Mitigating Malnutrition

At the recent Global Health Conference at Stanford, Sarah McCuskee, Michele Barry et al. contributed an introduction of their 2014 study on malnutrition in Madagascar. They analyzed childhood stunting in eastern Madagascar’s Ifanadiana, where they discovered a prevalence of 52.6% in children 6-59 months old, and began to assess its predictors. Their initial interpretation is that “growth impairment may have intergenerational or household-level” causes in Ifanadiana, supported by correlations between maternal weight and parental wealth indices and malnutrition vulnerability. The second phase of the longitudinal, long-term study will assess a second cross-section of the population with a new age cohort to clarify these potential predictors. According to Sarah, she and/or her co-authors will indeed be representing the study and its next stages at the upcoming Madagascar symposium, A Crucible for Science, Health and the Environment. February 8^th, don’t miss the chance to learn more! You can find a pdf of the flier at http://globalhealth.stanford.edu/events.html.

http://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/sief-trust-fund/brief/addressing-chronic-malnutrition-in-madagascar

(Emma)

Vanilla Volatility

Did you know that the price of vanilla, from UK importers’ perspective, can oscillate from 18 pounds/kg to 267 pounds/kg? Incredibly, it did just that, between 2012 and 2016. Bad harvests can precipitate lucrative price hikes, but the rapid fluctuations of the market introduce a factor of unpredictability into the finances of small-scale farmers they have every incentive to mitigate. Already, considering the substantial investment of time and energy needed to grow vanilla, small-scale farmers are fiercely competitive. Indeed, growers have a strong incentive to be the first to market and cut their vanilla early – compromising its quality – to the extent that the government has tried setting a date before which it is illegal to sell vanilla. However, enforcement is uneven, and financially-pressured farmers may succumb to the temptation of selling inferior vanilla to maximize slender margins before its price declines. Monopolistic vanilla exporters, to whom most small-scale farmers sell, reportedly increase pressures to sell early by capitalizing on market information asymmetry and compensating farmers relatively poorly even during vanilla price hikes. Exporters amplify this advantage by stockpiling vanilla purchased from farmers at market lows until the market booms. No wonder the source of the luxurious mansions and yacht we marveled at in Vohemar.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/jun/21/madagascar-vanilla-farmers-face-volatile-times-after-poor-harvest

(Emma) 

Dark Horse Artisanal Gold

All those goldminers we saw in Daraina and in neighboring areas have for years been deliberately overlooked by the government, their occupation “neglected as a formal activity.” Despite the fact that an estimated million people participate in this hidden sector, the government has, until recently, averted its eyes to both potential taxes from the activity, and its associated problems of child labor, dangerous working conditions, and illegal trafficking. Moreover, as we witnessed, this mining often takes place in protected areas, an incursion the international community frowns upon. However, artisanal gold is now beginning to emerge from the dust in more ways than one. In 2016, for the first time, the government officially announced the export of gold from the country, albeit from a commercial mining facility, an important realignment to reality that other countries have already reported as the import of gold from Madagascar. Moreover, in 2006, the government introduced a mining code requiring artisanal miners to buy an annual permit for what is merely the value of one day’s earnings in the sector, about $2. The proceeds are to go to the mayor for investment in roads, clinics and medical care. However, illegality remains pervasive, as miners forgo permits and continue to seek out prime prospecting regardless of protected areas’ borders. Despite gold’s footprint in parks and dangerous mining conditions, it also has a bright side, being a reliable source of income with the potential to spur the socio-economic development desired in many areas. A major conference in December was to rally donor support for work toward certification of Madagascar’s gold production as fair trade. The outcome is uncertain, but it is preceded by the World Bank’s support, part of a significant $1.8 million contribution to improve revenue collection and management across multiple sectors, including artisanal mining. 

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/nov/15/gold-rush-madagascars-artisanal-miners-could-benefit-from-global-downturn

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/jul/25/surge-in-gold-prices-no-change-in-fortune-madagascar-miners-africa

(Emma)

Snake of the Tsingy

Hey, did anybody see a diamond-back, cat-eyed snake gray as limestone stealing across the shadows of the tsingy at Ankarana? You could have been one of the first people to describe it! Madagascarophis lolo, meaning ghost snake, was just confirmed to be a species new to science in September 2016. It was spotted in 2014, when its discoverers were marching determinedly to Ankarana National Park, all the way from their field site 17 km away, in the height of the rainy season, in the depth of the muds. They knew the dismal conditions would bring out an array of snakes and other amphibians, but they had no idea they would find an entirely new species, especially of the cat-eyed family, whose members are generally well-described. However, they concluded the ghost snake was indeed new - after painstakingly counting all of the scales on its body, enumerating how many rimmed its eyes, and how many lined its lips, and comparing three genetic markers with those of its nearest kin - 100 km north. See, you never know what good things you’ll stumble across, traipsing through field and forest in pouring rains. J

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160902142207.htm

(Emma)

Redemption of the Drone?

Soon after our sojourn in Madagascar, July 27^th of 2016, a drone rose from the remote villages of Torotosy and Ampitavanana on a humanitarian mission. It carried, or rather, had the potential to carry, diagnostic blood samples and life-saving medicines to and from isolated villagers to the Centre ValBio. Currently, as we well know, roads can prove difficult to travel or impassable, and villagers needing medical attention can be reduced to walking long distances to a hospital for appropriate care. Our Malagasy hosts described a particular predicament to me during our hike in Andapa. A remote village in southern Madagascar had a refrigerator, which for a time preserved critical medicines for its populace. But, when the refrigerator succumbed, repair was impossible, the medicines spoiled, and the sick were compelled to forego care or travel a day – two if the weather was bad or if they had to walk – to the nearest hospital with refrigerated medicines. Even supposing medical personnel are dispatched to needy and remote areas, they cannot necessarily move much faster - their pace and mobility are constrained by heavy liquid nitrogen tanks that keep medicines cool in transit and other gear. It’s a big problem. A former deputy director of the Gates Foundation Tuberculosis delivery program, Dr. Small, cogitated on a solution from his present position at Stonybrook’s Global Health Institute, and dispatched four students and a drone to Madagascar for a trial flight over the trying roads between sickness and cure in southeastern Madagascar. Two students struggled out to one of the remote villages of Torotosy or Ampitavanana, two perched themselves at the Centre ValBio, on its rooftop among the treetops. The drone lifted from the village with its test cargo. When it arrived at ValBio, the pizza inside was still hot. Just how much cooler medicines can be kept with such efficient transit may prove transformative for countryside healthcare. Perhaps, the drone has found its calling.   

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/11/26/in-madagascar-test-drones-deliver-medicine-by-air/?_r=0

(Emma)

Novelty? Novelteeth!

A whole carnivore has escaped all the acuteness of the voracious scientific eye in Madagascar until recent years. Indeed, science may have continued in untroubled oblivion had chance not favored enterprising researchers from the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, who happened to be wading about the borders of a remote lake (Aloatra?), when they spotted “something strange” swimming past. To be sure, it is diminutive in size, semi-aquatic in habit, and misleadingly like a mongoose. John Fa of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust characterized it as a “scruffy little ferret” and only slightly more substantially as an otter - intent on scraping out a sustenance of fish and crabs. One of the original capturers and descriptors of a specimen, Fidimalala Bruno Ralainsasolo, hinted that a carnivore was not entirely unexpected snuffling about in the reeds of the shoreline (a similar vontsira, as it’s called, inhabits the eastern rainforests) but he hardly expected to see one swimming past with such aplomb. Now he concedes that “differences in its skull, teeth and paws have shown that this animal is clearly a different species with adaptations to life in an aquatic environment.” Just how adaptive this carnivore will prove to be, with its lacustrine home shrinking from deforestation, remains to be seen. It is fortunate, however, that Durrell’s vontsira has at least been seen and described, as it alerts scientists to the fact that more biological diversity remains to be discovered here than has yet met the eye. It is the first carnivore to be discovered in 24 years, but perhaps, it is not the last.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/8056289/New-carnivore-discovered-in-Madagascar-and-she-doesnt-look-very-happy-about-it.html 

(Emma)