Population Growth
Mounting Food Problem

By Khilendra Basnyat

THE world population stands at 6.1 billion plus at present. It is likely to increase by 9.3 billion by 2050. The population of the developing countries is expected to increase significantly in the years to come.

Failure

Despite untiring efforts for reduction, population growth has become a worldwide problem in recent years. Most countries, especially the developing ones, have failed to check population growth. Consequently, the annual addition of world population is close to ninety million.

Today, world population is the largest in history and is increasing at a rate that if not reduced could double in the next four decades.

In fact, evolution has prepared us to compete with other species to survive and multiply. However, it has not equipped us well to either understand or deal with the threat we pose to ourselves.

Food is an essential requirement of mankind. However, due to an imbalance between population growth and agricultural production, food problem is increasing in many countries, especially in the developing ones. Due to this, many countries are enrolling their names in the list of importers of food, forgetting that they were once self - reliant or even exporters.

In most developing countries, the poor population lives on agriculture. However, there has been no substantial agricultural development in these countries. For this reason, in these countries, the situation is particularly acute. Therefore, access to sufficient supply of a variety of safe good quality foods has been a serious problem in some countries.

Despite some progress made in increasing global food supplies and in improving the national state of population, one out of five people in the developing countries are still unable to meet their basic daily nutritional needs for a health and active life. Millions more are exposed to contaminated food.

Actually, food problem persists thoughout the world due to adverse weather, civil strife and economic problems. Presently, about 37 countries face food problem of varying degrees. The situation is especially grave in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

If the food demand of the world population continues at the present rate, more than six hundred millions people will be undernourished within a year.

In reality, frequent drought and unrest depress food availability.The continued civil strife in some countries had reduced domestic food production in the past.

Since cereals at present provide 60 per cent of calories and 50 per cent of the protein consumed by the human race, the need for increased cereal production is undoubtedly evident. On a global or national scale, augmenting output per unit area can increase cereal production. However, it is unrealistic to expect present acreage to be maintained unless there is an effective incentive to produce cereals.

It has been estimated that there is at least twice as much land physically available worldwide for crop protection that the 10 per cent that is presently being used. However, prospects for bringing this extra land into production in the short and medium term are not very encouraging. The existence of this unused resource has been appreciated for several decades. For instance, a detailed study conducted by FAO in developing countries quantified the actual area of land crop production together with the potential land area estimated to be suitable for crop production.

It was obvious from the results of the survey that in the developing regions of the world, cultivated area, as a proportion of the potential was only 45 per cent. Proposals were made whereby this figure would be raised by 0.7 per cent per year. This predicted rate of increase contrasts sharply with the reality of about one per cent increase in total arable land.

In fact, fighting hunger is a moral imperative. It also brings about large economic benefits. It has been estimated that halving hunger could yield economic benefits worth at least 120 billion-dollar a year, resulting from longer and healthier living for all those benefiting from such improvements. For this reason, the United Nations food body unveiled an ambitious new plan to fight hunger across the world, at a cost of 24 billion dollars a year a week ahead of a World Food Summit in Rome.

According to FAO, the anti-hunger programme would have the number of hungry people by 2015. This programme combines investment in agriculture and rural development with measures to improve direct access to food for the most severely undernourished people. In addition, this programme emphasises on creating more opportunities for small farmers who constitute 70 per cent of the world population to improve their livelihood on a sustainable basis.

In fact, in both the developed and developing countries, adequate quantities of topsoil are lost annually through erosion. In the Indian sub-continent alone, more than 100 hectares are lost per day as a result of salinisation due to faulty irrigation. Therefore, there is little justification for dramatic improvements in global food production in the short term at least, arising from an increase in area under production.

Estimates

Within the next twenty-five years, the world's population is estimated to increase at a staggering rate. Therefore the total demand for food will be greater than ever, and the demand will be different due to changing lifestyle, urbanisation and increasing incomes.

Debate Over Malaria Drugs

By Lauran Neergaard

THOUSANDS of travelers a year bring home a bad souvenir from a trip abroad: malaria. A few die, and the rest suffer weeks of miserable symptoms that usually hit shortly after they unpack.

Safe

Most of the millions who travel to malaria-plagued countries come home healthy thanks to swallowing protective drugs during the trip.

But the number of sickened each year because they didn't take those pills has risen by a few hundred since the mid-1990s. Even as tourism in developing countries grows, too many travelers don't know to take anti-malaria medicines - or skip them from worry about side effects, such as rare psychiatric symptoms linked to Lariam, the most-prescribed drug.

Now doctors are looking to a meeting of the world's malaria experts in January to settle just which medication is the best choice for different people heading on vacations, military duty or other trips to malaria-ridden countries.

Don't expect a simple answer.

The malaria parasite has developed resistance to that old standby drug, chloroquine, in most of the world, rendering it largely useless. That leaves most travelers three options: Lariam, a newer and possibly safer drug called Malarone, and the antibiotic doxycycline.

Each has pros and cons that make declaring a No. 1 choice for everybody all but impossible, cautions Dr. Bradley Connor, a New York travel-medicine specialist.

"Your one-week business traveler vs. your teenage backpacker across Africa have very different risks," agreed Dr. Kevin Kain, director of the University of Toronto's Center for Travel and Tropical Medicine.

All three drugs "work well if you take them," Kain said. Costomising the prescription to each patient's health and destination can limit side effectsd, ensuring travelers don't abandon their pills.

For example, Lariam isn't supposed to be used by anyone with depression, a history of other psychiatric disorders, or epilepsy. Also, it's losing effectiveness in parts of Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar. On the other hand, Lariam is the only once-a-week pill, the others require remembering a daily dose.

But the backpacker spending three months amid malaria-carrying mosquitoes may want the cheapest option, doxycycline. The busy executive may prefer Malarone because treatment ends one week after returning home, the other two drug must be taken for a month after returning to kill any still-lurking malaria.

Large areas of Central and South America, Hispaniola, Africa, the India subcontinent, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Oceania are considered malaria-risk areas, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Adding to the complex decision, the Food and Drug Administration recently took two steps that may influence prescriptions:

- The FDA strengthened warnings that Lariam may cause psychiatric side effects ranging from anxiety and dreams to hallucinations, depression, occasionally even psychotic behavior. Those risks have long been known, but the updated warnings stress that people with active or recent depression and other risk factors shouldn't take Lariam.

However, the FDA cautions that the drug's alleged link to suicide has not been proven, and calls Lariam an important option. Travel-medicine specialists estimate serious side effects occur in one in 10,000 to one in 15,000 Lariam users.

-Separately, the FDA added to competitor Malarone's label results of a new study of 1,000 travelers that favorably compared Malarone to Lariam. The drugs appeared equally effective, but 5 per cent of Lariam users had side effects bothersome enough to stop the drug, compared with 1.2 per cent of Malarone users, says Kain. The Tornoto physician headed the study funded by Malarone maker GlaxoSmithKline. The side effects were bothersome but not serious.

Malarone isn't risk-free-people with serious kidney damage can't use it-and after just two years of sales, it doesn't have Lariam's 17-year track record. Likewise, doxycycline's side effects include nausea, heartburn, sunburn and, for women, yeast infections.

Advice

Those advantages and disadvantages are the reason the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wants to debate the matter at its January meeting, before it updates the government's official health advice for travelers.

Traffic Management
Needs More Focus

By S.K. Shrestha

TRAFFIC accident treatment seems to be urgent in the Kathmandu Valley. Due to the lack of systematic traffic management the vehicles are increasing tremendeously. The roads and streets need timely repair and maintenance for durability. It has parking problems in respect of growth in number of vehicles. It is also facing haphazard urbanisation growth. The accidents are in progress due to the rapid increase in the number of vehicles per annum.

The traffic accident treatment requires the funds and staff to do accidental remedial work throughout Nepal. The task of the treatment is to identify the locations of the accidents and investigate them to find the factors involved. Such task is helpful to apply appropriate and effective remedial or preventive steps. It is better to take actual accident spot as the starting point because it is not possible to reliably identify and analyse hazardous locations. Such action needs extra care and caution.
There is heavy traffic congestion near the places like Sahid Gate. Putli Sadak, New Road etc in Kathmandu city. Such locations urgently require traffic management in a proper manner. The Valley also needs the expansion in road network as a treatment to mitigate traffic accident. Such action needs huge financial investment. It looks possible only through the cooperation of international donor agencies.

It is known that road accidents occur in many forms and in many locations. The main task is to idenfity locations of most frequent accidents for investigation and treatment. The traffic police further needs a reliable and comprehensive system to improve accident recording procedures. The accident data are not good enough for accident investigation and remedial work. The Micro Computer Accident Analysis Package System was introduced in 1995 in Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Naubise-Mugling Section of the Prithvi Highway. Such analysis requires a copy of the fully and accurately completed accident report for the basic information.

It is essential to inspect the site where the accidents have happened as the first step in the accidental remedial process. It is proper to carry out an initial analysis of the accident data by taking the accident reports. Such action is helpful to accurately assess the road conditions and other relevant site factors including the trial and experience of the problems faced by the road users.

Sometimes it is necessary to carry out additional surveys and studies in order to determine and design suitable remedial measures such as pedestrian counts, speed surveys, traffic counts, vehicle surveys, conflict studies, pedestrian surveys and so on. Before applying remedial steps, we need to consider upon its cost-effectiveness, long-lasting, impact in other types of accidents, effects on the environment, road users.

The treatment requires to develop an assessment procedure in order to find the priority of schemes. The main factor should be cost-effectiveness in respect of many other considerations. Proper monitoring and evaluation of the work is essential. The monitoring of its performance closely helps us to find the information on cost-effectiveness only. Gradually, it will assist us to build up a sound basis for road safety engineering. Evaluation is not easy task but it can provide indication to develop future accident remedial programmes.

The concerned authorities like Roads, Police, Environmental departments, ministries should pay due attention upon the programme through the coordination in this respect by utilising the available fund or attracting foreign donor agencies such as World Bank (WB), Asian Development Bank (ADB), Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and so on. The Kathmandu Municipality has constructed overhead crossings near the locations like Nachghar, Birhospital etc. Such activity would help in mitigating traffic congestion and accident in days ahead.