Malaria control, disasters and conflict
WHO European Region announced last week that Europe is now malaria free. This is great news to coincide with World Malaria Day this year. The challenge is to make sure Europe remains free of malaria into the future. Europe has been declared malaria free before, back in 1975. What happened to allow it to return?
Malaria incidence and invasive plants – is there a link?
25 April is World Malaria Day – a time to reflect on the steps we can take to tackle this terrible disease. Much progress has been made in the fight against malaria over the past 15 years, like the use of bed nets impregnated with pesticides, but 3.2 billion people are still at risk. If…
Buzzing activity around pollinator health
Yesterday I cherished the start of spring in England by attending an event devoted to pollinators and pollination at the University of Reading. Most presentations at this meeting organised by the Royal Entomological Society were understandably about bees, but we also heard a few talks highlighting the importance of other pollinator groups. For about five…
National Park Week: Free admission to U.S. national parks
All national parks in the USA. will be accessible admission-free from April 16 through April 24. The week of free admission during National Park Week is to mark the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service. This year’s celebration brings the grand total of free-admission days at America’s national parks to 16—well above the nine…
Workshop on “Food Security: Infectious Diseases in Farm Animals”- Invited Lectures, Day 2
St. Catherine’s College, Manor Road, Oxford, UK, 4-7th April 2016 Attended by M Djuric, CAB International, Wallingford, UK, on 5th April 2016 (Day 2) This workshop meeting was jointly organised by the Pirbright Institute, Woking, UK and Cairo University, Egypt and was sponsored by the British Council Research Links Programme. The aims of the workshop…
Workshop on “Food Security: Infectious Diseases in Farm Animals” brings together animal and veterinary scientists from Egypt and the UK
St. Catherine’s College, Manor Road, Oxford, UK, 4-7th April 2016 Attended by M Djuric, CAB International, Wallingford, UK, on 5th April 2016 (Day 2) This workshop meeting was jointly organised by the Pirbright Institute, Woking, UK and Cairo University, Egypt and was sponsored by the British Council Research Links Programme. There were 50-60 delegates in attendance…
Can the air we breathe be increasing our risk of diabetes?
World Health Day this year focuses on diabetes prevention and treatment with emphasis on what lifestyle changes people can make to stop themselves getting diabetes. There is some intriguing evidence that although lifestyle factors are influential we should also be considering some other environmental factors that could be influencing the risk of disease. One of…
Gail Tulloch reviews ‘The Animal Trade’
“The Animal Trade” is a book of major importance that will make groundbreaking contributions to the fields of animal welfare and ethics, husbandry, and government policy, nationally and, hopefully, internationally – as befits the expertise of its author, Clive Phillips. It is scholarly and comprehensive in its sweep, as well as being tightly written, so…
Tackling food security with urban agriculture
Bookie Ezeomah, marketing intern at CABI, looks at urban and peri-urban agriculture and how it can help solve food security The world population is projected to increase by an additional one billion people by 2030 with Africa and Asia accounting for the greater share of this population growth. According to UN reports, more than half of the world’s…
Traffic congestion causes hotspots of air pollution and road traffic accidents
Traffic congestion in Oxford is a public health issue. It increases air pollution, lowering air quality breathed, which is a known cause of asthma, lung cancer and cardiovascular diseases. It increases the risk of traffic accidents through poor driver behaviour and judgement. Stuck in a traffic jam last week in Oxford, brought about through traffic control system failures, this driver experienced first-hand both air pollution and road safety issues. Globally, road traffic accidents cause 1.25 million deaths per year, with the highest road traffic fatality rates in low-income countries.