H5N1

India: The 10 most common monsoon diseases

With the monsoon arriving two weeks early, this item from The Times of India is very timely: 10 Most common monsoon diseases. Excerpt:

For us monsoons is all about hot cup of tea and snacks, retro music in the background and the pitter-patter of the raindrops on your window pane. 

 But this picture perfect situation goes out of the window as soon as you step out. You need to know about 10 monsoon diseases that you need to look out this monsoon. While some are easily treatable a few can be life threatening. 

Most Common Monsoon Disease # 1: Malaria 

In the list of top common monsoon ailments, malaria takes the number one spot. Female anopheles mosquito causes malaria; they usually breed in waterlogged areas. Thus, clean your water tank frequently to avoid the risk of malaria. The common symptoms of malaria are fever, shivers, muscle pain and weakness. 

Most Common Monsoon Disease # 2: Diarrhoea 

 This is another common ailment during monsoon, which is caused due to unhygienic consumption or handling of foods and water. There are two main types of diarrhoea - acute diarrhoea and chronic diarrhoea. Both of these are highly preventable and treatable. In order to prevent this bowel problem, maintain proper hygiene, wash hands before handling food and drink only boiled water. 

Most Common Monsoon Disease # 3: Dengue 

Dengue fever is a monsoon ailments caused by mosquitoes. The common symptoms of dengue are fever, body aches, joint pain and rash. Tiger mosquito causes this monsoon ailment. To avoid being a victim of tiger mosquito, use insect repellent and cover yourself properly with clothes.

Nepal: ‘Cholera’ hits 200 people in Nepalgunj

Via ekantipur.com: ‘Cholera’ hits 200 people in Nepalgunj.

An outbreak of a disease symptomatic of cholera has affected local residents of Nepalgunj and the town’s adjoining areas, downing more than 200 people as of Sunday. 

Ram Bahadur Chand of the Banke District Public Health Office (DPHO) said they were waiting for a lab report from the National Public Health Laboratory to confirm the disease. 

“We suspect that polluted drinking water may be the primary cause for the disease but we are not quite sure if it is cholera,” Chand said. The cholera-like disease has mostly affected the residents of six wards in Nepalgunj. It has also been reported in Fattepur and Indrapur VDCs. 

As of Sunday, the Bheri Zonal Hospital received 290 patients suffering with the disease, said Dr Sarwesraj Sharma. 

Meanwhile, the DPHO has mobilised 85 female health volunteers equipped with water disinfectants and emergency medicines around Nepalgunj. An emergency meeting of the DPHO has also decided to run a weeklong public health awareness campaign.

Canada: Don't (always) drink the water

Via The Tyee, an alarming report by my colleague Chris Wood, excerpted from his book Down the Drain: Overlooked Epidemic Flows from Canada's Taps. Excerpt:

On any given day, public health authorities report more than 1,500 water advisories in force in Canada. They warn residents of affected homes either to boil or sterilize tap water before they consume it or not drink it at all. Montrealers got off easy when the Pointe-Claire advisory was lifted after days. Many alerts have been in place for months or years -- a few, incredibly, for decades. 

Canada-wide threat 

Across the country, in scores of places, Canada's water at the tap is flat-out dangerous. At the time of this writing [in mid-2012], British Columbia led the country with 290 active water warnings. Saskatchewan had nearly as many in place: 249. The 169 warnings active in Ontario outnumbered Quebec's 146, and even Prince Edward Island had three advisories in force. 

Many of these were not brief. On Nov. 18, 2011, the small town of Canyon, B.C., tucked into a valley in the Kootenays, between the province's southeastern borders with Alberta and Idaho, had four advisories in effect. According to the independent online summary maintained by www.water.ca, two had been in place since 1994, the most recent since 2003. 

Nearly one Canadian in three drinks water from in-ground rather than surface sources. A panel of experts assembled in 2009 by the eminently neutral Council of Canadian Academies (a consortium of engineering and science academies endowed with $30 million in 2005 to research questions of science for the federal government) estimated that persistent contamination was present in more than 30,000 such groundwater sources across the country. And the number was climbing.

Germany: Thousands evacuate Magdeburg amid record flood levels

Via Deutsche Welle: Thousands evacuate Magdeburg amid record flood levels. Excerpt:

German authorities have urged more than 15,000 people to evacuate the eastern city of Magdeburg has flood levels reached record levels. Meanwhile, people in Budapest are bracing as the surging Danube approaches. 

The water level of the Elbe river in Magdeburg Sunday reached nearly 7.4 meters (24 feet), up from the normal level of two meters. The peak level was 70 centimeters above that reached during the last catastrophic floods in 2002, when the river's maximum was 6.72 meters. 

"We hope that the dikes will withstand the pressure over the coming days, but we can't be 100 percent sure," said fire service spokesman Andreas Hamann, who is one of 1,200 emergency staff working in the area. 

Flooding in Germany and across central Europe has caused billions of euros of damage and killed at least 18 people. 

The evacuations in Magdeburg were described as a precaution, but a city spokesman said "people really are supposed to leave" when confronted with danger. A total of 23,000 have been asked to evacuate the city this weekend. 

Downstream along the Elbe, the town of Lauenburg and the village of Hitzacker in Lower Saxony were bracing for flood waters in the coming days. More rain heavy rain is expected Monday in the states of Thuringia, Saxony and Bavaria.

The public health consequences will doubtless include diseases resulting from ruined sewage systems and compromised drinking water.

MERS: Time for a little stark insensibility

I have been following the resurgence of MERS as keenly as anyone. The Italian cases got my attention this weekend, and I worry about the way the Saudis are handling their cases. (Check the comment by Magpie on the photo of the newest Saudi case, whose attendant isn't even gloved.)

But at the end of this eventful weekend, the most disturbing news to me was the Guardian editorial about the political instability of Saudi Arabia. As the editorial points out, the Saudis are a gerontocracy; King Abdullah, despite his dyed-black goatee, is about to turn 90, and his heir presumptive, a pup of 77, is said to suffer dementia. At 72, I no longer have illusions about the wisdom accruing to great age; I know from personal experience how a small leak in a blood vessel can threaten the healthiest brain.

For the last couple of years we've seen the Arab world in turmoil, with Syria as the most ghastly example. But a collapse in Saudi Arabia would be far worse. 

Suppose MERS had arisen in Syria last year, as the country was tearing itself apart. The refugees fleeing into Jordan and Turkey could have carried it, and under those conditions it would have spread unnoticed and unresisted. By the time the Turks and Jordanians sounded the alarm, it could have been anywhere.

Something like that could happen in a Saudi collapse, and we probably wouldn't even notice. Instead we'd be panicking about the spike in oil prices, the threat of new wars, and the flight of thousands of expats from Saudi Arabia to Bangladesh, Pakistan, and the Philippines—carrying not only new viruses but also new economic and political problems for their homelands. 

And public health problems for nations around the world, which would reliably cut their healthcare budgets as their economies imploded. That in turn would lead to a resurgence of polio, dengue, leptospirosis, cholera, and any other infectious disease you care to name. If a few people were still contracting MERS under such conditions, who would care?

Consider this: MERS is supposedly the "new SARS." SARS, which scared us all silly ten years ago, sickened 8,273 people around the world, causing 775 deaths, before its source (civet cats) was taken off the menus of Chinese restaurants. Presumably MERS could do the same before we figure out how to suppress it.

But put those cases and deaths in perspective. According to WHO, boring old diarrhea kills 760,000 children under 5 every year. That's 2,082 toddlers killed every god-damned day of our lives, or 86 in the next hour, or 3 in the next two minutes. SARS, going full out for months, killed 9 hours' worth of diarrhea victims under 5.

I will continue to follow MERS, and H7N9, and H5N1, because they are interesting in themselves and they will teach us a lot about how viruses and animals (including humans) interact, and how our societies respond to such threats. But the Italians are already turning their attention to the European floods and the current soccer situation; the Saudis are fussing about expat workers running away from their sponsors. 

So please, don't look at MERS or H7N9 as the next apocalypse. We've been living in an ongoing apocalypse for years, and we have been as starkly insensible to it as we ought to be to upstart hopeful monsters like bird flu and coronavirus. The apocalypse won't end until we address the reasons for diarrhea, and malnutrition, and the poverty that kills children while our attention is directed elsewhere.

China: Behind the dead pig scandal

Remember when the only story coming out of China was dead pigs in the Huangpu? South China Morning Post takes a detailed look at a problem that evidently is nothing new: China's dead pig scandal ushers in hard times for fishermen and hog farmers. Excerpt:

“I don’t even know why there was a scandal this year. Dumping pigs in the rivers is not news for us. We’ve seen a much worse situation,” said Li, 68, head of the Fengnan fishing community of Xinfeng. 

The period between May and September is usually the busiest time for workers like Zhao, Li said. Locals usually dispose of dead pigs by throwing them into rivers and dams near their homes, but when the weather warms, the carcasses float to the surface. 

Many of them now pluck dead pigs from the rivers rather than fish, but the change has not been by choice. 

Xinfeng’s more than 200 fishermen have had to watch their livelihoods decline in the last two decades as pig farming grew in the region. The town has raised the most pigs in Jiaxing city along its 150 kilometres of waterways. 

“Twenty years ago we didn’t expect raising pigs to do so much harm to our fishing industry,” said Li. “Things got worse in the early 2000s when more pig farms turned up. Dead pig carcasses and manure polluted the river. The water turned inky black, and in hot weather, you could smell the stink from far away.” 

Looking at the turbid, algae-covered water, Li lamented that the Pinghutang was full of fish more than 20 years ago. “Now everything has changed,” he sighed. 

No one has caught a living fish in the river system for more than a decade.

MSF: Treating cholera patients in northern Niger

Via MSF: Treating Cholera Patients in Northern Niger. Excerpt:

Cholera has broken out in northern Niger, in an area now inhabited by large numbers of Malian refugees who fled conflict in their homeland. 

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has treated all of the nearly 250 people affected by the cholera outbreak in northern Niger that was declared by the country’s health authorities on May 11. MSF has also opened two cholera treatment centers in the regions of Mangaïzé and Ayorou, north of the capital, Niamey. Six people have died in the outbreak thus far, however. 

“As soon as the first cases appeared, MSF rushed to open a cholera treatment center,” says Dr. Benoit Kayembé, MSF’s head of mission in Niger. “We currently have 100 beds in Ayorou and another 50 in Mangaïzé. As well as treating people with the disease, which mainly involves rehydrating them, our teams are leading health awareness campaigns in the affected villages. The teams are also treating water points in these communities and actively looking for further cases of cholera.” 

Fear That Disease May Spread Southwards 

“Some of the patients come from the camps of Malian refugees, but the majority are from local communities,” adds Kayembé. 

MSF is currently the only medical organization treating people infected by cholera in the region. Its teams are worried about the proximity of the affected area to the Niger River, which flows from northern Niger towards the capital, and could well carry the disease along with it. 

“We can expect to see cases spreading towards Niamey,” says Kayembé. “The region already suffered from cholera last year. Having so many people displaced within the region makes it easy for cholera to spread to other parts of the country.”

In many regions of the world, and notably in sub-Saharan Africa, fighting over the scraps in poor countries is so violent and vicious that the poor flee into more poverty—made more ingrained by starvation and disease. 

Canada: Montreal boil-water advisory leads to coffee shortage

Via The Gazette in Montreal: Boil-water advisory: Coffee in short supply downtown. Excerpt:

If you can grab a coffee on your way to the office, please do so because finding a hot brew downtown on Thursday is rarer than hen’s teeth. 

Major chains were not selling hot coffee due to the boil-water advisory and there were some pretty frazzled folks looking to satisfy their caffeine fix. 

“I’ve been up and down Ste-Catherine St. and no one had it, Starbucks, Second Cup,” said Natalie James, who finally scored a cup of java at Reuben’s Deli. “They told me they boil the water before they put it in the machine.” 

Next door at Second Cup, manager Bettina Ooi was experimenting with boiling water and then putting it in huge Thermoses, but her problems were compounded by the fact that she was unable to wash the Thermoses properly. 

“We can use the dishwasher (with very hot water) for the cups and saucers but the Thermoses have rubber seals and they can’t go in the machine,” Ooi said. 

Since the advisory on Wednesday, she said she has had to turn down “hundreds” of customers looking to buy a latte, cappuccino or regular coffee.

Canada: Boil-water advisory widens for Montreal area

Via The Gazette: Boil-water advisory widens for Montreal area. Excerpt:

A boil-water advisory issued Wednesday morning for the southwest sector of Montreal has been extended to many other areas both on and off the island and affects an estimated 1.3 million people. City officials said the warning could be in place for at least 24 hours. 

The city issued the new warning at 10:30 a.m. for all areas south of the Metropolitan Expressway, from LaSalle in the west to Pointe aux Trembles in the east. 

Residents in this area are warned to boil the somewhat brownish water flowing out of their taps or use bottled water until further notice. Some of the affected municipalities include: Verdun, Point-St-Charles, St-Henri, Côte-St-Paul, Ville-Émard, Westmount, Côte-St-Luc, Hampstead, Town of Mount Royal, Anjou, Montreal East and the off-island town of Charlemagne. 

Residents are advised to run the taps until until the water runs clear and then boil their drinking water for at least a minute until further notice. 

The city of Montreal issued the boil-water advisory Wednesday morning. Maintenance work at the Atwater water facility affected the quality of water samples and prompted the advisory. The city is recommending boiling water or using bottled water for drinking, preparing baby formula, washing fruits and vegetables, brushing teeth and making ice cubes.

Haiti cholera victims threaten to sue the UN

Via BBC News: Haiti cholera victims threaten to sue the UN. Excerpt:

Victims of Haiti's cholera epidemic have given the United Nations a 60-day deadline to start talks about billions of dollars worth of compensation or face legal action. 

The UN is accused of negligently allowing peacekeeping soldiers to pollute Haiti's water with cholera. 

A UN cholera expert agrees that this is "most likely" to be true. 

The UN rejected an earlier call for compensation and continues to insist it is immune from legal proceedings. 

The cholera epidemic began in Haiti near a camp for UN soldiers, where there were leaking sewage pipes. Some human waste was also dumped near a river outside the camp. 

>The camp housed UN soldiers from Nepal, where cholera is endemic. The UN's own cholera expert, Danielle Lantagne, has said that Haiti's outbreak is likely to have come from UN soldiers. 

The victims include relatives of the 8,000 people who have died and hundreds of thousands of people who have fallen sick. 

Lawyers for the victims say the UN is breaking international law. 

They say they will open legal proceedings in New York with claims totalling many billions of dollars if the UN does not start talks within 60 days. 

The lawyers say they will file claims for $100,000 (£64,000) for the families of those who have died and $50,000 (£32,000) for every one of the hundreds of thousands who have fallen sick.