Human Health
One Health for the Real World: zoonoses, ecosystems and wellbeing
17–18 Mar 2016
This symposium will bring together leading experts from different fields to discuss the topic ‘Healthy ecosystems, healthy people’. Continue reading
Did you miss this call for a US national food policy by Mark Bittman, New York Times columnist and lead food writer; Michael Pollan, leading food, food systems and food science author; Ricardo Salvador, director of food and environment at the Union of Concerned Scientists; and Olivier de Schutter, former UN special rapporteur on the right to food. Continue reading
African camels could hold important clues to controlling the potential spread of a respiratory disease transmitted by the animals. For many years African camels have lived with the disease and the risk of it spreading to humans is still low. But more research is necessary to understand the disease better. This is even more important given the confirmation that the chains of transmission of the human Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) infection originated from contact with camels. Continue reading
The Urban Zoo project is visiting 99 households across Nairobi, rich and poor, with livestock and without. They’re taking samples from people, their animals, and whatever wildlife they can find nearby (and catch): storks, mice, bats, et cetera. They’re sampling the ground around homes, yards and livestock pens with white paper booties. ‘The aim, says University of Liverpool veterinarian Judy Bettridge, is “to try and understand on a small scale how those bacteria are shared” among each household’s people, livestock and environment. “And then when we scale it up, are the bacteria here being shared with the household that’s 50 meters over there? Or 100 meters over there? So, how far can they actually spread?” . . . Continue reading
After nine years, the Foodborne Disease Burden Epidemiology Reference Group (FERG) of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has produced the first global assessment of food-borne disease. Continue reading
In case you missed it, earlier this year, Washington Post food–science columnist Tamar Haspel served up an interesting story in The Plate, a blog of National Geographic’s Future of Food series. Her story’s about a long-term research project’s attempt to develop disease-resistant cattle for African farmers. Continue reading
Bacon (photo via Flickr/Kietil Ree). ‘The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Monday that it has classified processed meat as a human carcinogen. ‘Red meat also was classified as a probable human carcinogen, according to the release by WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). ‘The group cited “sufficient evidence” linking processed meat—such as … Continue reading
Deaths caused by East Coast fever, the biggest killer of East African cattle, dropped 89 per cent among calves which were also infected with other species of parasite that do not cause disease. Continue reading
The Economist magazine recently ran a piece on research indicating that the ability to digest milk may explain how Europe got rich (28 Mar 2015). Continue reading
Pork joints in Uganda (photo credit: ILRI/Martin Heilmann, Freie Universitaet Berlin). The following excerpts are taken from a guest commentary, Healthy foods must be nutritious, safe and fair, published on the Global Food for Thought blog of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs on 10 Apr 2015. The authors are John McDermott, of the International Food Policy … Continue reading
ILRI Clippings 