Malaria, schistosomiasis (bilharzia), and Japanese encephalitis are the major vector-borne diseases whose increase or decrease can be attributed to agricultural water development (see table). Others include dengue fever, yellow fever, and filariasis.
"Good health and productive agriculture are both essential in the fight against poverty. In a rapidly changing world, agriculture faces many challenges, both old (natural resource constraints, extreme weather conditions, and agricultural pests) and new (globalization, environmental degradation, problems of maintaining production in conflict situations).
"...At the moment, a lack of integration and coordination characterizes the relationship between the agriculture and health sectors. Traditionally, agricultural and health policies address specific goals within those sectors.
"Earlier briefs in this series make the case that there is added value for the agricultural and health sectors in working more closely together to address problems of human well-being that fall at the intersection of the two sectors. Yet the divisions between the two sectors are wide and difficult to bridge.
Ethnic minorities in the mountainous forest regions of northern Thailand and northern Vietnam live in a particularly restrictive political, social and economic environment. Widespread degradation of land, water and forest resources has adverse effects on the livelihoods of these groups.
Agriculture produces food fundamental for human health. It therefore seems obvious that agriculture, food, and health are related! Agriculture affects whether people have enough food to eat, whether it is of sufficient nutritional value, and whether it is safe, all of which affect human health.
"Biodiversity provides essential components of healthy environments and sustainable livelihoods.
Beyond the obvious catastrophic effects of the HIV/AIDS pandemic on mortality, demographicchanges, and the suffering of individuals and their families, we are still only learning about thecomplex longer-term effects of the pandemic on poverty and vulnerability. For example, theHIV/AIDS pandemic has substantially increased the number of widow-headed households inAfrica.
This participatory poverty assessment (PPA 2006) comprises one component of ADB’s Technical Assistance to the Lao People’s Democratic Republic for Institutional Strengthening for Poverty Monitoring and Evaluation.
Agriculture is fundamental to achieving nutrition goals: it produces the food, energy, and nutrients essential for human health and well-being. Gains in food production have played a key role in feeding growing and malnourished populations. Yet they have not translated into a hunger-free world nor prevented the development of further nutritional challenges.
