In Brief: High food prices despite good rains in Djibouti – Most poor households in Djibouti still cannot afford sufficient food

Photo: IRIN

Livestock sales have also increased due to improved animal health

NAIROBI,  – Most poor households in Djibouti still cannot afford sufficient food, despite an improvement in food security due to rains in the coastal belt and large-scale distribution of aid, an early warning agency stated.

The price of imported rice, the main staple for poor households, increased by 6 percent in April, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net), said in its May food security update.

It noted that the UN Children’s Agency (UNICEF) was concerned about high levels of acute malnutrition, particularly in peri-urban areas around Djibouti City and in the northwest pastoral zone. Admissions to feeding centres rose from 7,302 to 18,417 children between December 2007 and December 2008.

Generally, milk production, the main income source for people living in the southeast roadside pastoral subzone, was abundant due to recent rains in the coastal areas. Livestock sales have also increased due to improved animal health.

However, with the hot season in late May, pastoralists in southeastern zones are likely to move herds back to coastal areas in search of pasture and water, resulting in overgrazing and competition for limited pasture.

eo/mw source.www.irinnews.org

ZIMBABWE: Cholera is not going away anytime soon – The epidemic has entrenched itself as Africa’s worst outbreak in more than 15 years

Photo: IRIN

Broken sanitation infrastructure

JOHANNESBURG,  – Zimbabwe’s cholera caseload is expected to top the 100,000 mark within the next few days, amid warnings by aid agencies that although the disease is subsiding, it has not been eradicated and could flare up again.

“The epidemic has entrenched itself as Africa’s worst outbreak in more than 15 years,” killing more than 4,300 people and infecting 98,309 since August 2008, with an “unacceptably high” 4.4 percent death rate, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), said in a report, The Spectre of Cholera Remains in Zimbabwe, released on 26 May.

In terms of international norms, a “controlled cholera outbreak” usually leads to a fatality rate of one percent or less. The waterborne disease, characterised by watery diarrheal stools, vomiting and rapid dehydration, can cause death within 24 hours if not treated.

The severity of Zimbabwe’s epidemic is attributed to the collapse of the water, sanitation and health infrastructure. The conditions that caused the outbreak – the worst on the continent since cholera rampaged through refugee camps in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, in 1994, killing up to 40,000 people in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide – are still intact.

“The eradication of cholera in Zimbabwe, or the complete conclusion to this current epidemic, is unlikely unless the underlying causes of the health crises are addressed,” the IFRC noted in its report.

Worst-case scenario just got worse

In December 2008 the World Health Organisation (WHO) predicted a worst-case scenario of 60,000 cases – the number reached in February 2009 – and then revised its prediction to 115,000 cases. At the current fatality rate, should the revised WHO forecast be realised, the number of deaths from the outbreak would surpass 5,000 people.

The rate of cholera infections has been slowed by the end of the rainy season, and a humanitarian response in which thousands of community-based volunteers were mobilised in education drives, nationwide cholera treatment centres were establishment and millions of litres of clean water were distributed, but these are all temporary measures.

Emma Kundishora, secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Red cross Society, told IRIN the NGO was building boreholes and digging latrines in rural areas, “as we don’t want this situation to be repeated,” but funding was becoming critical.

The IFRC expressed dismay at the “surprisingly slow donor response” to the cholera outbreak, and said that less than half its original budget of 10.17 million Swiss francs (US$9.35 million) to combat the disease had been covered, resulting in the “premature” scaling-down of cholera-related assistance.

“But while the international community continues to wrestle with the politics of Zimbabwe, Zimbabweans are still being infected,” it commented.

The endemic frustrations of operating in Zimbabwe – inadequate transport and communications – also played out more acutely. Aid organisations were often only made aware of community-level outbreaks when their treatment centres were inundated with cases

Hollow victories

“The steady decline in the spread of the illness should not be seen as a complete victory,” the IFRC urged. “Unless significant efforts are made to rehabilitate at least some components of the country’s degraded infrastructure, communities remain vulnerable to further and severe outbreaks.”

Zimbabwe’s cholera outbreak sprang from a confluence of events: unchecked infrastructural degradation, extreme weather conditions, HIV/AIDS, economic decay and widespread hunger.

“The endemic frustrations of operating in Zimbabwe – inadequate transport and communications – also played out more acutely. Aid organisations were often only made aware of community-level outbreaks when their treatment centres were inundated with cases,” the IFRC said.

The effects of malnutrition – Zimbabwe is the world’s most food-dependent country – “with somewhere between 65 and 80 percent of the population reliant on food aid”, the IFRC said – enhanced the disease’s deadly efficiency.

The 2008 harvest was the worst in the country’s history and 2009 is not expected to be much better. “The food crisis is undermining stunted efforts to provide antiretroviral treatment, and is contributing to the high fatality rate of the cholera epidemic,” the ICRC pointed out. 

go/he source.www.irinnews.org

KENYA: From prison to pigs – seven youths – many ex-convicts – decided to start an animal-rearing project to boost their livelihoods.

Photo: Julius Mwelu/IRIN

Some of the medicines that the Kangaroo Youth Self-Help group use for their pig-rearing project

NAIROBI, – Tired of living rough in the Kosovo area of Nairobi’s Mathare slums, seven youths – many ex-convicts – decided to start an animal-rearing project to boost their livelihoods.

“We got together and decided that living hand-to-mouth was hard enough without the label of an ex-convict; we had to do something on our own, even if it took years for it to become profitable,” group chairman Peter Ngigi said.

“That is when we opted for pig-rearing; it was easy to find food for the animals as we go round scavenging from hotel bins for their feed. We later bought two cows and some goats.”

Ngigi, 21, and his friends, who grew up in the slums, had several brushes with the law for petty crimes. Some of them served time in prison. The place they call home is called Kosovo in reference to intense gang fighting in 2002, when the area became a no-go zone for the Mungiki, a proscribed quasi-religious militia group that controls other slum areas in the city.

Like most slums in the city, conditions in Kosovo are terrible; unplanned and congested houses, open sewers, few toilets for hundreds of people, no running water and the polluted Nairobi River running through it.

Photo: Julius Mwelu/IRIN

Peter Ngigi, the chairman of the Kangaroo Youth Self-Help Group attends to a piglet in Kosovo area, Mathare slum, in Nairobi

Fresh start

Two years after they started their project, Ngigi and his friends have 22 pigs, three goats and three kids as well as two cows, housed in an unfinished, semi-permanent building.

“The recent swine flu scare has been the greatest setback [because] we are not able to sell the pigs,” Ngigi told IRIN on 26 May. “We hope the disease does not break out in Kenya; we would be finished.”

The Kangaroo Youth Self-Help Group project is restricted, however, because most members have limited knowledge of animal husbandry and marketing.

“We had hoped this project would lift us out of poverty; although we have yet to depend on it entirely for our upkeep, we are not giving up,” Hillary Wachira, 25, said.

He said they were motivated to start pig-rearing by another young man, who has since left the slum.

“Kariz [a nickname] even managed to buy himself two matatus [taxis] by rearing pigs here in Kosovo, which he would then sell to butchers in the area and to those in other parts of the city. So we thought, why not embark on something similar, perhaps we could also make something of our lives,” Wachira said.

The main challenge, Ngigi said, was finding space for the animals. They only got lucky when a fellow slum resident, who had reared pigs in the past, allowed them to use her unfinished building for their project.

“The woman who owns this building is helping us; we pay about 1,000 shillings a month [US$13] which is really not the going rate for rent in this area,” Ngigi said.

“She also gave us advice on how to take care of the pigs; the right time to de-worm them, the right amount of food for the piglets and even showed us the agro vet shop from where we buy drugs.”

Photo: Julius Mwelu/IRIN

Hillary Wachira, a member of the Kangaroo Youth Self-Help Group in Kosovo area of Mathare, attends to one of the group’s cows

Lack of training

Members appealed for help in training and marketing.

“Whenever we buy drugs for the animals we make sure we know the right doses because we have lost some animals in the past after injecting them with the wrong doses,” George Mworia, another member of the group, said.

“What we really need is training on ways of keeping these animals so as to curb unnecessary deaths; often we rely only on the advice of people who had kept pigs in the past.”

The group also lacked a market for their products.

“We have approached several butchers to tell them we can supply the animals regularly but none has got back to us; we sometimes wish we could get help from the [government's] Youth Enterprise Fund but we don’t know how to go about it, where do we begin?” he asked.

Ngigi said the group would like to expand to environmental conservation as they are situated right next to the polluted Nairobi River.

“We would like to plant trees on the river bank to prevent soil erosion that is eating into our space,” he said. “We will not tire trying as we hope to one day live off this project; if only we had guidance and training.”

js/mw source.www.irinnews.org