Funding shortfalls forced WFP to cut rations for up to one million people in Afghanistan, an early sign that aid money may dwindle as the international combat mission winds down. From the Guardian:
The UN food assistance agency, which runs on donations from member countries, faces a gap of about $30m (£19m) for its programme in Afghanistan, said country director Claude Jibidar.
“We have had to cut down the rations of the people we are assisting, just so that we can buy some time so we don’t stop altogether,” he said.
Jibidar said the cuts, to 1,500 calories a day from 2,100, would affect up to one million people, many of whom had to flee their homes because of the escalating war between the Taliban insurgency and the western-backed Afghan government.
For those displaced by the war, the prospect that food aid could stop is grim. “If the food rations get stopped, we will die of hunger,” said Bibi Fatima, who lives with eight family members in a mud hut on Kabul’s eastern outskirts.
The family was forced to flee their home in Helmand, a southern province where fighting has been fierce, and they have no income except what Fatima’s grandchildren bring in from begging on the streets. She said she had received food from a UN agency in past winters and was counting on help this coming season. “We don’t have firewood and food to eat. If our children get sick, we have no money to treat them.”
With Afghanistan’s harsh winter looming, Jibidar said the WFP had only about six weeks left to deposit advance stores of food meant to supply mountainous areas that usually get cut off for months at a time.
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Global Health and Development Beat
Despite worsening U.S.-North Korean relations, an American charity is ramping up efforts against an epidemic of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in the isolated country, where it says it is making inroads in fighting the deadly disease.
Indian companies and global health groups are stepping up efforts to provide a critical medicine for the country’s free HIV/AIDS drugs programme after more than 150,000 patients risked going without their dosages this month.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan are giving $25 million to the CDC Foundation to help fight the Ebola epidemic.
The World Bank pledged $50 million to the battle against cholera in Haiti, last week.
The Ebola outbreak in West Africa has exposed major gaps in development aid, prompting a rethink of the balance between building health systems and tackling specific diseases like AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.
The death rate in the Ebola outbreak has risen to 70 percent and there could be up to 10,000 new cases a week in two months, the World Health Organization warned Tuesday.
JFK Hospital is Liberia’s largest and one of its oldest medical facilities. The hospital had to close temporarily following the deaths of two leading doctors from Ebola. It is now getting back on its feet, with the maternity ward being the first section to reopen. (VOA )
MSF says that despite promises from various countries to help stem the spread of Ebola, to date, few pledges have translated into concrete action on the ground.
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Buzzing in the Blogs
Charles Lyons, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, makes the case for putting children at the center of the effort to end AIDS. He writes in the Lancet Global Health blog:
Much like the epidemic at large, ending AIDS in children will not be accomplished if business continues as usual. Real change demands the rapid scale up of paediatric treatment initiatives and programmes, including improvements for diagnosing children with HIV, developing new child-friendly drugs and drug formulations, increasing effective communication modalities, and creating new models for providing treatment services closer to where children live. We also need leadership and advocacy that puts paediatric HIV at the forefront of global conversations and decisions.
During 2014 there has been renewed interest in addressing this inequity and increasing international recognition of paediatric treatment as a high priority, as seen through ambitious target setting, pointed investments, and a focus on treatment innovation.
At the AIDS2014 conference in Melbourne, UNAIDS unveiled aggressive new treatment targets for children and adults. Known as 90/90/90, these targets call for 90% of all people living with HIV to know their status, 90% of all people diagnosed with HIV to be receiving ART, and 90% of all people on ART to achieve viral suppression. All of these are set to be met by 2020. The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation is collaborating with UNAIDS, UNICEF, and WHO on an action agenda around 90/90/90 targets, specifically for children, and on national-level efforts to integrate HIV and maternal, neonatal, and child health (MNCH) platforms in order to improve health services for HIV-infected and HIV-exposed children.
August 2014 saw the launch of the Accelerating Children’s HIV/AIDS Treatment initiative during the Obama Administration’s US-Africa Leaders’ Summit. This new partnership between the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation aims to double the number of children receiving ART in ten high-burden, priority countries during the next 2 years.
And in the spring of 2014, UNITAID, in partnership with non-profit organisations Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) and Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) launched their new Pediatric HIV Treatment Initiative, with the goal of overcoming barriers to the development and distribution of paediatric drug formulations and combinations.
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Capital Events
Wednesday
8:30 AM – New Growth Strategies: Delivering on their Promise – World Bank Group
12:00 PM – Crisis Communications: Protocols, Pitfalls, and Perceptions – SID
1:00 PM – Africa’s Stalled Fertility Transition: Causes, Cures, and Consequences? – Wilson Center
Thursday
12:30 PM – The Changing World of International Development: How is hte Business of Development is Changing, How are Development Organizations Adjusting to these Changes, and What’s Coming Next? – Georgetown University
2:00 PM – OECD Perspectives on Global Development – Wilson Center
Friday
8:30 AM – Ensuring Equity for NCDs in Women’s Health Throughout the Life Course – FHI 360
12:30 PM – Reaching the Most Vulnerable through Social and Gender Analysis: Lessons from Field Research in Mali, Ghana and Malawi – SID
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By Mark Leon Goldberg and Tom Murphy
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Disclaimer: Opinions presented in this email do not necessarily reflect the views of PSI.
