I just can’t get the images out of my mind of the Russian Federation’s barbarity and violent predation against Ukraine. I’d like to be thinking of moving forward agendas of planetary health, but I keep coming back to Ukraine. I explained my minor innate conflict of interest three weeks ago in this space, outlining part of my and my children’s and grandchildren’s ancestry. I’m absolutely proud of it, more now than ever.
Rhetorically, it’s constantly being asked, how can this be happening in the 21st Century? How can this be happening to a nation that was minding its own business just three weeks ago, and now thousands of its citizens have been blatantly killed, at least three million have fled, and many of its cities destroyed? Four weeks ago they all were just going about their daily lives, fully aware of the many times Russia said it wasn’t going to invade. How can Putin be allowed to keep this going? Last Tuesday he was described as a war mongerer and violent predator in our Parliament after a great speech by our new global hero, President Zelenskyy of Ukraine. What a contrast to the evil sitting in Moscow directing this horror, seemingly to build a greater Russia (though just the opposite is happening) and to stroke his ego, reminiscent of a just past U.S. president, who fortunately wasn’t nearly as bellicose.
An assault on the global order, as imperfect as it is, is being perpetrated affecting everyone, especially the world's poor and vulnerable. They who, in the first instance, constantly battle great structural injustice and in the second, great adversity in daily life, whether it be with finding the next meal, getting proper health care, a vaccination or an education. I know this, as I have seen it in all the countries where I have worked. But, fortunately, in all them I also have seen great leadership, working for good. The head of the UN has warned that “we must do everything possible to avert a hurricane of hunger and a meltdown of the global food system.” This war, totally unprovoked, will not make it easier for progress of global justice, just the contrary. We are now going to see more suffering globally, with huge shortages of food, medicine and diverted good will and increased fossil fuel production; and all this amongst the relentless ongoing climate and Covid-19 crises. These are just as insidious, though they’re not being perpetrated by one inflated enemy. But rest assured, they are not taking a pause.
Please read on in today’s Planetary Health Weekly (#11 of 2022) to see what continues week after week, without pause, as we celebrate seven complete years of publishing the PHW, and Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!:
CLIMATE CRISIS UPDATES (in a new format):
The east coast rain in Australia seems endless. Where on Earth is all the water coming from?
Canadian pipeline groups spend big to pose as Indigenous champions,
Ikea’s race for the last of Europe’s old-growth forest,
Glasgow climate pact fails to address the root cause of climate change: fossil fuels,
Major energy port, Amsterdam, becomes first capital city to endorse the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty,
Italy builds six new wind farms in a bid to move away from Russian gas dependency,
CORONAVIRUS UPDATES:
Public health restrictions in Canada are being dropped. So what does this mean for vaccinated individuals in the face of Omicron?
Hong Kong bet on zero-Covid. Now it’s facing a ‘preventable disaster,’
‘Covid zero’ regions struggle with vaccine complacency,
Moderna to set up mRNA vaccine manufacturing facility in Kenya,
The global Covid-19 death toll surpassed six million people. Public health experts say the true count will never be known,
Obama says he tested positive for Covid, feeling fine,
The origin and lineage of Covid-19: German geneticist shifts origin from Wuhan to Southern China (Yunnan),
Estimating the impact of Covid-19 vaccine allocation inequalities, THEN
Bez’s Blog #3: "Why is the U.S. dead first?"
What the war in Ukraine means for the world’s food supply,
Deaths linked to PM2.5 pollution in India increased by 2.5 times in 2 decades,
Physical fitness linked to lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease,
Can ‘green’ ammonia be a climate fix?
The plastic littering a beach can be tracked to its source,
The rich world’s climate hypocrisy,
Preventing pandemics, including veterinary training, costs far less than controlling them,
Crush the crisis: First Nations performers in Yukon are speaking out about the territory’s addictions,
Process to apply for First Nations drinking water compensation now open,
Quote on climate crisis by Canadian Green Party lead,
New event added: Bethune Round Table on International Surgery “Decolonizing Global Surgery” June 16-19,
The most detailed map of cancer-causing industrial air pollution in the U.S.,
WHO says it advised Ukraine to destroy pathogens in health labs to prevent disease spread,
‘Historic’ vote means Italian state must now protect animals and ecosystems,
Mapped: all the world’s military personnel,
Satellite images reveal Ukraine’s descent into darkness and destruction,
New book: “The Climate of History in a Planetary Age” by Dipesh Chakrabarty,
Indiana University-led global health network AMPATH adds sites in Mexico and Ghana, and lastly
ENDSHOTS of "Dream Over: Back to Winter!" amid charts on the uneven impact of Covid-19 on global mental health.
I hope you’ll keep reading. Best, david
David Zakus, Editor and Publisher
Fog Takes Over, Early Morning: Russia continues illegal and merciless attacks on peaceful Ukraine, unprovoked, causing huge loss of life, destruction and pain.
At any one time, Earth’s atmosphere holds only about a week’s worth of rain. But rainfall and floods have devastated Australia’s eastern regions for weeks and more heavy rain is forecast. So where’s all this water coming from?
We recently investigated the physical processes driving rainfall in eastern Australia. By following moisture from the oceans to the land, we worked out exactly how three oceans feed water to the atmosphere, conspiring to deliver deluges of rain similar to what we’re seeing now. Such research is important. A better understanding of how water moves through the atmosphere is vital to more accurately forecast severe weather and help communities prepare.
The task takes on greater urgency under climate change, when heavy rainfall and other weather extremes are expected to become more frequent and violent. Read more at the Conversation
At the Guardian: Canadian Pipeline Groups Spend Big To Pose As Indigenous Champions Oil and gas companies and lobby groups in Canada are heavily investing in campaigns to present themselves as defenders of Indigenous interests in the face of high-profile protests against a controversial natural gas pipeline on First Nation land, a new investigation by Eco-Bot.Net and the Guardian has found.
Most of Europe was rapidly deforested during the industrial era; less than 4 percent of EU forestland remains intact. Romania, far enough from the continent’s industrial centers and long a closed-off member of the Soviet bloc, remained a shining exception. During the country’s communist period, the government converted the forests to public ownership and kept them off global export markets, enshrining the forest management trends of an ancien regime. The result is that Romania retains some of the rare spruce, beech, and oak forests that qualify as old- or primary-growth, having never been excessively logged, altered by human activity, or artificially replanted.
But the fall of communism in 1989 dissolved one layer of protection for those forests, and the subsequent wave of privatization inaugurated widespread corruption. In 2007, Romania’s entry to the European Union created a massive, liberated market for the country’s cheap, abundant timber and the inexpensive labor required to extract it, conditions that encouraged Austrian timber companies and Swedish furniture firms to set up shop. Succeeding fractious, ineffectual regimes enacted further pro-market reforms and did little to curb corruption; in the final months of 2021, the country’s prime minister designate found himself unable to form a government at all. Add to that the astronomical growth of the fast furniture industry, which particularly relies on the spruce and beech that populate these forests, and the result has been a delirium of deforestation.
There’s one obvious, notable beneficiary of this situation: Ikea. The company is now the largest individual consumer of wood in the world, its appetite growing by two million trees a year. According to some estimates, it sources up to 10 percent of its wood from the relatively small country of Romania, and has long enjoyed relationships with mills and manufacturers in the region. In 2015, it began buying up forestland in bulk; within months it became, and remains, Romania’s largest private landowner.
While the UN process continues to be characterized by the shirking of historical commitments, there is growing momentum outside of the negotiations for a transformational shift on coal, oil, and gas production. One promising announcement, a first of its kind, was the formation of the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance spearheaded by Denmark and Costa Rica. It represents a growing network of jurisdictions including France, Portugal and California that are willing to take the crucial first step to end new licensing for oil and gas production.
One of the most talked about ideas at COP26 was the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. This is a global plan to phase out fossil fuels production and accelerate a global energy transition, that places equity at the center so no country, community or worker is left behind in the shift to clean energy and zero carbon solutions. The pillars of the proposed Fossil Fuel Treaty were endorsed by Fridays for the Future groups at COP26 and have support from more than 101 Nobel Laureates, 155 parliamentarians from 31 countries, 2,600 academics and 950 plus civil society organizations.
An essential step towards a treaty is increasing transparency and accountability. Currently, there is no publicly available database of fossil fuel developments and reserves. At COP26, Carbon Tracker Initiative and Global Energy Monitor launched the prototype of a Global Registry of Fossil Fuels to make this information publicly accessible. This provides a foundation for tracking the scale and responsibility of carbon emitters. This is essential to enable international negotiations and cooperation going forward.
A Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty would act as a complement to the Paris Agreement. Currently, there is no specific mechanism within climate negotiations to wind down fossil fuel production. In fact, the words oil, gas and coal do not even appear in the Paris Agreement. International cooperation around a fair phase out and fast tracking of solutions is required. With the exception of the first movers that have joined the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, it seems each fossil fuel producing country is clamoring to be the last one standing, able to continue producing oil, gas and coal regardless of the climate consequences.
Amsterdam has just joined the growing and diverse list of supporters in the call for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, which was recently signed by their Mayor on behalf of The Board of Mayor and Aldermen.
As one of Europe's largest energy ports and a major historical exporter of coal, the Dutch capital’s support for a global initiative to phase out fossil fuels is one of the most significant endorsements of the Fossil Fuel Treaty campaign to date.
Amsterdam joins 34 other municipal governments that have committed to act in accordance with the climate emergency by ending fossil fuel production, responsible for more than 86% of CO2 emissions in the last decade.
Amsterdam is the latest in a wave of cities to endorse the Fossil Fuel Treaty in recent weeks including Grenoble (France), Itahari (Nepal) and Burnaby (Canada). These endorsements come after Vancouver, Los Angeles, Sydney and Barcelona initiated a global trend of municipal governments calling for greater international action to address fossil fuels in 2021.
Globally, nationally and locally, the pandemic continues. It is far from being over.
Over the last week there were about 12.5 million new cases (tup ~10% though testing is now sorely insufficient and this is an underestimation) and 38,000 deaths (down again ~15%). Case fatality globally ranges from 0-18%, About 105 million people again received a vaccine. COVAX distribution is now catching up with demand.
In Canada there are still about 45 deaths/day. The countries currently with the highest incidence are: South Korea, Germany, Vietnam, Russia, France, Japan, Brazil, Netherlands, UK, Turkey and USA. The hotspots for cases remain the richer industrialized countries.
"It is the plague in seemingly all sincerity." Bob Woodward
The Omicron variant has made it easier for vaccinated individuals to catch and spread COVID-19, but experts say it’s clear people who have received two or three doses are significantly less likely to transmit the virus compared with people who are unvaccinated.
The issue of transmission among vaccinated individuals has become increasingly heated in recent weeks, as some officials, such as Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, falsely claim vaccination is not enough to stop virus spread.
As more provinces move to relax health restrictions and eliminate vaccine requirements for recreation facilities, restaurants and other indoor spaces, Canadians who have been vaccinated could find themselves sharing more space with people who have yet to receive a first dose. Research shows that the risk of COVID-19 tends to increase when unvaccinated individuals infected with the virus spend time indoors with others. Read more at Globe and Mail
The entomologist E.O. Wilson, who died recently, wrote back in 1998 "We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely." The situation today is even more extreme as our attention has been stolen and we can't focus on concepts for long. If you look at a story on the internet it may say "reading time 3 minutes." Can I invest that much time now??
The first challenge is to attract attention, however you can. For those who still read, a catchy headline or graphic can grab the reader to want to discover more. Thus the title of this week's blog: “Dead first.” For older folk perhaps they recall a rock band, the Grateful Dead. Jerry Garcia was the first member to die in 1995. What does it mean for the United States to be dead first?
First and last are the boundary markers. From last week's blog Japan is the winner in the Health Olympics, the ranking of countries by how long people live. They are dead last. In the bar graph presented, of the top 40 finishers for 2019 the United States was tied for 36th. The U.S. is pretty close to dead first there. How can we synthesize the right information to make sense of the reality that as a nation, people in the USA are not very healthy. First the facts.
A society's health can best be measured by who is alive and who isn't. How long did they live? Why did they die? I worked as an emergency physician for 30 years. The easiest diagnosis I could make on the job was whether someone was alive or dead. I filled out a death certificate and my work was finished. All rich countries and quite a few others collect and analyze such vital statistics. You can easily discover what proportion of the population died at what age. Consider how many died in childhood (up to age 5), in adulthood (age 15 to 60, say) and what was the average length of life or life expectancy?
These mortality measures are synthesized by many international agencies. The actual results don't vary among them. Without splitting hairs, the United States has higher mortality rates for almost all such indicators than every other rich country and quite a few not so rich.
Since such deadly facts are not broadcast widely perhaps it doesn't matter whether you are alive or dead? Read the obituary page and you'll see the age of death is always in the headline. This is an important moniker. Garcia died at age 53. Think of other prominent Americans who died before reaching age 60. Michael Jackson, Steve Jobs, and Janice Joplin. The oldest old person alive at any one time is never found in the U.S. They typically hail from Japan. Today Japan's Kane Tanaka, a woman born in 1903, is the world's longest living person.
How to interpret these facts? Could you imagine someone in the U.S. saying on their death bed: "I'm glad a lived a shorter life, I wouldn't want to live a longer one." No you can't. How to critically evaluate why those of us in the United States die so young?
The US boasts of having the world's most advanced and sophisticated medical system so it can't be that. Japan has more than twice as many men smoking per capita than in the United States. Similar arguments can eliminate personal behaviors as the critical reason, though that is a hard one to dispel since most of us we believe our health is under our own personal control. Not true.
Yes, healthcare and behaviors matter for our health, just not that much. Reviews of the impact of medical care on health say it amounts to about 10% of health production.
Over the last 40 years research has uncovered the importance of structural societal factors in producing population health. A very significant one is the amount of economic inequality present. This is well summarized in a book The Spirit Level: Why greater equality makes societies stronger by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. The other major complementary ingredient is the amount and type of social spending that a society engages in. Elizabeth Bradley's group at Yale University presented this in a 2011 paper.
The required social spending to improve health must be targeted towards early life, the first few years after conception. The required resources can come from decreasing the income or wealth gap. The United States suffers from extra-galactic income and wealth inequality. As a nation it spends very little on the early years but focuses on remedial actions in later life which don't do much for health.
Our challenge is to apply our critical thinking resources to verify these concepts, and create broad awareness so societies can make healthy choices wisely. Public health’s biggest idea was enunciated by Rudolf Virchow, the founder of modern cellular pathology, over a hundred and fifty years ago with his statement: “Medicine is a social science, and politics nothing but medicine at a larger scale.” The phrase public health hadn’t been invented then. Medicine was the catch-all term then. This casts us into a larger scale, the political arena, where the most important health outcomes are determined. We explore this in the next blog.
Read more from Bez and other bloggers at PHW Blogs
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could mean less bread on the table in Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen and elsewhere in the Arab world where millions already struggle to survive. A vendor waits for customers at a market in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, on Feb. 28. Credit: Mohammed Huwais/AFP via Getty Images
As we watch Ukrainian refugees arrive by car and foot in Poland, it’s hard not to recall World War II, when the region was ravaged by fighting, famine spread and millions of Ukrainians died of starvation.
We’re nowhere near that point; this time, however, food disruptions won’t remain an insular crisis. What is happening in Ukraine is already radiating outward and threatening food availability in less prosperous nations that have come to depend on exports of grains and other food products from Ukraine and Russia.
The Black Sea region today is a vital hub of global agricultural production and trade, and Ukraine is one of the world’s breadbaskets. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Ukraine and Russia were net grain importers. Now the two countries account for 29 percent of global exports of wheat. They also contribute 19 percent of global corn and 80 percent of global sunflower oil exports. Read more at NY Times
Deaths attributable to PM2.5 pollution in India have increased by 2.5 times over the last two decades, according to a new report by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE). The report released by Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav on Tuesday said India accounted for one out of every four deaths due to air pollution in 2019.
Data collated by green think-tank CSE, and represented in its "State of India's Environment Report", showed that 6.67 million people died due to air pollution in the world in 2019. Read more Health World
People who are more physically fit are less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease than people who are less physically fit, according to a preliminary study released late last month, that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 74th Annual Meeting being held in person in Seattle, April 2 to 7, 2022 and virtually, April 24 to 26, 2022.
"One exciting finding of this study is that as people's fitness improved, their risk of Alzheimer's disease decreased -- it was not an all-or-nothing proposition," said study author Edward Zamrini, MD, of the Washington VA Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. "So people can work toward making incremental changes and improvements in their physical fitness and hopefully that will be associated with a related decrease in their risk of Alzheimer's years later."
The study involved 649,605 military veterans in the Veterans Health Administration database with an average age of 61 who were followed for an average of nine years. They did not have Alzheimer's disease at the start of the study. Read more at Science Daily
Ammonia is also one of the top contenders for storing and transporting energy from renewable power plants so that electricity is available when and where it’s needed. The idea is to use renewable power to produce green ammonia from non-fossil fuel sources, send it off by pipeline or ship, and burn it in power production plants with turbines customized to run on ammonia. While batteries are efficient, they are best suited to storing smaller amounts of electricity for hours or days; a 2020 Oxford Institute of Energy Studies report concluded that for large-scale, long-term energy storage, liquid ammonia is hard to beat. Countries including Japan, Australia, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom have national plans to use green ammonia to store (and export) their renewable energy surpluses.
All told, chemist Douglas Macfarlane at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, anticipates that ammonia production will go up about 100-fold in decades to come. Read more at Wired
Paradise lost: plastic fouls a beach in Bali, Indonesia. Credit: Agung Parameswara/Getty
The plastic littering a beach can be tracked to its source. Simulations of plastic particles’ travels on ocean currents can help scientists to identify sources of coastal pollution1.Efforts to clean up beaches could be aided by a model that traces the movement of floating plastic debris. Read more at Nature
Many people around the world already consider the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow a disappointment. That is a massive understatement. Global leaders – especially in the developed world – still fail to grasp the gravity of the climate challenge. Although they acknowledge its severity and urgency in their speeches, they mostly pursue short-term national interests and make conveniently distant “net-zero” emissions pledges without clear and immediate commitments to act.
Making matters worse, many rich-country leaders’ statements in Glasgow are at odds with their actual climate strategies, and with what they say in other settings. So, while G7 leaders at the summit were issuing underwhelming green commitments for several decades in the future, they were busy allowing and enabling more fossil-fuel investment that will generate additional production and greenhouse-gas emissions over the medium term. Read more at Project Syndicate
We can pay now or pay far more later. That’s the takeaway of a new peer-reviewed study just published in the journal Science Advances, that compares the costs of preventing a pandemic to those incurred trying to control one.
“It turns out prevention really is the best medicine,” said Stuart Pimm, Doris Duke Professor of Conservation Ecology at Duke University, who was co-lead author of the study. “We estimate we could greatly reduce the likelihood of another pandemic by investing as little as 1/20th of the losses incurred so far from COVID into conservation measures designed to help stop the spread of these viruses from wildlife to humans in the first place.”
A smart place to start, the study shows, would be investing in programs to end tropical deforestation and international wildlife trafficking, stop the wild meat trade in China, and improve disease surveillance and control in wild and domestic animals worldwide.
COVID, SARS, HIV, Ebola and many other viruses that have emerged in the last century originated in wild places and wild animals before spreading to humans, the study’s authors note. Tropical forest edges where humans have cleared more than 25% of the trees for farming or other purposes are hotbeds for these animal-to-human virus transmissions, as are markets where wild animals, dead or alive, are sold.
One key recommendation of the new study is to use some of this money to train more veterinarians and wildlife disease biologists. Read more at My Vet Candy
A handful of musicians will perform for an event called Crush the Crisis, an online show aimed at honouring the lives lost to Yukon’s opioid crisis.
According to the most recent news release from Yukon’s chief corner, eight people have died in the territory (pop'n 40,000) from a drug overdose in the first six weeks of 2022.
“If we can put out music to help people in any way – people in the North don’t even have a week to grieve,” says Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation citizen Yudii Mercredi. Mercredi is one half of hip-hop duo Vision Quest, who performed at the event on March 4.
He says his home community of Old Crow in northern Yukon is feeling the weight of the crisis. At least two of the people who died recently were from Old Crow. “Families are losing young members of their family at the drop of a hat,” he says. “You can see the struggle in the community as it is right now. You can see people hurting.”
Mercredi hopes his performance will draw attention to the Ogilvie Creative House in Whitehorse, which organized and live streamed the show. Read more at APTN News
As of last week, residents of First Nations impacted by long-term boil-water advisories can apply for compensation as part of a class-action lawsuit taking aim at the Federal government.
The $8 billion First Nations Drinking Water Settlement, reached in December 2021, earmarked $1.8 billion in compensation for impacted First Nations, as well as a $6 billion commitment for construction and maintenance of safe water infrastructure in communities across Canada.
Quote Of The Week:
Green Party MP Elizabeth May delivered an emotional speech on March 15 after Ukrainian President Zelenskyy’s address to the Canadian Parliament. Credit: Global News
Green Party parliamentary leader Elizabeth May told Canada’s National Observer this latest IPCC report makes it clear “we are running out of time to hang on to a livable world.”
“This is not about hitting political targets,” said May. “It is about real limits in chemistry and physics. There is a real carbon budget and we are blowing through it.”
“We are distracted by pandemic and by war," she said. "We cannot afford to be distracted.”
March 28-April 1-3, 2022: CUGH 2022 Global Health Conference - All virtual: Healthy People, Healthy Planet, Social Justice (Los Angeles, California). Virtual Satellite Sessions: March 21-25, 2022
The Most Detailed Map Of Cancer-Causing Industrial Air Pollution In The U.S.
Credit: ProPublica
It’s not a secret that industrial facilities emit hazardous air pollution. A new ProPublica analysis in the U.S. shows for the first time just how much toxic air pollution they emit — and how much the chemicals they unleash could be elevating cancer risk in their communities.
ProPublica’s analysis of five years of modelled EPA data identified more than 1,000 toxic hot spots across the country and found that an estimated 250,000 people living in them may be exposed to levels of excess cancer risk that the EPA deems unacceptable.
The agency has long collected the information on which the analysis is based. Thousands of facilities nationwide that are considered large sources of toxic air pollution submit a report to the government each year on their chemical emissions.
But the agency has never released this data in a way that allows the public to understand the risks of breathing the air where they live. Using the reports submitted between 2014 and 2018, we calculated the estimated excess cancer risk from industrial sources across the entire country and mapped it all.
The World Health Organization has advised Ukraine to destroy high-threat pathogens housed in the country's public health laboratories to prevent "any potential spills" that would spread disease among the population, the agency told Reuters.
Like many other countries, Ukraine has public health laboratories researching how to mitigate the threats of dangerous diseases affecting both animals and humans including, most recently, COVID-19. Its labs have received support from the United States, the European Union and the WHO.
Biosecurity experts say Russia's movement of troops into Ukraine and bombardment of its cities have raised the risk of an escape of disease-causing pathogens, should any of those facilities be damaged. In response to questions from Reuters about its work with Ukraine ahead of and during Russia's invasion, the WHO said in an email on Thursday that it has collaborated with Ukrainian public health labs for several years to promote security practices that help prevent "accidental or deliberate release of pathogens."
‘Historic’ Vote Means Italian State Must Now Protect Animals And Ecosystems
A general view of the Italian parliament during the Italian President Sergio Mattarella's swearing-in ceremony at the Montecitorio Palace in Rome, Italy. Credit: Filippo Monteforte/Pool via REUTERS
In a historic vote, Italy has made protecting the environment part of its constitution. The Italian parliament has approved a law that means the state must safeguard ecosystems and biodiversity “in the interest of future generations.”
The changes to the constitution also mean that health and the environment must be protected by the economy. The new law states that private industry can no longer impact the climate. The protection of animals has been recognized too.
The inclusion of the environment and animals in the Italian constitution has been hailed as significant for the country’s future by both politicians and activists. “I think it is an epochal day,” Minister of Ecological Transition, Roberto Cingolani said in a statement.
While much of the world is living in one of the most peaceful periods in history, the spark of new conflicts like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reminds us of the importance of military personnel. Between ongoing armed conflicts to building of defenses preemptively, many countries have amassed significant militaries to date.
This map, using data from World Population Review, displays all the world’s military personnel.
"The Climate Of History In A Planetary Age" by Dipesh Chakrabarty
Credit: Book Cover
For the past decade, historian Dipesh Chakrabarty has been one of the most influential scholars addressing the meaning of climate change. Climate change, he argues, upends long-standing ideas of history, modernity and globalization. The burden of The Climate of History in a Planetary Age is to grapple with what this means and to confront humanities scholars with ideas they have been reluctant to reconsider—from the changed nature of human agency to a new acceptance of universals.
Chakrabarty argues that we must see ourselves from two perspectives at once: the planetary and the global. This distinction is central to Chakrabarty’s work—the globe is a human-centric construction, while a planetary perspective intentionally decenters the human. Featuring wide-ranging excursions into historical and philosophical literatures, The Climate of History in a Planetary Age boldly considers how to frame the human condition in troubled times. As we open ourselves to the implications of the Anthropocene, few writers are as likely as Chakrabarty to shape our understanding of the best way forward.
Indiana University-led Global Health Network AMPATH Adds Sites In Mexico, Ghana
AMPATH will launch the new sites based on the success of the collaborative model that IU helped develop over the past three decades in Kenya. Credit: IU Center for Global Health (2019)
An Indiana University-led global health program developed in Kenya is expanding to help improve health in new locations in Ghana and Mexico.
Over the past 30 years, the collaboration initiated between the IU School of Medicine in Indiana and Moi University School of Medicine and Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Kenya has grown into a successful global health partnership that has played an important role in confronting the HIV epidemic, primary care, obstetrics and surgery, financial and other social determinants of health, infrastructure needs, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Publisher and Editor: Dr. David Zakus Production: Julia Chalmers & Aisha Saleem Social Media: Mahdia Abidi, Shalini Kainth and Ishneer Mankoo Website, Index and Advisory: Eunice Anteh, Gaël Chetaille, Evans Oppong, Jonathan Zakus, Dr. Aimée-Angélique Bouka & Elisabeth Huang Blogs: Dr. Stephen Bezruchka, Aisha Saleem and Dr. Jay Kravitz