Pakistan

New Projects Dispel Myths and Spread the Truth About Vaccines

Stephen 1 Must Read, CANADA, developing world, Health, News, Science , , , , , , ,

By Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, May 3, 2012 (IPS)

In northern Pakistan, one in ten children dies before the age of five from diseases such as polio, measles or hepatitis, despite the availability of vaccines. And while health workers feared visiting this region, which includes the mountainous Swat district controlled by the Taliban until 2009, local people also fear the potentially life-saving vaccines.

“Some local imams (religious leaders) have been preaching that vaccines are an attempt by the U.S. government to sterilise children,” said Erfaan Hussein Babak, director of The Awakening project, which aims to promote vaccinations in the Swat district.

“The child mortality rate from preventable diseases is distressingly high,” Babak told IPS by phone from the region.

Some people in the region understand that vaccines are safe, but overall, there is little demand by parents for vaccinations, he said. To counter certain negative perceptions, The Awakening project is working to promote child vaccination by establishing village health committees, school clubs and radio programs.

The project is being funded by the Canada-based Sandra Rotman Centre as one of five projects awarded 10,000 U.S. dollars to educate populations in developing countries about the use of vaccines and immunisation to prevent diseases.

Combating myth

By 2004, polio had nearly been eradicated in Pakistan. However, the disease has seen a resurgence in the northern areas, in part due to the mistaken belief that the oral vaccine could render children impotent or sterile.  Continue reading →

Hundreds of Millions May Soon Be Fleeing the Floodwaters

Stephen 1 Must Read, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, ECOLOGY, Energy, Global Issues and Perspectives, global warming, Health, Hurricane, News, water , , , , , , , ,
More than 5 million affected by flooding in Pakistan Sept 2011 - a repeat of 2010.

Climate disruption shrinking areas where people can live.

Mexico faces $10 billion in storm/flood damage to roads, schools, clinics, etc every year

By Stephen Leahy

OSLO, Jun 9, 2011 (IPS)

Mass migration will inevitably be part of human adaptation to climate change, experts agree, since parts of the world will become uninhabitable in the coming decades.

Last year, 38 million people were displaced by climate-related disasters such as the flooding in Pakistan and China.

“Human displacement due to climate change is happening now. There is no need to debate it,” Jonas Gahr Støre, Norway’s minister of foreign affairs, told over 200 delegates attending the Nansen Conference on Climate Change and Displacement in the 21st Century in Oslo Jun. 6-7.

Governments and the humanitarian community need to understand this fact – and that it will get much worse in the coming decades, Støre said.

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Without major emissions reductions, climate change could get far worse than anyone is prepared to think about.

“It may be more realistic to consider four degrees C of warming rather than two degrees C,” suggested Harald Dovland, former head of the Norwegian Delegation to the United Nations climate change negotiations.

The world has already warmed 0.8C and will rise to least 1.6 C even if all emissions of carbon and other greenhouse gases ended today, James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told the conference.

A four-degree C warmer world is a very different planet and risks runaway climate change. Even two degrees C is not safe, Hansen said. 

“The last time the planet was two degrees C warmer was during the Pliocene (five to 2.4 million years ago) and sea levels were 25 metres higher,” he said. “If we burn all the fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) we’re creating conditions that future generations will be unable to cope with.”

Even though a four-degree C warmer world “is choosing the suicidal path”, experts must avoid fuelling xenophobia with predictions of mass migrations and conflicts, says Francois Gemenne, research fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations in Paris.

“This also feeds into a security agenda of panic and paranoia,” Gemenne said.

At least 20 percent of humanity will be at high risk of severe flooding due to sea level rise and extreme rainfall events in the coming decades.

“Too many people live in low-lying deltas and other parts of the world that are becoming too dangerous to live in,” said Gemenne. They will be forced to move and often this movement will be permanent.

Rather than building walls and barriers, countries and the international community need to encourage people to move to safer ground. “Lift the barriers so that people can use migration to adapt to climate change,” he urged delegates.  Continue reading →

The Yin and Yang of Climate Extremes We Will See More of

Stephen 1 Must Read, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, Energy, global warming, News, Science , , , , , ,

Extreme weather accounted for 76 percent of all disasters over the past 20 years. Recovery is often impossible even in the US, i.e. New Orleans 5 years after Hurricane Katrina where poor neighborhoods remain devastated

By Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Oct 13, 2010 (Tierramérica) 

The floods that affected 20 million people in Pakistan and the devastating six-week heat wave in Russia in recent months are tragic climate events — and they’re closely linked.

“The Pakistan floods and Russia heat wave were directly connected, the atmospheric science makes that clear,” Kevin Trenberth, senior scientist at the U.S. National Centre for Atmospheric Research, told Tierramérica.

A long-lasting high pressure system called a “blocking high” essentially gave western Russia a dry Mediterranean summer, which in turn shifted more- than-normal moisture into the Indian monsoon, resulting in record-breaking rainfall in northern Pakistan and India, Trenberth explained.

Wildfires burned many russian villages Aug 2010

It is difficult to determine whether climate change caused this extraordinary event, but it certainly made it much worse, according to Trenberth. “Without global warming these extremes are unlikely to have occurred,” he added.

The drought in Russian and the heavy rains in Pakistan are exactly what are expected to happen with climate change, said the expert.

“Changes in extreme weather events are the main way climate change is manifested,” he said, noting that the storms or floods that used to occur once every 200 years may now occur every 30 years.

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Continue reading →

‘Legacy of Katrina’ report details impact of stalled recovery on mental health status of children

Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, Culture, economics, Energy , , , ,
FEMA trailer and Katrina damaged house in St. ...
Image via Wikipedia

60 percent of children — as many as 20,000 — displaced by Hurricane Katrina 5 years ago either have serious emotional disorders, behavioral issues or are experiencing significant housing instability according to new report.

Five years ago Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans caused the evacuation of 1.5 million Gulf Coast residents. After a year, 500,000 people remained displaced, many residing in highly transitional shelters, including the notorious FEMA trailer parks. Now at the five-year mark, substantial consequences from this prolonged displacement have resulted in widespread mental health issues in children living in the region, according to a new study by the National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCDP).

And this is in the world’s richest country. How will Pakistan recover from its floods ? It may take a whole generation.

Economic experts consistently underestimate the real and long term impacts of weather disasters that are worsening and become more frequent due to climate change. We have yet to really comprehend those impacts and dangerously underestimate the real costs of climatic change. — Stephen

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