May 23, 2013

USAID Administrator Raj Shah unveiled the agencies first ever water and development strategy.

Civil society groups are expressing excitement over the scope and strength of the new strategy, dubbing it a “major advance.”

But many are also calling on lawmakers to ensure that, during the coming implementation phase, US aid is targeted primarily at the poorest communities in developing and middle-income countries.

“Achieving water security for regions, nations, and individuals is one of the greatest development challenges confronting the world today,” the new Water and Development Strategy, released on Tuesday by USAID, the country’s main foreign aid arm, states.

“By its nature, as a basic and essential resource, water considerations cut across nearly every aspect of USAID programming.”

Yet because of this cross-cutting nature, the new document covers both the human and agricultural uses of water, the new strategy was a very long time coming, requiring input and agreement from a vast number of government agencies and stakeholders.

“It is kind of astounding that this is the US government’s first such strategy, though it is something that many groups have long been advocating for,” Alanna Imbach, media officer with WaterAid America, a global advocacy and implementing group, told IPS.

“For many years in development work, water, sanitation and hygiene have been a bit forgotten. Instead, significant focus has been placed on education, maternal health and nutrition, overlooking the fact that water and sanitation are foundational building blocks for all of those other elements. So it’s now urgent that we get this right first and then the others will fall into place.”

Indeed, the ongoing impact of these issues remains incredibly wide. In developing countries, some 5,000 children are estimated to die every day from water-borne diseases, overwhelmingly from diarrhea due to bad drinking water, poor sanitation and inadequate hygiene.

Every year, around 2.5 billion such cases are recorded among young children alone, and the knock-on effects are vast.

“We know that every dollar we invest in clean water and basic sanitation yields eight dollars in benefits,” Dick Durbin, a US senator who has championed related legislation, said on Tuesday at the public unveiling of the new strategy. “People are healthier, kids stay in school, food is safer, AIDS drugs and other critical health treatments are able to work.”

In fact, international recognition of this centrality has led to some initial global success: the Millennium Development Goal to halve the proportion of those without access to clean drinking water was met in 2010, five years early.

Yet another MDG to similarly cut the number of those without access to basic sanitation remains outstanding, and the United Nations says the world will not likely achieve this goal by 2015.

According to USAID, some 40 percent of the world continues to use unsafe toilets, when they have toilets at all.

Advocates say it is critical that the new USAID strategy will attempt simultaneously to tackle both water and sanitation-related issues.

Setting out a plan for the next five years, the aim is to provide at least 10 million people with “sustainable access” to an improved water supply and six million people with access to improved sanitation during that period.

Notably, the plan puts into action new USAID guidance to emphasize local ownership and sustainability of US-funded aid projects, while offering greatly expanded flexibility on how that funding is to be used.

“What’s great about this strategy is that it opens up space for creative programming in water development,” Ned Breslin, chief of Water For People, a humanitarian group, told IPS.”It’s a huge step forward.”

May 22, 2013

A new UN report finds that AIDS-related deaths are declining in Africa and the number of people receiving AIDS treatment is going up. From VOA:

The report from the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS says the number of people in Africa who receive anti-retroviral drugs increased from less than 1 million in 2005 to more than 7 million last year.

It says AIDS-related deaths fell by nearly a third during that same period, and that new HIV infections are also falling.

Many African countries have taken steps over the past decade to ensure that at least some of their HIV patients have access to treatment.

The report, released Tuesday, notes that Africa continues to be affected by HIV more than any other region in the world. It says the continent accounts for nearly 70 percent of people living with the virus worldwide.

It also notes that in 2011, there were still 1.8 million new HIV infections in Africa, and 1.2 million people died of AIDS-related illnesses.

May 21, 2013

A new study from the Guttmacher Institute finds that modern contraceptives are lagging in developing countries. From VOA:

Guttmacher says between 2003 and 2012 the number of women wanting to avoid pregnancy – and in need of modern contraception – rose from 716 million to 867 million. The sharpest increase was seen, it says, in the 69 poorest countries “where modern method use was already very low.”

Senior fellow Jacqueline Darroch co-authored the study with Susheela Singh and published their findings in a special edition of The Lancet medical journal. Darroch said that the figures are based on household surveys.

“The Guttmacher Institute for a long time has focused on issues of reproductive health and especially the high rates of unplanned child bearing and unplanned pregnancies across the world – the United States, as well as other countries. And part of the answer to both why we have such high rates of unintended pregnancy – and part of the solution – has to do with contraceptive use.”

She said between 2003 and 2012, overall modern contraceptive use in the developing world increased from 71 to 74 percent among women wanting to avoid pregnancy.

“Methods ranging from condoms to pills, implants, injections, IUD’s, sterilization,” Darroch said.

However, rates can vary across sub-regions. For example, Eastern Africa rose from 31 to 46 percent; Southern Africa from 75 to 83 percent; Southeast Asia increased from 64 to 72 percent; and South America from 73 to 79 percent.

However, there was virtually no increase reported in mid and western African countries. Darroch said that has consequences.

“Couples are having children more than they want to. They are having what we call unintended births – births, that they tells us in surveys, that they either wanted later or they didn’t want to have at all. So there’s difficulty controlling fertility.”

Some couples, she said, are turning to induced abortions in unsafe conditions that can lead to maiming or death.

“The timing and the number of children and how you control that affects women’s health by preventing pregnancies when they’re most risky – when women are very young or older – by preventing the deaths and disability from pregnancy itself, as well as for newborns. In today’s societies, smaller families tend to do better off economically in terms of the resources that families are able to use for their children.”