Blog Contributor:
Lisa Hendrickson
Lisa Hendrickson is the 2010 fall intern for ONE’s Community Partnerships department. Prior to joining the ONE team, Lisa dedicated one year of service to AmeriCorps where she lead literacy programs for second graders in an inner-city Washington, D.C. elementary school. She has also spent time in India creating public health initiatives to combat diarrheal disease among slum children. Lisa is currently pursuing her undergraduate degree in international affairs at George Washington University.
Mar 3rd, 2011 12:45 PM UTC
By Lisa Hendrickson
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Indian women now have something new to add to their list of requirements for potential suitors: A toilet. In fact, having a personal toilet has become so important that it can actually make or break a marriage. “No loo? No I do,” declare the women of Haryana, a rural state in northeast India.
This chant comes in protest to the 665 million people in India who do not have access to toilets — the largest number worldwide. This has caused a serious problem, especially for females. In a culture that places a premium upon modesty, women are forced to travel very far to find privacy or go before sunrise and after sunset when the men are asleep.
As one woman notes, “It’s inconvenient, undignified and, at night, it’s not safe.” Not to mention, open defecation also leads to bacteria entering water sources. Ingesting this contaminated water is a serious cause of illness, most notably diarrheal disease — one of the top two killers of children.
To address this problem, India’s Ministry of Rural Development launched the “No Toilet? No Bride!” initiative as part of their Total Sanitation Campaign. The Ministry hoped to end open defecation and improve sanitation by linking the importance of toilets to marriage. A societal preference for boys has caused males to outnumber females. Because of this unequal gender ratio, women can be more selective when choosing a potential husband. Using this new position of power, females are now demanding that their spouses install a basic toilet. The Ministry of Rural Development backs up this demand by offering monetary incentives to any individual that builds a toilet. As a result of these efforts, more than 1.71 million toilets have been built across Haryana — meaning 98 percent of households now have toilets!
Although huge strides have been made in northeast India, hygiene and sanitation still remains a problem for the rest of the developing world. UNDP estimates that nearly 2.4 billion people still do not have access to hygienic sanitation facilities. Because of this, an average of 5,000 children die every day due to water and sanitation related diseases. This death toll will surely worsen if the Senate votes to slash our foreign aid budget.
The WHO has shown that every dollar invested in water and sanitation yields an economic return between $3 to $34. Please sign the petition today to ensure that cost-effective interventions are not cut. Children should not be dying from something as pointless as not having a toilet.
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Oct 27th, 2010 9:21 AM UTC
By Lisa Hendrickson
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Each year, there are 9 million new cases of tuberculosis (TB), causing close to 2 million deaths worldwide. In order to address this epidemic, the Stop TB Partnership created the Global Plan to Stop TB 2006-2015, an action plan and list of required resources needed to halve the number of TB cases and related deaths by 2015. Now at the halfway point, the Stop TB Partnership recently released the Global Plan to Stop TB 2011-2015, an updated road map that outlines where we were, where we are now, and where we need to go in order to reach our TB goal by 2015.
In terms of where we were and where we are now, it is important to note that a lot of progress has been made since 2006. ONE members have joined in the fight to increase the U.S. commitment to combating TB through mechanisms such as PEPFAR and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. As a result of these efforts, the U.S. has mobilized more than half of its $4 billion pledge promised during the first five years of the plan towards TB research and development.
A global increase in funding has allowed for TB case detection rates to increase to between 55 to 67 percent. This funding has also helped health care providers gain access to a portfolio of new diagnostic tools, as well as allowed for the development of drugs essential to treating the disease.
That being said, a lot still needs to change in order for us to reach our 2015 goal. The report states that if no improvements to the current TB control strategy are made from 2010 onwards, 10 million people will die from TB. Part of the reason that we need to change our current strategy is due to the fact that the face of TB is changing. HIV has thrown a curve-ball into efforts to address the TB epidemic. HIV weakens the immune system, making individuals more susceptible to TB. As a result, the exponential rise in HIV cases—especially across Africa— has caused a considerable increase in TB cases as well. The emergence of drug-resistant strains of TB (frequently referred to as MDR-TB or XDR-TB) has also made addressing the TB epidemic more challenging. The new strategy must directly address both these phenomena, as well as the increase in related drug costs for treatment. A higher profile must also be given to laboratory strengthening and all levels of research.
If fully implemented, the Global Plan to Stop TB could save up to 5 million lives. As ONE members, we need to continue to pressure leaders to make the public health problems affecting the world’s poorest countries a priority, and for their control to be addressed in an integrated fashion.
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Oct 12th, 2010 5:43 PM UTC
By Lisa Hendrickson
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Please give a warm welcome to Lisa Hendrickson, our fall intern for ONE’s community partnerships team. This is her first post to the ONE Blog and we’re excited to have her on board!
For those of you who are still in college like me, I’m sure you feel like you don’t have time for any extra reading outside class sometimes. Despite this, I am going to try to squeeze in Nelson Mandela’s new autobiography, “Conversations with Myself.”
Unlike other autobiographies, “Conversations with Myself” highlights not only the political conscious of a revolutionary, but the emotional realities a revolutionary faces during their struggle to advocate for the world’s poorest people.
Nelson Mandela served as president of South Africa from 1994 to1999 and is internationally acclaimed as the leader of the anti-apartheid movement. From personal doodles during meetings with foreign dignitaries, to letters written from his oppressive cell during his 27-year jail sentence, “Conversations with Myself” is an attempt to give access to the man behind the human rights figure.
“Conversations with Myself” was released today, in 22 editions and 20 languages. Pick up your copy and be sure to let us know what you think!
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