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| Afghanistan | |
| Cholera, Malaria Cases Increase in Helmand | |
| 2012-07-15 | |
| Health officials in Afghanistan's southern Helmand ...an Afghan province populated mostly by Pashtuns, adjacent to Injun country in Pak Balochistan... province said the incidence of cholera and malaria is on the rise. Head of the provincial health department Yar Mohammad Naseri said that with the onset of more dry and increasingly hot weather, the number of cases of serious diarrhoea has also risen. He said that the residents are not taking enough precautionary hygiene measures. He also emphasised that to protect people from malaria infections, the health department has distributed mosquito nets for the residents in the past few years, despite suggestions that the government had not done enough to prevent the disease.
As the summer temperatures rise, particularly in southern provinces of the country, Naseri said people should consider taking more steps in terms of hygiene. | |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #3 mom, back when he was into fertilizers and pesticides, my father invented a co-factor (not the correct word, but I am not a chemist) that made DDT as effective at 1/10th the dose. He made pots of money until Rachel Carson's Silent Spring came out... a year later. But DDT also needn't be sprayed wholesale during pollinating season, but targeted to breeding areas and building walls where female osquitos hang out while waiting to go for that blood meal. We now know a lot more about mosquitos than we did in the '60s, surely. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2012-07-15 20:17 |
| #2 With all due respect, the "People care more about birds" line doesn't work. The wholesale use of DDT in the 60s killed off the pollinators as well as the birds. In a farming area, this is devastating. No pollinators=no grain, no fruit, no vegetables. Starvation is not an improvement over malaria. I don't know about Helmand, but in parts of Africa smaller doses of DDT has been approved for use in homes, away from the food crops. Enough to get rid of the mosquitoes without poisoning the food and the pollinators. |
| Posted by: mom 2012-07-15 18:38 |
| #1 We had distributed anti mosquito nets for the residents of Helmand which works for five years but the people thought it was only for a year They've all been converted to chi strainers by now no doubt. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2012-07-15 00:14 |