Briefs
FrontLines - October 2009
Childbirth Deaths Exceed 2 Million Worldwide
More than 2 million babies and mothers die worldwide each year from childbirth complications, outnumbering child deaths from malaria and HIV/AIDS, the Associated Press reported from South Africa Oct. 6.
According to a study released in early October, 1.02 million babies are stillborn and another 904,000 die soon after birth. By comparison, 820,000 children die from malaria and 208,000 die from HIV/AIDS worldwide.
About 42 percent of the world’s 536,000 maternal deaths also occur during childbirth, according to the study. Deaths in Africa and South Asia account for three-quarters of the maternal and infant deaths.
The research was led by Save the Children, the Gates Foundation, and Johns Hopkins University with investigators from a dozen countries. It was published in the October journal of the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics.
Poverty is one of the main causes of these deaths. In wealthier countries, most women give birth with a skilled attendant, while in poor countries, few women do so.
Bolivia, Venezuela Anti-drug Measures Come Up Short
WASHINGTON—Burma, Bolivia, and Venezuela failed to meet international anti-drug measures, which could result in sanctions, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Sept. 16.
"Bolivia, Burma, and Venezuela, ‘failed demonstrably’
during the last 12 months to adhere to international counternarcotic
agreements and take counternarcotic measures set forth in U.S. law," said Kelly in a statement. President Obama, however, issued a national interest waiver for Bolivia and Venezuela, so some aid programs can "continue to support specific programs to benefit the Bolivian and Venezuelan people," Kelly said.
The announcement was part of the annual U.S. certification of countries that are actively participating
in the effort to crack down on the illegal narcotics trade.
Some 20 countries were identified as major drug-transit or drug-producing countries in the annual report, according to Agence France Presse.
The three countries decertified this month were also decertified in 2008, during the presidency of George W. Bush.
U.S. funds "will continue to support" civil society and small community development programs
in Venezuela, while the waiver will allow for "continued support for agricultural development,
exchange programs, small enterprise development, and police training programs" in Bolivia, AFP reported.
Somali Refugees
Fill Camps
NAIROBI, Kenya—Hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees are jammed into camps that are "barely fit for humans," with poor sanitation and little access to water and medicine, the British aid agency Oxfam said Sept. 3, the Associated Press reported. The camps are in Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia.
More than half of the Somali population—3.8 million people—need humanitarian aid, according to the United Nations.
The Dadaab complex in Kenya—the largest refugee camp in the world—is home to more than 280,000 people in an area meant to hold 90,000. Oxfam said that in the Somali town of Afgoye near the bullet-scarred capital, 485,000 people are taking shelter on a 9-mile strip of land.
Zimbabwe Food Crisis Looms
Food stocks in most rural households in Zimbabwe will be depleted by early October, warned USAID’s Famine Early Warning Systems Network, or FEWSNET, Sept 1.
The impending food shortages
are due to poor harvests and limited access to hard currency among rural dwellers to buy maize meal and other Zimbabwean staple foods, the Voice of America reported, citing
USAID reports.
FEWSNET said the situation in the cities is better because food imports have risen this year, a situation likely to continue
through the end of 2009.
Forbes Matonga, national director of Christian Care, a main distribution agent for the U.N. World Food Program, told Zimbabwe’s Studio 7 weekly news program that food aid is likely to be reduced from last year’s levels due to insufficient donor support and poor data on need, adding that he sees more problems than FEWSNET in urban zones.
Israel, USAID, Ethiopia Launch Agriculture Project
Ethiopia’s Daily Monitor reported Sept. 2 that Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Israel Avigdor Liberman was to pay a two-day official visit to Ethiopia that week, according to the Embassy of Israel in Ethiopia.
Liberman was to meet with Ethiopian officials to sign cooperation
agreements between Israel and Ethiopia, the embassy said in a statement. In addition, Liberman was also expected to take part in the official inauguration ceremony of the Butajira Center of Excellence for Horticulture, a tripartite center for propagation of tropical fruits and vegetables established by the minister of agriculture and rural development, USAID, and Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation.
USAID Supporting Displaced in
Sri Lanka
The U.S. government has provided approximately $57 million
for humanitarian assistance to Sri Lanka in 2009, the Voice of America reported Sept. 1.
The sum includes $42 million
in emergency food aid and over $11 million in emergency non-food relief to agencies such as the U.N. High Commissioner
for Refugees and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
USAID has provided the majority of this aid to help Sri Lankans who fled the conflict in the North. The aid includes food, medical care, individual hygiene and baby kits, emergency
health response kits filled with bandages and medicines, and health outreach programs. Additionally, some funds will be used to build sanitation and bathing facilities as well as temporary
shelters, and to pay for emergency transportation.
Study Says U.S. Should Lead in Monitoring Animal Diseases
A USAID-funded study by a panel set up by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council recommends that the U.S. take the lead in a global effort to protect people from new outbreaks of deadly infectious diseases that originate in animals such as the H1N1 flu virus, AIDS, and SARS.
The panel noted that air travel, climate change, population growth, and rising demand for meat products from developing countries have accelerated the spread of "zoonotic" diseases.
"At the moment, it’s like a wildfire," said Dr. Gerald Keusch of Boston University, who helped lead the group that wrote the report. "We deal with it as an emergency. It costs huge amounts of resources. It would be a lot cheaper and cost-effective
to have a system in place.
The Ottowan Citizen reported that the panel called for a sustainable, integrated surveillance
system to monitor animal and human populations worldwide
and for moving quickly to contain new outbreaks.
Such a system could have provided early detection for the H1N1 virus, which became a pandemic weeks after it emerged in North America in March, said the panel’s other co-chair, Marguerite Pappaioanou of the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges.
From news reports and other sources.
★
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