Water aid in Tanzania: The babies who die for want of clean water

At a clinic in rural Tanzania, we meet mothers who have lost infants to easily preventable illnesses caused by dirty water and lack of access to basic latrines.

 

In a bare clinic room overlooking a stretch of parched red earth, Aisha Mkude is telling us about the loss of her fourth child, a boy, in January. The baby died within a week of the birth after contracting an umbilical cord infection, she says in her native Swahili. Aisha is convinced her baby’s fatal illness was caused by dirty water, dug from beneath a dried-up riverbed by relatives, and transported in jerry cans to the clinic’s delivery room for the birth. It was used to wash the baby, herself, her clothes and the bedsheets.

This is Mlali Health Centre, in Tanzania’s Morogoro region a scenic sprawl of bush and palm trees lying at the foot of the country’s verdant southern Highlands. Chickens wander in, while outside, a woman attempts to sweep away the dust with a broom made of twigs. In the dry season it coats everything – cars, shoes, clothes, hair.

The circumstances in which Aisha gave birth here are unimaginable for most Westerners. Early one morning, she had travelled from her village to the clinic by motorbike taxi, stopping repeatedly on the unmade road because of the pain of labor. Arriving at the tiny delivery room, she was told by midwives that the clinic had no water: she would have to bring in her own supply for the birth.

For Aisha, 38, this wasn’t entirely unexpected. The same thing had happened at the births of her other children [three girls, aged eight, 13 and 16], when relatives fetched water from a nearby river. But last January, she recalls, things were even worse: the water situation was “very bad”. Two companions – a sister-in-law and a neighbor had to dig down into the riverbed to get to water, using shovels and buckets.

The birth itself went smoothly but two days later, back home in the village, the baby developed a high fever; on day three, back at the clinic, he was found to be discharging foul smelling water from the umbilical cord. Antibiotics failed to save his young life. By Kimena Nuhu.

PENGUIN LIKE HUMAN

A team of scientists have come to Penguin Beach at London Zoo, installed a hi-tech track and are now trying to lure Puddle and his penguin pals across it. They have a very upright posture like a human, but they also have very short, crouched legs - it is very comical. But when I see an animal do something weird, as an evolutionary biologist, I want to know how that evolved, how it got that way. Previous studies of the penguin's ungainly gait have revealed that the waddle is in fact the most energy efficient way for them to get about on land. But what is not known about penguins is how the legs do that, how big are the sideways forces on penguin legs and how that compares to other waddling birds.

But it turns out that penguins didn't always waddle. Fossils reveal that their ancient ancestors moved in a different way. We have all kinds of fossils as far back as 60 million years ago from the Southern Hemisphere, says palaeo biologist James Proffitt, who has come from Texas to study the birds. They probably moved about differently on land based on the anatomy of their legs and hip bones

That gives us a chance to understand how these unusual anatomies and behaviors have evolved in deep time and how we have all these bizarre things we see today. The bird bones show that the first penguins were a varied bunch: some were tiny, but others grew as tall as humans, hunting large fish with their spear-like beaks. A combination of some dangling string, a tennis ball on a stick - or some fish - is proving hard for some penguins to resist. Some of the youngsters are really inquisitive: anything new in their enclosure is almost like a challenge and they want to be the first ones to try it out, she explains. She's hoping all this hard work will shed light on these birds. I work with them every day, and I wonder about their way of moving - their distinctive waddle is just amazing.