ROAD TO MOSUL - Civilian Executions

"ISIS executes civilians as Iraqi forces gain ground in Mosul" PBS NewsHour 11/12/2016

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SUMMARY:  As Iraqi forces continue to gain ground in Mosul against Islamic State militants, thousands of residents are attempting to flee the city.  The United Nations reports that ISIS is carrying out mass executions of civilians.  Alex Milutinovic, who is directing relief efforts in Iraq for the International Rescue Committee, joins Alison Stewart to discuss the plight of those civilians.

ALISON STEWART, PBS NEWSHOUR WEEKEND ANCHOR:  Iraq's government says its security forces, with U.S. support, reclaimed two more districts in Mosul today from ISIS militants.  This footage released today by the Iraqi defense ministry shows helicopter attacks on ISIS positions to dislodge militants who have occupied Iraq's second largest city for two years.  The defense ministry says it has destroyed more than 40 ISIS hideouts and killed about 900 militants in the past month.

As thousands of Mosul residents try to flee the city, the United Nations reports ISIS is carrying out mass executions of civilians.

Joining me now to talk about this is Alex Milutinovic, who is directing relief efforts in Iraq for the International Rescue Committee.  He is in the Iraqi city of Erbil, about 50 miles east of Mosul.

And, Alex, we understand from the World Health Organization, as many as 48,000 people have fled Mosul.  Where are they going?

ALEKSANDAR MILUTINOVIC, INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE:  At the moment, we have over 50,000 people that have fled the surrounding of Mosul City.  Most of the people, two-thirds of them, are leaving towards the camps and the remaining one third of people are living with host community.

ALISON STEWART:  Is the Islamic State allowing people to leave?  Because there have been reports that the idea is to use civilians — their idea is to use civilians as human shields.

ALEKSANDAR MILUTINOVIC:  Unfortunately, the civilians are not allowed to leave the Mosul City.  They are being used as a human shield and our concern goes to the people of Mosul City who are now trapped in a very difficult situation.  They are basically trapped between the — you know, in the fighting zone and they have a hard time fleeing and finding safety.

HEALTH - Zika Virus

"WHO to consider declaring international emergency over Zika virus" PBS NewsHour 1/28/2016

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JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  United Nations health experts issued a powerful new warning today about the Zika virus.  The World Health Organization (WHO) said it may have mushroomed into a full-blown global emergency.

DR. MARGARET CHAN, Director-General, World Health Organization:  It is now spreading explosively.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  The sense of urgency was palpable as WHO Director Margaret Chan addressed a special session on the Zika virus in Geneva.

DR. MARGARET CHAN:  As of today, cases have been reported in 23 countries and territories in the region.  The level of alarm is extremely high.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Most of the outbreak has been concentrated across Central and South America.  WHO officials estimated today there could be three to four million cases in the Americas over the next year alone.

Brazil, hosting this summer’s Olympics, has been hit the hardest, with more than a million people contracting the virus.  Fear has spiked there with a rise in birth defects apparently caused by Zika, babies born with small heads, known as microcephaly, and with neurological problems.

DR. MARGARET CHAN:  The possible links, only recently suspected, have rapidly changed the risk profile of Zika from a mild threat to one of alarming proportions.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Researchers say it’s still relatively rare that a pregnant woman infected around the time of delivery can pass the virus to her newborn.  There’s also been one report of a possible spread through blood transfusion, and another through sexual contact.

Today, Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff announced a meeting of Latin American and Caribbean nations next week on how to eradicate the virus.  In the meantime, some 220,000 Brazilian soldiers are going house to house, checking for stagnant water and fumigating for mosquitoes that transmit Zika.

El Salvador has taken still more drastic measures.  Last week, its deputy health minister urged women to refrain from getting pregnant before 2018.  At least 31 Americans were infected in the past year, but all are believed to have contracted the virus after traveling to affected areas.

For now, there is no cure, and the WHO says it could take years to get a vaccine.

DR. SYLVAIN ALDIGHIERI, World Health Organization:  There is no immunity.  So we would expect huge numbers of infections, some detected, some not detected.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  The agency was criticized for not moving quickly enough on the Ebola outbreak.  But it’s calling a crisis meeting for Monday on whether to declare Zika an international health emergency.

"Why is Zika virus spreading so quickly?" PBS NewsHour 1/28/2016

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SUMMARY:  Weeks ago, hardly anyone in the U.S. knew what the Zika virus was.  Now the mosquito-borne illness is raising serious fears, especially for pregnant women.  Judy Woodruff talks to Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health about the dangers of the infection and how to prevent it, in absence of a vaccine.

CANCER - Processed Meat Debate

"Study finds that processed meat causes cancer, but how big is the risk?" PBS NewsHour 10/26/2015

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SUMMARY:  Eating processed meats such as hot dogs, sausages, ham and bacon can cause colorectal cancer, says the World Health Organization.  While the cancer risk in most cases is slight, it does increase with the amount of processed meats consumed, according to the WHO's investigation.  William Brangham learns more from Dr. Jonathan Schoenfeld of Harvard Medical School.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour):  This new report released today by the World Health Organization found that often-beloved meats, like sausage, bacon, ham, and hot dogs, can cause certain types of cancer.  Prior studies had established similar connections, but the WHO is the most prominent health organization to specifically say processed meats can cause cancer.

It looked at more than 800 studies around the world.  It also found that eating freshly prepared red meat like steak or pork or lamb probably can cause cancer as well.

Here to help us sort through this is Jonathan Schoenfeld.  He is a professor of radiation oncology at Harvard Medical School.  He co-wrote a notable paper for “The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition” in 2012 about the links between diet and cancer.

Dr. Schoenfeld, thank you for doing this.

The WHO certainly put the scare into meat eaters all over the country today.  How much of this — if I’m someone who has a couple of slices of bacon or a turkey sandwich a few times a week, how worried should I be?

DR. JONATHAN SCHOENFELD, Harvard Medical School:  Sure.

So, I Think it’s important to realize that what the World Health Organization was, like you said, as looked at hundreds of studies and put the evidence from those studies together to show that the consumption of processed or red meats was quite possibly associated with an increased risk of a variety of different types of cancer.

Now, what these studies did was look at the overall risk of cancer.  And so it’s hard to say that any one piece of bacon, for example, or piece of meat would increase your risk of cancer by a certain amount, but, in total, you know, these studies show that being one of the people who consume the most amounts of meats or processed foods could potentially increase your risk of these cancers.

HEALTH - The Resurgence of Polio

IMHO the use of "eradicate" in the context of a virus caused disease is very misleading.  You cannot eradicate a virus, what we have done with the polio vaccine is to buildup the human immune system to fight off the virus that causes polio, but it is still out there.

"Persistence is key to wiping out polio outbreaks in fragile nations" PBS NewsHour 5/6/2014

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GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  Public health officials around the world are sounding the alarm this week about the return of polio.  It’s a big shift from just two years ago, when some experts thought they were on the verge of eradicating the disease.

Jeffrey Brown has the story.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  The World Health Organization calls it an extraordinary event that threatens the decades-long battle to wipe out polio.

On Monday, the agency declared an international public health emergency.

Bruce Aylward is leading the WHO polio effort.  He spoke during a teleconference from Geneva.

BRUCE AYLWARD, World Health Organization:  While the virus has resurged, I think it reminds us that, until it’s eradicated, it is going to spread internationally and it’s going to find and paralyze susceptible kids.  Indeed, it could become endemic again in the entire world if we do not complete the eradication of this disease.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Worldwide, there have been 74 confirmed cases of polio this year, three times as many as the same period in 2013.  They’re focused in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.  In all, the outbreak has spread across at least 10 countries.  The WHO singles out Syria, Cameroon and Pakistan as the main sources of the disease.  Of those three, the vast majority of cases have been in Pakistan.

WORLD - Aid Group Personnel in Increasing Danger

"Program on Polio Eradication Suspended in Pakistan After 9 Aid Workers Killed" (Part-1) PBS Newshour 12/20/2012

RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): The death toll of polio vaccine workers killed in a string of attacks in Pakistan climbed again today. One victim died from wounds sustained in a shooting on Wednesday.

Tom Clarke of Independent Television News narrates this report on the difficult decisions the World Health Organization faces between protecting workers and eradicating a disease.

TOM CLARKE: Hundreds turned out to bury Mohammad Hilal, to mourn the loss of a 22-year-old student who gave out polio vaccine in his spare time. But they also came to express public outrage at this week's murders.

Nine young people, six of them women, one just 17, have been gunned down since Monday, and not at random, a series of coordinated assassinations targeting an annual three-day polio vaccination campaign.

BUSHRA ARAIN, All Pakistan Lady Health Workers Association (through translator): We go out door to door and risk our lives to save innocent children from being permanently handicapped.

For what? So that our coming generations turn out to be healthy. We work for our country, and we are being rewarded in the form of death. What kind of justice is this? Why are we targeted and killed?

TOM CLARKE: Until someone claims responsibility, we won't know why. The Taliban haven't come forward, but extreme Islamist groups have long opposed Western health interventions and the role for women in campaigns.

Frustration is compounded by the fact they were making such good progress. There were just 56 cases of polio in Pakistan this year, the lowest ever.

Up until the 1950s, polio, which can paralyze 10 percent of the children it infects, was one of the world's most feared diseases. Vaccination programs have steadily eradicated it in rich countries, and in recent decades, it's been all but wiped out in the developing world, too.

When the World Health Organization launched its campaign 24 years ago, polio was found in more than 125 countries, with around 350,000 cases every year. But now it's endemic in just parts of three countries, Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. And the cases have dwindled, 650 last year, and just 213 in 2012 so far.

The eradication program has had setbacks before, like a ban linked to extreme Islamists in Nigeria that led to outbreaks in 20 other countries. But observers say this week's violence is something new and requires the WHO to rethink the battle with polio it has so nearly won.

DR. HEIDI LARSON, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine: I think it needs to think about how to do it differently, maybe not as polio for polio's sake, but in the context of health.

And I know that that's been thought about. I know that the idea of integrating and mixing with other interventions has been thought through, but maybe it needs another look.

TOM CLARKE: The WHO warned failure to eliminate polio from its last few strongholds could mean as many as 200,000 new cases every year within a decade. That would be cruel memorial to the young volunteers who were so close to wiping it out for good.

"Understanding Why Delivering Aid Can Be a Dangerous Endeavor" (Part-2) PBS Newshour 12/20/2012

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SUMMARY: While aid groups operate with apolitical, humanitarian intentions, workers trying to bring relief in the middle of conflicts often find themselves in danger. Ray Suarez talks to Joel Charny of InterAction about the recent deaths of health workers trying to eradicate polio in Pakistan and the "erosion of safety" for aid groups.

ShelterBox USA Disaster Relief
InterAction.org