Mosquitoes strike again - this time it's zika

First there was malaria, then yellow fever, then dengue (see my post of 31 July 2013), then it was chikungunya (see my post of 21 May 2014), now it is zika – all of them spread by mosquitoes. In the case of zika, now moving through Latin America and the Caribbean, it is the same mosquito (see picture) that spreads dengue and yellow fever.

If a pregnant woman is infected with zika, it is believed the virus can cause her baby to have an abnormally small head – a condition known as microcephaly, which is often caused by the failure of the brain to develop at its usual speed. Nearly 4,000 such babies have been born in Brazil since October, and 49 have died.

A number of countries including Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador and Jamaica, have advised women to delay becoming pregnant until more is known about the disease, which was first identified in Africa in the 1940s. Some believe it was introduced to Brazil during the World Cup in 2014.

There is no known cure for zika, and the only way to prevent it is to avoid being bitten by the mosquitoes that carry it. In Brazil, they are working to clear stagnant water where the insects breed.

Can animals predict disasters?

Five tiny songbirds fitted with tracking devices appear to have fled their nests in Tennessee just a day before tornadoes struck in April. The golden-winged warblers had arrived at their nesting site only a few days earlier after a 3,000 mile journey from Colombia.

Scientists believe they flew 400 miles south to escape the storms which killed 35 people, then returned after a few days. They think the warblers may have been alerted by a very deep rumble in the air, inaudible to the human ear.

In 2004, there were stories of animals escaping the Boxing Day tsunami. Witnesses spoke of flamingos deserting low-lying breeding areas, elephants screaming and running to higher ground, and dogs and zoo animals refusing to go outside their shelters.

While more than 200,000 people died, there were relatively few animal casualties. At Patanangala beach in Sri Lanka’s Yala National Park, home to a wide variety of animals, 60 people were washed away, but the only animals lost were two water buffaloes. There is speculation that perhaps animals are able to detect vibrations in the earth that pass us by.

Diary Date - flood talk October 9

I'm giving a talk entitled 'Are floods getting worse? at Swiss Cottage Library on October 9 at 1830, based on my book Flood: Nature and Culture.  Admission free.  All welcome.   

Last year, the UK’s Environment Agency issued a record number of flood warnings, while also in the last few years, Pakistan has had its worst monsoon floods in eight decades, Thailand suffered one of the costliest inundations in history, Colombia and Brazil experienced the severest in living memory, and Australia’s prime minister declared the Queensland floods perhaps the worst natural disaster ‘in the history of our nation’.

So are things actually getting worse? I will be revealing that floods are the natural disasters humans are most likely to experience, and that some of the most ambitious structures ever built have been put up to defend us against them.

I will also be telling how stories like that of Noah’s ark, about an apocalyptic flood which almost wipes out humanity, feature in dozens of religions all over the world. Floods caused by rain, melting snow, storms, tsunamis, tides, the failures of dykes or dams, or deliberate act of war all feature.

The talk will also look at the way floods have been portrayed in films, literature and art.

Transporting explosives

At least 20 workers have been killed in a blast as they were working on a new road tunnel in China’s Hunan province.    State media says the accident happened while explosives were being unloaded from a vehicle.    Another four workers were pulled out of the tunnel alive.

The country is often criticised for poor safety standards.    Last November, three vehicles carrying explosives caught fire and blew up in south-western China, killing at least seven people and injuring about 200.

Perhaps the deadliest ever incident involving the transporting of explosives happened at Cali in Colombia in 1956.      A convoy of seven army lorries loaded with dynamite had been parked outside a barracks on the night of August 6, and in the early hours of the next morning, an explosion ripped through them.

It flattened the barracks and eight blocks of buildings, killing at least 1,300 people.    The cause was never clearly established.   At first, the military government said it was sabotage, but others thought it was an accident perhaps caused by the trucks overheating.

* Here I am in 1974 on the front line of the social revolution, exposing sex discrimnation at a bus depot.   http://www.macearchive.org/archive.html?Title=21182

War on drugs - danger of sanity outbreak

Members of Congress in Colombia are demanding the decriminalisation of some drugs.    The government and the USA oppose the move, but supporters say the ‘war on drugs’ has failed, and that the country has already paid a high enough price in blood.

Because drugs are illegal, millions of dollars flow into the hands of Latin American criminal gangs, providing most of their income.   Eight of the world’s 10 most violent countries are to be found in the region, and a mind-boggling 28,000 people are said to have been killed in Mexico’s ‘war on drugs’ over the last four years.

The US government has said decriminalisation was ‘worth discussing’, but that there was no possibility of the Americans dropping their opposition to it.   So what would be the point of talking to them, you might ask.

Even so, the hard-line president of Guatemala has announced his support for the policy, while former presidents of Brazil , Mexico and Colombia have declared the ‘war on drugs’ a failure.   At next month’s Summit of the Americas, Latin American leaders who want a change of approach will get a chance to put forward their arguments.

(See also my blogs of May 28, June 10 and 12, Aug 18, Sept 10, 2010, and March 8, 2011.)

Britain's 20 Worst Military Disasters 8 - the Siege of Cartagena de Indias

The Spaniards often call it ‘the Defeat of the British Armada’.    In 1741, during the wonderfully-named ‘War of Jenkins’ Ear’, the British dispatched the biggest force they had ever sent to the West Indies – 10,000 men and more than 20 ships - to join the fleet already out there under Vice-Admiral Edward Vernon.

The objective was to capture Spain’s fortress of Cartagena de Indias in modern-day Colombia, but right from the start, things went wrong.    The army commander, Lord Cathcart, and 600 of his men died from sickness on the way out.   

Then once the force arrived, a feud broke out between Cathcart’s replacement, the inexperienced Sir Thomas Wentworth, and Vernon, while the Spanish defences were cleverly organised by Admiral Blas de Lezo, nicknamed ‘half-man’, who had lost an arm, a leg and an eye in the service of his country.

A number of British assaults failed, while sickness continued to take a terrible toll.   When only 1,700 of the 10,000 who left Britain were still fit for duty, the assault was called off, and the country’s first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, was forced to resign.

Child survivors

It has now been revealed that the sole survivor of Tuesday’s air crash off the Comoros islands in the Indian Ocean was only 12 years old. Baya Bakari had been travelling with her mother who was among the 152 people killed.

Twenty-four years ago, in the world’s worst disaster involving a single aircraft, two children were among just four people who survived out of 524 on board. When rescuers reached the JAL jumbo which had hit a mountain ridge in Japan, they found two girls aged eight and 12, along with two women aged 25 and 34.

Children have been the only people left alive in a number of other air disasters. A three year old boy was the sole survivor of an air crash in Sudan in 2003 that killed 116. A nine year old girl alone escaped from a flight that blew up over Colombia in 1995, while two years later a one year old Thai boy was the lone survivor from an airliner that came down near Phnom Penh airport in Cambodia. According to one analyst, there have been 13 air accidents since 1970 where only one person survived, and in six cases that sole survivor was a child.

So is it just coincidence, or do children have a better chance of coming out alive? There are a number of theories. One is that aircraft seats offer better protection to smaller bodies – adults are more likely to be hit on the head or legs, and killed or injured, by flying debris. In addition, bones grow more brittle as we get older, and some believe that the human body reaches its maximum vigour at about the age of 11. There is also a suggestion that children may be better able to survive in water – a factor that may have helped Baya Bakari.