ICT4D News Roundup - March 24, 2017
Thanks for reading the Dimagi blog! Starting this week, we are introducing a new weekly roundup that will highlight news in the #ICT4D industry, as well as articles that focus on issues that impact the sectors we work across.
This week in the news: National Agriculture Day, World Water Day, and World TB Day. We also included links to a few other great reads below. Enjoy!
To celebrate National Agriculture Day, we wanted to share a video the showcases the great work our partners at Rainforest Alliance are doing to improve sustainable farming methods.
And as a segue to World Water Day, did you know that agriculture accounts for 70 percent of global freshwater usage? Rainforest Alliance shared its commitment to water conservation methods in a Q&A earlier this week on farming and the world water crisis.
The way farms manage water is integral to economic, environmental and social sustainability. Run-off from agriculture, whether it’s biological (like manure), or agrochemical, can poison waterways.
#WorldWaterDay 💧
We are proud to work with organizations that help to improve water sustainability measures. But unfortunately, there are still too many people who live without access to safe water resources. This year’s World Water Day was themed: “Why Wastewater?” Check out the article below to find out why.
Today, there are over 663 million people living without a safe water supply close to home, spending countless hours queuing or trekking to distant sources, and coping with the health impacts of using contaminated water.
How can mobile data collection solutions help? We help organizations focused on improving WASH measures by improving the flow of data on water projects. A WASH study across Vietnam, Cambodia, and Mozambique found that CommCare “improved the efficiency of water data quality transmission from water supply structures to upper administrative levels.” Check out our Evidence Base to learn more.
World TB Day
Did you know that more than 4,000 people lose their lives each day to tuberculosis? The World Health Organization released a press release earlier this week stating that, “TB/HIV co-infections [are] up 40% across Europe over the last five years.” This year we #UniteToEndTB by looking for new ways to fight the rise of this infectious disease. Learn more about World TB Day and the efforts to fight the disease below.
New data released today by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the WHO Regional Office for Europe ahead of World TB Day show that new tuberculosis (TB) cases and deaths in the 53 countries of the WHO European Region declined each year by 4.3% and 8.5% respectively between 2011 and 2015.
Mobile technology can help build TB treatment capacity. Limited health care personnel, insufficient training, and counterfeit medicines are significant contributors to the TB epidemic, all of which can be improved with mobile technology. Learn more about the challenges that TB programs face and how mHealth solutions can help here. And see how we are helping to strengthen Myanmar’s efforts against TB by reading this article.
Other Great Reads 👓
Our Patients Will Die Without Foreign Aid
This blog, written by Dr. Joia Mukherjee, Chief Medical Officer at Partners In Health, delves into how cuts to U.S. foreign aid may have a rippling effect across the globe.
As much of this aid is for health in some of the world’s poorest countries, these cuts will have a devastating impact on millions of people throughout the world. In short, people will die.
Community-Based Maternal Health Care: Meeting Women Where They Are
Maternal and newborn health is at the heart of Dimagi’s work. For most of these projects, community health workers are often at the center of these projects, in the field providing women the care and support they need. In this article by Sarah Hodin, a Women and Health Initiative Project Coordinator at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, discusses their importance and impact.
All women deserve respectful, culturally sensitive, women-centered care that takes into account how, where and with whom they want to receive maternal health care. In order to ensure that this happens, health systems must meet women where they are—both literally and figuratively.”
Stay tuned for next week’s roundup! Thanks for reading.
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