Stephen O'Brien visits a camp in Saint Saveur, Central African Republic. Nektarios Markogiannis/MINUSCA

CLICK HERE - OCHA Functional Review - Final Report - 29 July 2016 (155 page .PDF report)

irinnews.org - by Samuel Oakford - 16 January 2017

The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs will reduce spending by at least $20 million in 2017. The 10-percent cuts, including at least 173 staff layoffs, come along with an internal reform process sparked by a damning independent review.

In notes dated November addressed to OCHA staff and exclusively reported by IRIN, its head – UN humanitarian chief Stephen O’Brien – said donors hadn’t met growing demands.

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UN - Office of Internal Oversight Services - Internal Audit Reports
(click on the link below, and scroll to the bottom . . . click on page 2 for the most recently published .PDFs)
https://oios.un.org/page?slug=report

The Klebsiella pneumoniae organism in a petri dish.  GARY CAMERON / REUTERS

CLICK HERE - STUDY - CDC - MMWR - Notes from the Field: Pan-Resistant New Delhi Metallo-Beta-Lactamase-Producing Klebsiella pneumoniae — Washoe County, Nevada, 2016

No Antibiotic In The U.S. Could Save This Woman. We Should All Be Worried.

This is one of the first cases of a pan-resistant infection in America.

huffingtonpost.com - by Anna Almendraia - January 13, 2017

The recent death of a woman in Reno, Nevada, from an infection resistant to every available kind of antibiotic in the U.S. highlights how serious the threat of antibiotic-resistant superbugs has become. 

Experts say that while cases of a bacteria resistant to all antibiotics are still extremely rare in the U.S., we should expect to see more in the future. 

ANDRES MARTINEZ CASARES/REUTERS

The world’s humanitarian needs are growing. So is the aid gap.

huffingtonpost.com - by Jesselyn Cook - January 13, 2017

The global need for humanitarian aid has reached a level not seen since World War II. More than 128 million people in 33 countries are now affected by crises, including conflict and natural disaster . . . 

 . . . Despite the worsening nature of many of the world’s crises, internet traffic reveals “public fatigue” ― a decline in interest ― for the first time in three years, according to U.N. data. And, as the world’s humanitarian needs grow, the gap between funds needed and funds raised has widened.

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Sissoko D, et al. Clin Infect Dis. 2016;doi:10.1093/cid/ciw79.

CLICK HERE - STUDY -  Ebola virus persistence in breast milk after no reported illness: a likely source of virus transmission from mother to child

healio.com - January 10, 2017

Genomic analysis confirmed that the 2015 death of a 9-month-old Guinean infant from Ebola virus was the result of transmission through the breast milk of her asymptomatic mother, according to a recent case study.

WIKIMEDIA, HELLERHOFF

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Detection of Viral RNA in Tissues following Plasma Clearance from an Ebola Virus Infected Patient

A case study reports evidence of viral replication lingering in the respiratory tract of an infected person, even after their blood was Ebola free.

the-scientist.com - by Bob Grant - January 5, 2017

Ebola virus may linger and continue to replicate in the lungs of patients recovering from infection, even after viral RNA is no longer detectable in their bloodstreams, according to a case study published today (January 5) in PLOS Pathogens. . . .

 . . . Ippolito and his colleagues monitored the Ebola-infected patient, who was moved from West Africa to a hospital in Italy in 2015, over the course of their infection. They found viral RNA and other markers of viral replication in the patient’s lungs five days after such markers were no longer detectable in the blood.

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Image: A wind farm in Pomeroy, Iowa. The wind power industry is booming in the United States, with wind-farm technician projected to be the country’s fastest-growing occupation over the next decade. Credit Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

nytimes.com - January 2nd 2017 - Justin Gillis

With Donald J. Trump about to take control of the White House, it would seem a dark time for the renewable energy industry. After all, Mr. Trump has mocked the science of global warming as a Chinese hoax, threatened to kill a global deal on climate change and promised to restore the coal industry to its former glory.

So consider what happened in the middle of December, after investors had had a month to absorb the implications of Mr. Trump’s victory. 

Image: Industrial Age factory and railway engraving. (Washington Post illustration; iStock)

washingtonpost.com - December 29th 2016 - Ana Swanson

A backlash to globalization appears to be gaining strength around the world. U.S. politicians on both the right and left have called for curbing free trade deals they say benefit foreigners or the global elite. President-elect Donald Trump has championed tariffs on imports and limits on immigration, and suggested withdrawing from international alliances and trade agreements. 

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submitted by John Carroll

FILE - In this Oct. 10, 2016 file photo, banana and coconut trees are bent and broken along a southern coast road near the town of Roche-a-Bateau, Haiti, left behind by Hurricane Matthew. Hundreds of thousands of people in southern Haiti are facing food shortages three months after the storm destroyed crops and livestock in the region, international aid organization Oxfam said Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2017. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)  (The Associated Press)

Associated Press - January 4, 2017

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti –  Hundreds of thousands of people in southern Haiti are facing food shortages three months after Hurricane Matthew destroyed crops and livestock in the region, an international aid organization said Wednesday.

A "very poor" harvest is expected over the next two months in the South and Grand Anse departments of the southern Haitian peninsula, an area where most people depend on subsistence farming to survive, Oxfam said in a report calling for more support for a U.N. assistance fund.

The U.N. announced it would provide $139 million in assistance to the region, but that program is underfunded by 38 percent, the aid group said.

Guanajuato, Mexico - Russ Bowling

grist.org - by Amy McDermott - December 29, 2016

 . . . Mexico’s climate story reflects a growing global problem. Worsening droughts, floods, wildfires, and rising seas will drive millions from their homes, all around the world.

From Mexico to China, Bangladesh to Senegal, climate migrants everywhere will relocate to the nearest safe place, says sociologist Cristina Bradatan, also of Texas Tech. Sometimes that means crossing borders . . .

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Direct Relief staff stage hundreds of pallets bound for Haiti in the organization’s Santa Barbara warehouse on Dec. 20, 2016. The shipment, valued at $39.9 million, is the largest in the organization’s 69-year history.

directrelief.org

SANTA BARBARA, Calif., Dec. 28, 2016 – Direct Relief today airlifted 82 tons of medical aid to Haiti to help treat cholera and other diseases that have spread widely since Hurricane Matthew struck in October, incapacitating the country’s already overstretched health care system.

Direct Relief’s warehouse staff worked through the holidays to prepare 258 pallets of essential medications and supplies with a wholesale value of $39.9 million. The shipment – the largest by value in Direct Relief’s 69-year history – traveled by a chartered cargo jet from Los Angeles to Port-au-Prince.

Dozens of health care companies that support Direct Relief’s humanitarian health efforts contributed the supplies, augmented by funds contributed by donors to Direct Relief specifically for Hurricane Matthew assistance.

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Image: Cows graze in a farm near Chascomus, Argentina, on Nov. 10. (Marcos Brindicci/Reuters)

washingtonpost.com - Chris Mooney - December 11th 2016

The best news about climate change that we’ve heard lately is that for three years straight, the world’s energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide, the most important greenhouse gas, have been flat. The gas has continued to accumulate in the atmosphere, but emissions haven’t gone up, even as economies have continued to grow.

But now we learn that there’s a major dose of bad news to accompany that: What’s true for carbon dioxide is not at all true for methane, the second most important greenhouse gas. Atmospheric concentrations of this gas — which causes much sharper short-term warming, but whose effects fade far more quickly than carbon dioxide — are spiking, a team of scientists reports in an analysis published Sunday in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

A female Aedes albopictus mosquito feeding on a human host. Credit: James Gathany CDC

CLICK HERE - STUDY - PNAS - Global risk model for vector-borne transmission of Zika virus reveals the role of El Niño 2015

scientificamerican.com - by Kavya Balaraman - December 21, 2016

Mosquito-borne diseases like Zika can be extremely sensitive to climatic changes

The combination of climate change and last year’s El Niño phenomenon likely created the perfect playground for the Zika virus to spread rapidly across South America, a new study finds.

Both the Zika virus and the mosquitoes that carry it have been present in different parts of the world for a while. But several factors, including specific climatic conditions, could have catapulted the disease to public health emergency status, according to researchers from the University of Liverpool.

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who.int

23 DECEMBER 2016 | GENEVA - An experimental Ebola vaccine was highly protective against the deadly virus in a major trial in Guinea, according to results published today in The Lancet. The vaccine is the first to prevent infection from one of the most lethal known pathogens, and the findings add weight to early trial results published last year.

The vaccine, called rVSV-ZEBOV, was studied in a trial involving 11 841 people in Guinea during 2015. Among the 5837 people who received the vaccine, no Ebola cases were recorded 10 days or more after vaccination. In comparison, there were 23 cases 10 days or more after vaccination among those who did not receive the vaccine.

The trial was led by WHO, together with Guinea’s Ministry of Health and other international partners.

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CLICK HERE - The Lancet - Efficacy and effectiveness of an rVSV-vectored vaccine in preventing Ebola virus disease: final results from the Guinea ring vaccination, open-label, cluster-randomised trial (Ebola Ça Suffit!)

Emerging markets are leapfrogging the developed world thanks to cheap panels.

bloomberg.com - by Tom Randall - December 15, 2016

A transformation is happening in global energy markets that’s worth noting as 2016 comes to an end: Solar power, for the first time, is becoming the cheapest form of new electricity. 

This has happened in isolated projects in the past: an especially competitive auction in the Middle East, for example, resulting in record-cheap solar costs. But now unsubsidized solar is beginning to outcompete coal and natural gas on a larger scale, and notably, new solar projects in emerging markets are costing less to build than wind projects, according to fresh data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

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Hundreds of kayaktivists protest drilling in the Arctic and the Port of Seattle being used as a port for the Shell Oil drilling rig Polar Pioneer (Daniella Beccaria/seattlepi.com via Associated Press)

washingtonpost.com - by Darryl Fears and Juliet Eilperin - December 20, 2016

President Obama moved to solidify his environmental legacy Tuesday by withdrawing hundreds of millions of acres of federally owned land in the Arctic and Atlantic Ocean from new offshore oil and gas drilling.

Obama used a little-known law called the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to protect large portions of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas in the Arctic and a string of canyons in the Atlantic stretching from Massachusetts to Virginia. In addition to a five-year moratorium already in place in the Atlantic, removing the canyons from drilling puts much of the eastern seaboard off limits to oil exploration even if companies develop plans to operate around them.

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