2008 AIDS Conference Opens in Mexico City
This is the VOA Special English Development Report.
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| People carry a gay pride flag during a march in Mexico City on August 2, 2008 |
The seventeenth International AIDS Conference opened Sunday in the Mexican capital, Mexico City. About twenty-five thousand people are taking part in the six-day event. They include AIDS researchers, community leaders, policy experts, activists and delegations of young people from around the world.
The conference is expected to call for improvement in the prevention and treatment of H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. Delegates are also expected to praise the greater ability of patients to receive anti-retroviral drugs. Several meetings at the conference will examine efforts to discover a vaccine to prevent the disease.
Pedro Cahn is one of the leaders of the AIDS conference. He says there is growing support for efforts to guarantee that all people are able to receive HIV prevention and treatment. An estimated thirty-three million people are living with H.I.V./AIDS. About seven thousand people become infected with H.I.V. every day.
There is no cure for AIDS. However, a report last week from a United Nations agency says fewer people are dying because of it. UNAIDS says the number of deaths linked to AIDS dropped to about two million last year. This is two hundred thousand fewer than the number reported in two thousand five.
UNAIDS also notes some major gains in preventing new H.I.V. infections. Such gains are based on changes in sexual behavior and improved government programs. The report also calls for long-term financing to fight the spread of AIDS. This is needed because people with the disease are living longer because of improved treatment.
In Washington last week, President Bush signed legislation promising forty-eight billion dollars over the next five years to battle AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. The bill greatly expands the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Mister Bush announced the five-year, fifteen billion dollar program in two thousand three. He has since made it a major part of his foreign policy. Efforts have centered on fifteen nations in Africa, the Caribbean and Asia.
And that’s the VOA Special English Development Report, written by Jill Moss. You can learn more about AIDS and other issues facing developing countries at voaspecialenglish.com.
Farming Techniques That Will Feed a Family
This is the VOA Special English Development Report.
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| Female farmers in Rwanda and Sudan will learn about what kind of seeds to use, how to farm without chemicals and when to harvest |
The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that poor countries will spend up to one hundred seventy billion dollars this year to import food. This is an increase of forty percent from last year. The United Nations agency says the rising price of food over the past year is a serious problem because most hungry people also live in poverty.
A humanitarian organization based in Washington, D.C. has a new anti-hunger project. Women for Women International is teaching poor women in Sudan and Rwanda a new food production system called commercial integrated farming. The women are trained to grow crops that not only feed their families, but also earn them a profit.
Pat Morris is program director at Women for Women International. The group launched its commercial integrated farming program in Rwanda. Female farmers receive information about what kind of seeds to use, how to farm without chemicals and when to harvest. The program also provides business skills training. Mizz Morris says women being trained in Rwanda could more than triple the amount of money they earn from farming.
With integrated farming, the women raise animals and different crops on one piece of land. Animal waste provides fertilizer. Some of the crops can be used as animal feed. In Rwanda, the women have been able to grow traditional crops like bananas and sorghum grain along side higher-value crops, such as pineapples. A hectare of farmland in Rwanda used to earn about four hundred twenty dollars a year. But a family using integrated farming techniques on the same piece of land can earn as much as three thousand five hundred dollars a year.
Women for Women International works with local community partners to design and carry out its integrated farming program. Grace Fisiy is an agricultural business expert working in Rwanda and Sudan. She says the local media in both countries have helped educate people about integrated farming.
Women for Women International plans to train at least three thousand women in Sudan and Rwanda. Mizz Fisiy hopes the program will expand to other countries as well.
And that’s the VOA Special English Development Report, written by Jill Moss. You can learn about the efforts of other groups working in developing countries at voaspecialenglish.com.
Simple Technologies with High Aims
This is the VOA Special English Development Report.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has educated many exceptional minds, including twenty-six Nobel Prize winners.
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| Participants in the 2008 International Development Design Summit |
Recently an event took place at M.I.T. to try to think of exceptional ideas for simple, low-cost devices to help the developing world. Sixty people from more than twenty countries took part in the International Development Design Summit.
For a month this summer, they worked with volunteers from M.I.T., Olin College and a group of companies and other schools.
They were divided into ten teams. As the M.I.T. News Office reported, most of the people had never met before. Some spoke no English. But each team had to invent a device to solve a different problem and build a working version.
One team designed a way for people to charge batteries while pumping water with a treadle pump. People would be producing electricity while doing their usual daily work. Farmers in many developing countries use treadle pumps to irrigate their fields.
The energy stored in the batteries would be used to power electric lights at night.
Another team developed a system for making connecting blocks of earth to build walls and buildings. Some of the bricks were designed like the Lego blocks that children use.
Another device breaks up charcoal produced from burned corncobs. The carbon particles can then be pressed into small blocks and used as fuel for cooking. The M.I.T. report said this process would avoid the releases of dangerous carbon-monoxide gas produced when corncobs are burned whole.
One team redesigned a bicycle so it could be used to crush millet, an important grain in Africa and Asia.
Another team designed a rope-and-pulley system to transport goods up a hill from a small village factory in India to a road. From there the goods could be loaded onto trucks.
And another team created a way to help babies born too early in villages far from hospitals. The team developed a simple incubator to keep them warm. The device is designed to be easily built and repaired with materials available locally.
The International Development Design Summit was the idea of Amy Smith. She teaches mechanical engineering at M.I.T. This was the second year of the conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Plans call for the third one to take place next year in Ghana.
And that’s the VOA Special English Development Report, written by Jill Moss. Our reports are online at voaspecialenglish.com.
