STOP FOOD WASTE: THE FUTURE IS AT RISK, THINK 2050

There has been growing concern globally on the way we live in different regions across the world and the global crisis that looms if current individual and collective actions are not corrected.

Food waste or food loss is any food material that is discarded or unable to be used. In the context of this presentation, we will need to refer to this as not been used judiciously. It is also important to note that food waste comes in chain and in cycles which affect every region of the world in line with their lifestyles, standard and local belief systems.

Roughly one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year (approximately 1.3 billion tonnes) gets lost or wasted. This is an alarming loss percentage that we all should get worried about and understand food is not just the cost of the food wasted; but cost of other variables in both direct and indirect cost. 

Every year, consumers in rich and developed countries waste almost as much food (222 million tonnes) as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa (230 million tonnes). If this volume of food wasted can be saved, it means it could almost feed a sub-region in Africa for a whole year and this gives me a whole lot of reasons to get even worried the more. 222 million tonnes of food waste is no joke.

In developing countries food waste and losses occur mainly at early stages of the food value chain and can be traced back to financial, managerial and technical constraints in harvesting techniques as well as storage and cooling facilities. This is a peculiar food waste control gap that is peculiar to developing countries but this can be strengthened if farmers and food producers can have the confidence and support of government through investment in infrastructures such as good storage facilities, transportation for moving food and food products, expansion of food and packaging industries, reliable electricity, all these put together can reduce considerably the amount of food loss and waste. Invariably, the food waste in developing countries is more in the production chain than in consumerism.

This does not ultimately rule out the fact that we also have food waste at the consumer’s stage in developing countries. This is mostly associated with cultural belief systems and life style of the people. I live in Nigeria in Africa where visitors must be fed before they leave irrespective of whether they are truly hungry or not. We most times serve such visitors more than enough food that they could ever finish, we end up having leftovers that may never be eaten but thrown to the dust bin. What we need to know is that as we are busy wasting those food, there are millions of children across the world that have no food to eat and languishing in malnutrition. Food is too good to be wasted, we need to stop this trend and we need to reduce food waste now so we can prepare for possible future food shortage.

  

In medium and high income countries, food is wasted and lost mainly at later stages in the supply chain. Differing from the situation in developing countries, the behavior of consumers plays a huge part in industrialized countries. This dynamics could be seen to have some underlying social economic status factors, people shop for and most times cook more food than they need and bulk of these food never get to the dinner table. 

Most potent way of dealing with food waste is to reduce its creation. Consumers can reduce their food waste output at points-of-purchase and in their homes by adopting some simple measures good enough to stop food waste no matter how small. This includes planning when shopping for food and spontaneous purchases are shown as often the most wasteful. Proper knowledge of food storage reduces foods becoming inedible and thrown away, infrastructures also play a key role in this direction.

In the United States 30% of all food, worth US$48.3 billion, is thrown away each year. It is estimated that about half of the water used to produce this food also goes to waste, since agriculture is the largest human use of water (70%). (Jones, 2004 cited in Lundqvist et al., 2008). 

United Kingdom households waste an estimated 6.7 million tonnes of food every year, around one third of the 21.7 million tonnes purchased. This means that approximately 32% of all food purchased per year is not eaten. Most of the food waste (4.1 million tonnes) is avoidable and could have been eaten had it been better managed (WRAP, 2008; Knight and Davis, 2007).

 

In the USA, organic waste is the second highest component of landfills, which are the largest source of methane emissions. Methane is one of the most harmful greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. Methane is 23 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. The vast amount of food going to landfills makes a significant contribution to global warming, this clearly states that the impact of food waste has both environmental effect through the use of chemicals such as fertilizers and pesticides, more fuel used for transportation, land use and cost of all these which has an overall financial impact. 

We also need to consider other associated impact food waste has on water. We already know that agriculture already has the largest human use of water which is put at 70% (around 550 billion cubic metres of water is used to grow crops that never reach the dinner table), before we waste food we should also think of the impact this waste is going to have on water also.

In a document released by Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) “Food Waste Footprint” it was stated that under current production and consumption trends, global food production must increase 60% by 2050 in order to meet the demands of the growing world population. The current world population of 7.2 billion is projected to increase by 1 billion over the next 12 years and reach 9.6 billion by 2050. This means by 2050, we have an extra 2.4 billion mouths to feed and this will also place more demand on water needed for food production.

Food waste comes in different stages and cycles which range from:

• Food waste in harvesting processes which is more in mechanised farming
• Food waste through economic factors such as regulation and standard which leads to selective harvest that leaves food that does not meet market standard unharvested and left to waste in the farm.
• Food waste through processing otherwise known as post harvest loss with loss ration relatively unknown and difficult to estimate
• We also have a level of food waste in post harvest stage and this is more evident in storage. This loss is classified into two namely:

1. Quantitative loss: This loss is attributed to pest and micro-organisms that affect the stored food which leads to reduction in quantity eventually available for human consumption.
2. Qualitative loss: This is more in areas that have a combination of ambient heat and humidity which encourages the breeding of pest and micro-organism. This reduces the nutritional value, caloric value and edibility of crops. In a market that has standard and effective regulation, this food could also be affected and perhaps have little or no market value and ultimately disposed as waste.

• We also experience high level of food waste through retail stores where large quantities of food are thrown away. Usually, this consists of items that have reached their either best before, sell-by or use-by dates. These foods are destroyed by retail stores. It is important to note, these retails stores also shift the food waste to consumers by sales strategy on products with low shelve life or about to expire. Such strategies include 50% price reduction or buy-one-get-one-free, this attracts buyers to buy more than they need or buy what they do not even need which ends up most times as waste in dust bins.
• Suppliers to retail stores also produce or stock more food and food products than would be needed for supply to these stores based on contractual agreement, the excess that are perishable are afterwards thrown away.

When we weigh issue of food waste in several balances it does not favour the world in any way and changing the trend needs individual contribution. You need to take a personal pledge while I take mine irrespective of the part of the world we differently live in, we need to stand for this and conscientiously adopt food saving strategies for the sake of the future of the world. Children in different parts of the world are ravaged by poverty and hunger, the absence of relative peace due to widespread of wars and regional conflicts across Africa and some other parts of developing regions also lead to a number of children being orphaned. We also need to understand the concept of globalization which has removed trans-border barrier which leads to ease of migration by citizens of different countries that are either hit by national conflict or poverty. There are currently 9.7 million worldwide refugees according to United Nations High Commission for Refugee and these people take refuge in different countries or cities and remember we need food to feed this mass of people. 

When you take a position to contribute to the global campaign against food waste in your country and we all do same in our different countries, we would make the world a better place. No one individual can do this alone, when we all come together it means we all have the strength to make it work. If one can save a plate of meal to feed one and another saves a plate of meal to feed another, we will together be able to feed our growing population through the collective efforts of you and I. This is the way forward; it is the right thing to do.

Take a stand today and make it count, our collective decision is an investment for a sustainable global population.

References:

http://www.fao.org/nr/sustainability/food-loss-and-waste/en/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_waste

http://www.unep.org/wed/quickfacts/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoCVrkcaH6Q

 

Kindly read and leave a comment.

ehi@ohsm.com.ng

HIV/AIDS INFECTIOUS DISEASE: THE TRENDS, FACTORS LEADING TO CHALLENGES AND THE USE OF GLOBAL PUBLIC GOODS APPROACH

HIVAIDS is an infectious disease listed amongst the big 5 infectious disease burden in the world. Over 35 million people have lost their lives to the global HIV epidemic with 42 million estimated people living with this dreaded infectious disease. Developing countries has estimated 90% of the global pandemic with sub Sahara Africa region being the world worse affected region with already over 12 million children already orphaned by the disease within the region and it was postulated to increase to 18 million in 2010.

What is most shocking is the increase in the prevalence of HIV infection globally in spite of the huge fund that has been globally committed to the fight against the scourge. The high income countries of the world have been able to build feasible capacity with support from Global Partners and a combination of political commitment to fight the scourge. The reverse is the case in the low income countries bracket; it has become a combination of poverty, disease, political and economic instability and weak health infrastructure which has duly hindered remarkable progress in effort against HIV AIDS.

Despite of increase in available resources to tackle the prevalence of this disease, most regions such as sub-Sahara Africa, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia are still accounting for intensifying increase in the scourge with approximately 79% of new infections between 1998 and 2003. It is most pathetic that a greater number of people living with HIV/AIDS are in sub-Sahara Africa with equal concern of growing epidemic in Central Asia. A number of reasons are responsible but numerous amongst them are:

The social economic status of the people: This is a combination of different variables. A poor population ravaged by HIV infection will over time be wiped away if early intervention does not come their way and this was the case of some peculiar regions as Africa and Asia with very high population but low per capital income. Within the high income countries, the support from government and global partners is robust and with the level of fund allocated to enlightenment coupled with the improved per capita income, it looks a little better than what’s available in the developing countries.

If you recall, the cost of ART was exorbitantly high and was not within the reach of the purchasing power of the infected population. It even became more complicated when these regions had no structured health financing systems instead everyone pays for their healthcare treatment from their pockets each time they receive treatment at the hospitals. This was a huge burden in some regions that did not allow for effective management of HIV infection even when detected, the inability to continuously procure drugs and even maintain quality and healthy meals were a great concern in developing countries where some infected cases deteriorated to having tuberculosis alongside. This is evident in the way the infected people look coupled with the social stigma attached to the disease, there are virtually no one to offer help to these sets of infected patients, they are either manage themselves as much as they could and die on the long run predominantly without the needed care.

It was really bad that people stop associating with you immediately they discovered you have HIV infection, even the family members assign specific feeding plates to them, they are confined to certain parts of the house, their meals are sneaked into their rooms with disgust, toilets are no longer shared with them etc. These were the challenges that fast killed the infected patients outside the virus itself.

With the globalization and the new information available across the world, people are able to declare their HIV status publicly, the acceptance is quite impressive nowadays, the drugs are more affordable now and even the prescription and treatment outcome are quite impressive.

Sexual behaviour: Despite the advocacy surrounding the infectious nature of the HIV/AIDS disease, there still exist a huge belief in some of these poorer regions that the disease called HIV/AIDS does not exist and this has encouraged a certain proportion of the population to still take to careless sexual behaviour without condoms, having multiple sex partners and even commercial sex workers and their male patrons. This brings about a chain reaction from the sex workers infecting their male partners and the male partners in turn infecting their female sexual partners or spouses. This has created a web of challenge and difficulties in the global efforts invested towards fighting HIV AIDS.

The concept of globalisation which has removed the trans-border barriers is also a very strong factor contributing to the spread of the disease. Migration through international travel has been credited also the spread of sexually transmitted diseases including HIV, refugee population arising in areas of conflict is not excluded in these factors. There are currently 9.7 million worldwide refugees according to United Nations High Commission for Refugee and these people take refuge in different countries or cities resulting into cross border disease transmission.

Even in most countries, there are a number of high mobility internal labour migrants who mostly move between the urban and the rural communities, these are very possible ways diseases also travel within a nation and between communities of population groups. 

  

Gender inequality and gender bias in some regions as Africa where women are rated very low and used as sex tools has also been an issue of concern. Studies have shown female are more at risk of contracting HIV than their male counterparts. In 1997, women accounted for 41% of people living with HIV worldwide and in 2002, the figure rose to almost 50%.The impact on women though less marked in Asia, 28% of those infected are women but women’s low socio-economic status renders them more susceptible to infections. This women’s increased vulnerability to HIV Infection was not confined to developing countries only neither was it exclusively an issue of poverty. Between 2001 and 2003, the percentage of HIV infected women rose from 20% to 25% in North America and in Oceania for 17% to 19%. The further buttress the point that gender inequalities is associated with the spread of HIV. 

The absence of relative peace due to widespread of wars and regional conflicts across Africa also led to a number of young women and girls getting raped and sexually violated in war torn countries as Liberia, Rwanda, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Somalia etc and these also contributed to the spread of HIV infection.

Some of the early challenges which also posed initial problems across some developing regions as Africa were lack of enough information and clearly defined advocacy programs. Because of this paucity of right information, people chose to believe whatsoever they are told about HIV even if it is utterly wrong. This brought about different interpretations of the acronyms (AIDS) in some parts of Nigeria, younger people trivialised it and tagged it American Invention to Discourage Sex (AIDS) and in the midst of all these confusion and misconception, there was no strong political commitment on the part of Government to take ownership of a strong advocacy and public enlightenment processes, this was the case in many regions across Nigeria and other parts of sub-Sahara Africa. The younger population in high schools and colleges yearned for the right information which was in scarce content and were sometimes aired in between network news on Television at 9.00pm when more than 50% of Nigerians in many regions had no access to electricity let alone television to access such information.

Hospital and healthcare facilities did not have the requisite capacity rather to help people who came with honest intentions to be educated on HIV infection. It was wrongly classified as an issue that has to do exclusively with sex and this made people stay away from sex and continue to share sharp objects which has great potentials to getting them infected. There were absence of HIV counseling centres and no sexual health education in schools and communities, these led to limitation in available information that will be of help to the population.

Even the nurses and the entire healthcare workers did not have protection neither were there care workers prevention guidelines so they were not also excluded from the chain of spread of HIV infection. Do not forget most of those Nurses, Doctors, Phlebotomists and everyone in the healthcare chain that has anything to do with patient’s blood and other potentially infections materials were all vulnerable and had sexual partners or spouses also.

One of such local determinants that contributed to the challenge in developing countries is the local belief system, use of local herbs and traditional medication. Outside the fact that they did not open their mind to accept the existence of the pandemic, they even believed that even if it does exist they have enough herbs to achieve outright treatment and cure. The infection found its way in through internal migration and yet people died with perhaps symptoms of AIDS but we refused to agree that it was AIDS disease living with us. 

If you recall, a number of Nigerians (Medical Doctors and Herbal Doctors) came up with the false claims that they have discovered cure for the HIV AIDS and most people who suspected they had this infection went quietly and secretly to those Doctors who deceived them and collected their money and left them to die.  

Since the adoption of global public goods approach, there have been tremendous milestones in terms of achievement in finding useful solutions in addressing this issue.

Some of such profound approaches adopted were the funds allocation to research and development to enable researchers come up with new medicines to combat and prevent these diseases. This made the pharmaceutical companies have access to funds to research on relatively new areas and also to conduct trials at different stages for possible clinical approvals.  

There was also the convention on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), most importantly the DOHA declaration on the TRIPS agreement. These efforts gave room for the outcomes of research and development that has been approved to be shared and used for the good of all instead of placing restrictions in form of patents and copyrights that makes these research breakthroughs exclusively products or efforts of a few people who the world must pay so much to benefit from. The interventions made by the WTO gave room for other pharmaceutical companies (multi partner collaborations) to use the same research to come up with other generic brands of drugs that are more affordable and efficacious. This was a very useful instrument in ensuring access to treatment within and between low and middle income countries who per capital income could hitherto not grant them access to medications. This approach has also led to treatment simplification, it has reduced 10 pills taken 3 times a day in 1996 to 1 pill combined in all treatment taken once or twice daily in 2006. Virtually all hospitals and health centres have access to these drugs and it has given respite and hope to those living with HIV infection. The introduction of the male condom and lately the female one has also been an achievement in this direction coupled with the fact that counseling centres now have access to new information to help people on HIV infection. 

We can see in recent reports that over 8 million people now have access to treatment and over 60% of people needing treatment in developed countries now having access to treatment.  

References:

HIV/AIDS: Global trends, global funds and delivery bottlenecks. A paper presented by, Hoosen M Coosvadia and Jacqui Hadingham

UNFPA priority areas of support and key achievements/contributions to Nigeria’s HIV/AIDS response, UNFPA

The perpetual challenge of infectious diseases. By Anthony S. Fauci and David M. Morens

Global public goods and health: taking the agenda forward. By Inge Kaul and Michael Faust

HEALTHY LIFESTYLE AND LIFE EXPECTANCY: HOW RESPONSIBLE ARE WE?

I am  Global Health Ambassador.

 

It is most shocking that life expectancy in Nigeria according to 2011 report is 52 years, it is the 17^th lowest in the world and i am really afraid because this is going to go even worse the way things are currently in Nigeria. I would rather think this report should have been of great concern to the Government of Nigeria mostly the Ministries of Health at both State and Federal levels; nothing has been significantly done to the best of my knowledge to improve on this statistics starting with health education and enlightenment on lifestyle improvement.

It would interest you to know that even our neighbouring countries like Ghana stands at 62 years while Niger Republic stands at 55 years life expectancy. We have countries like United States of America at 78 years, United Kingdom at 80 years while Switzerland and Hong Kong topping the list with 83 years life expectancy. 

Seeing some countries healthier than others is based on 3 predominant factors namely:

Access to and quality of healthcare (health equity and health equality)

Difference in lifestyle

Difference in environment

When we consider the environmental factor, you will realise no individual exists in isolation but within a certain environment which greatly frame our lifestyles on both short and long term. Our roads were built without walkways, estates are built without play grounds and most recently schools are approved without consideration for sports and recreational infrastructures but the question is how did we get here? I still remember my primary school and secondary school days where you have more than enough sports infrastructures in schools, we found these very useful and you never can imagined how much those things contributed to the school child’s overall development most importantly mental health. We had interschool competitions, principals’ cup football tournament, inter house sports competitions and many other activities which added fun to learning and created activities that aided the school child exercise. It is so sad, how it has turned out these days. Do you know children are beginning to be hypertensive even at school age? This is a new development that has become so disturbing in global health perspective. How can this trend be corrected? What needs to be done? Can we roll back the years? It is indeed really sad.

A child is supposed to clock 60 minutes exercise time daily, it may not be at a stretch but all his activities for the day put together. The society and environment we have found ourselves has not helped in any positive way, children are most times been restricted to just the parents’ apartment and sometimes the compound which ultimately takes away from them the opportunity to clock requisite exercise expected of them daily. They eat without the opportunity to burn out the energy and this leads to heavy storage of unutilised calories in their systems which they must pay for later in their life time. Even adults are the worse victims in the excess calories storage; we need to know that every individual is the driver of his or her own health conditions. 

We are living in an age where everything about and around us have become mechanised, we are a mechanised people living in a mechanised society in a mechanised age. No one walks anymore, there is huge vehicular movement on our roads, everyone wants to drive to even the nearest locations or shops, gone are those days where people walk to run errands or walk to visit friends. 

There was a recent study done in U.S.A and U.K which looks at categories of people who run their errands using their personal cars, chartered taxis, public transportation, bike/walk as means of movement. What was most shocking in this discovery is the percentage number of people amongst the group assessed in the category of walk/bike. 32.3% of the adult group assessed in U.K. walk or use bikes to run errands or sort out issues but shockingly only 6.3 % of the adult group assessed in the U.S. walk or use bikes to run errands or sort out issues. This may be a very useful contributor to the difference in life expectancy in both U.K and U.S.A as already highlighted above.

Let’s learn to walk again and go back to our bicycles, these are cultural lifestyles that are fast eroding. Our fathers used these means and they yielded good results for them, why has it become so alienated in many countries of the world and mostly the continent of Africa? Walk for life is a healthy lifestyle code, let’s adopt it.

Have you heard of a concept called “Energy Balance”? It is simply talking about the amount of energy intake over the amount of energy expenditure. If you took in all that energy, you should be ready to also expend it proportionately so you can live healthily. Ensure you take in as much calories as you have the capacity to expend, if we are not able to get this right then we run into health trouble.

In most families’ pantry and shopping list today, how many of fresh foods as fresh vegetables, fresh fish, fibre rich foods, green foods do we really find? Everyone has gone into the collective chase of canned food high in salt and this is not helping anyone’s health. Because of work and career demand, we have all become so dependent on “MRE” (Meals Ready to Eat) they are basically found in cans. You need to know these foods have preservatives, high salt content which has high potential to induce hypertension. Let’s do more of fresh foods, fruits, fish instead of red meat, low cholesterol oil, less of sugar, less of canned and preserved food, less of fries and the likes, we will just be on a new trip for better health. Non communicable diseases are becoming a huge global concern, diseases like cancer, hypertension, diabetes, high blood pressure, stoke and other cardiovascular diseases traceable to sudden deaths are very preventable when a healthy lifestyle is adopted.

I have realised, we cannot solely blame our inability to live a healthy life on other people or government policies, living a healthy life is a deliberate choice we must make as individuals and it takes a whole lot more than being disciplined to make it happen but most importantly knowing that you are responsible for what happens to you and that you can control things within your capacity as it has to do with your health.

A word, they say is enough for the wise, the ball is in your court. Living a healthy life is a human right, compromising this is not in your best interest. Do not add to the statistics, stay alive.

Thanks for taking out time to read this.

ehi@ohsm.com.ng

DISASTER PREPAREDNESS AND SAFETY CULTURE AS EXHIBITED BY CUBA. A CLUE FOR GOVERNMENTS OF OTHER NATIONS

My dear readers, i came across this article written by Reihana Mohideen, a socialist feminist from Manila Philippines, i had to read it over and over again to my amazement. I became caught up in a web of emotion when i read about President Fidel Castro going to give assistance and rescue support in an area that has the highest risk when Cuba was hit by a disaster. No one could have asked for anything more.

We have always sang this in our blog articles that nothing happens outside leadership will and commitment, we cannot categorically say Cuba is a high income earning country but there is a political will to secure the lives of its population from those natural disasters peculiar to their geographical locations. Imagine being hit between 1996 and 2002 with 6 major hurricanes but see the minimal number of people lost to those 6 incidences. Their school curriculum has been fully laced with emergency preparedness and response contents, trainings are made available to everyone annually.

Maybe we just juxtapose this with the Philippines and Haiti scenarios where corruption and mental slavery have taken priority seat over the safety of the people and in some cases where standard has become an issue not to be discussed or evaluated. It rends my heart when mass of people are allowed to die through avoidable deaths when it could have been prevented if we only tried. The last disaster that hit Japan has been the biggest of it all but it did not catch the Japanese Government napping, preparations were in place and people knew what to do, teams were deployed immediately to the regions affected and lots were salvaged and lives were saved. We do not make preparations in the face of disaster; it is planned and prepared for in advance. People can only respond to the capacity they have been trained, we need to build and develop disaster management capacity to give some sort of mitigation which always goes a long way. Disaster naturally overwhelms everyone; the need to prepare is a huge succour.

The “Cuban Way” is the way and i challenge everyone to look into what his country has put in place from political will to attitude, training and the likes. I think we need to talk to our governments and leaders on the need to look inward; we cannot afford to continue this way. Cuba has proved to us that ability to prepare is not a function of funds but a deliberate effort to identify what you are faced with and make provisions for its mitigation. We will praise New Zealand for the standard they have set in quality building structure and codes, this is worth emulating.

Please read the article below and make your opinion felt. Remember Salus Populi Suprema Lex (The Safety of the People is the Supreme Law).

September 8, 2010 -- Comparisons must be made between the impact of the September 5 earthquake on Christchurch, New Zealand, and the quake that hit Haiti in January. The nature of a global system that maintains these inequalities should be exposed over and over again. In Haiti – with a population of around 9 million – some 250,000 people died in the earthquake and (according to government figures) 200,000 were injured and 1 million were made homeless. Some eight months later disaster still grips peoples’ lives. Fortunately, but in a staggering contrast, no lives were lost in New Zealand, although the earthquake was of a similar -- but slightly more powerful --- magnitude (7 on the Richter scale).

New Zealand’s building codes set a world standard in seismic building regulations and are incorporated into the building codes of several countries, including the Caribbean Uniform Building Code. Haiti, on the other hand, had no known building regulations. According to a report provided to the Global Task Force on Building Codes by a member of a disaster risk management team that visited Haiti prior to the earthquake in 2009, Haiti reportedly has some building regulations, but they were not focused on building safety and were rarely implemented. Haitian civil engineers and architects said that any codes used for professionally designed and constructed private buildings would not be Haitian – but would depend on where that person studied (USA being most common). Donor-funded buildings are usually built to a standard stipulated by the donor or by the professional in charge. The State University’s engineering curriculum did not have any substantive elements on building codes.

Philippines

The Philippines is one of the countries’ most vulnerable to earthquakes and studies have found that the country’s school children are especially vulnerable due to substandard building construction. Tens of thousands of people could die, in Manila alone, from an earthquake of the magnitude that hit Haiti and New Zealand. The building industry is riddled with corruption, undermining the implementation of building industry safety standards and regulations. The urban poor, who are a significant proportion of the urban population, live in hovel-like structures that are assembled with flimsy pieces of cardboard, wood and discarded roofing materials, easily washed away by rains and typhoons. Typhoon Ondoy, which hit the country in October 2009, killing thousands of people and displacing tens of thousands, gives us a terrifying preview of what an earthquake could unleash.

But the problems faced by those of us living in Third World countries in coping with disasters goes beyond the inadequacy of building regulations. The basic problem is poverty. A glance at the UN’s ranking of countries based on its Human Development Index (a measurement of education, life expectancy and income) is an indicator of the problem. Haiti’s ranking is 149 to New Zealand’s ranking of 20 (out of 182 countries). Philippines ranking is 105. The massive numbers of lives lost in disasters is a direct result of poverty. The poor in the Third World are more vulnerable, including to climate change-induced disasters, than those in the industrialised countries.

Cuba

However, even a poor country can take effective measures to mitigate the loss of lives and injuries if there is political will in government to prioritise protecting the lives of its people. If New Zealand sets the world standard with its seismically safe buildings, then Cuba sets the world standard on how a poor country can save lives during disasters. And the Cuban example has been acknowledged and praised even by those not partial to the Cuban Revolution, such as the United Nations, which identifies Cuba as a case study in disaster risk management. Between 1996 and 2002, six major hurricanes hit Cuba, killing 16 people out of the total 665 deaths in the affected countries. Hurricane Charlie killed four people in Cuba and 30 people in Florida. When Hurricane Ivan threatened Cuba, the country evacuated 1.9 million people, 17% of the population, over 15 days. All shelters were staffed with nurses, and doctors were sent to the high-risk areas. Then-president Fidel Castro went to the highest-risk area to assist the effort. No one was seriously injured or killed as a result of the hurricane.

According to the International Secretariat for Disaster Reduction (ISDR), the UN body that focuses on disaster reduction, “the Cuban way could easily be applied to other countries with similar economic conditions and even in countries with greater resources that do not manage to protect their population as well as Cuba does”. The ISDR says that Cuba is an example that the vulnerability of people can effectively be reduced with low-cost measures and strong determination. According to the ISDR the Cuban authorities are determined to implement disaster reduction policies in Cuba. “It is part of their development planning and their culture, which play a key role in saving lives and livelihoods. This illustrates the importance of a strong political will … Leaders of countries around the world have at their disposal the knowledge needed to reduce risk and vulnerability to hazards. Even poor countries are not entirely without options to mitigate or prevent the consequences of hazards. What is often lacking are concrete programs of action and the political will to implement policies and measures."

This Cuban “political will”, however, does not emanate from particular individuals or even governments. The “Cuban way” is the logic of a society – an entire social, economic and cultural system – that places human beings and their needs as its central and fundamental priority. Cuba’s economy and society are based on socialist principles prioritising people before imperialist profits, resulting in the highest levels of human solidarity and culture. Haiti, in contrast to Cuba, tragically and despite its heroic and historic struggles against colonial slavery, has been exploited for decades by imperialism, which has intervened in its political affairs with impunity, supporting coups and organising military interventions to overthrow pro-people governments, a history that we in the Philippines are familiar with as a result of our own semi-colonial relationship with and dependence on the United States.

The Cuban government is unique in that it has paid an equal amount of attention to the structural and physical aspects of disaster preparedness, but has also created a “culture of safety” through successful education and awareness campaigns. The ISDR points to education as one of the main reasons for the low level of hurricane mortality rate in Cuba compared to its neighbours. Disaster preparedness, prevention and response are part of the general education curriculum. People in schools, universities and workplaces are continuously informed and trained to cope with natural hazards. From their early age, all Cubans are taught how to behave as hurricanes approach the island. They also have, every year, a two-day training session in risk reduction for hurricanes, complete with simulation exercises and concrete preparation actions. This facilitates the mobilisation of their communities at the local level when a hurricane hits Cuba. Cuba’s entire adult population is literate and therefore can access educational materials about disasters. The Cuban Red Cross, which provides teaching material, is reinforced by training courses and disaster drills for parents in the workplace, as well as by radio and television broadcasts.

There is an adequate road system in the country that facilitates speedy evacuation and building codes are enforced, which reduce the element of highly vulnerable substandard construction. Approximately 95 per cent of the households in the country have electricity and therefore can access information about disasters through radio and television. Most importantly, the Cuban population is mobilised through a range of social, professional and political organisations in the country that provide structures that can quickly mobilise the entire population in disaster.

All these features of Cuba's disaster management program are direct results of the gains of the Cuban Revolution, which has created one of the most socially conscious, educated and politically organised and mobilised people in the world. We, in the Philippines, have much to learn from the “Cuban way”.

[Reihana Mohideen is from the international desk of the Partido Lakas ng Masa (Power of the Labouring Masses Party. This article first appeared at Reihana Mohideen's website, Socialist Feminist.]