Global Health Jay Naidoo

Global Health

image

17 May 2012

The adage, from your lips to God’s ears gains new meaning as I find lessons in remote northern Indian villages. The lessons which South Africa has forgotten and needs to re-learn.

I am squatting on the floor of a hut in an Araku tribal village in the north of Andra Pradesh, a populous state of over 80-million in the south of India. It reminds me of the many villages to which I travelled while organising workers in the sugar farms and mills of Natal in the 1980s. The rolling hills, the lush green vegetation, the mango trees filled with ripening fruit. The people are excited. They are members of the Araku Co-operative Society. They have 11,000 farmer-members.

I am a guest of Naandi, an innovative NGO launched in 1999 as a public-private partnership to deliver a hot, nutritious midday meal to children in Hyderabad when the Supreme Court of India ruled that was a child’s constitutional right. Today they feed over 1.3-million children across India.
Read More >
- - Tags:
  - India
  - Naandi
  - Nutrition
  - Social responsibility
  No Comments
- Short Url
image

14 May 2012

Tomorrow, I will participate in the celebration of GAIN’s 10th anniversary. Since its founding in 2002, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition has worked on the frontline of the fight against malnutrition, mobilizing partnerships and bringing innovative solutions to the table.

Since I have been involved with GAIN I have really seen the organization growing, expanding its scale and improving the lives of vulnerable populations around the world. Over 600 million people are now benefiting from affordable, better quality food thanks to the efforts of GAIN and its partners. I am really proud to be associated and part of this effort.
Read More >
- 1 Comment
- Short Url
post
14 May 2012

An Infinite Vision – The story of the Aravind eye hospital

In India, there is a model for healthcare that goes against all economic logic. People pay what they can to have their sight restored. If they can’t pay, they still get the gift of sight. No bank was prepared to back Dr Govindappa Venkattaswamy, yet today the results of his service are felt in 30 countries across the globe.

I pay R7 to have an eye test. I can come two more times in the next three months and I will not be charged. I first do a glaucoma test, then I am tested for vision, and then examined for uveitis, an eye disease I suffered in my youth. I am given a clean bill of health.

The hospital is spanking clean. Every day it sees 1,200 patients and the doctors perform over 200 operations. But this is only the beginning of an amazing story. It is part of a network of eye hospitals that has seen 32 million patients over 36 years and performed more than 4 million eye surgeries, most of them ultra-subsidised or free.
Read More >
- - Tags:
  - Aravind
  - Healthcare
  - Hospital Care
  - India
  1 Comment
- Short Url
post
8 May 2012

Improving Nutrition for Africa’s Food Security

In June the world will turn its attention to the G20 Summit, where leaders from across the globe will gather to discuss some of the most pressing problems faced today. Food security, with an emphasis on food price volatility, will rightfully be high on the agenda.

But implications for food security go well beyond the challenges of increasing food production to meet future demand, and of addressing short-term price volatility – for poor consumers , the issue is not just about the quantity of food that they eat, but also the quality. The nutritional quality of food consumed underlies health and wellbeing, and impacts on virtually all aspects of people’s lives and livelihoods. This is why when we consider food security in Africa, we must move beyond whether there is enough food but also consider whether that food can deliver life sustaining nutrients particularly for the millions of pregnant and lactating women and infants and young children who have greater nutritional requirements than the general population.
Read More >
- 1 Comment
- Short Url
post
7 May 2012

The South Of India: Dealing With Poverty And Inequality

Spent the last few weeks travelling in south of India and meeting villages learning about development projects especially organised around milk production that translates the wealth of the poor into incomes and livelihoods.

Have just met with organisations of tribal coffee farmers in Araku in north of Andra Pradesh.

Great experience and learning how we deal with poverty by organising communities around livelihoods.

It confirms for me the need for more campaign based approach to dealing with the structural causes of poverty and inequality.

Read More >
- - Tags:
  - global nutrition
  - inequality
  - poverty
  No Comments
- Short Url
post
12 Apr 2012

Addressing child malnutrition with Lead Group

I have agreed to serve on the Lead Group appointed by the UN Secretary General. It is an indictment on our humanity that nearly one third of children in the world are stunted. They will suffer irreversible damage to their mental and physical development that will rob them of their potential to be global citizens who benefit from our human progress. Yet the science, resources and cost effective, affordable business models exist for solving this human catastrophe.

But we lack the political will and the economic and political elites who control the food system and manipulate prices and markets will rake in billions of dollars in profit.

One billion people will go to bed hungry tonight. Something is fatally flawed with a global system and rules that perpetuate such human suffering and hunger in the world. An economic system that does not hesitate to pour trillions of dollars in saving banks and their greedy executives with their obscene bonuses but not support the right to food or health and education.
Read More >
- No Comments
- Short Url
post
24 Feb 2012

We need permanent solutions to our food security needs

Having visited Turkana in northern Kenya and seen the devastation of climate change first hand I can fully appreciate this viewpoint. I think our policy makers in Africa need to embrace indigenous knowledge more fully to find permanent solutions to our food security needs. I have great reservations about any solution that makes us hostage to vested interests in the seed, pesticide and fertilizer interests.

Early action can avert Sahel food and nutrition crisis – UN expert
www.srfood.org

“Drought, poor harvests and rising food prices have left the Sahel region of West-Central Africa on the brink of a humanitarian crisis,” warned Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food. “We must not wait until people are starving in order to act. The world must respond immediately to avert a full-scale food and nutrition crisis.”

Read More >
- - Tags:
  - food crisis
  - food security
  - Humanitarian Crisis
  - Sahel
  - UN
  - United Nations
  - West-central Africa
  No Comments
- Short Url

Page 1 of 7
Next

About Jay

Jay Naidoo is Chair of the Board of Directors and Chair of the Partnership Council of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN). Visit his bio page for more information.
Events
- In Conversation with Emma Mashinini & Jay Naidoo
  Picador African is please to invite you to join Emma Mashinini and Jay Naidoo in conversation around the launch of Strikes Have Followed Me All My Life. RSVP Cape Town: booklounge@gmail.com or call 021 462 2425 RSVP Khayetisha: Nina@jandjgroup.com
Recommended Reading
- The Souls of White Folk | Mark Heywood
  Archbishop Tutu is absolutely right to ask white people to reflect on themselves and their privileges. Tutu is not invoking guilt [...]
Important Issues
Follow me on Twitter
Follow @jay_naidoo
Join the conversation on Facebook
Poll of the Week
Signup to the newsletter

Name:

Email:
My Book