Monthly Archives: July 2012

Africa / Agri-Health / Animal Diseases / CRP4 / Emerging Diseases / Environment / Epidemiology / Health (human) / ILRI / Kenya / MarketOpps / Opinion piece / PA / RVF / Zoonotic Diseases

Animal-to-human diseases spreading with environmental changes–ILRI’s Delia Grace in The Guardian

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Villagers watch on as a team restrains a small pig for blood sampling in Luang Prabang, Laos (photo credit: ILRI/Kate Blaszak). Delia Grace, an Irish veterinary epidemiologist and public health expert at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), says shifts in forest cover, agricultural practices, mining and reservoirs are thought to be affecting the transmission … Continue reading »

Agriculture / Capacity Strengthening / East Africa / Event / Farming Systems / Food security / Livelihoods / PA / Partnerships / Southern Africa

New Australian International Food Security Centre seeks partnerships in Africa

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Mellissa Wood (4th left), of the Australian International Food Security Centre, and other members of the the Commission for International Agricultural Research on a visit to ILRI in March 2012 (photo credit: ILRI). A new initiative has been launched by the Australian International Food Security Centre to improve food security in Africa. The centre, which falls … Continue reading »

Books and chapters / Drylands / East Africa / Ethiopia / ILRI / Kenya / PA / Pastoralism / PLE / Somalia / Sudan / Tanzania / Vulnerability / Wildlife

Dynamic pastoral change: A new look at the Horn’s resourceful, innovative livestock peoples

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(Left) water gourd, Kenya, Northern Frontier District, Boran or Gubbra tribe, on loan from Gary K Clarke, Cowabunga Safaris; (right) calabash, Kenya, Maasai, on loan from Gary K Clarke, Cowabunga Safaris (photo credit: Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library / Betsy Roe). A new book from the STEPS Centre, in the UK, takes a fresh look at … Continue reading »

Agri-Health / Animal Diseases / CRP4 / Emerging Diseases / Epidemiology / Geodata / HIV-AIDS / ILRI / PA / Project / Report / Wildlife / Zoonotic Diseases

The ecology of disease: NYT cites ILRI study in report on rising threat of wildlife diseases transmitted to people

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Illustration by Olaf Hajek, in The New York Times Sunday Review: ‘The Ecology of disease’, 14 Jul 2012. Jim Robbins in The New York Times Sunday Review today writes about the ways breakdowns in the world’s ecosystems can ‘come back to haunt us in ways we  know little about. . . . Multimedia Graphic Hot … Continue reading »

Africa / Animal Production / Asia / CRP11 / Drylands / Event / Goats / ILRI / India / Innovation Systems / Knowledge & Information / Livestock / MarketOpps / Mozambique / South Asia / Southern Africa

Innovation platforms: Documenting experiences from the imGoats project and beyond

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Innovation platforms are a complex and some would say a not-so-straightforward approach. Nevertheless, ILRI, other CGIAR centers and other partners are using this approach in various projects such as the Nile Basin Development Challenge, IMGoats and the recently-completed Fodder Adoption and Fodder Innovation projects. What are innovation platforms exactly? This poster gives some ideas.   … Continue reading »

Capacity Strengthening / ILRI / IPMS

IPMS project contributes to public sector capacity development in Ethiopia

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Results based monitoring and evaluation, gender mainstreaming and mass insemination for improved dairying have been the subject of training interventions by the Improving Productivity and Market Success (IPMS) of Ethiopian Farmers staff in recent months. Courses have been run for  staff of the Agricultural Growth Program (AGP) at federal and regional levels, to staff of regional offices … Continue reading »

Agri-Health / Animal Diseases / CRP4 / Disease Control / Emerging Diseases / ILRI / MarketOpps / PA / Project / Report / Zoonotic Diseases

New findings of human-animal disease burden carried by world’s poor–IRIN and Reuters

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This transmission electron micrograph (TEM) depicted a number of Nipah virus virions that had been isolated from a patient’s cerebrospinal fluid. Nipah virus, related but not identical to Hendra virus, was initially isolated in 1999 upon examining samples from an outbreak of encephalitis and respiratory illness among adult men in Malaysia and Singapore (image credit: Microbe … Continue reading »

Agri-Health / Animal Diseases / CRP4 / East Africa / Emerging Diseases / Epidemiology / Ethiopia / ILRI / India / MarketOpps / Nigeria / PA / Report / South Asia / USA / West Africa / Zoonotic Diseases

Human-animal diseases are emerging in the North, have biggest costs in the South–New ILRI study

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Zoonotic emerging infectious disease events (non-wild hosts). Published In report to DFID by Delia Grace et al.:  Mapping of Poverty and Likely Zoonoses Hotspots, ILRI, 2012 (map credit: ILRI/Delia Grace). Natasha Gilbert reports today in Nature on the ‘Cost of human-animal disease greatest for world’s poor’, noting that ‘the United States and western Europe are … Continue reading »

Africa / Australia / BecA / ILRI / Research

Africa Food Security Initiative – update on an Australia-Africa partnership at the BecA Hub

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To foster a long-term sustainable improvement in African food security, the Australian government has increased its investment into Africa via the Africa Food Security Initiative (AFSI). One of the AFSI partnerships is between the Biosciences eastern and central Africa Hub (BecA) Hub and  the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). The latest program update … Continue reading »

Agriculture / Brazil / China / Event report / India / Opinion piece / PA / Policy

Rio+20 ‘ducked’ political realities: Time for South to show ‘political muscle and imaginative thinking’

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Happy dragon in Fengdu, China (photo on Flickr by Major Clanger). SciDevNet’s David Dickson argues in an opinion piece last week that the outcomes of the June Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development illustrate that leadership from developing countries will be key to global sustainable development. Dickson says that the result of Rio-20 was ‘the … Continue reading »