Women outside an emergency vehicle aimed at helping those affected by flooding. CREDIT: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS
by Ashfaq Yusufzai (peshawar, pakistan)
Inter Press Service
PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN, Aug 18 (IPS) – Torrential monsoon rains have left the people, especially women, in crisis as they are still grappling to recover from the last year’s floods in Pakistan.
“We are yet to return to normal lives after devastation caused by severe rains in June 2002 when the new series of rains have started only to further aggravate our problems,” Jannat Bibi, a resident of Kalam in the Swat Valley, told IPS.
Bibi, 44, a housewife, along with co-villagers, must walk about a kilometre twice a day to collect drinking water for her 10-member family. She says they want the government to provide them with essential needs like food, water, shelter, and medication.
“A new ongoing wave of monsoon rains has left us high and dry as we are facing a host of ailments due to contaminated water.”
“Some non-governmental organisations have given us mineral water, utensils and foodstuff last year in June when torrential rain damaged our mud-built houses, but this year, there’s nobody to extend us a helping hand despite severe floods,” she says.
Most people in the neighbourhood fear that more rain would bring more misery for them as the people have yet to rebuild their homes while roads and health facilities were in shambles.
Dr Farooq Khan in Swat district says the people desperately require clean drinking water as cases of diarrhoea have been increasing among them.
“There are more cases of vector-borne diseases, such as malaria, dengue, haemorrhagic fever (DHF) and Leishmaniasis because the people are exposed to mosquitoes-bites, the transmitters of these diseases, due to pools of stagnant water which serves as breeding grounds for mosquitoes,” Khan said.
Power breakdowns create problems because people cannot get drinking water from wells, and they often store it in uncovered pots, which serve as breeding spots for mosquitoes. “Khyber Pakhtunkhwa recorded 18,000 dengue Haemorrhagic fever patients and 18 deaths in 2022,” he said.
National Disaster Management Authority says at least 86 people, including eight children, have been killed by floods and landslides triggered by monsoon rains that have lashed Pakistan since last month. In June 2022, a flood killed 289 people, it says.
“Women are the worst victim of climatic changes as they stay home and have to prepare food, wash clothes and look after children, therefore, we need to focus on their welfare,” Dr Javid Khan, a local physician in Malakand district, which is adjacent to Swat, says.
According to him, about 20 cholera cases have been recorded because people use water contaminated by sewerage pipes during floods.
“The World Health Organization is establishing two diarrhoea treatment centres to prevent outbreaks of food and water-borne diseases,” he said.
Munir Ahmed, a local environmentalist, says that women, representing about half of the country’s population, are the worst affected by torrential rains.
Last year, massive flooding affected nearly two-thirds of the country’s population in Pakistan, as it submerged the low-lying areas inhabited by poor people, he says.
Rains destroyed 1.7 million homes in Sindh, Punjab, Balochistan, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces which also damaged the water sources and cultivable land, he says.
“As the people were recovering from the past year’s devastation caused by flood, a new spell has started dampening their hopes of recovery,” Ahmed says.
More than 1 300 health facilities and 3 000 schools destroyed by 2022’s floods are yet to be built.
“More than 50 000 pregnant women are finding it hard to undergo mandatory checkups at hospitals because of bad roads and lack of transportation in the country,” according to the Ministry of Health. It says the government is providing alternate sources in the shape of mobile vehicles to ensure their home-based clinical examinations.
Jabina Bibi, of the remote Chitral district, waited in stayed at home despite being six months into her pregnancy and didn’t receive a medical checkup until a local NGO sent a team to her locality, and she managed to source iron tablets for the treatment of severe malnourishment.
“The NGO’s doctors proved a blessing for me, and I delivered a normal baby because they carried out an ultrasound which enabled me to know the date of delivery for which I was taken to the hospital located 50 km away,” she said.
Other women also benefited, but the facilities are scarce, she said.
Chitral experienced more floods in July this year, which killed at least ten people. Water-Aid, and non-profit organisation, says that the floods have left almost 700 000 pregnant women in the country without getting maternal healthcare, leaving them and their newborns without support, food, security, and basic medical care. The miscarriage rate also skyrocketed during this period.
Floods causing landslides also resulted in the displacement of people and the loss of millions of livestock.
In Mansehra district, extensive damage rendered many roads unusable, creating significant transportation difficulties.
“We need to find work because construction activities have stopped, and it’s extremely to travel to other districts to find jobs,” Mushtaq Ahmed, 24, a resident of Mansehra, said. Pakistan is the second country with the most melting glaciers due to global warming, and Mansehra is one of the affected districts.
Climate experts believe that women and children are at a much higher risk of losing their lives during a disaster due to their limited access to resources during emergencies. The situation regarding monsoon rains has been under control as of now, but there are forecasts of potential rains in the coming days, which can hammer the last nail in the coffin of those madly hit by rainwaters last year.
Climate change brings, in its wake, deprivation of people from food security, health, education, and jobs, besides exposing women to violence, displacement, and mental health issues, and the government needs to protect the people from the ill effects of floods, experts say.
If people living in informal settlements gained access to adequate housing, the average life span would jump 2.4 years on average globally, saving 730,000 lives each year. Credit: Lova Rabary-Rakontondravony/IPS
Opinion by Jonathan Reckford, Joseph Muturi (cape town, south africa)
Inter Press Service
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Aug 16 (IPS) – When representatives from dozens of countries gathered recently at the UN High Level Political Forum in New York to share progress on their efforts to achieve the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), this disturbing reality was clear: the world is not even close to meeting the goals by 2030 as intended.
According to the report released at the meeting, progress on more than half of the SDG targets is weak and insufficient, with 30% of targets stalled or in reverse. In particular, progress towards SDG 11, which centers on making “cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable” is stagnating, signaling regression for the third year in a row.
Unless governments take urgent action to address the plight of more than 1 billion people struggling daily to survive in slums and other poorly constructed informal settlements, we will not achieve the SDGs.
Access to affordable, safe housing is a fundamental human right, and intrinsically linked to building sustainable and resilient communities. It’s time world leaders turned their attention to improving housing conditions in informal settlements as a critical first step in helping to solve the most pressing development challenges of our time, from health and education to jobs and climate resilience.
Consider Milka Achieng, 31, who lives among the more than 250,000 residents of Kibera, a bustling hub of mud-walled homes and small businesses that make up one of the world’s largest informal settlements on the south side of Nairobi, Kenya.
Every day, Milka heads out for work and walks past the kiosk where she pumps water that isn’t clean enough to drink without boiling. She passes neighbors who live with the constant fear of eviction and the threat of deadly fires sparked by jerry-rigged electrical lines.
Yet despite these conditions, Milka remains upbeat. She works for a Kenya-based startup that, from its production facility in the heart of Kibera, cranks out firesafe blocks designed to make homes in informal settlements safer and more resilient. These are the kinds of innovative, scalable solutions that not only hold promise for the future of Kibera, but also for the millions of families struggling to keep their loved ones healthy and safe in informal communities around the globe.
By 2050, nearly 70% of the world’s population is expected to live in urban areas, making the proliferation of informal settlements inevitable – unless world governments take bold, collective action.
A new report reveals the incredible, transformational benefits – in terms of health, education, and income – if world leaders invest in upgrading housing in informal settlements. The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) modeling from 102 low- and middle-income countries shows that if people living in informal settlements gained access to adequate housing, the average life span would jump 2.4 years on average globally, saving 730,000 lives each year.
This translates to more deaths prevented than if malaria were to be eliminated. The report also found that as many as 41.6 million additional children would be enrolled in school worldwide.
Economic growth, meanwhile, would jump by as much as 10.5% in some countries, whether measured as GDP or gross national income per capita. The resulting increase in living standards would exceed the projected cost of improving informal settlements in many countries.
These findings provide a long-overdue wake-up call to governments and municipal authorities that prioritizing safe and secure housing would have far-reaching implications for advancing not just community wellbeing, but national and global economic prosperity.
World leaders whose countries contribute billions of dollars annually to foreign assistance yet don’t prioritize improving informal settlements are making a grave mistake. Their goals related to education, health, and other areas of human wellbeing hinge on how well the world responds to trends such as growing inequities, rapid urbanization, and a worsening global housing crisis.
As the heads of an international housing organization and a global network of slum dwellers, respectively, we believe governments have an urgent responsibility to invest in comprehensive solutions to our global housing crisis.
This includes supporting start-ups, such as Milka’s factory, which are pioneering innovative, low-cost, and community-driven solutions to strengthen the foundation of unsafe housing settlements worldwide.
Simultaneously, officials at the global, national and municipals levels must ensure that residents have land tenure security, climate-resilient homes, and basic services such as clean water and sanitation.
Importantly, IIED researchers also concluded that, while they couldn’t put a precise number on it, the rehabilitation of informal settlements would have a clear and positive “spillover effect” by strengthening environmental, political and health care systems for all. This, in turn, would improve overall societal wellbeing for generations to come.
Upgrading the world’s supply of adequate housing is a lever for equitable human development and a cornerstone for sustainable urban development. Global, national and community stakeholders must join forces with the more than 1 billion voices clamoring for greater access to safe and secure homes.
When residents of informal settlements do better, everyone does better. Strikingly, it’s that simple.
Overfishing is harming the informal traders who rely on it for income. CREDIT: Marko Phiri/IPS
by Marko Phiri (bulawayo, zimbabwe)
Inter Press Service
BULAWAYO, ZIMBABWE, Aug 10 (IPS) – Zimbabwe’s ballooning informal sector has, in recent years, spawned the over-exploitation of the country’s natural resources, with the fisheries taking some of the most felt battering.
Amidst challenges brought by economic hardships, fisheries—for long imagined to be an infinite resource by hawkers and fishermen—are providing women with livelihoods against odds brought by climate change and competition from male fishmongers who go into the water.
Selling fish has for years been a source of income for women, but with current unemployment levels, more and more women are trying their hand at anything that will provide income.
According to the International Labour Organisation, out of more than five million informal traders in Zimbabwe, 65 percent are women, throwing more women into sectors such as fisheries that offer hope for steady incomes.
However, comes with its own downside.
Demand for aquaculture produce has not slowed amid dwindling fish stocks in the country’s dams, according to the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water, Climate, and Rural Development.
Officials say because consumers have no idea about underwater resource sustainability and management, the more nets are cast into the country’s waters, the less efforts are done to conserve the country’s fisheries.
Long touted as a cheap source of nutrition, with the price of fish bought directly from dams cheaper than that sold in supermarkets and butcheries, this has resulted in unintended consequences.
Janet Dube is a frustrated single breadwinner in Bulawayo.
She makes a living visiting dams surrounding the city of Bulawayo and used to travel as far as the Zambezi to purchase fish stock but now says she has watched as a growing number of people, especially women try their luck buying and selling fish.
And with huge numbers entering the fish trade, it has meant diminishing returns as fish in the country’s waterways are not being repopulated fast enough.
“I don’t get as many fish I used from my suppliers even in dams around the city where you do not have to travel to faraway places such as Binga to buy fish for resale in Bulawayo,” Dube said.
Sitting on the pavement of Bulawayo’s central business district, in the country’s second city, Dube hawks fresh bream fish and laments that although her stock is low, she still must worry about the fish going bad because of electricity power cuts.
Zimbabwe is in the midst of a long-running energy deficit that has not spared anyone, with the fisheries sector feeling the strain.
“I only come to sell fish in the central business district late afternoon to avoid losses as fish goes bad pretty fast,” Dube told IPS.
However, for other fishmongers, selling dried bream and kapenta has become the answer to these challenges.
At another bustling city pavement, Gracious Maruziva sells dried kapenta sourced in the Zambezi Valley.
“I don’t go there myself but buy from some people who travel to Binga regularly, but they don’t supply as regularly as they used to,” Maruziva said.
The reason: Her suppliers are struggling to bring in the once-abundant delicacy.
“It’s increasingly becoming tough selling fish as they say they are also not getting enough from their suppliers in the Zambezi,” she added.
Local researchers and agencies such as the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) have raised concerns about the lack of sustainability efforts in the country’s fisheries sector, that in recent years has experienced its own gold rush of sorts.
For years women in Bulawayo have travelled long distances to buy fish in bulk, creating long value chains along the way, but it is the current challenges that include low fish stocks in the dams and power outages that interrupt refrigeration that is exposing the risks that come with the fish business.
And with those challenges has been little success in sustainability and conservation of natural resources, experts say.
“We have seen it in the resource-rich communities through our trade justice work communities carry what is known as the ‘resource curse’,” said John Maketo, programmes manager at the Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development.
“Instead of adequately benefiting from the availability of a natural resource around them, communities become overburdened with the negative consequences of having it,” Maketo said at a time artisanal fishermen and miners are blamed for anything stripping dams of fish and illegally exploiting gold claims across the country.
However, there are concerns that in the absence of robust conservation efforts, the country’s fisheries could adversely affect rural communities relying on natural resources.
The Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (ZimParks) is on record lamenting the unregulated new entrants into the fisheries sector, a development that has further threatened already low fish stocks in the country’s dams.
According to FAO’s FISH4ACP, an initiative that seeks the economic and sustainability of fisheries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, Zimbabwe has over 12,000 dams, noting that despite this abundance, the sector continues to struggle.
To address this, FAO is “supporting an economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable fish farming sector” amid weak regulatory mechanisms and sound implementation of existing fishing quotas.
For women who find themselves hawking fish in the streets of Bulawayo, the consequence of that struggle is being felt in their daily takings.
“Fish is profitable, provided I get constant supplies. For now, I’m making do with what I can get,” said Dube.
Women and girls in Kenya’s West Pokot celebrate as the government cracks down on those practising harmful Female Genital Mutilation in the area. CREDIT: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
by Joyce Chimbi (nairobi)
Inter Press Service
NAIROBI, Aug 09 (IPS) – It promised to be the most defining, groundbreaking, and transformative protocol on African women’s rights. Specific in its approach, broad in its reach, and unique in its all-encompassing nature, covering issues such as HIV/Aids, widow inheritance and property disinheritance in a most unprecedented manner.
The Maputo Protocol was designed in line with the realities of the plight of women on the continent. Providing tailor-made solutions to lift women from beneath the crushing weight of a cultural system that disadvantages women from birth. Twenty years on, it is time to take stock.
“The 20th Anniversary of the Maputo Protocol is a historical advocacy moment for women’s rights advocates. It offers an opportunity to demand from African Governments real and tangible change for women and girls in their countries,” Faiza Mohamed, Africa Regional Director of Equality Now, tells IPS.
“By acceding to the Maputo Protocol, lifting reservations, fully domesticating, and implementing the Protocol, and ensuring their compliance with accountability processes. Beyond this, it signifies the generational changes over two decades and points to the need to reflect on future generations and to future-proof the Maputo Protocol and the SOAWR Coalition.”
The Solidarity for African Women’s Rights (SOAWR) is a coalition of over 80 civil society organizations, a pan-African women’s movement that pushes for accelerated ratification of the protocol in non-ratifying states while holding governments accountable to deliver for women in line with the Protocol.
Youth delegates at Maputo Protocol 20th anniversary celebrations, July 11, 2023. CREDIT: Equality Now
Mohamed stresses that the SOAWR Coalition is a remarkable testament to the power of women’s organized movements and their capacity to influence transformative policy agendas, leaving a lasting impact.
“Through its persistent efforts, SOAWR has successfully kept the protocol on the agenda of AU member states, leading to significant influence as 44 out of 55 African states have ratified or acceded to the Maputo Protocol. This achievement has turned the Protocol into a potent public education tool for women’s rights, both at the national and grassroots levels,” she explains.
“Notably, there has been substantial progress in the advancement of national jurisprudence on women’s rights, as well as in the empowerment of women themselves. Thanks to the coalition’s effective public sensitization campaigns, formerly taboo subjects like sexual and reproductive health rights, female genital mutilation, and polygamy have become open and advanced topics in various countries.”
The coalition has demonstrated how much women and like-minded partners can achieve working in solidarity. Additionally, each organization continues to push the women’s agenda forward – pushing and pulling in the same direction, to realize the dream of a society where women are fully represented in every corner of the spaces they call home.
“The Maputo Protocol comes out of the African feminist fire, and we need to keep it burning. That it is one of the most progressive legal instruments that came out of Africa. That it represents our diversity and our strength because we are not a monolith. It also represents the power of collective action and also the dream of the Africa we want,” says Nigerian-born Becky Williams, a young woman who now lives in Uganda and works for Akina Mama wa Africa.
Equality Now is currently advocating for adopting the Multi-Sectoral Approach in implementing the Maputo Protocol. The Multi-Sectoral Approach (MSA) provides a framework for convening different sectors within governments and actors outside of government in a joint effort to implement women’s rights as provided for in the Protocol.
Mohamed emphasizes that if recognized and embraced by governments and civil societies, the Maputo Protocol can be a powerful tool for change as it offers women a tool for transforming the unequal power relations between men and women that lie at the heart of gender inequality and women’s oppression.
To coincide with the Maputo Protocol’s 20th anniversary, SOAWR, Make Every Woman Count (MEWC), and Equality Now released a report titled, “Twenty years of the Maputo Protocol: Where are we now?” Providing a detailed account of progress made thus far, successes, challenges and recommendations.
Regarding rights related to marriage and child marriage, the report finds that several countries have adopted constitutional reforms related to the prohibition of forced marriage. For example, the constitution of Burundi guarantees marriage equality. The constitutions of Guinea, Malawi, Uganda, and Zimbabwe set the legal age of marriage at 18 years. AU Member States have enacted legislation on rights related to marriage.
On economic and social welfare rights, half of the African states maintain constitutional provisions guaranteeing equal remuneration for work of equal value or the right to fair or just pay. More than half of African states have laws mandating equal remuneration for work of equal value.
Regarding health and reproductive rights, almost all African states maintain constitutional provisions related to health and/or health care, and many enshrine the principle of non-discrimination based on health. Notably, six countries, including Angola, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, enshrine rights related to reproductive health care, such as access to family planning education or reproductive/maternity care.
Group photo of the delegates at the Maputo Protocol 20th anniversary celebrations held in Nairobi, Kenya. CREDIT: Equality Now
While women’s rights have come a long way, the report stresses that there is a long way to go and makes specific key recommendations, such as the need to address the right to abortion and treat each case as espoused in the Protocol. It also suggests that the Maputo Protocol should be used to protect women and girls’ reproductive health rights and advocates that Member states remove laws that fail to protect reproductive health rights.
It advocates for the passing of family laws to protect women’s rights before, during, and after marriage and establish special courts to deal with complex marriage issues. In addition, it suggests that Governments implement regional and international treaties such as the Maputo Protocol and educate women and girls on these.
It would like to see programmes that allow young women to return to school after giving birth promoted and demands that early marriage be criminalized, and customary law is adapted so that it no longer defines what happens to women in marriage.
It asks governments to provide universal health services and insurance access, especially for pregnant, vulnerable, and/or specially protected women. It requires member states to improve infrastructure, training, and equipment for health services in rural areas.
Equally important, the protocol includes the empowerment of women and girls to realize their sexual and reproductive health rights through awareness campaigns delivered in communities and schools and wishes to see menstrual hygiene management incorporated into national legal frameworks through awareness-raising activities from more actors, especially parliamentarians.
Goat rearing is contributing to economic independence and improved livelihoods of women thanks to a post-COVID-19 empowerment project. CREDIT: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS
by Umar Manzoor Shah (milonpur, india)
Inter Press Service
MILONPUR, INDIA, Aug 08 (IPS) – Seema Devi is a 39-year-old woman hailing from India’s northeastern state of Assam. She lives in a village called Milonpur, a small hamlet with no more than 1 000 inhabitants. While most men from the village, including Devi’s husband, move to cities and towns in search of work, women are left behind to take care of the house and kids.
Devi says that after the COVID-19 lockdown in India in the year 2020, the family income drastically plummeted. As most of the factories were shut for months, the workers, including Devi’s husband, were jobless. Even after the lockdown ended and workers were called back to the factories, the wages witnessed a dip.
“Earlier my husband would earn no less than Rs 10 000 a month (125 USD), and after the lockdown, it wasn’t more than a mere 6 000 rupees (70 USD). My children and I would suffer for the want of basic needs like medicine and clothing, but at the same time, I was considerate of the situation and helplessness of my husband,” Devi told IPS.
However, there were few alternatives available at home that could have mitigated Devi’s predicament. With the small area of ancestral land used for cultivation, the change in weather patterns caused her family and several households in the village to reap losses.
However, in 2021, a non-government organization visited the hamlet to assess the situation in the post-COVID scenario. The villagers told the team about how most of the men in the village go out to cities and towns in search of livelihood and work as labourers in factories and that their wages have come down due to economic distress in the country.
After hectic deliberations, about ten self-help groups of women were created. They trained in livestock farming and how this venture could be turned into a profitable business.
The women were initially reluctant because they were unaware of how to make livestock farming profitable. They would ask the members of the charitable organisation questions like, “What if it fails to yield desired results? What if some terrible disease affects the animals, and what if the livestock wouldn’t generate any income for them?”
Wilson Kandulna, who was the senior member of the team, told IPS that experts were called in to train the women about cattle rearing and how timely vaccinations, proper feed, and care could make livestock farming profitable and mitigate their basic living costs. “At first, we provided ten goat kids to each women’s group and made them aware of the dos and don’ts of this kind of farming. They were quick to learn and grasped easily whatever was taught to them,” Wilson said.
He added that these women were living in economic distress due to the limited income of their husbands and were desperately anxious about the scarcity of proper education for children and other daily needs.
Devi says that as soon as she got the goat kids, she acquired basic training in feeding them properly and taking them for vaccinations to the nearby government veterinary hospital.
“Two years have passed, and now we have hundreds of goats as they reproduce quickly, and we are now able to earn a good income. During the first few months, there were issues like feeding problems, proper shelter during monsoons and summers, and how and when we should take them out for grazing. As time passed and we learned the skills, we have become very trained goat rearers,” Devi said.
Renuka, another woman in the self-help group, told IPS that for the past year, they have been continuously getting demands for goat milk from the main towns. “People know about the health benefits of goat milk. They know it is organic without any preservatives, and that is the reason we have a very high demand for it. We sell it at a good price, and at times, demand surpasses the supply,” Renuka said.
For Devi, livestock farming has been no less than a blessing. She says she earns more than five thousand rupees a month (about 60 USD) and has been able to cover daily household expenses all by herself. “I no longer rely on my husband for household expenses. I take care of it all by myself. My husband, too, is relieved, and things are getting back on track,” Devi said, smiling.
Kalpana, a 32-year-old member of the group, says the goats have increased in number, and last year, several of them were sold in the market at a good price.
“The profits were shared by the group members. Earlier, women in this village were entirely dependent on their husbands for covering their basic expenses. Now, they are economically self-reliant. They take good care of the house and of themselves,” Kalpana told IPS News.
Note: Names of some of the women have been changed on their request.
The progress made in HIV prevention is nothing short of a global success story. It is time that TB caught up to HIV. Medicine is simply too advanced for us to tolerate how one disease can be beaten back yet another continues to flourish. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS.
Opinion by Violet Chihota (johannesburg)
Inter Press Service
JOHANNESBURG, Jul 26 (IPS) – Before COVID-19 came along, the two most lethal infectious diseases were HIV and tuberculosis (TB). Even though HIV still lingers, with 1.5 million people contracting the infection every year, epidemiologists point to the availability of many HIV prevention options as a primary reason for the decreasing caseload.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over the past two decades, new HIV infections decreased by 49%, HIV-related deaths decreased by 61% and an estimated 18.6 million lives were saved because of new treatments that minimise the infection and prevent its spread.
We have so many options for HIV prevention at our disposal, including the dapivirine vaginal ring, oral Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), harm reduction for people who use drugs, condoms for both men and women, voluntary medical male circumcision and the recently approved long-acting cabotegravir, with other options in development.
We have a suite of prevention tools because everyone is different, and people need to be able to choose their methods according to the way they live their lives. We observe a similar abundance of choice within family planning with oral pills, a variety of injectables, intra-uterine devices and condoms—we share this prevention method with HIV programs.
We do not have this many options for TB prevention, but the world needs to adapt to embrace choice if we are to meet the globally agreed-upon goal of reducing TB deaths by 90% by 2030—referred to as the “End TB targets.”
The urgency of the need is clear: an estimated 1.6 million people lost their lives to the disease in 2021, the second consecutive year the death toll went up after 14 years of progress. In Africa, an estimated 2.5 million people contracted the disease in 2021, one million of which were never diagnosed and treated.
Yet there are glimmers of good news. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, estimates of TB incidence have slowly declined over the past few years in Angola, Ethiopia, Gabon, the Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia—all countries with high burdens of TB.
Of these countries, Zambia has also had success in finding and diagnosing an increasing number of these infections; the pandemic impacted the surveillance efforts of the other governments.
As for HIV, there is no effective vaccine to prevent TB in adults: the BCG vaccine only prevents severe TB in children. However, there are ways to prevent TB when someone is potentially exposed to an infected person. In the workplace or when a family member at home becomes sick, for example, prevention starts with masking, which was traditionally used in clinical care settings. The other ways work through prophylactic regimens. For TB, we initially only had isoniazid that could be taken for six, nine, 12 or 36 months depending on country guidelines, but now we have shorter regimens that allow for patient choice.
These options include regimens lasting one (1HP) and three months (3HP), with different combinations of the antibiotic drugs rifapentine and isoniazid, all with vitamin B6 supplements to help counter some of the side effects of treatment. There is also a three-month regimen of rifampicin and isoniazid (often given to children and adolescents) and a four-month regimen of rifampicin alone. Longer courses of isoniazid taken for 6–36 months also remain options, though most people are eligible to take a shorter rifapentine- or rifampicin-based regimen and should be given the choice to do so.
We need to do a better job of making sure that people at risk of TB have access to the full range of prevention options. A recent peer-reviewed study underlines this point, estimating that tracing the personal contacts of people diagnosed with TB and providing them with prevention treatment would save the lives of 700,000 children under the age of 15 and 150,000 adults by 2035.
Even the financial benefits of the prevention program, in terms of increased economic productivity, would outweigh the costs. Nobody questions the need to have options for HIV prevention or family planning, but questions arise when trying to roll out a one-month TB prevention regimen when there’s already a three-month regimen available. We need them all. We also need to collect more data to differentiate which prevention regimens are best for each patient type to ensure success.
The WHO guidelines for preventive TB treatment create the possibility of choice among TB preventive treatments by not ranking the regimens by preference or effectiveness. But health care facilities and outreach programs need to embrace that range of options and make sure that a choice exists in practice. Supply chains may limit choice initially, but if there is no demand for more options from providers, there is no impetus to expand the supply chains.
The progress made in HIV prevention is nothing short of a global success story. It took a combination of scientific ingenuity and innovation, combined with an intensive dedication of resources that made a range of preventive options available around the world.
It is time that TB caught up to HIV. Medicine is simply too advanced for us to tolerate how one disease can be beaten back yet another continues to flourish.
Violet Chihota is an Adjunct Associate Professor and Chief Specialist Scientist at the Aurum Institute. She has been a researcher in global health for over 10 years, designing and managing the conduct of clinical research studies in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Cameroon, Georgia, India and Malaysia.
Marisol and Misael Menjívar pose next to the biodigester installed in March in the backyard of their home in El Corozal, a rural settlement located near Suchitoto in central El Salvador. With a biotoilet and stove, the couple produces biogas for cooking from feces, which saves them money. The biotoilet can be seen in the background. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS
by Edgardo Ayala (suchitoto, el salvador)
Inter Press Service
SUCHITOTO, El Salvador, Jul 25 (IPS) – A new technology that has arrived in rural villages in El Salvador makes it possible for small farming families to generate biogas with their feces and use it for cooking – something that at first sounded to them like science fiction and also a bit smelly.
In the countryside, composting latrines, which separate urine from feces to produce organic fertilizer, are very popular. But can they really produce gas for cooking?
“It seemed incredible to me,” Marisol Menjívar told IPS as she explained how her biodigester, which is part of a system that includes a toilet and a stove, was installed in the backyard of her house in the village of El Corozal, near Suchitoto, a municipality in the central Salvadoran department of Cuscatlán.
“When the first ones were installed here, I was excited to see that they had stoves hooked up, and I asked if I could have one too,” added Marisol, 48. Hers was installed in March.
El Corozal, population 200, is one of eight rural settlements that make up the Laura López Rural Water and Sanitation Association (Arall), a community organization responsible for providing water to 465 local families.
The families in the small villages, who are dedicated to the cultivation of corn and beans, had to flee the region during the country’s 1980-1992 civil war, due to the fighting.
After the armed conflict, they returned to rebuild their lives and work collectively to provide basic services, especially drinking water, as have many other community organizations, in the absence of government coverage.
In this Central American country of 6.7 million inhabitants, 78.4 percent of rural households have access to piped water, while 10.8 percent are supplied by wells and 10.7 percent by other means.
With small stoves like this one, a score of families in El Corozal in central El Salvador cook their food with biogas they produce themselves, thanks to a government program that has brought clean energy technology to these remote rural villages. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS
Since November 2022, the government agency has installed around 500 of these systems free of charge in several villages around the country.
The aim is to enable small farmers to produce sustainable energy, biogas at no cost, which boosts their income and living standards, while at the same time improving the environment.
The program provides each family with a kit that includes a biodigester, a biotoilet, and a small one-burner stove.
In El Corozal, five of these kits were installed by Asa in November 2022, to see if people would accept them or not. To date, 21 have been delivered, and there is a waiting list for more.
In El Corozal, a rural settlement in the municipality of Suchitoto in central El Salvador, the technology of family biodigesters arrived at the end of last year, and some families are now producing biogas to light up their stoves and cook their food at no cost. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS
“With the first ones were set up, the idea was for people to see how they worked, because there was a lot of ignorance and even fear,” Arall’s president, Enrique Menjívar, told IPS.
In El Corozal there are many families with the surname Menjívar, because of the tradition of close relatives putting down roots in the same place.
“Here we’re almost all related,” Enrique added.
The biodigester is a hermetically sealed polyethylene bag, 2.10 meters long, 1.15 meters wide and 1.30 meters high, inside which bacteria decompose feces or other organic materials.
This process generates biogas, clean energy that is used to fuel the stoves.
The toilets are mounted on a one-meter-high cement slab in latrines in the backyard. They are made of porcelain and have a handle on one side that opens and closes the stool inlet hole.
One of the main advantages that family biodigesters have brought to the inhabitants of El Corozal, a small village in the Salvadoran department of Cuscatlán, is that the whole process begins with clean, hygienic toilets, like this one set up in Marleni Menjívar’s backyard, as opposed to the older dry composting latrines, which drew flies and cockroaches. To the left of the toilet is the small handle used to pump water to flush the feces into the biodigester. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS
They also have a small hand pump, similar to the ones used to inflate bicycle tires, and when the handle is pushed, water is pumped from a bucket to flush the waste down the pipe.
The underground pipe carries the biomass by gravity to the biodigester, located about five meters away.
The system can also be fed with organic waste, by means of a tube with a hole at one end, which must be opened and closed.
Once it has been produced, the biogas is piped through a metal tube to the small stove mounted inside the house.
“I don’t even use matches, I just turn the knob and it lights up,” said Marisol, a homemaker and caregiver. Her husband Manuel Menjívar is a subsistence farmer, and they have a young daughter.
In El Corozal, biodigesters have been installed for families of four or five members, and the equipment generates 300 liters of biogas during the night, enough to use for two hours a day, according to the technical specifications of Coenergy, the company that imports and markets the devices.
But there are also kits that are used by two related families who live next to each other and share the equipment, which includes, in addition to the toilet, a larger biodigester and a two-burner stove.
With more sophisticated equipment, electricity could be generated from biogas produced from landfill waste or farm manure, although this is not yet being done in El Salvador.
Marleni Menjivar gets ready to heat water on her ecological stove, watched closely by her four-year-old daughter, in El Corozal in central El Salvador, where an innovative government program to produce biogas has arrived. With this technology, people save money by buying less liquefied gas while benefiting the environment. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS
Saving money while caring for the environment
The families of El Corozal who have the new latrines and stoves are happy with the results.
What they value the most is saving money by cooking with gas produced by themselves, at no cost.
They used to cook on wood-burning stoves, in the case of food that took longer to make, or on liquefied gas stoves, at a cost of 13 dollars per gas cylinder.
Marleni Menjívar, for example, used two cylinders a month, mainly because of the high level of consumption demanded by the family business of making artisanal cheeses, including a very popular local kind of cottage cheese.
Every day she has to cook 23 liters of whey, the liquid left after milk has been curdled. This consumes the biogas produced overnight.
For meals during the day Marleni still uses the liquefied gas stove, but now she only buys one cylinder a month instead of two, a savings of about 13 dollars per month.
“These savings are important for families here in the countryside,” said Marleni, 28, the mother of a four-year-old girl. The rest of her family is made up of her brother and grandfather.
“We also save water,” she added.
The biotoilet requires only 1.2 liters of water per flush, less than conventional toilets.
In addition, the soils are protected from contamination by septic tank latrines, which are widely used in rural areas, but are leaky and unhygienic.
The new technology avoids these problems.
The liquids resulting from the decomposition process flow through an underground pipe into a pit that functions as a filter, with several layers of gravel and sand. This prevents pollution of the soil and aquifers.
Also, as a by-product of the decomposition process, organic liquid fertilizer is produced for use on crops.
Most families in the rural community of El Corozal have benefited from one-burner stoves that run on biogas produced in family biodigesters. Larger two-burner stoves are also shared by two related families, where they cook on a griddle one of the favorite dishes of Salvadorans: pupusas, corn flour tortillas filled with beans, cheese and pork, among other ingredients. CREDIT: Coenergy El Salvador
Checking on site: zero stench
Due to a lack of information, people were initially concerned that if the biogas used in the stoves came from the decomposition of the family’s feces, it would probably stink.
And, worst of all, perhaps the food would also smell.
But little by little these doubts and fears faded away as families saw how the first devices worked.
“That was the first thing they asked, if the gas smelled bad, or if what we were cooking smelled bad,” said Marleni, remembering how the neighbors came to her house to check for themselves when she got the latrine and stove installed in December 2022.
“That was because of the little information that was available, but then we found that this was not the case, our doubts were cleared up and we saw there were no odors,” she added.
She said that, like almost everyone in the village, her family used to have a dry composting toilet, but it stank and generated cockroaches and flies.
“All that has been eliminated, the bathrooms are completely hygienic and clean, and we even had them tiled to make them look nicer,” Marleni said.
She remarked that hygiene is important to her, as her little girl can now go to the bathroom by herself, without worrying about cockroaches and flies.
Young woman sips an orange soda and waits for the rain to stop, on the porch of a small country store in a rural village in Bungoma County, Kenya. Credit: IFAD/Susan Beccio.
by Paul Virgo (rome)
Inter Press Service
ROME, Jul 20 (IPS) – The climate, conflict and economic shocks of recent years and their impact on food prices have landed a huge blow to the world’s hopes of achieving the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of eliminating global hunger by 2030.
Indeed, rather than coming down, the number of people who faced chronic undernourishment in 2022 was around 735 million, an increase of 122 million on the pre-pandemic level of 2019, the United Nations said in the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report that was released earlier this month.
Although tragic, this increase is not surprising.
What one perhaps would not expect is for obesity rates in developing countries to be rising too.
According to a new report by the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), overweight and obesity rates across low and middle income countries (LMICs) are approaching levels found in higher-income countries.
In 2016, for example, the percentage of people in low-income countries who were overweight was 25.8%, up over five percentage points on 2006.
The percentage rose from 21.4% to 27% for low-middle income countries in the same period.
The reason is simple – money.
Steep price gaps between healthy and unhealthy foods, coupled with the unavailability of a variety of healthy foods, are driving rises in obesity rates in both urban and rural areas of developing countries, the IFAD paper found.
The report, which reviewed hundreds of peer-reviewed studies and examined data from five representative countries, Indonesia, Zambia, Egypt, Nigeria, and Bolivia, said that the price gap between healthy foods, which tend to be expensive, and cheaper unhealthy foods is greater in developing countries than in rich developed ones.
As a result, three billion people simply cannot afford a healthy diet.
According to one of the studies (Headey 2019) reviewed by the report, it is 11.66 times more expensive to obtain a calorie from eggs in poor countries than it is to obtain a calorie from starchy staples, such as potatoes, bread, rice, pasta, and cereals.
In those same countries, it is only 2.92 times more expensive to obtain a calorie from sugary snacks than from starchy staples.
In wealthy countries, the gap is much smaller: it is 2.6 times more expensive to obtain a calorie from eggs than it is to obtain one from starchy staples and 1.43 times more expensive to obtain a calorie from sugary snacks.
“While price gaps between healthy and unhealthy foods exist in nations across the globe, that price gap is much wider in poorer countries,” said Joyce Njoro, IFAD lead technical specialist, nutrition.
“Also, high-income inequality within a country is associated with a higher prevalence of obesity.
“If we want to curb rising obesity rates in developing countries, we need big solutions that address how food systems work.
“It is alarming to note that three billion people globally cannot afford a healthy diet.
“Preventing obesity in developing countries requires a comprehensive approach that addresses cultural norms, raises awareness of associated health risks, and promotes the production, availability and affordability of healthy foods.”
The report said research showed sugar-sweetened beverage consumption is on the rise in developing countries (Nicole D. Ford et al. 2017; Malik and Hu 2022), and global sales of packaged food rose from 67.7kg per capita in 2005 to 76.9kg in 2017.
It noted that packaged food tends to be processed, which often means increased content of added or free sugars, saturated and trans-fat, salt and diet energy density, and decreasing protein, dietary fibre, and micronutrients.
The report also mentioned cultural factors.
In some developing countries, fatness is seen as desirable in children as it is considered a sign of health and wealth, and consumption of unhealthy foods may also carry a certain prestige, it said.
Culture also plays a role at the energy-expenditure side of the equation in places where physical inactivity is associated with high social status.
The report added that women are more likely to be overweight or obese than men in nearly all developing countries.
Referring to a 2017 study (Nicole D. Ford et al), it said reasons included different physiological responses to early-life nutrition, different hormonal responses to energy expenditure, weight gain associated with pregnancies, lower physical activity levels, depression, economic circumstances over the lifespan, and differences in sociocultural factors – like those regarding ideal body size and the acceptability of physical activity.
The summit, hosted by Italy and IFAD and its sister Rome-based UN food agencies, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP), will highlight how food-system transformations can contribute to better and more sustainable outcomes for people and the planet and the advancement of the Sustainable Development Goals ahead of the SDG Summit in September 2023.
Climate change poses a direct threat to small-scale peasants in Afghanistan, with soaring summer temperatures and frigid winters becoming increasingly challenging.
Inter Press Service
Jul 17 (IPS) – The author is an Afghanistan-based female journalist, trained with Finnish support before the Taliban take-over. Her identity is withheld for security reasons.Baba Jan, 60, a farmer in Badghis Province in Afghanistan has been forced to leave his home, not because of the war but due to the worst drought he has ever experienced. It is the second time this year he has been forced to leave his cherished home and life in the rural area for capital city, Kabul.
“If I could have stayed in Badghis, and even if you would have given me all of Kabul, I would not have come here”, he lamented, adding, “I loved my peasant life very much, and I miss my peasant life”, he said, covering his sad face with a shawl.
However, Baba Jan is not alone. A large number of farmers have suffered the same fate. Their lives in the western provinces of Afghanistan have been upended, with the loss of their agricultural products, livestock, and water resources caused by severe draught, largely understood to stem from climate change.
Baba Jan is now living with his three younger children in a mud hut in Kabul. The adverse situation has forced him to send his four grown-up children to work in Iran.
“We don’t care much about the war”, he says. “We were happy and busy with our peasant life but our children faced the risk of dying of hunger due to drought caused by climate change”.
Afghanistan is one of the countries that has been severely affected by climate change. The United Nations declared in 2022 November that Afghanistan is the sixth country in the world that has been severely affected by climate change.
It is one of the major concerns in the life of the people of Afghanistan – apart from the four-decades war that has ravaged this country – especially for the farmers and ranchers who cannot properly engage in livestock rearing and farming activities.
Apart from scorching hot summers with temperatures reaching 45 degrees Celsius, the situation can also swing to the other extreme of freezing harsh winters. As a result of the cold winter, about 200 people have lost their lives this year; hundreds of livestock have also been lost.
United Nations organizations have provided financial assistance to affected Afghans to alleviate their suffering, but they complain it is not enough for those in the drought-stricken areas, where what is needed most is assistance to drill wells in order to access fresh drinking water.
Even though current statistics are difficult to come by, says Obeidulla Achakzai, Director of Environmental Protection Trainings and Development Organization (EPTDO), a combination of reduced rainfall and frequent droughts have caused groundwater in Kabul to recede further from 20 meters thirty years ago to 120 meters currently.
The main source of livelihood for most Afghans is farming and if rain fails consecutively for four farming seasons, it causes huge food distress and population displacement. Climate change therefor exacerbates the poverty in a worn-torn country.
Obeidullah Achakzai says, for instance, that residents of Herat, Helmand, Uruzgan and other southern provinces of Afghanistan have lost their crops and have been displaced to other provinces within the country and into neighbouring countries.
Given this situation, people in Afghanistan are appealing to the global community to detach climate change from politics because environment is science and science is not political. In this regard, they call on the rest of the world to co-operate with Afghanistan – a reference to western countries denial of aid to the hardline Taliban regime.
Meanwhile, back in Kabul, Baba Jan like the other Afghans who have been displaced from their communities is fervently praying for the day he would be able to return home and continue his farming.
ECW director Yasmine Sherif and other delegates at the “Ensuring Education Continuity: The Roles of Education in Emergencies, Protracted Crises and Building Peace” conference at the UN. Credit: Abigail Van Neely/IPS
by Abigail Van Neely (united nations)
Inter Press Service
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 14 (IPS) – As the 2030 deadline for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) looms, Education Cannot Wait’s director Yasmine Sherif warned, “We are failing the promises we made on everything in the sustainable development goals, but especially on education because, without education, we cannot achieve any of the other sustainable development goals.”
Sherif was speaking at the “Ensuring Education Continuity: The Roles of Education in Emergencies, Protracted Crises and Building Peace” conference at the United Nations headquarters – where speaker after speaker called for an immediate increase in funding for education in crisis zones.
The conference was co-organized by the Permanent Missions of Japan, Italy, and Switzerland, UNICEF, ECW, Global Partnership for Education (GPE), UNESCO, Save the Children, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and Japan NGO Network for Education. The event was created with the goal of addressing the “crucial role of education as a life-saving and life-sustaining intervention in an emergency.”
It took place as a side event during this week’s High-Level Political Forum aimed to address the “crucial role of education as a life-saving and life-sustaining intervention in an emergency.”
This discussion came at a critical time. Earlier this week, the 2023 Sustainable Development Goals Report painted a grave picture of progress towards achieving the quality education goal proposed for 2030. Four out of every five countries studied experienced learning losses following the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the end of 2022, there were 34.6 million refugees, the highest global number ever recorded, of which 41% were children. According to ECW, 224 million crisis-affected children need education. Over half of these children – 127 million – are not achieving the minimum proficiencies in literacy or numeracy.
“It is critically important during this that we emphasize that education is a fundamental human right,” Ambassador Kimihiro Ishikane, Permanent Representative of Japan to the UN, said.
Noting that seven years remain before the SDG deadline, Stefania Giannini, Assistant Director-General for Education at UNESCO, urged Member States to commit to the Safe Schools Declaration, an inter-governmental agreement to protect education in times of armed conflict.
Speakers emphasized the importance of consistent education even during times of crisis.
During protracted emergencies in areas that have been disrupted by man-made conflicts or natural disasters, education continuity provides children and communities with a “sense of normalcy”, as Awut Deng Acuil, Minister of Education in South Sudan, remarked. “ fosters social and emotional wellbeing of learners affected by crises.
Two weeks ago, ECW launched a program in South Sudan to support a recent influx of refugees. Acuil highlighted that education is more than just knowledge gained in the classroom. She explained that it involves essential social-emotional learning, supports country development, builds resilience, promotes conflict resolution, and can even assist with economic recovery.
“Continuity of education for millions of children affected by crises remains at stake. Though we all know that one, education is a fundamental right for all children, and education continuation in high emergency situations remains a high priority for many communities,” Acuil said.
“Education is more than service delivery. It is a means of socialization and identity development through the transmission of knowledge, skills, values and attitudes across generations. It is, therefore, an important tool for the sustenance of peace, for without education, we cannot have peace,” said Asaju Bola, Minister from the Permanent Mission of Nigeria to the UN.
Somaya Faruqi, an engineering student and captain of the Afghan Girls Robotic Team, spoke about the power of academic achievement as a means to inspire gender equity. After her robotics team’s success in international competitions, more Afghan girls were given permission to join.
“The key to all these processes was education. Accessible education for girls and for boys equally,” Faruqi said.
Now, following the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan, Faruqi describes her home country as “a prison for girls” she had to flee.
ECW director Yasmine Sherif and other delegates at the “Ensuring Education Continuity: The Roles of Education in Emergencies, Protracted Crises and Building Peace” conference at the UN. Credit: Abigail Van Neely/IPS
The event showcased the measures that UN agencies have been taking to ensure education continuity. The UNESCO Qualifications Passport initiative provides refugees with a means for their qualifications to be certified and recognized in their host countries. UNESCO and UNICEF jointly launched the Gateways to Public Digital Learning, a global initiative for schools, learners, and teachers to have access to quality digital learning tools.
Digital learning and alternate forms of education provision were noted as significant tools to invest in, especially for students located in remote areas or in those communities who are unable to attend traditional public schooling. Ultimately, as Frank van Cappelle, Senior Advisor of Education, UNICEF, noted, “a holistic approach is needed; a flexible approach is needed… The human element is key.”
However, despite some gains, funding remains a barrier to the success of these programs. According to Charles North, the CEO of the Global Partnership for Education, the number of children impacted by crises is rising, but funding is not.
Rotimy Djossaya, Executive Director for Policy, Advocacy, and Campaigns at Save the Children, called for “timely debt relief for countries whose debt burdens are threatening their ability to invest in education.” He cited statistics that four out of fourteen low and middle-income countries spent more on servicing external debt than they did on education in 2020.
The event showcased a continuous, pressing need for education to be made a priority on the national and global levels. As Sherif noted, education is the foundation of a “more prosperous world.”
Sofía Quispe, the president of Ecorecicladoras de La Paz, finds a good haul of paper and cardboard in a municipal dumpster at the end of Avenida 6 de Agosto in La Paz, in a nighttime job that the southern hemisphere winter makes more challenging. CREDIT: Franz Chávez / IPS
by Franz Chavez (la paz)
Inter Press Service
LA PAZ, Jul 12 (IPS) – They haul many kilos of recyclable materials on their backs but receive little in return. These Bolivian women who help clean up the environment from dawn to dusk are fighting for recognition of their work and social and labor rights.
The inhabitants of La Paz, Bolivia’s political center, walk hurriedly and almost oblivious to the women of different ages silently opening heavy lids of municipal garbage dumpsters that are taller than the women themselves.
They use a homemade tool, a kind of hook with a long wooden handle, to dig through the unsorted waste, trying to avoid getting cut by broken glass, and in search of plastic containers, paper, cardboard or aluminum cans.
People walk by on the avenues and squares without looking at them, and sometimes actively avoiding them. The recyclers feel this indifference and even rejection, but they overcome it with the courage gained over years and generations, convincing themselves that they have a dignified vocation.
“People call us dirty pigs (cochinas), they humiliate us and we can never respond,” says Rosario Ramos, a 16-year-old who accompanies her mother, Valeriana Chacolla, 58, sorting through the trash for recyclable waste.
A study by the United Nations Joint Program on self-employed women workers in the country describes them generally as being “of indigenous origin, adults with primary school education. Seventy percent of them are also involved in activities related to commerce, while 16 percent work in the manufacturing industry.”
Of a population of 12.2 million projected by the National Institute of Statistics for the year 2022, 5.9 million are women. La Paz is home to 1.53 million people.
Of the total population of this Andean country, 41 percent defined themselves as indigenous in the last census, while according to the latest official data available, 26 percent of urban dwellers live in moderate poverty and 7.2 percent in extreme poverty, including most of the informal recyclers.
One of the groups of women of the Ecorecicladoras de La Paz association gather next to a municipal dumpster in a corner of Plaza Avaroa in Bolivia’s political capital, after finishing their nightly collection of reusable materials. CREDIT: Franz Chávez / IPS
On this southern hemisphere wintertime July night in La Paz, the group of women are virtually invisible as they gather around the dumpsters located in a corner of the Plaza Avaroa, in the area of Sopocachi, where residential and public office buildings are interspersed with banks, supermarkets and other businesses.
It’s a good place for picking through the waste in the dumpsters, and the women find paper, newspapers, plastic and aluminum containers. Although the volume of waste is large, each one of the garbage pickers manages to collect no more than one or two kg on one of the days that IPS accompanied different groups of the women in their work.
The silence is broken on some occasions when salaried municipal cleaners show up and throw the women out of the place, because they also compete to obtain materials that they then sell to recyclers. This is a moment when it becomes especially clear that garbage has value.
That is one of several reasons that forced the informal garbage pickers to come together in an association called EcoRecicladoras de La Paz. “There is no work for us, and they only listen to us when we organize,” says María Martínez, 50, the recording secretary of the 45 members, who also include a few men.
In Bolivia, trash is not separated into reusable and non-reusable waste in homes or offices. This task is carried out by private recycling companies, who buy the raw materials from informal waste collectors such as EcoRecicladoras.
Leonor Colque Rodríguez, 78, wearily ends her night shift collecting recyclable waste in Sopocachi, an area in La Paz, Bolivia. She has been working for 40 years as a “grassroots recycler” and is the head of her household. CREDIT: Franz Chávez / IPS
Martínez, with slightly graying hair, says she comes out every evening. “I was a domestic worker until I was 30 years old. When my daughter was born I couldn’t get a job. I collected plastic bottles, clothes and shoes and sold them to the factories, but the recycling companies who pay really low prices emerged,” she complains.
It takes about three months between the initial collection and the final sale of the recyclable materials. Martínez collects the materials, carries around seven kg on her back, walks about three kilometers and patiently stores them until she has enough to sell them to the wholesaler.
“One year I collected 200 kg of scrap metal and sold it for 150 bolivianos (about 20 dollars),” she recalls. The recycling companies want to buy by the ton, she explains, with a grin, because it is impossible for them to reach that volume.
She represents a second generation of garbage collectors. Her mother, Leonor Colque, is two years short of turning 80, and has been combing through garbage dumps and trash on the streets for 40 years. On her back she carries a cloth in which she hauls a number of pieces of paper and some plastic waste.
“They should stay in school because this job is not for young girls,” she recommends, sadly, because she could not achieve her goal of sending one of her daughters to a teacher training school.
At 58, Chacolla, like almost all women garbage pickers, is the head of her household. Her husband, a former public transport driver, lost his job due to health problems and occasionally works as a welder, door-maker or bricklayer.
When she goes out to sort through trash she is accompanied by her daughter, Rosario, who explains and expands on what her mother says, calling for a change in the public’s attitude towards them and respect for the work they do as dignified, emphasizing, as they all do, that they deal with recyclable waste, not garbage.
Vests like this one identify women “grassroots recyclers” in their work of sorting through waste in dumpsters installed by the municipal government of La Paz in different parts of the Bolivian city. CREDIT: Franz Chávez / IPS
“I walk with the Lord in my heart, he always helps me,” says Angelica Yana, who at 63 years of age defies the dangers of the wee hours of the morning in the Achachicala area, on the outskirts of La Paz, five kilometers north of the city.
“Nothing has ever happened to me,” says Yana, who leaves her home at three in the morning to scrape up enough to support a son who offers fine finishing masonry services, and her sick husband.
At the age of 70, Alberta Caisana says that she was assaulted by municipal cleanup workers while she was scrounging for recyclable materials. She now carries a credential issued by the Environmental Prevention and Control Directorate of the Autonomous Municipal Government of La Paz, and wears a work vest donated by development aid agencies from the governments of Sweden and Switzerland.
She relies on her uniform and identification card as symbols of protection from the indifference of the people and aggression from local officials.
The mother of a daughter and the head of her household, Anahí Lovera, saw her wish to continue her university studies frustrated, and at the age of 32 she combines collecting plastic bottles with helping in different tasks in the construction of houses.
In the foreground, the secretary of Ecorecicladoras de La Paz, María Martínez (50), together with Carla Chávez (42) and her mother Leonarda Chávez (72) take a break from sorting through waste in the Sopocachi area of the Bolivian city of La Paz. CREDIT: Franz Chávez / IPS
Others, they say, sell clothes and other recovered objects in street markets, such as the famous one in Villa 16 de Julio in the neighboring city of El Alto, where used and new objects are sold in an area covering two kilometers.
Lovera’s work appears to go smoothly, but she and her colleagues describe the moment of dealing with the buyers. They deliver an exact volume and weight of products and the buyers declare a lower weight in order to pay less.
“This sector isn’t noticed by society, especially because we work with waste, that is, with what society throws away; this work is ‘devalued’,” Bárbara Giavarini, coordinator of Redcicla Bolivia-Reciclaje Inclusivo, told IPS.
One sign of the public’s recognition of the “grassroots recyclers,” as they call themselves, could be the direct, sorted delivery of the waste, which would facilitate the women’s work, she said.
Redcicla, a platform that promotes the integrated treatment of waste, has been helping since 2017 to organize them and bring visibility to their work, while fostering the delivery of waste from citizens to “grassroots recyclers” and working for the recognition of their work as dignified.
The president of Ecorecicladoras de La Paz, Sofía Quispe, supports the idea of getting help from local residents in sorting materials and delivering them to their affiliates, instead of throwing them into dumpsters where they are mixed with products that prevent subsequent recycling.
The president of the women’s group Ecorecicladoras de La Paz, Sofia Quispe, walks along the central Arce Avenue in this Bolivian city in search of dumpsters where local residents throw their waste. CREDIT: Franz Chávez / IPS
Quispe is a 42-year-old mother of three. Like most of her fellow recyclers, she walks about two kilometers on foot in search of dumpsters, dressed in the customary indigenous wide-brimmed hat and pollera or skirt.
On the night that IPS accompanied her, she did not find the dumpster that was usually on Avenida 6 de Agosto, probably because it had been removed and taken to another part of the city.
The impoverished garbage picker was once a skilled seamstress who worked in small family-owned factories in the Brazilian city of São Paulo. Upon her return due to an illness, she was unable to raise the money she needed to buy a machine and raw materials.
She was also discouraged by the lack of interest among local residents in buying garments made in Bolivia, as they preferred low-cost clothing smuggled into the country as contraband.
Leonarda Chávez, another 72-year-old head of household, who collects recyclable materials every day with her daughter Carla Chávez (42) and granddaughter Maya Muga Chávez (25), feels satisfied because she can see her dream come true.
This month, her granddaughter earned a diploma in Business Social Responsibility, with which she completed her university education, in addition to a degree in commercial engineering and business administration, in a country where higher studies do not always guarantee good jobs.
Among the darkness and the objects discarded by people, hope is also alive. Rosario Ramos took the lessons of hard work and created her own goal: “I will study advanced robotics and prosthetic assembly,” she says with a confidence that contrasts with the group’s sad stories.
While India decreased its population without access to clean cooking fuels by about 30 percent from 2010 to 2020, Africa has seen an increase of more than 50 percent over the same period, driven by a rising number of poor, tepid government policies to address this issue, and overarching poverty challenges. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS
Opinion by Philippe Benoit, Alexandra Peek (washington dc)
Inter Press Service
WASHINGTON DC, Jul 12 (IPS) – An estimated 2.4 billion people currently lack access to clean cooking fuels, with the majority relying on biomass (firewood, charcoal, dung) to meet household cooking needs. This is only a slight decrease from 2017, when 2.5 billion people lacked access to clean cooking fuels.
Of those who continue to lack this access, the majority—923 million—live in sub-Saharan Africa, followed by 490 million in India. While India decreased its population without access by about 30 percent from 2010 to 2020, Africa has seen an increase of more than 50 percent over the same period, driven by a rising number of poor, tepid government policies to address this issue, and overarching poverty challenges.
Hidden behind these figures are the people who produce the biomass that powers most of this energy use: often it’s women and girls who are tasked with this labor. In this article, the authors discuss why it’s important to see these women and girls—potentially the largest segment of the energy labor force today and in the foreseeable future—as producers and workers.
In understanding them as a formidable workforce of biomass producers, their knowledge and experience can inform ongoing efforts of electrification, clean cooking alternatives, gender rights, and overall poverty alleviation. It is also equally important to recognize this workforce in order to improve its working conditions on the path to building a more inclusive energy workforce toward net zero emissions.
While the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #7 (SDG 7) draws attention to the need to eliminate the use of non-clean cooking techniques that kill millions each year, the working conditions under which women toil today to produce biomass also merits greater attention.
Just how many women are working in this area? A preliminary estimate—based on data regarding the number of households relying on biomass for cooking and the rate of participation of women in this labor—puts the number at over 300 million. Overall, while there is reliable data on lack of access to clean cooking, reliance on biomass, and deforestation trends, there is a gap in knowledge about the (wo)man power it takes to produce biomass.
This gap may stem from the way issues around biomass are often discussed in the SDG 7 context. For example, data on the lack of access to clean cooking primarily informs solutions to shift cooking norms and electrification pathways and efforts to obviate the need for women to labor in producing biomass, while data on biomass reliance feeds into conservation and land use efforts.
Such efforts, however, tend to overlook women as an energy workforce, even though across sub-Saharan Africa, India, parts of China, and Latin America, women and young girls collect and make the biomass necessary to power their homes, including for heating.
Organizations focused on gender parity, such as SEforAll, come closer to recognizing the work of these women and girls, but they, too, frame their efforts in line with clean cooking initiatives rather than labor conditions or rights. For instance, research on the number of hours spent collecting firewood and preparing meals is used to discuss cultural and gender roles that lead to systemic disadvantages for women and girls.
A missing link in all of these narratives and frameworks is understanding the size and importance of this workforce and how it might inform different strategies.
Embracing a Worker-Producer Narrative
Calculating the number of women and girls in their capacity as biomass producers reframes the perception of them as passive consumers (i.e., cooks) to active self-producers of the household energy sector. This framework can bolster efforts mentioned above in the following ways:
First, it reframes biomass—from an issue singularly belonging to the clean cooking initiative— and places it more broadly in the context of workers’ rights. Despite numerous clean cooking campaigns, poor women and girls will continue to produce biomass for their families for the foreseeable future. As important as it is to make access to clean cooking technologies universally available, what can be done for those producing their own energy in the meantime?
For example, these could be solutions such as creating wood stalls in more accessible areas to reduce collection times, or developing more ergonomic harnesses for carrying the wood to reduce the physical burden of the work. In addition, can more income-generating opportunities be created to help reduce the poverty of these women and girls?
Second, it informs policies around building an inclusive energy workforce. Recognizing that there is already a female-run and -operated energy workforce across the developing world has implications for workforce policies governing the energy transition. For example, when it comes to the ability to tap into this existing labor force, does reskilling apply to this workforce as it does to coal miners?
Moreover, by focusing on improving the labor conditions of women and girl biomass producers, this framework intersects with SDG 5: achieve gender equality and empower all women and girl. Organizations such as the Clean Cooking Alliance that aim to “increase the role of women in the clean cooking sector” and collect data on the number of hours required for biomass production could benefit from such a framework.
Third,research that intentionally includes groups underserved and underrepresented in data can inform policies for a just energy transition. Capturing the number of women and girls producing biomass can lead to important discoveries for improving their lives while informing the energy transition. For instance, surveys and fieldwork to collect the amount of biomass producers could also be used to track energy consumption and production trends that inform electrification efforts.
Many biomass collectors live on the margins or in rural areas, and research geared toward their energy needs can inform, for example, decentralized renewable energy projects and help anticipate their consumption patterns.
This energy workforce comprises some of the poorest people in the world—women, girls, and people of color—and that may partly explain why their labor and working conditions have received relatively less attention.
The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report and other research puts the world on a tight timeline for lowering emissions. Existing frameworks for achieving a clean energy transition can be strengthened through approaches that recognize and acknowledge the agency of biomass energy producers made up of millions of women and girls.
Alexandra Peek is a research associate with Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.
The shortages of days in the classroom and teachers, and the poverty of their schools and living conditions, provide for a very poor education for Venezuela’s children and augur a significant lag for their performance in adult life and for the country’s development. CREDIT: El Ucabista
by Humberto Marquez (caracas)
Inter Press Service
CARACAS, Jul 10 (IPS) – Hundreds of thousands of children and young people, and thousands of their teachers, drop out of regular schooling in Venezuela year after year, and most of those who remain go to the classroom only two or three days a week, highlighting the abysmal backwardness of education in the country.
“Why continue studying, to graduate unemployed and earn a pittance? We prefer to get into a trade, make money, help our parents; there are a lot of needs at home,” Edgar, 19, who with his brother Ernesto, 18, has been gardening in homes in southeastern Caracas for three years, told IPS.
A study this year by the non-governmental organization Con la Escuela (With the School), in seven of Venezuela’s 24 states -including the five most populated- found that 22 percent of students skip classes to help their parents, and in the 15-17 age group this is the case for 45 percent of girls.
In the school where teacher Rita Castillo worked, in La Pomona, a shantytown in the torrid western city of Maracaibo, “for many days in a row there is no running water, there are blackouts, and it’s impossible to use the fans to cool off the classrooms,” she told IPS.
The classes in the school are divided into 17 to 25 children each: the first three grades of primary school attend on Mondays and Tuesdays, the next three grades on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and Fridays make up for whoever missed class the previous days. That is in the mornings; secondary school students attend during the hot afternoons.
These are the first steps towards the definitive dropout of students: 1.2 million in the three years prior to 2021 and another 190,000 in the 2021-2022 school year, with 2022-2023 still to be estimated, with no signs of a reversal in the trend.
“The dropout rate is also high in secondary schools in Caracas, and the students who remain often pass from one year to the next without having received, for example, a single physics or chemistry class, due to the shortage of teachers,” Lucila Zambrano, a math teacher in public schools in the populous western part of the capital, told IPS.
Authorities in the education districts are increasingly calling on retired teachers to return to work, “but who is going to return to earn for 25, 20 or less dollars a month?” Isabel Labrador, a retired teacher from Colón, a small town in the southwestern state of Táchira, told IPS.
Currently, the monthly food basket costs 526 dollars, according to the Documentation and Analysis Center of the Venezuelan Federation of Teachers.
The infrastructure and equipment of many schools is seriously affected in different areas of Venezuela, and its recovery is essential as a space not only for students to obtain knowledge but also for the socialization and coexistence of students, teachers and representatives. CREDIT: E. Carvajal / CPV
Teachers held colorful street protests in the first few months of 2023, demanding decent salaries and other benefits acquired by their collective bargaining agreement, and these demands remain unheeded as the school year ends this July.
Teachers earning ridiculously small salaries, high school dropout rates, rundown infrastructure, lack of services, loss of quality and a marked lag in the education of children and young people are the predominant characteristics of Venezuelan public education today.
But “the education crisis did not begin in March 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic. These are problems that form part of the complex humanitarian emergency that Venezuela has been experiencing for many years,” Luisa Pernalete, a trainer and researcher at the Fe y Alegría educational institution for decades, told IPS.
Numbers in red
In the current school year, enrollment in kindergarten, primary and secondary education totaled 7.7 million, said Education Minister Yelitze Santaella, in this country which according to the National Institute of Statistics has 33.7 million inhabitants, but only 28.7 million according to university studies.
The difference in the numbers may be due to the migration of more than seven million Venezuelans in the last decade, according to United Nations agencies – a figure that the government of President Nicolás Maduro considers exaggerated, although it has not provided an alternative number.
The attraction or the need to migrate, in the face of the complex humanitarian emergency – whose material basis begins with the loss of four-fifths of GDP in the period 2013-2021 – also mark the desertion of students and teachers.
In the three-year period ending in 2021 alone, 166,000 teachers (25 percent of the total) and 1.2 million students (15 percent of the number enrolled at the time), dropped out, according to a study by the private Andrés Bello Catholic University (Ucab) in Caracas, ranked as the top higher education center in the country.
Con la Escuela estimates that at least 40 percent of the teachers who have quit have already emigrated to other countries.
Educational coverage among the population aged three to 17 years continues to decline: 1.5 million children and adolescents between those ages were left out of the education system in the 2021-2022 period. The hardest hit group is children between three and five years of age, where coverage amounts to just 56 percent.
Public school teachers, whose basic salary barely exceeds 20 dollars per month, have held massive protests in Caracas and other cities in the country demanding a living wage and compliance with the provisions of their collective bargaining agreement. CREDIT: M. Chourio / Efecto Cocuyo
According to official figures, there are 29,400 educational institutions in the country, of which 24,400 are public, with 6.4 million students and 542,000 teachers; and 5,000 are private, with 1.2 million students and 121,000 teachers.
They cover three years of early education, six years of primary school and five years of secondary school. It was decreed 153 years ago that primary education should be free and compulsory.
According to Ucab and Con la Escuela, 85 percent of public schools do not have internet, 69 percent have acute shortages of electricity and 45 percent do not have running water. There are also deficiencies in health services (93 percent), laboratories (79 percent) and theater or music rooms (85 percent).
Surveying 79 public schools in seven states, Con la Escuela found that 52 percent of the bathrooms are in poor condition, 35 percent of the schools do not have enough bathrooms, and two percent have no bathrooms.
In 19 percent of the schools classes have been suspended due to the damage to the toilets, and 34 percent do not have sewage pipes.
“Water is the service that generates the most suspension of classes in Venezuela,” Pernalete said. “Classes can be held without electricity in the school, but you can’t do without water, and if the service fails in the community or in the whole town, then it’s hard for teachers to go to work or the families don’t send their children to school.”
The backpack decorated with the tricolor Venezuelan flag, which is given to primary school students in the country’s public schools, is often carried by immigrants, such as these walking along a Colombian highway, as many students and teachers, in addition to dropping out of school, go abroad. CREDIT: JRS
Con la Escuela also found that 36 percent of the classrooms are insufficient for the number of youngsters enrolled, 44 percent of the schools have classrooms in poor condition and 50 percent reported desks in poor condition.
Moreover, the Ucab investigation found “ghost schools”, which appear in the Education Ministry figures but are actually only empty shells.
“We have gone to the field with the list of these schools and we have found that they no longer exist. There are just four walls standing,” said Eduardo Cantera, director of Ucab’s Center for Educational Innovation.
From precariousness to backwardness
If the salary of a new teacher in a public school is 20 dollars a month, those who are five levels higher in the ranks do not earn much more, just 30 or 35 dollars, although they do receive some bonuses that are not part of the salary.
In Caracas, private schools – which serve from kindergarten to the end of high school – a teacher earns about 100, maybe 200 or more dollars, depending on seniority, hours of work, and the families’ ability to pay.
The drop in wages cuts across the entire labor spectrum. The basic minimum is around five dollars a month, although there are food bonuses, and the average salary of formal sector workers is around 100 dollars.
It is a difficult figure to reach for many of those who work in the informal sector of the economy – 60 percent of the country’s workers according to the Survey of Living Conditions that Ucab carried out in 2022 among 2,300 households across the country.
A view of the María Auxiliadora school in a middle and upper-middle class area of Caracas. In private education, families must make extraordinary contributions to improve teachers’ salaries and thus hold onto them. CREDIT: Oema
It is a consequence of the gigantic setback of the Venezuelan economy – GDP shrank by four-fifths between 2013 and 2021 – compounded by almost three years of hyperinflation between 2017 and 2020, and depreciation that liquefied the value of the local currency, the bolivar, and led to a costly de facto dollarization.
Although public education is formally free, parents must contribute a few dollars each month to help maintain the schools. In private schools, prices are raised under the guise of extraordinary fees – the only way to obtain funds that make it possible for them to hold onto their teachers.
Pernalete says that in the interior of the country many teachers have to walk up to an hour to get to school -there is no public transportation or they can’t afford to take it-, not to mention the lack of water or electricity in their homes, or the absence of or the poor quality of internet connection, if they can afford it, or the lack of other technological resources.
And if they do have internet, that’s not always the case for their students.
Damelis, a domestic worker who lives in a poor neighborhood in Los Teques, a city neighboring Caracas, has three children in school. Some teachers, she told IPS, assign homework through a WhatsApp group, but in her home no one has a computer, internet or smartphone.
What is the result? The initial reading assessment test that Ucab recently administered to 1,028 third grade students nationwide showed high oral and reading comprehension (82 and 85 percent, respectively), but low reading aloud and decoding skills (43 and 53 percent).
More than 40 percent of the students only read 64 words per minute or less, when they should read 85 or more. Con la Escuela applied the test to 364 students in Caracas and the neighboring state of Miranda, and the children only read 48 words per minute.
There is also discouragement among teachers. The main public teaching university in the country has almost no applicants. In the School of Education at Ucab, the first two years have been closed due to a lack of students, despite the fact that the university offers scholarships to those who want to train as teachers.
What can be done? “The physical recovery of schools should be one of the first steps to guarantee their fundamental function: to serve as a center for socialization and meeting of teachers, students and representatives around the teaching-learning process,” said Cantera.
“Otherwise, the consequences will be very serious for the country’s development,” he said.
Labrador said she observes “a gradual privatization of education, it is no longer truly free,” and the disparity between public and private education is increasing inequality in a country where in the second half of the 20th century public education stood out as the most powerful lever for social ascent.
Pernalete said it is a matter of complying with the 1999 Constitution, which stipulates that workers’ salaries must be sufficient to live on and establishes the government’s commitment to the right to education, as it states that education and work are the means for the realization of the government’s goals.
Experts encourage parents to vaccinate their children against typhoid to ensure that the child has access to clean drinking water. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS
by Zofeen Ebrahim (karachi)
Inter Press Service
KARACHI, Jul 06 (IPS) – Childhood vaccination, complemented with clean drinking water and improved hygiene practices, are the key to eradication of typhoid XDR, not indiscriminate use of antibiotics, say Pakistan health experts.The first thing you notice about eight-month-old Manahil Zeeshan is how tiny she looks on the adult-size hospital bed at the government-run Sindh Institute of Child Health and Neonatology (SICHN) in Korangi, a neighbourhood in Karachi.
Her right foot is taped with a cannula, and she whimpers incessantly. “I have been in and out of the hospital for the last seven days,” said Uzma Mohammad, Zeeshan’s mom, with worry lines on her forehead. “High fever that refused to come down, severe cough for days and breathlessness,” were some of the symptoms Mohammad described. She was convinced someone had “put a spell” on her daughter.
The doctors, however, suspected she had typhoid.
Salmonella Typhi bacteria cause typhoid fever, and Salmonella Paratyphi bacteria cause paratyphoid fever. According to the US-based public health agency, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, along with a fever that can be as high as 103 to 104°F (39 to 40°C), the sick person can have weakness, stomach pain, headache, diarrhoea or constipation, cough, and loss of appetite. Some people have a rash of flat, rose-coloured spots. Internal bleeding and death can occur but are rare. It affects between 11 and 20 million people each year, leading to 128,000 to 161,000 deaths, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The highest fatality rates are reported in children under four years of age.
While Zeeshan’s blood culture report had yet to come to ascertain the cause of her sickness, she needed urgent medical care, said Dr Shabita Bai, who had admitted her.
“We could not wait for five days for the blood culture report as she was not doing well. And because she had already been given an antibiotic (a medicine used to kill bacteria) from outside, our chances of finding if the baby had typhoid for sure were slim, and we had to rely on the history,” justified Bai.
Decisions had to be made. Based on her condition, symptoms, and clinical diagnosis, the baby was given Ceftriaxone, an intravenous antibiotic, but she showed no improvement. The doctors then administered the stronger Meropeneme intravenously, a last-resort antibiotic.
Manahil Zeeshan’s foot has a drip in an effort to bring her temperature down and fight suspected typhoid. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS
Battling the Superbug
But even if she had typhoid, the bacteria in her body had taken on the form of a superbug — the extensively drug-resistant (XDR) typhoid and the current antimicrobials had become ineffective, said paediatrician Dr Jamal Raza, the executive director of the SICHN.
According to a Lancet study published in 2022, multidrug-resistant (MDR) typhoid has been seen in Pakistan, while typhoid bacteria resistant to the widely-used antibiotic azithromycin have been found in Bangladesh, Nepal and India. “Our analysis revealed a declining trend of MDR typhoid in south Asia, except for Pakistan, where XDR S Typhi emerged in 2016 and rapidly replaced less-resistant strains,” stated the study, which researchers claim is the largest ever examination of the S.Typhi bacterium.
The reason why antibiotics are losing their punch against some types of bacteria, said Raza, was the “indiscriminate use of antibiotics” that health practitioners prescribe to provide immediate relief. Another big problem was self-medication by people. “I know people often use an old prescription by a doctor to get the same medicine if they feel they have the same symptoms, thinking they do not need to visit the doctor.”
But he pointed out viruses, which are also small germs like bacteria, are causing bacteria-like infections, like a cold or the flu.
“Taking an antibiotic for the latter does not treat the disease; it only leads to antibiotic resistance,” said Raza.
A study conducted by researchers from three medical institutions, namely, the Aga Khan University (AKU) in Karachi, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) in Rawalpindi, and the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital & Research Center (SKH) in Lahore in 2018, found indiscriminate use of antibiotics to be causing new drug-resistant “superbugs.”
It found a high prevalence of multidrug and fluoroquinolone resistance for both S.Typhi and S. Paratyphi strains of typhoid bacteria. From 20% in 1992, the resistance was found to have increased to around 50% in 2015. The stubborn bacteria were resistant to antibiotics like ampicillin, chloramphenicol (and co-trimoxazole), as well as fluoroquinolone (ciprofloxacin and/or ofloxacin).
“The situation is quite grim,” said Dr Mashal Khan, chairperson of the government-run paediatric medicine department at Karachi’s National Institute of Child Health, referring to the increase in the number of children developing resistance to typhoid drugs. His worry is not that the bacteria has spread; his concern is the bacteria has mutated and become resistant to the drug.
“We’re running out of new antibiotics to treat bacterial infections; Meropeneme is the last one, and a very expensive one too,” he said resignedly, adding: “Although the development of newer antibiotics is the need of the day, I must emphasise the rational use of the ones being used is more urgent.”
Developing new drugs is challenging, and antibiotics more so, as the science is tricky.
“Antibiotics are not the most lucrative drugs to develop for pharmaceuticals as their utility is limited in the future due to the bacteria developing the ability to resist them,” said Infectious Diseases specialist and epidemiologist Dr Faisal Mahmood at the Aga Khan University Hospital in Karachi. “A lot of money goes into developing new drugs, and since most of the funding is from the global north, they prefer to work on infections which concern them directly. Typhoid is unfortunately endemic in the low and middle-income countries in the South, which have poorer water quality and have warmer, more humid climates.”
And that is why the only sure-shot way of reducing the disease burden of typhoid is to vaccinate the children.
In 2019, Pakistan became the first country to get the World Health Organization (WHO)-recommended single-dose typhoid conjugate vaccine (TCV) injected intramuscularly, added to its routine immunisation (RI) regime. This is given to babies at nine months, alongside measles-rubella vaccinations, without impacting either vaccine.
“Childhood vaccination complemented with clean drinking water and improved hygiene practices is the much more cost-effective way of eradicating typhoid than pumping antibiotics in a child,” said Raza. Meropenem costs as much as Rs. 30,000 (USD 105) for a 10-day course, and if hospitalisation is included, it can go up to Rs 100,000 ($349), said the doctor. Being in a government hospital, Zeeshan is treated free of cost.
Eight-month-old Manahil Zeeshan is treated for typhoid at the government-run Sindh Institute of Child Health and Neonatology (SICHN) in Korangi, a neighbourhood in Karachi. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS
Typhoid Vaccine Launch Hits a Snag as Covid-19 Surfaces
The 2019 TCV campaign was first launched in the two cities of Sindh – Karachi and Hyderabad (children up to 15 years of age were also given a shot), which reported the highest number of typhoid cases among children. There was a pause when Covid-19 hit the world. But by 2022, TCV had been launched across Pakistan, and 35.5 million children were vaccinated, after which it was added to the government-run Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) programme.
“Many parents do not know that the TCV is a more effective vaccine but only available at government vaccination centres, and not at private clinics and hospitals as Gavi has only given it to the government of Pakistan,” said paediatrician Dr D.S. Akram.
“There is another typhoid vaccine available in the private sector (typhoid polysaccharide vaccine), but it can only be given to children over two years of age, and it needs boosters every three years. My advice to parents is to vaccinate their kids against typhoid bacteria at nine months,” she said.
But it is still a drop in the ocean, and the fight against typhoid and other childhood diseases continues. The WHO places Pakistan among the ten countries that account for almost two-thirds of the world’s unimmunised children.
When Covid-19 hit the country’s already crumbling health system, it also brought the country’s immunisation programme to a halt too. An estimated 1.5 million children across Pakistan missed out on basic vaccines from March to May 2020, according to Gavi.
For Pakistan, which already has low immunisation coverage (the percentage of fully immunised children aged 12-23 months is just 66%), it meant a further dip in coverage which led to an unprecedented rise in the number of zero-dose children (those that have not received any routine vaccine). Add to these were the almost 19,000 new births every day. But when the lockdown eased and vaccinators returned to work, there was less demand for vaccination, having been replaced by fear of the new virus.
While Pakistan has yet to reach the optimal immunisation coverage of 90%, during Covid-19, Pakistan’s EPI received plaudits internationally for taking both vaccine coverage and the number of zero-dose children close to pre-pandemic levels in 2021. “What Pakistan achieved needs to be celebrated. In fact, Pakistan and Chad are used as examples internationally of how to get it right in an emergency,” said Huma Khawar, an immunisation and child health advocate working closely with EPI.
“Despite a year’s delay due to Covid-19, which was unforeseen, I think it is the best thing that the government has done for its country’s children,” said Khawar. She credited the RI programme that bounced back to the pre-pandemic level in 2021.
Clean water, Good Hygiene Key to Preventing typhoid
While immunisation can protect children from getting infected, clean drinking water and improved hygiene practices can reduce the risk of catching the disease to a great extent.
“Vaccines provide immunity when there is exposure to the bacteria,” agreed Dr Jai Das, assistant director at the Institute for Global Health and Development at the Aga Khan University and one of the co-authors of the 2018 report on typhoid, but emphasised the need for improved water and sanitation, a situation that continues to remain dismal and compromised in Pakistan.
The same study not only found a strong correlation between water and sanitation but to literacy levels as well. In addition, it stressed improving the country’s food safety protocols and implementing regulations.
While Mohammad believes that her daughter is under a curse, one reason could be that the unpasteurised cow’s milk she gives her daughter may not be properly boiled at home. “I was unable to breastfeed her,” she said. Further, she confessed to diluting it with unboiled tap water to make it last longer.
Doctors say giving Pakistani babies a lease of life is simple and costs nothing. “Exclusive breastfeeding up to at least six months of age (right now it is only 43%), attaining 90% coverage of RI across Pakistan and improving water and sanitation quality,” according to Dr Akram.
Bacteria Don’t Respect Geographic Borders
The XDR typhoid bacteria propagating in Pakistan has crossed borders and reached as far as the UK, Canada and the US. Earlier this year, a team of Pakistani and US researchers published their findings in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, stating that with numerous typhoid bacteria variants circulating in Pakistan have also been identified in Southeast Asia and Eastern and Southern Africa and have been introduced into the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States by travellers.
The Lancet study said strains from South Asia had spread 200 times to other countries since 1990. When these superbugs grow and spread, they can cause infections that are hard to treat. Sometimes they can even spread the resistance to other bacteria they meet.
The future looks frightening. While the need for improving water and sanitation cannot be overemphasised, along with the need for vaccinating children, newer and stronger antibiotics need to be developed and fast as typhoid may surface in deadlier ways than now since very few antibiotics remain effective against the bacteria.
Note: This story was supported by the Sabin Vaccine Institute and Internews
Cecilia Menjivar, a tortilla maker in San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, takes a break from cooking corn in a pot that is one meter high and 50 centimeters in diameter, heated by a wood stove. Many women in urban and rural areas run these small businesses, aware of the damage to their health caused by the smoke, but the economic situation forces them to use firewood, which is much cheaper than liquefied gas. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS
by Edgardo Ayala (san luis la herradura, el salvador)
Inter Press Service
SAN LUIS LA HERRADURA, El Salvador, Jul 04 (IPS) – Using a few dry sticks as fuel, Margarita Ramos of El Salvador lit the fire in her wood stove and set about frying two fish, occasionally fanning the flame, aware that the smoke she inhaled could affect her health.
“I know that the smoke can damage my lungs, because that’s what I’ve heard on the news, but what can I do?” Ramos told IPS, standing next to her stove in the courtyard of her home in El Zapote, a village of 51 families in the coastal municipality of San Luis La Herradura, in the southern Salvadoran department of La Paz.
Firewood, the fuel of the poor
“I cook with firewood out of necessity, because I don’t always have a job or money to buy gas,” added Ramos, 44, referring to liquefied gas, a petroleum derivative used for cooking in 90.6 percent of Salvadoran homes, according to official data.
This is the situation faced by many women in El Salvador and other parts of the world, especially in the countryside, where dire economic conditions as well as ingrained habits and traditions lead families to cook with firewood, with negative repercussions on their health.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that in 2019 approximately 18 percent of global deaths were due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and 23 percent to acute respiratory infections.
Ambient pollution, including wood smoke, plays a decisive role in respiratory diseases, especially among rural women, who do the cooking in line with the roles of patriarchal culture.
Back in 2004 the WHO warned that about 1.6 million people were dying annually from charcoal and wood smoke used in cooking stoves in many developing countries.
In El Salvador, 29,365 cases of acute respiratory infections per 100,000 inhabitants were reported in 2022, well above the 19,000 reported in 2021. Pneumonia reached 365 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the same period, and the case fatality rate stood at 13.6 percent, up from 11.4 percent the previous year.
Ana Margarita Ramos fries two fish for dinner on a wood stove in El Zapote, a coastal village located in the municipality of San Luis La Herradura, in the Salvadoran department of La Paz. Due to economic difficulties she frequently has to cook with firewood, and she fears that she might get asthma from exposure to the smoke. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS
Ramos showed IPS the gas stove she has inside her house, with a cylinder that lasts approximately 40 days.
But when the gas runs out and she can’t afford to refill the cylinder, she has to cook with her wood stove. In her courtyard she has a table in a makeshift shed, where she keeps the wood and a metal structure that holds her pots and pans.
Official figures indicate that 5.9 percent of households in this Central American country use firewood for cooking.
However, in rural areas the proportion rises to 12.9 percent, while 84.4 percent cook with gas and the rest use electricity and other systems.
Ramos, 44, has no steady job and as a single mother, scrambles to provide for the needs of her two children.
Twice a week she cleans upscale apartments at a resort near her home, in Los Blancos, a well-known beach on El Salvador’s Pacific coast, also in La Paz. When she does well she cleans two a day, earning 24 dollars.
Sometimes she also washes other families’ clothes.
“Right now I have run out of gas, I have to use firewood,” she said. A cylinder of liquefied gas costs between 12 and 14 dollars.
She generally collects firewood on the banks of the estuary, from the branches of mangrove trees, since hers and other poor families live in a shantytown located between the Pacific Ocean and the Jaltepeque estuary, one of the country’s main wetlands.
Poverty affects 26.6 percent of the population at the national level in this small Central American country of 6.7 million inhabitants, according to official figures. But in rural areas the proportion rises to 29.6 percent, and of these, 10.8 percent live in extreme poverty.
At her house in the coastal village of El Zapote, Ana Margarita Ramos luckily has a yard where she has set up her wood stove, thus reducing her exposure to smoke, in a country like El Salvador where many women suffer from respiratory diseases due to the effects of cooking with firewood. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS
Cutting costs with firewood
Meanwhile in San Salvador, the country’s capital, Cecilia Menjívar runs her small tortilla-making business partly by using firewood, which she collects from tree branches around the Los Héroes community where she lives.
She also uses wood left over from construction sites and sometimes buys it as well, at a cost of one dollar for about three “rajas” or axe-cut tree branches.
Tortillas are round flat bread made from corn dough, which are baked on metal plates generally heated with the flame from liquefied gas.
But Menjívar does not use gas to cook the 68 kg of corn she uses daily to run her business, as she can’t afford it.
“That’s why we prefer firewood. We don’t like it, first of all because of the damage to our health, and also because our clothes are impregnated with the smell of smoke and the walls of the house too, they look dirty,” Menjívar, 58, told IPS.
“We do it to save on the cost, which would be very high, and we wouldn’t make any profit,” she added, while behind her the 68 kg of corn for the day rattled in a boiling pot, black from the wood smoke.
Tortillas are part of the staple diet of the Salvadoran population. Most households cook their food on gas stoves, but they don’t make their own tortillas, because it is a complex and time-consuming process.
That is why so many women, like Menjívar, go into the tortilla business to meet the high level of demand, cooking the corn on wood stoves, usually located in the open air in their courtyards.
But during the May to November rainy season, they cook the corn inside the house, in a back room.
Because of the amount of corn and the size of the pot, the improvised wood stove made of wood and a metal structure has to be set on the floor.
The tortilla business has shrunk, she added, due to the increase in the cost of corn, which climbed from 15 dollars per quintal (45 kg) to 32 dollars.
“With this business we earn enough to buy our food and other basic things, but not for other expenses,” she said.
One of Ana Margarita Ramos’ two sons, in El Zapote, a coastal settlement in southern El Salvador, stands near the firewood that is always on hand in case they can’t afford to buy liquefied gas. About 13 percent of rural Salvadoran households cook with firewood, which poses serious health risks. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS
Chronic bronchitis and pneumonia
Menjívar said that she fell ill with pneumonia in 2022, and she did not rule out that the cause could have been precisely the smoke she has been inhaling for decades, although she pointed out that the doctors who treated her did not inquire about it.
“Since I was a little girl I have been exposed to smoke, because my mother also used to make tortillas using firewood,” she said. “When she couldn’t find dry branches, my mom would burn anything: old shoes, old clothes or paper.”
When she got pneumonia, she had to stop working for three months, and she had to leave the business in the hands of her teenage daughter.
Burning firewood releases toxic gases and polluting particles that end up causing ailments that in medical terminology are grouped together as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pulmonologist Carmen Elena Choto told IPS. These gases include carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide.
“We also see other harmful particles, there may even be hydrocarbons, because they not only burn wood, but also dry cow dung, corncobs, paper, anything to make the fire,” said the expert.
Damage to the bronchi, or chronic bronchitis, and to the alveoli in the lungs, or pulmonary emphysema, are some of the diseases associated with exposure to smoke, including tobacco smoke, she added.
“Due to the burning of biomass (firewood and other products), the most frequent disease is chronic bronchitis,” said Choto, and older women are the main victims.
People with bronchitis have a constant cough “or wheezing or shortness of breath because there is obstruction due to mucus plugs in the airway,” she said.
Patients, she added, feel tired and suffer from dyspnea or shortness of breath from low oxygen levels, which in severe cases requires hospital care.
Menjívar began to feel these symptoms after spending years making tortillas.
“I felt very tired, I suffered from hot flashes, I was short of breath, I felt like I was having a hard time breathing,” she said.
After she was diagnosed with pneumonia, Menjívar stopped working for three months.
“That’s why I try to stay farther away from the smoke now,” she said. “But the smoke spreads through the house.”
For her part, Ramos, in her coastal village, has put her stove in the yard outdoors, to reduce exposure to smoke. She worries that she could suffer from asthma, like her sister.
A resident of the coastal hamlet of El Salamar, in the municipality of San Luis La Herradura in southern El Salvador, cooks pasta for lasagna on an ecological stove called a “rocket”, which is much more efficient in producing heat and emits less smoke. This kind of stove has been used for decades in rural communities in the country, with good results in alleviating the health risks posed by wood stoves. But they have not become widespread, due to a lack of government investment and campaigns to encourage their use. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS
Eco-stoves, an alternative
One possible answer to reduce exposure to smoke, especially in rural areas, is the spread of eco-stoves, which due to their combustion mechanism are more efficient in producing energy and release less smoke.
These stoves have been around for decades in developing countries, including El Salvador, but they have not yet become widespread enough to make a difference, at least in this country.
There are socio-cultural aspects that hinder the expansion of the stoves and lead to the continued use of wood-burning stoves, environmentalist Ricardo Navarro, of the Salvadoran Center for Appropriate Technology, a local affiliate of the international organization Friends of the Earth, told IPS.
For example, he mentioned the practice by small farmers of placing corn or beans on bamboo or wooden platforms on top of wood stoves, so that the smoke prevents insects from eating the food.
“The problem is that sometimes we approach the issue as an energy or health problem, without considering these socio-cultural aspects,” Navarro said.
While cooking on one side of her wooden tin-roofed house, Mercedes Marcahuachi describes her long day’s work to meet the needs of her household and of the soup kitchen where she serves 150 daily rations at the low price of 80 cents of a dollar, in one of the settlements of Ventanilla, a “dormitory town” of Lima, the Peruvian capital. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS
by Mariela Jara (callao, peru)
Inter Press Service
CALLAO, Peru, Jul 03 (IPS) – At five in the morning, when fog covers the streets and the cold pinches hard, Mercedes Marcahuachi is already on her feet ready to go to work in Pachacútec, the most populated area of the municipality of Ventanilla, in the province of Callao, known for being home to Peru’s largest seaport.
“If I don’t get up that early, I don’t have enough time to get everything done,” the 55-year-old woman tells IPS as she shows us the area of her home where she runs a soup kitchen that she opened in 2020 to help feed her community during the COVID pandemic and that she continues to run due to the stiffening of the country’s economic crisis.
Emerging as a special low-income housing project in the late 1980s, it was not until 2000 that the population of Pachacútec began to explode when around 7,000 families in extreme poverty who had occupied privately-owned land on the south side of Lima were transferred here by the then government of Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000).
The impoverished neighborhood is mainly inhabited by people from other parts of the country who have come to the capital seeking opportunities. Covering 531 hectares of sandy land, it is home to some 180,000 people, about half of the more than 390,000 people in the district of Ventanilla, and 15 percent of the population of Callao, estimated at 1.2 million in 2022.
Marcahuachi arrived here at the age of 22 with the dream of a roof of her own. She had left her family home in Yurimaguas, in the Amazon rainforest region of Loreto, to work and become independent. And she hasn’t stopped working since.
She now has her own home, made of wood, and every piece of wall, ceiling and floor is the result of her hard work. She has two rooms for herself and her 18-year-old son, a bathroom, a living room and a kitchen.
“I’m a single mother, I’ve worked hard to achieve what we have. Now I would like to be able to save up so that my son can apply to the police force, he can have a job and with that we will make ends meet,” she says.
Marcahuachi worked for years as a saleswoman in a clothing store in downtown Lima, adjacent to Callao, and then in Ventanilla until she retired. Three years ago, she created the Emmanuel Soup Kitchen, for which the Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion provides her with non-perishable food.
Pachacútec, a poor settlement in the port municipality of Ventanilla, has 180,000 inhabitants from different regions of the country and districts of Lima, the Peruvian capital. The conditions of poverty and precariousness increase caregiving work, typically associated with women due to gender stereotypes. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS
The community soup kitchen operates at one end of the courtyard that surrounds her house and offers 150 daily food rations at the subsidized price of three soles (80 cents of a dollar), which she uses to buy vegetables, meat and other products used in the meals.
Marcahuachi feels good that she can help the poorest families in her community. “I don’t earn a penny from what I do, but I am happy to support my people,” she says.
Her daily routine includes running her own home as well as ensuring the 150 daily food rations in the Emmanuel settlement where she lives, one of 143 neighborhoods in Pachacútec.
Various studies, including the World Bank’s “Rising Strong: Peru Poverty and Equity Assessment”, have found that poverty in Peru is mostly urban, contrary to most Latin American countries, a trend that began in 2013 and was accentuated by the pandemic.
By 2022, although the national economy had rallied, the quality of employment and household income had declined.
Mercedes Marcahuachi is a resident of Pachacútec, a large area in the province of Callao on Peru’s central coast characterized by poverty and inequality. During the pandemic she set up a soup kitchen in her home, to feed the poorest local residents in her neighborhood, which is called Emmanuel. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS
In Pachacútec, in the extreme north of Callao, the hardship is felt on a daily basis.
Only the two main streets are paved, while the countless steep lanes lined with homes are stony or sandy. Cleaning is constant, as dust seeps through the cracks in the wooden walls and corrugated tin-sheet roofs.
In addition, food and other basic goods stores are far away, so it is necessary to take public transportation there and back, which makes daily life more expensive and complicated.
But these are unavoidable responsibilities for women, who because of their stereotypical gender roles are in charge of care work: cleaning, washing, grocery shopping, cooking, and caring for children and adults with disabilities or the elderly.
This is the case of Julia Quispe, who at the age of 72 is responsible for a number of tasks, such as cooking every day for her family, which includes her husband, her daughter who works, and her four grandchildren who go to school.
Julia Quispe, 72, continues to care for and feed her family, including making the long trip to the market to shop and feed her husband, daughter and grandchildren. She does so at the cost of her own poor health. But this resident of Pachacútec, a poor area near Lima, the Peruvian capital, responds that she has “never worked”, when asked. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS
She tells IPS that she has uterine prolapse, that she is not feeling well, but that she has stopped going to the hospital because for one reason or another they don’t actually provide her with the solution she needs.
Despite her health problems, she does the shopping every day at the market, as well as the cooking and cleaning, and she takes care of her grandchildren and her husband, who because of a fall, suffers from a back injury that makes it difficult for him to move around.
“When we came here in 2000 there was no water or sewage, life was very difficult,” she says. “My children were young, my women neighbors and I helped each other to get ahead. Now we are doing better luckily, but I can’t use the transportation to get to the market; I can’t afford the ticket, so I save by walking and on the way back I take the bus because I can’t carry everything, it’s too heavy.”
But when it comes to talking about herself, Quispe says she never worked, that she has only dedicated herself to her home, replicating the view of a large part of society that does not value the role of women in the family: feeding, cleaning the house, raising children and grandchildren, providing a healthy environment, which includes tasks to improve the neighborhood for the entire community.
Moreover, in conditions of poverty and precariousness, such as those of Pachacútec, these tasks are a strenuous responsibility at the expense of their own well-being.
The steep streets of Pachacútec are sandy or stony, which means there is constant dust in the homes, and women have to spend more hours cleaning in this densely populated settlement of Ventanilla, a coastal municipality neighboring Lima. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS
Recognizing women’s care work
“Poor urban women have come from other regions and have invested much of their time and work in building their own homes, caring for their children and weaving community, a sense of neighborhood. They have less access to education, they earn low wages and have no social coverage or breaks, so they are also time poor,” Rosa Guillén, a sociologist with the non-governmental Gender and Economics Group, tells IPS.
“For years, they have taken care of their families, their communities, they do productive work, but it is a very slow and difficult process for them to pull out of poverty because of inequalities associated with their gender,” she says.
She adds that “even so, they plan their families, they invest the little they earn in educating their children, fixing up their homes, buying sheets and mattresses; they are always thinking about saving up money for the children to study during school vacations.”
From the focus of the approach of feminist economics, she argues that it is necessary for governments to value the importance of the work involved in caregiving, in taking care of people, families, communities and the environment for the progress of society and to face climate change, investing in education, health, good jobs and real possibilities for retirement.
“Living here makes you feel like crying but what would that get me, I just have to get over it,” Ormecinda Mestanza, a resident of Pachacútec since 2004, tells IPS. She commutes daily to the Peruvian capital of Lima to work and earn a living, in trips that take between two and three hours. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS
Ormecinda Mestanza, 57, has lived in Pachacútec for nine years. She bought the land she lives on but does not have the title deed; a constant source of worry, because besides having to work every day just to get by, she has to fit in the time to follow up on the paperwork to keep her property.
“It makes you want to cry, but I have to get over it, because this little that you see is all I have and therefore is the most precious thing to me,” she tells IPS inside her wooden shack with a corrugated tin roof.
Everything is clean and tidy, but she knows that this won’t last long because of the amount of dust that will soon cover her floor and her belongings, which she will just have to clean over again.
She works in Lima, as a cleaner in a home and as a kitchen helper in a restaurant, on alternate days. She gets to her jobs by taking two or three public transportation buses and subway trains, and it takes her two to three hours to get there, depending on the traffic.
“I get up at five in the morning to get ready and have breakfast and I get to work late and they scold me. ‘Why do you come so far to work?’ they ask me, but it’s because the daily pay in Pachacútec is very low, 30 or 40 soles (10 to 12 dollars a day) and that’s not enough for me,” she says.
Wood and corrugated tin roofing are the materials used in most of the houses in Pachacútec, an area in the north of the province of Callao, adjacent to the capital of Lima, as is the case of the home of Ormecinda Mestanza, who constantly worries that when it rains her house will be flooded by leaks in her roof. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS
She managed to buy the land with the help of relatives. After working for a family as a domestic for 30 years, her employers moved abroad and she discovered that they had lied to her for decades, claiming to be making the payments towards her retirement pension. “I never thought I would get to this age in these conditions, but I don’t want to bother my son, who has his own worries,” she says.
And among the parts of the country with a poverty rate above 40 percent is Callao, a small, densely populated territory that is a province but has a special legal status on the central coast, bordered to the north and east by Lima, of which it forms part of its periphery.
The municipality of Ventanilla is known as a “dormitory town” because a large part of the population works in Lima or in the provincial capital, also called Callao. Because of the distance to their jobs, residents spend up to five or six hours a day commuting to and from work, so they basically only sleep in their homes on workdays, and very few hours at that.
Guillén says it is necessary to bring visibility to the workload of women and the fact that it is not valued, especially in poor outlying urban areas like Callao.
“We need a long-term policy immediately that guarantees equal education for girls and boys, and gives a boost to vocations, without gender distinctions, that are typically associated with women because they are focused on care,” says the expert.
She adds that if more equality is achieved, democracy and progress will be bolstered. “This way we will be able to take better care of ourselves as families, as society and as nature, which is our big house,” she remarks.
Eronildes da Silva proudly stands next to a bunch of bananas on his farm, whose large size is the result, he says, of the effective fertilizer of reusing waste water. In addition to farming, he drives a school bus and builds rainwater tanks in Afogados da Ingazeira, in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast region. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS
by Mario Osava (afogados da ingazeira, brasil)
Inter Press Service
“The rainwater tanks are the best invention in the world for us,” said Maria de Lourdes Feitosa, 46, who recalls the deadly droughts of the past in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast region.
“There has been a reduction of many diseases” that came from the so-called “barreros”, puddles and small ponds that are the result of the accumulation of water in muddy holes in the ground that people shared with animals, Feitosa, a farmer from a rural community in Afogados da Ingazeira, a municipality of 38,000 inhabitants, told IPS.
Feitosa owns a six-hectare farm and is less dependent on water than some of her neighbors because she produces agroecological cotton, which requires less water than horticultural and fruit crops.
Nearly 1.2 million tanks that collect 16,000 liters of potable rainwater from the roofs of homes now form part of the rural landscape of the semiarid ecoregion, an area that covers 1.1 million square kilometers and is home to 28 million of Brazil’s 214 million people, which extends throughout the interior of the Northeast and into the northern fringe of Brazil’s Southeast region.
The water tanks are a symbol of the transformation that the Northeast, the country’s poorest region, has been undergoing since the beginning of this century. During the longest drought in its history, from 2011 to 2018, there was no repeat of previous tragedies of deaths, mass exodus of people to the south and the looting of businesses by desperate people, as seen in the 1980s and 1990s.
According to the Articulação Semiárido Brasileiro (ASA), a network of 3,000 social organizations that created the program, adopted as public policy by the government in 2003, some 350,000 families are still in need of water tanks.
This 16,000-liter concrete slab tank stores rainwater collected on the roof and uses pipes to provide drinking water for Josaída Nunes and Eronildes Silva, in the Sertão de Pajeú, in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS
Another battle is to increase fourfold the more than 200,000 “technologies” for collecting water for production, or “second water”, which already benefit family farming and are decisive for food security and poverty reduction in the region.
Reusing household water
Josaida Nunes da Silva, 38, and her husband Eronildes da Silva, 41, resort to reusing water from the bathroom and kitchen in their home, faced with shortages aggravated by the altitude of the hill they live on in Carnaiba, a municipality of 20,000 people bordering Afogados da Ingazeira.
A complex of pipes carries the wastewater to the so-called “fat box” and then to the Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket (UASB) reactor and a tank for “polishing”, exposed to the sun, and another for the water ready for irrigation.
This system filters contaminating components, such as fecal coliforms (bacteria), and prepares the water with fertilizers for irrigation of the fields and fruit trees. “We grow lettuce, onions, cilantro and other vegetables, as well as bananas, corn, cassava, papaya, guava, passion fruit and even dragon fruit,” said Nunes.
Dragon fruit comes from the cactus family, of Mexican and Central American origin, and has recently become popular in Brazil.
The large size of the banana bunch is “proof” of the fertilizer’s effectiveness, said Nunes’ husband, who adds cow dung. “The treated water is a blessing. Besides providing us with water, it gives us good fertilizer,” Nunes said.
A “stone tank” that takes advantage of holes in the rocks to store rainwater is one of the technologies used to coexist with the scarcity of rainfall in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast ecoregion. In the background can be seen the mountainous landscape of the Sertão de Pajeú, in northeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS
Her husband Silva is also a bricklayer and has built many water tanks in the region. He also drives school children from the rural area in an old van and keeps fodder for his ten cows in hermetically sealed plastic bags.
“The drought hit us hard. We had to bring water from the ‘barrero’ on the plain, up the mountain in the ox cart. We bought a cow, when she was still a calf, for 2500 reais and had to sell it for 500 reais (104 dollars),” lamented his wife.
The couple owns 8.5 hectares of land, a large property in the region where most farms are only a few hectares in size, the result of the frequent divisions between heirs of the large families of the past. But since the terrain is mountainous and rocky, the cultivable area is limited.
Nunes and Silva have three children, although only the youngest, 17, still lives with them.
Farmer Aluisio Braz (L) dries and threshes beans, accompanied by his wife, Joselita Ramos, on the terrace of their house that collects rainwater to fill the 52,000-liter tank at the back for agricultural irrigation on their farm in Carnaiba, in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS
Coexisting with semiarid conditions
The techniques that benefit family farmers so that they can “coexist with the semiarid conditions” and prosper have been disseminated in the municipalities of the Sertão de Pajeú by Diaconia, a social organization of Protestant churches.
Pajeú is the name of the river that crosses 17 municipalities, whose basin is home to 360,000 people. The mountains surrounding the territory include the headwaters of several streams and creeks, which dry up in the dry season, but ensure greater humidity compared to other areas of the semiarid Northeast.
Agroecology practices are one of the focuses of Diaconia, whose agricultural technician Adilson Viana has dedicated 20 of his 49 years to supporting farmers and who accompanied IPS on visits to families involved in the program.
A tank that collects 52,000 liters of rainwater for production is the treasure of Joselita Ramos, 49, and her husband Aluisio Braz, 55, on their two-hectare farm, also located in Carnaiba.
The UASB reactor is an important component in the system for reusing bath and kitchen water for family farming in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS
The rainwater falls on a concrete terrace on the ground that is about 200 square meters in size and is slightly inclined to fill the water tank. Braz uses it to dry and thresh string beans, which are typical of the Northeastern diet.
The couple grows fruit trees that Ramos uses to make pulp using mango, guava, acerola cherry (Malpighia emarginata) and a fruit native to the semiarid region, the umbu or Brazil plum (Spondias tuberosa), that comes from a small tree native to Northeast Brazil.
Ramos is taking a break from the activity “because it is not fruit season in the region and the energy to run the refrigerator is very expensive.” Another difficulty is that the city government’s payments for the pulp supplied to the schools have been delayed. “I only received a payment in November for sales from early last year,” she complained.
To boost the production of grains, such as beans and corn, as well as cassava, Braz grows them on his father’s four-hectare farm, about six kilometers from his own farm.
Ivan Lopes, an enterprising family farmer, shows a soursop plant that is highly productive thanks to irrigation with reused water and natural fertilizers, on his farm in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS
Agroecological productivity
An exceptional case of entrepreneurial vocation and availability of water is that of Ivan Lopes, 43, who together with his brother grows fruit, including bananas, pineapple, mango, grapes, avocado, passion fruit and many more, on nine hectares of land.
Water is pumped from a lagoon on the property to four reservoirs located at the higher elevations, which make gravity irrigation possible. That is why electricity is one of the farm’s biggest expenses. “I plan to install a solar power plant to save money,” Lopes told IPS.
Honey is another product they make. “The last harvest totaled 40 liters,” from dozens of hives distributed throughout the orchard. Sugarcane is grown for the sale of sugarcane juice in the cities.
The farm is also a kind of laboratory for the dissemination of organic tomato cultivation in greenhouses. “At the agroecological market in São José do Egito (a neighboring city of 34,000 people) people line up to buy my tomatoes, because they are known to be clean, pest-free and tasty,” Lopes said.
To achieve his high level of productivity, the farmer makes his own fertilizer from earthworm humus. The success he has experienced in farming prompted him to get rid of his 10 cows in order to focus on crops and beekeeping.
ROME, Jun 30 (IPS) – Get yourself a nice big pot full of water, dice some onions and throw in the meat of your fancy, followed by chopped tomatoes, tomato paste, dried okra powder, garden eggs and chilli peppers.
Leave the pot to boil and, when simmering, add some fish and locust-bean-and-chilli mix, grind in some fresh okra and give it another stir.
Toast some fonio in a saucepan until it’s warm, add some water, put on a lid and cook on a low heat for 20 minutes.
Leave the fonio to rest so it comes out nice and fluffy and serve with your stew.
Delicious and easy-peasy!
This recipe for soupu kanja with fonio was recently presented by celebrity chef Fatmata Binta to launch the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Global Chefs Challenge.
The aim of the online challenge is to show the multitude of ways fonio and the other cereals belonging to the millet family can be used in order to encourage people to put them back on the menu.
Millets, a diverse group of small-grained, dryland cereals, are an excellent source of fibre, antioxidants, proteins and minerals, including iron.
They are diverse in taste and gluten free, meaning they are safe for sufferers of celiac disease, and the residues from their harvests can be used as livestock feed.
Despite these virtues, demand for millets has declined in recent decades, with a knock-on effect for production, as other cereals have become widespread and dietary preferences have shifted.
The FAO is trying to reverse this trend as it sees millets as an ideal way for countries to increase food self-sufficiency and reduce reliance on imported cereal grains.
Millets can grow on arid lands with minimal inputs, they are resistant to drought and tolerant to crop diseases and pests, making them resilient to changes in climate.
Their ability to grow in poor, degraded soils can also provide land cover in arid areas, reducing soil degradation and supporting biodiversity.
So as agrifood systems face big challenges to feed an ever-growing global population, these cereals provide an affordable and nutritious option and a potentially precious resource to help small-scale farmers to adapt to the climate emergency.
“Fonio is not only nutritious and delicious, it can grow in tough climates and could help to end world hunger” said Binta.
“So enjoy my fonio recipe and I challenge you to share your millet recipe!”
A native of Sierra Leone, in 2022 Binta became the first African to win the Basque Culinary World Prize for chefs who improve society through gastronomy.
Now based in Accra, Ghana, she received the prize for her ‘Dine on a Mat’ pop-up restaurant initiative showcasing the culinary traditions of the Fulani people of West Africa.
“If you’ve been following my work, you’ll know that I’m very passionate about African gastronomy, highlighting underutilized ingredients, and most importantly, taking inspiration from women in rural areas,” said Binta, whose Fulani Kitchen Foundation helps women farmers grow fonio as a crop.
“I collaborated on a recipe with some beautiful women from a town called Kolda, in Senegal.
“I encourage you all to try millets, to try fonio, add it to your diet, and let’s keep this challenge going”.
Anyone can join the chefs in taking part in the challenge.
All you have to do is make a video of yourself preparing a millet dish, explaining the recipe, the type of millet being used and the nutritional benefits.
Then put the video on social media using @FAO and the hashtags #IYM2023 and #YearofMillets in the post.
The potential of millets to save livelihoods and lives is demonstrated by story of Pudi Soren, a 27-year-old woman from the eastern Indian state of Bihar.
Pudi recently started growing finger millet after initially receiving seeds from a project administered by the FAO’s International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources and implemented by an NGO called Public Advocacy Initiatives for Rights and Values in India.
This has proved vital as it is a crop that she can plant near her home when rain from monsoon season is insufficient.
“We have forgotten about some crops,” said Soren.
“When we were children, we saw crops such as finger millets too, but people stopped their cultivation for many years.
“My husband and I have a small piece of land, but we did not grow much previously, because we lacked the necessary resources.
“Three years ago, the project gave us seeds and encouraged us to do farming. Now I am proud to be a farmer.
“We can grow finger millet in the rice fallow season and summer, and they do not need fertilizers; some cow dung is sufficient.
“It is a good source of protein in our meals, and my children like the biscuits that I make with the flour.
“In the past, we bought oil, wheat and pulses from the market and spent 500 to 600 rupees every month.
“Our expenses have been halved since we started cultivating these crops. I use the money for the education of my children.
“There are problems that we face as smallholder farmers.
“Rainfall is reducing. And when there is little rainfall, like this year, irrigation becomes expensive. Thankfully, finger millets can be grown with less water.
“What I grow sustains my family, but in the future, I want to sell my surplus on the market”.
With the monsoon refugees in the cramped camps in Cox’s Bazar are expected to be impacted by an increase of dengue, which last year accounted for 1,283 cases in the Rohingya camps. Credit: Rafiqul Islam/IPS
by Rafiqul Islam (dhaka)
Inter Press Service
DHAKA, Jun 27 (IPS) – With the monsoon in Bangladesh, Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar have emerged as a dengue hotspot, with the mosquito-borne disease continuing to spread among the stateless refugees.
“A total of 1,066 dengue cases were reported in highly cramped refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar up to May 23 this year, while the case tally was only 426 among the local community there,” Dr Nazmul Islam, Director of Disease Control and Line of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), said.
However, the latest data of the DGHS revealed that 1,283 people were infected with and 26 people died of dengue in the Rohingya camps and surrounding host community in Ukhiya and Teknaf upazilas of Cox’s Bazar from January 1 to June 6, 2023.
Nazmul said the dengue infection rate is highest in the Rohingya camps.
“Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar have the highest number of dengue patients. Last year, over 17,000 dengue patients were identified there. The number of dengue patients is so high this year, too,” he said.
Official data showed that dengue cases increased significantly in 2022 when the monsoon started. Experts fear the dengue situation will be more acute in the Rohingya camps during the monsoon this year.
Bangladesh witnessed its largest influx of Rohingya refugees in 2017 following a military crackdown in the Rakhine State of Myanmar. According to UNHCR, about 7,73,972 Rohingya people entered the country as refugees, totaling nearly 10 million with the previous influxes.
The forcibly displaced Rohingyas took shelter in overcrowded makeshift camps where they lacked access to civic amenities, including education, food, clean water, and proper sanitation, and also face natural disasters and infectious disease transmission.
“Most refugees have no adequate access to clean water, sanitary facilities, or healthcare. The monsoon season also poses a huge threat to thousands of Rohingya families living in makeshift shelters as dengue outbreak emerges in camps during the period,” said Ro Arfat, a Rohingya refugee.
Nazmul said Rohingya refugees live in a limited space in the camps where there is not enough scope to runoff rainwater, so stagnant water creates an enabling environment for the breeding Aedes mosquito, carrier of the dengue virus.
He said the risk of dengue infections climbs in densely populated areas. With the monsoon, the dengue situation could turn dangerous in the refugee camps.
Dr Iqbal Kabir, Professor and Director at the Climate Change and Health Promotion Unit, the Ministry of Health, Bangladesh, said in recent years, environmental changes have been markedly observed throughout the globe, and there is no exception in Bangladesh.
“The nature of the Aedes mosquito is that it must bite five humans to suck blood as per its demand, and an Aedes mosquito lays more than 200 eggs a time. Once they get suitable humidity and temperature, mosquito breeding occurs,” Kabir said.
He observed that dengue spreads very fast, but the authorities have not controlled dengue infections in the highly-crowded refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar.
During the monsoon, Bangladesh experiences spikes in dengue outbreaks. In 2022, 17 refugees died from dengue infections in Rohingya camps.
Despite having a high dengue infection rate in the camps, lack of awareness about the virus and the absence of prompt diagnosis of the disease make the Rohingya refugees more vulnerable.
“An Aedes mosquito can infect many within seconds, and keeping densely populated refugee camps safe from mosquitoes is really difficult. So there is a high possibility of a severe outbreak in the refugee camps,” said Mahbubur Rahman, Civil Surgeon, and Chief Health Officer for Cox’s Bazar.
Urgent Action Needed
The burden of dengue is related to the changes in rainfall patterns. The rainfall pattern has been changed. Pre-monsoon erratic rainfall is linked with the increase of vectors.
Unusual rainfall occurred in Cox’s Bazar area earlier this year, triggering dengue outbreaks in the camps.
Kabir said the dengue national guideline should be revisited to check dengue outbreaks across the country, including Rohingya camps.
He suggested launching a crash programme to prevent dengue infections in Rohingya camps; if clustering could be ensured, it would be easy to deal with the dengue situation there.
Golam Rabbani, head of BRAC’s Climate Bridge Fund, said the Bangladesh government should initiate research and increase the authorities’ capacity to tackle any future outbreak of dengue in the country.
He says the Department of Public Health and the DGHS should identify dengue as one of the most climate-sensitive diseases and improve their disease profile, suggesting the government initiate investment and policy interventions to address the dengue in Bangladesh.
ECW Executive Director Yasmine Sherif launches the Multi-Year Resilience Programme in Yirol, South Sudan. The three-year programme, delivered by Save the Children, the Norwegian Refugee Council and Finn Church Aid, in close conjunction with the Ministry of General Education and Instruction and other partners, will reach at least 135,000 crisis-affected children and youth. Credit: ECW/Jiménez
by Joyce Chimbi (nairobi)
Inter Press Service
NAIROBI, Jun 24 (IPS) – South Sudan is experiencing one of the most severe crises in the world today, causing fragility, instability, and economic stagnation. While a peace agreement was reached in 2018, sporadic intercommunal violence and climate-induced disasters continue to spur displacement. More than 2.2 million people are internally displaced. Another 2.3 million have fled to neighboring countries as refugees.
“South Sudan ranks the lowest on the human development index. It is the poorest country in the world and will need to catch up across all sustainable development goals and especially in areas such as eliminating extreme poverty, improving the education system, and gender equality. Yet, before COVID-19, 2.8 million children, and adolescents, or 70 percent of school-aged children, were not attending school. The number is now closer to 3 million,” ECW’s Executive Director Yasmine Sherif told IPS.
Sherif was on a field mission to South Sudan, where she met the President of South Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardit, and Awut Deng Acuil, South Sudan’s Minister of General Education and Instruction, to assist immediate solutions to the education crisis in a country where only 13 percent of children transition to secondary school. For them, education and conflict are two sides of the same coin. Their joint mission is to ensure no child is left behind, especially in hard-to-reach areas such as Pibor and Abyei.
“Years of conflict and forced displacement, compounded by climate-induced disasters, have taken a heavy toll on South Sudan’s next generation. Now is the time to turn the tide and provide the most vulnerable girls and boys with the protection and hope that only a quality education offers. By working together with the Government, donors, civil society, and across the United Nations, this is the single best investment we can make for the future of this young country and the entire region,” said Sherif when she met with Ministry officials in Lakes State.
At least 135,000 children will benefit from the ECW’s Multi-Year Resilience Programme in South Sudan. Credit: ECW/Jiménez
ECW is the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises and has supported South Sudan with multi-year investment since 2020. To address these interconnected crises through the transformative power of education, President Kiir and Sherif announced USD 40 million in catalytic grant funding in a function attended by key stakeholders, including the governor of Lakes State, education officials, parents, and children.
From the Lakes State, the fund has launched its second and the largest ever multi-year investment amounting to USD 75 million and has secured two-thirds of that amount, which is USD 50 million. Of this, ECW contributed USD 40 million. The Global Partnership for Education provided another USD 10 million for Education. In addition to the new multi-year investment, ECW also announced a half-a-million dollar First Emergency Response grant to support the immediate education response to the arrivals of refugees and returnees fleeing Sudan.
“We appeal to government donors and the private sector to close the remaining gap of one-third, equivalent to USD 25 million, to fully fund a multi-year investment education program. We say five for five to fully fund the multi-year investment. If five strategic donor partners and private sector (partners) offered five million dollars each, we would have a fully funded multi-year resilience program in the education sector,” she says.
ECW funding in South Sudan now tops USD 72 million, up from the fund’s USD 32 million invested to date – reaching close to 140,000 children, built or rehabilitated over 160 classrooms and temporary learning spaces, and provided learning materials to 50,000 children thus far.
With the extended response multi-year response, children will continue to enjoy a quality, safe, inclusive education. Sherif says there is a special focus on children with disability, especially those with cognitive disabilities, an invisible problem that often goes unrecognized among children in developing countries.
Further stressing that the President and education ministries are fully committed to bringing girls back to school through progressive messaging to the community, policy, and law. The push to keep girls in school and out of reach of child marriages and early child pregnancies is unrelenting.
“The Government of South Sudan is fully committed to ensuring that all children are able to obtain a quality education. Education Cannot Wait’s top-up investment will provide life-saving educational opportunities for tens of thousands of crisis-affected girls and boys across the country,” said President Salva Kiir Mayardit.
“To advance this work, we are calling on world leaders to step up funding for ECW and its in-country partners. This is a critical investment in sustainable development, peace, and prosperity for the people of South Sudan and crisis-impacted children worldwide.”
Closer home, the current conflict in Sudan is fuelling additional needs in South Sudan. More than 100,000 people have crossed the border in recent weeks. Cornered by unrelenting multiple challenges, options for a better future shrink with every new challenge. Unmitigated, an entire generation of children could miss out on lifelong learning and earning opportunities.
“In light of the unfolding Sudan crisis, we will allocate and make an announcement of half a million dollars to support the Government of South Sudan to provide education to arrivals and returnees fleeing the Sudan conflict. Children and adolescents who were already going to school will continue to do so uninterrupted, have school meals, and psychosocial and mental health support,” Sherif said.
The new funding will extend ECW’s Multi-Year Resilience Programme in South Sudan for another three years. The three-year programme will be delivered by Save the Children, the Norwegian Refugee Council, and Finn Church Aid, in conjunction with the Ministry of General Education and Instruction and other partners.
It will reach at least 135,000 crisis-affected children and youth – including refugees, returnees, and host-community children – with holistic education supports that improve access to school, ensure quality learning, enhance inclusivity for girls and children with disabilities, and build resilience to future shocks.
Importantly, the new multi-year programme will improve responsiveness and resilience through improved evidence-based decision-making, strengthen coordination and meaningful engagement with local actors, and scale-up resource mobilization.
As the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, ECW collaborates closely with governments, public and private donors, UN agencies, civil society organizations, and other humanitarian and development aid actors to increase efficiencies and end siloed responses.
ECW and its strategic partners are assessing the impacts of the civil war in Sudan on neighboring countries, including the Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, and South Sudan, to provide agile and responsive investments that return crisis-impacted girls and boys to the safety and protection of quality learning environments. The fund urgently appeals to public and private sector donors for expanded support to reach more vulnerable children and youth.
