nejm.org - Jennifer Leaning, M.D., and Debarati Guha-Sapir, Ph.D.
N Engl J Med 2013; 369:1836-1842 - November 7, 2013 - DOI: 10.1056/NEJMra1109877

Natural disasters and armed conflict have marked human existence throughout history and have always caused peaks in mortality and morbidity. But in recent times, the scale and scope of these events have increased markedly. Since 1990, natural disasters have affected about 217 million people every year, and about 300 million people now live amidst violent insecurity around the world. The immediate and longer-term effects of these disruptions on large populations constitute humanitarian crises. In recent decades, public health interventions in the humanitarian response have made gains in the equity and quality of emergency assistance.

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http://www.slideshare.net/YALE-ESF8--VMOC

In light of Typhoon Haiyan, the Yale-Tulane ESF #8 Planning and Response Program has produced special reports for current efforts. To access these reports, click here.

The Yale-Tulane ESF #8 Program is a multi-disciplinary, multi-center, graduate-level program designed to produce ESF #8 planners and responders with standardized skill sets that are consistent with evolving public policy, technologies, and best practices. The group that produced this summary and analysis of the current situation are graduate students from Yale and Tulane Universities. It was compiled entirely from open source materials.

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ECHO Daily Maps - http://ercportal.jrc.ec.europa.eu/Maps/Daily-maps-catalogue#

Credit: Shutterstock

thinkgrogress.org - by Emily Atkin - November 7, 2013

Producers of oil, gas and coal received more than $500 billion in government subsidies around the world in 2011, with the richest nations collectively spending more than $70 billion every year to support fossil fuels.

Those are the findings of a recent report by the Overseas Development Institute, a think tank based in the United Kingdom.

“If their aim is to avoid dangerous climate change, governments are shooting themselves in both feet,” the report, headed by ODI research fellow Shelagh Whitley, said. “They are subsidizing the very activities that are pushing the world towards dangerous climate change, and creating barriers to investment in low-carbon development and subsidy incentives that encourage investment in carbon-intensive energy.”

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           (CLICK IMAGE BELOW FOR INTERACTIVE ROSTER OF THE COMPANIES BEHIND CLIMATE CHANGE)

Chevron, Exxon and BP among companies most responsible for climate change since dawn of industrial age, figures show

theguardian.com - by Suzanne Goldenberg - November 20, 2013

The climate crisis of the 21st century has been caused largely by just 90 companies, which between them produced nearly two-thirds of the greenhouse gas emissions generated since the dawning of the industrial age, new research suggests.

The companies range from investor-owned firms – household names such as Chevron, Exxon and BP – to state-owned and government-run firms.

"While climate sceptics are attacking the IPCC report for being alarmist... environmentalists are complaining that the panel was too intimidated by the deniers, and understated the dangers," writes Elver [EPA]

Climate change deniers have been waging a PR war on scientists who promote a path towards a post carbon economy.

aljazeera.com - by Hilal Elver - October 10, 2013

After six years of work, a week-long final review session in Stockholm, invloving more than 200 scientists from 39 countries, the UN's influential scientific body IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), which is investigating climate change, released a 36-page summary of their latest work.

Gradually, the IPCC will make public four volumes of additional reports and suggestions to policy makers. Somewhat surprisingly, the report was not treated as "breaking news" by the mainstream media. There are several reasons for this.

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CLICK HERE - IPCC - Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis

MSF vaccination campaign in Guinea shows feasibility of oral cholera vaccine for control of future epidemics

Paris/New York, October 17, 2013—In a report published today in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and its scientific research arm, Epicentre, present results of one of the first-ever, large-scale uses of an oral cholera vaccine during a cholera outbreak—a major breakthrough in the understanding and future control of deadly cholera epidemics.

Please click here to read more

Boys walked on Sunday with sacks of rice in front of a damaged church in Jaro, where, one official said, no aid has arrived.  Jes Aznar for The New York Times

nytimes.com - by Keith Bradsher - November 17, 2013

JARO, Philippines — Even as a major international aid effort has begun to take hold around the coastal city of Tacloban, the situation grimly differs just a few miles inland, where large numbers of injured or sick people in interior villages shattered by Typhoon Haiyan more than a week ago have received no assistance.

Well away from the coastal storm surge areas where most of the death toll occurred on the Philippines island of Leyte, the picture is still one of utter devastation — in this case from Haiyan’s record winds.

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star-tides.net

The strength of STAR-TIDES is in its knowledge-sharing rather than as an operations center or a logistics hub.   We would like to do what is most useful in providing reach-back support.  Below are the latest updates from 4 broad areas (Equipment, Communications, Coordination, and Documentation):

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A corpse was carried on Thursday to a mass grave in Tacloban, the city of 220,000 that was flattened by the storm that made landfall a week ago. The number of dead still remains uncertain.  Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

nytimes.com - by Rick Gladstone - November 14, 2013

The aftermath of the Philippines typhoon is now threatening the country with outbreaks of debilitating and potentially fatal diseases, including some thought to have been nearly eradicated, because of a collapse in sanitation, shortages of fresh water and the inability of emergency health teams to respond quickly in the week since the storm struck, doctors and medical officials said Thursday.

Illnesses including cholera, hepatitis, malaria, dengue fever, typhoid fever, bacterial dysentery and others that thrive in tropical, fetid environments, where sewage and water supplies intermingle, could form what doctors fear is the disaster’s second wave.

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Emotional Speech by Philippine Delegate: Excerpts from a statement about Typhoon Haiyan by Naderev Saño, the chief representative of the Philippines at the Warsaw Climate Change Conference. Radek Pietruszka/European Pressphoto Agency

nytimes.com - by Henry Fountain and Justin Gillis - November 11, 2013

The typhoon that struck the Philippines produced an outpouring of emotion on Monday at United Nations talks on a global climate treaty in Warsaw, where delegates were quick to suggest that a warming planet had turned the storm into a lethal monster.

Olai Ngedikes, the lead negotiator for an alliance of small island nations, said in a statement that the typhoon, named Haiyan, which by some estimates killed 10,000 people in one city alone, “serves as a stark reminder of the cost of inaction on climate change and should serve to motivate our work in Warsaw.” . . .

. . . “What my country is going through as a result of this extreme climate event is madness; the climate crisis is madness,” Mr. Saño said. “We can stop this madness right here in Warsaw.”

U.S. Marine Corps aircraft arrive at Villamor Airbase in Manila, Philippines, to deliver humanitarian aid to victims of Typhoon Haiyan on Monday, November 11.

cnn.com - by Barbara Starr - November 12, 2013

Washington (CNN) -- The hundreds of thousands of typhoon victims in the Philippines need help, and they need it now, the U.S. Marine Corps general in charge of the U.S. military relief effort says. . .

. . . While U.S. Marines are on the ground providing aid and more U.S. military help has been dispatched, Kennedy said more help is urgently needed.

"The rest of the world needs to get mobilized, the rest of the donor community," he told NBC News. "A week from now will be too late. "

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A young survivor rests on a pedicab surrounded by debris caused by Super Typhoon Haiyan in Tacloban in the eastern Philippine island of Leyte on Nov. 11, 2013  NOEL CELIS / AFP / Getty Images

submitted by Albert Gomez

world.time.com - by Time Staff - November 12, 2013

Five days after the world’s strongest typhoon to date wreaked havoc across the Philippine archipelago, the extent of the damage wrought by Haiyan (known in the Philippines as Yolanda) is just starting to become known. TIME will continue to update this page with the latest information about ongoing relief efforts and stories from affected areas. Times given are U.S. Eastern time.

(CLICK HERE - LIVE BLOG)

Destruction in the Philippines' Leyte province. (Ryan Lim/Malacanang Photo Bureau via Getty Images)

submitted by Mike Kraft

washingtonpost.com - by Max Fisher - November 11, 2013

The typhoon that tore through the Philippines on Friday threw the country into such turmoil that, days later, public officials are reporting wildly different death tolls. The government disaster relief agency announced 229 killed, the army reported 942 and local officials in the devastated provence of Leyte went as high as 10,000. But none are much more than estimates, given that emergency workers still can't reach some of the worst-affected areas.

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