01/07/2009
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The Central Hospital of Thua Thien–Hue Province said Tuesday they had cured two out of six people admitted with H1N1 flu, formerly called swine flu. |
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A 21-year-old overseas Vietnamese and her relative, who asked not to be named, were allowed to return home after the last test showed they tested negative for the influenza A (H1N1) virus, the hospital said in a report. The two were detected with H1N1 on June 25, according to the report. Four positive cases remain at the hospital.
Vietnam's health ministry said it detected eight new cases of H1N1 infection Tuesday, raising the country’s total so far to 131.
The ministry confirmed there have been no outbreaks of the flu in the country so far. There have been no fatalities and all patients quarantined at medical facilities are recovering. Health experts and doctors from Asian countries said at a press conference in Singapore that they were worried about the combination of bird (H5N1) and swine (H1N1) flues, of which the former is more deadly while the later is more contagious.
As of Tuesday, there were 70,893 positive cases for the H1N1 virus in 116 territories and countries around the world, according to the World Health Organization. | 30/06/2009
On June 30, 2009 NDMP organized its sixth Steering Committee Meeting in Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD).
On June 30, 2009 NDMP organized its sixth Steering Committee Meeting in Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD). This is the final Steering committee before the project ends. The meeting content will be consisted of two main parts. The first session is to review the progress of NDMP from January - June 2009 and for the whole of NDMP Phase II and to update the steering committee on the progress of the establishment of the next phase of the Partnership. The second session, which is organized in the afternoon of the same day is to share three studies that NDMP is now conducting through its consultants: (1) The results of the National Implementation Plan Consultancy; (2) The results of the Mainstreaming Disaster Risk Management and Climate Change Tools Consultancy; (3) The results of the CBDRM Self Reliant Fund Consultancy
The meeting chaired by Prof. Dr. Dao Xuan Hoc, Vice Minister of MARD and Chairman of NDMP Steering Committee.
Participants of the meeting included NDMP donors, members of Steering Committee, member of the Inter-Agency Working Group and other representatives from International Organization working in Vietnam.
(NDMP) DHAKA, June 29 (Reuters) - More than 350,000 Bangladeshis are struggling without proper homes and at greater risk of disease a month after cyclone Aila ravaged parts of the country, international aid group Oxfam said on Monday.
Cyclone Aila slammed into parts of coastal Bangladesh and eastern India on May 25, killing more than 200 people and displacing millions. In Bangladesh alone, 190 people were killed and 750,000 left homeless.
A month after the cyclone hit, 350,000 victims are still living in temporary shelter on embankments, roadsides, school buildings and cyclone shelters, Oxfam said.
They were without adequate water, sanitation or livelihoods, it said, adding disease is becoming a serious problem.
"People urgently need shelter, safe water and sanitation facilities and restoration of livelihoods," said Oxfam country director in Bangladesh, Heather Blackwell, who had just returned from the severely affected areas.
"Government, humanitarian organisations, (the) U.N. and donors should come together to assist large numbers of displaced people who still need immediate support," she added.
An average of over 1,000 people are being admitted daily to take diarrhoeal treatment in the most affected districts, Oxfam said.
In the last few years disaster-prone Bangladesh, one of the world's most densely populated and poorest countries, has seen an increase in intensity and frequency of climate-related problems.
A cyclone in 1991 killed about 140,000 people and another in late 2007 killed over 3,300.
The United Nations Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted Bangladesh could lose nearly one-fifth of its land by 2050 because of rising sea levels due to global warming.
A team from IIED has edited the first book to address in detail the ways in which cities can adapt to climate change.
Adapting Cities to Climate Change contains contributions by 37 specialists from a variety of disciplines, several of whom served on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
It has chapters on key climate-related health issues in Asian cities, the particular impacts for children, the increases in flooding in African cities and the links between urban poverty and vulnerability to climate change in Latin America.
It includes case studies of the risks faced by Dhaka, Mombasa, Cotonou, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro and Shanghai and describes one of the world’s first city-based adaptation plans – from Durban in South Africa.
"Climate change threatens the lives and homes of hundreds of millions of urban dwellers because of the heat waves, sea-level rise and water constraints it is bringing and from the floods and storms that it will exacerbate," says David Dodman, who co-edited the book with Jane Bicknell and David Satterthwaite.
"Most of the most vulnerable people live in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean and have contributed very little to the greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change. There is an urgent need to begin adapting urban centres now so these risks can be reduced."
The book describes how the first priority for adapting cities to climate change is to remedy deficits in infrastructure and services. For most urban centres in these regions at least half of the population lacks piped water, sewers, drains, health care or emergency services.
The second priority is for city governments to work with their citizens and community organisations in identifying and reducing risk. Doing this in such partnerships cuts costs and greatly increases effectiveness.
"There are very large overlaps between good adaptation, poverty reduction and good city governance," says Satterthwaite. "But for this to happen, city governments have to work with those living in ‘slums’ and informal settlements, not against them. And national governments and international agencies have to support this but, at present, very few do so."
The book includes chapters discussing where adaptation can overlap with reducing greenhouse gas emissions (for Indian cities) and a critique of the very limited international funding available to support adaptation.
"With every new assessment of climate change being more alarming and urgent than the last, this is an incredibly timely book," says Ken Livingstone (Mayor of London 2000-2008). "It looks at what cities can do both to be part of the solution as well as being a practical guide for city governments on how to protect their populations from increasingly violent weather."
Adapting Cities to Climate Change was published by Earthscan.
More information 27/06/2009NEW DELHI, Jun 27 (IPS) - Predicting the monsoons - a risky proposition despite the deployment of satellites and supercomputers - appears to have become iffier thanks to climate change.
As the spectre of drought looms up across India thanks to this season’s seriously deficient monsoon - so far - it looks as if the days when India’s farming was referred to as a ‘gamble with the monsoons’ are returning.
"There is growing evidence to suggest that climate change is making the monsoons more unpredictable and worsening the severity of events like floods and droughts," Vinuta Gopal, energy and climate change campaigner for Greenpeace, told IPS.
Gopal says that while there is no scientific evidence yet to link this year’s truant monsoon to climate change, what is clear is that the "modelling systems of the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) cannot make predictions with any degree of accuracy." This means that farmers cannot depend on the forecasts to time sowing, harvesting and all that goes in between.
"Farmers we [Greenpeace] spoke with in the four southern states [Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka] told us that even traditional methods of forecasting have become undependable," Gopal said. "What is certain is that the intensity and frequency of storms and spells of rain and drought are becoming commonplace, but exactly how precipitation patterns are changing is still to be worked out."
On Apr. 17, IMD made an optimistic initial forecast for the South-West Monsoon that said that countrywide average cumulative rainfall for the season would be 96 percent of long-term average, allowing five percent either way for model error.
But this week India’s Minister for Science and Technology Prithviraj Chauhan scaled that down to 93 percent of the 89 cm (35 inches) of rainfall that ought to fall in the June-September monsoon season - if major crops such as sugarcane, oilseeds and rice are not to suffer.
Chauhan’s announcement brought gloom to a country hoping to make up for recessionary trends through a good harvest. Only a third of India’s arable land is irrigated - with the rest depending on monsoon rainfall and on underground water pumped up from aquifers using bore wells.
The last time India suffered a drought was in 2002, when economic growth slumped to four percent, dramatically illustrating the impact of monsoons on the economy. The following year when India had the best rainfall in five years, the economic growth sprang back to 8.5 percent. In 2004, the rains were the second lowest in two decades and growth slowed to 6.9 percent. The nine percent growth India experienced in 2005 and 2007 was accompanied by normal rainfall during those years.
Pradhan Parth Sarthi, a climate scientist with the prestigious Energy Research Institute, told IPS that the Indian summer monsoon remains a "complex and mysterious phenomenon" and that it is a hard task for any meteorologist to predict its course and precipitation "through existing statistical and dynamical models."
"While climate change has little impact on average annual rainfall, going by rainfall data studied over a 100-year period, it is seen that during the monsoons heavy to very heavy rainfall is increasing in some areas and rainfall of lowered intensity is decreasing in other areas. These trends compensate each other in terms of net rainfall but they can be disruptive of normal agriculture," Sarthi said.
El Niño (abnormal rise in sea surface temperature over the equatorial central Pacific Ocean), one of several factors that can delay or cause a failure of the monsoons, seems to have caused a 50 percent reduction in normal rainfall in June, Sarthi said. "We are hoping that the situation will revive in July, the principal rainy season, when El Niño weakens over the central, equatorial Pacific Ocean."
"El Niño is already known to cause droughts and it will be fair to say that global warming may act to exacerbate these extreme events," Sarthi observed.
"Although it is impossible to predict the effects of global warming on the frequency of El Niños, all indications seem to be that they are becoming stronger, more common, and are no longer disappearing completely," says Kevin E. Trenberth, a lead author of the 2001 and 2007 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s scientific assessments of climate change. "In other words, the Pacific doesn’t seem to be reverting to ‘normal’ anymore," Trenberth says in a report for the David Suzuki foundation.
For Gopal what is truly worrisome is a complacent attitude in which anomalous weather conditions are gradually becoming accepted as normal - and this despite a series of catastrophic events over the last few years.
In 2006, Cherrapunji in India’s northeast - famed as the wettest place on earth - received considerably lower amounts of rainfall, whereas arid, desert states such as western Rajasthan received unusual amounts of rainfall, bringing in its wake all manner of calamities, including diseases.
The July 2005 Mumbai deluge wreaked havoc in the western metropolis, causing billions of dollars of damage and the loss of hundreds of lives. Surging floodwaters triggered by the 2002 monsoon killed more than 800 people in Bangladesh, India and Nepal and displaced millions. This year Cyclone Aila devastated coastal Bangladesh leaving over 24,000 people homeless, and destroying large tracts of mangrove forests.
"The intensity and frequency of freak spells of rain and drought, cyclones and storms are only getting worse by the year. Science increasingly suggests that climate change is going to change the pattern of the Indian monsoon," Gopal said.
After assessing historical data, the IPCC in its fourth assessment report in 2007 suggested that "warming in India is likely to be above the average for South Asia, with an increase in summer precipitation and an increase in the frequency of intense precipitation in some parts."
According to the IPCC the Indian monsoons are going to undergo gross changes as a direct result of climate change with increased rainfall in the summer monsoon, but with uneven distribution across India.
Gopal predicts climate change will likely to lead to a stronger but more variable monsoon until 2100. Thereafter, with the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and its effects on temperatures in the North Atlantic, and in turn, the pattern of the North Atlantic Ocean circulation, the grip on the monsoon will weaken.
"What is imminent and looming large are the dire consequences of a climate- changed monsoon," Gopal said.
Close to two-thirds of humanity live within regions influenced by the Asian monsoon and depend on the water that it brings to support agriculture, and supply potable water.
The Indian subcontinent lies close to the centre of the monsoonal region, and despite a gradual shift away from agriculture, India is still largely an agrarian state with agriculture accounting for a third of its Gross Domestic Product. Only about 40 percent of the land is irrigated - leaving farmers exposed to the vagaries of monsoons.
India’s farming is focused on feeding domestic demand and follows the country’s long-held policy of maintaining food self-sufficiency.
23/06/2009
The European Commission congratulates Development Workshop France (DWF) and Focus Humanitarian Assistance (FHA) for receiving the prestigious United Nations' Sasakawa Award for Disaster Reduction. DWF received the Certificate of Distinction and FHA the Certificate of Merit.
Both are longstanding partners of the Commission's Humanitarian Aid department (ECHO) working with local communities in developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to natural disasters and helping them to protect themselves against such disasters. Both are honoured for their comprehensive work in disaster risk reduction.
This work includes, for example, Commission-funded and DWF-run preparedness projects in Vietnam demonstrating that preventive strengthening of buildings is cost-effective and efficient.
Louis Michel, European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, said: "I warmly congratulate Development Workshop France and Focus Humanitarian Assistance on winning this prestigious award. Better than just waiting for the next tragedy, the Commission is committed to supporting disaster risk reduction work. We are glad to have highly professional and dedicated partner organisations like DWF and FHA to help us improve the capacity of communities in developing countries at risk from natural disasters".
In 2008, Development Workshop France won the UN Habitat Award for its work preventing typhoon damage to housing in central Vietnam.
Focus Humanitarian Assistance is an affiliate of the Aga Khan Development Network. It received the Certificate of Merit for its disaster p revention, mitigation and preparedness activities to reduce the vulnerability of over half a million people living in the mountainous northern areas of Pakistan.
The UN Sasakawa award for disaster reduction was established in 1986 by founding chairman of the Nippon Foundation, Mr Ryoichi Sasakawa. The award has three elements: the Laureate as well as a Certificate of Distinction and a Certificate of Merit. Previous laureates include, among others, the Global Fire Monitoring Center in Germany and Dr. Ian Davis from the UK.
See also: IP/09/924
For further information: http://ec.europa.eu/echo/index_en.htm 20/06/2009The Global Platform ended today with participants from more than 300 regional/national organizations and governments urging political leaders to implement measures to halve the number of deaths from natural hazards by 2015.
In the Chair’s Summary at the close of the Second Session of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction, John Holmes, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Chair of the ISDR partnership recognised the way in which the process of DRR was being driven from the local level with the leadership increasingly coming from the global south.
Specific targets were also identified – reflecting the conference’s deliberations – as catalysts for cutting deaths and economic losses brought on by disasters, including:
• By 2010, establishment of clear national and international financial commitments to DRR, for example to allocate a minimum of 10% of all humanitarian and reconstruction funding, at least 1% of development funding, and at least 30% of climate change adaptation funding to DRR.
• By 2011, a global structural evaluation of all schools and hospitals and by 2015 firm action plans for safer schools and hospitals developed and implemented in all disaster prone countries with DRR included in all school curricula by the same year.
• By 2015, all major cities in disaster prone areas to include and enforce DRR measures in their building and land use codes.
“Achieving targets like these is challenging but it can be done. Even now, some of the world’s poorest countries are reducing the impact of disasters. There is no excuse for failing to act. What we need is the collective will to invest and act now,” Holmes commented later.
In his Summary, Holmes reviewed the findings and recommendations from four days of intense dialogue and debate drawn from plenary and informal plenary sessions, five high-level panels, five round-tables and over 40 special events.
He highlighted particularly the rising threat of climate change which, he said, is recognized as a source of great risk but at the same time offers the potential for a ‘triple win’ – adaptation, DRR and poverty reduction.
“The overwhelming view of the Global Platform is that DRR must be a concrete part of the deal on climate change that is sealed at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in December 2009,” he stressed, adding that national disaster risk and climate change adaptation authorities needed to ‘act quickly’ on policy harmonization and identifying collaborative programs for the post-Copenhagen era.
Expanding on the main Platform theme – Invest Today for a Safer Tomorrow – Holmes stressed: “At present the scope of activities to reduce disaster risks is often simply too small and suffers from limited institutional capacities, lack of skills and established tools and small budgets.
“Put bluntly, many countries must dedicate more funds from national budgets – or suffer the consequences. This is also a must for the international community”
Holmes also urged Governments to show leadership and responsibility in the upcoming mid-term review of the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters, which will scrutinize implementation progress to date.
Concluding the Summary, he said: “We know how to move ahead. We can close the gaps and engage those who most need it; we can make our schools and hospitals safe, and we can help address the climate change issue.
“With strong advocacy and stronger commitment, greater public awareness and support, and appropriate funds, we can substantially reduce the losses from disasters as well as contributing to resilient social and economic development.”
The Global Platform, attended this year by some 1,800 participants from more than 300 Governments and Organizations, is the premier gathering for the worldwide DRR community, including political leaders and their policy advisors, UN agencies, international organizations, and scientific/academic institutions.
Said Margareta Wahlstrom, UN Assistant Secretary-General and Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction: “It is clear that participants are leaving the Global Platform today with high expectations. The targets specified this morning are simply a first step – delivery must follow rapidly.”
She also welcomed a joint statement from the six members of the ISDR management oversight board, delivered during the closing ceremony, inviting Governments to make 2010 ‘the year of investment and action’.
18/06/2009
John Norton, President of DWF, receives the Award from John Holmes, UN Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Chair of the Second Session of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction held in Geneva, on the 16th June.
(Updated 6/18/2009 GMT+7)
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