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March 6, 2012 | 11:08 AM | By

Global safe drinking water goal achieved

Mike Urban, mikeurbanart.com

Borehole water supply, Nigeria

Amid all the dire reports that seem to indicate the world is going to heck in a handbasket, here’s some good news:

The United Nations children’s agency, otherwise known as UNICEF, reports that 89 percent of the world’s population now has access to safe drinking water. As the Washington Post said:

The water target was one of the U.N. Millennium Development Goals to reduce global poverty that government leaders, nongovernmental organizations and the United Nations have been working to achieve, with varying success.

This is cause for celebration, The Guardian notes, yet this milestone should not deflect attention from the fact that many hundreds of millions more — nearly a billion people — still lack access to clean and safe drinking. And, as also noted by The Guardian, about 2.5 billion don’t have proper sanitation which puts them at risk of many diseases and of contaminating their local water resources.

It should be noted that much of the progress achieved over the past decade has been due to improved living conditions in China and India, and that many parts of the world are still in desperate need of safe water and sanitation. Reuters quotes the head of the UN:

“Some regions, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, are lagging behind,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in the report. “Many rural dwellers and the poor often miss out on improvements to drinking water and sanitation. Reducing these disparities must be a priority.”

FILED UNDER: Basics, Health, Justice, millennium development goals, sanitation, UNICEF, United Nations, water
January 12, 2012 | 10:56 AM | By

India marks one year without polio, inches toward eradication goal line

UNICEF

Child receives polio vaccine

India will have made it one year, as of Friday, without a reported case of polio — a milestone everyone in the global health community is celebrating.

Except for maybe all those skeptics who say, or said, polio will never be eradicated.

The goal here is a world completely without polio, of course, since if this infectious disease exists anywhere it can spread everywhere — as China recently discovered.

But this accomplishment by India, which not that long ago had the world’s lion share of polio cases, does a lot to get us closer to the day when this crippling, sometimes deadly, disease is eradicated.

I’ve seen the ravages of polio in poor countries and, back in 2003 when I was a reporter for the Seattle PI, traveled to parts of India where the polio cases were exploding and reported on the country’s difficulties trying to rid itself of this infectious disease.

It may sound a simple enough goal to vaccinate all kids against polio, but it’s not. I can attest to how complex and challenging it has been — because of the nature of this disease, the lack of health care resources in the countries most in need and the various forms of political opposition that can emerge to obstruct what might seem to many an obvious good.

India’s not out of the woods yet and the disease remains entrenched in three countries, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria. But the fact that India appears to have completely rid itself of this disease is evidence that the global campaign to eradicate polio is that much closer to reality.

Indian health officials deserve a lot of credit for reaching this milestone, but credit for getting us where we are today should go first to Rotary International — which for decades has sustained the global vaccination effort against all odds (and lots of skepticism) — and then to organizations like UNICEF, the World Health Organization and, lately, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Gates Foundation has thrown a lot of money at this effort over the last ten years or so. Both Bill Gates and his father Bill Sr. also have been outspoken public champions of polio eradication — even to the point of apparently finally winning over the world’s leading polio eradication skeptic D.A. Henderson.

Here’s Bill Gates’ celebrating India’s achievement on Huffington Post

Other news stories of note:

Globe and Mail: How India conquered polio

Washington Post: Polio focus leaves other diseases behind

Reuters: India’s victory fuels endgame vaccine talks

Scientific American: India on track to be declared polio free

 

FILED UNDER: Health, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, eradication, India, polio, Rotary International, UNICEF, vaccines, World Health Organization
August 2, 2011 | 9:00 AM | By

40 years ago, the Concert for Bangladesh

This video was made for a fund-raising pitch. This one happens to be for UNICEF, which is supported by the family of former Beatle George Harrison. You can read about the UNICEF campaign here.

I’m not shilling for UNICEF here. I just wanted to post this video made about the Concert for Bangladesh.

That was 40 years ago, done to help the refugees in Bangladesh, and it was one of the first benefit concerts aimed at helping the poor overseas. It made me wonder if anything like this could be done, or would be done, in response to what’s happening in East Africa now.

New York Times: Famine aid barely trickling in ….

 

FILED UNDER: Basics, Bangladesh, UNICEF
June 13, 2011 | 6:27 AM | By

Gates Foundation’s global vaccinations scheme too friendly to drug industry, critics say

UN

Bill Gates at World Health Assembly

Vaccines are “miracles,” Bill Gates likes to say, because of their power to prevent death and disease so simply and at such a low cost.

Today, at a meeting in London held to increase funding for one of global health’s biggest success stories, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, governments and international donors agreed to boost funding for the vaccine intiative by $4.3 billion — exceeding GAVI’s request of $3.7 billion

The new money — most of which came from the British government, the Norwegian government and the Gates Foundation — will allow the vaccine alliance to vaccinate 250 million more children worldwide and prevent at least 4 million child deaths over the next five years.

The funding allows expanding the initiative’s portfolio to include two new vaccines against two big killers, pneumonia and diarrhea.

“For the first time in history, children in developing countries will receive the same vaccines against diarrhea and pneumonia as children in rich countries,” said Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “Together we must do more to ensure that all children – no matter where they live – have equal access to life-saving vaccines.”

In this time of economic recession, when governments and donors are reluctant to even maintain, let alone increase, foreign aid, GAVI’s success at fund-raising is extraordinary.

There’s little question GAVI is making a big difference in terms of global health, having so far prevented something like 5 million deaths. I’ve written several posts recently emphasizing this point, and to some extent perhaps sounding a bit like an advocate for GAVI.

It’s hard not to be when you look at what this project has accomplished in terms of lives saved.

But there are some questioning whether GAVI is, in fact, saving the most lives possible by getting the biggest bang for the buck. This question was raised today, at the London meeting and at the press conference. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Commission on Smart Global Health Policy, drug companies, GAVI, Knowledge Ecology International, Médecins Sans Frontières, Oxfam, UNICEF, vaccines
May 2, 2011 | 8:00 AM | By

Gates Foundation adviser to become UNICEF deputy director

Wikimedia

Geeta Rao Gupta

Geeta Rao Gupta, for the past year a senior adviser to the global development arm of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has been selected to become deputy director at UNICEF (aka United Nations Children’s Fund).

Rao Gupta, who before joining the Seattle philanthropy was president of the International Center for Research on Women, is widely regarded as an expert on gender, women’s issues (especially with regard to HIV/AIDS) and the intersection of health and poverty.

Rao Gupta will serve under relatively new UNICEF director Anthony Lake, a prominent expert on foreign policy perhaps best known as President Clinton’s National Security Adviser.

Side note: Lake replaced former UNICEF chief Ann Veneman, who has stirred controversy by joining the board of Swiss food company Nestle, which some nutrition advocates say undermines child health by promoting infant formulas and discouraging breastfeeding.

FILED UNDER: Health, Ann Veneman, Anthony Lake, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Geeta Rao Gupta, UNICEF