Policy News
Malaria death toll possibly twice as high as experts estimated – A new study funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation suggests that malaria may have killed as many as 1.2 million people in 2010, 90% of whom are in Africa. This figure is twice as high as the World Health Organization’s estimate of 655,000. The study also challenges the belief that children under the age of 5 and pregnant women are the most susceptible to the disease. (AP)
UN declares Somalia’s famine over, but says millions across East Africa still in crisis – The United Nations declared Friday that Somali’s famine is over, yet “2.3 million people remain in a food crisis situation in Somalia and still need assistance.” Across the Horn of African, more than 9.5 million people still need aid, and continued assistance is needed to prevent the fragile region from reverting back to famine. (AP)
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Famine Crisis Warning for West African Sahel Region – Early warning systems indicate that “famine is imminent” in regions of Mali, northern Burkina Faso and parts of Senegal due to erratic rains and poor harvests. In addition, conflict in Ivory Coast has hindered trade and contributed to a 40% inflation rate for food. (Reuters)
The Future of Foreign Aid Money – In a survey of 41 aid agencies, Reuters found that respondents overwhelmingly believed that environmental disasters will be the biggest factors in increasing the need for humanitarian aid, and that disaster preparedness is critical. Aid organizations recognize that “funding for disaster risk reduction…is not very ‘sexy’ for donors,” yet it is the most cost effective way to mitigate more extreme disasters. (Huffington Post, Tom Murphy)
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Ten years ago today, at a small press conference in New York, Bono and Bill Gates launched an activist entity called DATA, with start-up funds from Mr Gates, George Soros and Ed Scott.
I was one of the founders, along with Bobby Shriver and Lucy Matthew, and appointed the executive director. Though we started small, our oh so clever acronymic name stood for audacious goals: to campaign on debt, AIDS, trade and aid in partnership with African activists – in return for African governments offering more democracy, accountability and transparency to their citizens. We aspired to be data-based activists with a transatlantic bipartisan strategy, blending pop and policy, so that those with extreme global power would be forced to deal with extreme local poverty – and take the historic opportunity before us to end it.
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Why the Global Fund Matters – Paul Farmer argues that the Global Fund is facing a significant funding deficit that hit right as the end of AIDS became plausible. The Fund doesn’t just give ‘handouts;’ it makes long-term investments in health ministries and local health systems, an “approach that has had profound spillover effects on other health and development priorities.” According to Farmer, “if we allow the fund to fail, many people will die, and we will forfeit the chance at [an] AIDS-free generation.” (NYTimes Paul Farmer)
Engineering a Healthy Tomorrow for the Poorest Billion – Bill Gates, leaders of major pharmaceutical companies, and senior government officials from around the world unveiled “a joint declaration and a strategy to rid the world of ten neglected diseases that afflict the poorest of the poor in the world within a decade.” This declaration will aim to detect, diagnose, cure, and manage tropical diseases that have previously been neglected. (Huffington Post, Muhammad H. Zaman)
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Obama, in Google+ ‘Hangout,’ Defends Drone Use, Foreign Aid – During one of the questions in last night’s Google+ hangout, President Obama was asked about the justification for foreign aid, when so many Americans are struggling at home. He explained that “we only spend about 1 percent of our budget on foreign aid . . . but it pays off in a lot of ways,” including playing a critical role in our “overall security strategy.” (National Journal, George E. Condon Jr.)
New Chief Unveils Plan to Revive Disease-Fighting Fund – “There is nothing broken that can’t be fixed,” Gabriel Jamarillo, the new general manager of the Global Fund, said on Monday. Mr. Jaramillo has announced that he will focus on ‘establishing a disciplined private-sector governance process’ for managing grants, improve risk management from country to country, and try to raise new money.” (WSJ, Betsy McKay)
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This morning in London, 13 pharmaceutical companies, the US, UK and UAE governments, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank and other global health organizations announced a new plan to eliminate or control 10 neglected tropical diseases, which disproportionally affect 1.4 billion of the world’s poorest people.
Dr Caroline Anstey of the World Bank said: “These are not neglected diseases -– but rather diseases of neglected people.”
The aim is to eliminate Guinea worm, leprosy, lymphatic filariasis, blinding trachoma and sleeping sickness by 2020, and control schistosomiasis, river blindness, soil-transmitted helminthes, Chagas disease and visceral leishmaniasis. These diseases cause misery, suffering, disfigurement and death -– and when they don’t kill the seriously affect the lives of many people.
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Malaria’s Defeat, Africa’s Future – As a part of the African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA), 41 African presidents have signed on to end deaths from malaria in their respective countries. Each nation will publish their progress in this fight in the ALMA Scorecard for Accountability and Action, to better ensure that foreign aid dollars are being used effectively. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the new Chairman of ALMA, argues that if you care about the health of mothers and children, education, and peace, than you must care about malaria as well. (The Huffington Post, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf)
Trade barriers imperil African food security – While Mozambique has the fertile soil to produce plentiful harvests, many people in the small town of Namiranga, on the Mozambique-Tanzania border, are struggling to pay for food. A bag of maize that sells for $60 in Mozambique costs only $46 across the border in Tanzania. It is “barriers to intraregional trade [that] are preventing food from reaching the poor,” as Tanzania’s minister of agriculture, food security and cooperatives banned the export of food stocks in an effort to avert hunger at home. (Trust, Fidelis Zvomuya)
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