In addition to officially established regional disease information systems, national and regional early warning systems are developing fast to deal with human and animal health issues. These systems aim at improving the rapidity of reaction in emergency situations and preventing the occurrence of major disasters. A collection of early warning systems dealing with food security is presented below, with their different scopes and objectives.
The Livestock Early Warning System (LEWS) is an early warning system for monitoring nutrition and livestock health for food security of humans in East Africa. It is a subproject within the Global Livestock Collaborative Research Support Program (GL-CRSP) being implemented by Texas A&M University and funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
The system was specifically developed for East Africa to provide the capability of detecting changes in the well-being of free-ranging livestock before they are normally detected by the pastoralist or crisis monitoring organizations. Information on emerging problems will be provided to in-country policy-makers, international organizations, NGOs and pastoralist communities. Timely spatial information on trends of livestock well-being allows pastoralists and policy-makers to learn about more rational crisis mitigation and reduced land degradation risk.
More information available at http://cnrit.tamu.edu/lews
The USAID Famine Early Warning System (FEWS) for Africa provides data, information and analyses to decision-makers so they can evaluate and anticipate the need for famine interventions. The goal of FEWS is to strengthen the abilities of African countries and regional organizations to manage threats of food security through the provision of timely and analytical early warning and vulnerability information. The FEWS programme has entered its fourth phase, referred to as FEWS Net. One of the principal goals of FEWS Net is to provide timely access to satellite data and products in order to identify potential or actual problems related to drought and/or flood risk in Africa. FEWS Net activities include capacity development, network building and strengthening, and developing information useful for policy formulation and forming consensus about food security problems and solutions.
More information available at www.fews.net
The United Nations Environment Programme/Global Resource Information (UNEP/GRID) in Geneva operates the project on risk evaluation, vulnerability, indexing and early warning (PreView), which includes three components:
More information available at www.grid.unep.ch/activities/earlywarning/preview/index.html
Southern Sudan, an area with an estimated human population of 5.4 million, is the scene of frequent displacement, tribal conflict, flooding, famine, drought and disease outbreaks. In 1988, over one-quarter of a million people were estimated to have died from famine and as a result of drought. In response to this serious complex emergency situation, Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) was launched in 1989, under the leadership of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). The mandate of OLS is to channel humanitarian relief services to those affected. In March 1998, WHO joined UNICEF and began to operate within the OLS framework. In 1998 and 1999, international experts investigating a reported outbreak, later confirmed to be relapsing fever, reiterated the need for an early warning alert and response system on a wider scale.
In collaboration with several agencies, the Early Warning and Response Network (EWARN) was initiated in July 1999 with WHO as the lead agency. In 2000, technical, financial and material support were secured through the United Nations Fund for International Partnership (UNFIP) comprising the Rockefeller Foundation, the UN Foundation and the Gates Foundation. Currently, there are more than 40 health agencies (including NGOs, the International Committee of the Red Cross, UNICEF and WHO) participating in EWARN activities, as well as church groups, community leaders and local counterparts. In southern Sudan, as in many geographically inaccessible areas or resource-poor countries, the need to develop partnerships for a greater efficiency is crucial, and allows maximizing and coordinating the use of existing resources.
The objectives of EWARN are as follows:
The development of an early warning and response network in southern Sudan, built on the experiences and resources of existing NGOs, has provided a model of success in using scarce resources to build capacity and make a difference within a multidisease or integrated disease surveillance and response framework.
Source: ProMED-mail, available at www.promedmail.org
The Disaster Relief Web site is a cooperative effort between the American Red Cross, CNN Interactive and IBM. Its mission is to help disaster victims and the disaster relief community worldwide by facilitating the exchange of information on the Internet.
More information available at www.disasterrelief.org