reuters - by Alister Doyle and Bruce Wallace - June 1, 2015

BONN/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.N.'s Paris climate conference, designed to reach a plan for curbing global warming, may instead become the graveyard for its defining goal: to stop temperatures rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Achieving the 2C (3.6 Fahrenheit) target has been the driving force for climate negotiators and scientists, who say it is the limit beyond which the world will suffer ever worsening floods, droughts, storms and rising seas.

But six months before world leaders convene in Paris, prospects are fading for a deal that would keep average temperatures below the ceiling.

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Leading up to the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in Paris, France in 2015, countries have been asked to publicly declare what actions they intend to take under a new global agreement, by March 2015. The country commitments, known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions or INDCs, are expected to indicate through their form and strength what shape any 2015 agreement might take.

CLICK HERE - INDCs as communicated by Parties

Publication details

Overview

 This preliminary report summarizes the impact of the Ebola epidemic on the health workforce of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. It investigates the determinants of infection and describes safe practices put in place to protect health workers during the epidemic. The report covers the period from 1 January 2014 to 31 March 2015 and is presents findings from the 815 confirmed and probable cases for whom individual case reports were available.

The Ebola epidemic has taken a heavy toll on the already scarce health workforce. Among the health workers for whom final outcome is known, two-thirds of those infected died. Preliminary analysis shows that, depending on their occupation in the health service, health workers are between 21 and 32 times more likely to be infected with Ebola than people in the general adult population. With higher risks of exposure in caring for others, health workers were disproportionately impacted and traumatised by Ebola.

A new study suggests there was a better way to respond to the Ebola outbreak

TIME MAGAZINE by Alexandra Sifferlin                                                      May 26, 2015

It’s known that the response to the most recent Ebola outbreak, which as of Tuesday had infected more than 27,000 people and killed 11,130, was far too slow. Now, a new studysuggests that even once they got started, their approach to curbing the spread wasn’t the most efficient or effective.Read complete story.

The village of Dandagaun is hard to reach on a good day. The access road starts at the Bhote Koshi River, a Class V waterway that drains Himalayan glaciers, then heads more or less straight up for 5,000 feet, past tiny villages and mountain streams. After 10 long miles it curves into a bowl that opens to the northeast. Here sit terraced fields of rice and corn cut into the hillside. Technically speaking, the village, in Nepal’s Sindhupalchowk district, lies in the Himalayan foothills. But these are foothills in the way that the sun is a medium-size star. The ridgeline above the village rises sharply for a quarter mile. Looking at it requires straining your neck directly up.

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Refugees from Burundi arrive at the Mahama camp in Rwanda. The political crisis in Burundi has driven thousands to seek refuge in neighboring countries. Photo by: Thomas Conan / ECHO / CC BY-ND

devex.com - by Andrew Green - May 25, 2015

A failed coup and ongoing political conflict in Burundi have sparked a regional refugee crisis and stalled much-needed development projects in one of the world’s poorest countries.

This after Burundi spent the past decade attempting to overcome a post-independence period marred by a brutal civil war played out largely along ethnic lines. . . .

. . . The 10 years of relative peace allowed humanitarian partners to transition from emergency relief to long-term development projects in a country consistently ranked among the five poorest in the world. Now many of those partners have evacuated, as the country’s political situation has unraveled over the past month.

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Men walk past damaged buildings after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit Nepal on April 25. The disaster is just one of six Grade 3 emergencies that require a massive response from the World Health Organization.
Photo by: Laxmi Prasad Ngakhusi / UNDP Nepal

devex.com - by Jenny Lei Ravelo - May 21, 2015

There is no doubt that Ebola was 2014’s biggest health emergency, which required — and continues to command — a massive response from the World Health Organization and the wider international community.

But it was not the only emergency that demanded WHO’s attention and resources over the course of the past year.

During the special session of the executive board on Ebola in January, member states requested the health agency submit a report containing information on all Grade 3 emergencies the organization responded to as from May 2014.

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Photo: Sanjay Kanojia via Getty Images

cnn.com - by Harmeet Shah Singh and Rishabh Pratap - May 26, 2015

(CNN) Stifling heat has killed more than 1,100 people in India in less than one week.

The worst-hit area is the southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh, where authorities say 852 people have died in the heat wave. Another 266 have died in the neighboring state of Telangana.

India recorded its highest maximum temperature of 47 degrees Celsius -- 117 degrees Fahrenheit -- at Angul in the state of Odisha on Monday, according to B.P. Yadav, director of the India Meteorological Department.

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huffingtonpost.com - reuters - May 19, 2015

THALI, Nepal, May 19 (Reuters) - Nepali tea shop owner Phurba Sherpa has spent four nights cramped under a tarpaulin with his wife and nine others on a school field outside Kathmandu since falling rocks triggered by an earthquake last week demolished his distant mountain village.

The Nepali government is struggling to provide shelter for more than a million people like Sherpa who were uprooted by two massive earthquakes, first on April 25 and then 17 days later.

Tens of thousands are sleeping in the open, with monsoon rains possibly little more than a fortnight away.

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nytimes.com - by Adam Nossiter - May 19, 2015

Only days after declaring the lowest number of new Ebola cases in Guinea and Sierra Leone this year, officials at the World Health Organization said Tuesday that there had been a nearly fourfold increase during the most recent week of reporting, to about 35 new cases.

With Liberia, the other West African nation at the center of the epidemic, being declared free of Ebola this month, the recent drop in infections in Sierra Leone and Guinea had offered hope that the worst Ebola outbreak in history might end soon. . . .

. . . Health officials said that sharp falls and rises were normal as an epidemic approached its end. But they also said that some persistent risky practices, like unsafe burials of Ebola victims in Guinea, had contributed to the rise.

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undp.org - theglobalobservatory.org - by Michael R. Snyder - May 14, 2015

africaguinee.com - by BAH Aïssatou - May 16, 2015

(English translation provided below)

(Links to most recent WHO and UNMEER Situation Reports provided below)

Ebola : Nouveau rebondissement de l’épidémie en Guinée…

CONAKRY- Alors que l’épidémie Ebola tendait vers sa fin en Guinée,  elle vient de faire  un rebondissement dans certaines préfectures situées en basse Guinée et à Conakry.  20 cas confirmés ont été enregistrés ces derniers jours, a appris africaguinee.com.

Cette information rapportée par le chargé de  communication à la Coordination de  Lutte Contre Ebola, Fodé Tass Sylla  indique aussi que 5 cas positifs ont été enregistrés à Boffa, Dubréka et Forécariah et  (Matam), dans la seule journée du jeudi 14 mai.  Avec un total de 27 cas d’hospitalisation dont  18 cas  confirmés dans les Centres de traitements d’Ebola. 

 Les raisons  de cette situation  s’expliquent  par le déplacement des malades et des personnes contacts d’une localité  à une autre ;  et le déplacement des personnes vers les cérémonies funèbres, affirme Fodé Tass Sylla

Video: President Obama met Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, a day before the Gulf Cooperation Council summit meeting. By Associated Press on Publish Date May 13, 2015. Photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times.

nytimes.com - May 13, 2015 - David E. Sanger

When President Obama began making the case for a deal with Iran that would delay its ability to assemble an atomic weapon, his first argument was that a nuclear-armed Iran would set off a “free-for-all” of proliferation in the Arab world. “It is almost certain that other players in the region would feel it necessary to get their own nuclear weapons,” he said in 2012.

submitted by Santosh Dahal

Photo credit: Canadian Red Cross

ifrc.org - by Maude Froberg - May 15, 2015

Night falls in Kathmandu. We sleep in the streets, in the tents, in the parks. The last strong tremor still present in the body. Local or foreigner, it doesn’t matter. In the darkness, we are equally together and alone. All the senses are amplified, each sound is recorded, every movement in the ground.

(Read complete article in the link below)

http://www.ifrc.org/en/news-and-media/blogs/the-work-is-difficult-and-dangerous-in-nepal-but-who-would-we-be-if-we-did-not-try-68650/

reuters.com - by Joseph D'Urso

. . . For a two week trial, researchers employed locals to scoot around the province on small motorbikes known as okadas, collecting household, health and population data from villages on simple smartphones.

They travelled in pairs, one riding the motorbike and one using a GPS-enabled smartphone running an Android operating system, preloaded with a specially designed, simple programme for storing the necessary information.

When they arrived in a village they interviewed a village leader or representative to gather as much information as possible, and log GPS coordinates, essential in a region where village names are often duplicated or spelt differently.

Nic Lochlainn said it takes a long time to learn to use the sophisticated satellite devices usually used for mapping but users could master this software in hours and the data let experts assign Ebola cases to specific villages more accurately.

The scheme covered 950 villages in two weeks, and the cost was "very modest" compared with sending foreign aid workers into the field or commissioning detailed satellite imagery, she said.

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