Rice bank helps poor families

Rice bank helps poor families

May 29 2009
UCAN

KANDAL, Cambodia : Caritas Cambodia is seeing positive results four years after establishing its rice bank program to help poor rural families.

In Lavear Em and Kandal Steung districts in Kandal province, for instance, the program has significantly benefited impoverished households, says Chhay Meng, Caritas Cambodia's program manager in this province.

The program here is just one of the many rice bank schemes that Caritas is involved in across the country. Caritas is the Catholic Church's social service agency.

"Confronted by immense poverty and suffering, our most fundamental response has been supporting marginalized communities by sharing resources, supplying seeds for farmers, increasing their output and supplies, and helping to reduce their dependence on high interest loans," he said.

Meng said that Caritas has managed to help six communes and 13 villages in the province, directly benefiting up to 250 of the poorest families.

The good thing about the program, he said, is that although Caritas is the principle sponsor, it is the local people who are mainly responsible for the day-to-day running of the rice bank.

Farmers contribute 20 kilograms of rice to the bank on joining the scheme.

Participants wishing to borrow rice to feed their families will have to pay 20 percent interest on what they borrow. However, the interest rate goes up to 50 percent on rice seed for planting, which they pay back at harvest time. If they default on a repayment, then it can affect their ability to borrow in the future.

The scheme also allows farmers to save rice, said Meng.

Rice bank officials are elected by rice bank members in the villages and staff from Caritas Cambodia. There are three main officials per district: director, deputy-director, and cashier.

According to Yem Nuon, 54, cashier in Kandal's Stueng district, Caritas Cambodia in 2005 provided 250 kilograms of rice to poor families in her district. Since then the rice bank has grown significantly so that there is now a reserve of about three tons.

"I'm very thankful to Caritas Cambodia for assisting the poor families in our village," she said "If our crops fail, we can borrow seed from the bank. If we borrow from other sources, we have to pay double the interest (almost 100 percent)," she said.

Hem Pring, 60, director of the rice bank in the same village, said her village has 26 families already registered as members of the program and 56 other people are about to join. "The members are living better lives now," she added.

Cambodia to have first airplane taxiway next month

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-05-29 16:46


PHNOM PENH -- Cambodia will have its first taxiway next month in Phnom Penh International Airport, a path that connects the runway to where airplanes park to increase the flight capacity of the airport, local media reported on Friday.

The US$9 million taxiway, which is 1,250 meters long by 44 meters wide, roughly the same size as the existing runway, will allow for more takeoffs and landings each day, Khek Norinda, communications and marketing manager for Societe Concessionaire des Aeroports (SCA), was quoted by English newspaper the Cambodia Daily as saying.

SCA, which is financing construction, is a French-owned company and manages Phnon Penh International Airport, as well as the airport in Siem Reap and Sihanoukville, under a contract with the government that runs until 2040.

The construction began in May of last year and will be finished in June of this year.

Currently, only 10 passenger planes can land or take off in an hour from the airfield at Phnom Penh's airport, said Sok Puth Thoeun, director of the airport's engineering department. That will jump to at least 16 planes with the planned taxiway.

"It is the first parallel taxiway for Phnom Penh International Airport," he added. The State Secretariat of Civil Aviation also has a master plan to build a parallel taxiway at Siem Reap International Airport, said Sok Puth Thoeun.

Fears for new malaria drug resistance

The drug resistance was first detected in Pailin province in western Cambodia

By Jill McGivering BBC News, Cambodia

In a small community in Western Cambodia, scientists are puzzling over why malaria parasites seem to be developing a resistance to drugs - and fearing the consequences.

Ten days ago, Chhem Bunchhin, a teacher in Battambang Province, became ill with chills, fever, headache and vomiting.

At a nearby health centre he was treated with drugs considered a "silver bullet" in the battle against falciparum malaria.

This treatment with artesunate drugs was part of a clinical study being carried out by the US Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Science (AFRIMS).

In the past, artesunates have always cleared malaria parasites from the blood in two or three days. But after four days of monitored treatment, Chhem Bunchhin was still testing positive for parasites.

The anti-malarial drugs worked more slowly in Chhem Bunchhin

Dr Delia Bethell, an investigator working on the clinical trials, said he wasn't alone. Out of about 90 patients included in the study so far, roughly a third to half were still positive for malaria parasites after three days, some even after four or five days.

"It appears that the artesunate is working more slowly than previously," she said.

"It appears that the parasite probably is developing some kind of tolerance or is somehow less sensitive to the effects of the drug. But nobody knows why that might be."

These early results need to be more thoroughly investigated, she said.

The concern is that this could be the start of emerging resistance to the artemesinin family of drugs. If full-blown resistance did develop, it would be extremely dire.

"This is by far the most effective drug we have," explained Dr Bethell.

"And there are no new drugs coming through the system in the next few years."

Scientists are particularly concerned because the last two generations of anti-malarial drugs were undermined by resistance.

Dr Delia Bethell says the reason for the resistance is a mystery

And in those earlier cases, resistance also started in Western Cambodia, and in a similar way.

No-one is sure why this area seems to have become a nursery for anti-malaria drug resistance.

One factor could be the inappropriate use of drugs, related to a lack of medical supervision.

The public health system is weak. Government clinics often run out of drugs or may be closed when patients want access to them.

Instead, many patients visit private pharmacies to buy anti-malarial drugs there.

Coloured tablets

I visited one small drugs stall in Pailin's general market, sandwiched between a clothes outlet and a general grocery store.

All pharmacies are supposed to be licensed. But the stallholder told me he didn't have a licence. He'd applied for one, he said, but the paperwork had never been processed.

Many others running pharmacies, he said, were in the same position.

I watched him and his wife make up their own packets of drugs on the glass-topped counter, shaking a variety of coloured tablets into unlabelled plastic bags.

In many such private pharmacies, the customers choose what they want, deciding partly by price.

The quality of the advice they get varies enormously. If, as a result, they end up taking the wrong drugs in the wrong combinations, this too can fuel drug resistance.

The availability of many counterfeit drugs on the market only compounds the problem.

Villagers are happy to queue to receive mosquito nets

Professor Nick Day, director of the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit, is also running clinical trials in the region.

He and his team have also found that artesunate-type drugs are starting to become less effective.

This resistance must be contained urgently, because its spread would be a global health disaster, he said.

Resistance to previous malaria drugs caused major loss of life in Africa, he said.

"If the same thing happens again, the spread of a resistant parasite from Asia to Africa, then that will have devastating consequences for malaria control."

In a clearing in the jungle, about one and a half hours drive from Pailin along rough dirt roads, I watched health workers distribute mosquito nets to about 200 villagers.

It's one of a series of measures being rushed through to stop the spread of resistant parasites.

If they're not contained, history may repeat itself - and the fear is that many millions of people worldwide will lose their protection against this deadly disease.