Ebola .... and malaria ....

There is another ebola outbreak in the DRC .... Democratic Republic of the Congo .... with the disease first appearing in a rural and hard to get at area .... very poor roads, tracks really, and with virtually no health care.   Ebola has spread to the city of Mbandaka, on the Congo river, which is the 'road' to other parts of the country and the capital, Kinshasa.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) are working in the area to try and contain the outbreak, to stop it spreading to Kinshasa, and thence to other countries along the Congo River.  A vaccine still in development and licensing after the last outbreak of ebola in three west African countries two years ago, is now being given to health workers most at risk.  There isn't enough of the vaccine to vaccinate a population of several million people.  

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And in Kenya, the rains have been torrential this spring, with thousands of people flooded out of their homes along the coast, and in the refugee camps in the north-east of the country.  Following rains come mosquitoes and then malaria.  

Update on 'The forty-ninth year' .... and a diagnosis !

https://luolaughter.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/the-forty-ninth-year.html

I wrote about 'the forty-ninth year' last year, I think in April.   I had always had the desire to be in Kenya on the 50th anniversary of my setting foot in Africa for the first time, back in September 1968.   However, ever since I returned last year, I have been suffering from some mysterious infection or illness, which I briefly mentioned in that posting, and at long last, after 14 months and many, many tests, have a diagnosis as to why I have, in the past year, had one cold after another, pneumonia, noro-virus, encephalitis, urinary infections, and so on.   I have been suffering (possibly for many years) from coeliac disease !   This has manifested itself in my immune system not working, continual tiredness, weight loss, lack of bodily temperature control, ataxia, etc. etc.  

(Gluten free bread, by the way, is FOUL !   It is dry and crumbly, and toast made from it, shatters, like a broken car windscreen !   But being 'gluten-free' is no big deal, its necessary, and I'll cope with it.)

But anyway, I had some months ago decided to abandon the '50th year' visit to Kenya, and go instead on another visit to Jerusalem.  It is very expensive, but I will use the remainder of the money I had put by for one more Kenya visit, and somehow scrape together the rest.  Determination is my middle name !!

So this year, I'll be swapping this ......

.... for this .....

Army Worm

I remember in the early 1970's, there was a lot of work being done, studying army worms, at I.C.I.P.E. ( the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology in Nairobi).   Now there is a new threat.   

This shows people in Vihiga, which was only a couple of miles from where I used to live at Maseno, about 25 miles west of Kisumu.    It was an article in the Daily Telegraph a few days ago, about a slightly different caterpillar called the Fall Army Worm, which has somehow crossed the Atlantic and is now present in Africa.  It reports that this caterpillar can devastate maize crops almost overnight.  

Subsistence farmers can be ruined if this 'worm' gets onto their crops.  The moths can travel more than 60 miles in a night, lay 1,000 to 1,500 eggs, which hatch out into the caterpillars, which then munch their way through maize, millet, sorghum and other crops.  

Genetically modified crops have an immunity to the pest, but these are not grown in most of Africa, because of cost.   Many subsistence farmers keep some of their best maize seeds to plant the following year.   

Eradicating hunger in Africa could be put at grave risk because of this 'worm' ....