Water woes, feeding kids through tech and healthcare by women

[the_future_modernes]

IRAQ, TURKEY, SYRIA

Cooperation Strategic To Protect Tigris and Euphrates

SULAIMANIYA, Iraq / BRUSSELS, March 15, 2011 (IPS) - On a dusty street in the north-eastern Iraqi city of Sulaimaniya one recent day, an elderly man sold heaps of tomatoes, fruits and other fresh produce from a makeshift trolley.

But the vendor lamented that the fruits and vegetables no longer come from the once-prolific valleys of Iraq's self-governing Kurdish region, nor fertile regions further south.

Most of his goods are trucked in from Turkey and Iran, Massoud explains, handing over a bag of oranges to a visitor. "We had wars, we had Saddam, and now we have no rain," said Massoud, who did not want to share his real name with the customer.

Although the brief wet season is just beginning, much of northern Iraq has endured several years of drought, compounding water problems that stem from climate change, migration, a growing population and declining water flows in the country's most important rivers -- the Tigris and Euphrates.

Faced with a potentially catastrophic shortage of fresh water, Iraq and the other nations that share the Tigris and Euphrates, emanating in eastern Turkey, must strengthen efforts to protect the waterways, according to a new report. Such cooperation, like the rains, has been in short supply.MORE

INDIA
INDIA Tech to the Rescue of School Lunch Model

Akshaya Patra, which in Hindu mythology means an inexhaustible food vessel, feeds 1.2 million school children every day from 18 centralised kitchens - 15 automated, across eight states. Six of the kitchens are certified under the International Food Safety Management System standard ISO 22000:2005.

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Intelligently engineered automated kitchens have been Akshaya Patra’s cornerstones for achieving remarkable scale and efficiency in delivering school meals. Using a hub-and-spoke model, mass quantities of food cooked in these automated kitchens are distributed in smaller amounts to individual schools in the surrounding areas.

Malnutrition, classroom hunger and school dropouts continue to be grave concerns in India, making Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) one and two - to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, and to achieve universal primary education - difficult to achieve by the 2015 deadline.

The global hunger index published by the International Food Policy Research Institute ranks India - with 42 percent of the world’s underweight children aged under five - 67 among 84 countries in 2010.

In 2001 the Supreme Court of India directed governments to provide cooked meals in all state-run primary schools to address these concerns.MORE

PAKISTAN

PAKISTAN Unsung Heroines Bring Healthcare to Villages

KARACHI, Mar 16, 2011 (IPS) - At eight in the morning 30-year-old Sultana Solangi steps out of her house ready for her day’s work. Wearing a black gown that shows only her eyes, she is shod in comfortable slippers and lugs a large black bag.

She will walk through this city’s poorest communities, visiting as many as 10 homes everyday, helping to raise awareness and improve maternal and child health.

In her bag is an assortment of medical supplies: Paracetamol tablets and oral rehydration salts, bandages, condoms, contraceptive pills, iron and folic acid tablets, eye ointments, and antiseptic lotion.

Solangi, the sole breadwinner in her family of four, works as a lady health worker (LHW), employed by the government’s National Programme for Family Planning and Primary Health Care.

Launched in 1994, the programme now has a veritable army of 100,000 LHWs covering 60 percent of the population - the biggest outreach intervention in South Asia.MORE