NewZAID updates you in brief on key issues and events on the NZAID agenda. Please click on the useful links included in this newsletter to explore issues in greater depth. NZAID would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a safe and happy holiday season. The next issue of NewZAID is due out in late January.

	One of many villages, destroyed by flood waters in eastern PNG (photo by Oxfam)

New Zealand emergency aid supplies are being sent to help people affected by severe flooding in the eastern Papua New Guinea province of Oro.

Following an official request for assistance, New Zealand is sending an Air Force C130 Hercules to Papua New Guinea carrying two generators, tarpaulins, collapsible water containers, and 500 blankets. 

The supplies, from NZAID stockpiles, will help the thousands of people in the flood affected area who are in need of shelter and clean drinking water.  

An initial contribution of $100,000 from NZAID's emergency fund helped the PNG Red Cross replenish stocks of mosquito nets, tarpaulins, water containers and cooking equipment. 

For more information contact michael.hartfield@nzaid.govt.nz

World AIDS Day brings people around the world together, giving them the chance to express global solidarity with people living with HIV. The aim is not only to continue raising awareness of HIV and AIDS issues, but also to urge governments and leaders to keep their promises of commitment and action to meeting the challenges presented by HIV and AIDS.

Observed on 1 December, the focus for World AIDS Day this year (and through to the end of 2008) is on leadership, which is set by the World AIDS Campaign under the five-year slogan “Stop AIDS, Keep the Promise”.

The campaign emphasises the political leadership needed to fulfil commitments that have been made in the response to AIDS – particularly the promise of universal access to treatment, prevention, care and support while celebrating the leadership that already exists in all levels of society.  

NZAID is committed to working with partners to reverse and halt the HIV/AIDS epidemic. NZAID contributes around $18 million per year to partner government and Non-government Organisation programmes aimed at preventing and treating HIV primarily in the Pacific and Africa. NZAID also provides funding of around $6 million to UNAIDS and other UN agencies for HIV and AIDS work.

For more information contact christine.briasco@nzaid.govt.nz or visit the UNAIDS website

171 traditional birth attendants have been trained to save lives in Lao Cai province in the northern mountains of Viet Nam. The training was provided by Marie Stopes International (Vietnam) in Van Ban and Bao Yen districts, with funding from NZAID's Asia Development Assistance Facility (ADAF).

Highlights of the project include a decrease in maternal mortality; motivation of traditional birth attendants and village health workers to engage in continual learning; strengthened systems for supervision and monitoring; and a clear commitment from communities to move childbirth from home to commune health centres. 

NZAID Manager, John Egan, attended an end of project workshop in Sapa town on Friday 23 November. He congratulated the Lao Cai Department of Health and health workers from the two project districts on their success.

"In remote communities, where health centres are a long way from home, it is essential to know how to manage pregnancies," he said. "The project has strengthened the pre- and post-natal care offered by village health workers and traditional birth attendants. They are able to recognise risks in pregnancy and to refer pregnant women to the formal health system. This has saved lives of ethnic minority women and what better result can have been achieved than that?"

For more information contact julie.haack@nzaid.govt.nz, the ADAF Coordinator

A ceremony celebrating the formal signing of ten community forestry agreements between the Forestry Administration Cantonment and Community Forestry Management Committees was held on 19 November in Tbeng Lech Village in Siem Reap Province.

For several years the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) has supported the development of community forests and protected areas in Cambodia, and these legal agreements are the first to exist between government and communities for managing this community-based forestry.

The FAO’s projects aim to expand responsible, productive, and sustainable management of forest resources by local communities to meet their needs, while stimulating development within the provinces of Siem Reap, Oddar Meanchey and Banteay Meanchey. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries plan to adopt this model to other provinces in Cambodia.

NZAID has provided long-term support to the FAO’s Community Forestry Development Project in the northwest provinces of Cambodia, which has now become a model of good practice for the rest of the country.

For more information contact lynn.desilva@mfat.govt.nz

While approximately 70,000 people in the Pacific are blind, more than 80% of these cases are preventable. Supported by NZAID’s Pacific Regional Health Programme, the Fred Hollows Foundation New Zealand (FHFNZ) is working towards eradicating unnecessary blindness in the Pacific by building the capacity of people to address and treat the problems.

Established by the FHFNZ, the Pacific Eye Institute (PEI) is a specialist training centre for eye health professionals. The institute aims to ensure that graduates have appropriate clinical skills and knowledge to provide high quality eye health services and surgery to the Pacific community. 

In addition to supporting the PEI, FHFNZ education and research team members have published research which has allowed minimum standards of surgery to be implemented and monitored. FHFNZ also supports graduates back in their own communities to put their skills into practice in their own public health systems, and get eye care services out to remote and rural areas.

Vision 2020 Fiji, as part of this programme, has become sustainable through funding from the Ministry of Health and a cost recovery programme selling affordable ready-made spectacles. PEI trains eye nurses in management of spectacles programmes so that people in the Pacific can rely on a complete and regular service of vision testing and supply of spectacles.

For more information contact megan.mccoy@nzaid.govt.nz 

Ten Samoan health officers including officials and clinicians from the Samoan Ministry of Health (responsible for policy and regulatory oversight) and the National Health Service (responsible for service delivery), recently spent a week in Papua New Guinea on an NZAID-funded study tour to develop their understanding of the Sector Wide Approach (SWAp) to development in the health sector.

This approach involves donors providing budgetary support for specific sectors, rather than taking a project by project approach. It also means working together to achieve development goals in a way that supports the developing country’s own strategies and priorities.

During the study tour, participants visited various successful Papua New Guinea health SWAp activities, had one-on-one meetings with experts in their own fields, had the opportunity to share ideas and experiences in a round table discussion, and attended the Health Sector Improvement Programme Summit.

For more information contact helen.leslie@mfat.govt.nz

NZAID-funded humanitarian organisation SurfAid International has won the 2007 Humanitarian Award at the World Association of Non-Governmental Organisations (WANGO) awards ceremony held in Toronto in late November.

The award recognizes SurfAid as one of the top non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the world, which is testament to their ground-breaking and effective approach to providing aid.

The WANGO Awards Committee were impressed with the compassion of SurfAid and their remarkable and successful effort to address the dire health situation of the Mentawai people, with their high childhood mortality, the ravages of malaria, poor education, and poverty.

Mr Taj Hamad, Secretary General of WANGO said, “SurfAid’s unique cutting edge solutions to alleviate the human suffering in the Mentawai Islands, and now Nias Island, promoting community-based solutions and tapping into the inherent values in the surfing community—individualism, courage, dynamism, and adaptability—is an example of humanitarian service that deserves widespread recognition.”

One of the ways in which NZAID is able to make a significant difference is to engage with the New Zealand's NGO community and provide funding to support their programmes on the ground overseas. Surf Aid is an example of a successful partnership that is making a real difference.

SurfAid targets health issues in Indonesia, where a lot of death and suffering could be prevented by better post-delivery care and exclusive breast feeding, mosquito nets, improved nutrition, clean water, washing hands and recognition of the signs of serious illness. SurfAid International is committed to designing and refining a proven model that permanently shifts community norms towards these key health behaviours. Their long-term aim is to reach more communities further across Indonesia and beyond.

For more information visit www.surfaidinternational.org or contact mike.bird@nzaid.govt.nz or julie.haack@nzaid.govt.nz, the ADAF Coordinator