What We’re Reading 3/19/10

Mar 19th, 2010 11:21 AM UTC
By Robyn Mitchell

The Economist: Crumbs from the BRICs-man’s table
According to the Economist, emerging world powers – including Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) – are starting to become viable players in the international aid game and are jumping on the “once-in-a-generation chance to win friends and influence people.” A new study by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) found that emerging countries are increasingly affecting the growth prospects of poorer ones. Deborah Brautigam, author of a new book on China’s role in Africa, says the BRICs’ emergence as aid donors is as important for poor countries as was the fall of the Berlin Wall for eastern Europe. However, the Economist maintains that “just as that event did not solve the region’s problems at a stroke, so it is in Africa now. The search for good government goes on.”

Inter Press Service (IPS): Bad Water More Deadly Than War
As the UN gears up for World Water Day next week, Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon warns that more people die from unsafe water than all forms of violence, including war. A study released Monday by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF, found that while the world is on track to meet or even exceed the drinking-water target of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the UN’s sanitation targets are still lagging far behind. Said one clean water advocate, “This water and sanitation crisis is holding back improvements across all other MDGs, including education and maternal and child health, and affecting not only human development but also, crucially, economic growth.”

The Economist: When feeding the hungry is political
The Economist explores the history of the increasingly controversial World Food Program (WFP), the United Nations initiative started in 1962, which has “since grown into the behemoth of the aid business, envied and disliked in almost equal measure by many of its smaller peers.” While the WFP says it feeds people in more than 70 countries, the Economist highlights the recent queries as to “whether it always fulfills the high ideals of its humanitarian mandate.” According to the magazine, the WFP gets most of its fierce criticism from its operations in Africa, where the main complaint is that food aid creates a dependency culture among the poor.

The Telegraph: Sudanese guinea worm on the point of eradication. What next?
The Carter Center, founded by the former US president Jimmy Carter, may be on the point of exterminating the Guinea worm in Sudan, which leads the Telegraph to explore other diseases that are “on their way out” in the developing world. According to the paper, while scientists are making headway on treatment for malaria and polio, neglected tropical diseases that affect millions worldwide are still a long way off from becoming the success story of Guinea worm. However, Sandy Cairncross, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, maintains that the end of Guinea worm is significant because it helps to persuade people to live healthier lives. Said Cairnscross, “Prevention involves behavior change, which is challenging to achieve; but when people have found once that following health workers’ advice leads to elimination of an entire disease, they’ll be more ready to follow it the next time.

The Guardian: Drug-resistant TB spreading globally, warns WHO
Strains of tuberculosis that are resistant to the normal drug treatments are spreading across the globe, according to the latest report from the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO estimates that 440,000 people worldwide had multi-drug-resistant forms of the disease (MDR-TB) in 2008 and that a third of them died. The report warns that drug-resistant TB is a huge challenge, saying that “Countries face enormous hurdles in accelerating access to diagnostic and treatment services for drug-resistant TB, and previous efforts to address this epidemic have clearly been insufficient.”

Reuters: Anti-malaria funding must be tripled: campaigners
Funding to combat malaria must be more than tripled if the mosquito-borne disease which kills nearly a million people a year is to be fought effectively, health campaigners said on Thursday. Presenting a report covering the past decade, the Roll Back Malaria Partnership said a jump in financing had helped to contain the disease but more needed to be done. Said Michel Kazatchkine, director of the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, “Financing has a very swift impact. In some countries, the number of malaria cases had fallen 50 percent over the past two years.” One of Roll Back Malaria’s aims is to distribute more insecticide-treated mosquito nets and replace old ones — a cheap, simple and effective way to prevent the disease.

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