Beijing, with a population of over 20 million, has suffered from hazardous air pollution since last January, which has threatened the people greatly since the pollutants can cause fatal health problems.

On January 12, the air quality monitor run by the U.S. embassy in Beijing reported an air pollution level of 886, which directly indicated PM2.5 – a fine particulate less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter – is off its maximum level of 500. This warns that everyone should refrain from all physical activities outdoors. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the average concentrations of PM2.5 per cubic meter should not be more than 25 micrograms, yet the readings on some days in January exceeded 40 times of the standard.

The effect of the PM 2.5 is even more disastrous: The U.S. embassy Beijing air quality monitor website stated “PM 2.5 particulates are of concern since they are small enough to directly enter the lungs and even the blood stream,” and warned that ‘hazardous’ level of air quality can result in “Serious aggravation of heart or lung disease and premature mortality in persons with cardiopulmonary disease and the elderly; serious risk of respiratory effects in general population.”

Nonetheless, you did not need to check the Air Quality Index (AQI) to see how dreadful the air quality was. The darkness from the extreme dustiness lasted the whole afternoon on that day, and the thick dusty layers hindered sight within approximately 300 meters, where even the huge skyscrapers were hardly visible. “The smog was so thick that more than 50 flights were cancelled at Beijing Capital International Airport, causing chaos ahead of Chinese New Year, when city-dwellers travel to see relatives” reported the Independent on January 29. The effect of the ‘hazardous’ level of the air quality was immediate. Dr. Huang of the Beijing Shijitan hospital said in an interview with CBS News that the number of patients hospitalized because of chronic bronchitis or other respiratory illnesses had increased by 20% after the hazardous air quality days.

Yet, this catastrophic phenomenon did not just happen for an occasional day. Beijing has been besieged by the hazy and dusty skies for the last several months at a consistent level, and there have been only a few days of blue skies; the AQI reads under the degree of ‘Unhealthy’. Even China’s national newspaper, China Digital Times, published an article titled “Beijing Air Quality: Worse than SARS.”

As a response to the people’s outcry, the city government took urgent action. According to Bloomberg on the last January 29, Beijing decided to temporarily shut down the 103 factories around the city, and the government agencies and state-owned companies were commended to reduce vehicle use by 30% until the end of January.

The scenery of Beijing in the past months has been changed visibly. People started wearing PM 2.5-blocking masks outside, and frequently check AQI via the application on their mobile phones. The term ‘PM 2.5’ is often being discussed everywhere – in newspapers, television and people’s daily dialogue. Some companies distribute free 3M dust masks for college students on campus instead of their traditional marketing strategies of giving a small gift such as stationary.

It is estimated to affect the job market in Beijing as well. On April 1, Financial Times reported that the ‘Airpocalypse’ has made it difficult for companies to find international work talent, and many expatriates are planning to leave Beijing due to the concern for health. There are nearly 200,000 foreign residents in Beijing and many of the expats are professionals with high-earning jobs, which contribute greatly to the socio-economic development of the city, the news report said.

“Air pollution is a major problem in China because of the country’s rapid pace of industrialization, reliance on coal power, explosive growth in car ownership and the sometimes disregard for environmental laws,” said CNN news on January 19. China has been the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter since 2007, and approximately 70 percent of its total energy still comes from coal.

The 2012 Cancer Registry Annual Report showed that cancer-related mortality in China has increased by 465 percent in the past three decades and the lung cancer was the top cause among all the cancers.

According to the World Bank (WB) report, 20 cities in China listed on the 30 most polluted cities in the world. In the recent study by Greenpeace and Peking University’s School of Public Health, it is estimated that the exposure to PM2.5 caused more than 8,500 premature deaths in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Xi’an in 2012.

Image credit: People in Beijing via Flickr.com

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Sixteen are confirmed dead and thirty are in isolation in Kagadi hospital from the well-known and terrifying virus, Ebola.

Ebola is a viral infection related to HIV that is characterized by fever, body aches, rash, abdominal pain, and in most case violent hemorrhaging (bleeding from body openings). Similar to HIV, Ebola is spread only through contact with bodily fluids. Death rates from previous outbreaks range from 50-90% and there is no known cure or treatment except to treat the symptoms. Knowledge of the virus was made popular by the book The Hot Zone which was later the basis of the film ‘Outbreak.’

Ebola was originally discovered in 1976 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and is named after the Ebola River. Five strains, all named for regions, are known to exist: Zaire, Sudan, Cote d’Ivoire, Bundibugyo, Reston. This latest outbreak is the Sudan strain of the Ebola virus.

This outbreak has been centered in the Western region of Uganda and began in the city of Kibaale, about 100 miles from the capital, Kampala. The origin of the virus is unknown although the Kibaale Forest has a high concentration of monkeys and birds that are known transmitters of the disease.

The World Health Organization (WHO), United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Doctors Without Borders, and the Ugandan government are all working tirelessly to contain this outbreak. So far only two cases have been found far away from the original outbreak zone, one infected person was 200 miles outside of Kampala and had traveled from the area.

The other suspected case was in Eldoret, a large town in the Rift Valley in Kenya. Health officials are working on tracking down all 232 people who have had contact with the thirty individuals in isolation at the hospital and the sixteen who died originally.

Olimpia de la Rosa, the emergency coordinator for Doctors without Borders stated, “Right now there is no treatment for Ebola, so the most effective measure we can take is to contain the spread of the disease. That is why we need to start working immediately. Other cases need to be rapidly identified because containment is what can stop it.”

The thirty in isolation are currently only suspected to have the Ebola virus, although according to Dr. Dan Kyamanywa, at least three have been officially confirmed as having the virus.

Five of the thirty are prisoners from Kibaale prison and are showing the signs of vomiting, fever, and diarrhea. The rest of the cases will be verified when the blood samples return from the CDC labs in the US or the lab in Kampala (the only lab in Uganda capable of performing the analysis). Those with the virus – or just suspected to have it – are put in isolation and the medical personnel must wear many layers of protective gear.

Dr. Kyamanywa stated, “We do expect the number of suspected cases to increase. It’s important to break transmission and reduce the number of contacts that suspected cases have.”

According to the Ugandan Health Minister, Dr. Christine Ondoa, the outbreak initially went undetected because the patients only exhibited signs of fever and vomiting but no hemorrhaging, the most obvious symptom of the disease. The President of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, has asked Ugandans to refrain from handshaking, kissing, using public transport, having casual sex, and do-it-yourself burials.

The Ugandan government has also suffered from a lack of supplies. According to health official Stephen Mfashingabo, “There was no money from the Health Ministry to fund activities since this outbreak was confirmed and there was also no food.”

Many Ugandans are terrified about the outbreak. In 2000 another Ebola outbreak occurred, infecting 425 and killing more than half. Market day on Wednesday, August 1 was cancelled and many residents in Uganda are scared to go shopping, visit churches and mosques, or travel. Tumusiime Jamilo, a reporter for a local Ugandan station reported, “Fears of catching Ebola have twisted people’s lives. They can’t go to the markets to buy things, [others can’t] sell their products and that’s hitting their pockets.”

The thirty in the hospital twelve were admitted very recently. It is still unknown how effective the prevention methods have been.

Image Courtesy of  uusc4all

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In recent weeks, people in Kibaale, a western district of Uganda, have been troubled by a disease that has taken the lives of 14 out of the 20 reported cases and has many others leaving their homes in fear. Until now, the results of the tests have been inconclusive, with on-site analysts unable to identify the problem. It is confirmed that the deadly outbreak is the dreaded Ebola Virus.

World Health Organization (WHO) representative Joaquim Saweka told the Associated Press that “investigators were “not-so-sure” it was Ebola, and a Ugandan health official dismissed the possibility of Ebola as merely a rumor.” All of the evidence now points to this disease.

Common signs and symptoms of the disease are flu-like symptoms, including fever, nausea and vomiting, and a sore throat. This progresses to central nervous system problems like confusion, agitation, seizures, headaches, and occasionally a coma. A rare symptom (fewer than 10 percent of cases) is hemorrhaging of sites like the nose, gastrointestinal tract, or vagina, which gives Ebola the name Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever (EHF). It infects and kills the victim quickly.

The cause is still unknown, but some suspect the infection begins through contact with an infected animal. It is transferred between people through contact with infected secretions of the individual, such as blood or mucous. Relatives of a person who died from Ebola have often contracted the virus at bereaving ceremonies or coming into contact with the person’s belongings.

While there is no cure or vaccine for Ebola, officials are working now to isolate the individuals with it to stop the disease from spreading too far. Patients are being treated at the only major hospital in Kibaale. Stephen Byaruhanga, the districts health secretary, said “Being a strange disease, we were shocked to learn that it was Ebola. Our only hope is that in the past when Ebola broke out in other parts of Uganda it was controlled.”

The last outbreak, in 2000, left 224 dead in Uganda. Another outbreak left 37 dead in Bunibugyo, a district on the edge of the Congolese border. Officials in Kibaale hope to stop this strain before it reaches that point.

The only problem with their current isolation plan that Byaruhanga voices is that other people with diseases will not want to come to the hospital in fear of catching Ebola. Doctors and nurses on site are being asked to risk their lives in order to treat these patients. All remain hopeful that the virus will not spread.

Image Courtesy of  amref_france

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Ohio, U.S.A – The manufacturer of the nation’s first organic baby formula announced its expanded purity initiative to minimize or eliminate environmental contaminants known to be in the U.S. food supply, such as arsenic and other heavy metals, pesticide residues and hidden chemicals used in processing like hexane.

Nature’s One encourages other formula and baby food manufacturers to follow its lead utilizing the best science and technology to accomplish this goal.

“Anymore, it is not enough to talk about what is added to a formula to make it beneficial,” said Nature’s One CEO Jay Highman. “Instead, we need to talk about what is not in the formula or baby’s first foods. Unfortunately, many of these chemicals go undetected because they are not tested routinely, or are concealed under current labeling regulations. The company’s founding goal has always been to identify and eliminate toxins that may negatively impact human development.”

For example, according to a February 1, 2012 study, 15 infant formulas sold in the U.S. contained arsenic.  Researchers noted the type of arsenic when identified was nearly 100% inorganic arsenic; considered by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Drug Administration to be the most toxic form.

Nature’s One announced earlier this year that its formulas meet all world standards for inorganic arsenic in rice-based foods for infants – testing 58% to 73% lower than proposed world standards.  Arsenic is found in all drinking water, foods, infant formulas and even breast milk, according to the WHO. The U.S. has no current regulations for arsenic in food.

Nature’s One has innovated a USDA organic-compliant process to possibly eliminate detectable arsenic in organic brown rice syrup using modern testing equipment and methodologies. This allows Nature’s One to further proclaim the healthful benefits of organic brown rice syrup when compared to other carbohydrate sources like sucrose (table sugar) or glucose syrups (corn syrup) found in other organic and conventional formulas.

Since introducing the first organic formula in 1999 Nature’s One objective was to eliminate the use of pesticides, antibiotics, growth hormones, corn syrup, and more recently algae/fungus oils (DHA/ARA) and bisphenol-A (BPA).  The scope of this purity pledge has now expanded to include contaminants that transcend both organically and conventionally grown foods. Highman adds, “Our purity initiative has no ending point; eliminating or minimizing these toxins should be a goal for all companies who want to provide the very best in nutritional and developmental health.

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The humanitarian situation in South Kordofan that has garnered international concern, and which some have now exploited to push an agenda of intervention, prompted the formation of a joint assessment team composed of UN agencies (UNICEF, WFP, WHO, FAO), the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and NGOs. Their report just concluded that the humanitarian situation in the region is at “Normal levels” and that food security is “good” and stable for the conflict-affected population of 53,220.

The survey covered a sample of 53 villages in the region and found the levels of malnutrition among children under the age of five to be at 4.4 percent, a figure that is far below 15 percent which constitutes the United Nation’s rate of emergency. These sobering findings emphatically refute and contravene the claims of imminent catastrophe claimed by scaremongers.

These encouraging statistics are a function of the humanitarian interventions dispensed by the Government and partners aimed precisely at mitigating the impact of the conflict on the population. The assessment further notes the need for coordination between the humanitarian actors and recommends an extension of the period of food assistance in order to avoid shortages while concurrently generating programs for supplementary and therapeutic diet.

It also calls for creating quick impact projects in host communities to support farmers, pastoralists and traders. While the government and partners continue to provide assistance, there ultimately remains a security threat posed by the rebels who continue to launch attacks against civilians and deliberately destroy their livelihoods. Still, this stresses the need on all stakeholders and the peace-loving to pressure the rebels to abandon this destruction and pursue peace.

Sudan continues to call on South Sudan to recognize its negative role in this crisis and cease its support to the rebels. And in order for the U.S. and those pushing for an intervention to play a constructive role, they must look at the facts on the ground not the exaggerated allegations.

Image Courtesy of   http://www.flickr.com/photos/sossaheluk/

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On 12th January, 2010 Haiti experienced a new drama. An earthquake seven points of moment magnitude shocked the country leaving after it a trail of devastation and worst of all a stealth battle of ruthless numbers.

At the beginning of 2011, one year after the disaster, the Haitian government increased the initial death toll from 220.000 over 300.000 while the international community set a number lower than 100.000. They did it unexpectedly, without any previous comment and not defining the parameters and methodology used for the estimation.

Maybe they thought two hundred were not enough to boost international aid, and a bigger new headline of misery would have helped them to raise more funds. The math is obvious for Haitian rulers: higher victims mean more pity and shame which tends to increase international aid flowing into the country.

According to Inter-American Development Bank the earthquake caused damage estimated near 14 billion dollar, more than the country GDP, and somehow they need to put pressure on international donors both to increase the amount pledged, 5.3 billion dollars, and to speed the deliver into the country up.

It is believe that Haitian government had added into earthquake victims, among other, the subsequent 200.000 cholera infected and 4.000 dead. A rate that is still growing as of March 2011 rises to 300.000 with 5.000 deaths reported by WHO.The first cholera case appear months after the earthquake, it was reported on 14 October 2010 in the department of Artibonite, the country largest department located in the north-west side of the island, from where the disease quickly spread through Artibonite Rive affecting other departments.

Cholera is an infection of the intestine caused by a bacterium that causes diarrhea and vomiting which in severe cases can lead to death by dehydration due to an untreated patient may produce 10 liters of diarrheal fluid a day. The last cholera epidemic in Latin America started Peru in 1991, during the 7^th pandemic and after reach other countries but not Haiti, a country with none recorded cases previous 2010.

The earthquake caused massive population movements inside the country as in Cité l’Eternel, a neighborhood in Port-Au-Prince, home for tens of thousands of families who live crammed together in tiny shacks with no running water or proper sewage facilities. The mounds of garbage and the open sewers full of human waste are breeding grounds for cholera, typically transmitted by either contaminated food or water.

After a rapid spread the worst part took place between mid November and January, usually with more than 10.000 cases per week throughout the country, uncontrollable sometimes like the first week of the year when 14.000 cases just in Port-Au-Prince were reported.

While all this misery happens in Haiti, in the neighboring Dominican Republic were just 200 reported cases during the whole year, confirmed along the borderline, a gap which can be explained by their citizens’ wealth.  The GDP per capita is eight time higher in Dominican Republic than in Haiti, where just 96 dollars per year an person can be spent in health care.

Thus creating a risk profile for cholera within a population where 60 percent suffer from prevalence of undernourishment, 40 percent has no access to improved drinking water and just 20 percent has access to improved sanitation before the earthquake. The World Health Organization states also that cholera is one of the key indicators for social development.

While the disease no longer poses a threat to countries with minimum standards of hygiene, it remains a challenge to countries where access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation cannot be guaranteed. Almost every developing country faces cholera outbreaks or the threat of a cholera epidemic. As it can be imagined Africa nations head the rank.

With this outlook after the earthquake just NGOs were able to contain the epidemic, but it should be emphasized that dying by cholera is not easy with a minimum sanitation care. Around 75 percent  people infected do not become ill, but when illness does occur, 80 to 90 percent of episodes are of mild or moderate severity which can be treated with a simple treatment of oral hydration solutions, mere sugar and salt mix to be ingested costing about 10 cents the sachet.

For severe dehydration cases intravenous rehydration is necessary with mortality rate lower than 1 percent but untreated it raises over 50 percent. Moreover currently in the market two preventive vaccines are available; Dukoral and Sanchol, both with a protection close to 8o percent for the first two years and a cost between 1.50 to 5 dollars a dose.

Still, the cruel reality is that there is no money for everything and priorities have to be done. That is why some experts argue that a vaccination campaign would be neither feasible nor cost-effective, and advocating putting forth other measures. According to UNICEF NGOs have been deploying several initiatives to prevent, contain and reduce the epidemic.

In partnership with the Ministry of Health they are working to raise awareness about cholera through radio, television and text messages targeting at least 80 per cent of the population.

Through neighborhoods they have been putting up posters to help teach people how to protect themselves and giving information about the disease in schools, health centers, market and even door to door, with an aim to ensure that households have at least one person who knows how to prevent cholera and what to do in case symptoms occur.

Furthermore they install public water points where water tankers provide free and pure potable water where water purification tablets and soap are free handing out too. Without this facilities cholera spreading would have been unstoppable because in water kiosk 5 gallons of drinkable water cost up to one dollar when most of the population is surviving with less than a dollar per day, so is unaffordable for almost everybody.

A complete sanitation and potable water system for 1000 people during a year costs 18.000 dollars or more, so many times is too expensive as well. That is why they seek for other sustainable alternatives like wells, another effective and cheap way to allow easy access to safe water. After the well is constructed the NGOs put in charge a different committee for each site to makes sure it keeps running effectively.

Owing to the lack of resources NGOs try to do their best in a very difficult situation. Now that media focus has been diverted to the nuclear crisis Japan and Somalia famine the donatives have been critically reduced and foreign aid tends to displace to hot points. Under these circumstances nobody can be sock by the macabre game played by Haitian government.

Headlines are more important now than ever to keep the attention over a country where still 600.000 people live in displacement camps and 40.000 new cholera cases per month. Unfortunately more people are dying by starvation in Africa and like in a Machiavellian chain this triggers off mass media interest; giving television, radio and press space.

The chain continues with international donors, as foundations or governments seeking for recognition or NGOs seeking for promotion, increasing their efforts in the hot spot and therefore reducing staff and money from other projects. Likely the organizations in Haiti will be able to steadily reduce the monthly cholera cases and deaths into a situation under control, but not capable of eradicating it.

The country is struggling right now against a new endemic disease, they can win or they can lose and resign themselves to counting dozens of deaths per month. Everything depends on international help, Haiti is totally crippled, but these days developed countries are bailing banks out with tons of dollars used to make up a financial balance instead constructing a well for potable water that actually could save lives.

Image Courtesy of  http://www.flickr.com/photos/britishredcross/

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United States President Barack Obama recently convened a panel of experts known as the Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues following the revelation that despite more than 1,000 regulations covering how clinical studies are conducted, unethical medical studies are still possible.

Obama first thought about creating this panel last fall when a 65-year-old study surfaced accusing federal doctors of infecting Guatemalans with syphilis without their consent or knowledge.  This study lasted from 1946 to 1948.  American scientists infected patients in a Guatemalan mental hospital with the terrible disease to test whether penicillin could prevent some sexually transmitted diseases.  The study was hidden for many years after it produced no useful information.

The Guatemalan study was completely unethical for several reasons.  Infecting the patients with syphilis alone is unethical, but the participants did not understand the study and were not capable of giving their consent.  The study was hidden from the public and was only just exposed last year.

While the Guatemalan study is horrifying, perhaps the most well-known unethical medical study, at least to Americans, was the Tuskegee experiment, a syphilis study conducted between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama.  Six hundred poor, rural black men were tracked by the U.S. Public Health Service to study the progression of untreated syphilis.  These men were not given the adequate treatment even once penicillin became available.  The participants believed they were receiving free healthcare from the U.S. government.

Extensive research by the Associated Press found more than 40 other unethical studies.

In the 1940s, there was a federally funded study in which researcher Dr. W. Paul Havens Jr. exposed men to hepatitis in a series of experiments.  Havens’ study used patients from mental institutions in Middletown and Norwich, Conn.  The experiments left eight healthy men chronically ill.  Havens, a World Health Organization (WHO) expert on viral diseases, was the first scientist to differentiate types of hepatitis and their causes.  This study, however, broke no new ground in understanding the disease or how to cure it.

Also in the 1940s, a University of Minnesota study caused 11 public service employees to be injected with malaria and then starved for five days.  Some of the participants were also subjected to hard labor and they lost an average of 14 pounds.  They were later treated for malarial fevers with quinine sulfate.

In the 1950s, government researchers attempted to infect two dozen prison inmates with gonorrhea.  The inmates were from a federal penitentiary in Atlanta.  The bacteria was pumped directly into the urinary tract through the penis.  The men developed gonorrhea, but the study was deemed ineffective.  It was decided that since this is not how men would normally contract gonorrhea (which is by having sex with an infected partner), the results were not comparable.  The participants were eventually treated with antibiotics.  This study was never reported in the news.

In the late 1940s and 1950s, there was a dramatic increase in prisoners participating in studies.  By the 1960s, about half of the United States allowed prisoners to be used in studies and experiments.  It wasn’t, however, until a 1973 congressional hearing that pharmaceutical industry officials admitted they used inmates for their studies, because it was cheaper than using chimpanzees.

In a 1915 study, Mississippi inmates were offered pardons if they participated in a study where they were required to go on special rations.  U.S. Government’s Dr. Joseph Goldberger established the study to prove that pellagra, a systemic nutritional wasting disease, was caused by a dietary deficiency.  Goldberger is remembered as a public health hero.

These studies, and the countless others, violate the fundamental medical principle of “first do no harm.”  “When you give somebody a disease – even by the standards of their time – you really cross the key ethical norm of the profession,” said Arthur Caplan, Ph.D., director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Bioethics.

Unethical medical studies, as Obama and his panel feared, did not end with the 1960s.  There were two international studies in the last 15 years that raised outrage and concern.  One case involved U.S.-funded doctors who neglected to give an AIDS drug (AZT) to all HIV-infected pregnant women in an Uganda-based study.  The medicine would have protected their newborns had the women received it.

The other study was done by Pfizer Inc. The company gave a powerful antibiotic, Trovan, to Nigerian children infected with meningitis.  The drug was given to the children even though there were known doubts about its effectiveness for this disease.  The deaths of 11 children were tied to this study.  While Pfizer ultimately settled a $75 million lawsuit with Nigerian officials, the company admitted no wrongdoing.

The goal of the newly constructed presidential panel, Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, is to not only ensure that unethical medical studies will not continue, but to examine past studies.  The panel is set to report back to the president in September.  Their main objectives are to examine federally funded international studies to ensure all research is ethical, and to take a more intense, comprehensive look at the Guatemalan syphilis case.  There is a 14-member expert panel assigned to study if international studies are ethical, and a 12-person commission of investigators to look through hundreds of boxes of old government documents related to the Guatemalan study.

It is plausible that with less than a year to do its work, the panel may not produce any substantial new information.  “They face a really tough challenge,” Caplan said.

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