http://www.sos-europe-amnesty.eu/expulsion-throws-spotlight-on-morocco-human-rights-blog/
junho 2015
http://www.eldiario.es/desalambre/Marruecos-blinda-frontera-Argelia_0_406660121.html
http://www.abc.es/internacional/20150708/abci-tunez-valla-contener-yihadismo-201507081934.html?utm_source=abc&utm_medium=rss&utm_content=uh-rss&utm_campaign=traffic-rss
La valla tendrá 170 kilómetros de longitud y pretende contener el éxodo de jóvenes tunecinos hacia Libia para unirse al Estado Islámico
El primer ministro tunecino, Habib Essid, ha anunciado que Túnez ha iniciado la construcción de una valla en la frontera con Libia,
para tratar de controlar el contrabando y la infiltración de yihadistas
en ambas direcciones. El jefe del Ejecutivo tunecino ha indicado que la
valla tendrá unos 170 kilómetros de longitud y que se espera esté
acabada para finales de este mismo año, además, ha asegurado que «estará
flanqueada por trincheras y contará con cámaras de vigilancia». La
valla se extenderá desde el puesto fronterizo de Ras Jedir, junto a la
costa, y hasta el de Dehiba, lo que supone una tercera parte de los 460
kilómetros de frontera, en su mayoría desértica, que separa a ambos
estados.
La decisión de construir el muro se ha adoptado poco después de que Túnez haya sufrido, en apenas tres meses, dos atentados yihadistas que han costado la vida a 60 turistas extranjeros y han golpeado su difícil transición política y económica. Según las fuerzas de Seguridad tanto el pistolero que el pasado 26 de junio mató a 38 turistas europeos en un playa de la ciudad costera de Susa, como los dos que el pasado 18 de marzo asesinaron a 22 turistas en el museo de El Bardo de la capital tunecina, recibieron entrenamiento militar en campos yihadistas en Libia.
Túnez es, junto a Francia, el país que más voluntarios aporta al Estado Islámico, con cerca de tres mil yihadistas según cálculos oficiales y más de cinco mil según diversos expertos en islamismo radical afincados en el país. De ellos, se cree que cerca de un millar han regresado ya y han buscado refugio tanto en Libia, donde está cobijado el ilegalizado grupo tunecino «Ansar al Sharia», como en la región de Kasserine, en la porosa frontera con Argelia.
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/43332/title/Tracing-Ebola-s-Evolution/
By Anna Azvolinsky | June 18, 2015
Map showing spread of Ebola based on phylogenetic analysis of lineage A from March 2014 and B starting in May/June 2014PUBLIC HEALTH ENGLAND; MILES CARROLL, MICHAEL ELMORE (WITH PERMISSION FROM NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP)
The ongoing Ebola outbreak is the largest on record. The World Health Organization (WHO) this week (June 17) reported 27,305 confirmed cases, including 11,169 deaths. In an effort to better understand the deadly virus, scientists have mapped the transmission and evolution of Ebola at the epicenter of the 2014 epidemic (Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone), providing a detailed look at the virus throughout the first nine months of the outbreak. Together with previously published Ebola sequencing analyses, the results of two independent studies published this week could help health officials better prepare for and control future outbreaks.
In a study published in Nature this week (June 17), Miles Carroll of Public Health England and his colleagues at the European Mobile Lab and elsewhere reported 179 viral genome sequences from patient blood samples collected in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone between March 2014 and January 2015. Separately, a team led by the Broad Institute’s Daniel Park and his colleagues at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among other institutions, sequenced Ebola virus samples from the blood of 232 patients in Sierra Leone over a span of seven months in 2014. The latter team’s results were published today (June 18) in Cell.
Epidemiologist Stephen Morse of Columbia University in New York told The Scientist in an e-mail that the molecular data and associated geographic and temporal information presented in these studies could be a boon for researchers. The information might be used to understand which virus variants are most successful in which circumstances, added Morse, who was not involved in the work.
Overall, said Carroll, “these studies show the virus is not mutating like mad and does not appear to be adapting to a novel phenotype.”
Both teams sequenced the patient-derived viruses and performed phylogenetic analyses, finding that the pathogen spread by direct human-to-human transmission without any apparent animal intermediates. Traditional epidemiology and infection control have helped health officials bring the epidemic under control, said Paul Kellam, virus genomics team leader at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the UK who was also not involved in either study. “Molecular epidemiology,” he noted, “brings us an extra facet to . . . define the course of transmissions.”
The genomic analyses confirm that initial interventions put in place in spring 2014 by the WHO, the Guinean government, and other agencies “narrowly contained the outbreak,” said Carroll. Later, a single individual appeared to have carried the virus to Sierra Leone, after which the pathogen made its way back up to Guinea and Liberia, “causing a bigger wave of infections three months later,” Carroll explained. The viruses from Guinea and Sierra Leone mixed during summer 2014. Both studies showed little evidence of cross-country migration by early fall 2014. “The borders are not nearly as porous as previously thought,” said Park.
The analyses show that the initially rapid rate of viral evolution tapered off as the epidemic continued, confirming the results of a March 2015 study analyzing an initial Sierra Leone patient sample set from May to June 2014, and resembling the longer term genomic evolution observed for other types of viral outbreaks. “The virus does not seem to be adapting to the host . . . even though it had a bigger opportunity as the outbreak was a lot bigger than past outbreaks,” Carroll told The Scientist.
Still, the focus on the viral mutation rate in the literature “has been an unhelpful distraction from the epidemiology,” Oliver Pybus, a professor of evolution and infectious disease at the University of Oxford who was not involved in the work, told The Scientist in an e-mail. “The fluctuations in the ‘apparent’ rate have more to do with statistical interpretation than biological importance.”
Park agreed. “The evolutionary rate is similar to that of other RNA viruses and not the most interesting result.”
Scientists are now calling for faster, on-the-ground sequencing and quicker analyses that can be used during an epidemic rather than retrospectively. “For Ebola, we need this information within two to four weeks,” said Kellam. “Right now, there is a disconnect between the traditional scientific process and what needs to be done during the outbreak.”
“The field needs to get together and agree on genomic [data-]sharing principles,” agreed Pybus. “Information that can guide public health interventions will be lost if the data is reported piecemeal or with significant delays.”
In the meantime, researchers are pooling available genomic data sets to provide an up-to-date molecular picture of the outbreak. “This is the future,” said Kellam. “If we can do this with Ebola, we can this for any other epidemic infection.”
M.W. Carroll et al. “Temporal and spatial analysis of the 2014–2015 Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa,” Nature, doi:10.1038/nature14594, 2015.
D.J. Park et al., “Ebola virus epidemiology, transmission, and evolution during seven months in Sierra Leone,” Cell, doi:10.1016/j.cell.2015.06.007, 2015.
[mensagem organizada por Helion Póvoa Neto]
junho 2015
Expulsion Throws Spotlight on Morocco Human Rights
Migrants’
clothing caught in razor wire as they tried to cross the frontier to
Spain from Morocco at the Spanish enclave of Melilla, October 2005 -
Credit : José Palazón/PRODEIN
By John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International’s Director for Europe and Central Asia
After
four hours of questioning by a succession of policemen in a nondescript
office on the third floor of Rabat’s central police station, a senior
officer pushed a form across the table. “Please sign this,” he said
handing me a pen. It was an expulsion order for my immediate removal
from Morocco on the grounds that I posed a ‘threat to public order’.
I
had been picked up at around noon from my hotel and my telephone and
passport had been confiscated. A few hundred miles away my Amnesty
International colleague who had been researching human rights situation
of migrants and refugees, had also been held by the police and
questioned. Later that evening we were driven to separate airports and
put on flights out of the country.
By
expelling Amnesty International staff Morocco joins a long and
ignominious list of countries that have sent out staff packing ranging
from Eritrea to Indonesia. The catalogue of countries which has refused
Amnesty International entry is still longer. This month alone an Amnesty
International expert who was due to speak at a conference in UAE was
turned away at the airport and two staff members who were about to
launch a report in Azerbaijan were informed that they would not be
welcome in the country.
Our
expulsion on Thursday was not the first time that Amnesty
International’s work in Morocco has been hampered. In the early 1990’s
Morocco imposed a blanket ban on the organization and although this was
lifted in 1993 the relationship with the Moroccan authorities
deteriorated markedly after we launched our Stop Torture Campaign last
year. This detailed Morocco’s use of torture and found that, despite
being explicitly criminalized since 2006 and prohibited by the country’s
new 2011 constitution, torture continues, with perpetrators enjoying
virtual total impunity.
Unsurprisingly
our findings were not welcomed by the government. The Moroccan
authorities - in particular the Ministry of Interior - have become less
and less tolerant of scrutiny not only by local and international human
rights groups, but also by Moroccan journalists.
Groups
critical of the governments human rights record have been facing
mounting restrictions on their activities since the second half of 2014.
The Moroccan authorities have banned several public events and internal
meetings by various human rights groups. These restrictions followed
remarks by the Interior Minister that “some domestic associations and
entities work under the cover of defending human rights”, but are in
fact trying to “drive some of the international organizations to take
hostile positions towards Morocco’s interests”.
In
recent months, two investigative journalism events were banned by
Morocco’s Interior Ministry. Meanwhile, Hicham Mansouri, journalist and
Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, is currently serving a
10-month prison term for complicity in adultery, but we fear he is being
punished for his work.
We
had travelled to Morocco to investigate the treatment of refugees and
migrants trying to enter the fenced-off Spanish enclaves of Melilla and
Ceuta. On these borders there have been reports of and unlawful
pushbacks by Spanish border guards and ill-treatment by Moroccan
authorities whose cooperation in migration management the European Union
is assiduously courting.
Morocco
has promised sweeping - and for the most part - positive changes to its
own migration policies, including crucially the creation of a national
asylum system. There is much to praise therefore but by preventing AI to
conduct our research, the suspicion remains that the treatment of
migrants and asylum seekers picked up by Moroccan authorities at the
Spanish boarder is not all it should be.
My
treatment at the hands of the Moroccan police was polite but firm. As I
was led from the police station and into the car waiting to take me to
the airport the plain clothed police officer with whom I had spent much
of the day shook me by the hand. Looking me steadily in the eye he said,
“Morocco will do things our own way. We don’t need people like you
coming here and interfering and telling us what to do.”
In
the departure lounge, flanked by two police minders, I reflected on the
expulsion order that prevents me from returning to the country
“indefinitely”. This is a personal sadness of course, but more
significantly our expulsion is a symptom the dwindling space for
constructive dialogue on the human rights situation in the country.
This article first appeared in Newsweek.
This article first appeared in Newsweek.
http://www.eldiario.es/desalambre/Marruecos-blinda-frontera-Argelia_0_406660121.html
Marruecos levanta una valla con Argelia: "Es más peligroso llegar a Europa, hay heridos y muertos"
El investigador Hassan Ammari ha documentado cuatro muertes desde
enero en su intento de cruzar de Argelia a Marruecos, una ruta que tiene
como objetivo final alcanzar Europa
La valla, de la que ya se han construido 40 kilómetros, se extenderá por 140 km de la frontera argelina
"Entra menos gente. Antes venían 20 personas a la semana y ahora entran unas 10 personas al mes, pero siguen llegando", cuenta a eldiario.es Ibrahim, líder de la comunidad de inmigrantes gambianos
La valla, de la que ya se han construido 40 kilómetros, se extenderá por 140 km de la frontera argelina
"Entra menos gente. Antes venían 20 personas a la semana y ahora entran unas 10 personas al mes, pero siguen llegando", cuenta a eldiario.es Ibrahim, líder de la comunidad de inmigrantes gambianos
Elena González
- Oujda (Marruecos)
07/07/2015 -
20:47h
Parte de la valla que Marruecos está construyendo en la
frontera con Argelia, a la altura de Oudjda. En lo alto, un puesto de
control argelino. / eldiario.es.
"Desde que construyeron la valla en Oujda el paso es
mucho más peligroso. Hay heridos y muertos, por el foso y la barrera",
asegura Ibrahim, el chairman (líder) de la comunidad de Gambia, buen
conocedor del terreno. En 2014 Marruecos anunció la construcción de una
barrera a lo largo de la frontera con Argelia, desde la costa, que ha
encarecido y complicado las rutas para llegar a Europa. Un investigador a
cuyo trabajo ha tenido acceso eldiario.es ha documentado la muerte de
cuatro personas desde enero en esta zona.
Ibrahim
calcula que tiene 36 ó 37 años y que lleva unos 10 de viaje desde que
salió de su país, incluida una deportación desde España, un volver a
empezar el camino desde Senegal y los tres últimos años en Oujda. Ahora,
cruzar es un poco más difícil por el muro que está levantando Marruecos
con su país vecino.
"Marruecos está construyendo una valla dotada con
detectores electrónicos para protegerse de las amenazas terroristas, la
inmigración ilegal y el contrabando", declaró el ministro del Interior,
Mohamed Hassad, en una respuesta parlamentaria en julio del año pasado.
Sin precisar cuál sería la longitud de la barrera, Marruecos ha ido
ampliando el muro vallado, con tramos de 1,5 a tres metros de altura. Se
construyó un tramo inicial de 40 kilómetros al que siguió otro de 70 km
y está proyectado uno más de 30 km hasta la ciudad de Jerada. Se han
instalado diez torres de control y se ha equipado con cámaras. Casi al
mismo tiempo, los argelinos empezaron a cavar un foso en su lado de la
frontera, aunque Marruecos reprocha a sus vecinos –la frontera terrestre
permanece cerrada desde 1994– la falta de cooperación.
Entierro de Efoanimjor Kenneth George, el chico nigeriano que murió en la valla de frío. / Imagen cedida a eldiario.es.
"Cada vez que reforzamos la seguridad en las fronteras
llega la tragedia", se lamenta el investigador sobre migraciones Hassan
Ammari, que ha documentado la muerte de cuatro inmigrantes subsaharianos
en la frontera desde enero de este año: un camerunés, un nigeriano, un
ghanés y uns persona de nacionalidad desconocida. Él mismo fue a buscar
uno de los cadáveres, el del joven nigeriano, Efoanimjor Kenneth George,
el 21 de enero: "Hacía frío y llovía y el foso de la parte argelina se
llenó de agua. Apenas iba abrigado. Creemos que después los argelinos
lanzaron el cadáver a la parte marroquí", asegura. Fue enterrado en
Oujda el 20 de febrero.
Tumba de un ciudadano de Ghana que falleció en la frontera de
Marruecos con Argelia, en abril de 2015. / Imagen cedida a eldiario.es.
"Entra menos gente. Antes venían 20 personas a la semana
y ahora entran unas 10 personas al mes, pero siguen llegando", explica
Ibrahim, haciendo el recuento comparativo. "Pero si tienes dinero,
cruzas. Éste es un país de comercio, sobre todo en esta zona, donde
mucha gente vive del contrabando de mercancías y de personas", añade. No
es ningún secreto que en Oujda, como en cualquier ciudad fronteriza, se
mercadea de un lado al otro de la frontera con gasolina, aluminio,
cigarrillos, ropa y calzado. "Comercio informal tolerado", como dicen en
Ceuta y Melilla.
Otras rutas más caras y peligrosas
La nueva valla ha encarecido los precios de los pasadores de
inmigrantes. "Antes podían pasar más libres, sin pagar. Ahora han
convencido a la gente de que deben pasar forzosamente por los
traficantes de personas para poder llegar de Argelia a Oujda por los
puntos más habituales, así que estas pequeñas redes están mucho más
activas", analiza Ammari. Lo que antes costaba 20 ó 30 euros con un
"guía", ahora cuesta 50 ó 60.
También están cambiando
las rutas de entrada. En los últimos meses, han llegado inmigrantes
desde el desierto del Sahara, atravesando el norte de Mali hasta el sur
de Argelia y de ahí, a Marruecos, sin subir a Oujda, al norte. Es un
viaje aún más peligroso: "Vine desde Mali en un 4x4, con otras 15
personas, encajados en el coche, sin poder movernos. Dos de ellas
murieron en el desierto", explica Diabaté, un joven maliense de 17 años
que planea volver a Argelia porque en Marruecos no encuentra trabajo. Ha
abandonado el sueño europeo.
Los migrantes aseguran que, desde que se ha levantado el nuevo muro, necesitan más dinero para cruzar. / eldiario.es
El blindaje de la frontera con Argelia contrasta con la
calma que se respira dentro de la ciudad en la que se ha convertido la
Facultad de Derecho y Ciencias de Oujda, la célebre "Fac", que conocen
todos los inmigrantes subsaharianos recién llegados desde Argelia. Es el
primer punto de descanso en Marruecos después de un largo viaje. Allí
conviven unas 300 personas de distintas nacionalidades que hacen vida en
tiendas fabricadas con madera y plásticos. Mucho más sólidas, sin
embargo, que las de hace unos años porque ya no hay redadas de madrugada
de la policía en la Fac, como hasta hace un año.
Desalojo de los campamentos más próximos a España
En los últimos meses, la prioridad de Marruecos ha sido alejar a los
inmigrantes de las fronteras con Europa. Apenas hay 150 personas en el
monte Gurugú, después de los traslados forzosos de febrero pasado
y la imponente presencia policial en la zona de Nador, en la frontera
con Melilla. Oujda, a 134 km de Nador por la nacional 2, queda todavía
alejada de las fronteras europeas, por eso la Fac ya no parece ser una
prioridad para las fuerzas de seguridad.
En el
ambiente flota una rara normalidad. Unos juegan al fútbol y otros van y
vienen de entrenar. Tres jóvenes guineanos hacen sus abluciones antes de
rezar en una de las dos "mezquitas" –dos espacios señalizados con
piedras en el suelo– de esta parte del campus. Un grupo de jóvenes
senegaleses descansa a la sombra después de transportar varios bidones
de agua desde el otro lado de la facultad. Ahmed, recién llegado de
Guinea, espera a que sus padres le envíen dinero para intentar cruzar.
Ahmed, recién llegado de Guinea a , espera a que sus padres le envíen dinero para llegar a Europa. / eldiario.es.
Una decena de malienses, sentados en sillas de plástico
fuera de las tiendas, se reúne para hablar del problema de espalda de
Diarra, un joven de 18 años que cayó hace dos desde la valla de Melilla y
se lesionó la columna vertebral. Desde hace semanas, las placas que le
colocaron le molestan y quiere quitárselas. Por allí pasa un liberiano,
recién llegado: "¿Hay alguien que hable inglés?"- pregunta mientras
busca un hueco entre las más de 40 tiendas, agrupadas por
nacionalidades, que se alinean a lo largo de uno de los muros de la
facultad. Unos pasan unos pocos días, otros se instalan en habitaciones,
en apartamentos compartidos en la ciudad. Ibrahim lleva tres años en la
Fac y dice no se rinde: "El hombre no está hecho para desanimarse".
Túnez levantará una valla en la frontera con Libia para atajar el yihadismo
efe / túnez
Día 08/07/2015 - 20.09h
La valla tendrá 170 kilómetros de longitud y pretende contener el éxodo de jóvenes tunecinos hacia Libia para unirse al Estado Islámico
La decisión de construir el muro se ha adoptado poco después de que Túnez haya sufrido, en apenas tres meses, dos atentados yihadistas que han costado la vida a 60 turistas extranjeros y han golpeado su difícil transición política y económica. Según las fuerzas de Seguridad tanto el pistolero que el pasado 26 de junio mató a 38 turistas europeos en un playa de la ciudad costera de Susa, como los dos que el pasado 18 de marzo asesinaron a 22 turistas en el museo de El Bardo de la capital tunecina, recibieron entrenamiento militar en campos yihadistas en Libia.
Contener el yihadismo, máxima prioridad
Ayer, el portavoz del ministerio tunecino de Defensa, Belhasan Oueslati, reveló que tres jóvenes militares de la localidad meridional de Remada han abandonado sus casas y partido hacia Libia, presumiblemente para unirse a la yihad. Los supuestos desertores, elevan a 35 el número de jóvenes que han salido rumbo a Libia en los últimos días desde esta localidad, la más meridional del país y a escasos kilómetros de la frontera con Libia.Túnez es, junto a Francia, el país que más voluntarios aporta al Estado Islámico, con cerca de tres mil yihadistas según cálculos oficiales y más de cinco mil según diversos expertos en islamismo radical afincados en el país. De ellos, se cree que cerca de un millar han regresado ya y han buscado refugio tanto en Libia, donde está cobijado el ilegalizado grupo tunecino «Ansar al Sharia», como en la región de Kasserine, en la porosa frontera con Argelia.
http://www.almendron.com/tribuna/cause-behind-african-migrant-flood-has-terrifying-implications-for-the-world/
21/04/15
Reuters | Max Hoffman, Michael Werz
The migrant crisis in the Mediterranean is symptomatic of deep dislocation in the Sahel region and sub-Saharan Africa — dislocation exacerbated by climate change.
Climate change is affecting such basic environmental conditions as rainfall patterns and temperatures and is contributing to more frequent natural disasters like floods and droughts. Over the long term, these changing conditions can undermine the rural livelihoods of farming, herding and fishing. The resulting rural dislocation is a factor in people’s decisions to migrate.
Migratory decisions are complex, of course, and nobody would argue that climate change is the only factor driving them. But climate change cannot be ignored. The second-order effects of climate change — undermined agriculture and competition for water and food resources — can contribute to instability and to higher numbers of migrants.
Italian
coastguard and Armed Forces of Malta personnel in protective clothing
carry the body of a dead immigrant off the ship Bruno Gregoretti in
Senglea, in Valletta’s Grand Harbour, April 20, 2015. REUTERS/Darrin
Zammit Lupi
These are the conclusions of our regional report on Northwest Africa,
published in 2012, which examined the root causes of tragedies like
that of the drowning deaths of up to 700 migrants attempting to reach
Europe by boat via the Mediterranean. We found that underlying climate
and demographic trends can squeeze the margins of life at the family and
community levels, contribute to decisions to migrate, heighten
conflicts over basic resources and threaten state structures and
regional stability. We also found that climate challenges, longstanding
migratory routes and security concerns are linked to the Maghreb, the
Sahel region and the Niger Delta in compelling ways.
In northwest Africa, climate change will exacerbate difficulties in areas already facing numerous environmental and developmental challenges. Overall, up to 250 million people in Africa are projected to suffer from water and food insecurity in the 21st century. In the Sahel region, three-quarters of rain-fed arable land will be greatly affected by climate change. Droughts and flooding are already more frequent in Niger and northern Nigeria, along with temperature rises that jeopardize crucial rural activities.
The Niger River faces diminishing flows of roughly 10 percent, which numerous new dam projects will only worsen. If current water consumption trends continue, withdrawals from the Niger basin will increase sixfold by 2025, with profound implications for Nigeria. Lake Chad, which supports 25 million people, is drying up and is one-twentieth of its size in 1960. Northern Algeria, home to most of the country’s population and agriculture, may see rainfall reductions of 10 percent to 20 percent by 2025. Rainfall in Morocco is expected to decrease by 20 percent by the end of the century.
And as previously mentioned, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa are tied together by longstanding and well-established migratory routes. As early as 2011, research indicated that about 65,000 migrants passed through Agadez, Niger, on their way north to Algeria, Morocco and Europe each year. As climate change takes a toll on farming, herding and fishing, undermining livelihoods and contributing to decisions to migrate, these numbers could grow larger.
Nigeria is losing more than 1,350 square miles of land to desertification each year, a pace that may increase with climate change. With 70 percent of Nigeria’s population reliant on agriculture for its livelihood, and 90 percent of Niger’s workforce reliant on rain-fed agriculture, desertification represents a fundamental threat to rural life. Indeed, the line at which rainfall maintains sufficient groundwater for farming has been shifting south in recent years, according to United Nations reports.
These are not the abstract complaints of climate scientists; this is profoundly disruptive in a region dependent on agriculture. In Niger, frequent droughts have impoverished many and contributed to migration. When faced with deteriorating conditions, humans have long turned to migration; it is a basic adaptive mechanism.
And these trends in combination with rapid projected population growth throughout the Sahel region and West Africa are increasing the strain on the countries along this migratory route. Niger has the world’s second-highest fertility rate, with a median age of just 15 years, and its population is expected to quadruple in the next century. Nigeria’s population, meanwhile, is expected to double by 2040. Population growth increases the strain on already scarce natural resources like water, land and food and further contributes to migratory decisions.
Any effort to address the migrant tragedy playing out in the Mediterranean must address and incorporate these deeper-root causes. Though the warning signs have long been evident, policymakers still tend to focus on the symptoms rather than the causes.
Michael Werz is a Senior Fellow at Center for American Progress, where his work as member of the National Security Team focuses on the nexus of climate change, migration, and security and emerging democracies. Max Hoffman is a Policy Analyst on the National Security & International Policy team at American Progress.
21/04/15
Cause behind African migrant flood has terrifying implications for the world
The migrant crisis in the Mediterranean is symptomatic of deep dislocation in the Sahel region and sub-Saharan Africa — dislocation exacerbated by climate change.
Climate change is affecting such basic environmental conditions as rainfall patterns and temperatures and is contributing to more frequent natural disasters like floods and droughts. Over the long term, these changing conditions can undermine the rural livelihoods of farming, herding and fishing. The resulting rural dislocation is a factor in people’s decisions to migrate.
Migratory decisions are complex, of course, and nobody would argue that climate change is the only factor driving them. But climate change cannot be ignored. The second-order effects of climate change — undermined agriculture and competition for water and food resources — can contribute to instability and to higher numbers of migrants.
Italian
coastguard and Armed Forces of Malta personnel in protective clothing
carry the body of a dead immigrant off the ship Bruno Gregoretti in
Senglea, in Valletta’s Grand Harbour, April 20, 2015. REUTERS/Darrin
Zammit LupiIn northwest Africa, climate change will exacerbate difficulties in areas already facing numerous environmental and developmental challenges. Overall, up to 250 million people in Africa are projected to suffer from water and food insecurity in the 21st century. In the Sahel region, three-quarters of rain-fed arable land will be greatly affected by climate change. Droughts and flooding are already more frequent in Niger and northern Nigeria, along with temperature rises that jeopardize crucial rural activities.
The Niger River faces diminishing flows of roughly 10 percent, which numerous new dam projects will only worsen. If current water consumption trends continue, withdrawals from the Niger basin will increase sixfold by 2025, with profound implications for Nigeria. Lake Chad, which supports 25 million people, is drying up and is one-twentieth of its size in 1960. Northern Algeria, home to most of the country’s population and agriculture, may see rainfall reductions of 10 percent to 20 percent by 2025. Rainfall in Morocco is expected to decrease by 20 percent by the end of the century.
And as previously mentioned, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa are tied together by longstanding and well-established migratory routes. As early as 2011, research indicated that about 65,000 migrants passed through Agadez, Niger, on their way north to Algeria, Morocco and Europe each year. As climate change takes a toll on farming, herding and fishing, undermining livelihoods and contributing to decisions to migrate, these numbers could grow larger.
Nigeria is losing more than 1,350 square miles of land to desertification each year, a pace that may increase with climate change. With 70 percent of Nigeria’s population reliant on agriculture for its livelihood, and 90 percent of Niger’s workforce reliant on rain-fed agriculture, desertification represents a fundamental threat to rural life. Indeed, the line at which rainfall maintains sufficient groundwater for farming has been shifting south in recent years, according to United Nations reports.
These are not the abstract complaints of climate scientists; this is profoundly disruptive in a region dependent on agriculture. In Niger, frequent droughts have impoverished many and contributed to migration. When faced with deteriorating conditions, humans have long turned to migration; it is a basic adaptive mechanism.
And these trends in combination with rapid projected population growth throughout the Sahel region and West Africa are increasing the strain on the countries along this migratory route. Niger has the world’s second-highest fertility rate, with a median age of just 15 years, and its population is expected to quadruple in the next century. Nigeria’s population, meanwhile, is expected to double by 2040. Population growth increases the strain on already scarce natural resources like water, land and food and further contributes to migratory decisions.
Any effort to address the migrant tragedy playing out in the Mediterranean must address and incorporate these deeper-root causes. Though the warning signs have long been evident, policymakers still tend to focus on the symptoms rather than the causes.
Michael Werz is a Senior Fellow at Center for American Progress, where his work as member of the National Security Team focuses on the nexus of climate change, migration, and security and emerging democracies. Max Hoffman is a Policy Analyst on the National Security & International Policy team at American Progress.
New York Times
Young African Migrants Caught in Trafficking
Machine
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK MAY 5, 2015
ZAWIYAH, Libya — The no-money-down offer was too tempting for the children to
resist.
Smugglers had offered the boys and girls transportation out of the refugee
camps along the Eritrean border, across the African deserts and the Mediterranean
Sea, to a new life in Europe. There, they could quickly win asylum and bring along
their parents, the smugglers assured them. Payment could come later.
By the time the smugglers had conveyed the boys and girls to Libya, however,
the offer had become an ultimatum. The children, some as young as 8, called their
parents to relay a demand from the smugglers for more than $3,200. For parents,
failure to send the money meant abandoning their sons and daughters to the chaos
of Libya.
Zackarias Hilo, 19, the oldest of about 40 Eritrean boys held by the authorities
here at the time of a recent visit, said his father had initially exclaimed that he was
too poor to pay. “Then I am dead!” Zackarias replied.
So to come up with the payment, “my father went to the old city to sell all his
goats,” Zackarias said.
“It was the same for all of us,” he said, surveying the younger boys. Adult
refugees who traveled with them confirmed their accounts, which aid workers said
were common. In the case of one 8-year-old, a father in Eritrea and a sister in
Norway provided corroboration as well.
There are about 80 Eritrean boys and girls now imprisoned in two detention
centers here. Ill prepared to evaluate the smugglers’ offers, such children are
among the most innocent victims of the human smuggling machine that is now
sucking so many African migrants into the Libyan maelstrom and out onto the
Mediterranean waters.
Out of roughly 170,000 migrants arriving in Italy by sea from Libya last year,
more than 13,000 were children traveling alone, and 3,394 of those were Eritrean,
according to the International Organization for Migration, an intergovernmental
agency based in Geneva. In just the first few weeks of this year’s peak sailing
season, about 30,000 have crossed, including more than 5,000 so far this month
and a total of more than 1,680 unaccompanied minors.
More than 50 children, including some traveling with their parents, are
believed to have drowned along with 700 others when their overloaded boat
capsized in April. On Tuesday, aid groups said that as many as 40 other migrants
had drowned as well, and last year, hundreds of children died the same way.
The families being extorted by the smugglers are invariably already
impoverished. In Eritrea, the average per capita income is about $550 a year,
according to the most recent World Bank figures, so meeting the smugglers’
ransom can consume the savings of a whole village or more.
“The smugglers are very creative,” said Meron Estefanos, an Eritrean rights
activist in Stockholm who works with migrants. “Once the smuggler gets the
children to Libya, the parents have no option but to send money, because there is
no return.”
If the children reach Europe, she said, “the first thing they ask me is always,
‘Can I bring my parents?’ ”
The unaccompanied children come from many countries, including 1,481 from
Somalia, 1,208 from Gambia and 945 from Syria last year, according to the
International Organization for Migration. In some cases, parents may consciously
send children in the hope that they will be more likely to win asylum.
But the largest number of unaccompanied children come from Eritrea, a
dictatorship so severe it is sometimes likened to North Korea. Western countries
grant asylum to almost every arriving Eritrean. And the Eritrean children, aid
workers say, often slip away without the knowledge of their parents.
Eritrea drafts every man and woman as young as 18 into a brutal system of
military service that frequently lasts many years and can amount to slave labor at
state-run industrial projects. To escape, hundreds of thousands of adults have fled,
often to refugee camps across the hilly border with Ethiopia. Each year, hundreds
of unaccompanied children following the same footsteps walk into Ethiopia. The
camps currently house more than 1,500 without their parents, aid workers say.
“They are referred to as ‘orphans’ inside the camps,” said John Stauffer,
founder of the America Team for Displaced Eritreans, a nonprofit group.
Efrem Fitwi and Hermon Angosom, 8-year-olds at the detention center here,
appeared in an earlier New York Times article about migrants in Libya. “I saw what
happened to my brothers; I saw my future,” Efrem said when asked at more length
about his journey.
“We don’t have any education,” he said, squatting on the dirt courtyard of the
detention center and speaking Tigrinya, a language native to Eritrea and Ethiopia,
while Zackarias translated. “My brothers and sisters don’t have any school. So we
want to go to Ethiopia.”
Most children who make the trek without telling their parents regret it as soon
as they arrive, aid workers say. But Eritrea considers them defectors and criminals,
barring any return. “They get stuck there in the camps,” Ms. Estefanos said. “It is
very common.”
The camps are also where the smugglers trawl for passengers. Efrem and other
Eritrean boys in the Libyan detention center said their smuggler was Ermias
Ghermay, an Ethiopian who is wanted by the Italian police for the drowning of 366
migrants off the coast of Lampedusa in 2013.
His name resurfaced recently in Italian news reports about a police recording
of a telephone call in which smugglers discussed where to invest their millions in
profits.
“They say I let too many people board the boats,” Mered Medhanie, a 34-yearold
Eritrean smuggler nicknamed The General, reportedly said. “But they’re the
ones who want to leave right away.”
From the refugee camps in Ethiopia near the Eritrean border, Mr. Ghermay’s
crew packed the children in the back of a truck with a dozen other migrants to
drive west to Sudan and then north to Libya, children and adult passengers said.
Hermon and several other boys and girls said it was in Sudan that they first called
their families.
Hermon called his older sister, Haben, 22. She had recently traveled a similar
route across the Mediterranean and had finally reached Norway, where she applied
for asylum, she said in a telephone interview.
Having experienced the journey’s perils, she pleaded with Hermon to turn
back or stay in Sudan — anything but continue to Libya — and she initially
persuaded him, both said.
But after they hung up, Hermon felt afraid to stay alone in Sudan and unsure
how to go back, he said in an interview in the detention center.
“We don’t have friends in Sudan, we don’t have family there, and I am small
and I am scared,” Hermon said. “I missed my mother and my father, so I wanted to
get to the outside.” He allowed the smugglers to carry him on despite his sister’s
warnings.
The smugglers held Hermon captive in a squalid “collection house” somewhere
in western Libya — neither the boys nor the adults who traveled with them knew
where — until his sister in Norway could send enough money, about $1,600 for the
ride to Libya and another $1,600 or $1,800 for the boat ride into the
Mediterranean. He waited four weeks while she begged for money from family and
friends.
Finally, in the dark of night, the smugglers put Hermon and Efrem in an
inflatable dinghy to carry them out to a fishing boat packed with more than 200
others. The engine failed almost immediately, so they were pulled back to shore
and arrested.
Now, at the Libyan detention centers, the boys and girls spend most of their
time caged in concrete bunkers — the boys on thin pads on the floor, the girls on
rows of beds that fill the floor space. The food is little more than rice and macaroni.
There are few opportunities for recreation and no chance of education. The
United Nations refugee agency has largely withdrawn from Libya because of the
escalating violence. So have most other international aid groups.
Each of the centers held more than 400 adults as well as about 40 children,
many apparently younger than puberty.
None of the boys and girls knew where they were or how they might get out.
Many of the children speak only limited Arabic in an Eritrean dialect, and none of
the guards speak Tigrinya.
Hermon was stoic at first. Then a visiting journalist said he had reached
Hermon’s father in Eritrea, who was glad to hear news of his son. At that, Hermon
hid his face to weep, uncontrollably.
Later, Hermon was given a phone by a visiting journalist and allowed to call
his mother. But his guards insisted they stay in the room, and then mocked him for
crying.
“There he goes, crying and fussing to his mama, but his parents are the ones
who sent him,” a jailer said, accusing him of fabricating stories of mistreatment.
Had he told his parent he was well treated, another asked, threateningly. “I
told them I am in Libya,” Hermon said in Arabic. “I told them I am in prison.”
Another boy of about 8, Filimon Burust, was allowed to speak by phone to Ms.
Estefanos, the rights activist. He alternated between childlike terror and adult
suspicion, she said.
“I am not going to tell you where my father is,” he told Ms. Estefanos, warily.
“Just tell my mother to tell my father where I am — she knows where he is.”
Hermon’s sister, Haben, had lied to her parents, assuring them that Hermon
was safely on his way, but her lie was exposed when Ms. Estefanos reached his
father.
In reality, Haben said she had previously spoken only with the smuggler, Mr.
Ghermay. He demanded another $600 for a bribe to secure Hermon’s release from
detention, then put him back on another dangerous boat.
Is my sister doing anything to help me, Hermon asked in a phone call with Ms.
Estefanos. Was the price of his release in American dollars or Libyan dinars?
“You just concentrate on taking care of yourself,” Ms. Estefanos said she told
him.
Yaseen Kanuni contributed reporting.
Young African Migrants Caught in Trafficking
Machine
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK MAY 5, 2015
ZAWIYAH, Libya — The no-money-down offer was too tempting for the children to
resist.
Smugglers had offered the boys and girls transportation out of the refugee
camps along the Eritrean border, across the African deserts and the Mediterranean
Sea, to a new life in Europe. There, they could quickly win asylum and bring along
their parents, the smugglers assured them. Payment could come later.
By the time the smugglers had conveyed the boys and girls to Libya, however,
the offer had become an ultimatum. The children, some as young as 8, called their
parents to relay a demand from the smugglers for more than $3,200. For parents,
failure to send the money meant abandoning their sons and daughters to the chaos
of Libya.
Zackarias Hilo, 19, the oldest of about 40 Eritrean boys held by the authorities
here at the time of a recent visit, said his father had initially exclaimed that he was
too poor to pay. “Then I am dead!” Zackarias replied.
So to come up with the payment, “my father went to the old city to sell all his
goats,” Zackarias said.
“It was the same for all of us,” he said, surveying the younger boys. Adult
refugees who traveled with them confirmed their accounts, which aid workers said
were common. In the case of one 8-year-old, a father in Eritrea and a sister in
Norway provided corroboration as well.
There are about 80 Eritrean boys and girls now imprisoned in two detention
centers here. Ill prepared to evaluate the smugglers’ offers, such children are
among the most innocent victims of the human smuggling machine that is now
sucking so many African migrants into the Libyan maelstrom and out onto the
Mediterranean waters.
Out of roughly 170,000 migrants arriving in Italy by sea from Libya last year,
more than 13,000 were children traveling alone, and 3,394 of those were Eritrean,
according to the International Organization for Migration, an intergovernmental
agency based in Geneva. In just the first few weeks of this year’s peak sailing
season, about 30,000 have crossed, including more than 5,000 so far this month
and a total of more than 1,680 unaccompanied minors.
More than 50 children, including some traveling with their parents, are
believed to have drowned along with 700 others when their overloaded boat
capsized in April. On Tuesday, aid groups said that as many as 40 other migrants
had drowned as well, and last year, hundreds of children died the same way.
The families being extorted by the smugglers are invariably already
impoverished. In Eritrea, the average per capita income is about $550 a year,
according to the most recent World Bank figures, so meeting the smugglers’
ransom can consume the savings of a whole village or more.
“The smugglers are very creative,” said Meron Estefanos, an Eritrean rights
activist in Stockholm who works with migrants. “Once the smuggler gets the
children to Libya, the parents have no option but to send money, because there is
no return.”
If the children reach Europe, she said, “the first thing they ask me is always,
‘Can I bring my parents?’ ”
The unaccompanied children come from many countries, including 1,481 from
Somalia, 1,208 from Gambia and 945 from Syria last year, according to the
International Organization for Migration. In some cases, parents may consciously
send children in the hope that they will be more likely to win asylum.
But the largest number of unaccompanied children come from Eritrea, a
dictatorship so severe it is sometimes likened to North Korea. Western countries
grant asylum to almost every arriving Eritrean. And the Eritrean children, aid
workers say, often slip away without the knowledge of their parents.
Eritrea drafts every man and woman as young as 18 into a brutal system of
military service that frequently lasts many years and can amount to slave labor at
state-run industrial projects. To escape, hundreds of thousands of adults have fled,
often to refugee camps across the hilly border with Ethiopia. Each year, hundreds
of unaccompanied children following the same footsteps walk into Ethiopia. The
camps currently house more than 1,500 without their parents, aid workers say.
“They are referred to as ‘orphans’ inside the camps,” said John Stauffer,
founder of the America Team for Displaced Eritreans, a nonprofit group.
Efrem Fitwi and Hermon Angosom, 8-year-olds at the detention center here,
appeared in an earlier New York Times article about migrants in Libya. “I saw what
happened to my brothers; I saw my future,” Efrem said when asked at more length
about his journey.
“We don’t have any education,” he said, squatting on the dirt courtyard of the
detention center and speaking Tigrinya, a language native to Eritrea and Ethiopia,
while Zackarias translated. “My brothers and sisters don’t have any school. So we
want to go to Ethiopia.”
Most children who make the trek without telling their parents regret it as soon
as they arrive, aid workers say. But Eritrea considers them defectors and criminals,
barring any return. “They get stuck there in the camps,” Ms. Estefanos said. “It is
very common.”
The camps are also where the smugglers trawl for passengers. Efrem and other
Eritrean boys in the Libyan detention center said their smuggler was Ermias
Ghermay, an Ethiopian who is wanted by the Italian police for the drowning of 366
migrants off the coast of Lampedusa in 2013.
His name resurfaced recently in Italian news reports about a police recording
of a telephone call in which smugglers discussed where to invest their millions in
profits.
“They say I let too many people board the boats,” Mered Medhanie, a 34-yearold
Eritrean smuggler nicknamed The General, reportedly said. “But they’re the
ones who want to leave right away.”
From the refugee camps in Ethiopia near the Eritrean border, Mr. Ghermay’s
crew packed the children in the back of a truck with a dozen other migrants to
drive west to Sudan and then north to Libya, children and adult passengers said.
Hermon and several other boys and girls said it was in Sudan that they first called
their families.
Hermon called his older sister, Haben, 22. She had recently traveled a similar
route across the Mediterranean and had finally reached Norway, where she applied
for asylum, she said in a telephone interview.
Having experienced the journey’s perils, she pleaded with Hermon to turn
back or stay in Sudan — anything but continue to Libya — and she initially
persuaded him, both said.
But after they hung up, Hermon felt afraid to stay alone in Sudan and unsure
how to go back, he said in an interview in the detention center.
“We don’t have friends in Sudan, we don’t have family there, and I am small
and I am scared,” Hermon said. “I missed my mother and my father, so I wanted to
get to the outside.” He allowed the smugglers to carry him on despite his sister’s
warnings.
The smugglers held Hermon captive in a squalid “collection house” somewhere
in western Libya — neither the boys nor the adults who traveled with them knew
where — until his sister in Norway could send enough money, about $1,600 for the
ride to Libya and another $1,600 or $1,800 for the boat ride into the
Mediterranean. He waited four weeks while she begged for money from family and
friends.
Finally, in the dark of night, the smugglers put Hermon and Efrem in an
inflatable dinghy to carry them out to a fishing boat packed with more than 200
others. The engine failed almost immediately, so they were pulled back to shore
and arrested.
Now, at the Libyan detention centers, the boys and girls spend most of their
time caged in concrete bunkers — the boys on thin pads on the floor, the girls on
rows of beds that fill the floor space. The food is little more than rice and macaroni.
There are few opportunities for recreation and no chance of education. The
United Nations refugee agency has largely withdrawn from Libya because of the
escalating violence. So have most other international aid groups.
Each of the centers held more than 400 adults as well as about 40 children,
many apparently younger than puberty.
None of the boys and girls knew where they were or how they might get out.
Many of the children speak only limited Arabic in an Eritrean dialect, and none of
the guards speak Tigrinya.
Hermon was stoic at first. Then a visiting journalist said he had reached
Hermon’s father in Eritrea, who was glad to hear news of his son. At that, Hermon
hid his face to weep, uncontrollably.
Later, Hermon was given a phone by a visiting journalist and allowed to call
his mother. But his guards insisted they stay in the room, and then mocked him for
crying.
“There he goes, crying and fussing to his mama, but his parents are the ones
who sent him,” a jailer said, accusing him of fabricating stories of mistreatment.
Had he told his parent he was well treated, another asked, threateningly. “I
told them I am in Libya,” Hermon said in Arabic. “I told them I am in prison.”
Another boy of about 8, Filimon Burust, was allowed to speak by phone to Ms.
Estefanos, the rights activist. He alternated between childlike terror and adult
suspicion, she said.
“I am not going to tell you where my father is,” he told Ms. Estefanos, warily.
“Just tell my mother to tell my father where I am — she knows where he is.”
Hermon’s sister, Haben, had lied to her parents, assuring them that Hermon
was safely on his way, but her lie was exposed when Ms. Estefanos reached his
father.
In reality, Haben said she had previously spoken only with the smuggler, Mr.
Ghermay. He demanded another $600 for a bribe to secure Hermon’s release from
detention, then put him back on another dangerous boat.
Is my sister doing anything to help me, Hermon asked in a phone call with Ms.
Estefanos. Was the price of his release in American dollars or Libyan dinars?
“You just concentrate on taking care of yourself,” Ms. Estefanos said she told
him.
Yaseen Kanuni contributed reporting.
[enviado por Ethel Kosminsky]
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/43332/title/Tracing-Ebola-s-Evolution/
Tracing Ebola’s Evolution
Two independent teams examine the migration and evolution of the virus throughout the ongoing outbreak in West Africa.By Anna Azvolinsky | June 18, 2015
Map showing spread of Ebola based on phylogenetic analysis of lineage A from March 2014 and B starting in May/June 2014PUBLIC HEALTH ENGLAND; MILES CARROLL, MICHAEL ELMORE (WITH PERMISSION FROM NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP)The ongoing Ebola outbreak is the largest on record. The World Health Organization (WHO) this week (June 17) reported 27,305 confirmed cases, including 11,169 deaths. In an effort to better understand the deadly virus, scientists have mapped the transmission and evolution of Ebola at the epicenter of the 2014 epidemic (Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone), providing a detailed look at the virus throughout the first nine months of the outbreak. Together with previously published Ebola sequencing analyses, the results of two independent studies published this week could help health officials better prepare for and control future outbreaks.
In a study published in Nature this week (June 17), Miles Carroll of Public Health England and his colleagues at the European Mobile Lab and elsewhere reported 179 viral genome sequences from patient blood samples collected in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone between March 2014 and January 2015. Separately, a team led by the Broad Institute’s Daniel Park and his colleagues at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among other institutions, sequenced Ebola virus samples from the blood of 232 patients in Sierra Leone over a span of seven months in 2014. The latter team’s results were published today (June 18) in Cell.
Epidemiologist Stephen Morse of Columbia University in New York told The Scientist in an e-mail that the molecular data and associated geographic and temporal information presented in these studies could be a boon for researchers. The information might be used to understand which virus variants are most successful in which circumstances, added Morse, who was not involved in the work.
Overall, said Carroll, “these studies show the virus is not mutating like mad and does not appear to be adapting to a novel phenotype.”
Both teams sequenced the patient-derived viruses and performed phylogenetic analyses, finding that the pathogen spread by direct human-to-human transmission without any apparent animal intermediates. Traditional epidemiology and infection control have helped health officials bring the epidemic under control, said Paul Kellam, virus genomics team leader at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the UK who was also not involved in either study. “Molecular epidemiology,” he noted, “brings us an extra facet to . . . define the course of transmissions.”
The genomic analyses confirm that initial interventions put in place in spring 2014 by the WHO, the Guinean government, and other agencies “narrowly contained the outbreak,” said Carroll. Later, a single individual appeared to have carried the virus to Sierra Leone, after which the pathogen made its way back up to Guinea and Liberia, “causing a bigger wave of infections three months later,” Carroll explained. The viruses from Guinea and Sierra Leone mixed during summer 2014. Both studies showed little evidence of cross-country migration by early fall 2014. “The borders are not nearly as porous as previously thought,” said Park.
The analyses show that the initially rapid rate of viral evolution tapered off as the epidemic continued, confirming the results of a March 2015 study analyzing an initial Sierra Leone patient sample set from May to June 2014, and resembling the longer term genomic evolution observed for other types of viral outbreaks. “The virus does not seem to be adapting to the host . . . even though it had a bigger opportunity as the outbreak was a lot bigger than past outbreaks,” Carroll told The Scientist.
Still, the focus on the viral mutation rate in the literature “has been an unhelpful distraction from the epidemiology,” Oliver Pybus, a professor of evolution and infectious disease at the University of Oxford who was not involved in the work, told The Scientist in an e-mail. “The fluctuations in the ‘apparent’ rate have more to do with statistical interpretation than biological importance.”
Park agreed. “The evolutionary rate is similar to that of other RNA viruses and not the most interesting result.”
Scientists are now calling for faster, on-the-ground sequencing and quicker analyses that can be used during an epidemic rather than retrospectively. “For Ebola, we need this information within two to four weeks,” said Kellam. “Right now, there is a disconnect between the traditional scientific process and what needs to be done during the outbreak.”
“The field needs to get together and agree on genomic [data-]sharing principles,” agreed Pybus. “Information that can guide public health interventions will be lost if the data is reported piecemeal or with significant delays.”
In the meantime, researchers are pooling available genomic data sets to provide an up-to-date molecular picture of the outbreak. “This is the future,” said Kellam. “If we can do this with Ebola, we can this for any other epidemic infection.”
M.W. Carroll et al. “Temporal and spatial analysis of the 2014–2015 Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa,” Nature, doi:10.1038/nature14594, 2015.
D.J. Park et al., “Ebola virus epidemiology, transmission, and evolution during seven months in Sierra Leone,” Cell, doi:10.1016/j.cell.2015.06.007, 2015.
[mensagem organizada por Helion Póvoa Neto]
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