One Geek

Today is World TB Day.

According to a recent WHO the global tuberculosis (TB) epidemic has levelled off for the first time since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared TB a public health emergency in 1993. The Global Tuberculosis Control Report released today by WHO finds that the percentage of the world’s population struck by TB peaked in 2004 and then held steady in 2005.

Some interesting messages of hope are coming from the WHO which you can read here.

UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon

“We are currently seeing both the fruits of global action to control TB and the lethal nature of the disease’s ongoing burden. Almost 60 per cent of TB cases worldwide are detected, and out of those, the vast majority are cured. Over the past decade, 26 million patients have been placed on effective TB treatment thanks to the efforts of governments and a wide range of partners.”

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Executive Director, Sir Richard Feachem

“More than 1 million people are alive today thanks to the hard work of national tuberculosis programs who receive Global Fund resources and are supported by strong partners like the World Health Organization, Stop TB Partnership, the Global Drug Facility and the Green Light Committee. However, TB still kills 1.6 million people each year. We must step up the fight by mobilizing even more resources in order to expand and improve the quality of existing programs to treat both ordinary and drug resistant TB, and to make greater investments in HIV/TB co-infection interventions.”

UNFPA Executive Director/UN Under-Secretary-General, Ms Thoraya Ahmed Obaid

“We call on all countries to scale up TB diagnosis and treatment, especially as a key component of their maternal health services. Tuberculosis is taking a heavy toll on women, affecting them in the prime of their lives, threatening their health security and that of their families. We at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) call on all countries to scale up TB diagnosis and treatment, especially as a key component of reproductive and maternal health services.”

World Bank, Vice President for Human Development, Joy Pumaphi

“Given the world’s commitment to halve TB deaths by 2015, the development community must do more to better finance TB control interventions, and the health systems necessary to reduce the deadly impact of this disease and others. While welcoming progress in better TB detection and treatment in a growing number of countries, the World Bank is re-doubling its efforts to help poor countries strengthen their health systems as its best contribution to combating TB worldwide, while encouraging donors to commit to long-term predictable donor assistance for health. In this way, the Bank is committed to help developing countries achieve better TB results in Africa and other regions that are not currently on track to meet their 2015 TB goals, a task complicated by TB’s co-epidemic association with HIV and AIDS, and the emergence of extensively drug-resistant forms of the disease.”

Today is International Women’s Day.

I would like a day like this to be about celebrating the great things that women do everywhere. However it is not really like that, it is a day of social action. It is about action to promote gender equality.

There is a real need for gender equality, particularly in developing nations.

Out of this inequality much violence comes. This violence can takes many forms physical, sexual, verbal, emotional and economic. Some of the sexual violence is infecting women with HIV/AIDS The statistics on violence against women are so depressing.

I read today that only 50% of women in India and are consulted about decision relating to their own health care.

Female infanticide is still very much alive.

I have heard that TB is the number one killer in India of women of child bearing age. TB is treatable this is really not acceptable.

I hope to explore some of these issues more fully on my blog over the next few weeks and months.

Right now I am tired and it is time to go and watch a DVD. Life is all about priorities.

Why is it so hard to embrace both diversity and equality?

Class, race, gender, sexual preference, intelligence, charisma, health, compliance with social norms and so many other things are used to try and define and determine the value of people.

Why do people do it?

Why do I find myself sometimes thinking the same way?

MSF has done a report on the top 10 under reported Crises of 2006. Have a look at it here.

How many of these stories did you hear about?

I think I can claim about five out of ten, and knowing about at least two of them came directly from me living in India.

This is an interesting investigation into the Gates foundation. It shows how much of it’s money is being used to invest in companies with questionable ethics. I wonder if this is that surprising based on how Gates and Buffet originally got their money. Is it all a farce?

How many people do you need to kill to be free.
I am tired of people killing in the name of freedom.

How does the murder of civilians help anyone be free.

Where is our Ghandi, or Martin Luther King or our Nelson Mandela??

The world needs strong voices of peace and heroes to rally behind. What good are hospitals when people are being slaughtered just for being in the wrong place?

We need that great dead man to wake up and come again.

whenever we exercise power we are attempting to influence the course of the world, of humanity and we are thereby playing God. Most parents, teachers, leaders - most of us who exercise power - have no cognizance of this. In the arrogance of exercising power without the total self-awareness demanded by love, we are blissfully but destructively ignorant of the fact that we are playing God. But those who truly love, and therefore work for the wisdom that love requires, know that to act is to play God. Yet they also know there is no alternative except inaction and impotence. Love compels us to play God with full consciousness of the enormity of the fact that this is just what we are doing. With this consciousness the loving person assumes the responsibility of attempting to be God and not carelessly play God, to fulfill God’s will without mistake. We arrive, then, at yet another paradox: only out of the humility of love can humans dare to be God.

From M. Scot Peck’s The Road Less Travelled.

I think that this passage from The Road Less Travelled if taken to heart could improve the way aid and development work is done a lot. I was going to say a lot about this, but I think the quote does a much better job then anything I could write. I will however share some of my thoughts. Changing the world is a big responsibility and the responsibility I hold for the small insignificant amount that I do as one person is certainly enough to humble me. I am comforted that I have the humility Peck talks about sometimes. Some of the most inspiring people I know have far more of this humility then me though. Which is good because it challenges me to improve.

I am feeling rather passionate about Aid and Development again today. It’s been a while since I’ve kind of felt the level of passion that is just fun. Today I went to the launch of a voice mail and call back service called Soochna Se Samadhan designed to enable farmers to get advice on their crops through simply calling a number, leaving a message and then calling back the following day for the recorded answer. I found the presentations of which there were half a dozen a little lack luster, but I could get the passion for using Information and Communications Technology appropriately.

During the question time a women pointed out something that I had noticed, that in the pictures and all the slides they only showed men interacting with the project. She questioned the gender equality of the project, the two female leads of the project said they had noticed the mistake. It was fun because all the people involved were really passionate about the gender equality issue. It’s great that gender equality is accepted as something any development project requires. Another interesting thing about the project was the low tech nature of it from an end user point of view, they are even hiring locals to help farmers dial in.

A big issue with this project though is the cost to the farmer for this advice. They haven’t work out a model yet but it’s not going to be a free service. One of the partners is called TARAhaat who are basically a group all about making money in socially responsible ways.

Other thoughts to come out of the morning for me, was getting expert advice vs leveraging community based knowledge. Data vs Information vs Knowledge, which is too big a topic for this blog post. It was a good reminder to me of the human nature of development work and how it is OK to make mistakes. The ethics of having a posh launch for an NGO based project, the morning was at a convention centre place and a large buffet lunch was provided, as well as a conference gift. Which also raised the question for me of what is acceptable administration cost and what is waste. It was a good reminder that their are other people working on different problems in India and it also reminded me of why I like EHA and TEAR so much.

Work is gaining momentum finally as well which is good. I now have a vendor working at a pace I am happy with to sell me my servers for the hospital. Those who have talked to me lately may have heard how frustrated I was getting so it is a big relief.

Tonight I went out with Rob and Nicole both from St Stephen’s Belrose for dinner which was nice. I got in to two big passionate social justice rants, it had been too long a time since I have done a good just rant so I was happy. One was about the injustice both perpetrated and perpetuated by Australia, and the second was that India’s problems are not unsolvable and that the main real problems are silver bullet attitudes by government and some NGO’s, and a lack of transparency in many projects. It was such good fun.

Now I really should head off to bed as I have a meeting in the morning.

And I know for shore why they hate US?

Our countries (UK, US, Australia) are complicit in so many war crimes in a war that was started using lies.  Can there any longer be any doubt that the war on terror is an evil cynically used political tool?

The timing of most terror events is so convenient and the beneficiaries so clear.  The lives of 3000 odd American’s, now has another 2666 US lives added to that number in Iraq.  Add to that 40,000 civilian deaths.  13.3 Iraqi civilian deaths for each American death from September 11.  Is that justice?

Of course I am not be fair as it was to liberate in the end that we went into Iraq. So please feel free to disregard my maths.

But another interesting point is that however horrific these figures are 50,000 people a day who die due to extreme poverty.  The US have spent to date 313 billion US dollars on this war, I wonder how many lives could be saved with that money? How many friends in volatile areas they/we could make with that kind of cash?

But no they won’t do that, instead they will honour the dead by killing more people.

This poster is about female foeticide

The headline is “As per the census, there are 958 women for 1000 men. Because, more than 1 million female foetuses are aborted every year. Wake up before it’s too late. Ban Sex Determination.”

I found this on this blog

The world is making me rather sad, and more then a little angry at the moment.

I also found this interesting image on outsourcing

What is so important that requires the deaths of people in conflict zones. Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, India, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Dafur in Sudan, the list goes on..

There are so many places currently in conflict which I guess makes sense giving that the world spends 1 trillion dollars and guess who spends 47% of this amount?
The good old US of A of course.

How effectively is this money being spent?
In 2003 100,000 people died as a direct result of conflict according to this report. That’s 10 million dollars per a death, pretty expensive. There must be a cheaper way. And you know there is.. We could just starve countries to death instead of spending money on arms, that worked well with Iraq, until the US decided to break that plan and invade them.

Every year 6 million children under the age of 5 die from completely preventable causes. Apathy seems to be a much more efficient and effective merchant of death then armed conflict. Although World War II was a bit more effective causing about 63 million deaths according to this page. Though if you spread it over the duration of the war it’s only about 9 million a year. Add in other deaths due to poverty and I think you’ll see it’s more effective.

So if anyone really wants to effectively kill people just cut overseas development aid and wait for the people to die from things like hunger, malaria and HIV/AIDS. You see we just can’t kill people as cheaply and efficiently as poverty can. If you really want the land and resources of people in these countries just wait until most of them are dead, and either invade them cheaply or buy them out.

If you want to stop people dying needlessly there is a pretty simple method. Give the poor you voice, your time and some of your hard earned cash. Get behind the efforts already being made.

Did you know that if we took just 20% off the amount that the world spends on arm and put it into the Millennium Development Goals we could End Poverty in the next ten years.

Maybe that would also help solve the problems creating conflicts throughout the world.
My Other ideas for conflict zones:
all forces in disputed zones should withdraw, and all these zones should become neutral zones.
The world should have week where they don’t make or sell any weapons at all.
There should be a global ceasefire day.
We could abolish the concept of nations.

Does anyone else have any ideas? No idea is too crazy.
We could make people use homous loaded guns when they attack of each other.

Walking home from my coffee shop in South Extension, listening to music on my iPod, feeling a dust storm gathering a thought hit me. We are going to win, poverty will be made history.

For so long I had doubted that victory was possible, much of my work seems to be so futile. The lack of commitment from rich countries like Australia to poverty reduction has been depressing for me. As is the seeming lack of interest from the general public.

I don’t know if it will be in my life time or not but I know in my heart we are going to eliminate poverty. It is simply not sustainable. I had a think about the people I know who are working to fight poverty and how many people are working on it that I don’t know. We have some of the brightest, hardest working and most passionate people working for our cause.

But the thing that convinces me the most is watching the local Indians setup a market as I was walking along. These people are so enterprising, there is no way that unfair trade rules will keep them down.

We have the most powerful weapon in the history of man on our side, love. You can’t suppress that, people have tried to do so and they have failed. Love also has a powerful and life changing network effect on people. One persons actions can inspire a nation, or even the whole world. I’m thinking of people like Mandela or Gandhi here.

So I sit here filled with hope.

It is just a matter of time before poverty will be history.

I had a thought the other night that poverty reduction and the MDG’s are a lot like software development.

1) They are both involve incredibly complicated and interrelated systems
2) Companies are always hyping their products but failing to live up to their promises, just like countries promising more and better aid and development funds but often failing to deliver.
3) Both have grass roots movements.
4) Patents create problems in both areas.
5) Both are very costly to do and often miss deadlines.

Apparently world leaders are hesitant to put the word condom in their AIDS declaration. Other scary terms that they are trying to avoid are men who have sex with men (or homosexuals), people who inject drugs (or drug users) and people who sell sex (or prostitutes). Other scary concepts include empowering women, and of course money in the form of patents and clear financial commitments. For some reason in the news coverage prisoners the 4 identified at risk group was not mentioned.

The Bush administration, heavily influence by the Christian right, is blocking key proposals for a new United Nations package to combat HIV/Aids worldwide over the next five years because of its opposition to the distribution of condoms and needle exchanges and references to prostitutes, drug addicts and homosexuals.

The United States is being supported by many Muslim countries, including Egypt, and various conservative African and Latin American nations. “There are a lot of unholy alliances all over the place,” said a European official attending UN talks in New York on Thursday night.

Mail and Guardian

It upsets me that Christians can be so bloody STUPID.
Why can’t we acknowledge that people have SEX, and some people have it out of marriage.
Condoms help protect people who have sex outside of marriage and they also protect people with unfaithful partners.
People have been selling sex for centuaries and probably a lot longer! I can see no reason why we can’t have this in a declaration.
Men have been having sex with men for a long time too! What’s the big deal.
I don’t have any idea why injecting drug users are taboo. If you have an idea please leave it as a comment.
I guess the main objection might be distributing needles makes it seem like it’s OK to do drugs. But surely everyone knows, “Drugs are bad, mmmK.”

Anyway I really don’t understand this attituted. I guess the thinking might be this if you give me a condom I’ll go out and have sex.

Newsflash
I have been given condoms before and I didn’t end up having sex. My medical kit for India also contains condoms and it hasn’t made me go out and have sex.
I also brought clean needles with me to India and I haven’t gone out and brought myself some drugs to inject.
I have heard that men have sex with men, and I have meet men who have sex with men, but somehow I have managed to not be tempted into having sex with a man.
Oh and I have heard that I can exchange money for sex and that hasn’t made me go and hire a sex worker.

My argument is not that I am a saint, my argument is that education and giving people access to the commodities they need to live out their lifestyle choices more safely is not going to make people any less moral.

I think that we need to embrace harm minisation and education, they save lives. The UNAIDS report shows this clearly.

There are some interesting articles on the forming of the draft declaration:
BBC News
African News Dimension
Reuters
US ABC News

So how do we get around these issues:

Well taking a look at the final decleration it seems negotiation was the key.

With enough pressure they managed to get condoms in their AIDS declaration, and a few references to sterile injecting equipment and a reference to harm minimisation. Empowering women actually made it’s way into the declaration, upsetting some of the countries who seem to want poor uneducated girls to be married without being empowered to look after their own sexual health. Money does get mentioned, but not patents.

The big loss though is the vulnerable groups, it seems that men who have sex with men, people who sell sex, people who inject drugs and prisoners.

Despite this the declaration does actually mention that HIV is got through risky and unsafe sexual behaviour and injecting drug use. It commits the countries to working towards prevention and sets a slightly clearer path towards universal treatment for 2010. If we can manage that then maybe just maybe the Millennium Development Goals are still in reach.

In the 25 years since HIV/AIDS was discovered 25 million has died. Real progress is being made with the use of condoms as reported in The Australian.

However there is much more in the full report at UN AIDS.

From the executive summary:

There is a lot more in this report, but I don’t have the energy to go through it all now. The four most at risk groups are sex workers, men who have sex with men, injecting drug users and prisoners. I think this says a lot about our world. Yes these people engage in risky activities but if we really loved them there are so many things we could do to help them reduce their risks. I have the honour of knowing people who are working with some of these groups.

I think that if anyone is into letter writting there could be some fun letters to politicians out of some of this stuff. Perhaps we could give all the MPs condoms.

-UPDATE-

I can’t believe I forgot to mention Mother-Child infection. With the right drugs the risk of mother to child infection of HIV can be dramatically reduced. Sadly there is no where near enough being done in this area, with only 9% of mothers getting access to the required services well under the target of 80%.

I also forgot the Millenium Development Goals.
The goal of halting and begining to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS which is part of the 6th MDG and other agreements is still far off.