H5N1

Australia flooding: 'What do we have to do to make people move?'

Via the Brisbane Times: 'What do we have to do to make people move?': Mayor's flood plea. Excerpt:

A year's worth of rain was dumped on north Queensland in a week and Sunday night was described by authorities as the worst so far as locals prepare for a "long, hard week" ahead.

A total of 1100 residents were evacuated overnight, the SES received 850 calls for help in the 24 hours to Monday morning, rescue crews saved 18 people and one looter was arrested by police.  

Townsville Mayor Jenny Hill vented her frustration after some residents in areas predicted to be inundated, had to be doorknocked and asked to leave twice.  

"You can’t say you weren’t warned something might happen," she said.  

"What do we have to do to make people move?"  

The fire service, police officers, SES volunteers and army vehicles worked together to carry out the mass evacuations and council rubbish trucks have been transformed into "people-movers". 

Queensland Police Service Superintendent Steve Munro said on Sunday night, officers went out to the highest number of calls during the flood. 

Police received 150 calls to "high-risk" incidents and while responding to one, a police car was swept away and the officers had to be rescued.  

"If people had left their homes as we had asked over the past few days, we wouldn’t have had so many calls for assistance," he said. 

Townsville resident Erin Hahn posted a photograph of a crocodile outside her father's house in Mundingburra, and urged people to "stay out of the water". 

The Ross River Dam floodgates were fully opened about 9pm on Sunday after the dam neared 250 per cent capacity.  

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said schools, the airport and courts in Townsville would remain closed on Monday and there were more tough times ahead. 

"We’re not out of this yet, the monsoonal trough is still settling in over Townsville," she said. "During the next couple of days, there will be more heavy rain and damaging wind gusts."

Malnutrition, obesity and climate change threaten our future, warns report

The Tyee has published my article Malnutrition, Obesity and Climate Change Threaten Our Future, Warns Report. Excerpt:

Having dropped one bombshell report this month warning that our food choices are destroying the world, the British medical journal The Lancet has now dropped a second that says we’re now in a perfect storm of undernutrition, obesity and climate change.  

The Lancet calls it the “Global Syndemic.” The report’s authors say we’re facing three pandemics — undernutrition, obesity and climate change — that are interacting to form a “synergy of epidemics,” or syndemic, and it’s a global problem. 

Here’s how it works. Undernourished children in low-income and middle-income countries suffer from stunting, which makes them smaller than well-nourished children. But it also makes them more susceptible to obesity (which affects kids and adults in high-income countries even more). By 2015, obesity was affecting two billion people around the world. They’ve been set up to die of cardiovascular diseases, Type 2 diabetes and some cancers.  

The report says, “Economic losses attributable to undernutrition are equivalent to 11 per cent of the GDP in Africa and Asia, or approximately $3.5 trillion annually.” As we add another billion undernourished people by 2030, those losses will worsen.

Syria: WHO concerned over critical health situation in Al-Hol camp, Al-Hasakeh

WHO EMRO has published WHO concerned over critical health situation in Al-Hol camp, Al-Hasakeh. Excerpt:

31 January 2019, Damascus, Syria – The World Health Organization is extremely concerned about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Al-Hol camp in Al-Hasakeh governorate, and calls on all parties to the conflict to provide unhindered humanitarian access to people in need of life-saving aid.  

Over the last 2 months, approximately 23 000 people, mainly women and children fleeing hostilities in rural areas of neighbouring Deir-ez-Zor, have arrived in the camp. Many of them have walked or travelled in open trucks for several days and nights in the bitterly cold winter weather. Their journeys have been delayed en route by lengthy security screening procedures in an exposed field, and their ordeal has not ended on arrival to the camp. Thousands of new arrivals have been forced to spend several nights in the camp’s open-air reception and screening areas, without tents, blankets or heating. At least 29 children and newborns are reported to have died over the past 8 weeks, mainly from hypothermia, while travelling to the camp or shortly after arrival. 

The situation in the camp is now critical. Its population has tripled in size (from 10 000 to almost 33 000 people) in less than 2 months. The authorities are overwhelmed and struggling to cope with the sheer numbers of people. Many new arrivals are malnourished and exhausted following years of deprivation living under the control of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. 

The camp is unheated and there are shortages of health care services, tents, latrines and sanitation facilities. Humanitarian access to the camp and surrounding roads is hampered by bureaucratic obstacles and security constraints. 

Since the beginning of January, WHO has delivered over 35 000 treatment courses to support the work of 2 mobile clinics donated by WHO, as well as 4 mobile health teams currently operating in the camp. WHO-supported teams are working round the clock to screen new arrivals and refer them to hospitals when required. Severely malnourished children are being referred to a WHO-supported hospital in Al-Hasakeh.

The global syndemic of obesity, undernutrition, and climate change: The Lancet Commission report

The Lancet has published The Global Syndemic of Obesity, Undernutrition, and Climate Change: The Lancet Commission report. The key messages:

The pandemics of obesity, undernutrition, and climate change represent three of the gravest threats to human health and survival. These pandemics constitute The Global Syndemic, consistent with their clustering in time and place, interactions at biological, psychological, or social levels, and common, large-scale societal drivers and determinants. Their interactions and the forces that sustain them emphasise the potential for major beneficial effects on planetary health that double-duty or triple-duty actions, which simultaneously act on two or all three of these pandemics, will have. 

To mitigate The Global Syndemic, the Commission proposed the following nine broad recommendations, under which sit more than 20 actions: 

• Think in Global Syndemic terms to create a focus on common systemic drivers that need common actions. 

• Join up the silos of thinking and action to create platforms to work collaboratively on common systemic drivers and double-duty or triple-duty actions. 

• Strengthen national and international governance levers to fully implement policy actions which have been agreed upon through international guidelines, resolutions and treaties. 

• Strengthen municipal governance levers to mobilise action at the local level and create pressure for national action 

• Strengthen civil society engagement to encourage systemic change and pressure for policy action at all levels of government to address The Global Syndemic 

• Reduce the influence of large commercial interests in the public policy development process to enable governments to implement policies in the public interest to benefit the health of current and future generations, the environment, and the planet 

• Strengthen accountability systems for policy actions to address The Global Syndemic 

• Create sustainable and health-promoting business models for the 21st century to shift business outcomes from a short-term profit-only focus to sustainable, profitable models that explicitly include benefits to society and the environment 

• Focus research on The Global Syndemic determinants and actions to create an evidence base of systemic drivers and actions, including indigenous and traditional approaches to health and wellbeing

New plant-focused diet would ‘transform’ planet’s future, say scientists

Via The Guardian: New plant-focused diet would ‘transform’ planet’s future, say scientists. Excerpt:

The first science-based diet that tackles both the poor food eaten by billions of people and averts global environmental catastrophe has been devised. It requires huge cuts in red meat-eating in western countries and radical changes across the world. 

The “planetary health diet” was created by an international commission seeking to draw up guidelines that provide nutritious food to the world’s fast-growing population. At the same time, the diet addresses the major role of farming – especially livestock – in driving climate change, the destruction of wildlife and the pollution of rivers and oceans. 

Globally, the diet requires red meat and sugar consumption to be cut by half, while vegetables, fruit, pulses and nuts must double. But in specific places the changes are stark. North Americans need to eat 84% less red meat but six times more beans and lentils. For Europeans, eating 77% less red meat and 15 times more nuts and seeds meets the guidelines.  

The diet is a “win-win”, according to the scientists, as it would save at least 11 million people a year from deaths caused by unhealthy food, while preventing the collapse of the natural world that humanity depends upon. With 10 billion people expected to live on Earth by 2050, a continuation of today’s unsustainable diets would inevitably mean even greater health problems and severe global warming.  

Unhealthy diets are the leading cause of ill health worldwide, with 800 million people currently hungry, 2 billion malnourished and further 2 billion people overweight or obese. The world’s science academies recently concluded that the food system is broken. Industrial agriculture is also devastating the environment, as forests are razed and billions of cattle emit climate-warming methane.

“The world’s diets must change dramatically,” said Walter Willett at Harvard University and one of the leaders of the commission convened by the Lancet medical journal and the Eat Forum NGO. The report, published in the Lancet and being launched to policymakers in 40 cities around the world, also concluded that food waste must be halved to 15%.

Insights from Bacillus anthracis strains isolated from permafrost in the tundra zone of Russia

Thanks to Laurie Garrett for tweeting the link to this bioRxiv report: Insights from Bacillus anthracis strains isolated from permafrost in the tundra zone of Russia. The abstract and then a comment:

This article describes Bacillus anthracis strains isolated during an outbreak of anthrax on the Yamal Peninsula in the summer of 2016 and independently in Yakutia in 2015. A common feature of these strains is their conservation in permafrost, from which they were extracted either due to the thawing of permafrost (Yamal strains) or as the result of paleontological excavations (Yakut strains). 

All strains isolated on the Yamal share an identical genotype belonging to lineage B.Br.001/002, pointing to a common source of infection in a territory over 250 km in length. In contrast, during the excavations in Yakutia, three genetically different strains were recovered from a single pit. One strain belongs to B.Br.001/002, as the Yamal strains. 

Despite the remoteness of Yamal from Yakutia, whole genome sequence analysis showed that the B.Br.001/002 strains are very closely related. The two other strains contribute to two different branches of A.Br.008/011, one of the remarkable polytomies described so far in B. anthracis population. 

The geographic distribution of the strains belonging to this polytomy is suggesting that this polytomy emerged in the thirteenth century, in combination with the constitution of a unified Mongol empire extending from China to Eastern Europe. 

We propose an evolutionary model for B. anthracis recent evolution in which the B lineage spread throughout Eurasia and was subsequently replaced by the A lineage except in some geographically isolated areas.

This is a fascinating finding, and the outbreak was equally interesting to cover. In 2016 I published a Tyee article on the implications of climate-caused permafrost melting and potential release of anthrax—not only in Siberia, but in Alaska and northern Canada as well. Now we know that anthrax, at least, can rise from the dead and threaten the living again.

A virus even more dangerous than Zika to pregnant women

Via The New York Times: A Virus Even More Dangerous Than Zika to Pregnant Women. Excerpt:

The mosquito-borne virus that causes Rift Valley fever may severely injure human fetuses if contracted by mothers during pregnancy, according to new research.  

In a study published last month in the journal Science Advances, researchers used infected rats and human fetal tissue to discover how the virus targets the placenta. Results showed that the virus may be even more damaging to fetuses than the Zika virus, which set off a global crisis in 2015 and left thousands of babies in Central America and South America with severe birth defects.  

“Zika caught everybody by surprise,” said Amy Hartman, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Pittsburgh, who led the research. “If doctors had known about Zika’s birth effects, they could have done a lot more to protect pregnant women and babies. With Rift Valley fever, we’re trying to get ahead of the curve.”  

Rift Valley fever primarily occurs in livestock in sub-Saharan Africa, where outbreaks cause 90 to 100 percent of pregnant cows in a herd to miscarry or deliver stillborn calves, often a significant economic loss. 

 But hundreds of cases also occur in humans each year, causing flulike symptoms and severe liver problems. The outbreaks have moved beyond Africa: In late 2000, an outbreak in Saudi Arabia infected more than 100,000 people and led to at least 700 deaths, according to Dr. Hartman. The mosquito that carries the disease is also found in Europe and the Americas. 

“Climate change can alter how emerging infectious diseases will spread,” Dr. Harman said. “As mosquito populations move and change, we have a potential for this to spread far beyond its normal boundaries.”  

There are no vaccines or treatments for Rift Valley fever. The World Health Organization has called the disease a potential public health emergency.  

Two cases of infected fetuses have been documented. One infant was born with an enlarged liver and spleen, among other symptoms; the other died within a week. Because the disease can be asymptomatic in pregnant women, many more cases of abnormalities and stillbirths may have been misidentified. 

Among rats used in the study, 65 percent of the pups born to infected mothers died, compared to 25 percent of pups born from uninfected controls. Each infected mother lost at least one pup, and all of the infected mothers’ offspring contracted the virus. 

Pregnant rats were also more susceptible to death from Rift Valley fever than nonpregnant rats.  

Most surprising to researchers, the infected mothers’ placentas harbored more virus than any other tissue in the body — more than even the liver, where the virus’s damage is typically observed.

UK hospitals expecting 'mayhem' when cold snap hits, top doctor says

Via The Guardian: UK hospitals expecting 'mayhem' when cold snap hits, top doctor says. Excerpt:

Hospitals will be hit by “mayhem” this weekend because of the coming cold snap, a growing number of people with flu and the NHS’s staffing problems, a leading doctor has warned.  

Dr Nick Scriven, president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said hospitals will face “severe difficulties” this weekend as lower temperatures lead to a surge in patients needing care. 

“Influenza is here and is already impacting the NHS and, with colder weather starting to set in, this will further stress already stretched services.  

“I and many colleagues across the country are anticipating mayhem this weekend as temperatures drop, but it will come as no surprise to us,” Scriven said. 

Some A&E units and intensive care units are already full, especially with people who have serious breathing problems, he disclosed. 

“Within the last week I have had colleagues warning of emergency departments and intensive care units being full, and that will only worsen in the coming weeks,” added Scriven. 

“Skeleton staffing” of social care services over the festive period has meant patients who were medically fit to leave had not been able to get home from hospital, he added. “The capacity problems this will cause will be profound,” he added. 

Hospitals’ ability to withstand a sudden increase in winter-related illness will also be compromised by the NHS being “horrendously understaffed”, Scriven said. Official figures show that the NHS in England has 103,000 vacancies, including for 42,000 nurses and 10,000 doctors. 

Scriven’s comments came as NHS England revealed that almost 40,000 people so far this winter have had to spend at least 30 minutes with an ambulance crew because A&E units were too busy to accept them.

Eurosurveillance: West Nile virus outbreak in Israel

Via Eurosurveillance: Epidemiologic and phylogenetic analysis of the 2018 West Nile virus (WNV) outbreak in Israel demonstrates human infection of WNV lineage I. The conclusion:

The year 2018 has been exceptional in its severity with simultaneous and significant WNV outbreaks occurring across many European countries and in Israel. Moreover, infection in humans was detected very early in the transmission season raising the suspicion of emergence of a common, possibly more virulent, WNV strain. 

Our phylogenetic analysis demonstrates that all WNV sequences detected both in humans and in mosquitoes in Israel were related to WNV lineage I, unlike the outbreak in Europe, thus providing evidence for potential for different introductions of WNV lineages of the virus to Israel and Europe and implicating that indirect causes, e.g. climatic change, could be a potential cause of the simultaneous outbreak in Israel.

UK: Pollution and flu bring steep rise in lung-related illnesses

Via The Guardian: Pollution and flu bring steep rise in lung-related illnesses. Excerpt:

Accident and emergency departments have seen attendances due to lung-related illnesses almost double in under a decade as increasingly virulent flu strains and a rise in air pollution take their toll. 

A shortage of lung specialists means services can be patchy, with some respiratory teams over-stretched, however. The huge increase is adding to the significant pressures on hospitals, especially during the winter months, and has prompted calls for a new national strategy to tackle the problem that the British Lung Foundation estimates costs the UK economy £11bn a year. 

A data review, shared with the Observer by the British Thoracic Society (BTS), reveals that last year there were 913,646 attendances at A&E departments in England for lung illnesses – including pneumonia, flu, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma – a near doubling since 2011. 

The rise has seen a corresponding increase in hospital admissions. In December 2016 the BTS data shows there were 32,492 admissions resulting from A&E attendances for respiratory disease – more than three times the average for any of the 20 most common complaints that regularly trigger an admission.  

The findings will reinforce concerns about the threat to public health posed by flu outbreaks – and the NHS’s ability to cope – this coming winter. They show that, in the 12 months to April 2017, 62% more people died from a respiratory condition in the winter than in other seasons.

It's some consolation that Flu News Europe reports: "As of week 48/2018, influenza activity has been low in the European Region."