Archive for category: Health

Information and stories on health topics.

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Clean Water From a Box

As of 2005, one in six people are without access to clean water. Perhaps they spend a huge fraction of their income to gain access to a truck that distributes clean water to them, which, ultimately, might not even be clean. They might simply drink available water that holds dangerous bacteria, or that is laced with chemicals. Slightly less than 1 billion people wake up knowing that their first demand of the day is to find any source of water at all.

It isn’t as if water purification hasn’t been perfected in a number of other contexts. Drug companies purify water in huge quantities to produce medicine. The U.S. Navy found methods by which drinking water could be desalinated.

But both of these methods lack the level of portability needed to address the issue of water deprivation in impoverished regions. Methods like chlorine tablets exist, along with reverse osmosis plants. Yet problems of portability persist. It’s possible only some pollutants get purified, and others remain. Sometimes parts are too expensive to replace or are difficult to find.

The struggle with water purification for those in poverty has obviously been a long one, but it looks like the end might be in sight. It comes in the form of a plain-looking box, no larger than a mini refrigerator. Behind its design is a unique story, and its benefits have been a long time coming.

Dean Kamen has been working on what he calls the Slingshot for over 10 years. The inventor of the Segway, Kamen came to the project when Baxter International asked for his help. They had built a device to perform a procedure called peritoneal dialysis, which uses sterile saline to filter a patient’s blood. Kamen’s job was to refine and improve the machine.

It required huge amounts of purified water, or what amounted to multiple gallons a day for each patient. Kamen and his team turned to a simple scientific principle to solve their problem: they recycled the energy used when water evaporates. Now, Kamen has a device that he says can “take any input water, whether it’s got bioburden, organics, inorganics, chrome and… make pure water come out.” Kamen explains that the Slingshot could provide perfectly clean water using less power than a typical hairdryer.

Kamen’s last challenge is getting the Slingshot where it needs to go. Alongside Coca-Cola in October of 2012, Kamen announced plans with the company to bring the Slingshot to remote regions of Africa and Latin America. The partnership had already sent 15 of the machines to Ghana in 2011. Also involved in the process were the Inter-American Development Bank and Africare.

But Kamen has even bigger plans. His next project will work to reach even more people in need of clean water with his energy-efficient Stirling generator, solving the lack of electricity that could inhibit the use of the Slingshot. In the near future, Kamen has made it quite possible that millions of people will no longer face water insecurity.

— Rachel Davis

Sources: Popular Science, HowStuffWorks, Coca-Cola
Photo: Business Week

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END7 Diseases by 2020

END7
END7, an international advocacy campaign, aims to end seven neglected tropical diseases (NTDS) by 2020. It is currently raising awareness of the seven most common NTDs, and the easy and cheap resources available to eliminate them.

Cheap is not an understatement — it takes only 50 cents to treat and protect one person against all seven NTDS.

While 2020 may seem like an overly optimistic date to have eliminated seven diseases, treatments for all NTDs exist — it’s just a matter of getting them to those in need. The seven diseases include Hookworm, Roundworm, Whipworm, Elephantiasis, Trachoma, River Blindness and Snail Fever.

Nearly one in six people worldwide, including over half a billion children, have these diseases living and breeding inside their bodies. The effects of these diseases can be devastating, causing blindness, massive swelling in limbs, severe malnutrition, pregnancy complications and anemia.

Apart from the horrific effects of NTDs, these diseases makes it increasingly difficult for affected families to lift themselves out of poverty. They prevent children from going to school.

In order to spread the word about their cause and the work being done to help victims of NTDs, END7 utilizes social media outlets, hoping to target young activists who will then share the word with others. The goal is to get the general public involved, not just doctors and health care professionals.

The campaign asks the community to donate to NTD prevention and treatment programs. These programs deliver the medications to schools and poor communities all over the globe.

How can it be so cheap? Drugs to treat NTDS are donated by pharmaceutical companies, allowing for the remaining cost to come only in distributing the drugs to those in need.

Bill Nighy, who provides a voice for many of the END7 videos, describes his astonishment in the opportunity at hand, stating, “I’m shocked by how much devastation these diseases cause. But what shocks me more is how simple the solution is.”

If pocket change can provide a cure for seven diseases, it seems that a cure in 2020 may not seem so far out of reach after all.

 — Caroline Logan

Sources: END7, TwitChange
Photo: Northeastern

Underwater Gold Mining Threatens Filipinos

Investigations spanning from the beginning of the year have surfaced a unique gold mining practice in the Philippines. However, the nature of the dangerous work has raised concerns over the lack of labor regulations and the safety of the workers, especially since children are involved.

The people of the coastal province of Camarines Norte, about 200 miles southeast of Manila, are practicing an underwater mining technique called “compressor mining.” It involves teams of miners who dig holes in shallow bay water to dig and sift for deposits of gold trapped in ore. One team member is the digger and spends two to three hours at a time below the surface of the murky water, handing buckets of mud up to another team member.

The buckets are then passed back to the final members who mix in mercury so that the gold will bind to it. Once they’ve maximized the gold-to-mercury ratio in the mixture, they squeeze it out so that it solidifies into an amalgam lump. The final step is to take a blowtorch to the lump so that the mercury evaporates, leaving gold to be collected.

The technique is called compressor mining because the worker under water breathes through a tube connected to a makeshift compressor. The compressor is often fashioned out of an empty beer keg and connected to a diesel motor that pumps air through the tube.

From start to finish, the technique poses a number of severe health and safety risks. The holes dug by the miners are unstable and any wrong move could cause a collapse, trapping the worker. Spending long hours in the water exposes entire teams to bacteria and parasites as well. There is also the issue of toxins entering the lungs regularly through breathing tubes and mercury fumes poisoning those extracting gold.

In interviews with the laborers, Richard Paddock of the Center for Investigative Reporting states that those he talked to were completely unaware of toxic exposure, and many were reluctant to believe him.

There are at least a few thousand people involved in the operation, and many of the teams are comprised of families with children as young as 5 years old. Since underwater miners make more money, 12 and 13-year-old boys and girls are attracted to the position in hopes of raising money to safeguard their future and their family’s future.

According to Thomson Reuters, in 2012, the Philippines was the 18th largest supplier of gold in the world. Yet, like in many developing nations, the retrieval of gold from deposits is dangerous work and workers have very little choice when they need to provide for themselves and their families. Even still, these Filipino gold miners only make $5 average per day, up to $20 on a good day, and sometimes go home with nothing.

There’s no way to track the supply of gold coming out of the Camarines Norte area; once it enters the world gold supply, it is impossible to trace.

 — Edward Heinrich

Sources: PRI, PBS, Pulitzer Center
Photo: Pulitzer Center

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Solving the Cambodian Toilet Crisis

A Southeast Asian organization has used simple economics to create an effective solution to the Cambodian toilet crisis.

The Ministry of Rural Development reports that 61.4 percent of rural Cambodian households lack toilets. Open defecation has been proven to cause diarrhea, malnutrition, stunted growth and negative impacts on a child’s cognitive development.

However, according to a water and sanitation report published by The World Bank, more than half of the Cambodian households that lack a latrine could, in actuality, afford one. With current awareness and subsidy campaigns, latrine coverage has been increasing by only 1.3 percent per year, which means it could take more than 60 years for Cambodia to be “Open Defecation Free.”

WaterSHED is a Phnom Penh-based organization, founded in 2010. This humanitarian team works on water and sanitation marketing in Southeast Asia. The founders of this agency discovered that building toilets in Cambodia was outlandishly expensive. The price to build and assemble a toilet was between $250 and $400, but with Cambodia’s GDP per capita at around $950, having a toilet has been traditionally reserved for the wealthy.

Using a supply and demand framework, WaterSHED toilet suppliers lower their prices, increase their volume and offer a complete package including toilet installation for only $45. Families can pay for these latrines with microfinance loans targeted only at the very poor.

With this new method WaterSHED has reported the sale of 75,000 toilets in 59 of Cambodia’s 171 districts. This rate of toilet installation increases the annual coverage rate up to 7 percent.

The impact of WaterSHED’s advocacy has seen visible results. IRIN, a humanitarian news agency affiliated with the U.N., interviewed citizens in the Kompong Speu Province. In this village of 160 families, around 100 have recently installed a new toilet. The families have already seen the health benefits of their new latrines, including less frequent fever and diarrhea.

The World Bank argues that making the elimination of open defecation a top priority for policy makers in Cambodia is crucial to the productivity of the next generation. With innovative programs like those implemented by WaterSHED, the future looks brighter for the youth of Cambodia.

— Grace Flaherty

Sources: IRIN News, World Bank
Photo: Flickr

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10 Facts About Malaria

It is well known that mosquitoes carry diseases. Even in developed nations like the U.S., there are yearly warnings of West Nile Virus and Eastern Equine Encephalitis, but no disease carried by mosquitoes is as widespread as malaria. The following 10 facts about malaria shed some light on the global malaria epidemic, what is being done about it and what the future holds.

 

Top 10 Facts About Malaria

 

1. The word “malaria” means “bad air.” In the 18th century people thought that malaria was caused from breathing in bad air in marshy areas. In 1880 scientists discovered that this was not true, but the name stuck.

2. Malaria is spread by parasites. Five different parasites can cause malaria in humans, but the Plasmodium falciparum parasite is the most deadly. The parasites enter the human bloodstream through the bite of an infected mosquito.

3. Malaria is most commonly found in Africa and parts of Southeast Asia. Mosquitoes thrive in tropical and subtropical climates, so countries that are near the equator are more at risk. Additionally, many African and Southeast Asian countries have high poverty rates and people do not have access to malaria prevention and treatment, or are not educated on the disease.

4. Malaria can pass from human to human. You cannot “catch” malaria like you can a cold, but people can pass it on by sharing needles, blood transfusions and through pregnancy.

5. When infected with malaria, symptoms can range from none to severe. It can take anywhere from 9-40 days for symptoms to appear. Early symptoms can include fever, nausea, vomiting, fatigue, chills, headache, muscle aches, cough and sweating. If not treated within 24 hours the disease can worsen, leading to seizures, impairment of brain and spinal cord function, loss of consciousness and death.

6. Malaria infects an average of 200 million people each year. Up to 1 million of these 200 million will die every year. Of malaria deaths, 90 percent occur in Africa. In Africa one child dies from malaria every minute.

7. There is a cure for malaria. There are different drug treatments available depending on the strain of malaria an individual is infected with. The drugs cure malaria by killing all of the parasites within a person’s bloodstream. However, new waves of drug-resistant malaria are threatening the lives of millions.

8. The best cure for malaria is prevention. There are two major ways that malaria is prevented. Insecticide-treated mosquito netting placed around beds is a good way to keep people safe while they sleep, and spraying a household with residual insecticide will effectively eliminate mosquitos in the house for three to six months.

9. Mortality rates are falling. Since 2000, malaria mortality rates have fallen by 42 percent globally. This is largely due to increased prevention and faster testing and treatment to those who are thought to have malaria. By 2015, 52 countries are expected to have reduced their number of malaria cases by 75 percent. In the past four years the countries of Morocco, United Arab Emirates, Turkmenistan and Armenia have been certified by the World Health Organization as having eliminated malaria.

10. There is a promising vaccine currently being tested. While there is currently no vaccine on the market to prevent against malaria, there is one being tested via clinical trial in seven African countries with positive results. Scientists feel very encouraged by this new treatment and the vaccine could be ready for full-time use as early as 2015.

These 10 facts on malaria depict the fact that although malaria is a curable and preventable illness, millions of people still contract it every year. Those who contract it mainly reside in poor countries where access to quality health care and education is more difficult to come by. If these people receive the proper education on malaria, as well as access to medications, then there would be no reason for anyone to be dying from this disease.

— Taylor Lovett

Sources: CDC, Medical News Today, WHO
Photo: Flickr

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Every Woman Every Child

Every Woman Every Child is working to save the lives of 16 million women and children by 2015. Focusing on addressing the major challenges facing women and children all over the globe, Every Woman Every Child works to enhance financing, strengthen policy and improve service on the ground for women and children in need.

Launched by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon during the United Nations Millennium Development Goals Summit in 2010, the initiative would mean saving the lives of 16 million women and children, preventing 33 million unwanted pregnancies, ending growth stunting in 88 million children and protecting 120 million children from pneumonia.

Improving the health of women and children is critical to nearly every area of human development and progress. Research shows that the health of women and children is the foundation of creating healthy societies.

According to Women and Health Alliance International, every year half a million women die during pregnancy or because of problems during childbirth. While the mother’s death is horrible enough in itself, the structure of the entire family is damaged to a point of collapse.

Economies cannot grow and social stability cannot increase without first building up public health services. The Every Woman Every Child initiative recognizes that all factors have an important contribution to make in the movement, from the private sector to civil society.

At the 2010 launch more than $40 billion was pledged to the cause. However, more help is necessary to reach the 2015 goal. The secretary-general is asking the international community for additional commitments not just fiscally, but in the form of policy and human service delivery on the ground.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described his enthusiasm for the project, stating,“Every Woman Every Child. This focus is long overdue. With the launch of the Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health, we have an opportunity to improve the health of hundreds of millions of women and children around the world, and in so doing to improve the lives of all people.”

— Caroline Logan

Sources: Every Woman Every Child, UN Foundation, WAHA
Photo: Peace and Security

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10 Facts About Poverty India

According to the World Bank, India is one of the poorest countries in the world. Some of the main issues responsible for widespread poverty in India are poor health services, child malnutrition and inadequate education and training. Almost half of India’s population drops out of school by the age of 13 and only one in 10 people receive some form of  job training.

 

Top 10 facts about Poverty in India

1. India is estimated to have one-third of the world’s poor.
2. In 2012, 37 percent of India’s 1.21 billion people fell below the international poverty line, which is $1.25 a day, according to the Indian Planning Commission.
3. According to 2010 World Bank data, India’s labor participation rate (for those individuals over the age of 15) totaled 55.6 percent; however, the percent of wage and salaried workers of those employed only equaled about 18.1 percent.
4. According to the World Health Organization, it is estimated that 98,000 people in India die from diarrhea each year. The lack of adequate sanitation, nutrition and safe water has significant negative health impacts.
5. Families can’t grow enough crops to feed themselves each year due to the lack of new farming techniques, difficult weather conditions, poor storage conditions, misuse of insecticides and lack of water.
6. A third of the world’s malnourished children live in India according to UNICEF, where “46 percent of all children below the age of three are too small for their age, 47 percent are underweight and at least 16 percent are wasted.”
7. India has the highest rate of child marriage in the world, where one in three girls become child brides. Many girls are married off at an early age, become servants or even prostitutes just to survive.
8. The poorest parts of India are Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal.
9. According to the World Bank, in 2009 an estimated 2.4 million were living with HIV/AIDS, with children (less than 15-years-old) accounting for 3.5 percent and 83 percent making up the age group 15-49 years. Around 39 percent of those infected were women.
10. Men are more than twice as likely as women to hold salaried jobs in the large and medium-sized towns that are increasingly important centers of economic life in the Indian countryside. As such, in 2013 women only earned 62 percent of a men’s salary for equal work.

However, it is possible to end poverty in India. The first step would be to help the poor create their own businesses so that they may develop their own incomes. The second step is to create jobs that would allow those in poverty to increase their incomes through wages or salaries. Lastly, selling products to those living in poverty would help them earn or save money.

 – Priscilla Rodarte

Sources: Huffington Post, The Telegraph, BBC, The Wall Street Journal, UNICEF 1, Inter Press Service News Agency, The World Bank 1, The World Bank 2, UNICEF 2, Catalyst, Rural Poverty Portal
Photo: U.N.

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Water NGOs that Make a Splash

In industrial nations with established water purification and sanitation systems, people often take their ability to turn on the tap and drink a glass of clean water for granted. The reality is that nearly 1 billion people around the world do not have access to clean water and this is a serious problem.

Eighty percent of disease in developing countries is due to bacteria, worms and other organisms found in the unclean water that one-eighth of the world uses. Water-borne diseases are one of the top killers of children under 5, causing one in five deaths worldwide. In addition, an estimated 433 million school days a year are lost to sickness, caring for the sick or fetching water, all of which further perpetuate the poverty cycle. Fortunately, water is a solvable problem.

With the work of dedicated and forceful water NGOs and local governments, clean water has the potential to reach everyone around the globe. Here are some organizations that do particularly effective work.

1. Charity: water

Charity: water was founded by Kevin Rose in 2006 as a way of putting some direction into his life. Its overall mission is to bring clean drinking water to rural areas of developing nations. Charity: water also recognizes that women in developing nations may have to walk miles to get water for their families, and that the water they bring back often has disease carrying organisms. With this in mind, Charity: water aims to build water purification and gathering systems in local communities so that clean water is readily available.

Charity: water achieves its goals by appealing to the local needs and skills. The organization fully funds, supports, trains and aids the target community in building sustainable, easy to run and simple to maintain water collection projects. In addition, Charity: water does extensive research on the target community to establish which project would be most effective for the locals’ needs. The organization then helps design plans and builds systems, including hand-dug or drilled wells, rainwater catchments and water purification systems. Charity: water gets clean water to needy communities by establishing a system for water collection, building it and teaching the locals to use it. The organization then monitors its success and maintenance. Charity:water has found great success, with thousands of projects in Africa alone, and others in Central and South America and South Asia.

2.  Global Water

Global Water is based off the understanding that a lack of access to clean drinking water is the cause of much of the world’s hunger, disease and poverty. Its goal is to build permanent and sustainable sanitation facilities and clean water access to promote health, knowledge and hygiene in developing nations.

Global Water takes several approaches to reach its goals, most of which rely extensively on partnerships with local NGOs and governments. The company realizes that it is most effective as a support for the local installation and implementation of programs rather than a group that parachutes in, builds a system on its own and leaves.

Therefore, Global Water works with local groups to design an effective project, provides equipment, expertise and assistance in the building process, and inspects and monitors the project. This significant partnership with local groups makes Global Water unique and its projects lasting and effective.

Global Water has been involved in successful well drilling projects in Africa, building everything from hand washing stations to spring catchments in Central America.

3. The Water Project

The Water Project aims for better water programs rather than a large number of unsatisfactory ones. The campaign believes that the local community should dictate what method is used to ensure that the program is enduring and life changing. As a result, The Water Project insists on taking community feedback every step of the way.

The Water Project has worked in Burkina Faso, Kenya, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Uganda. While this is a more limited range of regions than other organizations of similar type, The Water Project focuses on sustainability and success rather than creating a vast array of defunct programs, and a limited range supports this work model. On top of building structures like wells, sand dams and rainwater catchment devices, The Water Project also aims to educate the local community on water safety and hygiene.

In fact, education is a fundamental part of the organization. The Water Project process starts by teaching local people about how proper sanitation and hygiene relate to health. In addition, The Water Project focuses on getting the community involved by providing support for the project, either through labor, money, food for workers, etc. Then comes the installation of the project, during which The Water Project helps get permits and dig wells. Lastly, the company conducts a final education on the new system and proudly hands over a new water system and chance for a better life to the local community. Throughout the following years, The Water Project continues to monitor and maintain its projects to ensure their lasting success.

Overall, NGOs and campaigns that provide clean water to developing nations are often the same in their final product, like the wells and lavatories they install. But each has its unique outlook on the problem and its own reputation in local communities. Without the combined efforts of these organizations and more like them, water safety around the world would be an insurmountable challenge. But because of the success of companies like Charity: water and The Water Project, it is becoming more and more possible for the  world to have access to clean water and effective sanitation.

 — Caitlin Thompson 

Sources: The Water Project, Global Water, Charity:water
Photo: Charity:water

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How Education Prevents Poverty

Education is a key factor to reducing and preventing global poverty. Many countries around the world are beginning to realize the importance of education and are investing in it significantly. Making education available to 100 percent of people around the world is one way to ensure that poverty declines. Let’s look at the three most significant ways education prevents poverty.

 

3 Ways Education Prevents Poverty

 

1. Health

Education benefits people’s health throughout their entire lives, from a mother’s pre-birth lifestyle to the likelihood of developing diseases later in life. Women with at least six years of education are more likely to use prenatal vitamins and other useful tactics during pregnancy, thus reducing the risk of maternal or infant mortality. Also, the child of an educated mother is twice as likely to survive to the age of 5 than an uneducated mother. Finally, mothers who have received an education are 50 percent more likely to vaccinate their children at early ages than mothers with little or no education.

Later in life, educated people are less likely to contract diseases, particularly HIV/AIDS. At least 7 million new cases of HIV/AIDS could be prevented if primary education were universal. Studies show that AIDS spreads twice as fast in women who have not received an education. In some countries, schooling is considered a “social vaccine” against HIV infection because girls’ attendance at school is strongly associated with avoiding the infection.

In general, education increases people’s knowledge of how to live a healthy lifestyle. Educated people know what kinds of foods are most nutritious, and therefore are more likely to buy those healthier foods for themselves and their families. Educated mothers will know how to cook healthy meals for their families. An education also provides people with knowledge about vaccinations, clean drinking water and fitness. In most cases, an educated person is a healthy person.

 

2. Economic Growth

By educating an entire population, economic growth is a natural effect. Studies show that each extra year of schooling can increase a person’s salary by 10 percent later in life. This means that a country’s GDP can increase by 1 percent annually by providing education to its entire population. Increasing a country’s GDP creates innumerable opportunities for trade and development.

Education also creates more people who are ready for the workforce. More workers in a country means fewer people will be unemployed. Unemployment has a high correlation with poverty; therefore, by employing more people, a country’s poverty rate will naturally decrease.

No country in the world has achieved rapid and consistent economic growth without at least 40 percent of its adult population being literate. Education can motivate people to become harder workers and can give people the drive to move up in the workforce. Increasing the literacy rate in a country can drastically improve economic development.

 

3. Empowers Women and Girls

Education has proven to benefit women and girls at a higher rate than boys. The empowerment that girls receive from an education both personally and economically is unmatched by any other factor. Women who are educated are usually better decision makers and have higher self-confidence. They are more knowledgeable about how to care for their families. Studies show that in Kenya, if female farmers were provided the same amount of education and resources as male farmers, crop yields could increase 22 percent. This idea can be applied globally.

Educated women are also more likely to delay marriage and have children when they are truly ready. This can ensure that the family will be well taken care of because the mother is prepared for the responsibilities of being a parent. Educated women have a higher likelihood of preventing their children from dying from preventable causes.

In poor countries, each additional year of education beyond grades three or four can provide women with a 20 percent increase in yearly salary. This allows families to be completely self-sufficient. The satisfaction that comes from a woman being able to provide for her family is immeasurable.

  — Hannah Cleveland

Sources: Results, World Education Blog
Photo: U.N.

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TaiwanICDF Provides Clean Water

April 11 marked the official opening ceremony commemorating the completion of a new, groundbreaking water supply system made possible by the Haitian government, the Red Cross Society of the Republic of China and the International Cooperation and Development Fund of Taiwan (TaiwanICDF.) The new water system will reportedly supply safe and clean domestic water for over 90 percent of the area’s inhabitants.

In January 2010 a magnitude seven earthquake devastated Haiti and rendered about 1 million Haitians homeless, a number of which relocated from its capital, Port-au-Prince, to New Hope Village in Savane Diane. As a result, the need for accessible and clean water  increased exponentially, and the new system accommodates this need and serves as a sustainable, long-term solution. TaiwanICDF reportedly showed residents how to maintain and fix the system in the event that it breaks down.

The Taiwanese ambassador to Haiti, Peter Hwang, attended this special celebration, as did TaiwanICDF’s Secretary General, Tao Wen-lung. Wen-lung said the system would provide enough water not only for over 200 homes, but additionally for the village’s health facility, school and nearby agricultural irrigation needs. He described it as “a real godsend for local residents.”

In a video on the TaiwanICDF website, a local resident describes the arduous three-hour process he formerly endured to transfer water from a far-away source back to his home. Now, he has a quick and easy water source practically in his backyard. In the video, the resident also thanks TaiwanICDF for their instrumental role in developing and maintaining the system in his village.

China and Taiwan are hosts to numerous humanitarian organizations. TaiwanICDF is particularly focused on infrastructural and economic development for long-term stability in needy nations and regions, as well as technical cooperation, humanitarian assistance and international education and training. This type of maintainable, long-term investment in developing nations has provided a model by which helpful contributions in such countries can make significant long-term differences.

– Arielle Swett

Sources: ICDF, Taipei Times
Photo: Taiwan Today