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Tension one year after the pandemic
Author: Karoli Ssemogerere. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- The World Health Organisation has shifted its attention to more pressing morbidities. During the pandemic, less attention was paid to other morbidities.
Everyone outside the west, sits down scratching their head, where did Covid-19 go? An unarmed combatant who brought the world to its knees, and is still killing by the hundreds in the epicentre of the pandemic namely China and the United States.
How effective were the vaccines in stopping the spread of the virus? How did the virus leave relatively unscathed the most vulnerable, poor and destitute populations? What do we expect in the future?
The competition for the world’s scarce resources is growing fiercer. Armed conflicts continue to build around water, food, energy and precious minerals. Ukraine is a vast rich agricultural country, a major grain producer and exporter, and also a major fertiliser producer that has destabilised global prices for staple foods.
Sudan is the confluence of the Nile, the Blue and White Nile, and a depositary of fine silt soils that have the potential of turning one of the world’s poorest regions into a granary for the continent.
Most of Africa’s food is grown on mountains, hillsides, shrinking water sources, highly fragmented land holdings. In Sudan, the combined acreage of fine silt soils and assured water supply could reduce the threat of hunger for decades to come.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has shifted its attention to more pressing morbidities. During the pandemic, less attention was paid to other morbidities on the rise. Of interest to Uganda is the cancer epidemic. 75 percent of new cancer cases are in the developing world.
This month, the WHO cancer panel labelled aspartame, a synthetic sweetener a probable source of carcinogens associated with cancer, throwing the beverages industry into a public relations spin. Diet drinks have been promoted as a healthier alternative to the real thing, which supports the addiction to sugary drinks associated with another cache of health problems, obesity, and neurological disorders associated with inflammation of body cells.
The “sugar” kick comes from as many as 12 teaspoons of sugar in a 300ml drink. Regarding climate change, a slight rise in temperature drives demand for both water and sugary drinks through the roof. Big and small players cannot match the demand for bottled drinks.
There is also growing tension between the rich and poor countries over control of the food chains. A recent Daily Monitor article correctly illustrated the rising misuse of chemicals in domestic agriculture. Banned substances still find their way into the domestic market; where over-use by farmers desperate to fight pests, diseases, and weeds are poisoning both the food they grow and the water supplies where they live.
Many farmers mistakenly believe that pesticides “kill” the vermin, whereas, they only import a pungent smell that has them migrating to nearby weeds and vegetation. They are also led to believe that herbicides are positive; when they kill most of the necessary soil properties, by killing organisms that improve aeration, water retention and produce organic matter.
If there is any lesson from the rich west, it’s in the management of insoluble chemicals, lead compounds associated with a rise in cancers, miscarriages, and mental health conditions in former industrial belts. Lead is an important solvent found in paint, and dyes.
Largely populated countries that paid little attention to chemical solvents have found themselves at the receiving end of debilitating morbidities, disused land. North-east Asia is often under dust storms from China, especially in the spring.
Outside the tourist medical system in India, are thousands of patients being treated for all sorts of exposures. Rivers are the biggest transporters of chemical effluents. Cleaning up a polluted area is almost impossible. In the United States, even after investments in superfund clean-ups, the lingering residues still reach toxic proportions.
Lake Victoria, the world’s second-biggest freshwater lake, is at a dangerous confluence of pollution from effluent waste discharges, shrinking fisheries, and possibly uncertain water levels. Rising demand for water in urban areas means National Water is struggling to keep up the pressure and keeping thousands of taps wet.
Mr Ssemogerere is an Attorney-At-Law and an Advocate. [email protected]
