Gypsy and Traveller evictions continue at Hovefields

This from the activist list in support of Dale Farm; sadly evidence of exactly the kinds of evictions which damage health and leave lasting scars.

Everybody is feeling very bruised after the Hovefields eviction and the two instant police evictions under s61 of the Criminal Justice Act 1994 around Gardiners Lane, which were done in jackboot fashion without the least mercy.

No attempt was made by the Essex police officers, led by Sgt Gordan acting under orders from Chief Insp.Schofield, to ascertain the circumstances of those he intended to evict, first from a car-park and the second time from a derelict garden where a house is awaiting demolition.

Among those forced to move at short notice - thirty minutes at Gardiners Way - were a pregnant mother, a boy with learning difficulties and a number of small children who had already undergone the trauma of seeing their homes bulldozed at Hovefields.

Meanwhile, further 28-day Notices of eviction may be served at any time on the few people still remaining at Hovefields, and on the 80 families at Dale Farm.

A bitter lesson from Hovefields is that sheer lack of paperwork prevented solicitors intervening to stop the destruction.

Direct action: If you are in Southend this week, please rally outside the County Court on Thursday 16th, when cases to be heard will test whether Basildon has fulfilled its duty under the Housing Act by offering bad-condition flats to Traveller families who have made it clear they cannot tolerate house-dwelling and simply want a place to station the trailer caravans and mobile-homes they own.

In London, cases relating to the Hovefields clearances are coming up in the High Court on 22 and 24 September. Again we are calling upon supporters to demonstrate outside the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand on these dates.

Letter to my MP - Gypsies and Travellers

This is not a good time to be a member of the UK's most disenfranchised and misunderstood ethnic minority. In a letter to the Guardian in June 2010, a long list of academics, broadcasters, and a planning official wrote:

Already the government has reversed progressive policies giving incentives for local authorities to develop Gypsy and Traveller sites, by cuts announced in the Housing and Communities Agency budget, cancelling all next year's bids for sites. The Conservatives announced plans to scrap planning and housing circulars which have started to give Gypsies and Travellers a "level playing field" in planning disputes with local authorities and planning inspectors. According to Eric Pickles, they want to revive the "Gypsy law" of criminal trespass. This discriminatory law was derided when Michael Howard campaigned on it in 2005.Detailed research has identified targets for sites for Gypsies and Travellers, and yards for showmen. Many have been agreed with local authorities and progress was starting to be made. After years of inaction on sites a cumulative need has built up. The situation now is worse than ever and will only get worse without new provision.

My MP, Conservative Mark Pawsey, has stepped up recently to offer his thoughts on this incredibly complex, entrenched and sensitive issue. Below is the text of the email I've just written to him. I've also put in an FOI request to Warwickshire County Council, asking for more information about site provision in Warwickshire - I'll report back, and may follow up with the same request to Rugby Borough Council - which, by the way, has a Conservative majority, and as I note below, has still expressed concern at the impact of the cuts.

Sunday 12 September 2010

Dear Mr Pawsey

I write following your recent comments in the Westminster Hall debate on Unauthorised Encampments of the 8^th September, 2010. Your statement displayed a failure to acknowledge, and perhaps a lack of understanding of, the challenges facing Gypsies and Travellers in the UK and the lives that have already been needlessly lost. It certainly appeared as if you were failing to represent those of your constituents who are themselves Gypsies and Travellers, or who support their right to pursue their legally recognised traditional way of life.

Due to government legislation, planning restrictions and sale of public land, the number of safe and legal stopping places for Gypsies and Travellers have been dramatically reduced. Gypsy families therefore often have to prioritise finding appropriate places to stop over attending preventative medical appointments such as smear tests and pre- and postnatal checks. A Department of Health study from 2004 found that coping with eviction, discrimination and poor living conditions is seen by Gypsies as being a primary cause of ill-health, particularly among women, facing the massive challenges of raising children ‘in situations where there may be no running water, shared toilets, leaking roofs and no washing machine’.

Due to widespread and persistent racism, particularly among support staff, and suspicion of conventional medicine, Gypsies and Travellers are more likely to see easy-access or peripatetic medical staff than to establish a relationship with 'the GP, practice nurse, a counsellor, chiropodist, dentist, optician, or alternative medical workers’. Thus they often do not understand or access their entitlements to preventative medicine such as childhood immunisations, antenatal checks and smear tests, and may put off seeking healthcare advice, or may under-use or discard prescriptions and medication.

As a result, medical conditions which can easily be controlled go unmonitored and unmedicated, or else medication is not reviewed and any side effects are not followed up. Gypsies are proven to suffer disproportionally from illness associated with poverty and poor living conditions, such as asthma, chest infections, heart disease, and disability, smoking and alcohol-related illnesses.

For Gypsy women these inequalities have severe consequences. The Confidential Enquiry into Maternal Deaths in 2002 found that of the disproportionately high number of Gypsy mothers who died during the period of study, almost all died either directly due to substandard care or as a result of associated problems. Their children are also at risk. Although the Department of Health found similar levels of common problems such as morning sickness, pre-term birth, breech presentation, or post-natal depression, miscarriage and Caesarean delivery were more common among Gypsy women. Incredibly, 17.6% of Gypsy and Traveller women studied had experienced the death of a child, compared with 0.9% of the comparators. Gypsy infants were found to have ‘low birth weight, low immunisation uptake and high child accident rate’, and there was a markedly high incidence of stillbirths.

In the case of Gypsy and Traveller mothers and babies, it is clear that the 'cycle of enforced nomadism' and lack of government leadership has lead to unnecessary deaths – and this is just one small area of policy. In this context, it is irresponsible and short-sighted to support public authorities in a knee-jerk, populist approach to retrospective Gypsy and Traveller planning applications without taking account of, and engaging with the wider problem. Rugby Borough Council has itself expressed concern at the impacts of the cuts and scrapping of targets implemented by the Coalition Government.

I urge you to take the earliest opportunity to outline how you will support a balanced and responsible approach to this issue, in all its complexity. I particularly recommend reading the 2004 Department of Health Study by Van Cleemput and Parry. I would also be delighted to brief you personally, at your convenience, if this would be helpful.

Yours sincerely

Laura Hudson

HIV as you've never seen it before

Luke Jerram's glass microbiology sculptures. He has a show on at the Smithfield Gallery from the 22nd September to the 3rd October, 10am-6pm, and the launch is the 22nd September 6-8pm.

Hat-tip, once again, to Chris Blattman.

IRIN: A rough guide to climate change in Africa

The World Economic and Social Survey (WESS), published annually by the UN Department for Economic and Social Affairs, has devoted its 2009 issue to climate change. It includes an accessible, if unsettling, guide to some of the major impacts of climate change in various African countries, based on the IPCC's reports. Some headlines after the jump, or read more and download the full report from IRIN.

Some headlines:

Food security

East Africa

Rainfall is expected to increase in some parts of the region. The loss of about 20 percent of plant and animal life in Lake Tanganyika is projected, with a 30 percent decrease in fish yields. In Kenya a one-metre rise in the sea level could affect the production of mangoes, cashew nuts and coconuts, causing losses of almost US$500 million a year. On the plus side, in parts of the Ethiopian highlands a combination of higher temperatures and better rainfall may lengthen the growing season.

Southern Africa

More frequent El Niño conditions - in which sea surface temperatures become warmer across the central and eastern Pacific Ocean - could disrupt rains, bringing a notable drop in maize production. On the other hand, growing seasons may lengthen in parts of Southern Africa, for example Mozambique, owing to a combination of increased temperature and higher rainfall. South Africa: In Africa's major grain producer net revenues from crops could shrink by up to 90 percent by 2100.

Water resources

East and West Africa

Rainfall is likely to increase in these regions, easing droughts in the east of the continent but bringing more frequent floods in the west.

Southern Africa

Large areas of the region are already experiencing water shortages, or are arid and trying to prevent encroaching desertification, so there is likely to be a greater number of people living with water stress by 2055 as rainfall becomes more erratic or declines.

Health

West Africa

Good news! By 2050 and beyond, a large part of the western Sahel will probably become unsuitable for malaria transmission.

East Africa

Based on parasite survey data, the previously malaria-free highland areas of Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi could experience modest incursions of malaria by the 2050s, with conditions for transmission becoming highly suitable by 2080s. In central Somalia, areas that now have low rates of malaria could develop high prevalence of the disease. Rift Valley fever epidemics - evident during the 1997-1998 El Niño event in East Africa and associated with flooding - could become more frequent and widespread as El Niño events increase.

Southern Africa

More areas are likely to become more suitable for malaria, with a southward expansion of the transmission zone into Zimbabwe and South Africa.

IDS Bulletin: how to respond better to AIDS

Reaping the benefits from the free 40 day full access to IDS (see previous post), this post draws your attention to a study by Stuart Gillespie from last year on Poverty, Food security, HIV vulnerability and the impact of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. The study concludes that

While the poor are undoubtedly hit harder by the downstream impacts of AIDS, in a variety of ways, their chances of being exposed to HIV in the first place are not necessarily greater than wealthier individuals or households. There is strong evidence that socioeconomic and gender inequalities condition the spread of HIV, while AIDS-related disease and death increases these inequalities – a potentially vicious cycle. [...]
If you are a person living with HIV and you are poor, it will be harder for you to sustainably access antiretroviral therapy; it will be harder to find and pay for treatment for opportunistic infections which (if you are malnourished) will usually be more severe, and it will be harder to ensure any medical treatment is complemented by a diverse and reliable diet. At the household level, poverty will worsen the impacts of other livelihood stresses and shocks, and close down options for effectively responding. At the end of the line, it is women and children who are the most vulnerable.

How to improve the AIDS response?

• pay more attention to the drivers of transmission within different social groups, with special attention to the vulnerabilities of women and children
• enhancing local capacity and improving livelihood strategies will increase the resilience of vulnerable households

IRIN: Dhaka residents threatened by heavily polluted rivers

Several voices warn that the heavy pollution of the rivers around Dhaka has affected the aquatic life beyond rescuing, IRIN reports. Also, this impacts the lives of the Bangladeshi, who need to change jobs, live with the stench and risk skin diseases and other health hazards. Earlier this year, the industral sector admitted that is lacks social responsibility plans, especially when it comes to effluent treatment plants.

"The concentration of organic pollutant in the Buriganga is 17 times higher than the allowable limit of 3mg per litre. Chemical pollutants like ammonia, aluminium, cadmium, lead and mercury have also been detected in the Buriganga," SM Mahbubur Rahman, head of the water resource planning division of the Institute of Water Modelling (IWM), said.
The lone sewage treatment facility operated and maintained by Dhaka Water Supply and Sanitation Authority (DWASA) has a treatment capacity of 0.12 million cubic metres per day, while the daily volume of sewage generated in Dhaka city is 1.3 million cubic metres.

Furthermore, the islands in Bangladesh are severely affected by rising tydes and cyclones - especially since tropical cyclone Aila destroyed much of its dykes and flood barriers earlier this year inMay. The Guardian posted an album with pictures of the repair efforts.

WHO: Breastfeeding - an emergency response

Emergencies – whether caused by conflict or natural disasters – are extraordinary events that can jeopardize the health and survival of large populations. Children are among the most vulnerable groups during emergencies, and small children are the most vulnerable of all, as they face a triple risk of death from diarrhoeal disease, pneumonia and undernutrition.

Breastfeeding during emergencies saves lives

The life-saving role of breastfeeding during emergencies is firmly supported by evidence and guidance. The Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding outlines actions to improve infant and young child feeding in emergencies. In all situations, the best way of preventing malnutrition and mortality among infants and young children is to ensure that they start breastfeeding within one hour of birth, breastfeed exclusively (with no food or liquid other than breast milk, not even water) until six months of age and continue breastfeeding with appropriate complementary foods up to two years or beyond. Even in emergency situations, the aim should be to create and sustain an environment that encourages frequent breastfeeding for children up to at least two years of age.

Read more on Reliefweb.

Reuters: WB warns for negative effects of economic crisis on health and education

In line with forecasts brought up in previous blog entries, the World Bank warns for potentially 'disastrous' effects on health and education projects in the developing world, Reuters reports. Especially the social aspect of the global economic crisis has been ignored in most African countries, Marwan Muasher, the World Bank's senior vice president for external affairs, said to Reuters.

Developing countries, initially shielded from the direct impact, are now being hurt by "second and third waves" of the financial crisis, which is coming on the heels of a damaging upward spiral of food and fuel costs, he said.
In particular, this was being felt in a drop of remittances, reduced investment in health, education and infrastructure projects and the inability to find credit, Muasher said.
"Health and education are the first areas to be dropped by governments in poor countries when budget deficits are high. This will have disastrous consequences in the long term."

All this could be prevented, according to Muasher, if 0.7% of all stimulus plans would go to the support of the school and health projects currently at risk.

IDRL: Lessons learnt from H1N1 and humanitarian evolutions in Sri Lanka

Three noteworthy topics signalled by the Federation's International Disaster Response Law programme:

• On July 5th, experts and representatives of 43 countries concluded the “Top Level Meeting on Influenza A (H1N1): Preparing for the Future”.
• In Sri Lanka, the Times reported, the government is starting to apply the tax law (0.9 per cent) on humanitarian aid it created in 2006, affecting 89 international and local humanitarian organisations, and potentially amounting to several millions of pounds.
• Furthermore, Reuters reported that the Sri Lankan government has asked for a reduction or scaling down in humanitarian operations, now that it declared total victory over the LTTE.

Some more information on these topics can be found in the extended blog entry.

On July 5th, experts and representatives of 43 countries concluded the “Top Level Meeting on Influenza A (H1N1): Preparing for the Future”. Some of the findings of this evaluatory meeting:

since international public health emergencies are unpredictable but recurrent and can severely affect human health and economic well-being worldwide, it is essential to reinforce public health capacity in order to permit timely actions to reduce the spread of disease.

Also, the experts and representatives

urged the WHO Director General to continue applying the procedure to determine an "internationally important public health emergency" and formulate the corresponding temporary recommendations.

In Sri Lanka, the Times reported, the government is starting to apply the tax law (0.9 per cent) on humanitarian aid it created in 2006, affecting 89 international and local humanitarian organisations, and potentially amounting to several millions of pounds.

The Government says that the tax is designed to crack down on NGOs that abused Sri Lankan law and squandered their funds on their own staff after the tsunami. Aid workers, however, say the new rules do not grant tax exemption for all the work they are doing — and want to do — to help 300,000 Tamil refugees in army-run camps. Some say the tax contravenes the international disaster response guidelines drawn up by the Red Cross in 2007 with the participation of 140 countries, including Sri Lanka.

However, some of the organisations, including Oxfam and Save the Children, have managed to negotiate their due tax with the government down to 0.1 per cent.
Furthermore, Reuters reported that the Sri Lankan government has asked for a reduction or scaling down in humanitarian operations, now that it declared total victory over the LTTE.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it was shutting down some of its offices in the country following the government's directive. "The ICRC is in the process of reviewing its setup and operational priorities in Sri Lanka," said the ICRC's head of operations for South Asia, Jacques de Maio. "As a first step, it will close its offices and withdraw its expatriate staff from the Eastern Province while winding down its operations in the area," he said. "The ICRC will continue its dialogue with the Sri Lankan government on issues of humanitarian concern."

WHO: Chronic diseases reach “epidemic” proportions

Chronic diseases—especially cancer, diabetes, and chronic respiratory and heart diseases – kill twice as many people worldwide every year than do infectious diseases HIV, malaria and tuberculosis, combined. But despite their stealth ascent to epidemic proportions – mostly in poor countries, according to World Health Organization (WHO) – chronic diseases receive scant donor and government attention.

Read more on IRIN.

Swine flu gets a high five

Paul Conneally of Federation Media team blogs at Head Down Eyes Open about the swine flu outbreaks.

Pandemic: Health impacts on logistics

Let’s just assume for the moment that swine flu will go pandemic. What effects will this have on our supply chains?

The most obvious one is that it will put severe demands on it. We will need to have massive amounts of medical goods at the right spot, at the right moment. How to deal with this issue merits a separate post, which will follow later today.

Perhaps more insidious is the fact that every supply line depends on people – and in case of a flu pandemic, many of those people will be incapacitated (by illness or death), or be subject to isolation or quarantine. This will mean a severe blow for many of our supply chains: without truck drivers, store managers, clerks, and purchasers, our supply lines will soon break down.

Furthermore, quarantine measures might also mean that transport will be infinitely more difficult: if we can’t have trucks or planes come into the country where we work, goods will not come in either.

Read more on 'A humourless lot' - a blog about logistics, health and aid.

Public health experts can save us from invasion of killer undead

If you’ve ever seen a zombie movie, you’ve seen an introductory guide to public health. The flesh-eating undead are an epidemiologist’s worst nightmare, but they can teach us a lot about public health crises and begin a philosophical discourse on the trade-offs between individual liberties and public safety.

Read more on the Yale Daily news website.

Alertnet: New HIV/TB research centre at KZN University

The University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) in South Africa will host a new research centre dedicated to exploring ways of controlling the HIV/tuberculosis co-epidemic.

Read more on Alertnet.

JHA: Understanding the Effect of the Tsunami and Its Aftermath on Vulnerability to HIV in Coastal India

In 2006, Oxfam commissioned the Swasti Health Resource Center in Bangalore, India, to study whether the 2004 tsunami and its aftermath increased vulnerability to HIV infection among affected residents of coastal India. Researchers found that such vulnerability did indeed increase in most of the 30 communities studied, primarily because the physical, social, and psychological conditions after the tsunami led to a significant increase in unprotected sex with non-regular sexual partners, especially among people living in temporary shelters. The research team recommends measures that government, local NGOs, and international aid groups can take to minimize the risk of HIV infection among displaced people after major disasters.

Read more on the JHA website.

Alertnet: The 'sting' of climate change will be malaria and dengue

Southeast Asia and South Pacific island nations face a growing threat from malaria and dengue fever as climate change spreads mosquitoes that carry the diseases and climate-change refugees start to migrate. A new report titled "The Sting of Climate Change", said recent data suggested that since the 1970s climate change had contributed to 150,000 more deaths every year from disease, with over half of the deaths in Asia.

"Projections of the impact of climate change on malaria and dengue are truly eye-opening," said the Lowy Institute report released in Sydney on Thursday. According to the World Health Organisation, rising temperatures and higher rainfall caused by climate change will see the number of mosquitoes increasing in cooler areas where there is little resistance or knowledge of the diseases they carry.

The Lowy report said early modeling predicted malaria prevalence could be 1.8 to 4.8 times greater in 2050 than 1990. The share of the world's population living in malaria-endemic zones could also grow from 45 percent to 60 percent by the end of the century.

By 2085, an estimated 52 percent of the world's population, or about 5.2 billion people, will be living in areas at risk of dengue.

It also said diseases will spread once climate change forces people to flee their homes, such as low-lying islands or coastal land swamped by rising sea levels.

Read more on Alertnet.

World Food Day: Global Hunger Index 2008

For World Food Day, IFPRI in conjunction with Welthungerhife and Concern Worldwide have published the Global Hunger Index. It shows that;

...thirty-three countries around the world have alarming or extremely alarming levels of hunger, according to the 2008 Global Hunger Index. The Democratic Republic of Congo scored the worst on the Index, followed by Eritrea, Burundi, Niger, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Ethiopia.

The Index ranks countries according to the prevalence of child malnutrition, rates of child mortality, and the proportion of people who are calorie deficient.

Global Handwashing Day - Oct 15

It's Global Handwashing Day next week - there are resources on the Federation website and the British Red Cross website.

For case studies and more technical articles, see globalhandwashingday.org.

WHO: World Malaria Report 2008

There were an estimated 247 million malaria cases among 3.3 billion people at risk in 2006, causing nearly a million deaths, mostly of children under 5 years. 109 countries were endemic for malaria in 2008, 45 within the WHO African region.

Household surveys and data from national malaria control programmes (NMCPs) show that the coverage of all interventions in 2006 was far lower in most African countries than the 80% target set by the World Health Assembly.... While the link between interventions and their impact is not always clear, at least 7 of 45 African countries/areas with relatively small populations, good surveillance and high intervention coverage reduced malaria cases and deaths by 50% or more between 2000 and 2006 or 2007.

Read more and download the report from Reliefweb.

Report from Save the Children: 'In the Face of Disaster: Children and Climate Change'

The consensus on climate change is clear: it is already happening and is likely to lead to an increase in the frequency and intensity of natural disasters.

The resulting impact on children is likely to be dramatic.- Malaria, currently responsible for the death of around 800,000 children under five years old in Africa each year, is set to increase. Climate change and its associated impacts also threaten to hinder the achievement of all the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), particularly the commitments to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, and reduce child mortality.

Climate change will demand better disaster response and better preparedness.The United Nations (UN) estimates that for every $1 invested in risk management before the onset of a disaster, $7 of losses can be prevented.This demonstrates the case for disaster risk reduction to be mainstreamed into development planning and programming.For the millions of children who become displaced, lose a parent, become separated from their families, go hungry or become victims of exploitation because of a disaster, the status quo is not good enough.We know the international community can do much better.
To view the report, click here