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More from World Water Week 2011

September 7th, 2011

World Water Week 2011 took place this past summer August 21 – 26 2011 in Stockholm, Sweden. The Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases along with our Latin America and Caribbean water initiative partners — the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and FEMSA Foundation — had our very own session during the conference entitled “Focus Latin America and the Caribbean: Fighting Poverty in Latin America: Integrating Water and Health Initiatives.” Panelists convened to take in-depth look at NTDs in Latin America and the Caribbean, and  to discuss promising strategies to sustainably reduce the burden of NTDs within the region. Below are photos from the session:

Our booth during the event.

Panelists (from left to right): Ann Kelly, Partner, Global Philanthropy Group and The Global Water Initiative of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, Vidal Garza Cantú, Director, FEMSA Foundation, Neeraj Mistry, Managing Director, Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases, Carlos de Paco, Operations Lead Specialist, Inter-American Development Bank, and Moderator Gian-Carlo Ochoa, Board Member, Charity Water.

Group photo with Global Network Managing Director Dr. Neeraj Mistry and event participants.

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Water and Sanitation to tackle NTDs in Latin America and the Caribbean – the IDB perspective Part 2

August 24th, 2011

Below is the second and last installment of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)’s series for World Water Week. In this entry, Josh Colston talks about the water and sanitation projects in Latin American and the Caribbean supported by IDB.

By: Josh Colston, Inter-American Development Bank, Social Sector

The Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) NTD Initiative is a partnership between the IDB, Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases. As the regional development bank for LAC, with projects in many different sectors, one of the things that the IDB brings to the partnership is the ability to facilitate this integration. We can collaborate with our colleagues in different departments, whose projects tackle NTD risk factors to include effective, low cost public health activities within their projects.

A good example of this is a project in Guyana’s capital city of Georgetown. Georgetown has a poor drainage system consisting of basic trenches, running alongside the roads. Lying close to sea level, the city is prone to severe and prolonged flooding during the rainy season, while the aging sewerage system regularly leaks. These problems cause wastewater to overflow into the drainage trenches and back-up into the streets and backyards. This in turn causes populations of mosquitoes – a vector for lymphatic filariasis (LF) – and soil-transmitted helminths (STH) transmission to rise. The water and sanitation division of the IDB has a project to improve the city’s sewerage system. Our NTD Initiative has therefore seized the opportunity to add a health component to this project. In this way, we are uniquely placed to bring together medical interventions with longer-term environmental improvements that will have a combined impact on the two diseases.

Happily, another way in which LAC is unique is that the elimination of several NTDs – Trachoma, Onchocerciasis and Lymphatic Filariasis among them – is a genuinely feasible goal in the short term. With this multi-sectoral approach, the IDB and its partners are going to play a small role in achieving this goal. But when it is reached, the real credit will have to go to the countries themselves – the governments, health workers and communities that made the final push to end the neglect, and rid the region of these major causes of disability, social-exclusion and unhappiness.

Josh Colston is a consultant in demography and epidemiology at the IDB, where he works on issues such as infectious diseases of poverty, maternal and child health and nutrition, and climate change and health.

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Posted in Latin America and the Caribbean, Water and Sanitation, World Water Week 2011

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Water and Sanitation to tackle NTDs in Latin America and the Caribbean – the IDB perspective

August 22nd, 2011

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is a source of development financing for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). IDB aims to bring about development and reduce poverty in a sustainable, climate-friendly way. IDB (along with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO)) is also one of the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases’ partners in the NTD Latin America and the Caribbean Initiative, which helps support programs that address NTDs in the LAC region. IDB will be joining us at our World Water Week event this Wednesday August 24 as well. Below is Part 1 of a two part series on NTDs in Latin America and the Caribbean, and how water and sanitation affect these diseases:

By: Josh Colston, Inter-American Development Bank, Social Sector

The NTD situation in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is unique. While in other regions, NTDs can be widespread across large areas; in LAC, the distribution of many NTDs is concentrated in small niches – stubborn pockets of transmission where the conditions are just right for the diseases to survive, continuing to infect people and resisting attempts to eliminate them.

One such condition is a lack of water and sanitation. A common feature of these small pockets – whose populations may only number in the 100,000s – is that they are often places where it is difficult to provide the local people with clean piped water and decent latrines that can dispose of their “waste” in a hygienic way. In urban areas, such as the city of Recife on the easternmost tip of Brazil, the last place in that country where the disfiguring disease of lymphatic filariasis (LF) continues to infect people, this lack of access may be due to rapid urbanization outstripping the capacity to meet the demand for water and sanitation services. Elsewhere, in the mountains of central Chiapas, the last bastion of blinding trachoma in Mexico, for example, it is because the indigenous, non-Spanish speaking population lives in small, dispersed settlements that are difficult to access.

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Posted in Latin America and the Caribbean, NTDs, Water and Sanitation, World Water Week 2011

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World Water Week 2011

August 18th, 2011

Next week August 21-27 marks 2011 World Water Week hosted by Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) held in Stockholm, Sweden. Since 1991, conveners and change-makers have gathered at World Water Week to discuss the globe’s water issues. This year’s theme is “Water in an Urbanizing World.” The conference will feature seminars and events that examine the potential and necessary responses in water policy, management and development that must take place in order to address pervasive water issues that make a significant global impact.

The Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases will be holding a session at World Water Week entitled “Focus Latin America and the Caribbean: Fighting Poverty in Latin America: Integrating Water and Health Initiatives.” The session will take an in-depth look at NTDs in Latin America and the Caribbean where innovative solutions are being applied by the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and other partners to eliminate NTDs once and for all.

To celebrate World Water Week, End the Neglect will feature pieces from guest bloggers on issues in water including water sanitation and its impact on NTDs, water and gender equity, and WASH in schools. In addition, we will also have videos and live-streaming from Stockholm.

Stay tuned next week, as each day we’ll feature something new for World Water Week 2011! Click here for more World Water Week resources and information.

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