CABI Blogs: hand picked... and carefully sorted

MERS the next pandemic threat?

10 years ago it was SARS, now the new coronavirus worrying pandemic planners is theMERS (Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome) coronavirus, that emerged in Saudi Arabia, last year. The number of cases is gathering momentum and we don’t yet know how it is transmitted or what animal is harbouring it. As Saudi Arabia is the host for the annual Hajj pilgrimage one of the largest mass gatherings in the world, it is important we find out before millions of visitors descend on the country.

World Environment Day: Think . Eat . Save

Today is World Environment Day, which is the day to highlight awareness of the environment and promote political attention and action to protect all environments each year, always on 5th June. The day has been celebrated since 1972 and this year’s official theme is ‘Think.Eat.Save: Anti-food Waste and Unnecessary Resource Consumption,’ which is a very important point when considering the massive amount of food that is wasted, especially in the western world, each year.

You have a Right to Mental Health

Image: King College London,  project Emerald (emerging mental health systems in low- and middle-income countries)

One of the key sessions  I attended at the second day of “The world in denial: Global mental health matters”( March 26-27, 2013, Royal Society of Medicine, London) highlighted the existing legal tools available to achieve international recognition of the Right to Health,  AND the problems of getting mental health included in this framework.  In particular how including it under disability has implications for access to treatment. This blog summarizes the session and puts information into context with current events, including the 66th World Health Assembly recommendations.

There was much I learnt that day, yet  of much I was already aware, as CABI’s Global Health database has 20,000 records on mental health, 25% of them focussed on developing countries. One of the eye-openers for me was an understanding of the various legal tools dealing with international recognition of the Right to Health and the problems of getting mental health included in this framework; how including it under disability has implications for access to treatment.

This is what I learnt, put simply, from talks given by Professor Norman Sartorius (President of World Psychiatric Association) and Gunilla Backman (Former health adviser SIDA & Editor, The right to health: theory and practice).

 

Basic Human rights: these are not defined or not universally accepted

AND

There are 5 categories of  documents related to human rights

As Locog winds up, what is the London 2012 legacy?

 
 

Around ten months after they opened, the London 2012 Olympic Games are becoming a distant memory, but as another summer begins the efforts to ensure lasting legacies continue. An unexpected surplus in the final accounts of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (Locog) means a minor windfall for legacy projects, while yesterday London Mayor Boris Johnson got together with Australian cricketing legend Shane Warne to publicise volunteering opportunities in the hope that one of the big Olympic success stories, the tens of thousands of volunteers, will continue to inspire.

Low-level iodine-deficiency produces lower IQ children in UK

IN my March 2013 blog “Eat less salt but make sure it contains iodine!”, I described the  problems of addressing iodine–deficiency diseases in Pakistan and  the worrying rise in iodine deficiency in the UK,  linked to a shift  in eating patterns away from dairy and oily fish, our traditional sources of iodine.   Whereas, other developed countries had relied on introducing a national supply of iodised salt, we had got away without it. But even countries using iodised salt, now had to watch out, as salt–reduction  campaigns to tackle rising cardiovascular diseases, were allowing iodine-deficiency to reoccur albeit at a low-level (as compared to the high level of iodine deficiency found in developing countries)

NOW there is further support for re-emerging iodine deficiency in the UK:  this time a study on pregnant women published in the Lancet. They have identified changes in the IQ of primary-school children born to mothers with low-level iodine deficiency:  IQ goes down 3 points & reading age is reduced.   For more information, read the BBC article Iodine deficiency 'may lower UK children's IQ and the Lancet study.

Need I say more? In the March blog, which featured on Global Health Knowledge Base and CABI-Handpicked & carefully sorted , I covered the spectrum of iodine-deficiency diseases which can occur in children born to mothers with iodine-poor diets,  leaving the children with permanent physical & mental intelligence problems.  Daily it seems, the case is being made to consider introducing iodised salt into the UK  and to advise would-be pregnant mothers not only to ensure folic acid is in their diet but also adequate iodine ( BUT not  through seaweed supplements). Pregnant mothers who rely on organic milk should be aware that this contains less iodine than usual and they will need to increase iodine intake to compensate.

WE do indeed “have a new challenge to addressing iodine deficiency in both developing and developed countries”.

Related articles

Iodine Deficiency during Pregnancy Linked with Lower IQ in Children

VIDEO: Iodine deficiency 'may lower IQs'

Iodine deficiency 'may lower children's IQ'

Iodine levels in mothers linked to children's IQ scores

Iodine deficiency 'may lower IQs'

Mothers' diets may harm IQs in two-thirds of babies

Women who drink organic milk in pregnancy could be harming their baby's IQ

Pregnant women should up iodine intake to increase child's IQ

Eating insects to save the planet: would it really help?

Image from Manataka^™ American Indian Council - manataka.org

It was well publicised in the media last week that we have reached the feared 400 ppm carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentration level in the Earth’s atmosphere. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported in a press release last week that the 400 ppm threshold was recorded at several stations of the World Meteorological Organization’s Global Atmosphere Watch network, and the threshold was reached earlier than the predicted 2015-16. The press release shows some dramatic graphic representations of the changes in CO₂ concentrations from ice core determinations, for the last 800,000 years and 300 years, and from instrument measurements at Mauna Loa for data since 1957.

Going Direct2Farm

Carmen Thönnissen, Programme Manager from the Swiss Agency for Development and Coopertation, recently visited CABI’s Direct2Farm project with her colleagues in Meerut, India. Read Carmen's report on her visit and the impact of mobile technology on Agriculture.

On 23 April 2013, we - from the Swiss Agency for Development and Coopertation (SDC) - had the pleasure to visit one site of the Direct2Farm projects in Meerut, India. Direct2Farm is a mobile-enabled agriculture infomediary service aimed at making high quality information readily accessible to farmers. Accompanied by Mr. Sharbendu Banerjee and Ms Priyanka Anand of the D2F CABI team in Delhi, we visited the Farmer Call Center that serves more than 30,000 farmers; an Airtel phone company selling stand in a nearby market; met with famers in their fields; and visited one farming family’s home near Meerut.

What’s the big deal about Open Access?

Specifically, what’s in it for the people who get involved? How can publishers, government bodies, academic institutions, researchers, and even the general public reap the benefits?

Copyright: ©Gideon Burton CC BY-SA 2.0

The aim of open access is to improve the communication of knowledge and encourage advancements in research by allowing information to be freely accessible to anyone. At a recent conference held in Oxford, the idea of open access data was discussed with people from all walks of life: publishers, researchers, business entrepreneurs. The general consensus was that openness should be common practice in the academic and publishing world – and that subscriptions, journal payments and other barriers to information should become a thing of the past.

Attack of the 340 million propagule timebomb! Stories of Phytophthora

 

Welcome to a new monthly series called CABI Author Focus. Each month one of the many talented authors or editors of books published by CABI will be writing about an element of their research. This month Kurt Lamour, editor of Phytophthora: A Global Perspective, writes for us on his experiences of this plant-damagng pathogen. As well as Phytophthora, Kurt co-edited Oomycete Genetics and Genomics: Diversity, Interactions and Research Tool with Sophien Kamoun.

Potato famine! Starvation and emigration! For many folks the only Phytophthora they’ll ever hear of, albeit tangentially, is through tales of the infamous potato blight that occurred in mid-1800 Ireland.  I’ve often used the famine as a reference point to help answer questions concerning what it is I do for a living; although I’ve learned this conversational strategy can be tricky.

Managing floods and droughts for a changing climate

Extreme weather is becoming increasingly more common in the UK in recent years; for example, recent figures from the UK Environmental Agency (EA) showed that 1 in every 5 days saw flooding in 2012, but 1 in 4 days were in drought. The EA reported that rivers like the Tyne, Ouse and Tone went from their lowest to their highest flows since records began, in the space of only four months. These stats indicate the UK must work on dealing with such extremes. The Flood and Water Mangement Act (2010) and the Environment Agency Catchment Flood Management Plans promote working with natural processes where possible.