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…
Author: Abdallah el-Kurebe
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.…
The Speaker of House of Representatives, Mr Yakubu Dogara has stressed the importance of enacting new legislation to aid the drive to modernise agriculture in the country as well as turn the sector into a major foreign exchange earner for the country in the nearest future. He said this while delivering an address at a two-day public hearing organised by the House Committee on Agricultural Colleges and Institutions on Monday in Abuja. Dogara also stressed the need to ensure bills processed by the legislature were cost-sensitive and did not increase the financial burden of the nation through the multiplication of agencies.…
This is the third in a three-part series making the case that the development of the biotech traits for insect resistance and herbicide tolerance are the most substantial innovations in sustainable agriculture in the last three decades. In the first part, I laid out the context in which I believe they should be assessed relative to other innovations competing for the crown. In the second part, I examined the data and evidence of their overall environmental impacts. Here, I’ll make my closing argument after looking at the impacts on Argentina, China, India, Pakistan and South Africa. Despite the myth that…
Two antimaterial drugs that could compete with other relevant drugs in the treatment of material parasites have been developed by a Nigerian scientist, Professor Umar Katsayel. Katsayel of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Zaria, disclosed this Mondy in Sandmu, near Daura. He said that the drugs were developed from the roots of Cissampelous mucronat plant and the stem-bark of Plumeria rubra plant, explaining that “these are common herbs found around the vicinity.”. According to Katsayel, the drugs had been subjected to various laboratory examinations to determine their efficacy and toxicity before consumption. ”We would soon make the drugs public…