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By Kaiser GH Update
In a guest post in the Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ “Global Food for Thought” blog, Ertharin Cousin, executive director of the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), examines global efforts to promote food security, noting, “WFP is deploying game-changing initiatives to build capacity, reduce hunger, and eliminate malnutrition through our groundbreaking partnerships with national governments, U.N. agencies, non-governmental organizations and the private sector.” She writes, “Thanks to tireless studies and technological advancements, our toolbox to solve hunger is large, life-changing, and cost-effective.” She concludes, “The world’s nearly one billion people who woke up hungry this morning have not seen the proposed agenda for the upcoming G8 summit. They are counting on people like you and me to drive food and nutrition security to the top of the global agenda” (5/14).
May 16th, 2012 | Posted in Kaiser's Global Health Update,Malnutrition | Read More »
By Kaiser GH Update
“Africa needs to boost agricultural productivity and address the debilitating hunger that affects 27 percent of its population if it is to sustain its economic boom, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said [in a report] on Tuesday,” Reuters reports (Migiro, 5/15). In its first-ever “Africa Human Development Report 2012: Towards a Food Secure Future,” UNDP “notes that with more than one in four of its 856 million people undernourished, sub-Saharan Africa remains the world’s most food insecure region,” the Guardian writes. According to the newspaper, the report says, “Hunger and extended periods of malnutrition not only devastate families and communities in the short term, but leave a legacy with future generations which impairs livelihoods and undermines human development.”
May 15th, 2012 | Posted in Aid,Kaiser's Global Health Update,Malnutrition | Read More »
By Kaiser GH Update
Speaking at an economic forum in Madrid, Spain, “[t]he head of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO], Jose Graziano da Silva, warned Thursday of a major funding gap for activities in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa,” Agence France-Presse reports. “He added that boosting food security entailed combining emergency action with support for family farming and smallholder production, as well as promoting long term development and reducing vulnerability to extreme events, like drought,” the news agency writes (5/10). According to the U.N. News Centre, Graziano da Silva also called for the involvement of “civil society, private enterprise, international agencies, and the governments of developing and developed countries” to help fight chronic hunger and malnutrition — which affects one of every seven people in the world — because it “is a challenge too great for FAO or any government to overcome alone” (5/10).
May 11th, 2012 | Posted in Kaiser's Global Health Update,Malnutrition | Read More »
By Kaiser GH Update
“At least one million children are at risk of dying of malnutrition in the central-western part of Africa’s Sahel region due to a drought crisis, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said [Wednesday], adding that more resources are urgently needed to help those in need,” the U.N. News Centre reports. “There are currently 15 million people facing food insecurity in the Sahel, which stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea,” the news service writes, adding, “The nutrition crisis is affecting people throughout Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and the northern regions of Cameroon, Nigeria and Senegal.”
May 3rd, 2012 | Posted in Aid,Kaiser's Global Health Update,Malnutrition | Read More »
By Kaiser GH Update
The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) “has warned clashes along the border between Sudan and South Sudan threaten to plunge the region into widespread hunger” and “said it is scaling up its humanitarian operation in South Sudan to assist a growing number of refugees and displaced people,” VOA News reports. WFP “plans to assist 2.7 million people in South Sudan this year under an emergency operation covering the border region and other areas,” the news service writes. WFP spokesperson Elizabeth Byrs “said [the agency] is providing special supplementary, nutritional feeding to about one-half-million young children, pregnant women, and nursing mothers who are suffering from, or are vulnerable to, malnutrition,” according to VOA (Schlein, 5/2). UNHCR, the U.N
May 3rd, 2012 | Posted in Aid,Kaiser's Global Health Update,Malnutrition | Read More »
By Kaiser GH Update
“While the battle against HIV/AIDS attracts more donor funding globally than all other diseases combined, it has not diverted attention from fighting unrelated afflictions — such as malaria, measles and malnutrition — and may be improving health services overall in targeted countries, according to a study on Rwanda published” Wednesday in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, an American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) press release reports. “A six-year investigation of health clinics in Rwanda by researchers at Brandeis University infuses fresh evidence into a long-standing debate about whether the intensive focus on HIV/AIDS, which in 2010 alone killed 1.8 million people, is undermining other health services, particularly in African countries that are at the epicenter of the pandemic,” the press release states (5/2).
May 3rd, 2012 | Posted in Aid,HIV/AIDS,Kaiser's Global Health Update,Malaria,Malnutrition | Read More »
By Kaiser GH Update
“The policy changes in the [Senate's draft Farm Bill] represent improvements to U.S. food aid policy, but we think Congress could do more,” Kelley Hauser, a policy analyst with ONE, writes in this post on the Care2 blog. She describes a letter sent by ONE to U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Chair Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Ranking Member Sen
April 30th, 2012 | Posted in Aid,Delivery,Kaiser's Global Health Update,Malnutrition | Read More »
By PSIHealthyLives
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed a group of 27 global leaders that will carry forward the mission of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement. “Never before have so many leaders, from so many countries and fields, agreed to work together to improve nutrition,” said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. “The Scaling Up Nutrition Movement gives all of us, including the UN, an opportunity to support countries in their efforts to end hunger and malnutrition.” The SUN movement aims to address the burden of under-nutrition and support the effort of the MDG to halve poverty and hunger by 2012. The group created a framework in 2010 on how to acheive the goal. The advised, “The worldwide pursuit of vital strategies to improve nutrition will need backing through a strong public information programme which focuses on the importance of (a) making the economic impact of under-nutrition visible (b) engaging decision makers as activists for attention to under-nutrition in the context of food security, health and social protection in order to tackle this negative economic impact, (c) encouraging public participation in a social movement that empowers households and communities for better nutrition.” The appointment of SUN leaders helps to further the goal of encouraging international participation in the framework. “It is time to recognize nutritional status not only as a marker of progress in development, but also as a maker of progress – and a key to more sustainable development
April 13th, 2012 | Posted in Malnutrition,Noncommunicable Disease,Uncategorized | Read More »
By PSIHealthyLives
April 11, 2012 In Chad, admissions to therapeutic feeding centers (for children too weak to eat even PlumpyNut) typically peak in July or August. This year, the numbers are already starting to peak, which is a harbinger of worse things to come in the Sahel food crisis. The Guardian reports: Kanem is one of the worst-hit regions in the current food crisis, which Unicef estimates is affecting approximately 15 million people in the Sahel. The NGO Action Against Hunger says that, in March alone, it had 68 new admissions to its therapeutic feeding centre in Mao, a dramatic increase compared with February, when they had 27. Therapeutic feeding centres cater for those children worst affected by severe malnutrition, youngsters too sick to eat fortified nut pastes such as Plumpy’nut or Plumpy’doz
April 11th, 2012 | Posted in Malnutrition,Noncommunicable Disease,Uncategorized | Read More »
By Kaiser GH Update
The Guardian examines child malnutrition in Chad, where “[r]ising therapeutic feeding center admissions highlight the growing urgency of the situation in one of Sahel’s driest, most remote areas.” Chad’s Kanem region “is one of the worst-hit regions in the current food crisis, which UNICEF estimates is affecting approximately 15 million people in the Sahel,” the news service writes. “‘The needs are many and varied in Chad, as we are facing multiple crises,’ said Anthony Lake, executive director of UNICEF, during a visit to Mao,” according to the Guardian. The news service writes, “Chad has a cereal deficit of about 400,000 tons this year, and stocks of only about 40,000 tons” (Hicks, 4/10). “The United Nations has warned that at least one million children under the age of five across Africa’s Sahel region are at risk of dying from severe famine and malnutrition due to drought,” Press TV reports, adding, “UNICEF said it needs $120 million to tackle the looming crisis” (4/10).
April 10th, 2012 | Posted in Aid & Development,Kaiser's Global Health Update,Malnutrition,Noncommunicable Disease,Nutrition & Food Security | Read More »
By Kaiser GH Update
“Nearly a third of pre-school children in Vietnam suffer from malnutrition and stunted growth, while in urban areas rates of childhood obesity are rising,” according to a report released Thursday by the country’s National Institute of Nutrition, Agence France-Presse reports. The study, based on a survey of more than 37,000 people conducted in 2009 and 2010, showed that more than three million children under the age of five, mainly in poor, rural areas of the country, “were malnourished, underweight or suffered from growth deficiencies,” according to the news agency. Conversely, “[c]hildhood obesity rates have seen a six-fold rise since 2006 and now run at up to 15 percent in wealthier urban areas including the capital Hanoi and southern Ho Chi Minh City, according to the survey,” AFP writes (4/6).
April 6th, 2012 | Posted in Kaiser's Global Health Update,Malnutrition,Noncommunicable Disease | Read More »
By Kaiser GH Update
UNICEF on Tuesday launched a social media campaign “to raise awareness about children in the Sahel region in northern Africa who are in urgent need of food aid,” CNN reports. UNICEF estimates that one million children in the region are at risk of starvation, and the U.N. says more than 10 million people risk severe acute malnutrition, the news agency notes. According to the U.N.
April 3rd, 2012 | Posted in Hub Selects,Kaiser's Global Health Update,Malnutrition,Noncommunicable Disease | Read More »
By GatesFoundationBlog
Undernutrition is subject to influences from both the public and private sectors and suffers from a chronic lack of funding, which has resulted in nutrition being “everyone’s problem, but no one’s responsibility.”
April 2nd, 2012 | Posted in Malnutrition,Noncommunicable Disease | Read More »
By Kaiser GH Update
“Millions of people in Africa’s turbulent Sahel region are on the brink of starvation due to drought and conflict, the United Nations said on Wednesday, and aid response plans are less than 40 percent funded ahead of an expected crisis peak,” Reuters reports (3/29). Following a week-long trip to Niger, Burkina Faso and Mauritania, John Ging, director of operations at the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said, “This is already an appalling crisis in terms of the scale and degree of human suffering and it will get worse unless the response plans are properly funded. …
March 29th, 2012 | Posted in Kaiser's Global Health Update,Malnutrition,Noncommunicable Disease | Read More »
