while promoting safe hygiene practices in more than 90 countries around the world. Plug in your zip code to find restaurants in your city.

World Water Day 2008 will be celebrated by the UN on Thursday, March 20. In New York you can help bring awareness to the sanitation crisis by “standing up for those that can’t sit down.”

PSI will host a World Water Day discussion about their Safe Water Programs, the successes and challenges, and the way forward on March 20 from 3:30-5:00 PM. If interested, please RSVP to akhanna@psi.org.

Celebrate World Water Day with Water For People on Friday, March 21. Raffles and speakers-including Amy Hart - Filmmaker, WATER FIRST-will make the evening one to remember.

If in Louisville, KY, join Edge Outreach on March 21, 2008 for a night of music, water and film. Join speakers and hear stories of what is being done for those without water and sanitation.

The DC Environmental Film Festival will have several water movies showing on World Water Day March 22. There is also a panel of water experts at 4:00 PM that day from Water Advocates, the Global Water Challenge, Natural Resources Defense Council and ConservationStrategy.

Join the Global Water Challenge, Water Advocates and others at the Student Movement for Real Change event on March 22: “Water is Life: Youth Leading Change on World Water Day”.

In 2007, 69 cities across the United States passed resolutions acknowledging March 22 as World Water Day. Join those interested in promoting World Water Day in a variety of events across the country.

WaterAid America in conjunction with the American Museum of Natural History present a panel discussion exploring the burden unsafe water and sanitation place on women, and the role women can play in water and sanitation development interventions. The discussion will be held on World Water Day, March 22.

Attention runners: join in an effort to raise awareness about the global water and sanitation challenge and help build a borehole well in the Azawak Valley, Niger - sign up for a Run for Water on March 22.

The Global Health Council will hold a briefing on Capitol Hill called “The Link Between Clean Water and Health.” The briefing will be on March 26 at 12:30 PM on Capitol Hill.

Libertyville becomes 1st ONE High School Today

Compassion has flooded the hallways of Libertyville High School in Illinois. I and my fellow students are taking action for the fight against disease and poverty and today, on March 19, our school will become the first official “ONE High School” at the same time Libertyville becomes an official “ONE City.”

Next month, we’re organizing a massive community benefit concert that will take place on April 18, 2008 at the high school’s field house. Just like the roots of the ONE Campaign, this started as just a few students’ idea and has grown into a movement.

What inspires me the most is how quick more students are to join. Our group continues to grow and we’ve already signed up more than 580 new members in just two days of tabling. Between our school and town, the Libertyville community is truly taking on to the idea that we all can come together as ONE community to change the world.

-Ryan Steel, ONE member and LHS senior, Libertyville, IL

Creating Safe Drinking Water is Not Rocket Science

Although many of us know that water is a scarce resource in our world, few people know that more than 5,000 children under the age of 5 die each day due to lack of access to clean and safe drinking water. That’s nearly 2 million children each year. On World Water Day, we need to remember these children and their families.

Although I have worked in healthcare for more than 30 years, I didn’t know the depth of the crisis of poor sanitation and dangerous water. I was shocked at these statistics when I came to the US Coalition for Child Survival in 2006.

In 2005, I paid a visit to the Children’s Hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan. Afghanistan has one of the worst infant, child and maternal mortality statistics in the developing world. Although improvements have been made in the last few years, there continues to be a crisis there. When I visited Children’s Hospital of Kabul, I found that each day nearly 1,000 children come to the clinic seeking help. The hospital, at that time, didn’t have clean water or working sanitation. Babies were sharing incubators and the food was horrible. Many children showed up due to malnutrition, dehydration and illnesses related to unsafe drinking water.

I saw so much pain in the faces of the children and families during my two weeks in Kabul.

Creating safe drinking water and making it accessible to children and families is not rocket science. We’re not waiting for any new inventions or technology. The cost is low and the results are truly life-saving. Access to clean water and sanitation can help prevent Diarrheal Disease, one of the leading causes of death among children under 5. Read our fact sheet and learn more about the causes, solutions and success stories. Download our fact sheet at here.

You can make a difference and the support of the ONE Campaign has already generated more than 200,000 letters to Congress to support the Global Child Survival Act. Our website has all the information and details on the causes and solutions to the global child survival crisis.

You can also learn more about safe drinking water here. Watch the flash program and get all the facts!

-Andrew Barrer, Executive Director, US Coalition for Child Survival

73 Thank Yous Awaiting Distribution

At 1:30 a.m. on Friday night, global poverty advocates scored a major victory. Rallying with allies like Interaction and the U.S. Global Leadership Campaign, sending tens of thousands of petitions and making thousands of calls, in just two weeks ONE members created the support needed to restore $4 billion to the 2009 international affairs budget.

The final vote was 73 to 23 in our favor. Now is the moment to thank the senators who voted with us, and stood up for the billion people around the world who live on less than a dollar a day when it really counted.

And now is also the time to contact those who didn’t vote with us and let them know that you’re disappointed and hope to have their support in the future.

Below I’m re-listing all the candidates’ votes by state. You can use the Capitol switchboard - at 202-224-3121- to connect to their office. Please do so today, our representatives need to know they have our support when they choose to vote for the most vulnerable among us.

BIDEN-LUGAR AMENDMENT - Yeas and Nays

What A Day

My name is Sammi Fredenburg. I’m from Seattle, but yesterday I was in Washington, D.C., to represent ONE and talk about the Global Child Survival Act.

The day started with a House of Representatives’ committee hearing where Senator Frist spoke on the incredible need for this legislation. He presented the committee with thousands of letters from ONE members, some of whom were in the audience with me.

He also brought vitamin A drops and the simple oral rehydration therapy that can save children’s lives in developing areas, and pointed out just how difficult it is to get these resources into people’s hands there.

Also at the hearing, Congressman Chris Shays of Connecticut talked about the work of groups like ONE, Save the Children, and the U.S. Coalition for Child Survival. He pointed out that the work of organizations like these has been more effective than the work of lawmakers in bringing change to people’s lives on these issues.

After the hearing, we met with reporters. CNN was there. So were a number of newspaper and online reporters. Senator Frist spoke, and then introduced me. I shared my personal story with the reporters as I have shared on this blog before. For me, the bottom line is simple: Every year, nearly 10 million children under the age of 5 die from largely preventable and treatable causes. That’s someone’s son or someone’s daughter dying every three seconds, nearly 27,000 children in the developing world today. We should do everything we can to save these children’s lives. And the Global Child Survival Act is an important step toward that goal.

I was thrilled to be at the Capitol, representing ONE and urging Congress to pass this legislation. I look forward to coming back to Washington when the bill is being signed into law. Yesterday was a great day, but that day will be incredible.

[Photos care of Paul Morigi - more photos here.]

-Sammi Fredenburg

Lobbying For Uganda

(Mariana Blanco, Invisible Children’s filmmaker and editor, joined 1,000 young Americans to lobby Congress on the crisis in Northern Uganda.)

I had never been to lobby in DC before, and now that its been a few weeks, the best way I can describe the Northern Uganda Lobby Days is in familiar terms–it was like a film, I think Rocky: Day one was the training montage; day two the fight on Capitol Hill, the fight to get our voice heard. I am a filmmaker for Invisible Children, and the world on Capitol Hill always struck me as cryptic and intimidating; but for two days at the end of March, I met person after person, sincerely excited to be involved in our effort.

Let’s skip to action. On day two, 800 individuals met with more than 200 staffers and Congressmen, making it one of the largest lobbying groups for Africa. I started the day surrounded by mostly young students in suits, practicing their speeches. There was urgency in the air – the LRA and the Ugandan government had made significant steps toward peace just days before. The day suddenly became weighted and relevant.

It was my job to stay near the action. (more…)

World TB Day

(Alexandra Fullem works for the Global Health Council)

Yesterday the Global Health Council, Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation and the American Thoracic Society hosted a Congressional briefing in honor of World TB Day 2008. We learned from our 3 speakers more about the threat of MDR and XDR TB, more about the perfect storm of TB/HIV co-infection and about the great work that is being done in the push to find a vaccine. The speakers were Dr. Payam Nahid from the University of California, San Francisco, Thomas Kenyon from the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator and Sylvie Kwedie from the Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation.

So, why is TB, an ancient disease, continuing to plague us after 5000 years? There are many reasons and the speakers outlined these for us. The first is poverty. The disease spreads quickly through the air and so we are all at risk, but those living in poverty even more so. The second is the rise of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. 1/3 of the population is carrying a latent form of TB. Once your immune system is compromised it becomes much more likely you will progress to active TB. In fact, TB is the leading cause of death for HIV patients with up to 40% of HIV deaths being TB related. The third reason that TB is still with us is poor TB control programs worldwide and poor laboratory capabilities, especially in endemic countries.

A fourth reason is that the drugs we are using to treat TB all date from the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s.We are treating this disease with very old technology.

This, together with (more…)