UNDP projects aim at better life in developing countries.

UNDP projects aim at better life in developing countries These are among the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) projects implemented in 1984 to help developing countries move towards a better way of life. Through its Global and Interregional Programme, UNDP has targeted priority areas for development assistance: agriculture, water supply and sanitation, special public works, housing and health, and energy assessment and management. A few examples of UNDP work in these areas follow:

Agriculture: Agriculture and its related subsectors remain the dominant priority in UNDP global programming. In 1984, research and training in this area was carried out by affiliated centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research and other international research institutions.

The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics began work in genetic breeding to improve food crop varieties. By 1984, using $12 million of UNDP assistance, the Institute had developed a germplasm bank of 23,000 strains of sorghum and 13,000 strains of millet, staple foods for an estimated 780 million people living at subsistence level.

To increase the efficiency of nitrogen and phosphorous fertilizers and promote their more effective use, UNDP supports the International Fertilizer Development Centre. One project aims to develop a urea supergranule to boost rice production by as much as 30 to 50 per cent over levels attainable through use of conventional fertilizers.

Other major agricultural initiatives supported by UNDP in 1984 include the development of pest management techniques through biological control methods as an alternative to toxic chemical pesticides; and research on an effective vaccine against African animal trypanosomiasis, a disease transmitted by insects that can cause sleeping sickness. Trypanosomiasis affects livestock production in over 50 countries.

Disease control: Three thousand scientists in 125 countries through a special global programme for Tropical Disease Research and Training, are working to prevent, control and treat six diseases which kill and disable millions in the developing world. Since 1976, UNDP, the World Bank and the World Health Organization have supported research on malaria, schistosomiasis, filariasis, trypanosomiasis, leishmaniasis and leprosy.

Successes include: progres in developing vaccines against malaria and leprosy, affecting 800 million and 11 million people, respectively; improved drug therapy for schistosomiasis, a parasitic disease carried by water snails, which may result in kidney damage, bladder cancer and liver failure and which affects an estimated 200 million people in 70 countries; discovery that domestic and wild animals are "reservoirs" of trypanosome parasites and thus an important link in the transmission cycle of sleeping sickness, which affects some 20,000 new cases yearly. In Latin America, at least 10 million people are infected with Chagas' disease, one form of trypanosomiasis; and drug screening for more effective compounds to treat onchocerciasis (river blindness), a form of filariasis, which affects some 30 million West Africans.

Water and sanitation: Since 1980, UNDP, in conjunction with United Nations agencies, bilateral donors and the World Bank, has supported efforts in more than 70 developing countries to overcome acute water-related problems.

Because affordable water supplies for an estimated 1.5 billion people in rural areas will continue to be based on the improved design, manufacture and maintenance of efficient handpumps for use at the community level, UNDP added an additional $4 million to its global handpump development project with the World Bank, bringing total commitments by 1984 to more than $8 million. To date, 23 different types of handpumps have been completed.

Teaching developing country personnel the benefits and uses of alternative water and sanitation technologies remains a major priority of the programme. Many developing countries are also working on recycling household and commercial wastes.

The Special Public Works Programme, sponsored by UNDP and the International Labour Organisation, provides immediate employment while creating vital irrigation systems, water supplies, roads and other works which in turn generate long-term employment. By 1984, special public works programmes were responsible for: irrigating more than 8,500 hectares of land worldwide; conserving and reforesting another 16,000 hectares in areas at risk; constructing and/or repairing over 1,800 kilometres of rural roads and tracks; and building 107 community and health centres and 102 housing units.

Energy: UNDP and the World Bank are assessing the most serious energy problems of individual developing countries, an exercise scheduled to be nearly completed by 1986, and focusing on sub-Saharan Africa.

In Mauritius, a pre-feasibility study supported by France is being undertaken to expand the use of bagasse for electricity generation. (Bagasse is the residue left after a product has been extracted.) In Sudan, pre-investment work by the World Bank focuses on petroleum development prospects and a proposed internal power project in the Blue Nile grid.