ANAEMIA: more than half of Indian women suffer from it

As stated by the World Health Organization “anaemia is a condition in which the number of red blood cells or their oxygen-carrying capacity is insufficient to meet physiologic needs, which vary by age, sex, altitude, smoking, and pregnancy status”.

Iron deficiency is one the most common causes of this disease, since it is fundamental in the formation of haemoglobin that composes blood red cells and which is responsible of carry the oxygen through the body. It is no accident that iron-deficiency anaemia is the most common type of this health issue. Moreover, it can affect the immune system, endangering the body defences, by exposing them to the risk of contracting infections.                                                                                                                                 Iron deficiency is usually caused by a lack of the substance in the diet, which is contained in some veg and non veg food, such as: meat and fish, eggs, cereals fortified in iron, legumes and leafy vegetables such as spinach, legumes and fruits. Anaemia causes fatigue and weakness, shortness of breath, pink or red urine, hair loss and brittle nails, as well as depression, dizziness and headache. In severe cases of the disease, it may also lead to heart and lungs complications.

Anaemia is considered as a national calamity in India, since more than half of Indian women and ¾ children suffer from it. Women with heavy periods, or pregnant are more susceptible to contract it. Moreover, during pregnancies, anaemia increases the risks of complications of the mother and the foetus, both during and after birth and can also lead to postnatal depression.                                                                           A study carried out in two rural villages in Karnataka (India), between 401 children aged 12 to 23 months old, showed that 75,3% were anaemic, which was directly associated with energy intake from food and especially from breastfeeding. The principal factors to blame are the diet and the food insecurity (both quality and quantity), which is directly linked to maternal anaemia, poverty and cultural beliefs. Indeed, many Indian women during periods avoid certain kind of foods for religious matters.

In conclusion, anaemia has to be linked to MHM and also to child marriage and gender equality, because very young women have less decision making powers, which makes them more vulnerable concerning nutritional intake. Usually, especially in rural areas, women and girls tend to eat after having served food to all the other male members of the family, which make them eat leftovers and usually smaller portions of food.

Anaemia is a very important issue that need to be considered as a real disease and solved. In order to prevent it, we should all, women and men, adults and children, have a regular diet, balanced and rich in iron.

Heeals Intern

SOURCES:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20547647

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3336343/

https://www.nhp.gov.in/disease/blood-lymphatic/iron-deficiency-anemia

http://www.who.int/topics/anaemia/en/

PICTURES: drawing from Heeals (NGO)

Sanitation challenge: Turning commitment into reality

Making information flow; strengthening partnerships

Good information on sanitation and hygiene is essential for making the right decisions. Getting the most useful information to flow from those who produce it to the people who use it is the challenge. There are several types of relevant information: there is technical information for practitioners/professionals, there is right to know/public participation information (that includes the rights and responsibilities of citizens under legislation and regulations) and there is user data collected for monitoring purposes. The Internet and e-mail are rapidly increasing access to information throughout the world, even in many poor or remote communities. To complement these new electronic methods for disseminating information, broadcast media and printed materials are still needed to reach the most inaccessible audiences. Traditional approaches to informing people, such as drama competitions and songs, have been used in many settings and have been shown to be effective. Addressing the sanitation and hygiene crisis requires a global strategy that builds partnerships between national governments, external support agencies, NGOs, communities and households and the private sector. Increased sharing of information resources between agencies and organisations through partnerships will help to reduce duplicative efforts, to learn from past mistakes and to consolidate effective approaches. Partnerships are vital for leveraging scarce resources

Getting sanitation and hygiene right

Effective sanitation and hygiene programmes need to combine interventions to change behaviour with the selection of the right technology. Changing behaviour requires culturally sensitive and appropriate health education. People need to understand, in terms meaningful to their lifestyles and existing belief systems, why better health depends on the adoption of hygiene practices such as hand-washing (after defecation, after handling babies’ faeces, and before cooking), on the use of latrines for safe disposal of faeces, and on safe storage and handling of drinking-water and food. Raising awareness of why sanitation and hygiene are important will often increase motivation to change harmful behaviours. Selecting the right sanitation technology is about having effective alternatives and making the right choice for the specific circumstances. Making the right choice of technology requires an assessment of the costs (both for building the facility and for operations and maintenance) and its effectiveness in a specific setting. For example, it is inappropriate to introduce piped sewage if there is no capacity to adequately treat the effluents. The use of conventional sewerage systems in extremely water-short regions may also be unsustainable.

What can we do?

National governments can ensure that hygiene promotion is funded alongside sanitation in a well-balanced programme. This may mean additional central government support for hygiene promotion and sanitation marketing. National governments can also support reviews of technical norms and standards, of planning regulations and of the health impacts associated with different options; fund research into appropriate technologies; and provide incentives for district/local governments to review their own policies and to innovate. Health education, especially concerning sanitation and hygiene, needs to be added to the national school curricula, and effective school sanitation strategies need to be developed.

District/local governments can provide funds for hygiene promotion and sanitation marketing; fund and support local entrepreneurs and public sector agencies that seek to develop new appropriate technologies; review and revise restrictive planning regulations and technical norms; and promote the use of appropriate sanitation facilities.

Communities and civil society can develop their own local technological solutions; make an effort to find ways of working with local technical agencies; be flexible when it comes to balancing local needs (getting the excreta out of the house) with community needs (protecting the communal environment); and participate in hygiene promotion and sanitation marketing campaigns.

Households can adopt good sanitation and hygiene practices; innovate, take action, talk with neighbours about solving local problems; and encourage local political representatives to support locally developed solutions.

Entrepreneurs can invest in research and development; carry out needs assessments and marketing research; find out what people are already using and develop better versions; and develop products and services that comply with national and local legislation and regulations.

International organisations can ensure that external funds for sanitation hardware are bundled with appropriate hygiene promotion and sanitation marketing activities; encourage governments to consider appropriate, cheaper or more effective sanitation technologies; finance local sanitation research; develop guidance and tools for facilitating good practice; disseminate information; and actively endorse the idea of flexible technical norms and standards.

We’re inspired by…

… the PHAST approach 
PHAST stands for participatory hygiene and sanitation transformation. It is an approach designed to promote hygiene behaviours, sanitation improvements and community management of water and sanitation facilities using specifically developed participatory techniques. The underlying basis for the PHAST approach is that no lasting change in people’s behaviour will occur without understanding and believing. To summarise the approach, specific participatory activities were developed for community groups to discover for themselves the faecal-oral contamination routes of disease. They then analyse their own hygiene behaviours in the light of this information and plan how to block the contamination routes.

Mobilizing financial resources

Improving access to sanitation and changing hygiene behaviours provide large benefits to all members of society that justify the preferential use of financial resources by individuals, households, communities, governments and external agencies to fund sanitation and hygiene interventions. For countries with poor coverage, the focus should be on increasing access. This can be leveraged by steering public funding towards stimulating demand for sanitation and promoting hygienic practices in schools as well as at the household level; financing public and school sanitation services; and delivering targeted subsidies where these can be demonstrated to be effective in increasing access.

picture credit : heeals
source :who

Links Between Water Sanitation Hygiene (WASH) and Malnutrition

Links Between Water Sanitation Hygiene (WASH) and Malnutrition

It is becoming clearer as time goes on that two of the worst problems plaguing impoverished communities around the world are interrelated: malnutrition and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) are often treated as separate issues, but increasing evidence is emerging suggesting that an unsanitary environment can in fact be one of the leading causes of malnutrition among children and adults alike.

The World Health Organisation estimates that up to ‘50% of malnutrition is associated with repeated diarrhoea or intestinal worm infections as a result of unsafe water, inadequate sanitation or insufficient hygiene’^[1]. These figures are enormous, especially when one considers that such diseases are often preventable by the simple act of handwashing. As stated in a report by Action Against Hunger, handwashing with soap reduces the risk of contracting a diarrheic infection by around 47%, which could prevent the deaths of up to 1 million children a year^[2].

These statistics highlight the importance of WASH programmes and initiatives across the globe, and show us that it is through by the simplest of actions that we can begin to make a truly significant change.

Look out for our upcoming crowdfunding campaign, where we will be raising funds to carry out our WASH programme in four underprivileged schools.Click Here To Make A Contribution 

Click Here To Make A Contribution : https://goo.gl/icvZ6l

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^[1]Source: 2013: Pugh, Velleman ‘Undernutrition and water, sanitation and hygiene’;(n.p.) wateraid.org

^[2] Source: 2005, rev. 2007: Departement Technique A.C.F. Interactions of: Malnutrition, Water Sanitation and Hygiene, Infections; (p.4) http://www.actionagainsthunger.org/sites/default/files/publications/Malnutrition_-_WASH_-_infections_English.pdf Last accessed 17/12/15

Breastfeeding ,Call for stronger workplace policies for nursing mothers

Breastfeeding ,Call for stronger workplace policies for nursing mothers

In Maderia, Ethiopia, health extension worker Elsebeth Aklilu takes a break from counselling women and their children on best nutrition practices, to breastfeed her own 10-month-old son. Photo: UNICEF/Christine Nesbitt

3 August 2015 – United Nations officials are marking the annual World Breastfeeding Weekby highlighting the vital importance of a practice that gives children the healthiest start in life and the need to strengthen policies to promote nursing with stronger workplace policies.

The theme for this year’s observance, held from 1 to 7 August, is “Women and work – Let’s make it work,” which emphasizes the need for better support systems and policies to enable working mothers to breastfeed.

“We know that breastfeeding helps children to survive and thrive – enabling infants to withstand infections, providing critical nutrients for the early development of their brains and bodies, and strengthening the bond between mothers and their babies. And the benefits of breastfeeding last a lifetime,” said the heads of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Anthony Lake, and the World Health Organization (WHO), Margaret Chan, in a joint statement.

The statement points out that a recent Lancet study found that infants who were breastfed for at least one year went on to stay in school longer, score higher on intelligence tests and earn more as adults than those who were breastfed for only a month. Despite this growing evidence, only 38 per cent of infants around the world today are breastfed exclusively for even the recommended first six months of life.

Global targets 2025

What law maker can do 

 What Employers Can Do !

What co worker 

can do !

What trade union can do !

While breastfeeding rates have increased in all regions of the world, global progress has stalled. The World Health Assembly has set a global target of increasing exclusive breastfeeding rates for children less than six months of age to at least 50 per cent by 2025.

“To achieve this ambitious and very important goal, we need to tackle all the barriers to breastfeeding,” said Mr. Lake and Dr. Chan. “Governments should lead the charge by making breastfeeding a policy priority in national development plans, increasing resources for programming that supports breastfeeding, and working with communities and families to promote the full benefits of breastfeeding.”

Also, more must be done to overcome an obstacle that prevents potentially millions of women from breastfeeding: Workplace policies that do not support the right of working mothers to breastfeed their babies on the job.

Today, of the approximately 830 million women workers in the world, the majority do not benefit from workplace policies that support nursing mothers, and this figure does not include women working in informal, seasonal or part-time employment – often the poorest women in poorer countries – who may face even greater barriers to continued breastfeeding. This is not only a loss to working mothers and their babies. It is also a loss to employers.

Working mothers with adequate maternity benefits, including a breastfeeding-supportive workplace, report increased job satisfaction and greater loyalty to their employers. Breastfed children fall sick less often, so their mothers are also less frequently absent from work. These effects in turn contribute to higher productivity – ultimately benefiting businesses and the larger economies to which they contribute.

Recognizing these connections, the UN International Labour Organization (ILO) has adopted three Conventions to establish protective measures for pregnant women and new mothers – including the right to continue breastfeeding – and to promote feasible options for women who are outside formal work settings. Globally, 67 countries have ratified at least one of the three maternity protection conventions.

The UN officials stressed that more governments should join the growing movement and take action to implement these important protections.

“We know that breastfeeding improves the lives of millions of children and ultimately benefits families, communities, and societies. Our challenge now is to make breastfeeding work in the workplace, too. Together, we can help working women to breastfeed and reap the benefits for themselves, for their children, and for the health and well-being of future generations.”

WHO recommends exclusive breastfeeding to begin within one hour after birth until six months of age. Nutritious complementary foods should then be added while continuing to breastfeed for up to two years or beyond.

Future global development agenda must include targets for improved health – UN official

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan (at podium), addresses the 67th World Health Assembly. Photo: WHO/V. Martin

19 May 2014 – Health must be a part of any future global development agenda, a senior United Nations official underscored today as she outlined a host of issues afflicting millions around the world and which impact on efforts to reduce poverty and advance overall well-being.

“Better health is a good way to track the world’s true progress in poverty elimination, inclusive growth and equity,” Director-General Margaret Chan said as the World Health Organization (WHO) opened its annual assembly in Geneva.

According to a WHO report released last week, substantial progress has been made on many health-related goals ahead of the 2015 target date for achieving the anti-poverty targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

These include halving the proportion of people without access to improved sources of drinking water, as well as progress in reducing child mortality, improving nutrition and combating HIV.

“For the post-2015 agenda, I see many signs of a desire to aim even higher, with ambitious yet feasible goals. Many more end-games are already on the table,” Dr. Chan said, noting the need to end preventable maternal, neonatal and childhood deaths, eliminate a large number of the neglected tropical diseases, and halt the tuberculosis epidemic.

“We have at our disposal a host of strategies for pursuing ever higher goals,” she added, while also noting that health benefits from WHO’s ability to tap the world’s best expertise.

Outlining the main health challenges facing the world today, the Director-General cited the renewed spread of the polio virus, which is due to several factors including civil unrest, poor immunization coverage and  the targeted killing of health workers.

“Two years ago, polio was on its knees, thanks to committed political leadership, better strategies and tools, and the dedication of millions of polio workers,” she stated.

“The factors responsible for this setback are largely beyond the control of the health sector. They are only some of several dangers for health in a world shaped by some universal and ominous trends.”

Among other issues, Dr. Chan highlighted the effects of air pollution, which is the world’s largest single environmental health risk; the growing prevalence of obesity, especially among children, and diet-related non-communicable diseases; and the global cancer crisis, in which the number of new cases has reached an all-time high and is projected to rise.

“Parts of the world are quite literally eating themselves to death. Other parts starve. Hunger and under-nutrition remain an extremely stubborn problem… At the other extreme, we see no good evidence that the prevalence of obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases is receding anywhere. Highly processed foods and beverages loaded with sugar are ubiquitous, convenient and cheap. Childhood obesity is a growing problem with especially high costs.”

The 2014 World Cancer Report, issued by WHO, provoked considerable alarm, noting among other things that developing countries now account for some 70 per cent of all cancer deaths. Many of these people die without treatment, not even pain relief.

“No country anywhere, no matter how rich, can treat its way out of the cancer crisis. A much greater commitment to prevent is needed,” Dr. Chan emphasized. “The same is true for heart disease, diabetes and chronic lung diseases. In some middle-income countries, diabetes treatment alone is now absorbing nearly half of the entire health budget.”

“All of these trends,” she stated, “are certain to increase the world’s inequalities even more. They define the tremendous job that lies ahead for public health. They also shape expectations for the performance of WHO, and the support countries, and the international community, will need from this organization.”






Source: UN News Center