Red Cross Blogs

Jamie

TEDxRC² is a worldwide event on 27 November 2011 that aims to multiply the power of humanity and start a global conversation about tomorrow’s humanitarian challenges and opportunities.

The event brings together seven diverse and inspiring speakers from inside and outside the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. These include author and relief worker Fiona Terry, editorial cartoonist Patrick Chappatte and Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre.

You can take part by watching the live webcast on Sunday 27 November, 15:00-17:00 GMT (below)

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Posted in International, Volunteering

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Tags: care in the home
Posted in Health and social care, UK

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Guest post from Mike Adamson, director of operations for the British Red Cross

The home care review, published today by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, has found “disturbing evidence that the poor treatment of many older people is breaching their human rights and too many are struggling to voice their concerns about their care or be listened to about what kind of support they want.”

This hard-hitting report exposes the depressing reality facing too many elderly people in their own homes.

It is vital that urgent changes are now made to ensure everyone is always treated with the dignity and compassion they are entitled to expect.

Politicians must start taking note of not only the financial bottom line, but also the humanitarian bottom line. Standards must never be allowed to slip so low again.

The report is right to highlight the need to change the way services are commissioned.

By keeping a clear focus on the elderly people themselves – not just the pennies and pounds – politicians can help to ensure that the most vulnerable are encouraged and supported by those that care for them to build their own independence, and are not neglected or even abused.

Too often when budgets are tight the extra humanitarian value offered by the voluntary sector’s dedicated, passionate volunteers and staff is overlooked.

Healthcare managers must make sure in future that this social value is at the heart of the commissioning process, without this the older generation will remain at risk.

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Tags: care in the home, ehrc
Posted in Health and social care, UK

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Food insecurity. It’s a phrase that’s been used a lot recently. But what does it actually mean?

Right now in some parts of Somalia, we’re seeing the most extreme effects of food insecurity – where people’s only choices are to a) leave their homes and travel miles in search of food and work, or b) stay where they are, and possibly die. A perfect storm of conflict, drought and successive failed harvests has seen a huge number of Somalis displaced both within the country and flooding over the border into Ethiopia and Kenya. Northern Kenya is already struggling – there too the drought has killed off crops and cattle. Armed gangs have even raided areas lucky enough to still have working boreholes and livestock. All these pressures, plus rising food prices mean many people struggle to get hold of enough food.

Food insecurity is a complex term. It covers a range of issues that can lead to someone not being able to get enough food. Experts in food insecurity often talk about ‘access’ to food – which sounds straightforward, but it’s not. It may be that food is available, but it’s expensive. And perhaps you start buying more food to compensate for your failed crops, but then your crops fail again, and again, and the prices keep spiraling. And perhaps the food doesn’t have much in the way of nutrition, but that’s all you can get. Or access to it is difficult due to conflict, or your political or tribal affiliations – food can also be used as a political tool by different actors.

Food insecurity can refer to a ‘non-emergency’ situation, but if no-one tackles the underlying issues, it can deteriorate into an emergency. Combine deterioration with man-made factors such as conflict and politics, and you’re in danger of reaching the most extreme level of food insecurity – famine.

On Wednesday, the UN announced that parts of south central Somalia are now experiencing famine. To you or I, that may seem obvious from the pictures we are seeing, but it has a technical definition. Famine is declared when the following criteria are met:

• At least 20% of the population has extremely limited access to food (in the south central Somalia, cereal prices are 2-3 times 2010 levels; 30% of people there are unable to meet basic food needs)
• Acute malnutrition exceeds 30% of population (double the standard emergency threshold of 15%, and in many parts of southern Somalia it’s now 38%. In some places, malnutrition exceeds 50%)
• The death rate exceeds 2 in 10,000 of the whole population per day and 4 in 10,000 per day for children under five.  Both of these thresholds are double what is used to define a humanitarian emergency.  (The under-fives death rate in south central Somalia is above 4 for all the assessed areas; in some areas it is as high as 13-20 children per day)

Mary Robinson from the UN described the situation in Somalia as ‘the worst food security situation in the world’.

At the moment famine has been declared in two regions of Somalia, but it is expected to spread across all areas of the south central area in the next 1-2 months. The time-frame for action is incredibly short – 3.7million people are in crisis, but 3.2million of those are in need of immediate, life-saving assistance.

Since the impact of drought on food insecurity takes a long time to become apparent, it does not get media attention until needs are most acute and severe. Before that point, it’s not a story. Areas can be food insecure, but if people are still getting hold of some food, they’re OK, right? Well, no. If food is scarce, people eat less, and often poor quality food. Over a period of time, and with ill health, this can lead to malnutrition. If this continues for a long time, children’s growth can be stunted. Brain development is affected. People become more susceptible to health problems; medical treatment such as anti-retrovirals for HIV won’t work properly. And if you’re spending 50-75% of your household income on food, you’re not able to afford other things. Education. Healthcare. Travel for work, or get to a doctor. Which would you give up? Or alternatively, which of these would you starve yourself for?

Food insecurity means your access to food is compromised; it’s not affordable, you have less of it, and what you get doesn’t provide enough nutrition.

Its causes are manifold: conflict; floods; drought; population movement; lack of agricultural development; global markets and food prices; loss of livelihoods or income; lack of ‘safety nets’ (alternative incomes or emergency food or seed stocks); lack of basic infrastructure (storage, refrigeration, decent roads); …it’s a long list. This is why ‘food insecurity’ is complicated and requires a whole range of different responses at different levels by different groups or stakeholders to tackle it.

In 2008, there were food riots in 35 countries. We didn’t hear about all of them. A sixth of the world’s population experience hunger. We don’t hear much about that either. We’d like more people to know what food insecurity is, and what causes it. But ideally we’d like it to be eradicated. But until it is, let’s make sure we all have a better understanding of it, what it really means, and work towards addressing those problems.

This year, the IFRC will launch their World Disasters Report on food insecurity and nutrition. David Naburro from the UN spoke recently at a RedTalk event. See here to watch it in full:

http://www.ifrc.org/en/news-and-media/meetings-and-events/red-talk/events-archive/19-may-2011—david-nabarro/

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Tags: drought, East Africa, famine, food insecurity, Horn of Africa, Somalia
Posted in Emergencies, International

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Part of  a week-long series about different aspects of the Red Cross’ work in Haiti.

It’s easy to take clean water, working toilets, a good sewage system and regular waste disposal for granted. Barring the odd breakdown, these things tend to just work in the UK, without the people who use them thinking very much about them.

So it’s easy to forget that, as well as being convenient, this infrastructure plays a vital role in protecting us from diseases like malaria, dengue fever, diarrhoea, dysentery and cholera.

When the earthquake hit Haiti last January, it devastated water and sanitation systems near the epicentre. It left more than 1.5 million people without access to safe drinking water or a toilet, placing them at risk of diseases. Some found host families further away from the epicentre, but many are still living in sprawling camps where, without adequate sanitation, they would be extremely vulnerable to disease.

Generally after a major disaster, talk centres around what needs to be done to restore pre-disaster levels of water and sanitation service. In Haiti’s case, this won’t be enough. Even before the earthquake, the country’s water and sanitation facilities were chronically under-developed.

In 2008, Haiti’s coverage rate for safe sanitation facilities was the 11^th worst in the world, according to the World Health Organisation. Fewer than 70 per cent of people living in cities had regular access to safe water.

The water regulatory agencies had no responsibility for sanitation, meaning there were no sewage systems and individual families made their own arrangements for sanitation according to their economic means. There were also few rubbish collections or street cleaning services in Haiti’s cities, including Port-au-Prince.

Health problems were inevitable with such poor sanitation coverage. Haitian children had on average four to six episodes of diarrhoea a year, several times higher than normal for industrialised countries. Watery diarrhoea caused between five and 16 per cent of child deaths in the country.

There were signs that these problems were being addressed before the earthquake – a new water and sanitation regulatory authority, DINEPA, was created in 2009, but its reform programme had only just begun when the quake hit.

People whose access to clean water and good sanitation was already inadequate suddenly found it was even worse – or in many cases non-existent.

Shortly after the earthquake, the Red Cross started trucking 2.4 million litres of water to displaced person camps in Port-au-Prince every day, enough for around 300,000 people. A year on, this is still happening and is around 40 per cent of all water distributed in the capital.

The Red Cross has also built latrines in camps in Port-au-Prince, Jacmel, Léogâne, Petit-Goâve and Grand-Goâve, used by 265,400 people. The British Red Cross is principally working in two camps in Port-au-Prince – La Piste (50,000 households) and Automeca (4,000 households).

Red Cross volunteers continue to provide extensive hygiene promotion messages to people living in the camps, including messages tailored for children. In the initial stages of the cholera outbreak in November, the Red Cross sent 2 million text messages to Haitians telling them how to take simple hygiene measures to prevent disease.

None of this amounts to a permanent solution to Haiti’s sanitation problems, however. Haiti’s water and sanitation infrastructure needs long-term, sustainable development. DINEPA will work with the Red Cross and other agencies to deliver a three-year water strategy providing this. One of the key goals of this plan needs to be the transferring of municipal services from the Red Cross to the public authorities.

It is likely, however, that the Red Cross will continue to provide safe water to up to 200,000 people in camps, makeshift settlements and the surrounding neighbourhoods in Port-au-Prince for at least the next 18 months.

And as people start to move into transitional shelters, it will be important to make sure they have a sustainable water supply. Water supplies in outlying areas, where there are many host families, will also need to be improved or new water sources created (through the drilling of boreholes, for example).

So there’s a huge amount of challenging work ahead. But there’s also a major opportunity. Over the next few years, aid and development agencies, along with the Haitian authorities, can make sure large numbers of Haitians have access to safe and reliable sanitation for the first time.

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Tags: Haiti, water and sanitation
Posted in Emergencies, International

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