Posted on 07/10/2002 12:12:41 AM PDT by ATOMIC_PUNK
World: Dozens dead in malaria outbreak in Kenya
NAIROBI, Kenya (July 9, 2002 7:48 p.m. EDT) - An outbreak of malaria has killed dozens of people and infected thousands in western Kenya, where warm and wet conditions have helped the disease flourish where it normally doesn't strike, experts said Tuesday.
Many hospitals in the highlands of Rift Valley and Nyanza provinces, 185 miles northwest of Nairobi, were overflowing with patients and mobile clinics were dispatched to the hardest hit areas, said Dr. Sam Ochola, director of Kenya's malaria control program.
Ochola said authorities were still compiling figures in some areas, but that dozens had died and thousands infected in the last two weeks.
"All of the clinics that we visited could not cope because the patients were too many," Ochola said.
Staffing was being increased at hospitals and clinics, and so far there were enough medical supplies to treat those infected, he said.
Mosquitos in East Africa's highlands normally don't spread malaria because of cold temperatures, said Dr. Jon Cox, an expert at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Without sufficiently warm temperatures, the malaria parasite doesn't develop inside the mosquito enough to be transmitted when the insect bites, he said.
But when the weather is warmer and wetter than normal, the parasite does have time to develop.
Ochola said while the epidemic was widespread, it was not as bad as the last outbreak in 1998 when hundreds of people died.
He hoped the epidemic could be contained in the next few weeks.
Cox and Ochola are part of a team developing an early warning system to predict when conditions are right for a malaria outbreak in the highlands of Kenya and Uganda so that preventive steps can be taken.
People were being advised to use mosquito nets, but Ochola said many highland residents, who live on less than a dollar a day, could not afford the $2 expense.
If I remember correctly, he was given an anti-maliarial drug that had been superceded by a newer, more effective medication. I hope she and the rest of the group are taking the most up-to-date drugs available. I'll worry until she gets back. And she's probably having the time of her life.
...That's why I'm worried...
However, as I've witnessed far too frequently from people I'd still call friends here at FR, it's flat-out surprising who has been indoctrinated into believing there are too many people on the planet.
Please pardon my skepticism if this doesn't apply to you two, but I've seen far too many who become concerned over stories like this one, clearly the consequences of international policies, only when they have a personal stake in the deaths. Otherwise it's "oh well, ya know Av, the enviro-wackos do have a point." This is the "morality" of the new paradigm.
Have a good day.
How many miserable misanthropes do you think admit to longing to kill off 95% of the world's human population? How many have you heard stand out in front (like Peter Singer) and announce it? They don't even have the guts, weasel-like, to imply it. They simply fund the enviro-wackos -- and they do their dirty work for them.
Have a very good day.
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