Pakistan – Deforestation increases capital’s temperature

June 7, 2010 · 0 comments

ISLAMABAD: Deforestation is the main cause of rising temperature in the Capital.

Deforestation at a fast pace has eroded the old cliche that it would rain in the Capital after some hot days. The average temperature during these days of year is around 40 Degree Celsius, which is five to six degrees more than the normal.

An official of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) told this news agency that they were committed to conservation of forests.

He said the government had set a target of increasing the forest cover by 5.6 percent in the current year and 6 percent by 2015 in the Mid-Term Development Framework.

Deforestation is the main cause of extraordinary change in temperatures in Pakistan and elsewhere. The continuing loss of forests in Asia is a result of many elements.

A combination of mismanagement and corruption, economic development, and an ever-widening gap between classes continue to cause deforestation across the continent.

Tree plantation is not an activity reserved only for the environmentally conscious West. It is a sustainable and easy way to improve environment, whether we are living in the United States or Pakistan. Deforestation and desertification are just some of Pakistan’s environmental problems, according to the latest edition of the CIA World Fact Book.

EPA did a wonderful job when it was headed by incumbent President Asif Ali Zardari. The then administration of the agency chalked out a comprehensive plan to increase tree plantation in the country and cooperation of various financial institutions was sought for the purpose.

EPA also undertook tree plantation of Islamabad-Murree Highway at that time, which added to the beauty of Potohar plateau and greatly reduced average temperature.

Trees help recharge ground water and sustain flow of streams. Trees have a positive impact on the incidence of asthma, skin cancer and stress-related illness by filtering polluted air, reducing smog formation, shading out solar radiation and by providing an attractive and calm setting for recreation.

Trees strengthen neighbourhood communities by providing people with an opportunity to work together for the benefit of the local environment.

Trees play a vital role in the urban ecosystem, by helping to support a great variety of wildlife, which people can enjoy close to home.

Source – Daily Times

Urban Area Disadvantage and Under-5 Mortality in Nigeria

June 1, 2010 · 1 comment

Environmental Health Perspectives, June 2010

Urban Area Disadvantage and Under-5 Mortality in Nigeria: The Effect of Rapid Urbanization

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Diddy Antai and Tahereh Moradi Division of Epidemiology, Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden

Background: Living in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas is associated with increased childhood mortality risks. As city living becomes the predominant social context in low- and middle-income countries, the resulting rapid urbanization together with the poor economic circumstances of these countries greatly increases the risks of mortality for children < 5 years of age (under-5 mortality).

Objective: In this study we examined the trends in urban population growth and urban under‑5 mortality between 1983 and 2003 in Nigeria. We assessed whether urban area socioeconomic disadvantage has an impact on under-5 mortality.

Methods: Urban under-5 mortality rates were directly estimated from the 1990, 1999, and 2003 Nigeria Demographic and Health Surveys. Multilevel logistic regression analysis was performed on data for 2,118 children nested within data for 1,350 mothers, who were in turn nested within data for 165 communities.

Results: Urban under-5 mortality increased as urban population steadily increased between 1983 and 2003. Urban area disadvantage was significantly associated with under-5 mortality after adjusting for individual child- and mother-level demographic and socioeconomic characteristics.

Conclusions: Significant relative risks of under-5 deaths at both individual and community levels underscore the need for interventions tailored toward community- and individual-level interventions. We stress the need for further studies on community-level determinants of under-5 mortality in disadvantaged urban areas.

CNN – Ghana bags a handy new way to tackle plastic waste

June 1, 2010 · 0 comments

London, England (CNN) — In Ghana’s capital, Accra, the streets are choked with trash and littered with plastic waste that blocks gutters and clogs storm drains.

Drinking water comes in sachets that cost a few cents. Cheap and convenient, they are sold in shops and by street hawkers. But once they have been drunk they are often simply dropped on the ground.

When British entrepreneur Stuart Gold saw Accra’s plastic problem he recognized an opportunity for a business venture — an NGO that could clean up the streets and create jobs in the community.

His idea was to collect discarded sachets, clean them up and stitch them together to make brightly colored, fashionable bags.

Two-and-a-half years later, Trashy Bags makes around 250 items a week and produces 350 different designs of bags, wallets and raincoats.

And crucially, its network of collectors has gathered some 15 million plastic sachets that might otherwise be on the streets of Accra.

“One of the problems in Ghana is the amount of plastic littering the streets,” Gold told CNN. “There isn’t a proper way of collecting waste and people aren’t educated as to the problems of plastic waste.

“The pure-water sachet is ubiquitous. When anyone wants water they can’t drink tap water so they buy these sachets, even for their home.

“Once they’ve drunk the water they drop it in the street. You can see people drop them from their cars,” he said.

Gold said that while waste collection is slowly improving in Accra, recycling is still in its infancy and landfills are inadequate.

Plastic dumped in the streets ends up blocking drains, which Gold said can cause seasonal flooding. Other waste makes it into the sea, with unsightly tangles of plastic bags washing up on the beaches to the east of Accra, he said.

Trashy Bags encourages people to bring them empty sachets, paying about 20 cents for each kilogram of water sachets (about 100 sachets) they deliver. It pays more for ice cream, fruit drink and yogurt sachets, which are harder to come by.

The sachets are sorted, hand washed, disinfected and dried in the sun, before being flattened by hand and stitched into sheets.

The sheets are then cut according to templates and assembled as finished bags, wallets and even rain jackets.

It’s a labor-intensive process that means Trashy Bags products are more expensive than mass-produced items, according to Gold.

Prices range from $1 for a wallet to $26 for sports bags and Gold said most of his products are bought by expats and tourists, or exported to countries including Japan, Germany and Denmark.

But he added that Trashy Bag’s reusable shopping bag, which costs about $4.30, is proving a hit with Ghanaians.

And the labor-intensive manufacture does mean jobs for locals. Trashy Bags currently employs 60 Ghanaians in its workshops and around 100 others collect sachets for the company

“For lots of people collecting sachets is their whole livelihood,” said Gold.

“One woman makes more money than any of our actual workers. She organizes other women to collect and she pays them and she brings the sachets in.”

The result, said Gold, is that instead of discarding sachets, some people are keeping them and selling them on to collectors.

He acknowledged that Trashy Bags’ efforts are only a drop in the ocean of waste, and that despite his goal of turning the NGO into a self-sustaining venture it is struggling to break even.

But he said an important part of the project is education. Whereas a number of clothing companies around the world use materials made from recycled plastic, Trashy Bags are visibly made from the original plastic packaging.

“We don’t melt it down, so it’s very obvious it’s made from recycled plastic trash. So, the Ghanaians love them, and they do appreciate the solution because it’s very graphic,” said Gold.

There are similar projects to Trashy Bags in other countries. “Bazura Bags” in the Philippines makes bags from offcuts left over by packaging companies, India’s “Thunk in India,” makes all kinds of recycled products, including pencil cases made from fruit juice cartons, and “Terracycle” in the United States makes a range of items, including backpacks made from cookie wrappers.

It’s a sign that attitudes to waste are changing around the world. And in Ghana too. The government has acknowledged there is a problem with plastic waste and has even talked about banning plastic.

While a ban may be unrealistic, the fact it has been considered is a sign the environment is a growing concern in the country.

“People in West Africa don’t take the environment particularly seriously, but more and more in Ghana they do,” said Gold.

“They are gradually seeing there are problems other than just disease, and [polluting] the environment is one of them.”

Source – CNN, June 1, 2010

CRS – Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Considerations in Home-Based Care For People Living with HIV

May 28, 2010 · 0 comments

Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Considerations in Home-Based Care For People Living with HIV, May 2010.

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Christopher Seremet, Catholic Relief Services.

This guidance document offers water supply and sanitation facility and hygiene promotion design considerations and recommendations intended to increase access to these facilities by people living with HIV. People living with HIV often require modifications to their water supply and sanitation facilities and hygiene practices due to their debilitating illness. This guidance document is intended for Home-Based Care (HBC) practitioners serving people living with this disease as well as water and sanitation engineers and technicians tasked with providing community water supply and household sanitation systems.

The Economist – Enough water is not enough: it must be clean

May 27, 2010 · 0 comments

IF WATER has the capacity to enhance life, its absence has the capacity to make it miserable. David Gray, a water practitioner who has served the World Bank in almost every river basin on the globe and is now a professor at Oxford, has a technique that makes the point. Every day he receives e-mails with water stories from newspapers round the world. By briefly displaying to an audience just one day’s crop—including, say, drought in Australia, floods in Kenya, an empty dam in Pakistan, a toxic spill in the Yellow river and saltwater contamination in Haiti—he can soon show how water may dominate if not destroy lives, especially in poor countries.

Some of its most pernicious influences, though, never make the headlines. This is how they might read: “Over 1.2 billion people have to defecate in the open.” “The biggest single cause of child deaths is diarrhoea or diseases related to it.” “Nearly 1 billion people have no access to piped drinking water or safe taps or wells.” Each of these statements is linked to water.

Surprisingly, some of those who have to defecate in the open do not mind. Some rural men, and even women, quite enjoy a social squat in the bushes. But for many, and certainly for those who must live with its consequences, it is a disagreeable practice. Women and, especially, girls often find it embarrassing. Many women in South Asia contain themselves by day and wait till nightfall before venturing into the shadows. Girls at African schools without latrines often drop out rather than risk the jeers of their male contemporaries. Slum-dwellers in Nairobi have to pick their way through streams of sewage and take care to avoid “flying toilets”, plastic bags filled with excrement that are flung with desperate abandon into the night.

Without piped water to wash their hands with, let alone to drink, the open-air defecators and another 800m people with access only to primitive latrines are inevitably carriers of disease. If they could wash their hands with soap and water, they could block one of the main transmission routes for the spread of both diarrhoeal diseases and respiratory infections. As it is, patients with water-related diseases fill half the hospital beds in the poorest countries, and dirty water and poor sanitation kill 5,000 children a day.

Clean water is crucial for children with diarrhoea; they need rehydration and electrolytes to survive. Even then, they may still be at risk of malnutrition if they continue to suffer from diarrhoea, which will prevent them from absorbing their food properly. This usually has long-term consequences. Malnutrition in the womb and during the first two years of life is now seen as causing irreversible changes that lead to lifelong poor health.

Poor health, bad in itself, translates into poor economic output. A study in Guatemala followed the lives of children in four villages from their earliest years to ages between 25 and 42. In two villages the children were given a nutritious supplement for their first seven years, and in the other pair a less nutritious one. The boys who had had the more nutritious diet in their first two years were found to have larger bodies, a greater capacity for physical work, more schooling and better cognitive skills. They also grew up to earn average wages 46% higher than the other groups.

Studies in Ghana and Pakistan suggest that the long-term impact of malnutrition associated with diarrhoeal infections costs each country 4-5% of GDP. This can be added to a similar burden for “environmental risk”, which includes malaria and poor access to water and sanitation, both water- related, as well as indoor air pollution. All in all, the World Health Organisation thinks that half the consequences of malnutrition are caused by inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene. In Ghana and Pakistan the total cost of these shortcomings may amount to 9% of GDP, and these two countries are not unique.

Read More – The Economist

Nigeria: More Citizens Now Live in Slums

May 27, 2010 · 1 comment

Nigeria: More Citizens Now Live in Slums – Experts

Lack of effective planning and programme in the housing sector have turned many Nigerian cities into slums, according to Inemesit Akpan

Most cities in Nigeria are fast developing into slums, according to experts at a recent conference on “Sustainable Cities” organised by the New Economic Partnership on African Development (NEPAD), held at the Transcorp Hilton, Abuja.

First to open the ‘pandora box,’ was the Country Representative of UN-Habitat, Professor Johnson Falade with his insightful paper entitled: ” Planned City as Foundation for Sustainable City Development.”

Prof. Falade, started with an explanation of what Sustainable Development is all about, which he defined, as “the development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

He added that sustainable development encompasses key concepts, the issue of ‘needs’ and the idea of ‘limitations: His words; “It contains within it two key concepts: the concepts of ‘needs’, in particular the essential needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organisation on the environment’s ability to meet present and future needs.”

An expert on urban development, Prof. Falade also spoke on issues regarding approaches to city developemnt, free interplay of the economic forces of supply and demand to detect land use decisions with many consequences like pollution, congestion and externalities.

Commenting on urbanisation in Nigeria and growth of cities, he spoke about Nigeria’s population which he put at 140 million (2006), population growth rate (2.8% per annum), urban population growth rate (5.8% per annum), urban population by 2007 (70 million – 50%), pointing out that by 2025, “more than 60% will live in towns and cities, while national population will double every three decades.”

He highlighted development challenges of rapid urbanisation without adequate city planning, to include: Emergence of fast growth and ill equipped settlements characterised by: (a) Inefficient and uncoordinated urban governance, (b) Poor economic and resource base of cities, (c) Lack of community participation in urban development, (d) Poor urban land management, (e) Insecurity of tenure, (f) Juvenile delinquency and crime, and (g) unsustainable development.

Another paper that generated attention, came from Kabir M. Yari, Managing Director, Urban Development Bank of Nigeria (UDBN). He opened up with an introduction which confirmed the popular views that cities in Nigeria and other African countries are growing at a very fast rate.

“Cities and urban settlements in Nigeria, like many other parts of Africa and other developing countries are growing at a very fast rate as a result of rural-urban migration and high urban population growth rates,” he asserted.

He said that one visible feature of these settlements is dominance of slums and informal settlements in the provision of land and shelter to their populace.” According to him, “it is estimated that “about 30 – 70% of the urban population in Nigerian cities live in unplanned or informal settlements.”

He told the audience made up of stakeholders in housing and urban development that the situation is so because the demand for serviced land and housing is so much greater than supply. He also noted that most urban poor households cannot afford to join the formal housing market “and are therefore forced to gain shelter through the informal housing supply system according to Hague finding in 2006.

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Uganda – urban street vendors and poor hygiene

May 27, 2010 · 0 comments

Uganda: Cheap Roadside Lunch Can Be Costly

Kampala — You might think you are saving by eating the ‘cheap’ food or drink sold by vendors on the roadside. But that is where it starts and ends.

According to the World Health Organisation, vended food is prepared or sold by vendors in streets and other public places for immediate consumption without further processing. This includes fruits, vegetables and beverages.

Scholars attribute street-food vending to rural-urban migration. It is estimated that 40% of the urban poor in the developing world eat street food as it is cheap.

It is a major source of income, especially for the women, requiring low capital investment.

Most vendors, however, have very low formal education, which makes them unable to appreciate the most critical food handling practices.

Consumers have thus borne the consequences whenever the food is unsafe.

Michael Kalema, an auditor, recalls the price he paid after eating an ‘affordable’ meal at some down-town food joint in 2008. “What I thought was a quick, affordable and decent lunch of sh2,000, eventually cost me close to half-a-million shillings in medication.”

He had been diagnosed with salmonella and listeria, pathogens found in half-cooked food.

In Kampala, some popular food joints are found along Nasser Road, in Arua Park and Kinamwandu on Johnson Street.

According to John Lule, the principle health inspector at City Hall, all street food vendors are governed by Section 281 of the Public Health Act.

“This spells out mandatory requirements for all eating houses, including accessible running water, toilet facilities, refuse bins and medical examination for the food-handlers.”

This, however, is usually not the case. A number of significant public health concerns still arise from the current state of street food vending that we all need to know.

Water

Water used for drinking, washing, cleaning and other operations is often below acceptable quality and is often insufficient.

Stationary food stalls often do not have direct access to water supply. Many vendors wash their utensils in water that has been used previously, perhaps several times.

Preparation

Some cooks carry out the final frying, grilling or baking in open stalls.

During such a process, sometimes raw materials and food may come into contact with cooked food, which is then consumed without further heating.

At times, soiled equipment and surfaces such as cutting boards and knives are used.

Little attention is paid to containers of pastes, sauces and other food additives, creating fungal growth and deterioration for the utensils.

Transportation

A lot of street-vended food is prepared far from town and then transported to the vending places using wheelbarrows, bicycles, pick-up trucks and passenger taxis.

This does not rule out contamination with toxic materials from the previous occupants of the vehicle used, say a pick-up truck that had earlier been used to ferry live chicken.

Source – http://allafrica.com/stories/201005270429.html

World Bank – $22.00 million for urban areas basic services in Yemen

May 27, 2010 · 0 comments

WB to provide $ 22.00 million for urban areas basic services in Yemen

[26/May/2010]

WASHINGTON, May 26 (Saba)- US$ 22.00 million equivalent will be provided for the Yemen Integrated Urban Development project to improve access to basic services at urban areas in Taiz province, the World Bank has announced.

In a press release, the WB said that the proposed project contributes to the strategic objectives of its recently approved Urban and Local Government Strategy that emphasizes the scaling up of urban upgrading, from a local to a national scale and improving living conditions in these areas by extending affordable services to informal settlements.

‘’Through this project, the Bank’s support will help improve urban management of the cities through an effective approach to basic service delivery for the urban poor in Yemen. Through continuous donor coordination and harmonization, this project “will also build the platform for future donor intervention in urban upgrading of informal settlements in key cities in Yemen as well as complement efforts of other IDA-funded projects like the Urban Water and Sanitation Project, the Social Fund for Development and Public Works Project to maximize leverage and impact,” noted Benson Ateng, World Bank Yemen Country Manager.

In Yemen, informal settlements in urban areas are characterized by poor access to basic infrastructure and services like water supply and sewerage, garbage collection and street lighting, environmental degradation, lack of economic and educational opportunities, poor health care, and lack of security of land tenure.

Taiz is one of the cities that are most severely affected by the rapid growth of informal settlements. Nearly 70 percent of the total residential built-up area of Taiz is informal and the vast majority of residential development since the 1980s has taken place informally.

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Climate Change and Urbanization in India

May 27, 2010 · 0 comments

The Coupling of Climate Change and Urbanization in India with a Focus on the Impact of Glacial Retreat, Part II

Health now and in the future

The main climate-related risks in the Hindu Kush-Himalaya region include the expansion of vector-borne diseases as pathogens are able to reside in new habitats in altitudes that were formerly unsuitable. Indian cities have already become reservoirs of vector-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever because of overcrowding and high rates of transmission (Revi, 2010).  Cooking, sleeping, and living with 13.4 people per 45 m2 room area, as in the slums of Kolkata, India, places residents at high risk exposure of respiratory infections, meningitis, and asthma (Kundu, 2003). Water-borne disease accounts for 80% of all disease. Water-related infections can be transmitted in the following ways: through ingestion from drinking supplies, through lack of water for hygiene and via aquatic pathogens and insect vectors that are hydrophilic. Slum conditions promote the spread of disease through all of these means.

Studies have shown that the quantity and timing of runoff from snowmelt and glaciers directly and indirectly influence the frequency and prevalence of water-borne diseases. Climate projections predict a heightened gradient in precipitation between wet and dry seasons, with wetter wet seasons and accompanying increases in flash floods and drier dry seasons with sharp declines in water quantity. During the wet season, flooding is expected to flush feces and pollutants into water sources; during the dry season, there is expected to be increased incidences of starvation and malnutrition as well as hygiene-related diseases. Infrequent bathing is associated with scabies and bacterial skin infections, some of which can lead to acute glomerulonephritis (Heukelback et al., 2005). The entire Indian subcontinent will have to combat adverse health impacts of climate change and water shortage, particularly due to the lack of freshwater reservoirs of glaciers. However, the current intra-urban health disparities indicate that slum dwellers will suffer the most.

Water in Urban India

As of right now, India has a number of freshwater reservoirs, but the increasing population and overexploitation of surface and groundwater over the past few decades has resulted in water scarcity in many areas (Grail, 2009). India has the highest water footprint among the top rice and wheat producing countries. In addition, only 26.8% of domestic and 60% of industrial wastewater is treated in India (Grail, 2009). Once the land of the holy rivers, India is now known for the level of toxicity and pollution of its rivers. Local and national governments fail to effectively manage the water quantity and quality crisis in India.

Groundwater plays a pivotal role in shaping the economic and social health of many urban areas. In their study on the “Groundwater Situation of Urban India,” Patel et al. identified two major factors that determine whether a city can meet its water demand (Patel et al, 2007). The first is physical or geographic water availability, which is the availability of sufficient and good quality groundwater due to natural recharge or from canals and potable aquifers that store and supply water. Good quality here means free from salt-water intrusion. The second determinant is the ability of the urban area to survive on external sources. Patel et al. calls this factor economic scarcity rather than physical scarcity because in the event of water shortage, wells running dry for example, cities must obtain supplies, often at significantly high costs (Patel et al., 2007). In 2005, 65% of households across seven major Indian cities faced severe water deficiency and many cities were forced to reach out to distant water sources. Delhi and Chennai currently receive water from rivers that are 250 Km and 450 Km away, respectively (Grail, 2009). Smaller urban areas, where residents are mainly slum-dwellers, tend to have lesser say on water stored at distant reservoirs and lesser economic strength to pay for external water sources. If and when water resources decline further and surface water from glacial inflow is completely unavailable, international, national and local governments will have to rise to the challenge to save millions of urban residents.

Source – http://www.onearth.org/node/2194

Role of urban municipal governments in reducing health inequities

May 27, 2010 · 0 comments

The role of urban municipal governments in reducing health inequities: A meta-narrative mapping analysis

The 1986 Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion coincided with a preponderance of research, worldwide, on the social determinants of health and health inequities. Despite the establishment of a ‘health inequities knowledge base’, the precise roles for municipal governments in reducing health inequities at the local level remain poorly defined.

The objective of this study was to monitor thematic trends in this knowledge base over time, and to track scholarly prescriptions for municipal government intervention on local health inequities.

Methods: Using meta-narrative mapping, four bodies of scholarly literature – ‘health promotion’, ‘Healthy Cities’, ‘population health’and ‘urban health’- that have made substantial contributions to the health inequities knowledge base were analyzed over the 1986-2006 timeframe. Article abstracts were retrieved from the four literature bodies using three electronic databases (PubMed, Sociological Abstracts, Web of Science), and coded for bibliographic characteristics, article themes and determinants of health profiles, and prescriptions for municipal government interventions on health inequities.

Results: 1004 journal abstracts pertaining to health inequities were analyzed.

The overall quantity of abstracts increased considerably over the 20 year timeframe, and emerged primarily from the ‘health promotion’and ‘population health’ literatures. ‘Healthy lifestyles’and ‘healthcare’ were the most commonly emphasized themes in the abstracts.

Only 17% of the abstracts articulated prescriptions for municipal government interventions on local health inequities. Such interventions included public health campaigns, partnering with other governments and non-governmental organizations for health interventions, and delivering effectively on existing responsibilities to improve health outcomes and reduce inequities.

Abstracts originating from Europe, and from the ‘Healthy Cities’ and ‘urban health’literatures, were most vocal regarding potential avenues for municipal government involvement on health inequities.

Conclusions: This study has demonstrated a pervasiveness of ‘behavioural’and ‘biomedical’ perspectives, and a lack of consideration afforded to the roles and responsibilities of municipal governments, among the health inequities scholarly community. Thus, despite considerable research activity over the past two decades, the ‘health inequities knowledge base’ inadequately reflects the complex aetiology of, and solutions to, population health inequities.

Author: Patricia CollinsMichael Hayes
Credits/Source: International Journal for Equity in Health 2010, 9:13

Source – 7thspace

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