Day: July 8, 2018

Researchers from half a dozen states in West Africa have joined together in a battle against what one expert calls a root crop “Ebola” — a viral disease that could wreck the region’s staple food and condemn millions to hunger.

Their enemy: cassava brown streak disease (CBSD), a virus that strikes cassava, also called manioc, which in some of the region’s countries is consumed by as many as 80 percent of the population.

The root-rotting disease was first discovered in Tanzania eight decades ago and is steadily moving westward.

“In outbreaks in central Africa, it has wiped out between 90 and 100 percent of cassava production — it’s now heading towards West Africa,” Justin Pita, in charge of the research program, told AFP.

“It is a very big threat. It has to be taken very seriously.”

In Uganda, 3,000 people died of hunger in the 1990s after the dreaded disease showed up, striking small farmers in particular.

“You can call it the Ebola of cassava,” said Pita.

The West African Virus Epidemiology (WAVE) project, a multi-million-dollar scheme funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, aims to shield the region from the advancing peril.

Headquartered at Bingerville, on the edges of the Ivorian economic capital Abidjan, it gathers six countries from West Africa — Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Togo — as well as the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Much is already known about CBSD — the virus is generally believed to be propagated by an insect called the silverleaf whitefly, and also through cuttings taken from infected plants.

But there remain gaps in knowledge about West Africa’s specific vulnerabilities to the disease.

They include understanding the susceptibility of local strains of cassava to the virus, and identifying points in the cassava trade that can help a localized outbreak of CBSD swell into an epidemic.

The scheme will also look at initiatives to help boost yield — a key challenge in a region with surging population growth.

“The current average yield from cassava [in West Africa] is 10 to 12 tonnes per hectare [four to 4.8 tonnes per acre], but it has the potential to reach 40 tonnes a hectare,” said Odile Attanasso, Benin’s minister of higher education and scientific research.

“In Asia, they have yields of 22 tonnes per hectare.”

‘Attieke is our husband’

The WAVE project hopes to go beyond the lab and test fields, though.

It also wants to harness the clout of community leaders and chiefs to spread CBSD awareness and promote better farming practices, such as confining and destroying crops in infested areas and banning transport of manioc cuttings.

“We kings and traditional chiefs are the interface between the population and the government,” said Amon Tanoe, the ceremonial monarch of the coastal Grand-Bassam region in Ivory Coast.

Ivory Coast is a huge consumer of cassava — the starchy root is typically pulped and fermented and served in a side dish called attieke.

In Affery, a big cassava-growing region about 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of the economic capital Abidjan, makers of attieke said they were deeply worried about the threat of CBSD.

“Attieke is our husband,” said Nathalie Monet Apo, head of the association of attieke producers, emphasizing how the cassava dish is intertwined with Ivorian life.

“If the disease shows up, it would be dramatic for our families and our community.”

“They have to find a cure for this disease — it’s thanks to growing cassava that I am able to provide an education for my four children,” said Blandine Yapo Sopi, eying a mound of harvested manioc that she hoped would bring in 450,000 CFA francs (nearly 700 euros, around $800).
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Dressed in heavy cotton, a helmet and respirator, Jessica Ball worked the night shift monitoring “fissure 8,” which has been spewing fountains of lava as high as a 15-story building from a slope on Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano.

The lava poured into a channel oozing toward the Pacific Ocean several miles away. In the eerie orange nightscape in the abandoned community of Leilani Estates, it looked like it was flowing toward the scientist, but that was an optical illusion, Ball said.

“The volcano is doing what it wants to. … We’re reminded what it’s like to deal with the force of nature,” said Ball, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

Scientists have been in the field measuring the eruptions 24 hours a day, seven days a week since Kilauea first exploded more than two months ago.

They are a mix of USGS staff, University of Hawaii researchers and trained volunteers working six-to-eight-hour shifts in teams of two to five.

They avoid synthetics because they melt in the intense heat and wear gloves to protect their hands from sharp volcanic rock and glass. Helmets protect against falling lava stones, and respirators ward off sulfur gases.

This is not a job for the faint hearted. Geologists have died studying active volcanoes. David Alexander Johnston, a USGS volcanologist was killed by the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state. In 1991,

American volcanologist Harry Glicken and his French colleagues Katia and Maurice Krafft were killed while conducting avalanche research on Mount

Unzen in Japan.

Ball, a graduate of the State University of New York at Buffalo, located in upstate New York near the Canadian border, compared Kilauea’s eruptions to Niagara Falls.

“It gives you the same feeling of power and force,” she said.

Worth the risks

Kilauea, which has been erupting almost continuously since 1983, is one of the world’s most closely monitored volcanoes, largely from the now-abandoned Hawaiian Volcano Observatory at the summit. But the latest eruption is one of Kilauea’s biggest and could prove to be a bonanza for scientists.

Ball and the USGS teams are studying how the magma – molten rock from the earth’s crust – tracks through a network of tubes under the volcano in what is known as the “Lower East Rift Zone,” before ripping open ground fissures and spouting fountains of lava.

They are trying to discover what warning signs may exist for future eruptions to better protect the Big Island’s communities, she said.

Fissure 8 is one of 22 around Kilauea that have destroyed over 1,000 structures and forced 2,000 people to evacuate. They are what make this volcanic eruption a rare event, Ball said.

“They’re common for Kilauea on a geologic time scale, but in a human time scale it’s sort of a career event,” she said.

Meanwhile, the summit is erupting almost every day with steam or ash, said Janet Snyder, spokeswoman for the County of Hawaii, where Kilauea is located.

Scientists had thought the steam explosions resulted from lava at the summit dropping down the volcano’s throat into groundwater. This was based on Kilauea’s 1924 eruption, to which the current one is most often compared.

But the explosions this time have released lots of sulfur dioxide gas, which means magma is involved, said Michael Poland, scientist-in-charge at Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, one of many volcanologists seconded to Kilauea.

“So we have already made a conceptual leap, leading us to believe it was different from what we had understood,” he said.

Poland and other scientists pulled equipment and archives out of the abandoned observatory at the volcano summit after hundreds of small eruption-induced quakes damaged the structure, and have decamped to the University of Hawaii in Hilo on the Big Island.

The archives included photos, seismic records and samples, some 100 or more years old, Poland said. “These materials are invaluable to someone who says, ‘I have this new idea, and I want to test it using past data.'”

Now the second longest Kilauea eruption on record, surpassed only by one in 1955, this eruption offers far better research opportunities than previous events, Ball said.

“We’ve got much better instruments and we’ve got longer to collect the data,” she said.
…

The Trump administration said Saturday it’s freezing payments under an “Obamacare” program that protects insurers with sicker patients from financial losses, a move expected to add to premium increases next year.

At stake are billions in payments to insurers with sicker customers.

In a weekend announcement, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said the administration is acting because of conflicting court ruling in lawsuits filed by some smaller insurers who question whether they are being fairly treated under the program.

Risk adjustment

The so-called risk adjustment program takes payments from insurers with healthier customers and redistributes that money to companies with sicker enrollees. Payments for 2017 are $10.4 billion. No taxpayer subsidies are involved.

The idea behind the program is to remove the financial incentive for insurers to cherry pick healthier customers. The government uses a similar approach with Medicare private insurance plans and the Medicare prescription drug benefit.

Major insurer groups said Saturday the administration’s action interferes with a program that’s working well.

The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, whose members are a mainstay of Affordable Care Act coverage said it was “extremely disappointed” with the administration’s action.

The Trump administration’s move “will significantly increase 2019 premiums for millions of individuals and small business owners and could result in far fewer health plan choices,” association president Scott Serota said in a statement. “It will undermine Americans’ access to affordable coverage, particularly those who need medical care the most.”

Serota noted that the payments are required by law, and said he believes the administration has the legal authority to continue making them despite the court cases. He warned of turmoil as insurers finalize their rates for 2019.

America’s Health Insurance Plans, the main health insurance industry trade group, said in a statement that it is “very discouraged” by the Trump administration’s decision to freeze payments.

“Costs for taxpayers will rise as the federal government spends more on premium subsidies,” the group said.

Conflicting rulings

Rumors that the Trump administration would freeze payments were circulating late last week. But the Saturday announcement via email was unusual for such a major step.

The administration argued in its announcement that its hands were tied by conflicting court rulings in New Mexico and Massachusetts.

Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Seema Verma said the Trump administration was disappointed by a New Mexico court ruling that questioned the workings of the risk program for insurers.

The administration “has asked the court to reconsider its ruling, and hopes for a prompt resolution that allows (the government) to prevent more adverse impacts on Americans who receive their insurance in the individual and small group markets,” she said.

More than 10 million people currently buy individual health insurance plans through HealthCare.gov and state insurance marketplaces. The vast majority of those customers receive taxpayer subsidies under the Obama-era health law and would be shielded from premium increases next year.

The brunt of higher prices would fall on solid middle-class consumers who are not eligible for the income-based subsidies. Many of those are self-employed people and small business owners, generally seen as a Republican constituency.

The latest “Obamacare” flare-up does not affect most people with employer coverage.
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