Peg Willingham, executive director of global vaccines at the UN Foundation, reports on the UN’s campaign to vaccinate 3.6 million children against measles from Mozambique.
(Credit: Stuart Ramson/UN Foundation)
I am in Mozambique this week for the launch of a five-day nationwide campaign to vaccinate 3.6 million children under the age of five against measles. Thousands of health workers have been mobilized across the country from rural, makeshift clinics underneath trees to health facilities in bustling towns and villages.
Billionaires Balk at Buffett and Gates Initiative – A brouhaha has been brewing in China amid rampant speculation that Chinese billionaires are dodging invitations to a banquet hosted by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett later this month… because they are nervous about being hit up for donations. (ABC News)
Uneasy Calm Returns to Mozambique After Last Week’s Violence – The head of news and current affairs at Mozambique television told VOA an uneasy calm has returned to the capital, Maputo, and surrounding areas hit last week by violent protests over rising prices that left at least 13 dead and hundreds injured. (VOA)
Four million poor children dying ‘of neglect’ – Save the Children says there have been four million preventable child deaths over the past 10 years because states have failed to help the poorest. (BBC)
Nigeria army in Maiduguri after ‘Boko Haram attacks’ - The army is conducting joint patrols with the police in Nigeria’s northern city of Maiduguri after a wave of killings blamed on the Islamist sect, Boko Haram. The police have also banned riding motorcycles at night as several of the shootings were carried out by people on motorbikes. Twelve people, including seven policemen, have died in the past month. (BBC)
South Africa Unions’ Strike Suspended – South Africa’s trade unions Monday suspended an almost three-week-old strike by hundreds of thousands of government workers that had closed schools and hamstrung ambitious new efforts to expand urgently needed medical services in the region’s richest but most inequitable economy. (NY Times)
U.S. Will Give Mozambique $1 Billion to Fight HIV – The U.S. says it will provide $1 billion over the next five years to help fight AIDS in Mozambique, including strengthening the country’s health system and improving access to treatment. The goal is for the government, aid groups, and private sector to harmonize their efforts to combat HIV and AIDS. (VOA) Pay attention to West African food crisis, says ambassador – U.S. ambassador Robin Renee Sanders argues that the international donor community needs to keep the food security situation in West Africa front and center so as to ensure that all vulnerable people have access to affordable, nutritional commodities to avoid any later crises. (Huffington Post)
Flying to the aid of Africans fighting illness – Journalist Caitlin Gibson interviews Johnathan Miller, founder of the Airborne Lifeline Foundation, a fleet of eight planes dedicated to transporting medical specialists and supplies to remote corners of Botswana to help villages combat HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. (The Washington Post)
South Africa wants to join BRIC nations – South Africa wants to be considered among the leaders of the developing world along with Brazil, Russia, India and China, its president said, pushing for his country to be the first African member of the informal group that has growing global influence. (AP)
New corn varieties could combat famine during drought – A recent study has found new breeds of “drought-tolerant” corn that could help farmers fight the effects of drought and provide food in periods of low rainfall, with the potential to save consumers more than $500 million in drought related price increases by 2016. (Michael Onyiego, VOA)
Merck provides new funding to fight HIV/AIDS in Botswana – The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has partnered with pharmaceutical giant Merck to provide $60 million over the next five years to fight HIV/AIDS in Botswana, which has the second-highest rate of HIV/AIDS infection in the world. (Byron Butler, The Daily Tell)
This week, President Obama hosted the Young African Leaders forum here in Washington, D.C. The forum brought together 120 dynamic individuals from more than 40 countries in an effort to forge strong, forward-looking partnerships across the continent and with the United States.
President Obama’s town hall speech at the White House
The goal was to allow the participants along with their American counterparts to share their insights on everything from good governance, empowering young people and economic opportunity. The forum kicked off with a town hall meeting with the president at the White House.
I was fortunate enough to attend two of the forum’s events and meet with many of the young African leaders to discuss the importance of fighting extreme poverty and preventable diseases, and how our countries can work together as partners in that fight.
ONE just returned from a listening and learning trip to Senegal, Ghana, Mozambique and Kenya with members of our board and other supporters. Below is a post from Dr. Regina Kapinga, Program Office at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation:
My name is Dr. Regina Kapinga, Program Officer at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and I oversee the sweet potato grant which covers more than 10 countries in Africa Mozambique inclusive. On Monday 15th March, a delegation from ONE visited this program — the Sweet Potato Action for Security and Health in Africa (SASHA) — a project located about an hour outside of Maputo, Mozambique. SASHA is a sweet potato research project aiming to directly improve the food security of poor families in sub-Saharan Africa with a goal of reaching ten million households in ten years.
In Mozambique, sweet potato is one of the most important traditional food and cash crops. It ranks third in production, after maize and cassava. The government of Mozambique selected sweet potato as one of the most significant crops for mitigating food insecurity and malnutrition among its 21 million people. All sweet potatoes are excellent sources of carbohydrates, fibers, macronutrients, several B vitamins and vitamins C and K. Most importantly, orange-fleshed sweetpotato are also rich in beta-carotene, the precursor of vitamin A. Sweet potato in Africa is widely consumed mainly in rural areas hence the widespread consumption of orange-fleshed sweet potato could significantly reduce vitamin A deficiency, which threatens an estimated 43 million children under age 5 in Sub-Saharan Africa. In Mozambique Vitamin A deficiency accounts for 69% of the total children.
Our program focuses on several components of which three of them include the following: The first and largest component of the program is breeding sweet potato varieties for Africa in Africa. Secondly, we are multiplying the planting material and using innovative methods to distribute them to farmers. The third component is the integration of agriculture and health to impact vitamin A deficiency through the production and consumption of orange-fleshed sweet potato. We are investigating the best ways to scale up these activities in order to ensure that at risk mothers are able to access orange-fleshed sweet potato and feed them to their children.
We are looking for government commitments to be able to scale up and enable farmers even in remote areas to provide calories and vitamins for themselves through a crop that they trust. Right now we are in 14 countries in Africa, but these are small pockets and we want to scale the program out to reach millions of more families.
ONE just returned from a listening and learning trip to Senegal, Ghana, Mozambique and Kenya with members of our board and other supporters. ONE’s Beth Adler reflects on a water and sanitation public private partnership in Mozambique:
One of our days in hot and green Mozambique was spent welcoming some ONE delegation members to a water and sanitation site run by a public private partnership called Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP) which includes ONE’s long-time partner CARE.
WSUP works in Maputo’s urban slums, called bairros, connecting families with the water network and building sanitation blocks to replace latrines. They also complement the physical infrastructure they install with health and hygiene in the bairro schools. The organization is a unique public-private partnership between private sector companies like Thames Water, Halcrow, and Unilever, NGOs like CARE, Water Aid, and WWF, and Cranfield University. A core component of WSUP’s operation is to working in close collaboration with local authorities, municipalities, and local service providers to provide sustainable solutions that will be used and maintained even once donors leave.
Our first stop was at the bairro’s standpipe—the current water provision mechanism. The standpipe is open for several hours each day and people line up with their jerry cans, sometimes for hours, to get water. When we visited, the line was comprised almost entirely of women and girls who after filling them would carry the jerry cans home on their heads. Our second stop was the home of a family who saved to pay for the installation of a water tap just outside their house. The mother explained that she was thrilled with the tap—it’s allowed her more time to purchase and market the vegetables she sells to earn her family income. Her family has also been able to sell some water to their neighbors, adding a source of income for them.
Walking through the unpaved, muddy streets of the bairro, it was clear that families live close together and there isn’t space in homes for personal sanitation facilities. We visited a latrine—shared by more than 30 families—which is typical of the sanitation situation in the bairros. A sanitation block is slated for installation soon, about which the community is very excited. We then saw a sanitation block in another part of the bairro. The block is a simple, concrete structure that takes about two months to construct. It has toilets as well as a water pipe and place for families to do laundry. The block is maintained by a committee of people in the community, and the water pipe is operated by a woman who draws an income from opening and closing the pipe each day and ensuring that the meter is paid so that residents can receive water.
The need for improved water and sanitation services in Maputo are severe and growing. The city is home to over 1 million residents and is growing at 6% annually. The water supply coverage from a conventional network is around 40%. The general coverage for sanitation is around 82%, and in the peri-urban areas there have been significant investments for the construction of improved latrines. Mozambique’s Government policy is to improve these conditions but it does not have the capacity without assistance.
The WSUP project in Maputo aims to improve the health and living standards of residents by providing sustainable access to potable water for 180,000 people and improved sanitation facilities for 100,000. Their hygiene programs also reach 11,000 children. Our bairro visit really opened our eyes to the challenges in the water and sanitation sector—and the opportunities. WSUP is making impressive progress talking this issue and it was a treat to see them in action!
Last week I spoke to 4-year-old Ercilia in the village of Muzingane Bairro 3. As she played with her friend Carlos on the swings at their preschool, Ercilia told me how much she loves her new playground. She smiled and laughed as Carlos pushed her high up into the air on the swing.
Nothing is more thrilling than the sight of a happy child like Ercilia. And we at Save the Children in Mozambique have seen a lot of joyful children lately — all of them laughing, playing and hanging out with friends at brand-new playgrounds outside of our preschools.
Here in the rural communities where we work, children had few amenities, much less new see-saws and jungle gyms. These new playgrounds, built with funds raised by the 2007 Idol Gives Back television special, add a whole new element of excitement to our early childhood development program. They also give children another reason to look forward to going to school every day.
The response from Americans to Idol Gives Back (video above) is a testament to the power that people can have when everyone works together to support a cause, much like we all do through the ONE campaign. With the opening of 31 playgrounds this summer and 42 preschools last summer, Americans have made it possible for over 3,000 Mozambican youngsters to learn and to play. I know that the kids are more excited than ever to go back to school this year.
The playgrounds were designed by three local Mozambican artists and the jungle gyms, seesaws and tire swings were all built with locally available and environmentally sustainable materials.
MACHALUCUANE, MOZAMBIQUE – JULY 15: Children play in the newly built ‘Idol Gives Back’ playground supported by Save the Children in Machalucuane, Mozambique on July 15, 2009. The village is located about 18 miles outside Xai-Xai, in Gaza province in Mozambique. The villagers have about 7 miles to the nearest hospital and secondary school. (Photo by Per-Anders Pettersson/Reportage by Getty Images for Save the Children.)
Aside from being a great addition to our schools, the playgrounds have created an opportunity for communities to come together and support education for their children.
Community members volunteered their time this summer to help build the structures and local auto mechanics donated used car tires for swings.
Through our work with the ONE campaign, we can continue to advocate for support for basic education, including early childhood development programs like the one in Mozambique, providing communities with the tools they need to improve the lives of their children.
-Domingos Mahangue, Field Operations Manager, Early Childhood Development Programs, Save the Children in Mozambique
ONE is campaigning to ensure that the Congressional budget does not cut foreign assistance programs like Feed the Future that help people break the cycle of poverty and hunger.
The Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 60 years. More than 11 million people, mostly nomadic pastoralists and farmers in south-central Somalia, north-eastern Kenya, and south-eastern Ethiopia, are severely lacking access to food.
2011 marks 30 years since the first cases of AIDS were documented. Take a closer look at the specific, achievable goals we must hit by 2015 to make this year the beginning of the end of AIDS.
As aid agencies warn more than 9 million people could be affected by a food crisis in East Africa, world leaders are failing to keep their 2009 promises to tackle the causes of chronic hunger and support farmers in the world's poorest countries.
