Bees and millennium development goals

Few years back, the United Nations set certain parameters to measure the effect of governance on human development in poor countries particularly Sub-Saharan Africa bedeviled with deepening poverty. Tagged Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), they cover critical areas like child and maternal mortality, hunger, poverty, gender inequality and economic deprivation for women, HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases and environmental degradation. With year 2015 set for the attainment of these goals just one year away, human development is still at its lowest ebb in Nigeria and many other African countries. The latest report on the MDG showed that poverty had risen in Nigeria and Zimbabwe as only 10 African nations had halved their poverty rates. Child mortality rates also rise in sub Saharan Africa, which has 34 of the world’s 36 countries with child mortality rates above 100 per 1,000 births. Deaths of under-five children caused by pneumonia and neonatal infections in Nigeria every year are 177,000 and 284,000 respectively. Severe bleeding after child birth kills 100,000 women each year with vast majority of these deaths occurring in Nigeria and other African countries. The worsening state of human development in Nigeria is not surprising. How can Nigeria attain MDGs without addressing the inadequacies in her socio-economic set-up? Is it possible to eradicate extreme hunger and poverty with food importation and oil-dependent economy? Oil is not only an exhaustible resource; its job creation potential is also grossly limited. Only the expatriates and few Nigerian elite get jobs/secured livelihoods in the nation’s oil industry. Yet, the main target audience of MDGs lives in the rural areas and earns their livelihoods from agriculture, which has been neglected by successive governments. Consequently, about 80 per cent of people in rural Nigeria particularly women wallow in abject poverty with hunger and malnutrition being the greatest facets of their deprivations. In other words, it is practically impossible to eradicate hunger and poverty without putting life into the nation’s agricultural sector. Agriculture is the bedrock of sustainable economic development and growth in Africa. Interestingly, beekeeping is the life wire of agriculture in all its ramifications. The bees make critical contributions to both crop farming and animal husbandry. If the American farmers rely on farm mechanisation and honeybee pollination to feed more people each year using less land, how can Nigeria boost food production to eradicate hunger without at least one of these two factors? Aside its indispensable role in crop production, beekeeping is also a veritable poverty reduction measure that can turn around the economic misfortunes of the poor rural and urban dwellers. It generates income through honey production, boosts crop yields and farmers’ income by as much 50 per cent. Beekeeping is also a veritable tool to create jobs for urban dwellers especially youth. MDGs are not attainable without curtailing the unbridled exploitation of natural resources in the rural areas. For instance, deforestation causes soil degradation, reduces valuable pollinators and exacerbates rural poverty and food insecurity. But beekeeping can help stem deforestation in our rural communities. How? By providing incentives in form of regular income from honey and increased crop yields, beekeeping offers sustainable income generating options to indiscriminate cutting trees for firewood and charcoal prevalent in our rural communities. And since rural beekeepers need plants to produce honey for food and income, continued deforestation is tantamount to destroying their economic base. In effect, massive deforestation in the rural areas cannot be halted by mere campaign and legislation, but by sustainable and viable economic activity like beekeeping in which the rural people are stakeholders. Beekeeping is less demanding of land and capital, farmer’s time and does not require rigour like crop farming, thus making it the most ideal vocation to empower the rural women who constitute the bulk of the poor and malnourished in Nigeria. Another target of the MDGs is to improve child and maternal health. But how can Nigeria achieve this with a healthcare system that is largely based on treatment with drugs? Elsewhere, the improvement of child and maternal health is not achieved with only well equipped hospitals, but largely with adequate supply of wholesome and affordable foods. Though every nation needs functional and well equipped hospitals, it does not take precedence over adequate supply of wholesome food in the hierarchy of human needs. Unarguably, nutrition is the bedrock of healthcare because food is the best preventive medicine against the major causes of infant and maternal deaths including diarrhoea, anaemia, dysentery, respiratory infections, protein deficiency and excessive bleeding after child birth. The fact that child malnutrition was a key component of issues discussed at the G8 summit in Canada underscored the indispensable role of nutrition in stemming child and maternal deaths. Otherwise, how will well equipped teaching and general hospitals stem high infant and maternal deaths, 60 per cent of which are attributed to malnutrition? According to experts, over 10 million Nigerian children are undernourished. In fact, it is inconceivable that honey, one of the most powerful food-medicines, which medical doctors in the United States use to improve health and well being of people, is not explored in the implementation of MDGs in Nigeria. Honey is not just good at preventing diseases, its efficacy against major killers of under-five children like anemia, diarrhea, dysentery, respiratory infections and whooping cough had been scientifically validated, according to Honey-Health and Therapeutic Qualities, a publication of the National Honey Board, USA. Honey has also been found to be of great value to infants especially as a supplement added to cereals, natural fruit juice and water. In the case of premature babies and infants at risk, honey improves weight gain, growth, hemoglobin formation, calcium retention, relief from constipation and diarrhea. Studies at the University of Minnesota, USA confirmed these observations and medical doctors there say honey should be more widely used to maintain the children’s health. The Honey Research Unit of the University of Waikato, New Zealand, found honey to be effective in treating bacterial gastroenteritis in infants. Used in place of glucose in an oral re-hydration fluid, it was found to be as effective as glucose in achieving re-hydration, while the antibacterial activities cleared the infection in bacterial diarrhea. Honey’s anti-bleeding properties can also help stem avoidable death of women due to bleeding after child birth. But while honey’s astounding health benefits are ignored in Nigeria, despite her parlous healthcare system, medical doctors operating under the aegis of Committee for the Promotion of Honey and Health Incorporated in the United States are educating Americans on how to promote health and healing with honey. In other words, without honey as the pivot of primary healthcare in Nigeria, it’s impossible to reduce infants and maternal deaths. . How can Nigeria combat HIV/AIDS without addressing the deepening poverty amongst her citizenry? It is incontrovertible that unemployment, poverty, low agricultural output and malnutrition fuel the spread of HIV infections in Nigeria and other sub Saharan Africa. Therefore given the linkage of poverty to continued spread of HIV/AIDS, bee resource has the greatest potential to combat this scourge. Why and how? Nutrition is undisputedly a key component of HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, and beekeeping is an indispensable catalyst to food production. Beekeeping is also a veritable tool to empower the low income groups in both rural and urban areas. In addition, beekeeping also provides excellent natural drugs for the treatment of HIV/AIDS. According to a White Paper on Honeybee Genome Project HBGP in the US, “many of the compounds identified in the bee venom notably mellitin and apamin have therapeutic potential for cancer, sleep disorders, learning and memory enhancement, Parkinson’s disease, HIV/AIDS associated dementia and schizophrenia”. Honey also offers great therapeutic value to people living with HIV/AIDS. For instance, a study reported in the Scientific World Journal indicated that honey decreased prostaglandin levels and elevated nitric oxide (NO) – end product, percentage of lymphocytes, platelet count and serum protein, albumin and copper levels in a 40 year old woman with history of AIDS.