This Ebola outbreak could be here to stay. A girl cries after the death of her mother and father outside the Island Clinic, a new Ebola treatment centre in Monrovia. Photo: AFP An idea long viewed as an unlikely possibility is now becoming increasingly real: Ebola might not go away for a very long time. It has never happened before in the 38-year history of the virus. Every other time Ebola has made the unlikely jump from the animal world to the human one, it has been snuffed out within days, weeks or, at most, months.
This time, though, in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the Ebola virus is raging like a forest fire, in the words of several public health officials. Art against Ebola: A local Liberian artist paints a mural. Advertisement "In my opinion," Lucey added, "a year from now, we won't have one or two cases; we'll have many cases of Ebola. " Unlike past outbreaks, in which Ebola emerged in the sparsely populated countryside of central Africa, this outbreak has become an exponentially spreading urban menace. Poverty USA | What is poverty? | Where is the poverty line? | Who is poor? Africa | The fattening rooms of Calabar. In some African societies being fat remains a symbol of status and power - despite the well-known problems connected to obesity.
In Nigeria, the rich can pay for special "fattening rooms" to put on extra weight. BBC World Service's Outlook programme spoke to a couple who opted for such a service before their wedding. "In the morning you eat fine," says Happiness Edem, recalling her time in the fattening room in the Nigerian city of Calabar. "After eating you can take a bath. From there you can sleep, you sleep fine, you wake up, you eat, you sleep. " Happiness attended the fattening centre for a total of six months, at the request of her husband, Morris Eyo Edem, leading up to their wedding.
By the time she had come out, her body shape had changed completely - to the delight of her husband. Fattening culture The average weight of a Nigerian woman is 60kg - but Happiness is well over twice that. "I don't think I will ever even do that," he says. "People will think I am not rich... Leblouh - Force-Feeding Young Girls in the Name of Beauty. While the whole world is obsessed over getting thin, it seems there are far-flung places in the world today where fat is still considered a thing of beauty. Not in a good way, though. In the West African nation of Mauritania, it is so important for girls to be fat that they are sent away to fat camp – the opposite of the western version – during school holidays, to put on oodles of weight.
According to women’s rights campaigner Mint Ely, girls as young as five are subjected to the tradition known as Leblouh each year. Leblouh is an attempt to groom young girls for potential suitors, involving the consumption of gargantuan amounts of food; even vomit, if it refuses to stay down. Ely says that in Mauritania, a woman’s size indicates the space she occupies in her husband’s heart. So to make sure no other woman can ever have room, girls are sent away for Leblouh at special farms where older women will administer the necessary diet.
Photo: JOOST DE RAEYMAEKER/Marie Claire Magazine Reddit. The End of Tanning? In the wake of research showing strong connections between indoor tanning and melanoma, the sunbed industry is battered and contracting. But the allure of artificially bronzed skin might be dwindling in general. Eric Gaillard/Reuters Ryan Baker, a director of operations for Palm Beach Tan, ushers me through the narrow, pastel hallways of one of the chain's salons in Washington, D.C. It's a tiny place, squeezed into a strip mall between a Chipotle and a beauty parlor. But in a pinch, some see it as a mini-vacation—a dose of artificial sunshine when life’s too busy, or the outside world too cloudy, for the real thing. Some customers pop in and out of the rooms in 10 minutes, Baker says, while others take their time, luxuriating for a half-hour or more as they primp and apply lotions in the full-length mirrors. One of the higher-end beds looks like a spaceship, or at least an 80s rendering of one. 1) Always know your skin type. 2) Take it slow to reach your "cosmetic objectives.
" Ebola virus: Meet the women who have survived the deadly disease. Stop The Madness Beauty Campaign aims to highlight the madness in our beauty standards. An image from the Stop The Beauty Madness campaign. Photo: Stop The Beauty Madness Source: Supplied ROBYN Rice wants you to “feel like you’ve been socked in the gut,” when you see the photos from her new online beauty campaign. Stop the Beauty Madness features 25 ‘advertisements’ using stock photos branded with honest messages highlighting the “madness” in our current beauty standards. Rice, founder of Be Who You Are Productions, wants us to question the value we place on physical beauty. “My main mission is to say if women are worried about their weight and their looks to the point that they’re not actually putting themselves in the world, then we’re missing out on some really extraordinary individuals and some really important conversations we need to be having,” Rice told The Huffington Post .
#StopTheBeautyMadness. Rice intentionally used stock images already out there, featuring a broad range of women in race, age and weight. “There’s not a lot of edgy photographs of women. Scientific research has shown plants can hear themselves being eaten. In 60 seconds: What is Ebola? You'll Have to Go Away: The Leprosarium on Peel Island - Hindsight. From 1907 until 1959 there was a Lazaret—a Leprosarium—on Peel Island, in Moreton Bay, just off Brisbane. There were lazarets all around the country, in every state, following a public health policy of exclusion...and fear. The stories from these places are not as well known as they might be, because anxiety, mythology, and misinformation haunts this history.
Family members often suppress this 'shameful' story, and a convention has developed whereby names of leprosy patients are not used. And yet, these are powerful stories. Significantly, as a purpose-built institution, it was also designed with division in mind. Peel Island is now a National Park, and the site of the Lazaret is protected. The Peel Island Lazaret didn't spring from nowhere: an earlier version had existed on North Stradbroke Island, and after 1940 the Aboriginal and Islander patients (designated 'non-white') were moved to Fantome Island in Far North Queensland. Leprosy cases in Britain may be misdiagnosed, doctors are warned | Society. Leprosy can be treated, but dermatologists from Cardiff reported two cases that were initially misdiagnosed. Photograph: Issouf Sanogo/AFP/Getty Images People with leprosy might be being misdiagnosed because of the rarity of the disease in Britain, doctors will be told on Monday.
Dermatologists from Cardiff reported two cases in which men who had moved to Britain from Asia were initially thought to have more common skin complaints. They say the disease – historically one associated with stigma and fear, though it is now curable – may be "masquerading" as other conditions because of the broad range of symptoms. Given the disease's rarity in Europe, Atwan said "it may easily be misdiagnosed and consequently pose future health risks for patients if missed". There have been no cases confirmed of patients acquiring the disease or catching it from someone else in England and Wales for 60 years. BBC Learning English | Compulsory cooking classes.
BBC Learning English | Women's 'constant' body worries. Questions for Supersize Me video. Super Size Me. Breaking News English ESL Lesson Plan on Smoking. Cigarette packets to carry gory pictures The British government is to use shock tactics in its latest attempt to discourage smokers from smoking. Gory photographs highlighting the health hazards of smoking will be plastered on cigarette packets. These will include images of diseased lungs blackened by tar next to a set of clean, healthy lungs. A total of sixteen pictures have been selected to scare existing and potential smokers. These will all be accompanied by stronger written health warnings. Anti-smoking campaigners welcomed the new warnings on tobacco products. 1. 2.
Shock tactics / gory photos / health hazards / lungs / government initiatives / campaigners / ash / minimum smoking age / smokers’ rights / bullying Have a chat about the topics you liked. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 1. 2. 3. GAP FILL: Put the words into the gaps in the text. Cigarette packets to carry gory pictures Listen and fill in the spaces. Anti-smoking campaigners __________________________ on tobacco products. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Big Sugar is having its tobacco moment - The Drum. Updated Tue 29 Oct 2013, 7:55am AEDT Should we treat food and drinks high in added sugars like we do alcohol and demand separate areas to sell them? Kieron Rooney thinks so. "There is not a single study showing that added sugar is good for you. " These words are from investment banking firm Credit Suisse. While many may question nutritional advice from a group of economists, few could dispute their ability to identify accurate trends in data. In a report on global sugar consumption, Credit Suisse has identified growing negative views towards sugar which it says provides "green shoots for dietary changes and social health advancement". The report is a warning to the food and beverage industry and specifically to companies with an economic model that is dependent on products manufactured with added sugar.
Ultimately, the investment bankers believe taxation would be the best approach and will provide the best outcome. If all this tax and regulation sounds familiar, well, it is. Indigenous Mental Health App launches - RN Drive. Laughter as medicine - RN Drive. What does it feel like to be airbrushed? 14 October 2013Last updated at 19:42 ET By Tulip Mazumdar BBC News Campaigners are calling for restrictions on the way magazines airbrush photos. Seeing your face and body transformed is an unnerving experience. My guilty pleasure is fashion and gossip magazines. I will check out those unflattering bikini shots of celebrities and be amazed at how their "fat-busting diet" did such a great job on their abs in just six weeks.
It's no secret that advertisers and magazines use airbrushing to give their images an aspirational sheen. In 2008 it was reported that magazines could soon be banned from using airbrushed photographs of celebrities, such was the anxiety over teenage eating disorders. It didn't happen. Continue reading the main story Since the birth of photography images have been manipulated to suit the creative vision of the photographer or to present a certain point of view, with figures removed or added and items moved, all to ensure the perfect composition.
Read more from Phil. GM crops: is opposition to golden rice wicked? | Environment. Sally Brooks, a York University social researcher specialising in international development, technological change in agriculture and food policy, spoke to me about her research into golden rice. For those who want to do some background reading, Brooks conducted a study on the lessons to be learned for biofortification projects from the golden rice experience. Brooks said the technology still required an enormous amount of research to be done in order to be able to assess its potential to save lives. Notably, she said the main obstacles that lie in front of the science were not the anti-GM lobby or regulation, but the simple technical difficulty of producing the crop. She said yesterday was not the first time Owen Paterson had referred to the golden rice project's moral imperative.
In a blogpost in June, Brooks said the co-option of the golden rice project into the wider GM debate (by both sides) had hindered the genuine attempts of scientists to study the potential of this crop: Malaria vaccine possible by 2015. THE introduction of a vaccine against malaria could be less than two years away following a trial by a British healthcare company. The results of the trial by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) demonstrated that the most clinically advanced malaria vaccine candidate - RTS,S - continued to protect young children and infants from clinical malaria up to 18 months after vaccination. Over a year and a half, the RTS,S vaccine was shown to almost halve the number of malaria cases in children aged five to 17 months at first vaccination.
The study of more than 15,000 infants and young children found the vaccine reduced by around a quarter the malaria cases in infants aged six to 12 weeks at first vaccination. GSK intends to submit a regulatory application to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) next year. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has indicated that a policy recommendation for the RTS,S vaccine candidate is possible as early as 2015 if it is granted a positive scientific opinion by the EMA.
Horizons - Food. McDonald's faces backlash in Tecoma, Australia. 2 October 2013Last updated at 19:01 ET By Phil Mercer BBC News, Sydney Protesters say nine out of 10 people in Tecoma do not want the McDonald's A long-running feud has pitted protesters from a small town of 2,000 people in the shadows of Australia's temperate rainforest against one of the world's most recognisable brands.
Tranquil Tecoma, 35km (20 miles) east of central Melbourne, has become a battleground between McDonald's and "community" protesters over the construction of a 24-hour drive-through restaurant. Opponents say the restaurant would be too close to a nursery and primary school, would damage other businesses and disrupt the fabric of a leafy community known for its artists and wildlife. The plan was initially rejected by the local council, but the fast-food giant won an appeal at a state planning tribunal, and work on the site is under way.
It's been a two-and-a-half-year fight spanning two continents. Looking for a 'tree change' Having the option Continue reading the main story.