Tag Archives: disease

Livestock and Training Help Fight HIV/AIDS

Posted on by
2

Today is World AIDS Day. This year’s theme is “Getting to Zero,” with a commitment to zero new HIV infections, zero AIDS-related deaths and zero discrimination.

Our two-pronged strategy to help fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, is to a) provide livestock to increase incomes so impoverished families can afford AIDS medication and b) teach sustainable farm methods integrating livestock with crop production to add protein to family diets so the AIDS medicine will be more effective.

Our work in the field has other positive effects that will help us “Get to Zero.” Watch these short videos to hear it directly from our participants.

Heifer Improves the Nutrition and Health of People Living with HIV/AIDS


Heifer Helps HIV/AIDS Orphans


Heifer Helps End Discrimination Against Survivors



Lelo Bwacha: An Awakening in Zambia

Posted on by
1
by Marleen New, Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations

 
A recurring theme on our trip to Zambia, I’ve found, is how such simple ideas, built from inexpensive and everyday items, can make a world of difference. 

The local Bemba phrase “Lelo Bwacha” when translated literally means “dawn” or “morning,” but in Zambia, it is used to describe an awakening, or “Our eyes have been opened” and “We didn’t know such simple things could change a life.” We heard this over and over, time and again, and it certainly seemed to resonate with what we were seeing and experiencing.
Zambian project participant showing how the Tippy-Tap system works.

 Consider the Tippy-Tap. As mentioned in the previous post, having a hand-washing facility convenient and close by the latrine improves hygiene.

Simple Tippy-Tap method

In its simplest form, this could be achieved by providing a plastic jug filled with water. If you drill a small hole close to the bottom of the jug and plug the hole with a stick, you don’t even have to touch the jug to wash your hands. Just remove the twig, wash your hands under the running water and stick the twig back in to stop the flow. Simple.

The Tippy-Tap takes this idea a step further and completely removes the necessity of handling the container.  The jug is suspended by a rope slung over a branch, which is then tied to a stick on the ground.  Stepping on the stick tilts the jug so water can flow to wash your hands. It’s hard to explain but the pictures can demonstrate much better than words.
Considering the incredibly high rate of water-borne diseases, (60 percent of our targeted community members have experienced diarrhea at least once in the last three months) this alone could make a big difference.

Today we visited some families that I had met nine months ago when I came with Elanco staff to see what was then a future project area. During that visit, we met a family that had begun to build a barn—just in case they were selected to receive animals once the project began. Imagine building an entire barn, just in the slim chance you might receive an animal. We decided the phrase “The Audacity of Hope” applied quite well to this farmer! When we returned today we found the barn completed, as well as a bigger, stronger, more impressive barn right next to it. I asked why the second barn and was told — since the barn was built before any Heifer training had taken place– the knowledge and expertise needed to construct a facility strong enough to hold a 500-pound animal hadn’t been utilized. No worries, the farmer told us, he would just use his first structure for storage and smaller animals that he planned to purchase one day. But he was mighty proud of his new one.  We could only imagine the hard work required to build it. It was amazingly strong and built using only his hands—no machinery—and not one nail!
Lelo Bwacha indeed!
Tomorrow we participate in the next handover ceremony of 42 draft cattle to 20 more families!

World Water Day: Let’s Unite for Clean Water

Posted on by
3
Written in collaboration by Brooke Edwards and Maegan Clark

In 1992, the UN designated March 22 of each year as World Water Day. Although Heifer International’s focus is on ending hunger and poverty, clean water (for people and livestock) is absolutely essential for our project families and communities to thrive. In observance of this year’s World Water Day, we thought we would shine a light on how water plays an important part of our work all over the world and give you a few ways you can help bring safe drinking water to the world’s poor.

In many of our project communities, the lack of access to clean potable water is one of the most critical challenges. Many communities depend on unsafe water from unprotected shallow wells or rivers. Lack of access to water is a threat to the livelihood of a community in many ways. Inadequate access to water negatively affects the productivity of livestock and crops, and unsafe drinking water is a health hazard to both communities and animals. It is primarily the responsibility of women and girls to fetch water for household and animal use, often walking long distances in harsh conditions. Water scarcity is believed, for this reason, to affect the enrollment rates as well as educational performance of girls.


(Please note that there is no audio due to the high winds.Video by Geoff Oliver Bugbee)


In this video you’ll see Fatou Dione walking in oven-hot wind churning with dust to fetch water for her husband and four children. It’s the dry season in her village of Diarrere in Senegal, and both water and food are running low. At the time this video was shot, they were eagerly anticipating the rains the following month.


To address water scarcity in our project communities when needed, Heifer partners with organizations specializing in water projects to bring deep-water wells and pumps to the area. Consistent with our methodology of helping families and communities become more self-reliant, local people are trained to maintain the wells with locally available resources. And to ensure the sustainability of the boreholes, water management committees are established and trained.
Improved sanitation is also crucial for our projects. In Uganda, Heifer participants are using a clever hand-washing station called a Tippy Tap. It allows you to wash your hands without touching anything in the process. 
Tippy Tap System
Image from www.cdc.gov

These really make sense when running water isn’t available. Much better than a bucket, that’s for certain. We all know hand washing is a key way to stop the spread of many diseases. In a country like Uganda, which has a life expectancy of 52.98 years (yes, in large part a result of HIV/AIDS), avoiding disease like bacterial diarrhea is of the utmost importance.



The Tippy Tap is a cheap device made of locally available materials. It was initiated by Heifer Uganda at this farm and others as one way of ensuring that family members and their visitors wash their hands with soap each time they use the pit latrine. In so doing, the possibility of spreading disease is minimized.


So what can you do to help?

  1. Help fund our Building a Sustainable Way of Life Project in Peru, which will improve community wells to ensure the availability and quality of water in wet years and dry.
  2. Team up with US-based groups who are calling for increased commitments by the US government to help increase access to safe drinking water and improved sanitation for millions around the world.
  3. Find and attend an event near you.
  4. Visit a local restaurant participating this week in UNICEF’s Tap Project, and pay a $1 (or more!) donation for otherwise free tap water.

    For more information about World Water Day please visit http://www.worldwaterday.org/ and http://oneweekforwater.org/. 


Appropriate Technology Keeps Your Hands Clean

Posted on by
2

I know I seem to keep harping on about biogas (and there’s more to come!), but that’s not the only form of appropriate technology we saw in Uganda. Here’s a clever hand-washing station on a farm we visited. It’s called a Tippy Tap, and it allows you to wash your hands without touching anything in the process.

We saw a couple of these on our trip, and they really make sense when running water isn’t available. Much better than a bucket, that’s for certain. We all know hand washing is a key way to stop the spread of many diseases. In a country like Uganda, which has a life expectancy of 52.98 years (yes, in large part a result of HIV/AIDS), avoiding disease like bacterial diarrhea is of the utmost importance.
Under Heifer Uganda’s holistic farmer training curriculum, families participate in a course on home hygiene. Farmers are trained to keep their homesteads clean and tidy and to ensure reasonable hygiene and sanitation. This practice goes on in many of Heifer’s projects worldwide.
The Tippy Tap is a local, cheap device that is affordable by all families. It was initiated by Heifer Uganda at this farm and others as one way of ensuring that family members and their visitors wash their hands with soap each time they use the pit latrine. In so doing, the possibility of spreading disease is minimized. The training and demonstration on how to make and use the Tippy Tap is done at one participant farmer’s home, and thereafter each participant goes back home and makes one for the family.
The water used is clean and safe, drawn from individual roof water tanks–simple water harvesting techniques introduced to families by Heifer Uganda. When available, community protected wells, communal boreholes, natural springs and sometimes piped water may be the family’s water source. The water sources, in most cases, are within walkable distances, and families ensure that the container has water in it at all times.

Cholera Spreads to Haiti Capital

Posted on by
0

A 3-year-old boy who had not been out of Port-au-Prince tested positive for cholera, health authorities told the Associated Press early this week. Dozens more city residents suspected of having cholera were being tested.
The outbreak has killed at least 544 people in Haiti. Health officials are concerned that flooding after Hurricane Tomas passed through on Friday and Saturday increased the risk of the disease spreading in the country.
According to this AP story on msnbc.com, Partners in Health said that living conditions in Port-au-Prince’s earthquake camps have “deteriorated as a result of the storm. Standing water, mud, lack of garbage collection and limited sanitation availability make the camps a potential flashpoint for cholera outbreak.”
Justin Alce, Heifer’s country director in Haiti, passes along that one of Heifer’s partners in the locality of Ivwa is reporting 26 cholera deaths in the communities of K-louis and Rousseo.
Hurricane Tomas has been devastating as well for Heifer Haiti, with heavy loss of crops, houses and animals as well as the destruction of roads and other infrastructure. We’ll pass along any more updates as we receive them.
To read more about Heifer’s plans for earthquake rehabilitation in Haiti, read our World Ark update here and in the Winter 2011 issue in January.
Photo by Bryan Clifton, Heifer International

Is Malaria Eradication the Right Goal?

Posted on by
0
Back in 2007, the contemporary titans of development funding, Bill and Melinda Gates, called for the global eradication of malaria. Remember when Bill unleashed supposedly malarial mosquitos on an audience at TED (5:05)?
Surely malaria eradication a good thing, right? The WHO thought so, and they got on board. But a new series of papers published in the journal Lancet is not as gungho.
The Guardian‘s Global Health blog has a good synopsis of the findings:
“The most startling paper … is an analysis by Oliver Sabot and colleagues from the Clinton Health Access Initiative in Boston, USA, who take a hard-headed look at the relative costs in four impoverished malaria-endemic countries of eliminating the mosquito-borne disease, versus controlling it. They found that there was a only a small probability (less than 10%) that elimination would be cost-saving over 50 years in three of those countries … and a moderate chance in the other. …
“The other problem they found was that funding for malaria control at the moment is geared to bringing down the numbers of cases rapidly – good in itself, but not the way things have to go if elimination is the goal. …
“All this is not to say that elimination should no longer be contemplated. It’s just more possible in some countries than in others. …”

Cholera Affects Heifer Haiti Participants

Posted on by
0

The cholera outbreak in Haiti that’s killed 250 people is affecting participants in Heifer’s projects there. Heifer International sent out the following release today:

Heifer Haiti staff not infected by cholera outbreak; disease claims project members

Justin Alcé, Heifer International’s Haiti country director reports that in-country staff has not been infected by the cholera outbreak reported in the earthquake-ravaged country, but that some Heifer program participants have lost family members.

In a conversation with leaders of the Alliance Pour la Gestion de L’eau et de Reboisement (AGRE), an organization working with Heifer on a sustainable farming enterprise, two project program participants fell victim to the deadly disease in Liancourt, in the Artibonite region of Haiti, Countrywide, cholera has killed more than 250 people and left more than 3,100 hospitalized. Officials report that animals, too, are dying in the cholera outbreak.

The most affected region is the Lower Artibonite, Central plateau and some regions in the western department (Archaie, La Gonâve Island and Cabaret, some 35 kilometers from the capital of Port-au-Prince). The Artibonite and central plateau were chosen for Heifer Haiti project sites because of the high concentration of internally displaced people (those who fled Port-au-Prince for rural areas) following the January 2010 earthquake.

Cholera is an intestinal infection caused by ingestion of contaminated food or water, a serious and growing problem in the earthquake-ravaged country. Cholera causes diarrhea that can quickly lead to severe dehydration and death without prompt treatment. Vomiting also occurs in most patients. No cholera outbreaks had been reported in Haiti for decades before the earthquake, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
At least five cholera cases have been reported in Haiti’s capital, heightening concerns the disease could reach tent slums where poor hygiene, sanitation and widespread poverty could rapidly spread it. But officials said Sunday that all victims apparently contracted the cholera outside Port-au-Prince, and are hopeful the bacterial disease could be confined to rural areas where it originated.

In response to the cholera outbreak, aid workers are coaching impoverished families how to avoid cholera. Various aid groups are providing soap and water purification tablets and educating people in Port-au-Prince’s camps about the importance of washing their hands.

Twelve cholera treatment centers are also being established and distributions of soap, water purification tablets and rehydration salts continue.

Heifer Haiti staff, supported by team members in Little Rock, is following reports of the disease and communicating and visiting with project partners and families where possible to monitor the situation for appropriate response.

The New York Times reports that the disease is spreading from rural areas to Port-au-Prince, but that fatality rates have declined. This is the first appearance of cholera in Haiti in 50 years.

People Still Get Leprosy?

Posted on by
0

It’s amazing how diseases we consider pieces of the past still torment poor people around the world. Take leprosy, for instance. Associated Press reporter Margie Mason visited East Timor recently to report on this terrifying bacterial infection that can be cured with three pills a day but still ravages 250,000 new patients a year, most of them in India. Although it’s not fatal, the disease can mean an end to life if it’s not treated quickly, Mason wrote in her article, which appears in The Washington Post.

“It maims people, it cripples them and it makes their lives shorter because they cannot work and therefore they cannot eat,” says Dr. Denis Daumerie, project manager of Neglected Tropical Diseases at the WHO in Geneva, who’s been working with leprosy for nearly three decades. “It kills slowly. It leads to discrimination and social exclusion, which in many societies is worse than death.”

To read the story, click here.

Gates Foundation Sponsors ABC News Series on Diseases That Affect the Poor

Posted on by
0

“World News” anchor Diane Sawyer and Dr. Richard Besser, ABC’s medical editor, are leading a new yearlong ABC News series on the diseases and health conditions that disproportionately affect the world’s poorest people. Inadequate newborn care, malaria, polio, HIV, tuberculosis and a lack of critical vaccines are among the global topics to be covered.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is giving a $1.5 million grant that will help fund the cost of the series, and ABC News will invest more than $4.5 million in the project.
“We believe that great storytelling can inform decisions that could help to save lives,” said Kate James, chief communications officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The series, called “Be the Change: Save a Life” will begin in December and continue throughout 2011. It will include reporting from all ABC News anchors across all broadcasts and platforms. Read more about the series on ABC’s website.

WHO Announces Report on Neglected Tropical Diseases

Posted on by
0
I received an e-mail from the World Health Organization announcing its first-ever report on neglected tropical diseases, to occur Oct. 14 in Geneva, Switzerland. From the e-mail:
“There are 149 countries and territories where neglected tropical diseases are endemic, at least 100 of which are endemic for 2 or more, and 30 countries that are endemic for 6 or more.
“Once widely dispersed, many neglected tropical diseases are now concentrated in poor remote rural areas and also in urban slums and conflict zones. They cause blindness, disability, deformities or otherwise maim those who are affected.
“Other neglected diseases such as dengue and rabies are widespread and their geographical range is continuously increasing as the infection spreads to new areas.
“They are seen as promoters of poverty which weaken impoverished populations, frustrate the achievement of the health-related Millennium Development Goals and impede global development outcomes.”
Stay tuned to Heifer blog for more. The day’s events are to be live-streamed by the WHO, and the full report will be available on Oct. 14.