Helping make poverty history this Christmas

On Saturday November 17, 2011, Ella Pearse (daughter of RESULTS Northern Beaches member Melissa Pearse), and her two friends Edita and Sienna, held a small fundraising stall at a local shopping centre and raised a remarkable $120! Here's what they wrote:

We decided to raise for RESULTS because we wanted to help make poverty history and help save children and their families all round the world that aren’t as lucky as us.

Firstly, we had a meeting together to plan out what we were going to make, how much everything was to be and what we had to bring on the day.

We made the lucky dip, lolly bags and cards so they were ready for the stall.

On Sunday the 20^th we met at Edita’s house at 10.30am to make all of the food.  At around 1:00pm we finally finished making the food and Edita’s mum drove us up to Elanora Top shops to set up our stall.  We set up our stall in front of the Elanora Newsagent because it was closed.

When customers came to our stall or people were walking past we told them we were raising money for a group called results that is trying to make poverty history.

Although 50 per cent of the people didn’t buy anything, most of them donated money anyway.  After an hour and a half Edita’s mum picked us up from our stall and we took everything back.  After cleaning up and sorting everything out we counted up all of the money that we raised together which added up to $120!

We thank everyone that donated money for RESULTS to help end poverty!

From left to right: Ella Pearse (11yrs-old), Edita Grinsberg (10yrs-old), and Sienna Baker (11yrs-old).

2011 Global Microcredit Summit: Day 2

Our National Manager, Maree Nutt, is in Spain this week for the 2011 Global Microcredit Summit.

Day 2:

YESTERDAY, November 15, I met Kirsten Hambly, First Secretary to the Australian Ambassador to Spain (Ms Zorikas McCarthy). We all agreed that on the whole microfinance initiatives are very useful and an important tool for poverty reduction.

There are many hundreds of institutions here at the summit doing great work, like the Grameen Bank, the BRAC in Bangladesh, Fonkoze in Haiti, Kashf in Pakistan, Jamii Bora in Kenya and many, many more.

We talked about the challenge in how to differentiate 'good' microfinance from the 'bad' microfinance that recently attracted media attention.

An expert panel is now working through The Summit Campaign and developing a 'Seal of Excellence', whereby microfinance institutions would be certified and easily recognised for their strong financial performance, protection of clients, and their strong focus on poverty reduction.

The Ambassador's representatives agreed to report on the importance of the summit, and agreed to include RESULTS' request to double aid for microfinance in her report to Foreign Affairs Minister Kevin Rudd.

2011 Global Microcredit Summit

OUR National Manager, Maree Nutt is in Spain at the 2011 Global Microcredit Summit and has recently written about the opening ceremony:

QUEEN Sofia of Spain has just opened the Global Microcredit Summit in the beautiful city of Valladolid, two hours from Madrid. 

She recounted, seeing with her own eyes, the positive impact of microfinance when she visited Grameen Bank over 16 years ago.

Queen Sofia has participated in every global summit since, and Spain can be proud of being the second-highest aid donor in microfinance programs, totalling almost $1 billion! We could do with such a champion in Australia.

Any suggestions?

Disappointingly, AusAID is not represented here, and the Australian Ambassador to Spain, who was due to representing Australia is sick with flu. Instead, I will meet with the Ambassador's First Secretary shortly...

Make sure you follow our blog for continual updates of Maree's visit to Spain.

Her Majesty Queen Sofía of Spain, is Honorary Co-Chair of the Microcredit Summit Campaign.

 

Pneumonia kills babies: To protect them - vaccinate!

Dr. Kate O’Brien is pediatrician, epidemiologist, Deputy Director of the International Vaccine Access Center (IVAC), Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, USA, and a winner of the 2011 US Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. Read why she thinks World Pneumonia Day is so important:

I AM  a pediatrician, an infectious disease pediatrician at that.  We’re supposed to know what to do when a baby has pneumonia - apparently that’s not always true.  I’ve treated hundreds of such cases - but this time was different.   

When it’s your own infant none of that experience matters.
 
Jack looked at me with what seemed like panic in his eyes.  Coughing, crying, breathing fast, sleeping in fits and spurts.  Babies aren’t supposed to breath that fast.  He lay beside me in bed. It was the day before Christmas and I just kept telling myself that we’d be better soon---apparently that’s not true either.    We both had influenza, I’m sure of that.  If you’ve had it you’ll know what I mean---I felt like hell, exhausted, muscle aches, every time I coughed it felt like sandpaper scraping over my trachea.  But since I’m an infectious disease doc, of course we were vaccinated!---well, apparently that wasn’t true this year.  I had every intention of getting that done weeks earlier, but life got in the way.

The middle of the night always makes things worse, or at least things seem worse.  So, we became ‘that family’, calling our neighbors in the middle of the night to care for our two-year old while we drove to the hospital with Jack.  So many times I was that doctor we were about to meet in the emergency room, scratching my head wondering, “Why did they wait the whole day at home and decide to finally come in at 2 in the morning?”  Well, now I knew.  Sometimes it doesn’t get better.  He had pneumonia on the chest x-ray and needed antibiotics.

                                                    Baby Jack at 4 months.

Every day, of every year, millions of children get pneumonia and struggle to breath; more than a million of them don’t get the treatment they need and die.  Every day of every year something unimaginable to the mothers we are, happens to mothers we don’t know, over 90 per cent of them living in poor countries in Africa and Asia ---their child dies in front of their eyes from pneumonia.  It’s senseless. It’s inhuman. 

Vaccines against the biggest pneumonia causing bacteria, Hib and pneumococcus, along with other simple strategies can prevent these deaths.  

So, this year on World Pneumonia Day, look at your kids and remember to get them vaccinated, remember to get yourself vaccinated and remember that not every mother is so lucky….yet.

The  GAVI Alliance is helping give those mothers the same opportunity for their kids, faster than ever before for any vaccine.  At a time when the world seems to be more complicated than ever, this seems like a pretty sensible thing to do.

ACTION releases eye-opening report on children & TB

THIS WEEK, RESULTS, as a partner in the ACTION Project, is calling attention to the neglect and has released a report, Children and Tuberculosis: Exposing a Hidden Epidemic.

TUBERCULOSIS (TB) remains among the top ten killers of children worldwide, yet virtually no public or political attention is paid to TB as a children’s health issue.

The world’s most vulnerable children are bearing the brunt of this neglect. In 2009, one million children became sick with TB and it is those who are malnourished, orphaned or living with HIV that are most likely to die from this entirely treatable and largely curable disease.

This week, ACTION is calling attention to the neglect and has released a report, Children and Tuberculosis: Exposing a Hidden Epidemic.

The report is a reminder that TB is not a disease of the past and remains a leading killer, especially of children whose underdeveloped immune systems leave them particularly susceptible.

According to Dr. Ben Marais, a leading TB specialist at The Children’s Hospital Westmead, the prevention, diagnosis and management of children with TB:

“(TB) remains a significant challenge in countries where the TB epidemic is poorly controlled. In these settings, TB is often a major unrecognized cause of disease and death in young children, while it is readily treatable.  Greater awareness must be translated into more effective models of care, backed by local political commitment to make a difference.”

It is through this eye-opening report that RESULTS hopes to call attention to the immediate need to stop neglecting TB and increase funding and research for this deadly but preventable disease to save children’s lives.

Maiden MP visit achieves great RESULTS!

Rachel Achterstraat is our ACTION Project Coordinator and recently went on her first Member of Parliament meeting in Canberra last Friday with RESULTS National Manager Maree Nutt. She wrote about her experience:

Today, I attended my first ever MP visit. In many ways this was my 'baptism by fire' because as it happens, my local Federal Member (of Warringah) is none other than Tony Abbott, Leader of the Opposition.

RESULTS National Manager Maree Nutt and I met with Mr. Abbott to discuss the premature closure of medical clinics in the Torres Strait Islands (TSI), which have been treating Papua New Guineans with tuberculosis (TB) for the past six years.

A recent decision made by the Australian Government to cut funding for these clinics has led to their forced closure.

The implications of this decision are far-reaching.

PNG patients who had previously received treatment through the TSI clinics will now be at high risk of developing Multi-Drug Resistant TB (a more vicious strain of the virus) and Australian citizens will be exposed to a significantly increased risk of cross-border transmission.

The Government has proposed that these funds should be diverted away from these life-saving clinics and funneled into a more broader health systems strentgthening approach to tackle the high rates of TB in PNG.

Whilst RESULTS is pleased that the Australian Government will be investing in health service delivery for our nearest neighbor, it is too early to tell if the proposed strategy will be of any effect.

It is also estimated that building the capacity of the PNG health system to cope with the national TB burden will take more than a decade, resulting in at least ten years of increased risk to a highly infectious and often fatal disease.

Having served previously as the Minister for Health and the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Mr. Abbott took interest in the issue. He was particularly concerned by the potential for TB to spread throughout the Australian Indigenous population in Northern Australia, and also the potential impact of increased TB transmission in a country with a high HIV/AIDS burden, such as PNG.

Mr. Abbott agreed that a short term and longer term strategy is required to address this issue and was dismayed at the shortsightedness of current plans to close the clinics.

Mr. Abbott suggested that he would write a Letter to Prime Minister Julia Gillard, outlining RESULTS recommendations and asking the Government to resume funding for the TSI Clinics. Mr. Abbott also suggested that his Minister for Indigenous Health could ask a Question of Notice to the Parliament at Question Time.

Despite first-time nerves and a few tongue-ties, I think my first MP visit was a success.

Having the ever-sharp Maree along with me was a huge support.

I believe we left with the promise of a concrete action from Mr. Abbott and the beginnings of an open dialogue with his team.

From Left to Right: National Manager Maree Nutt, ACTION Project Manager
Rachel Achterstraat, and Federal Leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott.

RESULTS urges Federal Govt. to resume funding TB clinics in Torres Strait

RESULTS International (Australia) is urging the Federal Government to resume funding for medical clinics in the Torres Strait Islands.

Without these clinics Papua New Guinea nationals will not receive critical care for tuberculosis (TB) and will likely increase the chances of this highly-infectious disease spreading within Australia.

In the past, these life-saving clinics have received funding from the Commonwealth and Queensland State Governments, however the Federal Government’s decision to withdraw funding for these services means that the closure of the clinics is imminent.

The Commonwealth has stated that it would instead send $43 million in AusAID funding to PNG-based health services.

“Whilst the increase in aid funding to improve health services for TB in Papua New Guinea is welcome, lasting sustainable improvements will take years to achieve.

“This means in the short term, keeping TB clinics open in the Torres Strait is imperative.” RESULTS International (Australia) National Manager Maree Nutt today said.

According to the World Health Organisation, TB is a disease of poverty affecting mostly young adults, and in 2009 1.7 million people died from the airborne contagion worldwide.

There is also a recorded death every two hours in PNG from TB, according to the National Department of Health. 


“Let us not forget that tuberculosis is an airborne disease so it is a very real threat, not only to Torres Strait Islanders, but to Australians as well,” Ms Nutt added.

Coalition MPs such as Warren Entsch and Andrew Laming have also been outspoken on the issue, forecasting disastrous outcomes if Multi-Drug Resistant TB patients from PNG worked their way south, risking increased transmission to Australian citizens.

TAKE ACTION TODAY: Write a letter-to-the-editor to your local newspaper imploring the Federal Government to resume funding for medical clinics in the Torres Strait Islands.