Posted by CSIS Staff on Mar 07, 2012 at 08:54 am
Ten months after suffering “the largest urban disaster in modern history” – a devastating 7.0-magnitude (MMS) earthquake on January 12, 2010 that killed over 316,000 and affected 3 million – Haiti faced an outbreak of cholera. In Part 2 of our look at Haiti's cholera outbreak, CSIS examines the Haitian government's response and the challenges that lie ahead.
Posted by CSIS Staff on Mar 06, 2012 at 04:59 pm
The Dominican Republic reported its first cholera cases in November, 2010 – just two months after the initial outbreak in neighboring Haiti. Two years later, the Dominican Republic has recorded far fewer cholera cases and related deaths than Haiti; the higher quality of the Dominican Republic’s water and sanitation infrastructure and its responsiveness to the cholera outbreak are important reasons for the lower numbers.
Posted by CSIS Staff on Mar 06, 2012 at 04:11 pm
In this blog post, CSIS looks at the science behind cholera: how it is transmitted and how it targets the human being.
Posted by CSIS Staff on Mar 06, 2012 at 03:17 pm
Ten months after suffering “the largest urban disaster in modern history” – a devastating 7.0-magnitude (MMS) earthquake on January 12, 2010 that killed over 316,000 and affected 3 million – Haiti faced an outbreak of cholera. In Part 1 of our look at Haiti's cholera outbreak, CSIS examines the origins of Haiti's cholera outbreak.
Posted by CSIS Staff on Feb 28, 2012 at 02:03 pm
An end to Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) may be in sight. The London Declaration on NTDs, announced on January 30th 2012, may mark the beginning of a new era in which these neglected diseases share the spotlight. The London Declaration calls for the eradication, elimination, and control of many NTDs, with target dates set for the year 2020.
Posted on Apr 28, 2011 at 09:00 am
The 2010 floods were by far the worst natural disaster in Pakistan’s history. Flooding of almost biblical proportions ultimately affected more than 20 million people and covered one-fifth of the country’s territory. However due to coordinated emergency reponse, the international community avoided a large-scale disease outbreak in Pakistan in 2010.
Posted on Apr 05, 2011 at 02:41 pm
At Coca-Cola, water is vital to the sustainability of our business. We're working with partners in countries around the world to help manage water resources responsibly. As we've engaged in these partnerships, one of the things we've learned is how important access to water and sanitation is to the empowerment of women and girls.
Posted on Apr 04, 2011 at 10:05 am
Women in most of the developing world have the primary responsibility for managing their household’s water supply. Unfortunately, that is not always their choice. Too often, where water is scarce, women are the ones forced to fetch it -- often traveling long distances on foot, sometimes two or three times a day. By providing women with the knowledge and tools to treat water and make it safe, one woman can change the health and well-being of her entire community.
Posted on Apr 04, 2011 at 09:47 am
Two important developments over the last decade are converging to offer a monumental opportunity to advance the lives of millions of women and girls around the world. These women have been held back from healthy, productive lives due to lack of access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH).
Posted on Mar 29, 2011 at 02:52 pm
The debate around "sustainability" is somewhat surprising. Arguments rage over the issue for reasons I still struggle to fully understand. Simply put, sustainability means that water flows, toilets are used and hands are washed, forever. Not for awhile or for the operational life for a particular piece of hardware, but rather to the point that children grow up expecting water to flow, expecting toilets to be available to them at all times, and unthinkingly wash their hands.
Posted on Mar 29, 2011 at 02:29 pm
For years, the water sector has hidden a dirty little secret: more than 50 percent of all water projects fail, and less than five percent are visited after completion. Today we are sweeping yet another secret under the rug: investment in the water cause is suffering and financial flows are insufficient to achieve the MDG targets for water and sanitation. Clearly, we have a problem with sustainability – from both a programmatic and financial perspective. The good news is that we can overcome these obstacles.
Posted on Mar 29, 2011 at 07:58 am
Every era has its own WASH sustainability challenges - taken together, they teach the universal lesson of its necessity for every society in history’s basic development and prosperity, and sometimes for the rise (and decline) of great powers and turning points of human civilization. Today, first generation industrial era pipes, many buried deep beneath large metropolises, are decaying and in desperate need of hundreds of billions of dollars of renovation. Renovation of obsolete infrastructure is one layer of today’s WASH sustainability challenge. Another is delivering water to urban slums for the first time.
Posted on Mar 28, 2011 at 08:41 am
We already know that the combined effects of a number of major drivers, including climate change, are causing varied, somewhat unpredictable, and increasingly severe effects on water resources. While efforts to determine the specific impacts of climate change on the local hydrological conditions need to continue, prudent decision makers are already incorporating these additional uncertainties into their planning processes, and considering how to secure and sustain water resources for the population, production systems and the environment.
Posted on Mar 23, 2011 at 03:31 pm
Over the last three days, the international community convened in Cape Town, South Africa for World Water Day (WWD) to address the challenges and solutions focused on this year’s theme: Water for Cities: Responding to the Urban Challenge.
Posted on Mar 22, 2011 at 01:50 pm
One of the most difficult challenges for developing economies will be managing water resources in ways that do not make poor nations and communities poorer, generate international conflict, or trash freshwater and riparian ecosystems. In practice, this will mean that policymakers will have to build and operate water infrastructure to function under a much larger range of conditions than we can accurately predict today. And that also means that climate-sustainable water policy will need to be incorporated beyond the water ministry and merge into agriculture, energy, urban planning, health, and even foreign policy.
Posted by Katherine Bliss on Mar 22, 2011 at 11:29 am
This edition of the Global Health Policy Center newsletter is focused on global water issues because today, March 22, is World Water Day.
Posted on Mar 16, 2011 at 10:04 am
Public officials from utilities and municipalities voice a range of interlinking and complex challenges they faced in extending and maintaining urban water and sanitation services in their cities. They boiled down into three critical areas: lack of capacity and incentives; proven effective models; and channeling of finance to where it’s most needed.http://smartglobalhealth.org/cms/index.php?S=d211855378ef8a7f5a66385200175773a58ea4f9&C=edit&M=edit_entry&weblog_id=3&entry_id=543
Posted on Mar 16, 2011 at 09:51 am
The reliability and relatively low cost of the water we provide – especially as compared to other utilities – might give the impression that the water business presents no real cause for public concern. This is far from the case. George S. Hawkins, General Manager of the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority, explains what it takes to maintain DC's water network.
Posted by CSIS Staff on Mar 15, 2011 at 03:40 pm
With World Water Day on March 22nd, the theme of this month's blog is water. Themes to be discussed include urban water challenges; women and the water sector; water resources and climate change; and WASH sustainability.
Posted by Katherine Bliss on Oct 29, 2010 at 10:01 am
While considerable energy is focused on mobilizing state action where sanitation is concerned, the research community also has a significant role.
