Showing posts with label disease. Show all posts
Showing posts with label disease. Show all posts
01 March 2012
28 February 2012
Colonialism in Africa helped launch the HIV epidemic a century ago
We are unlikely to ever know all the details of the birth of the AIDS epidemic. But a series of recent genetic discoveries have shed new light on it, starting with the moment when a connection from chimp to human changed the course of history
By Craig Timberg and Daniel Halperin | The Washington Post | Feb 28, 2012
To export ivory and rubber from what is now Cameroon, traders created routes that enabled the first cases of HIV to reach large population centers. This photograph is from a collection by Alice Seeley Harris and her husband, John Harris, who were missionaries in the Belgian Congo at the turn of the century. They documented the horrific abuses of the indigenous people of the Congo by Belgian King Leopold II's regime. Anti-Slavery International/PANOS
Read more...
Sphere: Related Content
12 February 2012
Global Fund Fights AIDS, TB and Malaria
The long-awaited shake-up in the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (the Fund) finally became operational this month with the assumption of office of Gabriel Jaramillo, a former leading banker, as the new general manager. The change followed various unflattering audit reports of the Fund operations in some recipient countries that suggested money lost to corrupt practices and lax oversight
Chinua Akukwe | World Press | February 6, 2012
A pregnant Sudanese woman being treated for Malaria in a health center in Nyala. (Photo: Raul Touzon, National Geographic Society, Corbis)
Read more...
Sphere: Related Content
27 December 2011
Philippines floods death toll nears 1,500
The death toll from flash floods that swept away entire villages in the southern Philippines climbed to nearly 1,500 today, as authorities widened their search for bodies
Associated Press in NZHerald.co.nz | Dec 27, 2011
Read more... Sphere: Related Content
Flash flood victims cross a river after receiving relief goods in Iligan city, southern Philippines on Christmas day. Photo / AP
20 December 2011
Somalia Remains the Worst Humanitarian Crisis in the World
The drought and famine in the Horn of Africa continues, with the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net) recently confirming that the famine in the Middle Shabelle, as well as among internally displaced populations in Afgoye and the Somali capital of Mogadishu, will continue through the end of the year. The result is a humanitarian crisis that has left an estimated 250,000 people at risk of imminent starvation
By William J. Garvelink, Farha Tahir | Center for Strategic and International Studies | Dec 16, 2011
Read more... Sphere: Related Content
19 December 2011
The news is terrible. Is the world really doomed?
The economy's bust, the climate's on the brink and even the arts are full of gloom. Has there ever been an era so bleak?
Andy Beckett | guardian.co.uk | 18 December 2011
Read more... Sphere: Related Content
End of the world as we know it? Photograph: Ryan McGinnis/Alamy
06 November 2011
Fatty Foods Addictive as Cocaine in Growing Body of Science
Cupcakes may be addictive, just like cocaine
By Robert Langreth and Duane D. Stanford | Bloomberg | Nov 2, 2011
If fatty foods and snacks and drinks sweetened with sugar and high fructose corn syrup are proven to be addictive, Big Food may face the most drawn-out consumer safety battle since the anti-smoking movement took on the tobacco industry a generation ago. Photographer: Denis Stenderchuck/Getty Images
Read more... Sphere: Related Content
Cupcakes sit on display at a bakery in New York. Photographer: Rich Press/Bloomberg
22 October 2011
Gov'ts Fail to Invest in Hungriest, Poorest Regions
For millennia, people have coped with drought in the Horn of Africa, comprised mainly of drylands. Yet today, more than 13 million people there are starving because of political instability, poor government policies and failure to invest in the world's poorest people, say experts here in Changwon
By Stephen Leahy | IPS | Oct 21, 2011
Read more... Sphere: Related Content
Bashir Nwer of Libya and Chencho Norbu, Bhutan, at the United Nations Conference to Combat Desertification in Changwon, South Korea. Credit: Franx Dejon/IISD Reporting Services
07 April 2010
UNICEF sounds alarm bells over water
More than 1 million children under the age of 5 die from complications from poor sanitation and a lack of clean water, U.N. agencies said in Dubai
United-Press International | April 6, 2010
A report from the U.N. Children's Fund, UNICEF, found that 1.5 million children across the world die every year from diarrhea because of unsafe water and poor sanitary conditions.
UNICEF said there are roughly 300 million school days lost each year to diarrhea. Improved hygiene and better sanitation, the report said, could not only increase school attendance but also stimulate local economies.
The humanitarian agency said many schools in developing countries lack the resources needed to provide clean water and sanitation facilities for their students.
"Millions of children in the developing world go to schools which have no drinking water or clean latrines -- basic things that many of us take for granted," Sigrid Kaag, the agency's regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in Dubai.
The report, UNICEF said, is a call to action to school and community organizers that water is a key health issue.
"Every child has the right to be in a school that offers safe water, healthy sanitation and hygiene education," said Kaag.
© 2010 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Read more... Sphere: Related Content24 February 2010
Niger: Over 7 Million People Facing Food Insecurity Owing to Bad Harvest, Warns UN
More than 7 million people in Niger, which last week saw its Government overthrown in a coup d'état, are facing food insecurity, the United Nations health agency warned today
UN News Service in AllAfrica.com | 23 February 2010
Some 2.7 million, or one in five households, were severely food insecure and another 5.1 million were moderately food insecure, Paul Garwood of the World Health Organization (WHO) told reporters in Geneva.
"More than half the population [of 7.7 million] was estimated to have less than two months worth of food stocks to survive until the next harvest in October," he stated.
Mr. Garwood added that in the first weeks of 2010, nearly 29,000 cases of global acute malnutrition had been reported. In response, Niger's authorities had recently launched a support plan to improve food safety and prevent malnutrition and to treat cases of malnutrition of children aged under five.
Acute malnutrition affected more than 12 per cent of children in this age group in Niger, he noted, adding that WHO is seeking around $659,000 for emergency nutrition intervention for children under five.
In addition, WHO is supporting the training of seven trainers in Agadez on the new protocols on the treatment of people with acute malnutrition, and these trainers will in turn train almost 80 people.
Meanwhile, the UN is working closely with its partners, including the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union (AU), to help resolve the crisis in the country which began when renegade soldiers stormed the presidential palace last Thursday with the stated aim of returning Niger to democracy.
Copyright © 2010 UN News Service. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
Read more... Sphere: Related Content31 January 2010
East Timor Declares War on Leprosy
Chad Bouchard | VOA News | 30 January 2010
East Timor is one of the few remaining countries where leprosy is endemic, and one of only two in Asia where it has yet to be eliminated. The government has declared war on leprosy, and vows to eliminate it this year.
Florindo di Silva started feeling pain in his eyes four years ago. The 60-year-old father of six says he went to a doctor in the East Timor capital, Dili, but no treatment was available. The disease that caused di Silva to lose vision, and his hands and toes to go numb - turned out to be leprosy.
He says he can walk a little bit, he can chop wood, but it hurts. Right now, his hands cannot do anything. Di Silva says his eyes and head hurt every day, and he is not strong enough to cut coconuts with a knife.
According to the World Health Organization, di Silva is one of about 1,300 new cases of leprosy that have been detected in East Timor since 2004.
Health officials say the number of undocumented people living with disabilities caused by leprosy is likely three times higher.
Some progress has been made. In 2004, the overall ratio of infection was 4.7 per 10,000 people. In 2009, that fell to 1.3 per 10,000.
The decline is due in large part to a program that blanketed the country with hundreds of health ministry staff members able to diagnose and manage the disease.
One of those health workers, Jose Pereira, works at a clinic where he monitors di Silva and about 12 other patients with leprosy.
Pereira says if his patients do not come to the clinic to get medicine, he goes to their houses in the villages to give them medicine. But, he says, they often ask for food, and he does not have any to give, and it is very difficult.
Leprosy is relatively easy to treat with a cocktail of antibacterial drugs known as multidrug therapy. After taking the medicine for one month, patients are no longer contagious, and damage from the disease stops for good after a few months.
Poverty - a key challenge
But poverty is a key barrier to eliminating the disease. Natalie Smith, the country leader for the Leprosy Mission in East Timor, says the bacteria that causes the disease is endemic here, and flourishes in a population that is largely isolated, malnourished and living in unsanitary conditions.
"It really thrives where there's poverty, poor sanitation, poor diet and poor hygiene and those sort of contribute to affect the people living in that environment's immune system, so when their immune system is compromised, they're more susceptible to catching leprosy," said Smith.
In rural East Timor, where about three quarters of the country's 1.1 million residents live, diagnosing patients and ensuring treatment remains a challenge. Smith says failing to identify the disease and treat it perpetuates a crushing cycle of poverty.
"I think it needs to be a priority because of the disability that it produces. And there's been a lot of studies on the burden of disability now and the fact that if people with disabilities are assisted and helped they can actually add to a country's economic viability rather than economic demise. But the longer we delay in treating someone, the more likely they're going to get nerve damage and that's going to lead to long-term disability," she said.
Leprosy campaign
The government has vowed to eliminate the disease this year. The head of East Timor's Leprosy Program at the Ministry of Health, Jose Liu Fernandes, says to do that, the government has begun a radio and television campaign about the disease and how to prevent it.
He says East Timorese do not yet know enough about the disease, so they are surprised when they contract it. Fernandes says they need to teach people that if they start feeling numbness in their hands, it could be leprosy.
In many countries, people with leprosy are shunned and face a lifetime of isolation.
But Salvador Amaral, with the World Health Organization, says there is no such stigma in East Timor. Salvador says traditionally here, leprosy is not considered to be a disease, but a result of eating certain foods, like fish, or a curse from God.
Back in the outskirts of Dili, 22-year-old Joao Godinho Sarmento recounts how he started noticing light patches on his arms six years ago. It turned out to be early signs of leprosy. Doctors caught the disease before it caused serious disability.
Sarmento says his life is pretty normal. He does not have problems at school, and no one considers him to be different or disabled. He hopes other people who have this disease can realize they are not different from anyone else.
Sarmento studies mathematics at the national university, and hopes to become a teacher or an engineer.
You are welcome to use any material that is published by voanews.com, or you may link to any of the web pages that Voice of America has published on the internet. There is no need to request further permission
Read more... Sphere: Related Content17 January 2010
HAITI: As Aid Efforts Flounder, Haitians Rely on Each Other
The roof of Haiti's national penitentiary is missing. The four walls of the prison rise up and break off, leaving only the empty sky overhead
By Ansel Herz | Inter-Press Service | Jan 15, 2010
A view of the Haitian National Penitentiary in Port-au-Prince following the powerful Jan. 12 earthquake. Credit:UN Photo/Logan Abassi
The gate to the jail in downtown Port-Au-Prince is wide open; the prisoners and police are all gone. Bystanders walk freely in and out, stepping over the still-hot smoldering remains of the facility's ceiling.
The 7.0 magnitude earthquake on Tuesday afternoon broke it to pieces.
"I don't know if he's alive or not alive," said Margaret Barnett, whose son was a prisoner. "My house is crushed down. I'm just out in the street looking for family members."
"Where is the help?" she asked. The former government employee spits the question again and again, hands on her hips. "Where is the help? Is the U.N. really here? Does America really help Haiti?"
In the absence of any visible relief effort in the city, the help came from small groups of Haitians working together. Citizens turned into aid workers and rescuers. Lone doctors roamed the streets, offering assistance.
The Red Cross estimates that 45,000 to 50,000 people were killed in Tuesday's earthquake, with some three million others left homeless and in need of food and water.
At the crumbling national cathedral, a dozen men and women crowded around a man swinging a pickaxe to pry open the space for a dusty, near-dead looking woman to squeeze through and escape.
The night of the quake, a group of friends pulled bricks out from under a collapsed home, clearing a narrow zig-zagging path towards the sound of a child crying out beneath the rubble.
Two buildings over, Joseph Matherenne cried as he directed the faint light of his cell phone's screen over the bloody corpse of his 23-year-old brother. His body was draped over the rubble of the office where he worked as a video technician. Unlike most of the bodies in the street, there was no blanket to cover his face.
Central Port-Au-Prince resembles a war zone. Some buildings are standing, unharmed. Those that were damaged tended to collapse completely, spilling into the street on top of cars and telephone poles.
In the day following the quake, there was no widespread violence. Guns, knives and theft weren't seen on the streets, lined only with family after family carrying their belongings. They voiced their anger and frustration with sad songs that echoed throughout the night, not their fists.
"Only in the movies have I seen this," said 33-year-old Jacques Nicholas, who jumped over a wall as the house where he was playing dominoes tumbled. "When Americans send missiles to Iraq, that's what I see. When Israel do that to Gaza, that's what I see here."
Late at night, Nicholas heard false rumours that a tsunami was coming and he joined a torrent of people walking away from the water.
Nobody knows what to expect. Some people said Haiti needs a strong international intervention - a coordinated aid effort from all the big countries. But there was no evidence on the streets of any immediate cavalry of rescue workers from the United States and other nations.
"My situation is not that bad," said Nicholas, "but overall the other people's situation is worse than mine. So it affects me. Everybody wants to help out, but we can't do nothing."
Haitians are doing only what they can. Helping each other with their hands and the few tools they can find, they lack the resources to coordinate a multi-faceted reconstruction effort.
U.N. agencies and humanitarian organisations on the ground are struggling to help survivors of the quake, but many are hindered by large-scale damage to their own facilities, as well as lack of heavy equipment to clear rubble.
Logistics remained the main obstacle on Friday, according to news reports, with damage to the main airport, impassable roads and problems at the docks continuing to bottleneck the outpouring of international relief workers and basic supplies.
The United Nations is issuing a flash appeal Friday for more aid as part of a coordinated immediate response and long-term reconstruction plan.
A popular radio host here reminded everyone that the strength of the Haitian people cannot be underestimated, posting on his Twitter: "We can re-build! We overcame greater challenges in 1804" - the year Haiti threw off the yoke of colonial slavery in a mass revolt.
As the days tick by and the bodies pile up, it will take bold vision and hard work on that scale for Haiti to recover from Tuesday's tremors.
Copyright © 2010 IPS-Inter Press Service. All rights reserved
Read more... Sphere: Related Content15 January 2010
Floods, winds cause havoc in several areas
Jon Afrizal and Wahyoe Boediwardhana | Jakarta Post in ReliefWeb | 15 Jan 2010
Some parts of Java, Sumatra and Sulawesi were engulfed by floods and whirlwinds Thursday, causing destruction in the affected areas.
In Malang regency, East Java, a bridge on the main Malang-Kediri and Malang-Jombang highways collapsed after their supporting pillars were swept away by the bloating Konto River in Ngeprih hamlet, Bendosari village, Pujon district in Malang, on Wednesday night.
As a result, traffic from Malang to Kediri and Jombang had to be rerouted dozens of kilometers through either Blitar or Surabaya.
Pujon district chief Hablul Matin said the support pillars of the bridge, built in 1970, had collapsed after being pounded by the swelling Konto River due to heavy rains from Wednesday until Thursday morning.
"The bridge is highly vital for motorists as it cuts the distance from Malang to Kediri or Jombang by up to around 80 kilometers."
Head of the technical department of the East Java Public Works Office Pitoyo Wasis said Thursday the pillars of the bridge had sunk by 50 centimeters.
In Situbondo, East Java, seven districts were engulfed by floods originating from the Argopuro mountain slopes after heavy rains poured over the regency since Wednesday afternoon until midnight.
Two bridges, each in Curah Suri village, Jatibanteng district and Sumberanyar village, Mlandingan district, and river embankments were damaged by the floods.
In Jambi, a number of schools in Sekernan district in Muarojambi regency, were forced to suspend their schooling activities after the Batanghari River burst its banks and swamped the area.
Elementary school students have to wade in water as high as an adult's knee to get to their classrooms.
A number of students said they refused to study because they did not feel comfortable. Besides being wet, they said their feet also felt itchy.
The principal of SD 118 state elementary school in Pematang Pulai village, Kemas Hasan, said he had to use a boat to get to the classroom.
He said he would put first and second graders on leave for two days as the flood level had risen and no longer safe to them, while the others would remain in school as usual.
There was a similar situation at the SD 50 state elementary school in Berembang village, where two classrooms could no longer be used.
During recess, a number of students splashed around in the floodwater.
School principal Sahrul said the flooding had not disrupted activities, adding that students only faced difficulties to get to the library due to the depth of the water.
In Makassar, South Sulawesi, at least 70 houses were damaged after being hit by whirlwinds in two districts — Ujung Tanah and Tallo.
"It was like thunder and it lasted only for three minutes. We then became aware that it was a whirlwind," said Zainuddin, the Pattingaloang village head in Ujung Tanah.
Besides the whirlwind, floods have also submerged some areas, including public facilities and farmland, in Makassar.
"Today, flooding and whirlwinds have damaged tens of houses," said Hakim Syahrani of the Makassar disaster mitigation coordinating board.
"The residents whose houses were inundated have to be evacuated."
Luthfiana Mahmudah and Andi Hajramurni contributed to this story from Jember and makassar
Read more... Sphere: Related Content13 January 2010
The Holocaust We Will Not See
Avatar half-tells a story we would all prefer to forget
By George Monbiot | the Guardian in Monbiot.com | 11th January 2010
Avatar, James Cameron’s blockbusting 3-D film, is both profoundly silly and profound. It’s profound because, like most films about aliens, it is a metaphor for contact between different human cultures. But in this case the metaphor is conscious and precise: this is the story of European engagement with the native peoples of the Americas. It’s profoundly silly because engineering a happy ending demands a plot so stupid and predictable that it rips the heart out of the film. The fate of the native Americans is much closer to the story told in another new film, The Road, in which a remnant population flees in terror as it is hunted to extinction.
But this is a story no one wants to hear, because of the challenge it presents to the way we choose to see ourselves. Europe was massively enriched by the genocides in the Americas; the American nations were founded on them. This is a history we cannot accept.
In his book American Holocaust, the US scholar David Stannard documents the greatest acts of genocide the world has ever experienced(1). In 1492, some 100m native peoples lived in the Americas. By the end of the 19th Century almost all of them had been exterminated. Many died as a result of disease. But the mass extinction was also engineered.
When the Spanish arrived in the Americas, they described a world which could scarcely have been more different from their own. Europe was ravaged by war, oppression, slavery, fanaticism, disease and starvation. The populations they encountered were healthy, well-nourished and mostly (with exceptions like the Aztecs and Incas) peacable, democratic and egalitarian. Throughout the Americas the earliest explorers, including Columbus, remarked on the natives’ extraordinary hospitality. The conquistadores marvelled at the amazing roads, canals, buildings and art they found, which in some cases outstripped anything they had seen at home. None of this stopped them from destroying everything and everyone they encountered.
The butchery began with Columbus. He slaughtered the native people of Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic) by unimaginably brutal means. His soldiers tore babies from their mothers and dashed their heads against rocks. They fed their dogs on living children. On one occasion they hung 13 Indians in honour of Christ and the 12 disciples, on a gibbet just low enough for their toes to touch the ground, then disembowelled them and burnt them alive. Columbus ordered all the native people to deliver a certain amount of gold every three months; anyone who failed had his hands cut off. By 1535 the native population of Hispaniola had fallen from 8m to zero: partly as a result of disease, partly as a result of murder, overwork and starvation.
The conquistadores spread this civilising mission across central and south America. When they failed to reveal where their mythical treasures were hidden, the indigenous people were flogged, hanged, drowned, dismembered, ripped apart by dogs, buried alive or burnt. The soldiers cut off women’s breasts, sent people back to their villages with their severed hands and noses hung round their necks and hunted Indians with their dogs for sport. But most were killed by enslavement and disease. The Spanish discovered that it was cheaper to work Indians to death and replace them than to keep them alive: the life expectancy in their mines and plantations was three to four months. Within a century of their arrival, around 95% of the population of South and Central America had been destroyed.
In California during the 18th Century the Spanish systematised this extermination. A Franciscan missionary called Junipero Serra set up a series of “missions”: in reality concentration camps using slave labour. The native people were herded in under force of arms and made to work in the fields on one fifth of the calories fed to African-American slaves in the 19th century. They died from overwork, starvation and disease at astonishing rates, and were continually replaced, wiping out the indigenous populations. Junipero Serra, the Eichmann of California, was beatified by the Vatican in 1988. He now requires one more miracle to be pronounced a saint(2).
While the Spanish were mostly driven by the lust for gold, the British who colonised North America wanted land. In New England they surrounded the villages of the native Americans and murdered them as they slept. As genocide spread westwards, it was endorsed at the highest levels. George Washington ordered the total destruction of the homes and land of the Iroquois. Thomas Jefferson declared that his nation’s wars with the Indians should be pursued until each tribe “is exterminated or is driven beyond the Mississippi”. During the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864, troops in Colorado slaughtered unarmed people gathered under a flag of peace, killing children and babies, mutilating all the corpses and keeping their victims’ genitals to use as tobacco pouches or to wear on their hats. Theodore Roosevelt called this event “as rightful and beneficial a deed as ever took place on the frontier.”
The butchery hasn’t yet ended: last month the Guardian reported that Brazilian ranchers in the western Amazon, having slaughtered all the rest, tried to kill the last surviving member of a forest tribe(3). Yet the greatest acts of genocide in history scarcely ruffle our collective conscience. Perhaps this is what would have happened had the Nazis won the second world war: the Holocaust would have been denied, excused or minimised in the same way, even as it continued. The people of the nations responsible – Spain, Britain, the US and others – will tolerate no comparisons, but the final solutions pursued in the Americas were far more successful. Those who commissioned or endorsed them remain national or religious heroes. Those who seek to prompt our memories are ignored or condemned.
This is why the right hates Avatar. In the neocon Weekly Standard, John Podhoretz complains that the film resembles a “revisionist western” in which “the Indians became the good guys and the Americans the bad guys.”(4) He says it asks the audience “to root for the defeat of American soldiers at the hands of an insurgency.” Insurgency is an interesting word for an attempt to resist invasion: insurgent, like savage, is what you call someone who has something you want. L’Osservatore Romano, the official newspaper of the Vatican, condemned the film as “just … an anti-imperialistic, anti-militaristic parable”(5).
But at least the right knows what it is attacking. In the New York Times the liberal critic Adam Cohen praises Avatar for championing the need to see clearly(6). It reveals, he says, “a well-known principle of totalitarianism and genocide - that it is easiest to oppress those we cannot see”. But in a marvellous unconscious irony, he bypasses the crashingly obvious metaphor and talks instead about the light it casts on Nazi and Soviet atrocities. We have all become skilled in the art of not seeing.
I agree with its rightwing critics that Avatar is crass, mawkish and cliched. But it speaks of a truth more important - and more dangerous - than those contained in a thousand arthouse movies.
References:
1. David E Stannard, 1992. American Holocaust. Oxford University Press. Unless stated otherwise, all the historical events mentioned in this column are sourced to the same book.
2. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-miracle28-2009aug28,0,2804203.story
3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/09/amazon-man-in-hole-attacked
4. http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/017/350fozta.asp
5. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2802155/Vatican-hits-out-at-3D-Avatar.html
6. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/26/opinion/26sat4.html
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010
Copyright © 2006 Monbiot.com
Read more... Sphere: Related Content07 June 2009
World's poor overwhelmed by rubbish
guardian.co.uk, 5 June 2009
Read more... Sphere: Related Content
World Environment Day was established by the UN in 1972 to give a human face to environmental issues. But as these images show, developing countries suffer the worst effects of waste and pollution. Here, a trash-covered creek in Manila, Philippines, where slums often adjoin rubbish dumps. The country's poorest sift through the garbage to find discarded objects they can sell on or re-use, or even scraps of food to eat. Photograph: Francis R. Malasig/EPA
A Palestinian woman tries to walk along a road in Gaza so full of rubbish and sewage that even vehicles can no longer drive on it. Photograph: Sipa Press /Rex Features
A girl stands on the rubbish-strewn beach in Haina in the Dominican Republic. The New York-based non-profit Blacksmith Institute is sending researchers to 80 developing countries to find and assess many of the world's dirtiest industrial waste sites. The institute recently led a clean up of a battery site in Haina, in which much of the underlying soil was 35% lead, a pollutant that leads to severe learning disabilities in children. Photograph: Eduardo Munoz/Reuters
A woman carrying a baby discards waste water in the suburban area of Yoff outside Dakar, Senegal. According to Senegalese law it is illegal to dispose of garbage and waste water in public places. However, waste disposal facilities are inadequate, forcing many communities to dispose of their waste on public ground and in streams. The World Health Organisation estimates that most deaths and pathological complaints in developing countries are associated with a water-borne illnesses. Photograph: Nic Bothma/EPA
An employee works inside the Caivano dump, near Naples, southern Italy, where rubbish is turned into bales. Neapolitans took the law into their own hands after the city ran out of space to dump rubbish. Photograph: Salvatore Laporta/AP
Computer parts lie on the ground at a dump in Accra, Ghana. Thousands of discarded computers from western Europe and the US arrive in the ports of west Africa every day, ending up in massive toxic dumps where children burn and pull them apart to extract metals for cash. Photograph: Jane Hahn/EPA
A cow feeds on plastic bags and other garbage along a stream in New Delhi, India. Photograph: DAVID GUTTENFELDER/AP
A child swims in the polluted waters in Cilincing, one of the poorest communities of Jakarta in Indonesia which has very poor access to clean drinking water. Photograph: BEAWIHARTA/Reuters
A farmer collects produce grown close to a stream containing dozens of discarded cartons and other waste items in Xinlou village, north-east of Guangzhou, Guangdong province, China. Pollution has become the ugly face of China's rapid economic growth. As many as 300 million people drink contaminated water every day, and 190 million are suffering from water-related illnesses each year. Photograph: Alex Hofford/EPA
A huge mound of waste at a dump in New Orleans, a year after Hurricane Katrina struck. Photograph: Alex Brandon/AP
Farm waste and used pesticide containers pile up in a natural water reserve, which has become an illegal dump,according to environmental group Ecologistas en Accion, in El Ejido, south-east Spain. Photograph: Francisco Bonilla/Reuters
Birds on a tree among plastic materials in Changzhi, Shanxi province. Photograph: Stringer Shanghai/REUTERS
Men push goods past a pile of uncollected garbage in the Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya: Kibera, which houses almost 1 million people, is the largest slum in Africa, and one of the biggest in the world. It has only two main water pipes, and in most of the slums there is no sanitation, with one hole-in-the ground latrine being shared by up to 50 shacks. Photograph: KAREL PRINSLOO/AP
Sheep feed off rubbish left on one of Albania's biggest beach resorts of Durres. Photograph: Gent Shkullaku/AFP
A man removes garbage brought in by the rain in an open canal at the slum of Cite-Soleil in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Photograph: ARIANA CUBILLOS/AP
In this photo released by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, marine debris has been washed ashore on Laysan Island in the Hawaiian Islands. Photograph: NOAA/AP
Carrier bags from the British supermarket chain Tesco contribute to pollution in the Shunde district of Guangdong, China. Italian, Dutch and British waste is recycled in the area, but as many as 3bn plastic bags are used in China every day. Photograph: Richard Jones/Sinopix/Rex Features
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009
02 June 2009
The Coming Of Biofuels: Study Shows Reducing Gasoline Emissions Will Benefit Human Health
ScienceDaily, June 1, 2009
When it comes to transportation fuels, carbon-neutral biofuels as an alternative to gasoline are coming. While the focus of a shift from gasoline to biofuels has been on global warming, such a shift could also impact human health.
A grant from the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) has produced a novel and comprehensive “Life Cycle Impact Assessment” to measure the benefits on human health that might result from a switch to biofuels. Although there are a number of uncertainties that must be addressed for a more accurate picture, these early results show that a biofuel eliminating even 10-percent of current gasoline pollutant emissions would have a substantial impact on human health in this country, especially in urban areas.
“While the successful deployment of biofuels requires research to overcome technical barriers, there are other barriers that can often impose constraints more challenging than those related to technical feasibility, including constraints imposed by health risks,” says Thomas McKone, an expert on health risk assessments who holds a joint appointment with Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division and the University of California Berkeley’s School of Public Health. “Just think, if we had done a life cycle impact assessment on the human health effects of gasoline years ago we might not be in the situation we’re facing today.”
McKone is the co-leader of EBI’s Life-Cycle Environmental and Economic Decision-Making for Alternative Biofuels programs with Arpad Horvath, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley. At the recent 31st Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals, conducted by the Society for Industrial Microbiology and held in San Francisco, he described a biofuels Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) that he carried out in collaboration with Agnes Lobscheid, an environmental scientist who also holds joint appointments with Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley.
“In a typical LCIA, we evaluate the potential impact on human health and the environment of a product or activity holistically, by analyzing those effects over the entire life cycle of the product or activity,” McKone said in his presentation. “For biofuels, we will ultimately need to look at the overall human health and environmental impacts of biomass production, converting and processing this biomass into fuel, storing, transporting and distributing that fuel, and finally the actual combustion and use of the biofuel.”
EBI is a partnership between UC Berkeley, Berkeley Lab, the University of Illinois and BP, the energy corporation that has provided EBI with a 10-year $500-million grant. Part of its mission is to look into the environmental, social and economic dimensions of a transition to biofuels for transportation energy. In their initial LCIA, McKone and Lobscheid wanted to gain a better understanding of both life-cycle impacts and the distribution in space and time of these impacts for reduced gasoline use. To do this they first needed to define the factors that really matter for characterizing such impacts.
“For example, when looking at greenhouse gas emissions the key is to determine the total amount of emissions being vented into the atmosphere,” McKone said. “However, when looking at the release of toxic pollutants, where the pollutants are being released can be more important than how much or even how toxic.”
In preparing this LCIA on reduced gasoline use one of the biggest challenges faced by McKone and Lobscheid was the uncertainty factor in quantity, quality and relevance of their input data.
“Uncertainty was the elephant in the room for us,” McKone said. “For an LCIA there are two types of uncertainties, those due to variability in measurements and models, and those due to lack of knowledge. In our case, the data is not what we would like and it will take years to improve it.”
Nonetheless, McKone and Lobscheid were able to prepare an LCIA for reduced gasoline use based on the damage to human health that emissions from gasoline burning can cause. For a baseline, they used a 10-percent reduction in gasoline use. In assessing the impact of these emissions on human health they looked at “disability adjusted life years or “DALYs,” which is a combination of two common damage factors in LCIAs - years of life lost due to premature mortality (YLLs) and the equivalent years of life lost due to disability (YLDs). One DALY is equal to one lost year of “healthy” life. To put this into perspective, the total annual disease burden in the United States is about 30 million DALYs.
“In looking at emission impacts on health. we have the capacity to carry out county-level resolution measurements for both direct and indirect emissions,” said McKone in his SIM symposium presentation.
Measured emissions at county-level resolution included
direct particulate matter and indirect fine particles (2.5 micrometers in diameter or smaller) produced from emissions of sulfate and nitrite gases, volatile organic compounds and ammonia, plus ozone, toxic air pollutants, emissions to surface and ground water, and emissions to soil.
“We found that for the vehicle operation phase of our LCIA, the annual health damages avoided in the U.S. with 10-percent less gasoline-run motor vehicle emissions ranges from about 5,000 to 20,000 DALY, with most of the damage resulting from primary fine particle emissions,” said McKone. “While county-specific damages range over nine orders of magnitude across all U.S. counties most of the damage, as you would expect, is concentrated in urban populations with the highest impact in the Los Angeles, New York and Chicago regions.”
Large urban regions also suffered disproportionate health damage as a result of benzene emissions at service stations and during the transporting by truck of gasoline to service stations - approximately 930 DALYs.
“We need finer spatial resolution about the impacts and more data on emissions factors, even for gasoline, to remove some of the key uncertainties about how fuel switching plays,” said McKone, “but clearly impacts on human health should be a prime consideration in future fuel policy decisions.”
Adapted from materials provided by DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Copyright © 1995-2009 ScienceDaily LLC — All rights reserved
Read more... Sphere: Related Content26 May 2009
Climate Change Already Here And Getting Worse
BERNAMA, May 26, 2009 11:37 AM
MAPUTO, May 26 (Bernama) -- The Mozambican climate has been changing for the past 45 years, according to the first detailed study on the matter, unveiled here on Monday, by the country's relief agency, the National Disasters Management Institute (INGC).
The study on "Adaptation to Climate Change in Mozambique" shows that, between 1960 and 2005, temperatures rose by an average of between 1.1 and 1.6 degrees centigrade, Mozambique's news agency (AIM) reported.
"The number of cold night and cold days has fallen, and the number of warm nights and warm days has increased, with the greatest changes occurring in the north of the country", says the study.
A further conclusion is that the rainy season is starting later than it used to. In some parts of northern Mozambique the rains begin 45 days later than was the case half a century ago.
Annual rainfall in southern Mozambique has been increasing - but this is more than cancelled out by increased consumption of water, notably for agriculture. The study warns that, even with an increased average flow of 15 per cent in the southern rivers, at the current population growth rate there will be a 64 per cent decrease in the availability of water per capita by 2050. With a larger population, consuming water at current rates, the Limpopo River, for instance, will be dry for most of the year.
In central Mozambique, the flow of the Zambezi River is predicted to decline, because of an expected reduction in rainfall in Zimbabwe and Zambia. The study notes that additional research is needed to assess the implications for the generation of electricity at the Cahora Bassa dam.
Cyclones are becoming more frequent and more intense. Between 1980 and 1993, Mozambique was hit by four cyclones, only one of which had wind speeds in excess of 100 kilometres an hour. But between 1994 and 2007, there were 11 cyclones, six of which were more devastating than any in the preceding period.
The worst was cyclone Eline in 2000, which reached wind speeds of over 180 kilometres an hour, and played a major role in the catastrophic flooding in southern Mozambique that year.
The data on sea level rise along the Mozambican coast is of poor quality, but consistent with global trends. A continuation of the current trends, the study suggests, will lead to a rise in sea level of between 10 and 20 centimetres by 2060, due largely to water expanding as it becomes warmer.
But current trends may not continue. If, as many scientists fear, there is massive melting of the polar ice caps, that could lead to catastrophic sea level rises. The study posits a scenario of "extreme increase" in which the sea level off the Mozambican coast rises by five metres by 2100. But the study's authors admit that this is largely guesswork: on the most alarming of all scenarios, the melting of the East Antarctic ice sheet, the sea level rise would be 55 metres.
The central city of Beira, large parts of which are already below sea level, is at serious risk. Currently Beira's sea defences will cope with a tidal surge of 3.4 metres. But a weather event where the water rises by 3.8 metres would overwhelm the defences. Such extreme events are expected once every five years now - and once every three years by 2030.
If the "extreme sea level increase" scenario occurs, Beira is doomed. By 2050, the higher parts of Beira will be an island, cut off from the rest of the country. That implies moving Beira port, and its connecting railways to somewhere safer.
The people too will have to move. "A strategy for organised evacuation must be drawn up", warned university researcher Rui Brito, who presented the study.
Other coastal cities do not face quite such a dramatic future. But Maputo port, and the city's coastal area are at risk, and much of the northern city of Pemba could disappear under the waves, if there is significant melting of the polar ice caps.
The researchers warn that, even today, Mozambique cannot cope with a major cyclone. Major investments in coastal protection are needed immediately. The longer the delay, the more expensive remedial action will become.
Speaking at the launch of the study, the Resident Representative of the United Nations System, Ndolamb Ngokwey, stressed the need to act speedily, and for all bodies involved to coordinate their efforts.
"Climate change will exacerbate the existing political and humanitarian problems, and will reduce access to water, with a direct impact on agriculture", he warned.
INGC General Director Joao Ribeiro told reporters that there will now be a second study to draw up specific action to be undertaken by each sector of the Mozambican state.
© 2009 BERNAMA. All Rights Reserved
Read more... Sphere: Related Content22 May 2009
Tomorrow’s weather: dysentery, pneumonia and malaria
A number of diseases are likely to increase in frequency due to climate change, especially in the poorest nations.
Morten Andersen, COP15 Copenhagen, 21/05/2009 13:45
Disease levels in some areas of Zambia may increase as much as four-fold due to climate change, according to research under the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). Some regions are expected to be hit by droughts, leading to increases in dysentery, while other regions are likely to be flooded, which will raise the levels of pneumonia and malaria.
The study, published in the latest issue of the IIED bulletin Tiempo, states that ”Zambia is currently saddled with a heavy burden of communicable climate-sensitive diseases (…) floods and droughts can increase disease levels in some affected areas by as much as 400 percent.”
The author of the study, George Kasali of Energy and Environmental Concerns for Zambia, comments:
”Almost all of these climate hazards will have a negative effect on health. Despite the increased frequency of these hazards in the last decade, Zambia has not yet developed any climate-informed policies for the health sector.”
The bulletin also carries studies from Benin and Bhutan, showing similar lack of preparedness.
”There is very little awareness of the potential impact of climate change on human health within health sectors in the Least Developed Countries. There have been very few assessments of how climate change will affect food security, access to water, flood risks and diseases such as malaria,” says Hannah Reid, a Senior Researcher at IIED.
COPYRIGHT 2008-2009
Read more... Sphere: Related Content16 May 2009
Nigeria: Flooding - Kano Warns Against Drainage Blocking
Abdulsalam Muhammad, AllAfrica.com, 15 May 2009
Kano state Government has called on residents in the state to guard against the indiscriminate dumping of refuse on the drainage pathways.
The commissioner in charge of Project Monito-ring, Alhaji Ibrahim Garba gave the advice while on inspection visit to Mandawa-ri area of the city. He explained that such kind of attitude posed health hazard to society.
Alhaji Ibrahim Garba stated that Kano State Government is making frantic efforts toward solving the perennial problem of flooding in the city and its environ, adding that every residents is expected to play a role in checking the menace.
The Commissioner decried indiscriminate dumping of refuse which in the end blocks drainage and culverts leading to devastating flooding each year. He called on city dwellers to imbibe the attitude of cleanliness.
Garba also called on the citizens to show concern on government activities by monitoring the execution of any project sited in their community with the view of achieving the best for the people.
Speaking earlier, the ward head of Mandawari, Zannuni Mohammed Lawan, called on the state government to provide refuse dump site in the area to check improper disposal of waste.
Lawan said that residents of the area resort to indiscriminate disposal of their domestic waste due to lack of an appropriate dumping site.
He, however, commended the state government for taking concrete measures toward solving the perennial flooding problem in the area which poses danger to their lives and property each year.
Copyright © 2009 Vanguard. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com)
Read more... Sphere: Related Content13 May 2009
Somalia 'worst drought in decade'
BBC News, Wednesday, 13 May 2009 08:20 UK
Some 3.2 million Somalis need life-saving food aid, says the UN
Somalia is facing its worst drought for at least a decade, says the UN.
Satellite surveys of rainfall and ground research show the drought's severity, said UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Somalia, Mark Bowden.
He said many cattle were dying from the lack of water, and that this was contributing to nearly half the population suffering from malnutrition.
Mr Bowden said humanitarian assistance to Somalia needed to start "increasing dramatically".
He said that Somalis were not currently dying of starvation but some 3.2 million of the population needed life-saving food assistance.
"We're now facing a drought in Somalia that is worse than people have seen for at least a decade," Mr Bowden said.
"Roughly 45% of the [Somali] population is suffering from moderate malnutrition."
In parts of central and southern Somalia, 24% of children under five suffer from acute malnutrition, he told a news briefing in Geneva.
Some 1.1 million people in Somalia have been driven from their homes because of conflict in recent years.
Since the weekend thousands of civilians have fled fierce fighting in the capital Mogadishu between Islamist militants and the government.
© MMIX
Read more...
Sphere: Related Content
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
