By Stuart Smyth 1994 is generally regarded as the first year of genetically modified crop production, the first being the GM Flavr Savr tomato in the US. The crops that will be planted in 2018 represent the 25th year of GM crop production. While many eNGOs of social media ‘celebrity’ rant, rave and troll that GM crops are the cause of every leading social, medical and environmental misfortune in existence, this could not be further from the truth. While GM crops celebrate their 25th production anniversary, these technologies have been researched for a decade longer. During this time, they have been proven safe countless…
Author: Abdallah el-Kurebe
By Ludger Wess What is nature? What is natural? Philosophers have been arguing about this since antiquity. Supporters of organic farming seem to know the difference. For them, the use of “chemistry” and “genes” is unnatural. But neither nature nor organic farmers adhere to this definition, making it difficult to use the concept of “natural” when deciding which techniques should be allowed. Organic farming, as most people believe, relies only on methods that are “natural”. Everything that does not occur in nature — mineral fertilizers, genetic engineering and chemically-synthesized plant protection products such as glyphosate or neonicotinoids — is prohibited. In contrast, those things…
The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the George W. Bush Institute and the UNAIDS have announced renewed partnership to End AIDS and Cervical Cancer among HIV-positive women in Africa. They said the renewed partnership would accelerate lifesaving efforts to help end AIDS and cervical cancer in Africa’s eight sub-Saharan African countries to commemorate Mother’s Day. The partnership would ensure efforts were more effective and at a lower cost by refocusing on reaching HIV-positive women in eight target countries, including Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. According to UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS…
Mark Edge, Director of Collaborations for Developing Countries at Monsanto, talks about WEMA, the initiative that uses Bt maize to eradicate a harmful pest and help smallholder farmers in Africa. My work at Monsanto over the years has offered me many new challenges – lately I’m working with a team on the complex issue of helping smallholder farmers in Africa get better seed to help them manage the threats to their maize crops. The WEMA collaboration In 2008, we entered into a public-private partnership to develop Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and…
The main hospital in Democratic Republic of Congo’s northwestern town of Bikoro has received a new suspected Ebola case, the hospital’s director told Reuters on Friday. Bikoro is the nearest major town to Ikoko Impenge, the village where the first reports of the fever appeared. Congo’s health minister on Thursday announced the first confirmed death in a new outbreak of the virus and said 11 other were confirmed to be infected, including three medical staff. The DRC announced on Thursday that 11 other people were now confirmed to be infected, including three medical staff. No fewer than 17 people have…
The World Health Organisation (WHO) says that with declining numbers and only a handful of confirmed cases reported in recent weeks, the critical phase of Nigeria’s largest Lassa fever outbreak is under control. A statement issued by WHO’s Communication Officer, Ms Charity Warigon in Abuja on Friday said continued vigilance was needed as the country was still Lassa fever endemic. She said that this year, 423 confirmed cases, including 106 deaths, had been reported but that national case numbers had consistently declined in the past six weeks. The spokeswoman said that the numbers had dropped below levels considered to be…
DNA evidence points to Asian amphibians as the source of a fatal disease that has been wiping out frogs across the globe. By Ruth Williams In recent decades, large populations of frogs, toads, and salamanders in disparate regions of the world have been succumbing to the deadly chytridiomycosis disease caused by the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. The sudden and dramatic die-offs have prompted a large-scale research effort to pinpoint the source of the deadly fungus, and now the results of that research are in. After analyzing the genomes of hundreds of B. dendrobatidis samples collected from wild and captive amphibians in…
Officials said 17 people have died in an area of northwestern Democratic Republic of Congo where health officials have now confirmed an outbreak of Ebola. This is the ninth time Ebola has been recorded in the central African nation, whose eastern Ebola river gave the deadly virus its name when it was discovered there in the 1970s, and comes less than a year after its last outbreak which killed eight people. “Our country is facing another epidemic of the Ebola virus, which constitutes an international public health emergency,” the Health Ministry said in a statement. We still dispose of the…
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said it has immediately scaled up its response after two new cases of Ebola Virus Disease were confirmed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The new cases were identified on Tuesday in a remote area of the country’s north-west, near the town of Bikoro, near the Congo River, by Government scientists there. WHO said the two positive samples, out of five tested overall, had come from the Iponge health facility, located close to Bikoro, and additional specimens were being collected for further testing. “Our top priority is to get to Bikoro to work alongside…
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday it had launched campaign in Africa for more than two million people in five countries to have access to Oral Cholera Vaccine (OCV). The vaccines, funded by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, were sourced from the global stockpile and are being used to carry out five major campaigns in Zambia, Uganda, Malawi, South Sudan and Nigeria. The OCV is recommended to be given in two doses. The first gives protection for six months, the second for three to five years. All five campaigns should have completed their second round of vaccinations by mid-June.…