Interactive: How the world responded in 2011 to Somalia’s famine
By Humanosphere
See the article here: Interactive: How the world responded in 2011 to Somalia’s famine
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By Humanosphere
See the article here: Interactive: How the world responded in 2011 to Somalia’s famine
Continued here: USAID Assisting Communities Affected By Cyclones In Eastern Africa
Array Excerpt from: Early Warning Tool Helps Aid Workers Stay On Top Of Emergencies
“A feeble international response to Pakistan’s second major flooding crisis in two years has left millions of people at serious risk of malnutrition and disease, aid groups warned Thursday,” Agence France-Presse reports. “The Pakistan Humanitarian Forum (PHF), a network of the 41 largest international charities in the country, called on the international community and Pakistan to take urgent steps with the next monsoon season months away,” the news service adds. “At least 2.5 million people are still without food, water, shelter, sanitation and health care, putting them at serious risk of malnutrition, disease and deepening poverty, said the coalition of international charities,” AFP writes, adding, “Around 43 percent of affected people are severely short of food and malnutrition levels were already well above the emergency threshold in the southern provinces of Sindh and Baluchistan before the floods struck” (Gilani, 2/15).
“At least 16 people have been killed this week when a category four cyclone lashed Madagascar’s eastern shores, rescue authorities said on Wednesday,” Reuters reports, adding, “Some 65 people were injured and about 11,000 people left homeless after Cyclone Giovanna pummeled the country’s eastern seaboard causing power shutdowns in parts of the island’s port city of Tamatave, rescue officials said” (Iloniaina, 2/16). UNICEF “will start distributing medicines and mosquito nets [Thursday] to the parts of eastern Madagascar hardest hit” by the cyclone, the U.N. News Centre writes.
The medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) on Thursday said the conditions for hundreds of thousands of refugees living in Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camp are worsening and people there “are experiencing a ‘humanitarian emergency’ because of the scaling back of aid work,” Deutsche Presse-Agentur/M&C reports (2/16). MSF “said the health of refugees at the complex is deteriorating, with recent outbreaks of measles, cholera and acute diarrhea,” and said an estimated one in 12 children is malnourished, VOA News writes. “Most of the refugees at Dadaab are Somalis who fled last year’s severe drought or Somalia’s chronic conflict,” the news agency notes. MSF “called on the Kenyan government, international aid groups, and the U.N.
By Humanosphere
This is not looking good. As the story reports: “The unrelenting violence only highlighted the difficulties that Western and Arab powers faced in trying to resolve the crisis in a country with a well-armed military and a key place in the Middle East’s precarious strategic balance.” Source: Chicagotribune Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Angus MacSwan Reuters … Continue reading →
In response to the earthquake in Haiti on January 12, 2010, PSI deployed a special response team to help reinforce relief efforts on the ground. PSI/Haiti immediately suspended regular activities and focused on disaster relief operations in area where PSI/Haiti’s existing operational infrastructure, personnel and technical expertise added value to the efforts of more traditional relief agencies.
“[O]n the eve of the two-year anniversary of the 7.0 quake in Haiti, three Senators wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. Agency for International Development head Rajiv Shah urging them to better facilitate distribution of U.S. aid to the country,” CQ HealthBeat reports (Bristol, 1/11)
Today marks the two year anniversary of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that hit Haiti in January 2010. Far from celebration of the progress made since, the anniversary has drawn criticism from a range of dignitaries and aid workers in the country and around the world. That the billions in international humanitarian assistance have failed to [...]
“A mentally ill man who bathed in and drank from a contaminated river most likely was the first person to be infected” with cholera in the outbreak that began in Haiti in October 2010, researchers from Partners in Health said in a study published Monday in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, the Associated Press/Washington Post reports (1/9). “‘This patient’s case is the first in the community’s collective memory to have had symptoms that are recognizable, in retrospect, to be those of cholera,’ according to the study,” CNN’s “The Chart” notes, adding, “There is no lab method to confirm that this was the first patient to start the epidemic, wrote the authors” (Park, 1/9).
“Almost two years after the devastating 7.0 earthquake destroyed much of Port-au-Prince, full recovery appears to be years away,” the Miami Herald reports, noting that “[t]housands of people continue to live in makeshift shelters and tents [and] rubble from dilapidated buildings still line some streets” (Lee, 1/7). In addition, “[t]he cholera outbreak in Haiti is ‘one of the largest epidemics of the disease in modern history to affect a single country,’ the U.N. World Health Organization’s Pan-American Health Organization [PAHO] said in a news release,” according to United Press International (1/7)
By SarahBoseley
A report from the Institute of Health Metrics in Seattle reveals that fears of a total collapse in funding for health in developing countries are unfounded – so far It has seemed inevitable that funding for development, and within it global health, would collapse as donor countries cut back on spending as the economic crisis continues. There are signs in the World Malaria Report, which I wrote about here , that funding is on a downward slide – mainly because of the important role of the Global Fund to fight Aids, TB and Malaria which does not have enough cash to pay for its next round of grant-making.
By Humanosphere
The deadly, tragic situation in Somalia persists. As the ONE Campaign notes in an overview Update on Horn of Africa: Four million people remain food insecure in Somalia and 250,000 in Southern Somalia continue to face famine conditions. These conditions are expected to persist at least through December 2011 and depending on the favorability of … Continue reading →
