News~

(Click on organization name for link to website.)

USAID and Partners Form a $5 Million
Alliance for Safe Drinking Water:
Safe Drinking Water Alliance Launched at the United Nations

NEW YORK, April 22, 2004. A strategic public-private collaboration devoted to ensuring safe drinking water was officially launched today at the United Nations' Commission on Sustainable Development meeting in New York. The Safe Drinking Water Alliance will receive $1.4 million over the next 18 months from the U.S. AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT (USAID) through the GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCE, an initiative to promote partnerships such as this in the developing world. USAID's financial contribution is leveraging substantial in-kind and financial contributions from Procter & Gamble (estimated at approximately $3.5 million), as well as technical and program support resources from other partners.

The Alliance is designed to develop innovative approaches for ensuring the safety of drinking water. USAID, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for Communication Programs (CCP), CARE, Population Services International (PSI), and Procter & Gamble joined forces to leverage their respective expertise and resources to better understand the behaviors and motivations for choosing particular technologies for treating household water, to share the knowledge gained, and identify opportunities for scaling up successful efforts to ensure safe drinking water. (Excerpt)

Reference documents; click on titles for full-text reports.

Disinfecting Water, Saving Lives: PSI’s Safe Water System Prevents Diarrhea.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Safe Water System information

Safe Water Systems for the Developing World: A Handbook for Implementing Household-Based Water Treatment and Safe Storage Projects

The Safe Drinking Water Alliance: Uniting Forces to Ensure Safe Water.

A New Complementary Approach for Providing Safe Drinking Water: P&G’s PuR Purifier of Water.

Click here for selected drinking water research abstracts.

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EARTH DAY 2004:
World Bank Calls for Concerted Action on Environmental Health

Contact: Sergio Jellinek, 202-458-2841. News Release No:2004/328/S

WASHINGTON, April 22, 2004. The World Bank today called for speeding up global action to fight diseases caused by outdoor and indoor air pollution, and unsafe water- conditions which are affecting the health and lives of millions of children in poor and middle-income countries.

"Adults and children are dying because of environmental pollution and unsafe water," says Ian Johnson, World Bank Vice President for Sustainable Development. "This is a global problem that the international community urgently needs to put an end to, because children’s lives depend on it."

Every year in developing countries, an estimated three million people die prematurely from water-related diseases, and two million people die from exposure to stove smoke inside their homes. It is the infants and young children, followed by women, from poor rural families who lack access to safe water, sanitation, and modern household fuels that bear the brunt of the largest portion of deaths.

According to the World Bank’s Environment Strategy, over one million people die annually from vector-borne malaria, with the vast majority of deaths occurring in poverty-stricken Africa. Another million people die from urban air pollution, and, of the urban populations, there is reason to believe that it is the urban poor who suffer the most.

"Progress is happening, but it is still too slow," adds Johnson. "Solutions require coordination across different sectors, including the need for changing behaviors on the ground. Better infrastructure and energy services for households and communities are needed for mitigating the most daunting environmental risks to health." (Excerpt)

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Appropriate Sanitation
in the Developing World

Worldwide, two of the major causes of mortality and
morbidity are unsafe drinking water supplies and
inadequate disposal of human excreta.

EcoSan is meeting the need with a course entitled "Appropriate Sanitation in the Developing World," which will be held at the Agricultural University of Norway from May 24 to May 28, 2004.

This course explores ecological solutions for developing countries, examining recycling and natural waste treatment systems. Case-studies from Asia, Africa and Latin America will be presented by sanitation specialists. Analysis of associated issues, both technical and social, will follow.

Designed for both the professional and student, the purpose of this course is two-fold: to illustrate how ecological sanitation is applied in developing countries, and to explain, in-depth, the principles of ecological engineering.

Registration ends May 10, 2004. All presentations are in English. Email contact.

Click here to view the course brochure.

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World Health Organization sponsors
Africa Malaria Day

More than 600 million people urgently need effective malaria
treatment to prevent unacceptably high death rates.

22 APRIL 2004 | GENEVA -- More than 600 million people, most of them children living in sub-Saharan Africa, face the daily threat of death from malaria because new, more effective treatments are not available where they live. Cheaper medicines, which have been used for many years, are no longer effective in most places because the malaria parasite has developed resistance to them.

“At least one million children die every year in Africa from malaria. Several million more become seriously ill. In many places, they are still given medicines whose effectiveness is very low and decreasing,” said Dr LEE Jong-wook, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO). “Better treatment is available and must be delivered urgently to the people who need it most.”

Artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) provide highly effective treatment for malaria, for the first time in more than 20 years. However, despite some progress, this new medication is not available as widely or as quickly as it needs to be.

Since April 2001, WHO has strongly recommended that countries where there is resistance to conventional treatments should switch to ACTs. But at about US$ 2 per adult dose, ACTs cost 10-20 times as much as the old monotherapies, such as chloroquine. For most countries in Africa, external funding will be necessary. [Continued]

For more information, please contact: Ms Melanie Zipperer at the World Health Organization. Telephone: +41 22 791 1344 or Email: zippererm@who.int.

Malaria links:

Celebrities lend their voices to children's fight against malaria.

WHO Malaria page

EHP Info Center Malaria Bulletins, 2004/2003

EHP II Malaria and Other Vector-borne Disease Reports.

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