Children

In 1993 the World Health Organization declared TB a global health emergency, developing the Stop TB Partnership. In 200o new cases of TB began to emerge which were drug resistant, elevating TB to epidemic proportions for the next four years, as some 20% of TB cases where resistant to standard treatments.

According to the WHO an estimated 1.5 million people died from TB in 2006, with an additional 200,000 deaths from HIV-associated TB. TB is curable if detected early and correctly treated, however multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB), HIV-associated TB, and weak health systems continue to pose major challenges in the fight against TB world wide.

The Stop TB Partnership set the Global Plan to Stop Tuberculosis, which has aimed to save some 14 million lives between 2006 and 2015. However the WHO claims that Worldwide efforts to confront TB are making progress, but too slowly.

The WHO estimates that around 4.8 billion US dollars is needed to effectively control TB in developing and lower to mid-income countries in 2008 alone. Currently there is some $ 1 billion ear marked for MDR-TB and XDR-TB, however that leaves a substantial gap in funding, of some $ 2.5 billion, which includes $ 500 million gap for MDR-TB and XDR-TB.

Related links:
Tuberculosis: topical overview
WHO program on TB
Stop TB Partnership official World TB Awareness Day 2008 site
Global tuberculosis control 2008 - surveillance, planning, financing - The WHO’s twelfth annual report on global tuberculosis control
Anti-tuberculosis drug resistance in the world report
The Global Response Plan
The Global Response Plan factsheet
Tuberculosis Drugs - Sixth Invitation for Expressions of Interest, May 2005 - UNICEF

The global fight against tuberculosis is proving difficult, with the deadly disease spreading as cases go undetected in India and China, the World Health Organization warned Monday. Tuberculosis killed some 1.7 million people in 2006, and an estimated 9.2 million people were infected that year, the WHO said in its annual report on the disease.

Pakistan set to complete world’s largest health campaign, as a massive countrywide effort to immunize 64 million Pakistani children against measles is set to achieve its goal in April. Health officials are immunizing children at schools, hospitals and outreach facilities.

German Court Upholds Muslim Headscarf Ban in Schools, as they announced it would uphold a ban on Muslim teachers wearing headscarves in schools in the state of Baden-Württemberg. A state administrative court of appeal in the city of Mannheim ruled teachers cannot cover their heads in the classroom — at least not if they do so for religious reasons. The court’s decision overturned an earlier ruling in 2006 by a lower court, which decided in favor of a teacher who had converted to Islam. The teacher, who had worn a headscarf since 1995, took her case to court after the school board in the state capital of Stuttgart ordered her to stop wearing a headscarf in the classroom.

How can world’s poor better be part of global market? The world’s poorest people, almost by definition, typically have little stake in the goods and services offered in the global marketplace — a fact that arguably hurts both them as well as companies that would like to have more customers. In this essay, Christian Seelos, director of the platform for strategy and sustainability at IESE business school, writes about how corporations more effectively can reach the poorest of the world.

Gaza Humanitarian Crisis Worst in 40 Years, according to a report sponsored by eight British-based aid agencies and human rights groups has described the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip as the worst in 40 years. And a senior UN official has warned that the entire infrastructure there is close to collapse.

Drive to boost girls’ education in Egypt has started its 2008 arm of the initiative begun 8 years ago. The program started in 2000 with a goal of creating some to build over 1,000 “girl-friendly” schools in seven provinces. From 2003-2007 the initiative targeted villages and hamlets in the provinces of Bani Suef, Assiut, Al-Menia, Al-Fayyoum, Sohag, Al-Beihera and Al-Guiza, which had a disparity between boys and girls attending school gender gap of between 5 and 15.7 percent. Thus far some 1,063 schools have been built and with 27,784 students enrolled. “…by 2015, we hope no Egyptian girl will be out of school”.

Madagascar ratifies statute establishing International Criminal Court (ICC), the independent, permanent court that tries people accused of the most serious crimes, such as genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Malagasy Government deposited its instrument of ratification to the statute on March 14, according to a news release issued by the ICC.

Georgian street children and caregivers trained to deliver life saving aid, as more than 75 street children and 150 social workers and teachers in four regions in Georgia are equipped to deliver life-saving assistance thanks to recent trainings on emergency care conducted by World Vision. The trainings are provided by the “Learning the Principles of First Emergency Care” project, which aims to increase the capacity of street and at-risk children aged 10-16 in Tbilisi, Telavi, Kutaisi and Batumi, as well as among social workers of various youth centers and institutions, to avoid risks and dangers to their health and wellbeing.

Forced labor big part of globalization’s dark side, with over 12 million people worldwide are estimated to be trapped in a massive global market of forced labor that sees workers duped into near-slavery situations, Newsweek reports. These workers have little legal recourse and may have to work decades to pay off brokers who promised them high-earning jobs.

WHO survey shows heavy tobacco use among India’s young, the report shows that about 17% of school-age children in India use tobacco. More than one-third of school personnel also use some form of tobacco, mostly cigarettes, shows the survey, part of a global poll carried out in 140 countries.

Young Tibetans look past Dalai Lama’s recommendations, as the Dalai Lama’s support of peaceful engagement with Chinese to achieve Tibetan goals is not shared by many young Tibetans who believe more drastic, even confrontational action is needed. Yet even among the most radical Tibetan activist groups, respect for the leader is nearly universal.

In a statement issued by UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon’s message on World Water Day targeted a lack of political will as the main reason for failure to achieve basic sanitation.  However with today is marked to bring awareness to the plight of some  2.6 billion people world wide who are without proper sanitation facilities and clean drinking water.

What can proper sanitation and hygiene do:

UNICEF and UNDP will hold a ground braking event, ‘Stand up for those who cant sit down’, today in NYC’s Central Park;

Please see the official World Water Day site, and yesterdays post for more information, resources and ways you can help those in need of clean water and sanitation.

“Today 2.6 billion people, including almost one billion children, live without even basic sanitation. Every 20 seconds, a child dies as a result of poor sanitation. That’s 1.5 million preventable deaths each year.”

Children around the globe continue to endure needless suffering due to diseases brought on by a lack of access to clean drinking water and poor sanitation. Two years ago, in an effort to speed up efforts to reach the Millennium Development Goals, the UN General Assembly created resolution A/C.2/61/L.16/Rev.1, which declared 2008 as the International Year of Sanitation (IYS). The objective of the resolution is to promote the need for global sanitation.

Why is sanitation so crucial? It only takes a very small amount of feces particles to transmit disease, as ‘water carried disease’ are passed on by water, hands, flies or the ground. Thus sanitation is crucial in the fight against the spread of disease.

Children are more susceptible to diseases, and as the lack of proper healthcare facilities, access to drug treatments and education on disease prevention, children in the developing world are even more susceptible than their western counterparts to preventable diseases. Lack of clean drinking water, indoor plumping, and proper sewage gravely hinder a child’s daily life and place them in greater danger of disease and illness. There are five main types of water-related infectious disease; water-borne, water-washed, water-based, water-related insect vector, diseases caused by poor sanitation.

What diseases which can be caused by bad sanitation? Diseases include; schistosomiasis, malaria, typhoid, cholera, dysentery, gastroenteritis, hepatitis, guinea worm, filariasis, yellow fever, river blindness scabies, trachoma, yaws, leprosy, conjunctivitis, skin infections and ulcers. Many Diarrheal/intestinal diseases, like cholera can cause dangerous dehydration often leading to death. Other diseases like hookworm, can result in anemia and stunted growth in children.

Children bathe and wash dishes in a lake in Sierra Leone, February 2008. © Manoocher Deghati/IRIN

Last month Water launched a new report, Giving sanitation the green light, at AfricaSan, Africa’s conference on sanitation and hygiene. The report highlights the serious lack of priority given to sanitation efforts;

“Lack of sanitation is one of the biggest killers of children in the developing world. Yet it is given low priority by donor and recipient governments alike. In sub-Saharan Africa, at current rates of progress, the 2015 MDG target for sanitation will not be met until 2076. It is clear that without an extraordinary effort it will be missed.”

It is clear that the need for proper sanitation systems and education are gravely needed across the globe, and until they are met children will continue to needlessly suffer. Even when proper sanitation systems are in place children and their families must also be made aware of proper hygiene techniques, to prevent the transmitting disease. Furthermore it is crucially important that sanitation standards and needs be met in every country to ensure that sustainable development can take root.

Recent News on Sanitation:
YEMEN: Sanitation services limited, sewage treatment plants poor
AFGHANISTAN: Poor sanitation, bad toilets cause deaths, misery
BANGLADESH: Towards “sanitation for all by 2010”
PAKISTAN: Open defecation-free communities - one village at a time

Other Related Links:
Global Sanitation Fund
Global WASH Campaign
UN-Water
World Health Organization (WHO)
Water Supply & Sanitation Collaborative Council
International Decade for Action ‘Water for Life’
World Water Day site 2007
Water Aid
Children pay the price for lack of safe water and sanitation
UNICEF calls for children to be at centre of regional action on hygiene
UNICEF highlights water scarcity on World Water Day
PlayPumps International- uses the PlayPump water system,a merry-go-round attached to a water pump, and aims to install 4,000 PlayPump water systems in 10 African countries by 2010, bringing clean water to up to 10 million people.
Tap Project - UNICEF- Dine at Tap Project participating restaurants around the US during World Water Week, from March 16 - March 22, and donate a dollar for your free tap water.
The Water Project
El Porvenir supports self–help, community–initiated water, sanitation and reforestation projects in Nicaragua.
Water Advocates

HIV major factor in rising child deaths in South Africa as “every year 20,000 babies are stillborn and another 22,000 die within the first month of their lives. In total, at least 75,000 children die before their fifth birthday, while 1,600 mothers die due to pregnancy or childbirth complications, according to a report on infant, child and maternal mortality, released at a conference on perinatal care in Johannesburg this week.” The report, Every Death Counts, produced jointly by the Department of Health, the Medical Research Council and the University of Pretoria.

After police raids in June 2007 freed hundreds of child laborers working in China’s kilns, the government took steps to crack down on trafficking. Despite the government crack down, children are still routinely kidnapped from villages in China and pressed into labor in slave-like conditions (The Washington Post).

While Kosovo revels in it’s newly found independence from Serbia, many women and girls in the country find themselves enslaved in the sex trade and many others continually suffer from domestic abuse. It will be a challenge for this newly free nation to improve conditions for women (The Los Angeles Times).

A dangerous type of childhood meningitis has been virtually eliminated in Uganda in just five years after a vaccine was introduced this week. The vaccine could save the lives of some 5,000 children a year, according to a new report. “This is the first time we’ve seen this kind of impact, a 100 percent drop,” said Dr. Julian Lob-Levyt, executive secretary of the GAVI Alliance. The vaccine, known as Hib, protects against haemophilus influenzae type B, a bacterium that can inflame the lining of the brain or cause pneumonia. Each year, it kills 386,000 children globally (The New York Times).

In an effort to lead young men away from armed military groups, Turkey’s government is planning a broad series of investments worth as much as USD 12 billion in the country’s largely Kurdish southeast, in a new economic effort intended to create jobs and draw young men away from militancy, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. The program is intended to drain support for the militant Kurdish group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, by improving the lives of Turkey’s impoverished Kurdish minority (The New York Times).

Sierra Leone maternity hospital’s have become a “last resort” for both patients, do to the shortages of staff and supplies. Sierra Leone has one of the highest levels of maternal mortality in the world because of underinvestment in health programs, malnutrition, and harmful cultural practices, UN children’s agency (UNICEF) Executive Director Ann Veneman told journalists in the Sierra Leone capital. “Child mortality in this country is the worst in the world at 270 deaths per 100,000 children born”.

In Somalia displaced families surviving on less than one meal a day. Large numbers of families displaced by the continuing violence are living on less than one meal a day and spending large proportions of that to buy drinking water, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Get more girls in school, activists say, “This is a situation that must change rapidly because the education of girls will shape the progress we want to see for Somalia in terms of peace and development,” Christian Balslev-Olesen, the representative for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Somalia, said on 7 March. Somalia has one of the worst overall child educational attendence rates in the world.

Senegal’s leading news agency reports on a newly minted peace deal between the leaders of Chad and Sudan, signed today in Dakar.Voice of America notes that several Chad-Sudan peace deals have failed in the past and it has many looking at theLatest peace pact to revive past failures.

A new report from the International Crisis Group previews Sudan’s 2009 general elections and a planned 2011 South Sudanese independence referendum and questions what the future of North-South relations might look like.

Reports that the head of Kenya’s election commission will face a public probe over the country’s heavily disputed December 27 vote. While some try to return to some form of normality in the face violence many

urban displaced still looking for a home. “My baby is 10 days old, I remain under this tarpaulin tent not knowing what the future holds,” Elizabeth Mueni, one of 263 IDPs camping at the Dagoretti district officer’s (DO) compound.

Authorities in the Republic of Congo have lifted a temporary ban imposed four months ago following the arrest on 25 October 2007 in neighboring Chad of members of a French NGO who were charged with abducting 103 children.

Nutrition experts say governments are not investing enough to prevent and treat malnutrition in women and children in poor countries. “The amount donors have given to combating malnutrition is lamentable,” Saul Morris, one of the authors of a series of reports on child survival published recently by The Lancet medical journal.

In Egypt a drive to boost girls’ education, the drive is sponsored by the government and the UN. The goal is to build over 1,000 “girl-friendly” schools in seven provinces, as there due to the low attendence of girls. Many girls do not attend school due to the proximity of schools, poverty, child labor, gender inequality, and early marriage.

In Sudan around 650,000 or half of all children in Darfur do not receive an education, despite efforts by various organizations to provide schooling in camps and towns across the western Sudanese region, according to Save the Children.

In Chad many young people desperately seeking sex education. Some of the young people who seek help at the Youth Information and Orientation Centre for Reproductive Health (CIOJ) in N’Djamena, capital of Chad, do not understand how they became pregnant or contracted a sexually transmitted infection (STI). Workers at the center blame the high levels of ignorance on the failure of parents to talk to their children about sex.

Burundi’s teachers are calling for more HIV/AIDS education in schools, to ensure that older primary school pupils and secondary school students, many of whom are sexually active, are properly equipped with the facts about the pandemic. Ernest Mberamiheto, deputy minister in charge of primary and secondary education, said government studies in 2004 revealed that 23 percent of school children had had sexual intercourse by the age of 14.

In the Niger Delta there is no lack of youth ready to join militias. And while many young boys want out of the fight disarment will still leave wages twice or three times less, leaving many feeling that the life of a militant is the only hope for economic stability.

Israel sentences man for “honor” killing of sister, the court handed down a 16-year prison sentence Tuesday against a man accused of participating in the killing of his sister, after women in the family stepped forward to testify against the suspect. The sister was the eighth female family member to be killed in recent years, but this was the first conviction in any of the cases. She was 18 at the time, and was the eighth female member of the Abu Ghanem clan to have been killed in seven years

Meningitis is spreading across the region with the death toll reaching 422 since the beginning of 2008 yet, contrary to several recent reports, a World Health Organization (WHO) official said the figures are lower than previous years and that West Africa is well-prepared to contain the disease. Low cost meningitis vaccine developed, which has proven to be highly effective in trials in West Africa, and will be introduced in 2009.

South African schools are the most dangerous in the world, and if the issue is not addressed it will stunt children’s education and jeopardize the future development of the country, according to the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR). However experts warn that safety is part of a more complex problem.

The number of cases of drug-resistant tuberculosis around the world is higher than ever, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned Tuesday. Eastern Europe, China and India have been hit particularly hard, the agency notes in its report, driving concerns that some health care systems may soon be overwhelmed by the potentially lethal disease.

10 UN agencies urge end to female genital mutilation, a painful and dangerous ritual still imposed on many girls in Africa, Indonesia and the Middle East. The initiative to change this tradition best comes from the inside, as evidenced by several West African villages that have abandoned the practice, the UN says.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urges General Assembly to hold special session on suicide bombings, considering them a growing threat against humanity and political stability, a UN spokeswoman said Wednesday. Ban will personally urge General Assembly President Srgjan Kerim to hold the session, the UN chief told leaders of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish rights group that has pushed for the initiative.