Former President Jimmy Carter joined the World Health Organization in London today to ask governments and nongovernmental organizations for $93 million in donations over four years to rid the world of guinea worm disease, a debilitating infection that still afflicts four African countries. In 1980, about 3.5 million people in 20 countries suffered from guinea worm disease, an affliction so painful that it can immobilize sufferers for months. According to the World Health Organization, only 970 cases of guinea worm have been confirmed from January through August this year, primarily in the ... Read More
Dengue Fever Slips Across the Border
November 16, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Stories of the potential consequences of climate change have been used to motivate politicians, shame deniers and educate the broader public on how an abstract scientific concept could breed concrete disasters. There are, of course, the rising sea levels and warmer temperatures, migrating species and shrinking ice caps. Less frequently cited, it turns out, is another concern: dengue fever. Public health experts now warn that climate change could come with a host of complications that have seldom figured prominently in all the talk of emissions reductions and treaty negotiations. More ... Read More
