USAID Hiring Water and Sanitation / Diarrhea Expert

I have received this note through various channels from USAID in Washington DC – a very interesting senior watsan position at USAID on its Environmental Health Team. Note the focus on ‘diarrheal disease and associated mortality’.

Public Health Advisor – Environmental Health
U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)

The USAID Bureau for Global Health, Maternal and Child Health Division (MCH), based at USAID headquarters in Washington DC, is seeking a Public Health Advisor to provide leadership in its environmental health activities. The major activities of the MCH environmental health team are focused on reduction of diarrheal disease and associated mortality for vulnerable populations in developing countries, especially children under 5, through improvements in drinking water quality and availability, sanitation, and hygiene. Other areas of activity vary over time, but may include improvement in indoor air quality, reduction of health vulnerabilities from climate change, and other topics related to health impacts from environmental degradation.

The successful candidate will participate in and provide leadership to the development of USAID environmental health strategies, plans, program guidance, and dissemination of results. S/he will provide specialized expertise to USAID Missions and host-country governments on new developments and the most effective approaches to environmental health problems in a region or country. S/he will be responsible for communicating such strategies and program results to diverse audiences within and outside USAID, including the U.S. Congress, external partners, and senior USAID and U.S. government staff.

This is a senior position requiring effective program management and communications skills. For further details on qualifications and to apply for this position, please see http://www.avuecentral.com/vacancy.html?ref=NRKVN.

Note that U.S. citizenship is required. Application deadline is 9/9/2009.

Cholera in Africa: More crappy news

It really (really) pisses me off when cholera is in the news - again. Cholera should not exist. It angers me even more when it is featured so prominently in so much of the reporting reaching my desk from many parts of the developing world, particularly in Africa. Cholera is preventable. If cholera kills someone, the world is doing something wrong.

The latest piece of shitty news is this disturbing piece from Kenya, where cholera is hitting a little too close to home:

Obama Brother May Have Cholera


and from the Associated Press:


Official: Obama's half-brother falls ill in Kenya


We hope that it is just a nasty case of diarrhea. We hope that this will be treated (as it can be quite easily) and that Malik Obama will be back at work soon. We hope that it is not cholera, and if it is, we hope even more that it doesn't kill him like it does many other Africans, preventably.

Keys to cholera:

- It is dangerous (viz. fatal all too often).
- It is easily spread through lack of simple safe drinking water and sanitation facilities.
- It is treatable.
- Most importantly, it is preventable, and both the international donor community and every government throughout the developing world can do something about it.

Sources:

• My other recent blog post on the issue. There will likely and distressingly be more such posts.


• An insightful piece from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.


• Cholera at the World Health Organization

This steady stream of cholera in the news has to stop. Cholera mortality and morbidity must stop. The White House is in an extraordinarily strong position to contribute to the elimination of fatal cholera and other diarrheal disease. For an interesting and related take on unnecessary and preventable childhood mortality please see Nicholas Kristof's piece Good News: Karlo Will Live. And call the White House.

Cholera BAD: A Lion in Our Village

If you read one journal article this year, make it this one, from the New England Journal of Medicine:

A Lion in Our Village — The Unconscionable Tragedy of Cholera in Africa

A lion in our village indeed. This is the under-recognized story of cholera in Africa powerfully told by Drs. Eric Mintz and Richard Guerrant.

We know that cholera is caused by unsafe water and inadequate sanitation, and solved by safe water and improved sanitation. This is not an intractable problem.

From their first handful of words "inexcusable,...completely preventable" to even more potent language later on "Epidemic cholera represents a fundamental failure of governance, and bold and visionary leadership is required if we are to attack its root causes," the authors do justice both to the gravity of the problem and to its solvability in Africa as elsewhere in the developed and developing world.

What's missing is the governance and the political and financial capital to get to solutions - both prevention and treatment - this is fixable and unnecessary.

The Big Necessity - Book Signing with Rose George, the Scribe of Sanitation

Did you know that even though disease spread by human excrement kills more children each year than HIV, TB and malaria combined, nobody talks about it because it’s not sexy?

While we’re ignoring this silent killer, 2.6 billion people (that’s four in ten!) today do not have a toilet and instead are forced to do their business on roadsides, in bags or bushes, or anywhere they can. Open defecation is the leading cause of some of the deadliest, but most ignored, communicable diseases affecting our world’s population today.

Diarrhea – usually caused when flies, feet or fingers introduce feces into the food (dig the alliteration) or water supply - needlessly kills nearly 2 million children a year and is the second leading cause of child death worldwide. We hope you will join us and help tell the story about the billions of people whose lives can be saved by the simple introduction of a toilet – a privilege we take for granted each and every time we flush. Journalist Rose George will join us in Washington, DC on October 22nd to launch her new book:

The Big Necessity:

The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why it Matters

It's an entertaining, educational and insightful ride through the world’s sanitation systems, or lack thereof. From the slums of Dar Es Salaam and the villages of Bangladesh back to the squeaky-clean sewage plants that serve Washington DC, George exposes the taboos and disparities that surround human waste – and shows us in no uncertain terms why confronting them is essential to our global health, dignity, and prosperity.

Double click on image below for more details. The event is free, but please RSVP.