Category: General

Another 1.9 million babies were tragically stillborn during the same period, according to a separate UN report.

 

NEW YORK/GENEVA/WASHINGTON D.C., 10 January 2023 – An estimated 5 million children died before their fifth birthday and another 2.1 million children and youth aged between 5–24 years lost their lives in 2021, according to the latest estimates released by the United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN IGME).

 

In a separate report also released today, the group found that 1.9 million babies were stillborn during the same period. Tragically, many of these deaths could have been prevented with equitable access and high-quality maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health care.

 

“Every day, far too many parents are facing the trauma of losing their children, sometimes even before their first breath,” said Vidhya Ganesh, UNICEF Director of the Division of Data Analytics, Planning and Monitoring. “Such widespread, preventable tragedy should never be accepted as inevitable. Progress is possible with stronger political will and targeted investment in equitable access to primary health care for every woman and child.”

 

The reports show some positive outcomes with a lower risk of death across all ages globally since 2000. The global under-five mortality rate fell by 50 per cent since the start of the century, while mortality rates in older children and youth dropped by 36 per cent, and the stillbirth rate decreased by 35 per cent. This can be attributed to more investments in strengthening primary health systems to benefit women, children and young people.

 

However, gains have reduced significantly since 2010, and 54 countries will fall short of meeting the Sustainable Development Goals target for under-five mortality. If swift action is not taken to improve health services, warn the agencies, almost 59 million children and youth will die before 2030, and nearly 16 million babies will be lost to stillbirth.

 

“It is grossly unjust that a child’s chances of survival can be shaped just by their place of birth, and that there are such vast inequities in their access to lifesaving health services,” said Dr Anshu Banerjee, Director for Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health and Ageing at the World Health Organization (WHO). “Children everywhere need strong primary health care systems that meet their needs and those of their families, so that – no matter where they are born – they have the best start and hope for the future.”

 

Children continue to face wildly differentiating chances of survival based on where they are born, with sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia shouldering the heaviest burden, the reports show. Though sub-Saharan Africa had just 29 per cent of global live births, the region accounted for 56 per cent of all under-five deaths in 2021, and Southern Asia for 26 per cent of the total. Children born in sub-Saharan Africa are subject to the highest risk of childhood death in the world – 15 times higher than the risk for children in Europe and Northern America.

 

Mothers in these two regions also endure the painful loss of babies to stillbirth at an exceptional rate, with 77 per cent of all stillbirths in 2021 occurring in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Nearly half of all stillbirths happened in sub-Saharan Africa. The risk of a woman having a stillborn baby in sub-Saharan Africa is seven times more likely than in Europe and North America.

 

“Behind these numbers are millions of children and families who are denied their basic rights to health,” said Juan Pablo Uribe, Global Director for Health, Nutrition and Population, World Bank and Director of the Global Financing Facility. “We need political will and leadership for sustained financing for primary health care which is one of the best investments countries and development partners can make.”

 

Access to and availability of quality health care continues to be a matter of life or death for children globally. Most child deaths occur in the first five years, of which half are within the very first month of life. For these youngest babies, premature birth and complications during labour are the leading causes of death. Similarly, more than 40 per cent of stillbirths occur during labour – most of which are preventable when women have access to quality care throughout pregnancy and birth. For children that survive past their first 28 days, infectious diseases like pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria pose the biggest threat.

 

While COVID-19 has not directly increased childhood mortality – with children facing a lower likelihood of dying from the disease than adults – the pandemic may have increased future risks to their survival. In particular, the reports highlight concerns around disruptions to vaccination campaigns, nutrition services, and access to primary health care, which could jeopardize their health and well-being for many years to come. In addition, the pandemic has fuelled the largest continued backslide in vaccinations in three decades, putting the most vulnerable newborns and children at greater risk of dying from preventable diseases.

 

The reports also note gaps in data, which could critically undermine the impact of policies and programmes designed to improve childhood survival and well-being.

 

“The new estimates highlight the remarkable global progress since 2000 in reducing mortality among children under age 5,” said John Wilmoth, Director, UN DESA Population Division. “Despite this success, more work is needed to address persistent large differences in child survival across countries and regions, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Only by improving access to quality health care, especially around the time of childbirth, will we be able to reduce these inequities and end preventable deaths of newborns and children worldwide.”

 

Source: World Health Organization

Close to one billion people globally are served by health-care facilities with no electricity access or with unreliable electricity

 

New joint report launched

 

Close to 1 billion people in low- and lower-middle income countries are served by health-care facilities with unreliable electricity supply or with no electricity access at all, according to a new report from the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Bank, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), and Sustainable Energy for All (SEforAll). Access to electricity is critical for quality health-care provision, from delivering babies to managing emergencies like heart attacks, or offering lifesaving immunization. Without reliable electricity in all health-care facilities, Universal Health Coverage cannot be reached, the report notes.

 

Increasing electrification of health-care facilities is essential to save lives

 

The joint report, Energizing Health: Accelerating Electricity Access in Health-Care Facilities, presents the latest data on electrification of health-care facilities in low- and middle-income countries. It also projects investments required to achieve adequate and reliable electrification in health-care and identify key priority actions for governments and development partners.

 

“Electricity access in health-care facilities can make the difference between life and death,” said Dr Maria Neira, Assistant Director-General a.i, for Healthier Populations at WHO. “Investing in reliable, clean and sustainable energy for health-care facilities is not only crucial to pandemic preparedness, it’s also much needed to achieve universal health coverage, as well as increasing climate resilience and adaptation.”

 

Electricity is needed to power the most basic devices – from lights and communications equipment to refrigeration, or devices that measure vital signs like heartbeat and blood pressure – and is critical for both routine and emergency procedures. When health-care facilities have access to reliable sources of energy, critical medical equipment can be powered and sterilized, clinics can preserve lifesaving vaccines, and health workers can carry out essential surgeries or deliver babies as planned.

 

And yet, in South Asia and sub-Saharan African countries, more than 1 in 10 health facilities lack any electricity access whatsoever, the report finds, while power is unreliable for a full half of facilities in sub-Saharan Africa. Although there has been some progress in recent years on electrification of health-care facilities, approximately 1 billion people worldwide are served by health-care facilities without a reliable electricity supply or no electricity at all. To put this in perspective, this is close to the entire populations of the United States, Indonesia, Pakistan and Germany combined.

 

Disparities in electricity access within countries are also stark. Primary health-care centres and rural health facilities are considerably less likely to have electricity access than hospitals and facilities in urban areas. Understanding such disparities is key to identifying where actions are most urgently needed, and to prioritize the allocation of resources where they will save lives.

 

Health is a human right and a public good

 

Electricity access is a major enabler of Universal Health Coverage, the report states, and so electrification of health-care facilities must be considered an utmost development priority requiring greater support and investments from governments, development partners and financing and development organizations.

 

According to a World Bank needs analysis included in the report, almost two-thirds (64%) of health-care facilities in low and middle-income countries require some form of urgent intervention – for instance, either a new electricity connection or a backup power system – and some US$ 4.9 billion is urgently needed to bring them to a minimal standard of electrification.

 

No need – and not time – to ‘wait for the grid’

 

Decentralized sustainable energy solutions, for example based on solar photovoltaics systems, are not only cost-effective and clean, but also rapidly deployable on site, without the need to wait for the arrival of the central grid. Solutions are readily available, and the impact for public health would be huge.

 

Additionally, healthcare systems and facilities are increasingly affected by the accelerating impacts of climate change. Building climate-resilient health care systems means building facilities and services that can meet the challenges of a changing climate, such as extreme weather events, while improving environmental sustainability.

 

 

Source: World Health Organization

The hardship being felt across the Horn of Africa by the worst drought in 40 years has left many women weak and malnourished. The UN agency dedicated to women’s sexual and reproductive health, UNPA, is helping save mothers’ lives in Kenya, through the donation of a simple but effective way of accessing hard-to-reach areas – a motorbike, to enable safe emergency deliveries in hospital.

 

“I cannot imagine them giving birth without the support of a skilled health professional”, said Mark Epeyon, a community health volunteer at the Katilu hospital in Kenya’s Turkana County.

 

Since November, the motorbike ambulance has protected lives that would have been lost without prompt transportation to their nearest health facility.

Help on wheels

Even before the current climate crisis, skilled birth attendance rates were low in Kenya. Today the maternal death rate remains high, despite some progress, at 342 mothers per 100,000 live births – nearly 90 per cent of which are attributed to inadequate quality of care.

 

Mathew Bundotich, a medical superintendent at the Katilu hospital, explained that families are now forced to migrate ever further from health facilities in search of water, food and pasture for their animals.

 

While midwives used to assist at least 60 births every month, he said that the drought has caused ante-natal visits to dwindle.

 

“We pride ourselves on having recorded zero maternal deaths in our facility over the last year”, said Mr. Bundotich. “But now we have to follow women into their communities in order to reach them”.

 

Driver on the case

Having worked in the community for more than 11 years, Mr. Epeyon has mastered the art of navigating both on and off-road terrain – quickly locating a mother in urgent need of assistance, even in the most inaccessible areas.

 

“I became a community health volunteer because I saw the impact that a lack of proper health information and access to services was having on my people”, he told UNFPA.

 

“When my wife got pregnant the first time, she gave birth at home. Our child developed health complications that have affected him into adulthood”.

 

Spreading the word

To reach more women and girls in drought-affected communities, Mr. Epeyon has been going door-to-door, telling others about the motorcycle ambulance, encouraging pregnant women to call him when in need, day or night.

 

In its first month of operation, the scrambler safely transported five women with obstetric emergencies to the hospital, likely saving their lives and those of their newborns.

 

Delivering life

As the motorbike can safely and comfortably transport one patient, an outreach medical worker and emergency supplies for on-site treatment, it has significantly reduced the time needed to deliver essential help to those in remote areas.

 

“In the past, women have given birth on the roadside while trekking to hospital because they live too far from a health facility”, explained Mr. Epeyon.

 

“With the motorcycle ambulance, even if a woman delivers on the way, she is able to do so in a dignified manner, on a comfortable stretcher and with the help of a healthcare worker and myself”.

 

Heartfelt appeal

Due to the ongoing drought, more than 4.3 million Kenyans need humanitarian assistance, including 134,000 pregnant or breastfeeding women.

 

Through its Response Plan for the Horn of Africa Drought Crisis 2022-2023, UNFPA is appealing for $113.7 million to protect the sexual and reproductive health and rights of millions of women and girls across the region.

 

 

Source: United Nations

According to the International Monetary Fund, 22 countries in Africa are either in debt distress or at high risk of debt distress –that is, they are unable to fulfill their financial obligations to creditors. This is nearly double the number of countries in Africa in some form debt crisis just a few years ago.

 

Why so many African countries are facing a fiscal crisis today and the implications of debt distress for economic and social development is explained at length by my guest today Mark Plant, senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development.

 

We kick off discussing why Ghana and Zambia are illustrative of broader fiscal trends in Africa and then have a discussion about the policy conundrums facing countries as they navigate fiscal crises and seek to satisfy creditors without sacrificing substantial gains in economic and social development.

 

 

Source: UN Dispatch

The year 2022 was certainly one of extremes when it comes to climate disasters. Record-breaking temperatures and shocking floods, droughts and storms devastated many regions of the world.

But despite the destruction and loss of lives, new technologies, resilient communities and historic agreements — including a new mechanism to respond to loss and damage from climate change — offer signs of hope.

During 2022, the World Food Programme (WFP) provided food and other assistance to over 160 million people, including many hit by climate disasters. In over 30 countries, WFP also supported communities to better anticipate and prepare for climate impacts— for example, through some US$11 million in insurance payouts, and cash assistance reaching roughly one million people ahead of forecasted climate hazards.

With this year promising another wave of climate-related disasters — which will contribute to rising humanitarian needs — innovative ideas, collective action and radical climate solutions are more urgent than ever.

Here, we’ll explore what lies ahead for the climate world — and WFP — in 2023:

Climate-driven humanitarian crises

“Unprecedented” often feels like an overused word. And whilst 2022 certainly was an unprecedented year of climate disasters, experts warn of bigger and deadlier weather events to come. While it can take months for scientists to establish a direct link, our changing climate is increasingly influencing many of the world’s emergencies — posing massive challenges for WFP and other humanitarian responders.

Last year deepened the worst drought on record in the Horn of Africa, destroying crops and livelihoods and pushing communities to the brink of famine. Meanwhile, severe floods affected 19 countries across West Africa and plunged one-third of Pakistan underwater.

The first week of 2023 alone saw many countries in Europe observing the warmest January day on record — after experiencing, in 2022, the second warmest year ever recorded.

For the communities supported by WFP, these record-breaking changes have meant increased hunger, at a time when humanitarian budgets are tightening. Today, nearly 350 million people face acute food insecurity worldwide. Yet in 2022, WFP received only around two-thirds of its funding needs.

Most devastating of all, those suffering the worst impacts did little to cause the problem. The 20 countries on the International Rescue Committee’s 2023 Emergency Watchlist – including drought-hit Somalia and flood-hit Pakistan – contribute only two percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Global meetings and “no-nonsense” action

With country climate action plans and commitments falling “woefully short,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is convening a “no-nonsense” climate action summit this September.

“No exceptions. No compromises,” he says of a gathering expected to focus on concrete, practical solutions and collective action in tackling the greatest threat facing humanity.

In December, when Dubai hosts the 28th UN Climate Change Conference (COP28), world leaders will hopefully come armed with new, more ambitious commitments to lower emissions and protect people from loss and damage — the hot topic of the climate world in 2022.

“We hope that the climate summits in 2023 will see much more concrete commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help the most vulnerable communities on the climate frontlines to protect themselves from loss and damage,” says Gernot Laganda, WFP’s Director of Climate and Disaster Risk Reduction Programmes.

Loss and damage

In the central African country of Chad, sandwiched between the Sahara desert and more fertile Savannah, pounding rains wiped out farmer Mahamat Kary’s 2022 maize harvest.

“The rain is normally supposed to help us grow food to eat, but now it is becoming an issue, as you can see,” he says. “There is nothing more catastrophic than this water. All the flooded crops are destroyed.”

Mahamat received some support through a WFP resilience-building project to build a dike, aimed to protect maize harvests. But such assistance cannot cover catastrophic climate-related losses increasingly afflicting countries like Chad, which contribute just a fraction of global emissions.

Last year, and after decades of advocacy from developing countries, leaders at COP27 agreed to establish a loss and damage fund; a financing mechanism to compensate vulnerable countries on the frontlines of the climate crisis.

But the hard work is still to come. A multi-nation committee will recommend how the fund should be set up and financed by December’s COP28.

“A key principle of loss and damage funding should be that it is directed to local efforts and initiatives, starting with the most vulnerable first,” says Laganda. “First and foremost, this funding needs to go to solutions which protect local communities from harm and avoid them becoming dependent on debt, aid or charity.”

New numbers, new ideas

With one in 23 people worldwide likely to need help to survive this year, scaling up climate adaptation solutions for vulnerable communities is more crucial than ever. Those needs will only mount as the planet heats up.

In April, scientists will issue a final figure for 2022’s global average temperature. Currently the world is about 1.15°C degrees above the pre-industrial average — dangerously close to the 1.5°C degree limit world leaders agreed to in 2015.

“The unabated rise in global temperatures and the resulting increase in climate-related disasters is pushing the humanitarian system to breaking point,” WFP’s Laganda says. “We urgently need the funding and systems in place to scale-up climate adaptation solutions in food systems — combining hazard forecasting with physical and financial protection.”

One example is WFP’s climate insurance programme, which delivers payments to farmers after climate impacts have damaged their crops. In 2023, the programme aims to provide at least three million vulnerable people with insurance coverage.

WFP’s anticipatory action programme — which uses early warning systems to provide assistance to people at risk before disasters strike— aims to scale up to cover five million people by 2025.

“This year is bound to be another challenging year for tackling climate change,” says Laganda.

“But with renewed energy from communities, governments, scientists and development partners, 2023 can also be a year of good news and transformation,” he adds. “We have the power to create a better, more sustainable future.”

 

 

Source: World Food Programme

Le Premier Ministre Gervais Ndirakobuca a tenu jeudi 12 janvier 2023 au chef-lieu de la province Gitega, une réunion d’évaluation de la saison culturale 2023 A et de préparation de la saison culturale 2023 B à l’intention des responsables dans le secteur agricole et administratif. Au cours de cette réunion, les directeurs des bureaux provinciaux de l’environnement, de l’agriculture et de l’élevage ont présenté tour à tour l’état de distribution des engrais et des cultures pour la saison culturale 2023 B.

 

En général, la récolte pour cette saison culturale 2023 A ne sera pas bonne suite au retard de la pluie et à la quantité de l’engrais type Totahaza qui était insuffisante. Face à ce défi, le Premier Ministre Gervais Ndirakobuca a demandé aux responsables de l’usine FOMI de trouver une solution avant le début de la saison culturale 2023 B.

 

S’agissant du défi lié au manque de semences sélectionnées de haricots et de pommes de terre, les participants à la réunion ont appris que le ministère en charge de l’agriculture a envoyé des experts à l’extérieur du pays, pour chercher des semences sélectionnées de haricots adaptées au climat du Burundi.

Au niveau de l’ISABU, l’inquiétude est le risque de ne pas disponibiliser la quantité suffisante de semences sélectionnées de pommes de terre et cette Institut s’investit pour leur multiplication.

 

Sur base des défis soulevés, le 1er Ministre Gervais Ndirakobuca a donné des orientations et des conseils aux responsables du ministère en charge de l’agriculture, leur demandant de s’assurer que les semences de maïs sont bien conservées dans les stocks.

 

Au moment où le prix du haricot est revu à la hausse, le 1er Ministre demande aux multiplicateurs de semences de ne pas les vendre puisque le gouvernement va réguler les prix de semences de haricot pour éviter que les multiplicateurs de ces semences ne tombent en faillite.

 

Au moment où dans les différentes provinces du pays, la récolte des cultures de maïs et de haricots approche, le premier ministre Gervais Ndirakobuca appelle les administratifs à veiller à ce que la production ne soit pas vendue à l’étranger.

 

Source: Radio Television Burundi