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HEALTH & SCIENCE
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Volcano buries Indonesian farmers' savings DUKUN: Indonesian farmer Ari Sutikno was a month away from harvesting his rice crop when Mount Merapi volcano buried it—and his family's income— under a layer of hot ash. Like thousands of other poor farmers across central Java, the 65-year-old father of three has lost everything to the destructive power of nature. His paddy field in Sanggrahan village, about 22 kilometers northwest of the fuming crater, is now dead and he does not know when he will be able to plant again. In the meantime his family will have to depend on the charity of friends and relatives, and the meagre support of the state. "My paddy was our only source of income but it's all gone," he said as the volcano continued to spew ash and hot gas a week after its last deadly eruption.
"I'm waiting now for rain to soften the mud so I can salvage the paddy, otherwise it's the end." Indonesia is the world's third biggest producer of rice after China and India, thanks in no small part to its rich volcanic soils and plentiful rainfall. Farmers around Merapi would normally expect three harvests a year. But that natural richness sometimes extracts a high price. Vast tracts of countryside that usually glow a verdant green now wear a grey mask of ash and volcanic mud known as lahar. In Banyudono village, rice farmer Pertimah was desperately trying to save what she could from her ruined crop. Relatives were helping to carefully separate the paddy from the heavy mud. "I've tried to save as much as I can, but that's all I can do. I put everything in God's hands. It's part of his
scheme," she said. She had been five days away from harvest when the ash rained down last Friday, in the volcano's biggest eruption since the 1870s. Mount Merapi—the name means Mountain of Fire—has killed 206 people since it began erupting late last month, and forced more than 380,000 people into emergency shelters. The most active volcano in an archipelago studded with them, Merapi is also a sacred landmark in ancient Javanese tradition. People like Sutikno and Pertimah think of it as a living thing, one which wakes and sleeps and, at times, bursts with intemperate anger. "It's like someone who has a serious illness and there's no sign of a recovery," Sutikno said. "It's almost impossible to predict. I've often thought that it would go back to sleep but
it has come back to life again and again. It's never-ending misery for us, I'm so frustrated." Pertimah said the failed harvest had cost her about 2,500 dollars, a fortune for poor farmers like her. "All the money I invested here has gone. I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. I don't have any idea where can I find money to start over again." The government has said it will replace all the livestock killed on the slopes of Merapi since October 26, but for arable farmers like Pertimah there have been no such guarantees. "I hope Merapi stops erupting soon. Otherwise it's a pity for all the villagers here," she said. Officials said that despite the devastation around Merapi, the eruptions would have almost no effect on Indonesia's total rice output. — AFP
More behavioral, stress problems for offspring of deployed soldiers Years of war is taking a toll on US children WASHINGTON: Children of active-duty military personnel make 18 percent more trips to the doctor for behavioral problems and 19 percent more visits for stress disorders when a military parent is deployed compared with when the parent is home, according to a study of children ages 3 to 8 in the current issue of Pediatrics. Those increases are even more striking given that the overall number of doctors' visits declined 11 percent during deployment, perhaps because the lone parent at home was so busy, says study author Gregory Gorman, who analyzed the medical records of nearly 643,000 children and 443,000 parents from 2006 to 2007.
KATHMANDU: Bird trainer Scott Mason shows Kevin, an Egyptian vulture being trained for parahawking in Pokhara. — AFP
Nepal's endangered vultures take flight for the new sport POKHARA: At a lakeside resort in the mountains of western Nepal, the paragliding season is in full swing, and local champion Kevin is training to get back to full fitness. His unerring ability to find the thermals that allow paragliders to defy gravity, soaring through the air with vertigoinducing speed, have made Kevin a minor celebrity in the world of this exhilarating sport. Kevin, a four-year-old bird who was rescued as a chick after falling out of the nest, is the world's first paragliding vulture. His owner is Scott Mason, a 38-year-old Londoner with a lifelong passion for bird conservation who travelled to Nepal nine years ago and-almost by accidentinvented the new extreme sport of parahawking. The birds fly with the paraglider, guiding the pilot to the thermals that they have a natural instinct for finding. They are then rewarded with meat, and are trained to land on a passenger's gloved hand when called. Mason, a former professional falconer, was at the start of a round-the-world trip when he took his first tandem flight on a paraglider in the Nepalese resort town of Pokhara where he now lives. Impressed by the wealth of birdlife in the skies above Pokhara, he decided to stay on for a while, and was soon running a small rescue centre for birds of prey. Nepal has long been an international centre for paragliding, thanks to its
stunning mountain scenery and clear, dry winters, and it wasn't long before Mason came up with the idea of training birds to help locate the thermals. He hooked up with a fellow Briton who ran a local paragliding centre, and their early attempts to fly with birds proved successful. "No one had ever done it before, so we were writing the rule book. I'd trained birds for hunting, but I was very much out of my comfort zone. I was learning as much as the birds were," Mason said. In 2003 the pair made a short film on parahawking, winning international awards and generating a buzz in the adventure sports community. "It was becoming more and more obvious that we'd hit on something that was very unique, that could generate a lot of international attention," said Mason. "At the time there was a real need to put a focus on a problem that was becoming apparent with vultures. I had always wanted to do something powerful within conservation and this was the perfect chance to do it." South Asia's vultures have been driven to the brink of extinction, and conservationists had just discovered the main cause-the birds were being poisoned by Diclofenac, a drug found in the carrion they eat. It was widely used as a painkiller for livestock, and as cows are considered sacred and cannot be killed for meat there were large numbers of
carcasses to be disposed of by vultures. The catastrophic decline in vulture numbers across Nepal, India and Pakistan has dramatic ecological and social consequences, not least because the birds once played a vital role in preventing disease by cleaning up carrion. "These declines are right across South Asia and are completely unprecedented," Chris Bowden, vulture program manager for Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said. "We went from tens of millions to just a few thousand in 15 years or so. "The oriental whitebacked vulture used to be considered one of the most populous species in the world. To find it on the critically endangered list is quite extraordinary." Diclofenac has since been banned and a safe alternative, Meloxicam, introduced. But experts believe a human version of the banned drug is being used on animals, and overall bird numbers are still thought to be declining. Mason's initial attempts at parahawking were with two black kites brought in to the centre he set up, Himalayan Raptor Rescue. It was not until Kevin, an Egyptian vulture, was brought to the rescue centre in 2006, that he decided to start offering tandem flights commercially, realizing they could be used to highlight the plight of the often misunderstood birds. "Kevin was a vulture, which
meant we could focus our conservation efforts and use him as an ambassador," he said. "Because he was brought in as a chick, he couldn't go back into the wild anyway, he didn't have the necessary survival skills. It also meant he didn't have the same fear of humans the other birds had. "So we trained him to fly with the paragliders and suddenly parahawking as a concept became viable." Since then, the business has taken off. In the first year, Mason piloted just seven commercial flights but by 2009, the number had swelled to 370. Kevin has now been joined by fellow Egyptian vulture Bob, as well as black kites Goggles, Brad and Sapana, the first bird of prey to be taught to fly with paragliders. Some of the cost of each flight goes to vulture conservation projects in Nepal and some goes to fund Himalayan Raptor Rescue, which aims to rehabilitate sick, injured and orphaned birds and return them to the wild. Those that cannot be sent back into the wild become permanent residents, are exercised daily andif they show an aptitudetrained to fly with the paragliders. "Flying with birds is a bit like swimming with dolphinsit's something people never imagine they could actually do," Mason said. "My last flight of the season last year was with an 80-year-old man who said it was the best experience of his life." — AFP
Gorman, a pediatrician with the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., says military doctors are usually aware of the burden on such children, but he hopes more civilian doctors, who care for two-thirds of kids in military families, will find out if a parent is deployed and ask how families are coping. Research shows that kids of enlisted Army soldiers are more likely to suffer maltreatment when a parent is in combat, and that Army wives are more likely to be diagnosed with depression, anxiety, sleep disorders or other mental health conditions when their husbands are deployed. The new study may actually underestimate the psychological stress on military families because it included all branches of the service, instead of concentrating on the Army and Marines, who have done most of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, says Deborah Gibbs of RTI International in Research Triangle Park, NC, author of the maltreatment study. The new study also excludes the Reserves and National Guard, some of whose members have completed multiple tours of duty. "Most military families cope astonishingly well," Gibbs says. But "the National Guard and Reserve families have all the same stresses but none of the support that active-duty families have." — MCT
Neanderthal, human brains similar at birth LOS ANGELES: The newborn brains of Neanderthals looked remarkably similar to human brains at birth and then start to diverge drastically over the first year of life, European scientists reported this week. The findings, reported online in the journal Current Biology, could help paleoanthropologists figure out the cognitive differences between modern humans and their extinct relatives and when, exactly, those differences developed. A team led by paleoanthropologist Philipp Gunz of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, scanned the skulls of several Neanderthals, including a newborn, and mapped out the shape of the brain cavity. Gunz said he decided to look at the differences between skulls of humans and Neanderthals after finding in an earlier study that chimp and human brains had the same elongated shape at birth, but the human baby's brain quickly became more rounded. Gunz wondered if they would find a similar difference in shape between young humans and Neanderthals, who became extinct around 25,000 years ago, even though the size of the two species' brains was roughly the same. Human and Neanderthal brains were remarkably similar in shape right after birth, the scientists found - perhaps because of the common need to squeeze a baby's head through its mother's birth canal. But differences set in during the first year. — MCT
DUKUN: An Indonesian farmer Ari Sutikno shows his rice crop destroyed by ash from the Mount Merapi eruption in Dukun near Magelang. — AFP
New mission of hope to ease burden of diabetes Diabetes Associations, Sanofi-aventis launch awareness campaign Sanofi-aventis, global leader in diabetes care, yesterday launched a regional campaign that takes a heartening approach to tackle the disease that affects 26 million people in the Middle East and millions more worldwide. 'My Diabetes Story' works to illustrate the seriousness of diabetes by bringing to light the emotional reality of the millions of people living with the disease. Through patient stories, 'My Diabetes Story' aims to show that people living with diabetes can still lead successful lives and promotes effective disease management and highlights the importance of leading a healthy lifestyle. The program also serves as a communication platform for media through the "My Diabetes Story" Media Award, which celebrates journalists whose news stories present an educational and hopeful view of the disease. Diabetes associations, including the Pan Arab Society for Endocrinology and Diabetes, the Emirates Diabetes Society, the Saudi Scientific Diabetes Society, Qatar Diabetes Association, and the Lebanese Society of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Lipids endorsed the campaign and were in attendance to launch 'My Diabetes Story', a campaign aimed at raising awareness of diabetes through real-life, uplifting patient stories. Dr Abdullah Bin Nakhi, Consultant Diabetologist Deputy director General, Dasman Institute and Dr Munira Alarooj, Consultant Diabetologist Assistant Director General, Dasman Institute in Kuwait said: "we consider this program, My Diabetes Story (MDS), a major public initiative oriented to patient education and well being, as it gives a great value to the importance of living better life to our diabetic patients and respect their daily activities. On the other hand this program gives the media the opportunity to understand the burden of diabetes also to act as a window for patients to understand their disease well and improve their well being and social life. Results from the recent International Diabetes Management Study were also presented at the event. The results describe the current practices in the management of people with diabetes in the region and shows that 50 percent of diabetics do not comply with their prescribed treatments. Also, 40 percent of diabetics said
that they didn't receive appropriate education about their disease, which is what "My Diabetes Story" aims to address by showing how proper diabetes management can help diabetics live healthy, positive lives. "Education is vital to combat any disease, whether on a region-wide scale or individually. It is our duty to make sure that the public, patients, doctors and media are receiving the support they need. "My Diabetes Story" campaign gatherers real life stories, knowledge and experience from different perspectives, and conveys a message of hope while highlighting the importance of managing diabetes, so as to lead a healthier life. Our ambition is to be the first company to offer patients best-in-class solutions integrating drugs, devices and services," said Jean-Marc Voissier, sanofi-aventis General Manager for Gulf countries. Diabetes treatment normally includes a combination of oral medication and insulin, which was recently approved for use in the early stages of treatment for better disease management. Diabetics are also encouraged to make certain lifestyle changes such as controlling their diet and doing regular exercise. If not treated well, diabetes can lead to severe complications including blindness, kidney and heart diseases, stroke, loss of limbs and reduce life expectancy. Recent estimates suggest that the MENA region contains six of the ten countries with the highest prevalence figures worldwide and with a diabetes population that is set to double by 2025. Over 3 million individuals across the Gulf region have diabetes and millions more are at risk. Statistics show that 1 out of every 5 adults in the Middle East have diabetes. Sanofi-aventis has long been a champion in the fight against diabetes, supporting and involving the public, healthcare practitioners, governments and the media. "My Diabetes Story" is a natural evolution of the work that the company is already doing by keeping the community informed and updated on the real affects of diabetes in our society. One of the most successful media seminars organized by sanofi-aventis, DEVOTED has aimed to raise awareness of diabetes within the MiddleEast and support the significant efforts that are currently being made to tackle this epidemic in the region.
Spain's anti-abortion groups reject new law MADRID: Four months after a new more liberal abortion law took effect in Spain, 'pro-life' groups are fighting back, demanding aid for women who feel they have no choice other than to end their pregnancies. Abortion clinics and so-called 'prochoice' advocates say they are also under fire. Last month, hundreds of people shouting "murderers" demonstrated at the site of an international conference of abortion rights proponents in the southern Spanish city of Seville. Pope Benedict XVI also launched an implicit attack on the reforms brought in by the Socialist government when he visited Spain this month. The new legislation, which came into effect in July, allows abortion on demand up to the 14th week of pregnancy and up to the 22nd week if there is a risk to the mother's health or if the foe-
tus has serious problems. It replaced a 1985 law which only allowed abortion in cases of rape, foetal malformation and when a woman's mental or physical health was deemed to be at risk if the pregnancy went to term. Spain's conservative opposition Popular Party and the Roman Catholic Church have vigorously opposed the reforms. And activism against them has not weakened in the overwhelmingly Catholic country since a series of mass demonstrations last year as the new legislation was being prepared. The pope, in consecrating Barcelona's Holy Family church on November 7, urged that "the life of children may be defended as sacred and inviolable from the moment of their conception, that the reality of birth be given due respect and receive juridical, social and legislative support." — AFP