Our friends at the British Council's Global Changemakers program have just released this video of how their network of young community activists are working to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
These young people are examples of just the sort of work that we need to see more if we're going to achieve the eight millennium development goals by 2015.
With just a month to go until the Review Summit in New York, we at the Global Poverty Project will be working hard to build momentum and support to ensure that our leaders stand by their promises.
We'll be releasing our own viral video in just 10 days that puts you right in the middle of the fight against extreme poverty - but in the meantime, we'd love to know what you're doing to help us the eight millennium development goals?
The Millennium Development Goals
1. Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger
2. Achieve Universal Primary Education
3. Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women
4. Reduce Child Mortality
5. Improve Maternal Health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Other Diseases
7. Ensure Environmental Sustainability
8. Develop a Global Partnership for Development
If you’re reading this there is a good chance you have seen our 1.4 Billion Reasons presentation, and you will be a little familiar with the west African country of Ghana - a vibrant country with a growing economy and a emerging democracy and certainly one of Africa’s most dynamic nations.
It should continue to progress, but like many of its neighbours, Ghana is still plagued by endemic diseases like malaria. According to the World Health Organisation, malaria kills around a million people each year, and reduces a country's GDP by as much as 1.3% because of people being sick.
We know that Malaria can be largely prevented by widespread use of mosquito nets, and efforts to eliminate mosquito breeding grounds - stagnant pools of water. In Malaria endemic areas, you can think of a bednet likea toothbrush; an essential piece of health equipment.
This video shows how Malaria No More UK, working with Nets For Life, are working to ensure that communities in Ghana can have access to bednets. They recognise that delivery alone is not enough to get people to use nets, so they are training up local people to speak about why it is so important to use the nets, and use them properly.
Unfortunately, Malaria isn’t just about people dying. Even if a child recovers from Malaria the chances are, they’ve missed a fair bit of school. If when they do return they are put in a lower grade, they may feel embarrassed and drop out all together. This is surprisingly common problem.
Or, for adults, a week off work after a malaria induced fever means a weeks less income to look after your family. That's less money to put into kids education, savings for the future, or less money to get the essentials of food and clean water.
The good news is that thanks to efforts like those of Malaria no more, we're seeing a significant decline in the disease in many parts of the world. The Roll Back Malaria Partnership - the global coordinating mechanism in the fight against Malaria - has calculated that 25 countries - including Eritrea, Rwanda, and Sao Tome and Principe - halved Malaria cases an cases and deaths between 2000 and 2007.
With the upcoming replenishment of the Global Fund, there's an opportunity for all of us to contribute to making sure that we have the funds to scale up the fight against Malaria. That's why we've teamed up with our partners at RESULTS UK, and are giving people the in the UK the chance to write to your local MP about the Global Fund. If you're in another country, you can use the same information as the base to contact your local politicians to ask them to ensure that your government does their bit too.
When I was first heard of the Global Fund, I thought it sounds a bit like the World Bank? Surely just another way to manage international debt and distribute money to governments. That was my first assumption. My second was, why do we need another bank for the world, surely its just going to make things more complicated?
Wrong on both counts.
The Global Fund, founded in 2002, is actually something very different form the World Bank. Its much simpler, as you can see from this video. It is an organisation dedicated solely to fighting HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. So it is integral for the achievement of the sixth millennium development goal.
It was former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s dream to create an institution like the Global Fund. His analogy is that as humans we are all in the same boat when it comes to global disease. If one end of the boat gets a hole in it, we’re all at risk. How big that boat is depends on your perspective, but I don’t think its big enough to pretend we can’t see it at all.
So why are we writing about the Global fund? Well, because its working incredibly well. Michael Kazatchkine is the executive Director of the Global Fund, and testifies to its success. In 2001 hardly anyone in developing countries were being treated for AIDS, today it is over 4 million people.
Two thirds of all international funding to fight Tuberculosis and Malaria is now being channelled through the Global Fund, because it has been recognised for its effectiveness.
It is effective because of its flexibility. It does not naively believe that there is one model to deliver treatment worldwide. Programs need to be at the very least, country specific, and this requires the input of local people because they are the ones who really know what will work in their community.
Furthermore, it frames HIV, TB and Malaria as epidemics, and you cannot fight an epidemic alone; a vast network of people is needed. It is perhaps the global scale that might make the challenge seem overwhelming, but when you think about it, nearly everything is global these days. There should really be no problem in forming a worldwide commitment to fight something that will potentially harm us all.
Michael Kazatchkine asserts that the post Global Fund picture is radically different to the era before it was founded. The statistics demonstrate the how many more people are receiving treatment, but what is astounding is the lack of awareness of this achievement. The majority of people that I speak to about poverty issues seem to think things are at a standstill, when they most definitely are not. The Global Fund is just one institution channelling money to fight three diseases, there are so many more doing equally great work.
Right now, the world's biggest donors - governments, private foundations and large organisations - are considering how much money the Global Fund will have for the next three years to fight these diseases. Although the Global Fund has achieved some huge successes in the last few years, pressures on budgets around the world mean that there's real concern that the Global Fund won't be given enough money to really scale up its work, and continue to step up the fight against these diseases.
That's why we've teamed up with our partners at RESULTS UK, and are giving people the in the UK the chance to write to your local MP about the Global Fund. If you're in another country, you can use the same information as the base to contact your local politicians to ask them to ensure that your government does their bit too.
We live in the 21st century, we’ve sent humans to the moon and still every minute a women dies as a result of pregnancy. This video by the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood highlights how a lot of these deaths could be prevented - simply by providing the much needed medical assistance. In the developed world a women is more likely to die in a plane crash, than in childbirth. We’re accustomed to births happening in hospitals, with sterile equipment and in the presence of doctors and midwives wearing clean hospital uniforms. I mean, there’s even a growing movement in America and Europe calling for “demedicalizing birth”!
All this makes the thought that millions of women give birth without ANY assistance almost unbelievable. And sometimes there’s a happy ending to an unattended birth - a healthy mother and baby. But too often their life is in danger, and this movie shows the multitude of reasons why women still don’t get medical assistance even when it’s a matter of life and death.
A lot of times the closest hospital is too far away. Cars are expensive but lack of means of transport to hospital are one of the reasons mothers and their babies die. Villagers in Pitala, Malawi (Southeast Africa) came up with the idea of bicycle ambulances - simple, cost-effective, and it works. Villagers in Pitala are lucky - the hospital is close enough for a bike-ride to be feasible. In a lot of places the closest hospital will be days away.
Sometimes the mother is hemorrhaging and losing a lot of blood - 1 in 4 women who die in childbirth die because of excessive bleeding. Something that almost never happens in the ‘global North’ because there’s a pill, available in every hospital, which can quickly stop the bleeding - Misopostol. It’s a low cost (less than US$2), off-patent, easy to administer drug with few side-effects, which dispensed by a trained birth attendant saves lives. It sounds simple (and it is), but a trained birth attendant with adequate supplies needs to be present. However, globally we are currently lacking 4.3 million health workers - that’s a New Zealand or Croatia worth of doctors, nurses and midwives the world really badly needs to keep women from dying while bringing life into the world!
Lastly, and maybe in some ways most tragically, women all too often die because their families are not willing to pay for their treatment, even when it’s as little as US$3.45. There are still frighteningly many countries, where girls and women are not valued equally to their fathers, brothers and husbands and their health isn’t a priority. This shows that for progress on MDG5 we also need to work towards gender equality - which we've written about recently through the stories of Jess, Exildah and Kakenya.
As we see our screens filled with images from the devastating floods in Pakistan, it’s a timely reminder of the vital role that humanitarian aid workers play all around the world.
Hundreds of thousands of people around the working working tirelessly to save lives, create opportunities and fight poverty in some of the most difficult environments on the planet.
This short film was made for the the 2010 World Humanitarian Day project by our good friend, David Ohana, from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
It is a collaborative film shot in over 40 countries in under 9 weeks, on a shoestring budget - with the goal of showing the enormous diversity of places, faces and endeavors of humanitarian aid workers in 2010. It was filmed by humanitarian staff and freelance filmmakers from around the globe (over 50 contributors in total) with all time donated.
As we see our screens filled with images from the devastating floods in Pakistan, it’s a timely reminder of the vital role that humanitarian aid workers play all around the world.
