The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between childhood undernutrition and poverty in urban and rural areas.
Poverty and health
Does living in an urban environment confer advantages for childhood nutritional status? Analysis of disparities in nutritional status by wealth and residence in Angola, Central African Republic and Senegal
Kennedy G, Nantel G, Brouwer ID, Kok FJ: Public Health and Nutrition 9(2):187-93, April 2006
Donor Fatigue Leaves 2.8m People Hungrier in Southern Africa
2004 ended on a grim note for many in Southern Africa, where emergency food supplies cannot meet their needs. The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) announced that it had been cutting rations to more than 2.8 million people over the past six months, as it lacked the funding to purchase additional food supplies. "There will be serious health and nutritional repercussions if people have to accept a further reduction in their meagre rations," said Mike Sackett, WFP Regional Director for Southern Africa, in a press release issued December 22.
Double burden of disease threatens the world’s poorest people
This article from the Bulletin of the World Health Organization highlights the association between poverty and major risk factors for ill-health. Research was focused on people in low and middle income countries within each of the World Health Organization (WHO) sub-regions. Findings showed that in each sub-region, poverty was strongly associated with increased malnutrition among children, having access only to unsafe water and poor sanitation, and exposure to indoor air pollution. The authors suggest that halving the number of people who live on less than a dollar a day would still fail to reduce the prevalence of these health risks by the 50 per cent needed to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets.
Drinking water, sanitation and hygiene in schools, Global baseline report 2018
United Nations Children's Fund; World Health Organization: Geneva, 2018
Millions of children around the world do not have access to clean water or decent sanitation at school, putting their education – and those of girls in particular – at risk. The first ever global baseline report on drinking-water, sanitation and hygiene in schools – carried out by WHO and UNICEF – shows that 620 million children worldwide do not have access to decent toilets at school, and around 900 million children cannot wash their hands properly. Ensuring that children attend school and complete their education is crucial to a country’s social and economic development, yet a lack of decent hygiene facilities discourages children, particularly girls, from doing so. Nearly 570 million children lacked a basic drinking water service at their school. Nearly half of schools in sub-Saharan Africa had no safe drinking water and a third of schools in sub-Saharan Africa had no sanitation service.
Early cessation of breastfeeding amongst women in South Africa: An area needing urgent attention to improve child health
Doherty T, Sanders D, Jackson D, Swanevelder S, Lombard C, Zembe Wanga et al: BMC Pediatrics 12:105, 24 July 2012
Despite being a critical component of interventions to reduce child mortality, exclusive breastfeeding practice is extremely low in South Africa. This paper investigates why. The authors conducted a sub-group analysis of a community-based cluster-randomised trial (PROMISE EBF) promoting exclusive breastfeeding in three South African sites between 2006 and 2008. By 12 weeks postpartum, results showed that 20% of HIV-negative women and 40% of HIV-positive women had stopped breastfeeding. About a third of women introduced other fluids, most commonly formula milk, within the first three days after birth. Antenatal intention not to breastfeed and being undecided about how to feed were most strongly associated with stopping breastfeeding by 12 weeks. Self-reported breast health problems were also associated with a three-fold risk of stopping breastfeeding. The authors conclude that early cessation of breastfeeding is common amongst both HIV-negative and positive women in South Africa. There is an urgent need to improve antenatal breastfeeding counselling taking into account the challenges faced by working women as well as early postnatal lactation support to prevent breast health problems.
East Africa food crisis deepens
Oxfam: 2012
As the drought in the Horn of Africa, deepens, Oxfam has extended its famine relief programmes in Somaliland, Ethiopia and Kenya with a mixture of emergency aid, long-term development and prevention, and advocacy to address the root causes of chronic drought. Nearly five million Ethiopians are affected by the crisis. Oxfam is scaling up its response in Ethiopia to reach 700,000 people by helping communities look for more sustainable sources of water, drilling boreholes, developing motorised water schemes and improving traditional water harvesting systems. In the driest and worst affected areas Oxfam has been trucking in emergency water supplies to over 69,000 people, which is treated and used for drinking, cooking, washing and keeping animals alive. Community health workers are also conducting public campaigns to help stop the spread of water-borne diseases such as diarrhoea. In Kenya, 4.3 million people are affected by the crisis – mainly in the southern agricultural areas and the northern pastoralist regions, such as Turkana and Wajir. People in these areas rely on their livestock as their main source of income and nutrition, but the drought has left the animals weak, dying and hard to sell. Oxfam’s “de-stocking” programme buys up some of the weakest goats and, sheep and slaughters the animals to provide meat to the community. About 900,000 vulnerable animals – belonging to 18,000 families – are also benefiting from Oxfam’s veterinarian and de-worming programmes.
East Africa gripped by severe food crisis
IRIN News: 28 June 2011
East Africa is experiencing a severe food crisis, with at least 10 million people affected in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda, says the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). And according to the Mubarak Relief and Development Organisation (MURDO), a local NGO working in the Lower Shebelle region of Somalia, the international community is not helping. The recent March to May "long rains" in Kenya were poor for the second or third successive season in most rangelands and cropping lowlands, with many of these areas receiving 10-50% of normal rains. The consequences include declining water and pasture, and high levels of livestock death. In the predominantly pastoralist north, a low milk supply has contributed to malnutrition levels soaring above 35%. Nationally, at least 3.2 million people are currently food insecure, and even in Kenya's coastal region, thousands are food insecure, says the Kenya Red Cross Society.
East Africa: Food for thought
World Vision
As the Horn of Africa risks facing a famine not seen since the mid-1980s, World Vision Africa Senior Advisor Nigel Marsh says all hope is not lost. The people of Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Burundi are at the mercy of three giants that are difficult to wish away: namely the weather, poverty, and HIV/AIDS.
Economic burden of family caregiving for elderly population in southern Ghana: the case of a peri-urban district
Nortey S; Aryeetey G; Aikins M; Amendah D; Nonvignon J: International Journal Equity Health 16(16), 2017, doi: 10.1186/s12939-016-0511-9.
Close-to-client community-based approaches are argued by the authors to be a low-cost way of providing basic care and social support for elderly populations in such resource-constrained settings and that family caregivers play a crucial role in that regard. However, family caregiving duties are often unpaid and their care-related economic burden is often overlooked, despite this knowledge being important in designing or scaling up effective interventions. This study, therefore, estimated the economic burden of family caregiving for the elderly in southern Ghana. It used a retrospective cross-sectional cost-of-care design in 2015 among family caregivers for elderly registered for a support group in a peri-urban district in southern Ghana. A simple random sample of 98 respondents representative of the support group members completed an interviewer-administered questionnaire. Costs were assessed over a 1-month period. Direct costs of caregiving (including out-of-pocket costs incurred on health care) as well as productivity losses (i.e. indirect cost) to caregivers were analysed. The estimated average cost of caregiving per month was US$186.18, 66% of which was a direct cost. About 78% of the family caregivers in the study reported a high level of caregiving burden with females reporting a relatively higher level than males. Further, about 87% of the family caregivers reported a high level of financial stress as a result of caregiving for their elderly relative. The study shows that support/caregiving for elderly populations imposes economic burden on families, potentially influencing the economic position of families with attendant implications for equity and future family support for such vulnerable populations.
Economic impact of the three communicable diseases: HIV and AIDS, TB and malaria on the SADC Region
SADC Secretariat: SADC International Conference on Poverty and Development, 18–20 April 2008, Pailles, Mauritius
The region as a whole is not on track to meet the MDG targets owing to, among others, increased prevalence of communicable diseases. In this paper, authors discuss the Economic impact of the three communicable diseases: HIV and AIDS, TB and Malaria and demonstrate that these diseases negatively affect economic growth. The paper is based on literature review of studies done within and outside the SADC region on the impact of the three communicable diseases.