With a population of nearly 600,000, the settlement near Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh is the largest refugee camp in the world. Credit United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

More than half a million Rohingya refugees face looming disaster from floods and landslides when the first storms of the monsoon season hit their camp in Bangladesh.

nytimes.com - by SOMINI SENGUPTA and HENRY FOUNTAIN - MARCH 14, 2018

The world’s largest refugee camp, a temporary home to more than half a million people that sprawls precariously across barren hills in southeastern Bangladesh, faces a looming disaster as early as April when the first storms of the monsoon season hit, aid workers warn.

“It’s going to be landslides, flash floods, inundation,” said Tommy Thompson, chief of emergency support and response for the World Food Program. “It’s going to be a very, very challenging wet season. That’s if we don’t have a cyclone.”

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CLICK HERE - WHO - R&D Blueprint - List of Blueprint priority diseases

telegraph.co.uk - by Alanna Shaikh - March 10, 2018

Over two days in early February, the World Health Organisation (WHO) convened an expert committee at its Geneva headquarters to consider the unthinkable.

The goal was to identify pathogens with the potential to spread and kill millions but for which there are currently no, or insufficient, countermeasures available . . . 

 . . . In addition to eight frightening but familiar diseases including Ebola, Zika, and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), the list included a ninth global threat: Disease X.

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ALSO SEE RELATED ARTICLE HERE - Mysterious 'Disease X' Could Be The Next Deadly Global Epidemic, WHO Warns

globalbiodefense.com - February 22, 2018

CLICK HERE - DARPA - Pandemic Prevention Platform (P3)

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched the Pandemic Prevention Platform (P3) program in 2017, with the eventual goal of halting the spread of any infectious disease outbreak before it can escalate into a pandemic . . . 

 . . . In contrast with state-of-the-art medical countermeasures, which typically take many months or even years to develop, produce, distribute, and administer, the envisioned P3 platform would cut response time to weeks and stay within the window of relevance for containing an outbreak.

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xinhuanet.com - Editor: Liu - February 23, 2018

CLICK HERE - Dampened STING-Dependent Interferon Activation in Bats

WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have identified the secret of bats that harbor highly pathogenic viruses like Ebola, Marburg and SARS coronavirus but do not show clinical signs of disease.

In a paper published on Thursday in the journal Cell Host & Microbe, scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China find that in bats, an antiviral immune pathway called the STING-interferon pathway is dampened, so bats can maintain just enough defense against illness without triggering a heightened immune reaction.

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Ebola virus budding from surface of cells, from a scanning electron micrograph.  Image credits: NIAID

CLICK HERE - The Global Virome Project

insidescience.org - by Benjamin Plackett - February 22, 2018

 . . . In an article published in Science magazine today, Daszak and a group of like-minded scientists described a new initiative, called the Virome project, that would identify and catalogue hundreds of thousands of yet-to-be-discovered viruses found in wild animals.

The team estimates that there are about 1.6 million undiscovered virus types and that somewhere between 631,000-827,000 could potentially spill over into humans. The viruses are found mostly in wild mammals.

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A mural announces anti-Ebola sentiment outside a business in Harper, Liberia.  Brad Wagenaar

CLICK HERE - STUDY - The 2014–2015 Ebola virus disease outbreak and primary healthcare delivery in Liberia: Time-series analyses for 2010–2016

After the 2014 outbreak, the population's needs were often unmet in terms of primary care, mother-child health, and immmunizations.

newsroom.uw.edu - by Ashlie Chandler - February 20, 2018

The 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa rapidly became the deadliest occurrence of the disease — claiming 4,809 lives in Liberia alone.  Now new research from the University of Washington suggests Ebola's collateral effects on that nation's health system likely caused more deaths than Ebola did directly.

The study, published today in PLOS Medicine, found that it only took four months for Liberia to lose between 35 percent and 67 percent of primary health care services after the  Ebola outbreak began.

Zika's blood-sucking predator

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Zika virus–related neurotropic flaviviruses infect human placental explants and cause fetal demise in mice

cnn.com - by Susan Scutti - February 18, 2018

In 2016, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that the Zika virus caused birth defects in babies born to women who had been infected while pregnant. This was the first mosquito-borne disease known to cause birth defects . . . 

 . . . Now, a study suggests that two viruses that are related to Zika can cause similar birth defects.

West Nile and Powassan viruses caused fetal death in infected pregnant mice, the researchers say.

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CLICK HERE - NEJM - Zika Virus and Birth Defects — Reviewing the Evidence for Causality

FILE PHOTO: Uninhabitable apartments, in danger of collapsing into the Pacific Ocean, line Esplanade Ave. in Pacifica, California January 26, 2016. REUTERS/Noah Berger/File Photo

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Committed sea-level rise under the Paris Agreement and the legacy of delayed mitigation action

reuters.com - Alister Doyle - February 20, 2018

Sea levels will rise between 0.7 and 1.2 meters (27-47 inches) in the next two centuries even if governments end the fossil fuel era as promised under the Paris climate agreement, scientists said on Tuesday.

Early action to cut greenhouse gas emissions would limit the long-term rise, driven by a thaw of ice from Greenland to Antarctica that will re-draw global coastlines, a German-led team wrote in the journal Nature Communications . . .

 . . . By 2300, the report projected that sea levels would gain by 0.7-1.2 meters, even if almost 200 nations fully meet goals under the 2015 Paris Agreement, which include cutting greenhouse gas emissions to net zero in the second half of this century . . . 

China has confirmed first ever human case of H7N4 bird flu Photograph: Kin Cheung/AP

CLICK HERE - The Government of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region - Press Release

A 68-year-old patient from Jiangsu province, who has since recovered, developed symptoms on Christmas Day and was admitted to hospital

theguardian.com - by Tom Phillips - February 15, 2018

A woman from eastern China has been confirmed as the first ever human case of H7N4 bird flu, according to Chinese authorities . . .

 . . . The 68-year-old patient from Jiangsu province, who has since recovered, developed symptoms on 25 December, was admitted to hospital for treatment on 1 January and was released on 22 January. 

“She had contact with live poultry before the onset of symptoms,” Hong Kong’s centre for health protection (CHP) said in an alert on Wednesday evening. “According to a report from the Chinese centre for disease control and prevention, upon analysis, the genes of the virus were determined to be of avian origin.”

CLICK HERE - RESEARCH - STUDY - Unprecedented climate events: Historical changes, aspirational targets, and national commitments

sciencedaily.com - by Stanford University - Taylor Kubota - February 14, 2018

The individual commitments made by parties of the United Nations Paris Agreement are not enough to fulfill the agreement's overall goal of limiting global temperature rise to less than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The difference between the U.N. goal and the actual country commitments is a mere 1 C, which may seem negligible. But a study from Stanford University, published Feb. 14 in Science Advances, finds that even that 1-degree difference could increase the likelihood of extreme weather.

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ALSO SEE RELATED ARTICLE HERE - Scientists Just Issued a Grim New Warning on Climate Change: 'We Are Not Prepared'

cbsnews.com - February 11, 2018

An explosion and fire at an electric substation threw much of northern Puerto Rico into darkness late Sunday in a setback for the U.S. territory's efforts to fully restore power more than five months after Hurricane Maria started the longest blackout in U.S. history. The island's Electric Power Authority said several municipalities were without power, including parts of the capital, San Juan, but they were optimistic it could be restored within a day as they worked to repair a substation that controls voltage.

The blast illustrated the challenges of restoring a power grid that was already crumbling before it was devastated by the Category 4 hurricane.

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ALSO SEE RELATED ARTICLE HERE - Explosion cuts power in Puerto Rico

Changes in sea level observed between 1992 and 2014. Orange/red colors represent higher sea levels, while blue colors show where sea levels are lower.

CLICK HERE - STUDY - PNAS - Climate-change–driven accelerated sea-level rise detected in the altimeter era

cnn.com - by Brandon Miller - February 13, 2018

Sea level rise is happening now, and the rate at which it is rising is increasing every year, according to a study released Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers, led by University of Colorado-Boulder professor of aerospace engineering sciences Steve Nerem, used satellite data dating to 1993 to observe the levels of the world's oceans.

Using satellite data rather than tide-gauge data that is normally used to measure sea levels allows for more precise estimates of global sea level, since it provides measurements of the open ocean.

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ALSO SEE RELATED LINKS BELOW . . .

Residents of San Isidro, P.R., waited for food and water in October. Credit Erika P. Rodriguez for The New York Times

nytimes.com - by PATRICIA MAZZEI and AGUSTIN ARMENDARIZ - February 6, 2018

The mission for the Federal Emergency Management Agency was clear: Hurricane Maria had torn through Puerto Rico, and hungry people needed food. Thirty million meals needed to be delivered as soon as possible.

For this huge task, FEMA tapped Tiffany Brown, an Atlanta entrepreneur with no experience in large-scale disaster relief and at least five canceled government contracts in her past. FEMA awarded her $156 million for the job, and Ms. Brown, who is the sole owner and employee of her company, Tribute Contracting LLC, set out to find some help.

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FILE PHOTO: Tesla's new electric semi truck is unveiled during a presentation in Hawthorne, California, U.S., November 16, 2017. REUTERS/Alexandria Sage/File Photo

reuters.com - by Eric M. Johnson - February 2, 2018

 . . . Reuters has learned that Tesla is collaborating with Anheuser-Busch, PepsiCo and United Parcel Service Inc to build on-site charging terminals at their facilities as part of the automaker’s efforts to roll out the vehicle next year . . .

 . . . Companies that spoke with Reuters said the first step is to install charging equipment on their own premises. The Semis would be limited to routes that would get them back to home base before the batteries are spent, the firms said.

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documents.worldbank.org - 29 January 2018

Abstract

Public health systems have critical and clear relevance to the World Bank’s twin goals of poverty eradication and boosting shared prosperity. In particular, they are impacted by, and must respond to,significant threats at human-animal-environment interface. Most obvious are the diseases shared between humans and animals (“zoonotic” diseases), which comprise more than 60 percent of known human infectious pathogens; but also aspects of vector-borne disease, food and water safety and security, and antimicrobial resistance. Public health systems must therefore be resilient and prepared to face existing and future disease threats at the human-animal-environment interface. the Operational Framework provides a strong orientation to One Health to assist users in understanding and implementing it, from rationale to concrete guidance for its application. Six core chapters are included, supported by annexes diving deeper into operational tools and recent World Bank alignment with One Health topics, and a glossary that explains key terms, including interpretations specific to the Operational Framework.