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UK aid cuts contributed to major cholera epidemic, says NGO [1]
['William Worley']
Date: 2023-02-09 14:30:01+00:00
A health surveillance assistant mixes chlorine with water to disinfect it in response to the latest cholera outbreak in Blantyre, Malawi. Photo by: Eldson Chagara / Reuters
The United Kingdom government’s aid cuts caused deaths by pulling funding from climate early warning systems in Malawi and contributed to a major cholera outbreak in the country that has killed more than 1,000 people, an NGO leader has claimed.
The claim, made by Nick Hepworth, executive director of Water Witness International, centers around cuts to the £90 million Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters program, known as BRACC in Malawi, which was cut in 2021 as the U.K. government reduced the aid budget from 0.7% to 0.5% of gross national income.
A key component of BRACC was early warning systems — which detected Tropical Storm Ana in January 2022 — but Hepworth’s team in Malawi were told by a relief and rehabilitation officer that the system failed in at least one district, Chikwawa, due to a lack of funding. The region consequently saw 13 people dead or missing as a result of the flooding and 84,000 displaced, according to Hepworth, citing the official’s figures.
BRACC also previously targeted places now hard hit by Malawi’s cholera epidemic — which has gone on for 11 months, infecting 36,943 and claiming 1,210 lives, according to the World Health Organization. The outbreak was exacerbated by the climate change-related flooding which followed Storm Ana.
“Mangochi, which is the district which has the highest incidence and death rate of cholera, with 110 deaths and 6,500 cases to date, was one of the districts receiving benefit from the BRACC program,” Hepworth told Devex.
The BRACC program was made up of several components that Hepworth said could have helped avoid the worst effects of the cholera outbreak. One was an emergency fund called the crisis modifier, intended to be mobilized fast and prevent crises “snowballing out of control,” according to Hepworth. It had a good track record responding to crises in 2019 and 2020 but was “cut completely [in 2021], which means it wasn’t available in [the] aftermath of storm Ana,” explained Hepworth.
“There’s an obvious question as to whether we’d have seen the cholera epidemic that we have seen if that rapid response had been available,” he added. “That system was set up specifically to control events like this cholera epidemic. The fact that it was removed … it doesn’t take a genius to work out that it could have been an exacerbatic factor in the epidemic.”
Another aspect of BRACC, building rural livelihoods, was intended to build more household income — regarded by experts as a key factor in people’s ability to recover from shocks — and land and water management, added Hepworth.
While the BRACC program was in its early stages, “all the signals were it was effective in building the resilience of communities in Malawi, and that’s not something we should be undermining,” said Hepworth. “When the rich nations of the planet decide to pull aid like that to some of the poorest, a cholera epidemic is the kind of thing you can expect to happen.”
Water Witness International was not directly involved in BRACC but examined water-related development programs in Malawi in March 2022 as part of its work assisting the government to plan their response to the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference Declaration for Fair Water Footprints, according to Hepworth.
U.K. aid to Malawi, particularly for programming focused on water, sanitation, and hygiene has been declining since 2016 — before the budget cuts — despite the country’s status as one of the poorest in the world.
But the reduction in aid is not the only factor in the epidemic’s spread. "There is a serious water and sanitation problem that needs to be urgently addressed, there is need to enforce laws on how drainage systems and dumping of waste is managed," said Thokozani Liwewe, acting medical officer for Lilongwe district.
Malawian Minister of Health Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda has also warned that some cultural beliefs and hostility toward health workers are slowing efforts to curb infections of cholera.
Referring to a letter sent by NGOs to the former Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, “the Government were forewarned of this and turned a blind eye; that makes them culpable,” said Hepworth.
He called for the aid budget to be restored to 0.7% and for the BRACC program to be fully funded.
The U.K. has so far donated £500,000 to relief efforts for the cholera epidemic in Malawi, but total need is $14 million, according to UNICEF, a fact that was reiterated by a Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office spokesperson reached by Devex.
Madalitso Wills Kateta contributed reporting.
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[1] Url:
https://www.devex.com/news/uk-aid-cuts-contributed-to-major-cholera-epidemic-says-ngo-104892
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