Slow progress in tackling world hunger
The Global Hunger Index (GHI) Report released for World Food Day today shows that progress in fighting hunger remains slow. This year the report released by the International Food Policy Research Institute highlights gender inequality as a factor in food insecurity.
Pass the Chalice?
"Bishops defying swine flu advice" said the headlines recently. Some bishops in England have recently reinstated using a shared chalice to distribute communion wine. UK Dept of Health advice is to suspend this practice during the swine flu outbreak to prevent the spread of this disease. I can see why chalices were identified as potentially…
Food Price Hikes – Crisis and Opportunity?
The drastic rises in prices of food during 2007-2008 had severe consequences, but could such rises present an opportunity? Antonio Martuscelli believes “High food prices in the short-run are very damaging for low-income groups of the population in developing countries. At the same time, high prices are an incentive for producers and extremely important for…
Parasite anyone?
European Congress of Tropical Diseases/1st Mediterranean Travel Medicine meeting Monday Sept 7 2009 We are in Verona, home of Juliet & Romeo & apparently Pinocchio, if the street sellers are any indication. My companion is tucking warily into her first swordfish meal, a confirmed meat eater up until now. She remarks that her uncle had…
We caught malignant malaria from chimpanzees — but when exactly?
Image: CDC/ James Gathany, Dr. Frank Collins, University of Notre Dame A couple of weeks ago I came across a news item entitled 'Scientists report original source of malaria', with a sub-headline to the effect that it jumped to humans from chimpanzees, possibly through a single mosquito. Reading the story indicated that it actually referred…
Artemisinin yields boosted
Artemisinin is currently the most effective drug we have against malaria, a disease which kills a child every 30 secs, and which we in Europe need to remember was only finally eliminated from Europe in the 1950’s….. and with climate change may well be back, and not just in travellers. Artemisinin works on the parasite and…
Food security: food is not just an energy source, it keeps you healthy
The UK news services may now be focused on swine flu and the death toll of our soldiers, but food security (access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life) has not gone away. We all have to face up to it. AS I fight the daily battle with wasps…who, in…
Feeding the world – another way….
How to feed more people in the same sized world has been an issue for a few decades now, the green revolution of pesticides and intensive breeding got the world over a hurdle after WW2 and now people are wondering how to improve again – will GM have the answer? Is it just economics that…
Tea … will a cuppa see you through novel H1N1 influenza?
Still popularly known as swine flu here in the UK, the novel pandemic H1N1 influenza makes you feel really ill even if you experience the "mild" form. On a BBC radio 5 program in the first week of July, controversy arose over a recommendation to drink lots of fluids and to avoid tea… because it…
Flu panic in Argentina
A CABI sales colleague now in Argentina reported on June 30th that meetings had been cancelled, ministers were resigning and hospitals & schools faced closure, all through the fear of the novel H1N1 influenza pandemic the entire world is now experiencing. The Argentine Post points out that Argentina is now entering its winter, and that…