The study estimates over 1.2 million lives were lost to malaria in 2010, almost twice the estimates used by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in its most recent malaria report. Whilst both approaches maintain that the majority of lives lost to malaria are in Africa – which bears 91% of all deaths – and amongst young children. The difference in the IHME’s data is the assumption that higher numbers of older children and adults in heavy-burden malaria areas are dying from the disease.
Whilst the total numbers may be different, “however you look at it, far too many people are dying from malaria,” Professor David Schellenberg, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine told the BBC.
But there is good news, as Annemarie Meyer, Programme and Policy Manager at Malaria No More UK explains: “the main trends reported by both the IHME and WHO reports highlight that international efforts to fight malaria are working with a consistent and significant reduction in malaria deaths since 2004. This progress is thanks to investments in efforts to prevent, diagnose and treat malaria, we need to continue to press for more resources to sustain these gains and save more lives.”
Malaria No More UK spoke to a number of experts ahead of the publication of the study. Many of our own policy advisors have also been involved in reviewing and responding to the study data. It is important to note that global malaria data relies on estimates, as Lancet editor Richard Horton pointed out to the BBC this morning, “Right now we don’t actually have any reliable primary numbers for malaria deaths in some of the most malarious regions of the world, so what numbers we have come from estimates.”
Better disease diagnosis and surveillance is needed, ultimately, to remove the reliance on data modeling like these. As Professor David Schellenberg also told the BBC “The introduction of rapid diagnostic tests for malaria, recommended by the WHO in 2010 and increasingly available in endemic countries, affords an unprecedented opportunity to take the guesswork out of malaria diagnosis and to improve the reliability of information.”
Annemarie Meyer adds, “the WHO already recommends that essential malaria prevention, diagnosis and treatment should be made available to both adults and children: we all agree that efforts need be increased to reach everyone at risk.”
It is critically important to sustaining and increasing efforts to combat this deadly disease. The IHME study’s authors emphasised the importance of sustaining and increasing efforts to combat malaria, and recognised the contribution of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria in achieving success so far. With international financing for malaria, and particularly funding for the Global Fund facing significant shortfalls in meeting the need, it is more important than ever to increase our efforts to sustain international support.
Malaria No More UK, along with the Global Poverty Project and a host of other organisations focussed on tackling HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria have been calling for increased funding for The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB
and Malaria. We have been asking people to lend their voice to this campaign: to sign a petition and write to their MP to help persuade the British government to announce an increase in financial support for the Fund.
Join our campaign with the Global Poverty Project to help ‘Fund The Fund’ by adding your name to the petition on the right or sending a letter to your MP
Following on from our recent series of posts about food security, hunger and waste, this is a guest post from Martin Bowman, founder of Bexley/Lewisham/Dartford Food Not Bombs, on how food waste in developed countries is contributing to global food insecurity.
‘Over half of the food produced today is lost, wasted or discarded as a result of inefficiency in the human-managed food chain.’
- Achim Steiner, Executive director of UNEP (United Nations Environmental Programme)
The world is over-crowded – this is the message that resounds through the media. This was especially so in 2011, the year the world’s population passed 7 billion, which caused a worldwide panic – there is not enough to go round! One UN report cried that farmers must produce 70% more food by 2050 to feed our swelling population, which is tipped to hit 9 billion by that point.
Many solutions have been proposed, most notably from the GM lobby, trying to present their patented, privatized food as the cure for the world’s ills, although this is highly questionable. Moreover, the World Food Programme budget for 2009 was US$6.7 billion. That year, the number of hungry people globally reached a record 1 billion, and the WFP argued that it needed an extra $3 billion to counter a downward trend in food aid and growing need. Evidence is also mounting for the link between hunger, violence and conflict.
In short, we are bombarded with images of scarcity. But this is wrong. For we live in a world of unparalleled abundance.
Here is a list of facts which are the antidote to “scarcity thinking”:
• All the world's nearly one billion hungry people could be lifted out of malnourishment on less than a quarter of the food that is wasted in the US, UK and Europe.
• The irrigation water used globally to grow food that is wasted would be enough for the domestic needs (at 200 litres per person per day) of 9 billion people - the number expected on the planet by 2050.
• If we planted trees on land currently used to grow unnecessary surplus and wasted food, this would offset a theoretical maximum of 100% of man-made greenhouse gas emissions. 10% of rich countries' greenhouse gas emissions come from growing food that is never eaten.
Tristram Stuart is one of a growing vanguard of food waste campaigners who have emerged in the past few years, which now includes Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, This Is Rubbish, and Friends of the Earth. Their message is simple: throwing way food is damaging to people and the planet. That food (and the resources used to produce it) could be put to better use.
Food prices are also at record highs, which have pushed millions into malnutrition over the past few years. What is the cause of this which is constantly referred to in the press? Scarcity. Hence, the frequent explanation: that crops failures in countries such as Australia contributed to the various price rises, pushing up food prices globally. Other reasons for the record highs are the demand for biofuels and commodity speculation by investment banks and hedge funds. Food wastage is rarely mentioned, and yet throwing 30-50% of the world’s food away puts massive strain on the global food supply, driving prices up.
What is the solution? Food waste needs its own “reduce, reuse, recycle”. This is represented in the simple food waste flow chart – reduce (wasting less will relax the strain on the global food supply), feed to people in need (providing a much needed safety net, especially in the context the financial crisis and austerity programmes), feed to livestock (pigswill can help reduce the West’s reliance on soy, much of which comes from deforested land in Brazil), compost (reduces the need for energy intensive fertilizer), and finally, as a last resort, disposal. For an inspiring list of companies dealing with these different levels of food waste, click here:
If you feel inspired to join the growing food waste movement, here are some great campaigns to get involved with:
• Feeding the 5,000 Pledge: Pledge to reduce your food waste, and call on businesses to do the same.
• Hugh’s Fish Fight: Call for reforms to EU fishery policy, to stop half of the fish caught in the North Sea being discarded.
• Friends of the Earth’s “Feed farm animals, not incinerators” campaign: Call for food waste and pigswill to replace imported animal feeds, often soy grown on deforested land.
• WDM’s Food Speculation campaign: Call for banks to stop betting on food prices, which makes them more volatile and drives them up.
You can also find out more about Food Not Bombs from their facebook page here.
Before living abroad in the developing world I had struggled to understand what it meant not to be able to afford enough food.
I knew of the the World Bank’s extreme poverty line, which is defined as living with an average daily consumption under $1.25. I’d assumed that $1.25 would go much further in a developing country than it would here, but I learnt quickly that it doesn’t.
The World Bank’s extreme poverty statistics are calculated using purchasing power parity. This means that economists consider a basket of goods such as rice and beans that are consumed by people everywhere and then compare the costs of such goods around the world. This method allows the World Bank to account for the differences in costs of goods and services in different parts of the world.
I was shocked to discover in my first trip to a developing country, $1.25 is enough to buy only about two bowls of rice with a few vegetables. The limited food options available to those in extreme poverty make them more vulnerable to increased food prices and instability.
On 24 September 2011 several world leaders met to discuss strategies that could be developed to address the recent famine in the Horn of Africa. Discussions led to the emergence of The Charter to End Extreme Hunger, which provides a succinct list of strategies that, if implemented, will bring real solutions.
This charter has been endorsed by Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, UN OCHA head Valerie Amos, Norweigan Minister of the Environment and International Development Erik Solheim, UNISDR head Margareta Wahlstrom, and UK Secretary of State for International Development Andrew Mitchell.
One area of focus in the charter is to ensure that everyone can afford to buy food. To achieve this goal the Charter commits to “scaling up strategic and emergency food reserves at local, national and regional level, ensuring the governance of these reserves is accountable to the people they are intended to serve.”
Out of fear of corruption and market distortions, food reserves were eliminated or scaled back at the beginning of the millennium. But, it backfired in a big way.
Food prices rose 83% during the food crisis in 2007-08 and the lack of food reserves left millions of people in extreme poverty without enough food. Having emergency food reserves protects against shocks like droughts, fires, and natural disasters. ActionAid explains that maintaining food reserves can prevent famines and that such preventive measures are more cost effective then addressing the outcomes of widespread hunger.
Countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia, China, and India have used their food reserves to prevent famine. For example, Bangladesh increased its public food stock in 2008 to spur domestic production, and has occasionally released some of its public stocks at rates below market value to check back against inflated prices and increasing malnutrition.
The Charter to End Extreme Hunger also commits to “tackle the causes of high and volatile food prices by taking action to end biofuel mandates and limiting governments’ use of food export bans.” Taking food export bans as an example, they’re under fire because they cause instability in markets, and drive pries up. In 2010 Russia experienced a heat wave that had dramatic effects on Russian grain production. Russian exporters recognised that the heat wave would increase the price of grain internationally and imposed an export ban that reserved Russian grain for local consumption. Oxfam explains that export bans did not decrease food prices in Russia and that it led to price spikes and food instability.
The Charter to End Extreme Hunger is an ambitious and important call to action. Establishing food reserves and eliminating export bans, two components of the section of the Charter, will help developing countries to protect themselves against dangerous price fluctuations, and ensure that we never again are confronted by a famine of the sort we’re seeing in East Africa at the moment.
This year the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that the income of the average UK household had fallen 1.6% since 2008. Coupled with a slow and fraught global economic recovery, this has led to public disquiet about poverty overseas and a fall in long-term charitable giving. So, we thought it would be interesting to have a look at different charities approached Christmas to appeal to the public.
A recent poll conducted by ComRes, a leading market research agency, found that 69% of the British public say most of the stories they hear regarding Africa are largely negative. However, 63% of them would feel more likely to donate to a charity if they are provided with positive news on the effects of aid in the region.
Over the years, many charity campaigns have featured some notoriously dismal images depicting weary eyed, severely undernourished children who are often close to death. This represents a very real reality for some communities across famine stricken parts of Africa. But, as we’ve blogged about before, long-term exposure to these images runs leaving people desensitised and disillusioned.
Someone who has been giving regularly over many years may begin to ask, ‘What has my money achieved if I am met by these same recurring images year after year?’ Appeals which aim to induce guilt, and draw one-off pity donations do little for creating a culture of long-term donors who are confident their money can secure and sustain development and change.
Save the Children’s Born to Shine campaign made its appearance early this year. It has proved a welcoming and refreshing contrast to some past visual campaigns used charities. The campaign’s televised advert is an endearing tribute to the vast, unlocked potential sitting dormant within every child living in extreme poverty. Save the Children prove there is more to highlight than just their living standards. This approach makes for a far more palatable appeal, while the concluding caption, ‘8 million children under five die needlessly every year’ still highlights the reality of challenges ahead.
Save The Children’s Christmas Wishlist webpage has been well crafted for simple and easy gift giving. On offer for purchase are anything from midwife birthing kits, to chickens and water buffalo. Similarly, ActionAid’s wide ranging Christmas gifts section also proves simple and effective. Gifts that change lives immediately greets you with warm, bright faces - which works well during the festive season. From toys for Rwanda, to funding a programme planting 400 trees in Vietnam, a range of gifts from the sentimental to practical are available for giving. Short clips showing Your Money in Action accompany many of the alternative gifts featured, allowing the donor to engage with personal stories from communities eager to show how their funds are being used.
This was a common feature used by charities in their alternative giving sections. More than half of respondents for the 2010 DFID ‘public attitudes towards development’ survey, felt corruption in developing countries defeated the purpose of donating. These charities are recognizing a new type of donor, who requires a greater level of information on how and where their donations are being spent.
Oxfam’s 50% off sale on all second hand clothing and ethical fashion gifts shows the charity adapting at a time when post-Christmas prices are slashed all along the high-street, and consumers are on the hunt for the right bargain. Christian Aid’s Christmas appeal is another that has caught our attention. 2011’s Christmas campaign centred on awareness building using an inspiring story of 129 children who, in 2008, were successfully reunited with their families after they were separated when rebels attacked their villages in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Resources available for download ranged from church sermon notes, to children’s activity sheets based on the story for Sunday school session.
The Big Christmas sing – one voice against poverty is a unique annual event in which communities across the country can hold their very own singing event to raise money for their projects. Christian Aid have often recruited X factor finalists to launch the events. This serves to keep charitable fundraising current, contemporary and enjoyable. It also has the effect of widening appeal and increasing youth involvement.
Emphasising progress and positivity can have long-term benefits of changing attitudes and donating habits of the public. Continued use of the kind of campaigns led by a purely negative tone, may be damaging by feeding into public perceptions of developing countries – where foreign aid is achieving little. This is particularly unjust when we know of the success vaccination programmes have had in reducing child mortality rates over the past decade. Polio, a disease once rife and endemic in large parts of Asia and Africa, is now close to being eradicated. While we don’t wish to whitewash over the many challenges still facing the developing world, we hope charity appeals can do more to report on the progress that has already been made.
I can’t count the number of photos of emaciated children from East Africa that I have seen this year. Headlines citing death tolls in the Horn of Africa have become just another part of most of the United Kingdom’s morning commute. The United Nations estimated in September that 13 million people are currently starving in East Africa and that 750,000 people in Somalia are at risk of dying of hunger. It is time that the international community do something to address this grave problem.
On 24 September 2011 several world leaders met at the United Nations in New York to discuss strategies that could be developed to end starvation. Discussions led to the emergence of The Charter to End Extreme Hunger which not only acknowledges occurrences of extreme hunger in East Africa but also provides a succinct list of strategies that, if implemented, will bring real solutions. This charter has already been endorsed by Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, UN OCHA head Valerie Amos, Norweigan Minister of the Environment and International Development Erik Solheim, UNISDR head Margareta Wahlstrom, and UK Secretary of State for International Development Andrew Mitchell.
One of the most critical elements of the charter is its promotion of local food production. The charter reads, “Failure to act is costing lives every day as people struggle to deal with shocks such as the changing climate and rocketing food prices. This has to change.” In order to achieve this goal the Charter urges signatories to commit to fulfil the pledges made to the l’Aquilla Food Security Initiative (AFSI), to develop a new plan to decrease malnutrition and food insecurity after AFSI expires in 2012, to spend 10% of national budgets on agricultural development, and to implement global and regional policies already in existence to promote food security for all.
Encouraging local food production may be one of the more challenging tasks of the Charter. The BBC reported on 24 September 2009 that South Korea had signed an agreement with Tanzania where 500 sq km of land in Tanzania would be developed to produce processed goods for South Korea. South Korea has signed similar leasing agreements with countries like Madagascar. The BBC explains that leasing land from poorer countries has helped nations like China, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait to ensure food security for their populations but has limited the ability of lower income countries to grow food on their own land. Decreased food yields have led to greater food instability and higher food prices. As prices increase lower income families have been effectively priced out of eating.
In the wake of early moves toward land-leasing for food production the World Food Programme (WFP) indicated that their 2008 target of feeding 73 million people had become impractical and that the WFP would have to either reduce rations or the number of people it attempted to help. In 2011 the WFP was only able to meet around a fourth of the need for food in Somalia. Incomprehensive performance of the WFP should be a signal to us that something is wrong with our food system.
The Charter to End Extreme Hunger affirms that strong local production is key to fighting malnutrition and food instability. Regional and global strategies, such as AFSI, are present but are not being enforced. The East African famine this year should show us the effect that malnutrition a continent away can have on us. We can’t erase the image of the hundreds of thousands of people suffering from starvation in Somalia but we can take preventive action in the short term to ensure that a crisis of this degree never happens again.
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