YCLOAK

PARIS — Bird flu is likely to spread further in the Antarctic region, causing immense damage to wildlife, according to experts on the highly contagious disease that has killed hundreds of millions of birds worldwide in recent years.

The spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza, or HPAI, commonly called bird flu, to the remote southern region has raised concerns for isolated populations of species, including penguins and seals, that have never been exposed to the virus.

The H5 strain of the virus was detected in the region on October 8 in a brown skua on Bird Island, part of the British Overseas Territory of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, according to a report by OFFLU, which gathers experts from the World Organization of Animal Health and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

Around the same time, the virus was detected in fulmars and albatrosses in the nearby Falkland Islands.

“HPAI H5 virus is likely to spread further among Antarctic wildlife, potentially infecting the 48 species of birds and 26 species of marine mammals which inhabit this region,” OFFLU said in its report on Thursday.

“The negative impact of HPAI H5 on Antarctic wildlife could be immense, because their presence in dense colonies of up to thousands of pinnipeds [seals] and hundreds of thousands of birds facilitates virus transmission and may result in high mortality,” the report said.

Elephant seals in South Georgia could have been infected by migrating seals from South America, where there was a large die-off of the species, OFFLU said. Infected elephant seals could possibly transport the virus to neighboring islands and further south to the Antarctic Peninsula.

“If HPAI H5 virus completes the above-suggested stage of spread, further virus spread in the Antarctic region is likely given the many avian and mammalian species that probably are susceptible to infection,” the report said.

Bird flu in Antarctica particularly threatens the emperor penguin species, considered under near threat of extinction. If the virus was to enter an emperor penguin colony, it could spread to the whole population, OFFLU said.

It urged continued monitoring and surveillance of wildlife populations and biosafety measures to reduce the risk of human-mediated spread of the virus to new areas and to reduce the risk of human infection.

OFFLU uses the biogeographical definition of the Antarctic region, based on species and ecosystems distribution. It is wider than the Antarctic Treaty region, including all ice shelves.
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BLANTYRE, MALAWI — Malawi, which already is suffering from food shortages, this week banned the import of unmilled maize from Kenya and Tanzania over concerns that the spread of maize lethal necrosis disease could wipe out the staple food.

The ministry of agriculture announced the ban in a statement that said the disease has no treatment and can cause up to 100% yield loss. The statement said maize can be imported only after it is milled, either as flour or grit.

Henry Kamkwamba, an agriculture expert with the International Food Policy Research Institute, told VOA that if the disease were introduced into the country, it would be difficult to contain.

He used the banana bunchy top virus as an example of the potential danger.

“Think of how we lost all of our traditional bananas in the past and now Malawi is a net importer of bananas … due to our lax policies in terms of imports,” he said.

“There are these similar concerns with maize,” he said, with maize being the nation’s main food crop.

Kamkwamba predicted the ban would help Malawi prevent the disease from spreading.

Kenya and Tanzania have long been primary sources of maize for Malawi during periods of food shortage.

Malawi is facing shortages largely because Cyclone Freddy destroyed thousands of hectares of maize last March.

The World Food Program in Malawi and the Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee estimate that 4.4 million people — around a quarter of the population — would face food shortages until March 2024.

Grace Mijiga Mhango, the president of the Grain Traders Association of Malawi, said that while she understands the severity of the impact of the maize disease, banning imports at a time of need would likely result in higher costs.

“If we really don’t have enough food, then we are creating another unnecessary maize [price] increase,” she said.

The next alternative for maize imports is South Africa, she said.

“South Africa is quite a distance,” she said, “and they don’t have enough. … It will be expensive.”

Malawi’s government said the ban will be temporary as it explores other preventive measures to combat the spread of maize lethal necrosis disease.
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SANTA FE, N.M. — Like Christmas trees, Santa and reindeer, the poinsettia has long been a ubiquitous symbol of the holiday season in the U.S. and across Europe.

But now, nearly 200 years after the plant with the bright crimson leaves was introduced in the U.S., attention is once again turning to the poinsettia’s origins and the checkered history of its namesake, a slaveowner and lawmaker who played a part in the forced removal of Native Americans from their land. Some people would now rather call the plant by the name of its Indigenous origin in southern Mexico.

Some things to know:

Where did the name poinsettia come from?

The name comes from the amateur botanist and statesman Joel Roberts Poinsett, who happened upon the plant in 1828 during his tenure as the first U.S. minister to the newly independent Mexico.

Poinsett, who was interested in science as well as potential cash crops, sent clippings of the plant to his home in South Carolina and to a botanist in Philadelphia, who affixed the eponymous name to the plant in gratitude.

A life-size bronze statue of Poinsett still stands in his honor in downtown Greenville, South Carolina.

However, he was cast out of Mexico within a year of his discovery, having earned a local reputation for intrusive political maneuvering that extended to a network of secretive masonic lodges and schemes to contain British influence.

Is the ‘poinsettia’ name losing its luster?

As more people learn of its namesake’s complicated history, the name “poinsettia” has become less attractive in the United States.

Unvarnished published accounts reveal Poinsett as a disruptive advocate for business interests abroad, a slaveowner on a rice plantation in the U.S., and a secretary of war who helped oversee the forced removal of Native Americans, including the westward relocation of Cherokee populations to Oklahoma known as the “Trail of Tears.”

In a new biography titled Flowers, Guns and Money, historian Lindsay Schakenbach Regele describes the cosmopolitan Poinsett as a political and economic pragmatist who conspired with a Chilean independence leader and colluded with British bankers in Mexico. Though he was a slaveowner, he opposed secession, and he didn’t live to see the Civil War.

Schakenbach Regele renders tough judgment on Poinsett’s treatment of and regard for Indigenous peoples.

“Because Poinsett belonged to learned societies, contributed to botanists’ collections, and purchased art from Europe, he could more readily justify the expulsion of Natives from their homes,” she writes.

A Christmas flower of many names

The cultivation of the plant dates back to the Aztec empire in Mexico 500 years ago.

Among Nahuatl-speaking communities of Mexico, the plant is known as the cuetlaxochitl (kwet-la-SHO-sheet), meaning “flower that withers.” It’s an apt description of the thin red leaves on wild varieties of the plant that grow to heights above 3 meters.

Year-end holiday markets in Latin America brim with the potted plant known in Spanish as the “flor de Nochebuena,” or “flower of Christmas Eve,” which is entwined with celebrations of the night before Christmas. The “Nochebuena” name is traced to early Franciscan friars who arrived from Spain in the 16th century. Spaniards once called it “scarlet cloth.”

Additional nicknames abound: “Santa Catarina” in Mexico, “estrella federal,” or “federal star” in Argentina and “penacho de Incan,” or “headdress” in Peru.

Ascribed in the 19th century, the Latin name, Euphorbia pulcherrima, means “the most beautiful” of a diverse genus with a milky sap of latex.

So what is its preferred name?

“Cuetaxochitl” is winning over some enthusiasts among Mexican youths, including the diaspora in the U.S., according to Elena Jackson Albarrán, a professor of Mexican history and global and intercultural studies at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

“I’ve seen a trend towards people openly saying: ‘Don’t call this flower either poinsettia or Nochebuena. It’s cuetlaxochitl,'” said Jackson Albarrán. “There’s going to be a big cohort of people who are like, ‘Who cares?'”

Most ordinary people in Mexico never say “poinsettia” and don’t talk about Poinsett, according to Laura Trejo, a Mexican biologist who is leading studies on the genetic history of the U.S. poinsettia.

“I feel like it’s only the historians, the diplomats and, well, the politicians who know the history of Poinsett,” Trejo said.

The Mexican roots of U.S. poinsettias

Mexican biologists in recent years have traced the genetic stock of U.S. poinsettia plants to a wild variant in the Pacific coastal state of Guerrero, verifying lore about Poinsett’s pivotal encounter there. The scientists also are researching a rich, untapped diversity of other wild variants, in efforts that may help guard against the poaching of plants and theft of genetic information.

The flower still grows wild along Mexico’s Pacific Coast and parts of Central America as far as Costa Rica.

Trejo, of the National Council of Science and Technology in the central state of Tlaxcala, said some informal outdoor markets still sell the “sun cuetlaxochitl” that resemble wild varieties, alongside modern patented varieties.

In her field research travels, Trejo has found households that preserve ancient traditions associated with the flower.

“It’s clear to us that this plant, since the pre-Hispanic era, is a ceremonial plant, an offering, because it’s still in our culture, in the interior of the county, to cut the flowers and take them to the altars,” she said in Spanish. “And this is primarily associated with the maternal goddesses: with Coatlicue, Tonantzin and now with the Virgin Mary.”

A lasting figure in history

Regardless of his troubled history, Poinsett’s legacy as an explorer and collector continues to loom large: Some 1,800 meticulously tended poinsettias are delivered in November and December from greenhouses in Maryland to a long list of museums in Washington, D.C., affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution.

A “pink-champagne” cultivar adorns the National Portrait Gallery this year.

Poinsett’s name may also live on for his connection to other areas of U.S. culture. He advocated for the establishment of a national science museum, and in part due to his efforts, a fortune bequeathed by British scientist James Smithson was used to underwrite the creation of the Smithsonian Institution.
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Injecting billions of dollars into green solutions to fight climate change has been a top priority of the Biden administration in 2023. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias looks at this year’s achievements and setbacks in the president’s environmental agenda.
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Nairobi, Kenya — According to the British charity Save the Children, some 30,000 children will be born in war-torn Sudan over the next three months without access to proper medical care, such as through doctors, hospitals and medicines. The group says the lack of basic health care endangers both mothers and unborn children, heightening the risk of long-term and deadly complications. 

That’s out of a total of some 45,000 children that are expected to be born in Sudan in the next quarter amid conflict that has destroyed many health facilities in the country.

The head of child protection at Save the Children International in Sudan, Osman Adam Abdelkarim, told VOA that the recent escalation of violence in many parts of Sudan has made his organization fear for pregnant women and millions of others. 

He said that in the town of Wad Madani, in Al Jazirah state, the medical system has collapsed. 

“There are no health facilities going to be operational,” he said. “There were two doctors killed in the last three days, and all of the medical staff evacuated, and left the place. And also, the supply chain to reach out[lying] areas, it was very challenging. It’s difficult to move, and that’s affecting the whole supply chain system for delivering drugs and also to make the medical staff available.”

The recent escalation of the conflict has seen more than 25,000 pregnant women on the move from violence, and Save the Children warns the women likely will be cut off from the health facilities and the right nutrition needed to support their babies.

Health experts say the first four weeks of a child’s life carry the highest risk of death and are the most dangerous for the mother. Most of the deaths are caused by birth asphyxia, premature birth, or infections. 

Hala al-Karib, regional director of the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa, says there are not enough facilities in Sudan right now to help women and children.

“We are going to see a large number of women losing their lives,” she said. “We are going to see a lot of children losing their lives because of the fact that, you know, the infrastructure that’s typically established in wartime, you know, has not been done. And that in itself is an issue. The other issue… [is] the total failures of the mediation efforts that’s controlled by the Americans, it’s controlled by the Saudis,…both of them, they have not been successful to create safe zones for civilians.”

Sudan descended into armed conflict in April after the leader of the Sudanese Armed Forces, General Abdel Fatah al-Burhan, and the leader of Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, disagreed on how to move the country from military rule to a civilian-led government.

More than 12,000 people have been killed since April, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.   

 

The conflict has displaced more than 4.3 million people and 1.1 million have fled to neighboring countries.

Al-Karib said Sudanese civilians need safe camps. 

“All medical services and medical facilities totally collapsed at this point in time,” she said. “Now, since the war erupted in April, you know, there have been frequent calls to the international community to establish IDP camps, safe IDP camps for civilians to exist with services, and so on. That never happened. The international community, they never fulfilled their obligations towards Sudan. The crisis in Sudan has been totally abandoned and sidelined.”

The war has made it difficult for aid agencies to reach millions of people in need of food, water, and medicine due to the warring parties’ failure to allow humanitarian workers to safely pass through dangerous areas.

Save the Children is calling on the international community to assist the millions of Sudanese affected by the conflict and to remember their children and their mothers during these difficult times.
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GENEVA — As Ukraine enters a second winter of war, the World Health Organization warns that the country’s public health system will come under enormous stress as millions of civilians try to keep safe and warm during the long, brutally cold weather ahead.

“Since the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine … we have seen the impacts on public health and the increase in disease burden,” said Jarno Habicht, WHO representative in Ukraine.

“So, even if the war would end today, the health needs of millions of people across Ukraine will increase,” he said, noting that children and the elderly “are suffering particularly and struggling as winter arrives amid ongoing fighting.”

Speaking to journalists Tuesday from Odesa, Habicht said he and Ukraine’s minister of health recently delivered critical equipment and medicines to Lyman, a city in eastern Ukraine on the frontline, “to ensure treatment can be available throughout the winter.”

“We heard constant shelling, and that is the reality for health care workers and patients,” he said.

10 million with mental health needs

The WHO has verified more than 1,400 attacks affecting health care since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, causing many civilian casualties and significantly disrupting the country’s health system.

“These attacks continue, providing the risks for the provision of health services,” said Habicht, noting that the fear of attack has put many people on edge.

“We have more than 10 million people in Ukraine with mental health needs,” he said.  “These can vary from anxiety to the other higher-level needs, for which it is necessary to turn to primary care and hospitals.”

He said that more than 55,000 primary health care workers have been trained to deal with mental health needs and that community mental health teams are available across different regions to provide care.

“These needs will be long-lasting and, particularly, the mental health needs will be here for many generations,” said Habicht, emphasizing that the war has been especially devastating for the country’s 7.5 million children.

“Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, we have seen the impact the war has had on mental health, on nutrition, as well as on vaccinations,” he said. “So, we need to ensure that the comprehensive package is available. There, we have many partners, including UNICEF who [are] ensuring that there are outreach services to make sure that health care is available.”

“Potentially higher numbers of deaths”

WHO officials have reported that Ukraine suffers from low immunization rates for all vaccine-preventable diseases and, during the long winter ahead, will need to prepare for outbreaks of infectious disease along with difficulties arising from noncommunicable diseases, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and chronic respiratory disease.

Habicht warned that “we will have potentially higher numbers of deaths because of the cold and freezing winter temperatures.”

The WHO estimates that 7.3 million people will need humanitarian support in 2024. Of that number, Habicht said, the WHO and partners aim to target 3.8 million of the most vulnerable.

He also said health care workers are bracing for a repeat of last year’s attacks by Russia on Ukraine’s power grid.

“We have witnessed an increase in the number of burns related to heating and new heating devices, as people need to find ways to have electricity and heating due to attacks on civilian infrastructure,” he said. “We need to talk about the increased burn needs due to the attacks with drones, and a number of civilians who have suffered as a result of them.”

In preparation for winter, Habicht said, many health care facilities have been installing generators and heating systems and providing a place where people can come to warm up, charge their phones and pass an anxiety-free moment.

On another positive note, he said Ukraine’s health system has been given a boost by the country’s recent progress toward accession to the European Union.

“With the potential that negotiations are moving forward, the potential is huge for the public health to ensure that, point for point, improving the public health system will improve also peoples’ health,” Habicht said.

“In that sense I am optimistic but also realistic that these changes will take time.”
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SACRAMENTO, California — When a toilet is flushed in California, the water can end up in a lot of places: an ice skating rink in Ontario, ski slopes around Lake Tahoe, farmland in the Central Valley.

And — coming soon — kitchen faucets.

California regulators on Tuesday approved new rules to let water agencies recycle wastewater and put it right back into the pipes that carry drinking water to homes, schools and businesses.

It’s a big step for a state that has struggled for decades to secure reliable sources of drinking water for its more than 39 million residents. And it signals a shift in public opinion on a subject that as recently as two decades ago prompted backlash that scuttled similar projects.

Since then, California has been through multiple extreme droughts, including the most recent one that scientists say was the driest three-year period on record and left the state’s reservoirs at dangerously low levels.

“Water is so precious in California. It is important that we use it more than once,” said Jennifer West, managing director of WateReuse California, a group advocating for recycled water.

California has been using recycled wastewater for decades. The Ontario Reign minor league hockey team has used it to make ice for its rink in Southern California. Soda Springs Ski Resort near Lake Tahoe has used it to make snow. And farmers in the Central Valley, where much of the nation’s vegetables, fruits and nuts are grown, use it to water their crops.

But it hasn’t been used directly for drinking water. Orange County operates a large water purification system that recycles wastewater and then uses it to refill underground aquifers. The water mingles with the groundwater for months before being pumped up and used for drinking water again.

California’s new rules would let — but not require — water agencies take wastewater, treat it and then put it right back into the drinking water system. California would be just the second state to allow this, following Colorado.

It’s taken regulators more than 10 years to develop these rules, a process that included multiple reviews by independent panels of scientists. A state law required the California Water Resources Control Board to approve these regulations by December 31 — a deadline met with just days to spare.

The vote was heralded by some of the state’s biggest water agencies, which all have plans to build huge water recycling plants in the coming years. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which serves 19 million people, aims to produce up to 570 million liters (150 million gallons) per day of both direct and indirect recycled water. A project in San Diego is aiming to account for nearly half of the city’s water by 2035.

Water agencies will need public support to complete these projects — which means convincing customers that not only is recycled water safe to drink, but it’s not icky.

California’s new rules require the wastewater to be treated for all pathogens and viruses, even if the pathogens and viruses aren’t in the wastewater. That’s different from regular water treatment rules, which require treatment only for known pathogens, said Darrin Polhemus, deputy director of the division of drinking water for the California Water Resources Control Board.

In fact, the treatment is so stringent it removes all of the minerals that make fresh drinking water taste good — meaning they have to be added back at the end of the process.

“It’s at the same drinking water quality, and probably better in many instances,” Polhemus said.

It’s expensive and time-consuming to build these treatment facilities, so Polhemus said it will only be an option for bigger, well-funded cities — at least initially.

In San Jose, local officials have opened the Silicon Valley Advanced Water Purification Center for public tours “so that people can see that this is a very high-tech process that ensures the water is super clean,” said Kirsten Struve, assistant officer for the water supply division at the Santa Clara Valley Water District.

Right now, the agency uses the water for things like irrigating parks and playing fields. But they plan to use it for drinking water in the future.

“We live in California where the drought happens all the time. And with climate change, it will only get worse,” Struve said. “And this is a drought-resistant supply that we will need in the future to meet the demands of our communities.”

Joaquin Esquivel, chair of the Water Resources Control Board that approved the new rules on Tuesday, noted that most people are already drinking recycled water anyway. Most wastewater treatment plants put their treated water back into rivers and streams, which then flow down to the next town so they can drink it.

“Anyone out there taking drinking water downstream from a wastewater treatment plant discharge — which, I promise you, you’re all doing — is already drinking toilet to tap,” Esquivel said. “All water is recycled. What we have here are standards, science and — importantly — monitoring that allow us to have the faith that it is pure water.”
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North America’s oldest citizen science project is underway with thousands of volunteers measuring bird populations in the annual Christmas Bird Count. VOA’s Natasha Mozgovaya joined a birdwatching team in Seattle. 

 
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NEW YORK — A new study adds to evidence that severe obesity is becoming more common in young U.S. children.

There was some hope that children in a government food program might be bucking a trend in obesity rates — earlier research found rates were dropping a little about a decade ago for those kids. But an update released Monday in the journal Pediatrics shows the rate bounced back up a bit by 2020.

The increase echoes other national data, which suggests around 2.5% of all preschool-aged children were severely obese during the same period.

“We were doing well and now we see this upward trend,” said one of the study’s authors, Heidi Blanck of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We are dismayed at seeing these findings.”

The study looked at children ages 2 to 4 enrolled in the Women, Infants and Children program, which provides healthy foods and other services to preschool-aged children in low-income families. The children were weighed and measured.

The researchers found that 2.1% of kids in the program were severely obese in 2010. Six years later, the rate had dipped to 1.8%. But by 2020, it was 2%. That translates to about 33,000 of more than 1.6 million kids in the WIC program.

Significant increases were seen in 20 states with the highest rate in California at 2.8%. There also were notable rises in some racial and ethnic groups. The highest rate, about 2.8%, was in Hispanic kids.

Experts say severe obesity at a very early age is nearly irreversible and strongly associated with chronic health problems and an early death.

It’s not clear why the increase occurred, Blanck said.

When WIC obesity rates dropped, some experts attributed it to 2009 policy changes that eliminated juice from infant food packages, provided less saturated fat, and tried to make it easier to buy fruits and vegetables.

The package hasn’t changed. But, “the daily hardships that families living in poverty are facing may be harder today than they were 10 years ago, and the slight increases in the WIC package just weren’t enough,” said Dr. Sarah Armstrong, a Duke University childhood obesity researcher.

The researchers faced challenges. The number of kids in WIC declined in the past decade. And the study period included 2020, the year the COVID-19 pandemic hit, when fewer parents brought their children in to see doctors. That reduced the amount of complete information available.

Despite its limitations, it was a “very well-done study,” said Deanna Hoelscher, a childhood obesity researcher at the UTHealth Houston School of Public Health, “It gives you a hint of what’s going on.”

What’s happened since 2020 is not yet known. Some small studies have suggested a marked increase in childhood obesity — especially during the pandemic, when kids were kept home from schools, eating and bedtime routines were disrupted and physical activity decreased.

“We are thinking it’s going to get worse,” Hoelscher said.
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