By Akanimo Sampson
A United Nations agency, Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has launched a new Corporate Framework on Rural Extreme Poverty to accelerate the agency’s and its partners’ efforts towards eradicating extreme poverty for all people by 2030 – target 1.1 of Sustainable Development Goal 1 – end poverty.
This is coming as the Tripartite – a joint effort by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and the World Health Organisation (WHO), launched the Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Multi-Partner Trust Fund, which is being supported by an initial contribution of $5.00 million from the Government of the Netherlands.
This appears to be a major boost to combat one of the gravest risks to global health.
The AMR Trust Fund* has a five-year scope, through 2024, and aims to scale up efforts to support countries to counter the immediate threat of AMR, arguably the most complex threat to global health.
Anti-microbial resistance refers to the natural ability of bacteria and other microbes to develop resistance to the medicines we use to treat them, and the process is accelerated by inappropriate or excessive use of pharmaceutical products designed to kill unwanted pathogens in humans, animals and crops. In particular, the overuse and misuse of antibiotics in human and animal health is fueling resistance.
The rise of AMR, poses a threat described as a “silent tsunami.” Drug-resistant microorganisms now account for an estimated 700,000 deaths a year, a figure that could increase to 10 million deaths each year if no action is taken.
“Combating antibiotics resistance is fundamentally a behaviour change issue. I’m not talking about washing hands more often, but about ensuring antibiotics are prescribed less readily and that work methods are changed to reduce the chance of resistant bacteria spreading”, said the Netherlands Medical Care and Sports Minister Bruno Bruins.
“This topic is so important that it deserves to stay at the top of the international political agenda. Countries have made outstanding plans and it’s time now to carry them out. The Multi-Partner Trust Fund that we’re launching today will help us do this because the problem is too big for countries to tackle alone”, he added.
“Unfortunately, borders don’t stop bacteria. But by pooling our efforts and knowledge, we can help each other combat AMR,” said Carola Schouten, the Netherlands Minister of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality. “There’s still scope for improving the way antibiotics are used in livestock production, too. This conference is an excellent opportunity to engage in dialogue and learn from each other,” she added.
“We all have a role to play to protect the efficacy of antimicrobial agents and the AMR Trust Fund gives us the opportunity to support the efforts of the different sectors at national, regional and global levels”, said Dr Monique Eloit, the OIE Director General. “AMR must be addressed in a One Health approach and supported by long-term commitments from all stakeholders. The OIE is committed to supporting the animal health sector in fulfilling its commitments to ensure that both animals and humans will continue to benefit from available and efficient anti-microbials to treat their diseases for the future.
“FAO is fully dedicated to help eliminate hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition and dedicated to produce safe food for a growing world population in a sustainable way, said FAO Deputy-Director General, Climate and Natural Resources, Maria Helena Semedo.
“Anti-microbials are necessary tools to ensure food security, but they need to be used in a responsible way. FAO considers the Multi Partner Trust Fund as a milestone in our Tripartite efforts to reduce AMR” she added.
“This new Trust Fund signals an important new commitment to combat antimicrobial resistance. AMR is a serious challenge to reaching universal health coverage and a threat to achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals”, said Dr Zsuzsanna Jakab, Deputy Director-General, WHO.
The immediate funding appeal is for $70 million, to be used to support countries and the implementation of the Tripartite’s AMR Workplan 2019-2020, particularly in providing technical support to countries designing National Action Plans on AMR and to scale up local action.
Prominent among the AMR Trust Fund’s ultimate desired outcomes is a world where infectious diseases can continue to be treated with effective and safe anti-microbials and one in which resistance is monitored and controlled at a slower pace. The pathway to that success entails activities ranging from awareness raising and the drafting of national action plans to surveillance of AMR trends and better ensuring responsible antimicrobial sales and use patterns.
Inaction, due to policy or implementation inadequacies, threatens to make common infections more difficult to treat and lifesaving medical procedures and treatments riskier to perform.
Inaction could also raise food insecurity and rural poverty, when animal illnesses can no longer be effectively treated using veterinary medicines.
The AMR Trust Fund provides a joint mechanism for clear attribution and transparency of all sources of finance, while its activities will be based on the application of best practices, scaling up activities that have worked and innovative approaches to ensure that today’s cures are available for future generations.
*The UN Multi-Partner Trust Fund Office, the UN center of expertise in pooled funding mechanisms, will act as trustee of the Fund. The UN MPTF Office, acting as an independent trustee, will provide real-time information on contributions and use of resources of donor contributions through the MPTF Office Gateway (mptf.undp.org)
In the mean time, since 1990, global progress on poverty reduction has been unprecedented. About 736 million people – 10 percent of the global population – are still living in extreme poverty today, which is currently measured as people living on less than $1.90 a day.
Also, inequalities persist and a continuing global slowdown in economic growth is expected to impede or even reverse progress towards poverty reduction, particularly for rural areas in the poorest countries.
Given these trends, FAO believes that more needs to be done to reach the extreme poor who live predominantly in rural areas.
“FAO is stepping up its efforts to end extreme poverty. This is important as it will also bring us closer to ending hunger and malnutrition and reaching other SDGs. When the extreme poor have means to improve their lives, they no longer suffer from hunger and can invest in a better future for their families and communities,” said FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva.
Adding the FAO chief said, “it is not by accident that the SDG1 and SDG2 are the first two – and the cornerstone – of the other goals.”
The framework puts forwards four priority areas for FAO’s work across 130 countries: ensuring food security and nutrition; promoting economic inclusion; fostering environmentally sustainable and resilient livelihoods; and preventing and protecting the extreme poor against risks and shocks.
The framework acknowledges that poverty can be measured over a number of dimensions – not only based on people’s income or spending power, but also on their health and educational status, access to services, living standards, and overall well-being.
The framework outlines the need to consider these different dimensions of poverty in FAO’s programmes, and enhance the organization’s policy support and partnerships with other agencies and institutions in order to create a more sustained and inclusive economic growth, and foster ways to better measure and address extreme poverty.
The framework outlines activities such as:
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Making the link between poverty and hunger more explicit by promoting policy coherence between social protection, food security and nutrition sectors; and facilitating integrated programmes that bring together social assistance, access to nutrition education, health services, and nutrition-sensitive agriculture.
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Promoting economic inclusion of the extreme poor in rural areas by promoting food and agricultural investments and employment opportunities for the extreme poor. For example, when supporting the development of value chains, FAO will consider how the rural extreme poor could benefit, and develop options and innovative approaches that are inclusive of the rural extreme poor, either as producers or in wage employment.
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Fostering environmentally sustainable and resilient livelihoods, including integrating poverty reduction into climate change actions.
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Protecting the extreme poor against risks and shocks.
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Increasing its own and its partners’ capacity to better integrate poverty analysis in programmes, projects and policies.
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Developing dedicated and integrated approaches for the rural extreme poor. At least 20 percent of FAO projects will explicitly target the extreme poor.
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Participating in and strengthening existing international bodies and networks to specifically target rural poverty and extreme poverty at global and regional levels.
