"Fight Against Hunger Needs Greater Investment from Private Sector"

“There can be no freedom from hunger – there can be no food security – without the active participation of all sectors of society, including the private sector,” said FAO’s Director-General, José Graziano da Silva.

Speaking at a high-level conference in Istanbul focused on promoting private agricultural investment and trade from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, Mr. Graziano da Silva said that apart from important investments, financial and in-kind contributions, the private sector can make another important valuable contribution, namely political support to food security.

There can be no freedom from hunger – there can be no food security – without the active participation of all sectors of society, including the private sector.

“We need to build consensus and mobilize all stakeholders towards this goal. With the private sector on board, national and international efforts to fight hunger have added legitimacy,” he told the gathering of leaders in agribusiness and top level policy-makers.

The Director-General and his counterpart, EBRD President Sir Suma Chakrabarti, stressed that the fight against hunger can only be won in partnership between governments, civil society and farmer organizations and the private sector. They also called on governments to create an enabling policy environment that fosters private sector investment.

Sir Suma said he was impressed by the positive response by all the companies that were invited to the conference. “It shows that the private sector is concerned about food security. This meeting is another step forward to helping the private sector to enhance production and employment, using the expertise of the EBRD and FAO in the food and agricultural sectors,” he told the conference.

The conference explored ways to improve the trade conditions between transition countries and the southern and eastern rim of the Mediterranean, according to a news release issued by FAO. It also discussed different models to develop farming and maximize the efficiency of food chains.

Since the start of their partnership in 1994, FAO and the EBRD have implemented over 90 technical assistance projects, totalling about $12 million, which have helped to address institutional and regulatory bottlenecks, as well as improve transparency and efficiency along the whole food value-chain in the countries in which EBRD operates.

Source: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=42881&Cr=food+security&Cr1=#.UFmZwbIgeAk

Why children are attending less School?

Heeals , 14th July 2012 
by Gaurav Kashyap

Behaviour of children towards Unhygienic practice, have a significant impact on child’s academic performance. majority of children are not properly taught healthy sanitation& personal hygiene habits , like washing hands with soap regularly ,wash hand before and after eating ,bathing daily.

Unhygienic practice make them sick, due to sickness they skip there classes, which result in poor academic performance and High dropout cases from School.
A good Hygienic behaviour in children help them in improving their academic performance ,availability of good sanitation facilities &improve in personal hygiene make children regular in their classes  and help in reducing the dropout cases.
Full Report: “On Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation Facilities 2012”
Sixty percent of people living in india do not have access to Toilets and hence are forced to defecate in the open .
This make India the number One country in the world where open defecation is practiced .                                                                          
Indonesia with 63 million is a far second! Manority of people practicing open defecation lives in rural areas .
More then half of the 2.5 billion people without improved sanitation lives in india or china .
Almost 10 % of all communicable diseases are linked to unsafe water & poor sanitation .
“Around 97% of all Indians do not clean drinking water” .The problem arises due to contamination of Drinking Water by leaked sewage .

Open defecation , Manual scavenging and lack of public toilets in urban slums & rural areas putting stigma on Indian face .
2011 census says , there was only 35% sanitation coverage .
“Sikkim becomes India’s first Nirmal State”
We hope every State would  achieve this status ,there are 2.6 million dry latrines in the country .
British medical journal lancet published research journal which shows that low sanitation & poor hygiene cause malnutrition, because of phenomenon called tropical anteropathy .
When the guts get weekend because of the lack of proper sanitation & hygiene it plays great impact then diarrhoea.