EBOLA: NOT (YET) A REAL PUBLIC HEALTH ISSUE

Virus contained in animals living in tropical forest...deforestation...civil war...corrupt political regime... all ingredients for outbreak of epidemics

Peter Piot co-discovered the deadly virus nearly 40 years ago, but says it wasn't thought a major public health threat – until now

[Reproduced from NEWSCIENTIST]

You discovered the Ebola virus in 1976. How?
My lab received a blood sample from a Belgian nun who had died in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). She was diagnosed with yellow fever, but when we isolated the virus, it didn't look like anything we knew. Under the electron microscope it looked like a worm.

Then we got news from the World Health Organization of a major epidemic with a very high mortality rate in Zaire. We were told to stop all investigations because our lab wasn't equipped to deal with dangerous viruses. So we sent the virus to the US Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. They confirmed that it was a new virus.

What happened next?
The next step was to figure out how the virus was transmitted and to stop the epidemic. So I went with a team to the epidemic zone in the equatorial forest in the northern part of Zaire. It was my first time ever in Africa, and I was just 27 so I had zero experience. But we did the detective work, unravelling how this virus was spreading.

Nearly 40 years after the virus was found, are you surprised at how bad the situation is?
Yes. This Ebola epidemic has killed more people than all the other epidemics together. It is a perfect storm: a virus hiding in the forest, likely in bats; people who are more exposed to the forest due to deforestation and other factors; no trust in authorities after decades of civil war and a corrupt regime; and a dysfunctional health system. You also have strong beliefs about disease causation, traditional funeral rites that require the family to touch the body and mistrust in Western medicine. Finally, there is the very slow response – both nationally and by the international community.

How was the international response lacking?
We were all far too late. Even today with the much enhanced support, we are still running behind the virus. The epidemic is expanding. Every week the number of deaths is greater than the week before.

Experimental treatments are now being tested. Why hasn't this happened sooner?
After the 2001 anthrax scare, an anti-bioterrorism programme largely funded by the US Department of Defense led to the development of a few vaccines and experimental drugs for Ebola. But the funding dried up. Until now, Ebola hasn't been a real public health issue compared with HIV, malaria, maternal mortality and so on. But now we must accelerate evaluation of experimental vaccines and offer some of the drugs for palliative use.

What are the most promising treatments?
We still need to go through human trials for a potential vaccine, but that will take months and might well be too late for this epidemic.

For treatment, we can use blood plasma or serum from people who have recovered from Ebola – when you recover from an infectious disease you have very high levels of antibodies in your blood. But let's make sure treatments are well evaluated. For the next epidemic we need to have stockpiles of vaccine and drugs that can be mobilised immediately.

THE LARGEST NETWORK OF OCEANIC PROTECTED AREAS IN THE WORLD

This magnificent submarine world must be protected. 

Access BBC News (and watch a footage of peculiarities of coral life):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-29373068

[Photo above from Mother Nature Network (www.mnn.com)]

US President Barack Obama has signed a memorandum to expand a vast marine reserve in the Pacific Ocean.

The Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument will become the largest network of oceanic protected areas in the world.

The memorandum bans commercial fishing, deep-sea mining and other extraction of underwater resources in the area.

The Pacific Remote Islands National Marine Monument (PRIMNM), at  200 nautical miles from the unique atolls, encompasses more than 490,000 square miles (1,269,051 km2), an area roughly three times the size of California.

PHOSPORUS FROM FISH BONES OF ANCIENT NORTH-CENTRAL AFRICA TO THE AMAZON FOREST. UNBELIEVABLE!!!

African fish nourish Amazon

  BBC News  (Last updated 25/09/2014 07:34 BRT)

The Amazon is being fertilised by the remains of ancient fish from Africa.

The nutrient-rich material is being carried in millions of tonnes of dust blown across the Atlantic from the Sahara every year.

Scientists have long recognised the importance of this airborne train to the rainforest's health.

But now a UK team has been able to show that much of the essential phosphorous in the dust is derived from the bones and scales of fish and other organisms.

These are animals that lived in Megalake Chad, a massive body of water that covered north-central Africa thousands of years ago.

When they died, their remains sank into the muddy sediments, which today are exposed in what is one of the windiest places on Earth - the so-called Bodélé Depression.

Satellites regularly catch vast clouds of dust being whipped up in this region of Chad to be thrown across the ocean to South America.

The dust contains the apatite (phosphorus) mineral. Phosphorus is a nutrient essential for photosynthesis.

Scientists were unsure whether this apatite had been weathered out of rocks or perhaps had a biogenic source.

But by examining its crystalline structure, researchers have revealed its true origin.

"This is the first time that fish bone and scale phosphorus have been found in dusts," said Prof Karen Hudson-Edwards from Birkbeck, University of London.

"The finding is important because this type of phosphorus is more soluble and available to ecosystems like the Amazon than other types of phosphorus that come from rocks.

"The Bodélé fish phosphorus is like that found in fish bone meal that gardeners use as a fertiliser," she told BBC News.

The determination relied on work carried out at the Diamond Light Source in Oxfordshire.

This facility uses brilliant X-rays to probe the workings of matter on the smallest scales.

Its pictures could discern the delicate, tell-tale chemical signature of biogenic apatite in the Bodélé dusts.

The team's report in the journal Chemical Geology highlights the fact that this important source of phosphorus for the Amazon is finite.

The sediments of Megalake Chad will eventually be completely eroded by the winds blowing through the Sahara.

When that happens, it could have deleterious consequences for the rainforest, says co-worker Dr Caroline Peacock from Leeds University.

"A large part of the phosphorus that the Amazon receives currently is in this more useful soluble form. While the lake sediments remain - that's great. But when they're gone then the Amazon will have to make do with detrital (weathered rock) phosphorus, detrital apatite, which is that much harder to solubilise."

The team's aim is to go back to Chad to investigate precisely how long the important dusts can be sustained.

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos

GOOD NEWS (?). BIOLOGICAL ATTACK AGAINST DENGUE

Brazil releases 'good' mosquitoes

From BBC News

Brazilian researchers in Rio de Janeiro have released thousands of mosquitoes infected with a bacteria that suppresses Dengue fever.

The hope is they will multiply, breed and become the majority of mosquitoes, thus reducing cases of the disease.

The initiative is part of a programme also taking place in Australia, Vietnam and Indonesia.

The intercellular bacteria, Wolbachia, being introduced cannot be transmitted to humans.

The programme started in 2012 says Luciano Moreira of the Brazilian research institute Fiocruz, who is leading the project in Brazil .

"Our teams performed weekly visits to the four neighbourhoods in Rio being targeted. Mosquitoes were analysed after collection in special traps.

"Transparency and proper information for the households is priority. "

Ten thousands mosquitoes will be released each month for four months with the first release in Tubiacanga, in the north of Rio.

'Good' bacteria

The bacteria Wolbachia is found in 60% of insects. It acts like a vaccine for the mosquito which carries Dengue, Aedes Aegypti, stopping the Dengue virus multiplying in its body.

Wolbachia also has an effect on reproduction. If a contaminated male fertilises the eggs of a female without the bacteria, these eggs do not turn into larvae.

If the male and female are contaminated or if only a female has the bacteria, all future generations of mosquito will carry Wolbachia.

As a result, Aedes mosquitoes with Wolbachia become predominant without researchers having to constantly release more contaminated insects.

In Australia this happened within 10 weeks on average.

The research on Wolbachia began at the University of Monash in Australia in 2008. The researchers allowed the mosquitoes to feed on their own arms for five years because of concerns at the time Wolbachia could infect humans and domestic animals.

Three more neighbourhoods will be targeted next, and large scale studies to evaluate the effect of the strategy are planned for 2016.

Dengue re-emerged in Brazil in 1981 after an absence of more than 20 years.

Over the next 30 years, seven million cases were reported.

Brazil leads the world in the number of Dengue cases, with 3.2 million cases and 800 deaths reported in the 2009-2014 period.

BBC © 2014

ELECTIONS IN BRAZIL: CAN THE ATLANTIC FOREST BE SAVED???

Reproduced from The Ecologist

Saving Brazil's Atlantic forest on a shoe string

Cristina Banks-Leite

As Brazil prepares for elections next month, conserving its remaining Atlantic Forest is a hot issue, writes Cristina Banks-Leite. Ecologists want to preserve more native habitat, while farmers want to expand their acreage. But there is one solution that ought to please everyone.

But if priority areas were restored to at least 30% native habitat cover, the price to pay would be less than 6.5% of what Brazil currently spends on agricultural subsidies.

Brazil's Atlantic forest - Mata Atlântica - is one of the world's great biodiversity hotspots, rivalling even the Amazon.

Running on and off for several thousand kilometres along the coast, the forest is home to 10,000 plant species that don't exist anywhere else, more bird species than the whole of Europe, and more than half of the country's threatened animal species.

Today, the ecosystem it sustains is under threat: trees have been cleared for farms, houses and roads, big cities such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo have grown in the region, and just 15% of the original forest remains.

But it's not all doom and gloom for the Atlantic forest. I and collaborators from the Universities of São Paulo, Michigan, Toronto, and UNESP, have published a study in the journal Science which shows that paying farmers to conserve areas of forest within their property is good value for money.

The key message from our work is that it is possible to protect native species, maintain a healthy ecosystem and potentially reduce poverty, all for less than US$200m each year.

These results are interesting for at least two reasons. The first is very simple, our conclusions are not calamitous - instead of showing that it is the end of world as we know it, we show that human welfare and conservation needs can both be satisfied for a reasonably small amount of money.

The headline number seems large, but it only represents less than 0.01% of Brazil's GDP.

Farmland versus forests - a hot electoral issue

The second reason is much more complicated, however. Brazil is heading for an election in October, and as it stands anything could happen.

This is important as the current government is in the process of relaxing the Brazilian Forest Code which would, among other things, allow farmers to set aside a smaller proportion of their land to native habitat. This has sparked a fiery discussion among conservationists, scientists, politicians and farmers.

Previously, the code required farmers living within the Atlantic forest to set aside 20% of their land for native habitat. Farmers were prevented from designating land they couldn't use anyway such as particularly steep terrain or areas close to rivers, so many had to set aside more than 20% of their land.

In theory, this was great for biodiversity. In practice it never worked as farmers didn't respect the law, often because they couldn't afford the economic costs of setting aside productive agricultural land for conservation.

The other side of the coin is that the new code is unlikely to protect the Atlantic forest's species. But, up until now, nobody knew how much habitat really was needed. What our results show is that at least 30% of the forest area needs to be set aside for conservation if we are to preserve a healthy ecosystem.

This is great news for Brazilian scientists and conservationists, because now they can use a number to base their arguments while discussing the changes to the Forest Code, instead of saying the usual 'more the merrier'.

A productive partnership?

But the suggestion that more forest is needed to preserve biodiversity doesn't mean the battle between farmers and conservationists has to continue. This is because the onus of increasing forest cover from 20% to 30% doesn't have to solely fall on farmers.

There are already some schemes that pay farmers to set aside part of their land for the protection or restoration of native habitats.

These schemes are usually run by local governments or NGOs and the rationale is that they are paying people to protect crucial ecosystem services, such as carbon storage, watersheds (or water quality) and the functions provided by a healthy spread of plants and animals such as pollination, or pest control.

We show that if the Brazilian government expands these schemes, then we can have both happy farmers and happy biodiversity.

This does not mean that every single farm in the Atlantic forest would have to set aside 30% of its land for conservation. It also does not mean that we would protect all species from extinction, as some need large areas of unbroken 100% pristine forest.

Compared to farm subsidies, saving forest is a bargain

But if priority areas were restored to at least 30% native habitat cover, the price to pay would be less than 6.5% of what Brazil currently spends on agricultural subsidies.

Farmers willing to set aside land for conservation would receive regular payments, local communities would receive the benefits of enhanced ecosystem services, and native species would be protected. Sounds like a good deal.

Whoever wins Brazil's election will have to deal with either angry farmers or angry scientists and conservationists. Our study thus reveals a promising light at the end of the tunnel - the suggestion that the new government might not need to make compromises.

Potentially this is a battle everybody can win.

 

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Cristina Banks-Leite is Lecturer in Life Sciences at Imperial College London. She does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

 

A NATURE RESERVE CONSERVATION OR DIAMOND EXPLORATION, WHICH ONE WILL WIN?

A $4.9bn diamond mine will open on September 5 in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, the ancestral land of Africa’s last hunting Bushmen, exactly ten years after the Botswana government claimed there were “no plans to mine anywhere inside the reserve.”

The Bushmen were told they had to leave the reserve soon after diamonds were discovered in the 1980s, but the Botswana government has repeatedly denied that the illegal and forced evictions of the Kalahari Bushmen – in 1997, 2002 and 2005 – were due to the rich diamond deposits. It justified the Bushmen’s evictions from the land in the name of “conservation”.

In 2000, however, Botswana’s Minister of Minerals, Energy & Water Affairs told a Botswana newspaper, "the relocation of Basarwa (Bushmen) communities from [the Central Kalahari Game Reserve] is to pave way for a proposed Gope Diamond Mine”; and in 2002, the Bushmen told Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples’ rights, "Foreign Minister General Merafhe went to the reserve and told us we had to be moved because of diamonds.”

[...]

Access www.survivalinternational.org

IN THE AMAZON: DEFORESTATION DECREASES...BUT...

Portuguese: Brasil é exemplo de sucesso na redução do desmatamento, diz relatório

English: Brazil is an example of success in reducing deforestation, says report

Alessandra Corrêa

De Nova York para a BBC Brasil

Atualizado em  5 de junho, 2014 - 05:43 (Brasília) 08:43 GMT

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Portuguese: Um relatório divulgado nesta quinta-feira na reunião da ONU sobre mudanças climáticas que ocorre em Bonn, na Alemanha, destaca o Brasil como o país que mais reduziu o desmatamento e as emissões de gases que causam aquecimento global.

English: A report released on Thursday at the UN meeting on climate change held in Bonn, in Germany, highlights the Brazil as the country reduced deforestation and emissions of gases that cause global warming.

Now,  read the text below which was also reproduced from BBC News.

Amazon destruction increases again

Last updated 10/09/2014 21:09 BRT

The rate of destruction of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil has increased for a second year running.

Brazilian government figures show deforestation was up by 29% in the 12 months up to the end of July 2013.

Satellite data showed that almost 6,000 sq km (2,315 sq miles) of forest were cleared during that period.

The largest increases in deforestation were seen in the states of Para and Mato Grosso, where most of Brazil's agricultural expansion is taking place.

More than 1,000 sq km (390 sq miles) have been cleared in each state.

Last year, the Brazilian authorities said there had been a 28% rise in deforestation.

That reversed several years of decline.

The worst year since the Brazilian government began tracking deforestation was 2004, when almost 30,000 sq km (11,580 sq miles) of forest were lost.

Besides agricultural expansion, the rebound in deforestation is due to illegal logging and the invasion of public lands adjacent to big infrastructure projects in the Amazon, such as roads and hydroelectric dams.

BBC © 2014

IN EUROPE EVEN VULTURES ARE POISONED!!!

Reproduced from http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_round_up/2547150/europes_vultures_face_extinction_from_toxic_vet_drug.html

Vultures have become one of the most threatened families of birds on the planet thanks to poisoning by the veterinary drug diclofenac. Now Birdlife has discovered that it's on sale in Europe - threatening to wipe vultures out and undermine significant EU investments in vulture conservation.

Following recent catastrophic declines of vultures in Asia that left landscapes littered with carcasses, vultures in Europe and Africa may be set to follow, according to BirdLife International.

The warning comes following the discovery that a veterinary drug that's lethal to vultures even at low doses is commercially available in Europe.

"Vultures play a fundamental role that no other birds do: they clean our landscapes", said Iván Ramírez, Head of Conservation for BirdLife International in Europe and Central Asia.

Following recent catastrophic declines of vultures in Asia that left landscapes littered with carcasses, vultures in Europe and Africa may be set to follow, according to BirdLife International.

The warning comes following the discovery that a veterinary drug that's lethal to vultures even at low doses is commercially available in Europe.

"Vultures play a fundamental role that no other birds do: they clean our landscapes", said Iván Ramírez, Head of Conservation for BirdLife International in Europe and Central Asia.

And that means they are for human and animal health as they clean up the rotting remains of dead animals.

Diclofenac has already wiped out vultures in South Asia

Used to treat inflammation in livestock, diclofenac has already wiped out 99% of vultures in India, Pakistan and Nepal.

A non-steroid anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) present in many commonly used drugs that are used for treating moderate pain, diclofenac is extremely toxic to vultures in small doses. Vultures eating cattle treated with a veterinary dose of diclofenac will die in less than 2 days.

The decline of vultures in Asia was shockingly fast - quicker than any other wild bird, including the Dodo. Within a decade species such as the White-rumped Vulture fell by 99.9% as a result of diclofenac in India alone - leaving only one bird in a thousand alive.

A safe alternative drug, meloxicam, has been identified and tested on vultures and a range of other bird species. The meloxicam patent is more than 10-years old, meaning any pharmaceutical company can produce it with no royalties or licence fees to pay.

But now diclofenac has reached Europe

But despite the dangers and the availablity of alternatives, BirdLife has found that the drug is commercially available in Spain and Italy - both stronghold countries for European vulture species.

Since 1996, the EU and national governments have invested significant resources on conserving vultures, and there have been at least 67 LIFE projects related to these species. Between 2008 and 2012, nine vulture conservation projects alone received €10.7 million.

"We know what we need to do in Europe - ban veterinary diclofenac", said Jim Lawrence, BirdLife's Preventing Extinctions Programme Manager. "All these European conservation efforts would be useless if the use of veterinary diclofenac becomes widespread."

Four vulture species breed in Europe: the Endangered Egyptian Vulture, the Near Threatened Cinereous Vulture, and important populations of Griffon Vulture and Bearded Vulture.

Three of the four vulture populations have been increasing steadily (except the Egyptian Vulture), partly due to the intensive conservation efforts funded by European Union budget lines.

A host of other threats in Africa

As well as the impending threat of diclofenac, a multitude of other complex threats need to be unravelled further in Africa, and investment needed to tackle them.

African vultures are facing increasing threats from poisoning (deliberate and accidental), persecution for body parts to be used in traditional medicine, habitat loss, collision with power-lines, and more.

The birds have declined in West Africa on average by 95% in three decades. Across Africa, seven of the eleven vulture species are now listed as globally threatened, with species such as Hooded Vulture recently being up-listed to Endangered in 2011.

"Three of every four old-world vulture species are already globally threatened with extinction or Near Threatened according the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species", said Kariuki Ndanganga, BirdLife Africa's Species Programme Manager.

"Unless threats are identified and tackled quickly and effectively, vultures in Africa and Europe could face extinction within our lifetime."

He is now leading an effort to raise £20,000 to identify, review, prioritize and tackle the threats to vultures across the continent.

The decline is global

Of 11 vulture species found in Africa, seven (including five of the six species endemic to Africa) are globally threatened. Five of these species joined the Red List of threatened species only in the last seven years. The Hooded Vulture - a historically widespread species - was listed as Endangered in 2011.

There are 21 species of vultures in the world, five of which can be found in the American continent. The other 16 are distributed across Africa, Europe and Asia.

Of these so-called Old World vultures, 75% are globally threatened or near-threatened, with the number of threatened species expected to rise in the next conservation status assessment.

 

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