Posts Tagged ‘water’

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Water in the World of Global Health

March 24th, 2011

By: Alanna Shaikh

March 22 was World Water Day, which meant a ton of interesting blog posts, forceful press releases, and well-researched articles on water. It was a fantastic opportunity to learn more about a really important issue in global health and development.

It depressed me. It should depress you too. Water is everything in global health, and I mean everything. Clean water is key to stopping a whole range of infectious diseases, from cholera to onchocerciasis. It’s especially important to saving the lives of children, since they are so easily killed by the diarrheal diseases that are transmitted so often by dirty water.

And the task ahead of us is massive. Clean water isn’t just possibly the most important health issue out there. It’s also an infrastructure issue, a governance issue, an agriculture issue. It ties to just about everything anyone is trying to do in development. In cities, access to clean water means stuff like building functioning sewers and providing running water to places where people live. In rural areas it means boreholes, pit latrines, and keeping the drinking water from getting contaminated by agricultural chemicals.

Everywhere, it means a whole lot of education about water – what clean water consists of[i], why it matters, and how to keep it clean. Don’t feed water to your animals at the same watering places humans use. Don’t dig your latrine too close to the well. Don’t wash your clothes in the drinking water, especially not diapers. Wash your fruits and vegetables before you eat them. For that matter, if you can ever afford any, wash your meat.[ii] » Read more: Water in the World of Global Health

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Reading List 1/10/2011

January 10th, 2011

Happy Monday readers! We have a great list of reads to kick off your week. Today we’re reading about the state of schistosomiasis in Cambodia, challenges and victories in water sanitation in Lusaka, Zambia, mass drug administration for elephantiasis in Karnataka, India, and the benefits of handwashing.

Cambodia: Winning the battle against schistosomiasis, IntellAsia
Sector project avails clean water to Lusaka, David Kanduza, Times of Zambia
Preventive measures for elephantiasis, The Hindu
What Are the Benefits of Hand Washing?, Rachel Morgan, LiveStrong

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12 health solutions we’d like to see more of in 2011

December 29th, 2010

Reposted with permission from Blog for Global Health.

This blog was written by Global Health Council Policy Communications Intern Allison Kline.

How do you get the most health for your dollar? As the world tightens its belt, people and global health organizations have been focusing on how they can maximize outcomes for the lowest possible cost.

Anastasia Moloney, the Bogotá correspondent for Reuters AlertNet was compiling a top 10 list of “big ideas that cost little” with the aim of producing a list of simple, low-cost innovations in the fields of technology, health, education, water and sanitation that can make a big difference in the developing world.

The question was: “If there was one low-cost solution to improve health and or water and sanitation in the developing world that we need to see more of in 2011, what would it be?

We polled the members of our Global Health Communicators Working Group and here are the 12 ideas they offered (with the nominating organization in parenthesis), in no particular order of priority. Do you agree with them? Do you know any others that should be listed here? If so, please post them below.

Water and sanitation can make a huge difference in improving health by preventing water-borne diseases:

1.  Increased hand washing with soap: According to the Global Handwashing Day website, handwashing with soap before eating and after using the toilet can cut deaths from diarrhea by half, and acute respiratory infections by a quarter — the same health benefits as thousands of dollars in immunization, for just US $3.35 (Global Health Council).

2.  Point-of-use water filters: Vestergaard-Frandsen’s lifestraw provides an effective, affordable way for populations in remote and rural parts of developing countries to obtain safe drinking water, such as areas affected by guinea worm, where treating water sources or eradicating the parasite itself would be a logistical and financial nightmare.

Vaccines are arguably one of the most effective and cost-effective initiatives in global health. Innovation in vaccine delivery and policy make it easier to vaccinate everyone for less:

3.  Increased childhood vaccination: Particularly for preventable diseases such as pneumonia (Hib and pneumococcal), typhoid, rotavirus and rubella (Sabin Vaccine Institute).

4.  Meningitis vaccine: The vaccine, developed through the Meningitis Vaccine Project (MVP) in collaboration with the World Health Organization and PATH, will cost only 40 cents per dose, making it affordable for many African governments (Global Health Technologies Coalition).

» Read more: 12 health solutions we’d like to see more of in 2011

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Toilets, Nerds, and the Importance of Advocacy

November 24th, 2010

Last Friday November 19 was World Toilet Day, and many events took place to observe this occasion. One of which took place in DC, an event called Nerd Nite. This event occurs once a month and features intellectual presentations on a variety of topics, with entertainment in between each presentation. The latest Nerd Nite included a presentation by Hope Randall of Path. End the Neglect was there to capture Hope on film (which we will have up shortly), and she’s been kind enough to provide us a blog post below:

Reprinted with permission from DefeatDD.org.

By: Hope Randall, Program Assistant for PATH’s diarrheal disease communications and advocacy team

I spent last Friday evening celebrating toilets and talking to a group of nerds about the deadly global impact of diarrheal disease and the solutions to defeat it.

Public speaking doesn’t typically make me nervous, but on Friday, I took advantage of my free drink ticket before taking the stage to talk to a group of young DC professionals about diarrhea. While this topic is familiar enough in global health circles, I’m never quite certain how the public at large will react. Will they laugh without taking the message seriously? Wrinkle their noses in disgust? Lose attention completely?

My concerns were completely unwarranted. As I presented “The Scoop on Poop,” we laughed together at potty humor and edgy communications strategies, then easily segued to the heart of the matter: that while we have the luxury of laughing about toilets and poop jokes, children around the world are dying from a lack of water and sanitation commodities that we consider as basic as air. I was touched by the level of instant engagement and the genuine eagerness of the average person to lend a hand. I felt a sense of camaraderie when I announced that it was World Toilet Day and the crowd whooped and cheered. » Read more: Toilets, Nerds, and the Importance of Advocacy

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