With mobile money, Haitians are able to complete transactions like this one wirelessly. Photo: Karl Grobl for NetAid.

This article was republished by The Christian Science Monitor.

In Haiti, cash is escaping from wallets and savings accounts are breaking free from brick-and-mortar banks.

Two years after 2010’s devastating earthquake, mobile money has taken off in the island nation. While the country has seen setbacks in many areas and continues to struggle, one bright spot is the transformation of the country’s traditional banking sector. Physical banks were wiped away by the quake and subsequent hurricane, and a mobile banking network that uses cell phones has grown up in their place.

Toting your money around on a cell phone might sound scary, but for many Haitians it’s more secure than carrying around a wallet, which isn’t protected by a PIN. The handy infographic to the right shows how a mobile money transaction works.

How a mobile wallet transaction takes place in Haiti. Infographic courtesy Mercy Corps.

In the months following the quake, both Mercy Corps (our parent organization) and The Gates Foundation sponsored separate Haitian cell phone companies, Voilà and Digicel, to help mobile money take off, with the Gates Foundation offering monetary incentives for the first company to get a program off the ground and for continued improvements in order to get entrepreneurial engines revving.

For many Haitians, mobile money can open a door to personal choice. Mercy Corps has used mobile money to distribute food aid to families across Haiti and deliver payments from its cash-for-work programs. Instead of spending hours waiting in line for a cash payment or a food ration, Haitians receive a wireless money transfer on their phones once a month.

The technology holds promises for the future, too. Long-term, mobile money could be expanded so that it’s accessible to everyone for all of their personal purchases. Haitians could use mobile money to send remittances to family members in other parts of the country, according to AudienceScapes. And after visiting with Mercy Corps staff in Haiti in 2010, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote about the way that mobile money is creating a way for the poor to save money like never before. Most banks won’t accept very small deposits, but now a mobile phone could double as a savings account. It could blow the microsavings sector wide open.

Mobile money could also help make Haitians healthier. Even before the earthquake hit, Haiti’s public health indicators were the worst in the Western hemisphere, according to the U.S. Department of State, and those problems were only compounded by the disaster. In Kenya, one of the first countries to adopt mobile money, customers can use it to pay - and save up for - health services. Expectant mothers use it to save for health care, and in rural communities Kenyans have used the service to pay for access to clean water, reports USAID. Looking forward, a mash-up of mobile health and mobile money technologies in Haiti could lead to new insurance plans and health voucher programs, according to Health Unbound.

With mobile money quickly gaining widespread use, the developing world is leaps ahead of the developed. Mobile money launched in Kenya in 2003, according to The National Archives, but Google Wallet’s similar service in the U.S. wasn’t released until September of last year and has yet to truly take off. Maybe it’s time for American company executives to start taking a few pointers from Haiti.

Village savings and loan schemes help the poor save in remote communities like this one in Malawi. Photo: Erik Mandell for MercyCorps

The world's poorest have long struggled to borrow. Now, an alternative microfinance model is also making it easier for poor people to save.

Microfinance institutions have provided lending services to millions of the world’s poor people for several decades. But loans must be paid back, and even traditional microlenders are hesitant to lend money to the poorest of the poor—including those living in some of the most remote and unpopulated communities. That’s where the model of village savings and loans associations (VSLAs) comes in, according to a recent Economist article.

The idea is simple: savings, rather than just borrowed money, is key to helping poor people become more stable and less vulnerable. Differing from the better-known Grameen Bank model of microfinance, which provides individual or group loans and operates on credit, a village savings and loan scheme allows a group of community members to pool their savings, lend within the group, and save the interest earned from the loans to disperse to members individually or use for community projects.

This model enables both borrowing capabilities and longer-term savings accumulation for both the group and its members.

CARE International, a humanitarian aid organization focused on fighting poverty, engineered the VSLA model in Niger in 1991. Today, CARE oversees village savings and loan associations in Ghana, Malawi and Uganda. Numerous other non-governmental organizations have promoted village savings groups that serve more than 4.6 million members in 54 countries.

While nonprofits promote the model, the groups themselves are internally managed. Unlike solely credit-based models, group members do not owe repayment to an external bank, but rather to their own pool. Group constitutions are established by members, outlining rules, interest rates, and how savings and interest will be shared. Sometimes transactions, debts and credits are written in basic ledgers, but some groups with no literate members rely on memorization, familiar to those with a culture of oral history, according to Hugh Allen, founder of VSL Associates.

Amid criticism of the effectiveness of traditional microfinance models, as we reported a few months ago, VSLA schemes offer a different path to poverty alleviation.

And for some of the world’s poorest, savings—not a loan— is the golden ticket needed for a better life.

Erik Mandell is a graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont. He is currently pursuing a master's degree in public administration and global leadership at Portland State. Read his other contributions to Global Envision.

A wax lined sleeping bag could save the lives of thousands of underweight infants born in the developing world. Photo:ladybugbkt (flickr)

In the developing world, many children’s lives end before they have a chance to begin. The developers of Embrace—a portable and cost-effective incubator—believe they have hatched a solution to infant mortality.

With a design similar to a doll-sized sleeping bag, Embrace uses a removable wax insert that requires only hot water for heating. When the warm wax is inserted, the sleeping bag can maintain a consistent temperature of 98 degrees for 4 to 6 hours, allowing low-weight infants to maintain a warm body temperature as they would in an electronic incubator. However, unlike a traditional incubator, which on average costs a hefty $20,000, the Embrace weighs in a much lighter $100. Extensive research was done in both India and in U.S. hospitals on over 170 babies to verify Embrace’s efficacy and safety.

Today, nearly 450 infants die every hour and more than 20 million children are born premature or with a low birth weight each year . If this new product is embraced by the developing world, more will have a chance of living a meaningful life.

The use of technology in humanitarian aid planning is on the rise. Photo: Esther Gibbons (Flicker)

2011 is over, but the impact technology had on humanitarian aid planning last year could be just beginning to emerge.

Humanitarian issues demand immediate solutions. In 2011, a lot of solutions to crises placed heavy emphasis on technology. Here are three notable examples:

Disaster prone Bangladesh turned to GPS to provide early weather warnings to fishermen.

Airtel, a private mobile operator in Bangladesh will provide early weather warnings to fishermen using its global positioning system via cell phones in partnership with the Center for Global Change, the Campaign for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods and two international NGOs, according to IRIN.

More than half on Bangladesh’s population uses mobile phones. Early weather warnings could prove to be a life-saving tool. "75 percent of the country’s population lives in rural, disaster-prone areas, an ideal environment in which to exploit the potential of mobile phones to mitigate disasters," IRIN reported.

Technology has helped put Kibera on the map, literally.

Finding Kibera, a district of Nairobi, on a map before 2009 was not an easy task because it wasn’t on one. The location of schools, medical facilities, water points and other basic information was simply not available. As a result, The Map Kibera Project was created in order to provide this information. The goal: to train nine Kibera residents in using GPS devices to gather geographical information in a "citizen mapping" project.

Now this information is available on OpenStreetMap, a global map anyone can view and edit. Organizers plan to continue adding information on the map and eventually start mapping other communities.

Mobile phones have turned ordinary people into extraordinary philanthropists.

This past year, one of the worst famines in modern history struck the Horn of Africa. Humanitarian aid and donor government assistance poured in from all over the world. One campaign, "Kenyans for Kenya," set a goal to raise $5.28 million dollars in one month. Within 10 days, the goal was met and a bigger goal of $10.56 million set. By September 1, more than $7 million was collected, $1.6 million through private donations.
Contributions, most of them from Kenyan citizens and organizations, were made through a mobile phone money transfer service operated by telecom firm Safaricom. The money collected has been used to send money to affected areas through the Kenyan Red Cross Society, IRIN reports. This has been one of the most successful humanitarian fundraising campaigns Kenya has ever seen, and its efforts are ongoing.

These are only a few examples of how technology has positively impacted humanitarian responses to crises. Technology isn’t the answer to all the world’s problems, but it’s proving to be an effective tool.

Medic Mobile works with the simplest of cell phones to help provide health care to those far away from their nearest hospital. Photo: Fabiola Coupet/Mercy Corps.

In rural communities around the world, the virtual doctor is in.

The distance between far-flung communities and their nearest hospitals can be fatal. Medic Mobile bridges the gap using a common household item: the cell phone. It’s not the same as a living, breathing doctor, but Medic Mobile comes pretty close, and it does so using a list of platforms that is strikingly similar to what you might find on a smart phone. These seemingly-sophisticated technologies can work on even the most basic of cell phones and computers, just like those found all over the developing world.

Medic Mobile’s Sim Apps, in addition to open-source platforms like FrontlineSMS, OpenMRS, Ushahidi, Google Apps, and HealthMap, allow hospital staff sitting at a computer to communicate with multiple health workers in rural areas. The health workers’ phones are basic, but Medic Mobile uses a tiny parallel SIM card that fits between any GSM phone and a carrier’s cell phone to allow these phones to run the necessary apps. The Medic Mobile website provides a more in-depth description of the many technologies it employs. In a 2009 interview with GOOD magazine, co-founder Lucky Gunasekara described Medic Mobile’s importance:

We can communicate need in real time. Say I am a community health worker in rural Malawi and one of my patients gets really sick. Before this system came along, for a lot of clinics, the patient would die, because even though I have some basic health training as a community health worker, there is nothing I can really do. They're still just as disconnected as the communities they live in. Now with our system clinicians see things in real time and they communicate back.

In addition to saving lives, the program saves time: its website says that in six months, the pilot program in Malawi “saved hospital staff 1200 hours of follow-up time and over $3,000 in motorbike fuel” and cut 900 hours of travel time for antiretroviral therapy monitors by eliminating their need to hand-deliver reports to the hospital.

Since its inception in 2009, Medic Mobile has expanded to Honduras, Haiti, Uganda, Mali, Kenya, South Africa, Cameroon, India and Bangladesh. The platform is adaptable to different situations: it was used in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake to link first responders and locals in need of help. As a result of its successes, Medic Mobile was recently named one of the Top 11 in 2011 mobile health innovators of the year by mHealth Alliance.

The proliferation of cell phones is sparking a revolution in developing-world health care. Innovators from all reaches of the globe have used the near-ubiquitous technology to increase health care affordability and access. By adapting sophisticated platforms to basic devices, they’re turning $15 cell phones into invaluable lifelines.

Editor’s note: For more information on the connection, check out A Medical Lab in the Palm of Your Hand, A Dose of Cell Phone Surveillance Helps Aid Workers Save Lives, and Paging Dr. Smartphone, to name a few.

Candles provide a light in the dark for those without access to electricity. Photo: Sara Y Tzunky

Is microfinance the solution to energy poverty? If partnered with renewable energy, it could prove to be true.

Energy poverty—a lack of access to electricity, fuel and more efficient cooking technologies—affects over two billion people, according to the United Nations' Rebeca Grynspan, making it a huge development priority.

Living without electricity simply makes you poorer. Kerosene lamps are expensive, ineffective and fill a home with hazardous fumes. But without a lamp, it's impossible to work or study after sunset. Cooking over an open flame pollutes the lungs and requires hours of wood-gathering, a huge loss of productive time. This is where simple solutions (like more efficient cookstoves) can yield huge impacts.

As a weak economy shrinks international funding pools, countries need to be increasingly wiser and more creative in their resource management. It’s worth noting that a lack of infrastructure presents the rare opportunity to build right the first time. By funding sustainable energy initiatives through microfinance, two things can happen: (1) Programs aiming to reduce energy poverty can work closely with locals and make more informed decisions by relying on indigenous knowledge; and (2) Money stays in the local economy, creating avenues for future investment and wealth generation.

Mercy Corps is combining these two endeavors to address energy poverty. The organization's Energy for All (E4A) program, funded by the European Commission, began in May 2011 in the country of Timor-Leste. It's primarily focused on lighting, cooking fuel needs and natural resource management. Because the population of Timor-Leste heavily relies on crops for fuel, food and income, they are especially vulnerable to shocks. Without access to energy, their problems are exacerbated, true for most poor people in developing countries.

Mercy Corps utilizes a market-driven approach to address energy poverty issues: By remaining external to the market, they strengthen the local economy and seek to create linkages where gaps in service exist. Simply donating materials or stoves undermines local businesses and acts as a disservice to the community. But upfront costs of adopting new technologies is often a major barrier, so Mercy Corps is partnering with microfinance institutions in Timor-Leste to initiate loans.

Mercy Corps' comprehensive survey compiled and assessed the needs of local households, to paint a clear picture of the specific needs and challenges of the community. The outcome is a program design that will implement solar power, improved cook stoves, seed storage and sustainable forestry initiatives.

And a performance tool developed by the Grameen Foundation, the Progress out of Poverty Index (PPI), will help local microfinance institutions determine whether the services they provide are effective or not.

Additionally, the E4A program is establishing alternative energy centers that will demonstrate their sustainable business models to the local market, with a special focus on rural off-grid areas.

I had the opportunity to visit Soft Power Health in Kyabirwa, Uganda, an organization testing an improved community cook stove. Access to a seemingly simple cook stove not only improves the health of the user but requires less fuel and reduces cooking time. By easing access to tools like this, the group is educating the surrounding community with hands-on instruction and use, the first step in technology adoption.

The concept of energy poverty received international attention last year when the UN announced that 2012 is the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All. They are seeking opportunities to scale up efforts that will achieve universal access to modern energy services. As part of the Millennium Development Goals, the UN has set a target date of 2030.

That's an ambitious timeline for getting electricity to everyone, and it's unlikely to happen without the for-profit sector. This makes it imperative that governments, lenders and non-governmental organizations implement market-based solutions that allow communities to lift themselves out of poverty through developing a robust local economy. Microfinance-backed renewable energy can be the first tool in this process.

Many organizations are taking the lead in implementing energy innovations where the need is great. What other programs and innovations d you know of that address the needs of people without energy access?

57 million women give birth each year without the help of a trained professional. Photo: hugrakka(Flicker)

Bringing one life into the world shouldn't mean sacrificing another. While the developing world scrambles to secure funding for midwifery services, there's a cheap, short-term solution: birth kits.

The risk of death due to pregnancy or childbirth is 1 in 8,000 in developed countries, as opposed to 1 in 17 in developing countries, according to the organization Unite For Sight. Yearly, approximately 57 million women give birth in their home without the help of a trained professional, increasing the risk of complications.

Midwives are an essential player in lowering maternal deaths. "Midwives can save women's and newborns' lives if they are properly trained and equipped, and if a support network is available," writes the World Health Organization. Worldwide, the WHO estimates, there is a shortage of 350,000 midwives. But training 350,000 new midwives won't happen overnight. In the meantime, birth kits could fill the gap.

Birth kits provide the tools for a safer and sanitary delivery, including soap to wash hands, razors and ties for the umbilical cord, plastic sheets for a clean surface, and an instruction sheet.

The impact of birth kits can be life-saving but their success depends on acceptability within the community where it is introduced. At times, modifications might be needed such as redesigning the instruction sheet to use images instead of words, considering low literacy rates. PATH, an international organization which focuses on global health and well-being, has produced kits used in Bangladesh, Egypt and Nepal. Cutting the umbilical cord on a coin is considered good luck in Nepal. To adhere to traditional customs, PATH created a kit that includes a plastic rupee.

Another common problem: Cutting the umbilical cord with unsanitary, used razor blades. Disposable razor blades or an illustrated instruction sheet encouraging woman and midwives to sterilize reusable blades after every use could reduce this problem. The Janma clean delivery birthing kit by AYZH is making modifications to its current scalpel handle design to discourage reuse.

Though midwives are the ideal choice for safe births, families can't always afford their services. Government and non-profit programs that subsidize midwifery programs aren't economically sustainable in the long run. A model pursued by the Midwifery Association of Pakistan involves changing public perceptions of the midwife's role in health care, advocates for government-set standards for midwifery education, and lobbies for professional rights.

Until midwifery is economically viable and publicly understood, we need an affordable stop-gap solution to save lives. Maternal mortality will continue to rise if birth kits—and, eventually, midwifery services—aren’t accessible to the women who need them now.

A flourishing economy has enabled many Chinese citizens to climb the socio-economic ranks. Photo:xiaming (flickr)

The spirit of 1989’s Tiananmen Square is alive in China, except the swarm of charged students has been replaced by a disgruntled, expanding middle class.

Inadvertently, an economic boom has resounded with cries for change.

2011 has been an exceptionally rough year for government officials trying to maintain social complacency across China’s far-reaching borders. Perhaps inspired by the Arab Spring, Chinese civilians took to the streets in February to enact their own “Jasmine Revolution” (taken from the Tunisian movement of the same name), demanding greater accountability and transparency from their current one-party system. At least 54 activists, including lawyers and intellectuals, were arrested, and, the New York Times reports, the term “jasmine” was blocked on internet search engines. In recent months, labor strikes have swept the People’s Republic, resulting in street rallies filled with middle class voices expressing their frustrations with meager wages and unhealthy work conditions.

However, the butterfly effect of protests—originating from the Arab Spring and expanding into the Occupy Wall Street movements—reaches beyond income inequality. Much of the Chinese middle class will no longer play the passive bystander to haphazard industrialization. On July 23rd, a high speed train collision, killing 40 passengers, moved government-backed news broadcasters to risk publicly questioning the Chinese Communist Party’s ability to provide the public with safe, accessible infrastructures.

In early August, more than 12,000 people converged in the city of Dalian to stop the re-opening of a paraxylene plant (a toxic chemical used to make polyester) after a storm had exposed citizens to chemicals known to cause leukemia and birth defects. The plant’s closure provided a significant win for the protesters—the government agreed to the shutdown despite a reported $1.5 billion invested in the industry.

In a land where censorship and submissiveness are ingrained in the cultural psyche, why are so many compelled to take a stand now? It’s a complex question, but part of the explanation lies in the problem itself: the rise of China’s economy.

Globalization, specifically global export trade, has upshot China into a leading economic powerhouse. Now the fulcrum of production in the globalized world, many Chinese workers are finally transitioning from poor to middle class (defined by The Brookings Institution as households that spend $10 per person daily).

By 2015, the Brookings Institution estimates that for the first time in 300 years, "the number of Asian middle class consumers will equal the number in Europe and North America. By 2021, on present trends, there could be more than 2 billion Asians in middle class households. In China alone, there could be over 670 million middle class consumers, compared with only perhaps 150 million today.”

The Chinese Communist Party has come to rely on the middle class for support; in the past they have served as a relatively quiet buffer between a populous but powerless poor class and a power-driven rich minority. The Economist observes that China has “kept themselves to themselves as a result of the implicit social contract offered by the Communist Party: you let us rule and we will let you get rich.”

China's middle class wants to renegotiate this contract, demanding more environmental and wellness security from their political leaders. “As many previously poor people adopt middle-class lifestyles in the decades ahead,” Brookings researchers observe, “they may find themselves not only consuming more but also more forcefully advocating for less pollution and lower emissions.” In other words, more money means more demands.

If the party chooses to reinvest its money into the people’s pockets through increased incomes, subsidized health care, lowered taxes, and environmental protection, the middle class is expected to grow by leaps and bounds in the coming years. However, one only needs to look back at China’s Great Leap Forward to see that blind fixation on economic prowess can result in a neglected, damaged social sector. Looks like China will need to take a middle-road approach if it hopes to flourish.

Women farmers in Africa produce over 60 percent of all food crops. CIMMYT (flickr)

Women comprise 43 percent of the world’s farmers. In Africa, it’s 80 percent. Women plant, harvest, process and sell their crops, but men continue to dominate agricultural science and research. This may be about to change.

African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) is trying to close the R&D gender gap. Their program fast-tracks female science careers in agriculture, empowering them to contribute more effectively to hunger and poverty alleviation in their own communities - a model that could be replicated internationally.

Although African women produce 60 to 80 percent of food crops, they receive significantly less (5% as of 2008) of the agricultural training and tools available to men, says the United Nations. A 2010-2011 research report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization shows that women could produce 20-30 percent more if they had equal access. This creates a subsequent increase in household income, health, and community food supply. The East Africa Report emphasizes that research is also pivotal in fostering innovation. Without a seat at the table, women cannot influence practices. Who better to innovate than the farmers themselves?

Every 30 seconds a child dies of malaria. Scientists have genetically modified a mosquito that could potentially stop the spread of malaria. Photo:Gravitywave (flickr)

This article was republished in The Christian Science Monitor.

Bloodthirsty? Yes! Pesky? Absolutely! Malaria transmitters? Possibly not anymore.

Mosquitoes are getting a genetic makeover, which could potentially halt the endemic spread of malaria, according to a group of Johns Hopkins University researchers.

Mosquitoes have been nibbling away at birds, reptiles, and humans for nearly 30 million years. They hold primary responsibility for infecting approximately 300 million people with malaria and causing 1 million deaths a year in more than 100 countries. Scientists have been able to activate a gene that blocks these tiny insects from developing the malaria parasite in their guts. While this discovery seemed promising initially, researchers struggled to design a mosquito that could out-survive their malaria-infected counterparts.

The answer, they discovered, lies in controlling a protein called SM1 peptide. When this protein was activated, studies found that “after nine egg-laying cycles, the mix of genetically-modified (GM) mosquitoes and wild had changed to 70/30,” according to How Stuff Works?.

In spite of the promising findings, scientists remain leery of releasing the GM mosquitoes into the wild. These tests have only been done on malaria-carrying mice; the long term effects on humans are still unknown. Releasing tens of thousands of mosquitoes into the wild has never been done before, and there is a possibility that the GM mosquitoes could eventually develop immunity to the malaria parasite.

Perhaps the most compelling argument against releasing these mosquitoes comes at the heels of recent findings of an anti-malaria vaccine, largely funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. When 6,000 African children were tested with the vaccine, “it reduced the risk of infection with severe malaria by 47 percent during the year after the shots,” reports the New York Times.

As President Obama stated earlier this year, “Africa’s future is up to Africans.” Finding an end to malaria has the potential to lift African nations out of poverty by spurring educational advancement, market productivity, and economic growth. And ending malaria would certainly hold great promise for Africa’s future by cultivating healthy young minds of students who can sustain their educational development. In fact, studies done in Kenya by the World Health Organization found that the “disease kept children out of school for 11 percent [of the school year]."

While the long term impacts of GM mosquitoes and vaccines currently elude us, dispersing these scientific discoveries could save the lives of millions of impoverished people. The end to the means has yet to be uncovered, but these findings could pave the road to a usable solution. And that is something to buzz about.

An image of an endocervical gland taken during a pap smear. Simple vinegar turns out to be a lower-cost alternative to tests like this one. Photo:Ed Uthman(flicker)

A common household item can serve a double purpose: it gives flavor in your kitchen, and it saves your life.

A low-cost innovation—vinegar— can help detect cervical cancer and save thousands of lives in developing nations.

Developed by the John Hopkins medical school in the 1990’s and endorsed by the World Health Organization, vinegar is brushed on a woman’s cervix. The vinegar causes precancerous spots to turn white, reports The New York Times.

The spots can be instantly frozen off with a metal probe cooled by a tank of carbon dioxide.

In the traditional Western test for cervical cancer, a pap smear, a scraping of the cervix is taken and sent to a lab for testing. High-quality labs are scarce in many poor countries, and waiting for results can take weeks. Woman who live in rural areas are hard to reach. The vinegar procedure, known as VIA/cryo, only requires a nurse and a single visit to detect and kill the cancer.

Each year, more than 250,000 women die from cervical cancer, 85 percent of them in poor or middle-income countries.

Solutions to problems don’t always have to be high-tech. A little creativity and ingenuity can go a long way.

The Ganges River Delta, in Pakistan, could be feeding a lot more people. Photo: Lunar Planetary Institute (Flickr)

This article was republished by The Christian Science Monitor.

The next century is going to leave the planet parched for drinking water. But a new study asserts that the problem isn't water scarcity -- it's water efficiency.

The global population is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization says we need to increase food and water production by 70% if we are to feed that population. Can we do that with the resources we have?

Yes, says the study, published by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). Researchers looked at 10 major river basins to assess how the world uses its water, and concluded that with refined practices, we can sustainably exceed the needs of current and future generations.

It is not how much water we have, but how we use that water, that will drive resource politics. According to CGIAR, most of the world considers different uses of water in isolation from one another. A more integrated approach to the water needs of food, industry, and energy would lead to more efficient allocation.

Dr. Simon Cook, of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture described the current practice as one of “complete fragmentation of how river basins are managed amongst different actors and even countries where the water needs of different sectors – agriculture, industry, environment and mining – are considered separately rather than as interrelated and interdependent.”

Today, for example, water rights are allocated to hydroelectricity in the Mekong, leaving farmers and fishermen up and down the river bereft of water. There's no shortage of Mekong water. It's just being unevenly distributed. CGIAR recommend water institutions take a more integrated approach, one the total needs of water within a region, rather than having compartmentalized institutions working independent from one another.

In sub-Saharan Africa, where the land is regularly parched and massive droughts like the current one in East Africa may become more commonplace, improving methods to save and store rain for agriculture use would also boost food production.

So the problem may not be an issue of resource scarcity or carrying capacity. But with this news comes responsibility: if the problems lie with us, then so must the solution.

If you are interested in the health of the world economy, it helps to know a bit about its history. But conceptualizing the global economy over long periods of time can be daunting. Until now.

Check out the above video, in which Hans Rosling plots the "wealth and health of nations" over the last 200 years. Then see his interactive website, gapminder.org, which lets you dig into his data yourself.

Cellphones are transforming the way in which aid workers are tackling the transmission of infectious diseases in Haiti. Photo:ambafranceht (flickr)

In Haiti, aid workers may have saved thousands of lives by tracking the cell phones of displaced citizens.

Following the 2010 earthquake (which claimed the lives of over 200,000), and a deadly cholera outbreak that originated in a U.N refugee camp, public health researchers in the area discovered that they could harness Haiti’s burgeoning cell phone network in a unique way.

Researchers found that not only was it possible to anonymously track (via cellphone SIM cards) the movements of displaced citizens, but that in doing so they could also anticipate the spread of epidemics, NPR reports. This let aid and health workers reach areas of infection more efficiently, curbing the further spread and transmission of disease.

An additional benefit to utilizing the Haitian cell network was that medical workers were able to distribute health advice by way of text and voicemail messages to thousands of Haitians, tips on everything from re-hydration to breastfeeding infected babies.

Though this effort was one of the first of its kind, infectious disease investigators believe that similar techniques for future outbreaks around the globe have the potential to be equally effective. Add "epidemic control" to the consistently growing list of uses for mobile phones. At the pace that cellular and smart phone technology are developing, who knows what’s next?

The Invisible Problem. Photo: carl.jones (flickr)

The world is facing a "global human rights emergency in mental health," says the World Health Organization (WHO) via the Guardian. It's a quiet crisis keeping millions out of the global marketplace.

Mental health problems (including autism, substance abuse, schizophrenia, depression, dementia) account for an estimated 14 percent of all global health conditions, yet receive less than 1 percent of most countries' health-care budget, according to the Guardian. Overall, the WHO estimates a 75 percent coverage gap in many countries with low and lower-middle incomes. One-third of all countries lack a mental health program, and only one of 10,000 UK charities listed on GuideStar is dedicated to international mental health.

Saudi Ali Mufreh exemplifies the problem, having lived in chains for 35 years since developing mental problems at age 15. Ali spends his days alone, hearing little more than the sound of “his clanking iron restraints,” says Al-Riyadh. Ali's brother Omar explained:

I was forced to chain my brother in this small room to protect him and protect others from him. I am searching for a cure to his condition, but I have had no luck yet. If I let my brother go, then he will place the whole family in danger. On two occasions, he tried to burn down the house. Both times we escaped, but the whole house was severely damaged.

Ali is not alone. Dr. Irmansyah, Indonesia's director of mental health services, estimates that 30,000 mentally ill people are restrained in cages, stocks or chains. Some suffering from mental illness are deposited at camps like Indonesia's Yayasan Galuh, where patients live on a hard tile surface surrounded by open sewers, according to PBS NewsHour.

In addition to violating basic human rights, the isolation of those with mental illness also creates an economic burden on developing countries, says the Guardian.

Mental illness adversely affects people's ability to work, creates a potential career burden on their families and generally leads to greater poverty.

But, there's hope.

In 2008, the WHO launched the Mental Health Gap Action Program to improve conditions for the mentally ill, primarily in developing countries. The WHO asserts that “with proper care, psychosocial assistance and medication, tens of millions could be treated for depression, schizophrenia, and epilepsy, prevented from suicide and begin to lead normal lives&emdash;even where resources are scarce.”

Four critical areas for emphasis going forward include:

• Reaching people in the countryside: Many of the developing world's mentally ill live in the countryside, and what few treatment services that exist are likely far away in the capital cities. Large numbers of non-specialist field health workers could be trained in basic mental health care and drug distribution, serving as a first line for treatment and as a conduit for passing more serious cases onto city hospitals.
• Changing Public Awareness and Perceptions: The mentally ill are often hidden from society due to the social stigma and marginalized, so it is little surprise they receive minimal help. The U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals make no mention of mental disabilities, and discussion of mental health is often considered "something of a luxury" among policymakers and the media. Making the topic visible and less stigmatized encourages donations, research and advocacy.
• Preventing illness before it develops: Aiding malnourished or overworked mothers and their newborns is a critical step to preventing mental illness in the first place. According to one WHO report,“improving nutrition and development in disadvantaged children can lead to healthy cognitive development, improved educational outcomes, and reduced risk for mental ill health."
• Seeing the mentally ill as potential workers: In one study from India, the onset of mental illness reduced working hours by 64 percent (from 28 to 10) — not including increased family care — suggesting major economic benefits accruing to countries who get the mentally ill treated and back to work. In other words, there may be only one aid program a family like Ali’s needs: treatment for Ali himself.

Developing countries and NGO's will eventually realize the advantages of treating the mentally ill. However, changing the way the general population perceives the mentally ill may be just as difficult as treating the mentally ill themselves.