Problem

EKANTIPUR.COM by Manish Gautam and Pranaya SJB Rana      April 20, 2015
 
Nepal -- More than two weeks later, the mystery disease in Jajarkot has finally been identified as swine flu. With 24 people dead and thousands infected in a number of remote VDCs in Jajarkot, the disease has made national headlines. Yet, many have criticised the government for its lackluster response to the outbreak.

A team led by Health Minister Khaganath Adhikari visited the outbreak sites only after a dozen people had died. The team returned with inadequate samples for testing, prolonging the diagnosis period. Since then, a medical team of roughly 40 medical personnel from the Epidemiology and Disease Control Division (EDCD), the World Health Organisation, and the Nepal Army have been deployed to the outbreak sites.

Yet, there is little sign of the disease abating. Manish Gautam and Pranaya SJB Rana spoke to Dr Baburam Marasini , the harried director of the EDCD, on the state’s response to the outbreak, the EDCD’s complaints of a lack of funding, and the state’s preparedness for such epidemics.

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Drone footage shot by ABC cameraman Brant Cumming in the Gorkha district shows buildings reduced to rubble by the April 25 earthquake. This video highlights the remoteness of the affected areas in Nepal and the difficulties faced by rescue personnel struggling to reach them.

submitted by George Hurlburt

theconversation.com - by Gerard Fitzgerald, Apil Gurung, and Bharat Raj Poudel - May 5, 2015

The media in Nepal has been instrumental in keeping people connected and updated about the recent magnitude 7.8 earthquake that hit the country on Saturday April 25.

However, initially the quake did not create a major reaction, as small scale tremors are not uncommon in the country. The Nepalese people were also unclear about the extent of the disaster as local media struggled to react to the earthquake.

The reality of the scale of the disaster began to sink in when heartbreaking pictures of the damage started emerging. Live footage and pictures from the international media gave some insight into the extent of the devastation in the earthquake ravaged nation.

FOREIGN POLICY   by Freddie Wilson                                                         May 2, 2015
The country has just a handful of private helicopters, which are crucial to earthquake rescue operations. But are foreign trekkers the only ones who’ve benefitted?
In the wake of the earthquake, it became immediately clear that choppers would be crucial to lifesaving rescue operations. Landslides have besieged Nepal, wrecking many sections of its already tenuous road system. People are trapped in remote villages — or what remain of them — while supplies are bottlenecked at the Tribhuvan International Airport, in Kathmandu. “The planning over many years seems to have failed to take account of the fact that hard to reach places — most of those badly hit — would remain hard to reach, after the quake,” wrote John Bevan, who has worked with the U.N. in Nepal and Haiti, in an email from Kathmandu.

HUMANOSPHERE  by Tom Murphy                                                                          May 1, 2015

ELMINA, Ghana – Each evening the fishermen set out in their hand-carved wooden boats. By nightfall, the horizon is dotted by a long row of small lights, their own constellation. Fish are caught, the haul is sold in markets and life continues. But one group is noticeably absent from Elmina and other towns along Ghana’s coast – tourists.

The near-empty Elmina Bay Resort. (Credit: Tom Murphy)

Thousands of college students embark on a trip to see the world and do a bit of learning through the Semester at Sea program. The West African countries of Senegal and Ghana are usually on the itinerary, bringing a steady flow of tourism to the two countries. But the countries are not destinations for three consecutive semesters due to concerns about Ebola.