Agriculture and Malaria Azerbaijan

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Agriculture and Malaria Azerbaijan

• Tugrul Temel
• ISNAR MTP 5
• Internal Program Review

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Outline

• Background
• Objectives
• Research Method
• Observations and Findings
• Malaria Control Strategies
• Expected Outcomes and Impacts
• Lessons Learned
• Future Activities

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Objectives

• Identify links between agricultural changes
  malaria
• Envisage the effects on malaria of these changes
• Advise on the effective malaria control
  strategies

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Research Method Data, Tools

• Interviews the Ministries of Health and
  Agriculture, and NGOs
• District level data collected on
• malaria cases, number of hospital
• land use, land characteristics (salinity,
  marshes, erosion), irrigation water use,
  infrastructure, cropping patterns, farming types
  (kolhozes, solhozes)
• rain, temperature, longitude, latitude,
• Analysis of data by econometric and spatial tools

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Observations

• Interview Institutional arrangements became
  effective only recently
• for water supply, sanitation, and monitoring
  malaria
• Literature Abundant mosquito-breeding habitats
  are due largely to
• ongoing irrigation works, poor maintenance of
  irrigation canals/roads,
• poor management of water distribution
• lack of financial resources
• poor community-based control activities
• Statistics Crop patterns of malaria-epidemic
  districts of south also emerge in the Shirvan
  region

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Findings

• Malaria is cumulative
• correlation is positive between malaria in 1993
  and malaria in consecutive years
• Malaria is correlated with
• irrigation water use ()
• soil salinity ()
• number of former state farms ()

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Malaria Control Strategies

• Focus agricultural research on the role of
• local irrigation techniques
• land characteristics
• legacy of former state farms, e.g., large
  irrigation system
• knowledge of Eucalyptus trees to reduce soil
  humidity/lower water tables
• Enhance management of
• irrigation water use and soil
• community level water authorities
• poorly maintained drainage facilities
• high water tables

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Malaria Control Strategies

• Effective biological chemical measures
• apply microbial and residual insecticides while
  taking remedies for their adverse health effects
• stock surface water with Gambusia fish
• Prioritize those districts with
• severely suffered from malaria in 1993
• consuming large amounts of irrigation water
• suffering severe land salinity
• being occupied by a large number of state farms

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Expected Outcomes and Impacts

• Outcomes
• knowledge to establish links (causes/sources of
  malaria) b/w agr. malaria
• knowledge shared by the Ministries of Health and
  Agriculture
• knowledge to be used in public awareness and
  policy dialogues
• Impacts
• enhance livelihood of those suffering from
  malaria
• strengthened collaboration of ISNAR with these
  institutions
• input to the 1st Steering Committee Meeting of
  SIMA
• input to develop similar projects for Sub-Saharan
  Africa and Central Asia

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Lessons Learned

• Need for a full understanding commitment at the
  policy level (from interviews)
• malaria-agriculture research is relevant
• effective malaria control demands cooperation
  between health, agriculture, and local
  communities
• Need for a pilot study (from data analysis)
• macro studies undermine location-specific
  characteristics
• better control of the variables
• better understanding of the role of environmental
  conditions
• easier to develop control strategies
• New project proposals must have
• policy commitment, pilot study, ownership by
  national counterparts

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Future Activities

• Apply the innovation system approach to
  understanding of
• constraints on and opportunities for effective
  linkages between agriculture, health, and other
  organizations
• how knowledge on agriculture-health linkages is
  generated, diffused, and utilized (AKIS for
  agriculture-health links)
• which activity, and at what level (individual,
  household, farm, sector), demands new human and
  institutional capacities to be developed
• Construct a database of agriculture and health
  indicators
• Develop tools (surveys, questionnaires,
  quantitative methods, etc.) for gathering and
  analyzing information
• Prepare project proposals on malaria-agriculture
  linkages
• in the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa and
  Central Asia (SIMA, WHO, Other donors)
• develop methods for incorporating health concerns
  into agricultural priority setting
  decision-making processes