Intro:  Chad has been in the news lately with regard to Darfur and the possible abduction of children and the arrest of their alleged kidnappers.  Here is some info about a country with more than its share of problems.

BBC, 10/30/07: 

A largely semi-desert country, Chad is rich in gold and uranium and stands to benefit from its recently-acquired status as an oil-exporting state.However, Africa’s fifth-largest nation suffers from inadequate infrastructure and internal conflict. Poverty is rife, and health and social conditions compare unfavourably with those elsewhere in the region. Chad’s post-independence history has been marked by instability and violence stemming mostly from tension between the mainly Arab-Muslim north and the predominantly Christian and animist south. AT-A-GLANCE Politics: Crises on several fronts: President Deby, in power since 1990, faces an armed rebellion by several groups and incursions from neighbouring Sudan. He survived a coup attempt in 2006 Humanitarian issues: 140,000 people are internal refugees; 200,000 refugees are from Sudan Economy: Chad is enjoying an oil boom. Changes to rules governing how revenues can be spent have been controversial. Chad ranks as the world’s most corrupt state International: Chad cut ties with Sudan in 2006, accusing it of supporting rebels. Refugees from Central African Republic and Sudan’s Darfur have been streaming in   In 1969 Muslim dissatisfaction with the first president, Ngarta Tombalbaye – a Christian southerner – developed into a guerrilla war. This, combined with a severe drought, undermined his rule and in 1975 President Tombalbaye was killed in a coup led by another southerner, Felix Malloum. Mr Malloum, too, failed to end the war, and in 1979 he was replaced by a Libyan-backed northerner, Goukouki Oueddei. But the fighting continued, this time with a former defence minister, Hissen Habre, on the opposite side. In 1982, with French help, Mr Habre captured the capital, N’Djamena, and Mr Oueddei escaped to the north, where he formed a rival government. The standoff ended in 1990, when Mr Habre was toppled by the Libyan-backed Idriss Deby. By the mid-1990s the situation had stabilised and in 1996 Mr Deby was confirmed president in Chad’s first election. In 1998 an armed insurgency began in the north, led by President Deby’s former defence chief, Youssouf Togoimi. A Libyan-brokered peace deal in 2002 failed to put an end to the fighting. From 2003 unrest in neighbouring Sudan’s Darfur region spilled across the border, along with hundreds of thousands of Sudanese refugees. They have been joined by thousands of Chadians who are fleeing rebel fighting as well as violence between ethnic Arab and ethnic African Chadians. Chad and Sudan accuse each other of backing and harbouring rebels. Chad became an oil-producing nation in 2003 with the completion of a $4bn pipeline linking its oilfields to terminals on the Atlantic coast. The government has moved to relax a law controlling the use of oil money, which the World Bank had made a condition of its $39m loan.   FACTS     Full name:The Republic of Chad Population: 9.1 million (UN, 2005) Capital: N’Djamena Area: 1.28 million sq km (495,800 sq miles) Major languages: French, Arabic Major religions: Islam, Christianity Life expectancy: 42 years (men), 45 years (women) (UN) Monetary unit: 1 CFA (Communaute Financiere Africaine) franc = 100 centimes Main exports: Cotton, oil, livestock, textiles GNI per capita: US $400 (World Bank, 2006) Internet domain: .td International dialling code: +235   LEADERS   President: Idriss Deby   President Deby: Inaugurated multi-party constitution Idriss Deby, a former coup leader, won a third term in presidential elections in May 2006, gaining 77.5% of the vote. The main opposition parties, who accused the president of corruption and refused to field any candidates, rejected the result. Polling went ahead despite a rebel assault on the capital three weeks before election day. The president has also been beset by splits within his Zaghawa ethnic group and by defections and desertions in the military. Idriss Deby was born in Fada, in north-east Chad, in 1952. A career army officer, he helped Hissen Habre topple Goukouki Oueddei in 1982. In 1989 he fled to Sudan after being accused of plotting a coup. A year later his Patriotic Salvation Movement drove Mr Habre into exile and in 1991 Mr Deby was proclaimed president. He won Chad’s first post-independence presidential election in 1996 after overseeing the introduction of a multi-party constitution. He was re-elected in 2001. In 2005 voters supported constitutional changes allowing Deby to stand for a third term.   MEDIA   OVERVIEW | FACTS | LEADERS | MEDIA Radio is the main means of mass communication, but state control of the broadcast media allows few dissenting views. State-run Radiodiffusion Nationale Tchadienne operates national and regional radio stations. Around a dozen private radio stations are on the air, despite high licensing fees. Some of them are run by non-profit groups. These broadcasters are subject to close official scrutiny. The only television station, Teletchad, is state-owned and its coverage favours the government. Private newspapers critical of the government circulate freely in the capital, N’Djamena, but have little impact among the largely rural and illiterate population. The press Le Progres – daily N’Djamena Hebdo – private weekly L’Observateur – private weekly Le Temps – private weekly Notre Temps – private weeklyTelevision Teletchad – state-ownedRadio Radiodiffusion Nationale Tchadienne (RNT) – state-owned FM Liberte – private, owned by a group of human rights organisations La Voix du Paysan – Catholic station Radio Arc-en-ciel – Catholic station Dja FM – Chad’s first private radio station Al-Nassr – private

BBC, 10/30/07: 

Darfur conflict zones map

The conflict in Darfur in western Sudan began in 2003 after rebel groups began attacking government targets, saying their communities were being discriminated against in favour of Arabs. Darfur, which means land of the Fur, has faced many years of tension over land and grazing rights between the mostly nomadic Arabs, and farmers from the Fur, Massaleet and Zagawa communities. The BBC News website examines how this instability has spilled over into neighbouring Chad and the Central African Republic.   JANJAWEED AND CHAD REBELS 1. Chad accuses the Sudan government-backed Arab Janjaweed militia of attacking villagers in Chad. It says the militia has also attacked some of the 200,000 refugees that came to eastern Chad after fleeing violence in Darfur. Chad also accuses Khartoum of backing the Union of Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD), which is a coalition of small armed groups and army deserters who have launched cross border attacks from Darfur. These attacks have raised communal tensions in eastern Chad, which has a similar ethnic make-up to Darfur.   DARFUR REBELS 2. Sudan accuses Chad of backing Darfur’s National Redemption Front rebels as they carry out cross-border raids. There have also been allegations that many of these rebels have become assimilated into Chad’s national army – a charge Chad’s government denies. Some Darfur rebels come from the same Zagawa ethnic group as Chad’s President Idriss Deby. Chad has called for United Nations peacekeepers to patrol the border. Sudan is resisting any UN deployment. CAR REBELS 3. The Central African Republic (CAR) says Sudan backs Union of Democratic Forces for Unity (UFDR) rebels who have seized towns in CAR. The government says the UFDR are operating from Darfur with the support of the Sudanese authorities. French forces have already deployed against CAR rebels in support of the government   CHAD TROOPS 4. Chad says it will send troops to help CAR fight rebels attacking northern CAR. It accuses Sudan of attempting to destabilise both Chad and CAR and has suggested an anti-Sudan alliance. Almost 50,000 refugees have arrived in Chad in recent weeks, fleeing fighting in CAR.

Health Day (10/28, Preidt) reported, “In 2006, an estimated 1.1 million people were treated at U.S. hospital emergency departments for head injuries related to common household products and settings such as ladders, steps, and showers, the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission reports.”

According to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, the “actual number of head injuries suffered by people in their homes is likely greater, since many injuries are treated at doctor’s offices and immediate-care centers, or people don’t seek any medical treatment.”

Falls are a serious matter, particularly among the elderly, where they can result in head injuries. Among those 65 and older, “falls are the most common cause of traumatic brain injury, which account for 46 percent of fatal falls among older adults.” Traumatic brain injury is also the “leading cause of death and severe injury in children who suffer falls.”

Atlanta Journal-Constitution (10/28, Hendrick) reported, “One of the major players in the burgeoning $40 billion health information technology industry is…McKesson Technology Solutions, which manufactures and sells robots” used in hospitals. McKesson’s “products streamline communication between doctors and patients, build digitized medical records and eliminate pharmaceutical mistakes often caused when pharmacists can’t read the…handwriting of physicians.”

One of the company’s robots, called Fillmore, “lives in a room full of hooks laden with thousands of tiny bar-coded medication bags. On command, it zips down a rail and pulls medicines off, dropping them into an envelope and sending them by computerized pushcart to a nurse’s station.”

Fact Sheet: Creating a Culture of Preparedness Among Schools
Release Date: October 30, 2007

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
Contact: 202-282-8010

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) offers a wide-range of emergency preparedness resources to help schools create safe and secure environments for their students. Emergency preparedness is an important responsibility shared by all individuals as well as communities, including schools. In order to advance school preparedness nationwide, DHS offers several planning and training resources to help local schools prepare comprehensive all-hazard emergency preparedness plans that are exercised regularly and developed in partnership with their community leaders and first responders.

Safe School Initiative: Established in collaboration by the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Education’s Safe and Drug Free Schools Program, the Safe School Initiative (SSI) focuses on prevention and provides useful information about the thinking and behavior of students who commit acts of targeted violence in our nation’s schools. One of the key recommendations of the SSI was that schools form multidisciplinary threat assessment teams to assist with identifying, assessing and managing students who may pose a threat of targeted violence. An interactive CD-ROM, titled A Safe School and Threat Assessment Experience: Scenarios Exploring the Findings of the Safe School Initiative, complements the published documents of the Safe School Initiative. The CD is available to law enforcement and school safety personnel across the country and can be ordered via the Department of Education website at http://www.edpubs.org/.

Protecting Our School’s Infrastructure: DHS’ Office of Infrastructure Protection (OIP) has developed and issued Characteristics and Common Vulnerabilities, Potential Indicators of Terrorist Activity, and Protective Measures reports for public and private schools (K-12) and higher education institutions. With dual benefits in addressing both terrorism and criminal-related security issues, these resources are available to local law enforcement and school officials to help identify site-specific vulnerabilities, anomalies or incidents that may precede a terrorist attack or other kind of harmful incident, and certain measures that can be taken to better protect and create a safer environment. DHS has conducted over 40 Site Assistance Visits at schools to help officials identify potential vulnerabilities as well as Soft Target Awareness Courses that address the security of schools and higher education institutions.
Protecting Against Man-Made or Terrorist Incidents: The DHS Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) offers a series of manuals and publications to help schools address their physical design and layout as part of a mitigation process to protect against terrorist attacks and natural disasters. These materials include: Design Guide for Improving School Safety in Earthquakes, Floods and High Winds; Primer to Design Safe School Projects in Case of Terrorist Attacks; Incremental Seismic Rehabilitation of School Buildings (K-12): Providing Protection to People and Buildings; and FEMA Mitigation Case Studies Protecting School Children from Tornadoes: State of Kansas School Shelter Initiative.

School Preparedness Training Courses: FEMA also offers several courses – both online and in-person, through the Emergency Management Institute to help schools and district personnel develop emergency plans for all-hazards. Through “train-the-trainer” courses, FEMA links school personnel with first responders, law enforcement, public health officials and others to discuss different needs and decisions that may arise during an emergency such as transportation, food and health, medical assistance, facility management, and communication. More information on available courses may be found at http://training.fema.gov/emiweb.
Lessons Learned Information Sharing (LLIS): Established to help first responders, emergency planners and managers, and homeland security partners prevent, prepare for, and respond to terrorism, this web portal includes valuable best practices and lessons learned information, including a section on school emergency planning. Additional information may be found at https://www.llis.gov.

DHS “READY” Campaign: A national public service advertising campaign produced by The Advertising Council in partnership with the Department of Homeland Security, the Ready Campaign is designed to educate and empower Americans to prepare for and respond to emergencies, including natural disasters and potential terrorist attacks. Ready Kids is the newest addition the campaign and provides a family-friendly tool to help parents and teachers educate children, ages 8-12, about emergencies and how they can help their families better prepare. Individuals interested in more information about family, business and community preparedness can visit www.ready.gov or call 1-800-BE-READY to receive free materials.
Citizen Corps: Created by President Bush in 2002, Citizen Corps provides Americans of all abilities with opportunities to gain information, training, and hands-on volunteer opportunities that increase community preparedness and resilience to all types of hazards. Headquartered at FEMA, there are more than 2,220 Citizen Corps Councils nationwide. These councils operate at the community level bringing public and private sectors together with local government, emergency managers, voluntary organizations, and first responders to coordinate disaster preparedness planning and response efforts in our communities. Schools are encouraged to partner with local Councils to integrate school emergency plans with community plans; coordinate alert systems; and educate, train and exercise the school community. Visit www.citizencorps.gov for more information.

Funding and Additional Resources: DHS offers several grant programs to State and local governments with potential applicability to school-related violence or terrorism. States and local governments make the decision as to whether this program may be applied to educational facilities. Information on DHS grants is available at www.grants.gov.

A complete DHS list of emergency preparedness resources for schools may also be found online at www.dhs.gov/schoolpreparedness. In addition, individuals can view a School Preparedness Virtual Town Hall conducted by the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Education. This 90-minute web cast provides information concerning grant programs and other school preparedness resources available from the Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools as well as the United States Secret Service and Federal Emergency Management Agency, components of the Department of Homeland Security.

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This page was last modified on October 30, 2007

The Truth About Deadly ‘Superbugs’
By Dave Mosher, LiveScience Staff Writer

posted: 30 October 2007 08:54 am ET

Email NEW YORK – Armies of invisible creatures are spreading across the planet, infesting local communities and claiming the lives of innocent children in their wake. And the attackers are immune to some of the world’s best weaponry.

It sounds more like a sci-fi movie plot than reality, but “superbugs”—deadly microbes that can resist drugs designed to wipe them out—are far from imaginary. Schoolchildren in several states recently have died from infections caused by MRSA bacteria, otherwise known as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, and medical recordkeeping shows such cases are increasing annually.

MSRA spreads via surface-to-surface contact, developing into a staph infection if conditions are right. The first symptoms can include pimple-like sores on the skin where the bacteria launch their attack, while rarer but more advanced infections can enter the bloodstream, attack organs and lead to death.

But need the masses live in fear of stubborn yet deadly microbes such as MRSA as their numbers rise worldwide, or are we overreacting?

Most medical experts think superbug diseases are here to stay but offer a major caveat: Only a fraction of the population need worry a little, if at all.

The numbers

An estimated 18,650 Americans died in 2005 from MRSA, a microbe whose defenses have benefited from decades of assault by antibiotics.

“The spread of MRSA isn’t a flash in the pan. It’s been around for about 50 years now,” said Dr. Cyrus Hopkins, an infectious diseases specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital. Healthy people are hardly its favorite customers and rarely meet the microbe.

About 77 percent of deaths from MRSA in 2005 occurred in people 65 or older, according to a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, an age bracket known for weakened immune systems. For people younger than 65, the chances of dying from a lightning strike (about 1 in 600,000) are greater.

“I think people should understand that the chance of being exposed to a superbug is very small,” Hopkins said. “Even if they are exposed, the chance they’ll get sick from it is very small. And if they do get sick, most healthy people survive.”

The chances are low, Hopkins explained, because the body’s immune system can fight dangerous invasions; in addition, populations of “friendly” microbes living inside of our bodies easily out-compete invaders. Twenty-five to 30 percent of people, in fact, carry harmless S. aureus bacteria inside their nose as “natural flora.”

The principle of natural flora explains how most Escherichia coli strains live peacefully within our intestines. Eat some spoiled or improperly cooked food, however, and a bigger dose of those or other more foreign bacteria can lead to diarrhea or infection if the microbial visitors to your gut are virulent, as were E. coli strains contaminating spinach earlier this year.

Evolution on drugs

But where do the harmful, drug-resistant nemeses come from? Experts think the answer lies in how we combat diseases with antibiotics.

Antibiotics shut down unruly bacteria directly, police them until the immune system can rid of them or both. And each new antibiotic on the market works well—at least for a few years, said Dr. Martin Blaser, a professor at New York University’s School of Medicine and former president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).

Medical experts such as Blaser think the forces of evolution start working as soon as patients carrying a dangerous microbe receive antibiotics.

“Anyone who doesn’t believe in evolution just has to look at MRSA,” Blaser said of the microbe’s growing arsenal of drug resistance.

Kill off millions or billions of harmful bacteria with an antibiotic, and some stragglers with a life-saving genetic change carry on their heritage. If a similar drug is used again, it’s much less effective than before; repeat the cycle, and eventually microbes like MRSA make news headlines.

Making matters worse, Blaser said, is that drug companies have little incentive to create new antibiotics—they are expensive to test, and the customer turnaround is quick and unprofitable.

“Until we develop new antibiotics and change our usage—we use antibiotics like water—these problems will persist,” said Blaser, who is lobbying congress with other IDSA members to offer monetary incentives to develop new antibiotics.

But recent victims of virulent S. aureus strains that killed schoolchildren have many medical experts on edge, as most victims were healthy. Blaser said the responsible MSRA strains probably did not come out of hospitals, which are well-known breeding grounds for drug-resistant diseases.

“It’s not just affecting previously ill people,” Blaser said. “It’s football players, wrestlers and just plain healthy kids.”

Blaser thinks the microbial attackers somehow evolved to be more invasive than their more bashful in-laws.

Sustained attack

The growing world population may be the force whacking the evolutionary beehive for virulence, a measure of a microbe’s ability to infect something.

People used to live in small, spread-out communities, so when super-aggressive diseases did appear, Blaser said they couldn’t get very far.

“Every time a virulent disease popped up, it was ‘end of story.’ They had nowhere else to go,” he said.

But today, populations are immense, tightly connected around the globe and contain growing elderly populations as well as carriers of immune-weakening diseases such as HIV. Blaser said the combination is a recipe for disaster, and his group’s new model of that recipe was detailed the Oct. 18 issue of the journal Nature.

“We did not make the laws of nature,” Blaser said. Even though we may not like them, we need to understand them to better control infectious diseases.”
Chamber of wisdom

Trying to understand infectious diseases is what engineer Clive Beggs has built his career around—quite literally. The medical technology professor at the University of Bradford in England has helped build one of only a few chambers in the world that can precisely study the hospital environments in which microbes tend to infect people.

“If you look at a common laboratory, you’ll find microbes in Petri dishes or in a broth, but that tells you little about how they really behave in realistic environments,” Beggs said.

The 2,825-cubic-foot (80-cubic-meter) climate-controlled room goes online in November and contains a mock-up of a hospital ward. The research team made of doctors, engineers, mathematicians and other specialists hopes to study how microbes “get from A to B and what they do in between,” Beggs said.

“We want to see how nurses tear down patients’ beds, for example, and find out how that might help spread microbes like C. diff,” Beggs said, referring to Clostridium difficile—a drug-resistant microbe that is currently ravaging hospitals in Europe.

“It’s difficult to do the research we’d like to do in a real hospital,” he said. “There are bureaucratic issues in gaining access to hospitals, and there’s a huge amount of variables we can’t control.” In addition, Beggs said follow-up clinical studies are long and expensive—so having the most accurate and reliable information possible before taking the plunge is crucial.

Before the researchers investigate how best to clean hospital rooms, however, they will first focus on how humidity affects superbugs. “A few studies suggest the drying effects of (air conditioning) could control the spread of some microbes,” Beggs said. “But overall, there’s little research in this area. We want to change that and possibly help people.”

Beggs said such environmental countermeasures to prevent bacteria’s spread are extremely important, especially if there are fewer new antibiotics in the pipeline. “In general, hospitals are doing everything they can to maintain clean and safe facilities, but we don’t fully understand how ward environments affect the spread and development of superbugs,” he said.

Stopping a superbug

While research groups such as Beggs’ come up with new ways to thwart dangerous microbes and others seek new antibiotics, some experts think vaccines are as important as ever. Problem is, the disease-preventint injections are as financially unattractive as new antibiotics.

“Nobody will invest in a vaccine to fight a disease that isn’t very widespread,” said Donald Kennedy, a medical professor at St. Louis University’s School of Medicine. If vaccine development could get a boost, however, Kennedy thinks microbes like MRSA could get the boot, much like smallpox, or at least be set back as measles, polio and hepatitis B are in the United States.

“Vaccination strategies have eliminated or reduced those diseases, not treatment strategies,” he said. “It’s a challenge, but if we’re smart enough we could do it. Most people would rather not catch a disease than take drugs while they have one.”

Until more advanced solutions come along, people are sticking to tried-and-true advice any doctor would offer: Wash your hands, and wash them often.

“That’s what our school is recommending our students do,” said Tricia Gordon, a public high school teacher in Manassas, Va., where MRSA outbreaks have occurred. “We’ve sent out public health warnings and information. We’re also now requiring kids who play sports to get cleared if they have any sores and we’ve updated our cleaning supplies to handle (MRSA).”

Gordon said most people use the information responsibly, but some seem to be acting a little paranoid.

“Some people think the situation is a bit extreme, with kids thinking they have it when with every little pimple that shows up,” she said. “Knowledge is power, but you have to keep your head screwed on and act on common sense.”

To do that, Hopkins said following up on public health warnings is crucial.

“Don’t react to the 11 o’clock news and get scared. Go to your health department’s Web site for detailed information,” Hopkins said. “And don’t forget to wash your hands.”

Source: http://www.livescience.com

Congolese no longer kiss as Ebola seems to spread
Thu Sep 20, 2007 1:18pm EDT
By Joe Bavier

KINSHASA (Reuters) – Villagers don’t kiss anymore in a corner of Democratic Republic of Congo hit by the deadly and highly contagious Ebola virus.

People began falling ill in April in Kampungu, Western Kasai province, centre of an outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever that has no cure or treatment and kills 50-90 percent of its victims.

There have been 385 suspected cases of the disease, and 174 have died, though only a handful of cases have been confirmed.

“People no longer kiss each other when they meet. They don’t even shake hands,” Antoine Bushambu told Reuters by phone from the town of Mweka, around 60 km (37.5 miles) from Kampungu.

“Those are the instructions the doctors have given to the population. There’s been a big change in behavior,” said Bushambu, who works for a Congolese human rights organization.

In the past week, several suspect cases have been reported in Kananga, the capital of Western Kasai. The provincial health minister of neighboring Eastern Kasai said on Thursday four more cases had been discovered there, raising fears the outbreak may be spreading beyond its rural confines.

But health officials suspect many deaths may be due to other illnesses like typhoid or Shigella, a bacterial infection.

“So far we have only nine confirmed cases of Ebola, but we don’t really know about the rest. We want to have the correct origins of those illnesses,” said Christiana Salvi, a spokeswoman for the U.N. World Health organization (WHO).

PUBLIC EDUCATION

Without reliable information — something the WHO hopes will change with the arrival of a high-tech mobile laboratory this weekend — health workers are struggling to staunch panic.

“There’s been no public education or health education. The concept of disease in these places is so far away from the clinical one,” Josep Prior, head of Doctors without Borders (MSF) mission in Congo, told Reuters.

“This is the difference between families hiding patients and people coming in for treatment … It’s extremely important.”

Ebola is transmitted through direct contact with blood, body fluids and tissues of infected people. Towards the latter stages, victims become highly contagious and the disease can even be transferred through contact with bodies of the dead.

When a major Ebola outbreak hit the town of Kikwit in neighboring Bandundu province in 1995, killing 250 people, many people are believed to have caught it during the traditional funeral rite of washing corpses, which led to entire families being wiped out despite awareness campaigns.

Health officials hope this time things will be different.

Congo’s health ministry has begun circulating leaflets and posters in several languages, and airing radio and television adverts. Actors are even touring remote villages staging plays that warn of the dangers of Ebola.

“At least it show that people know what’s going on and aware of the risks,” Salvi said.

A quarantine zone is in place and officials say the disease is largely contained in Kampungu and nearby Luebo village.

But Bushambu said people miles away in Mweka are not taking any chances and age-old village traditions are changing.

“There are even those who bring their own cups to places where they drink palm wine. Before they used to share,” he said.

Source: Reuters

Iraq cholera outbreak slows – health ministry
Tue Oct 30, 2007 8:11am EDT
By Aseel Kami

BAGHDAD, Oct 30 (Reuters) – The spread of cholera in Iraq is slowing thanks to health measures taken to curb an outbreak of the disease, the health ministry said on Tuesday.

Cholera has killed 22 people since an outbreak in the northern province of Kirkuk in August and there have been 4,444 confirmed cases, almost exclusively in northern regions.

“The rate of increase is very slow. October was better than September. Thanks to the monitoring of the disease and health awareness campaigns among citizens the situation has became better,” a health ministry spokeswoman said.

Cholera is characterised in its most severe form by a sudden onset of acute watery diarrhoea that can cause death by severe dehydration and kidney failure within hours. The virulent disease is mainly transmitted through water and food.

With 2,968 cases and five deaths, Kirkuk province has been the epicentre of the outbreak. In neighbouring Sulaimaniya, 14 people have died and 1,217 cases have been recorded. In nearby Arbil province there have been 224 cases, the spokeswoman said.

RESTAURANTS, WATER SOURCES

Health officials in Kirkuk said on Tuesday they were still monitoring places such as restaurants and water sources to try and prevent cholera making a comeback.

“The disease is going down. On Oct. 29 we received three cases,” said Doctor Sabah al-Dawoudi, head of the health department in Kirkuk. “At the outbreak of the disease we were receiving more than 50 cases a day.”

Across Iraq, television stations have been broadcasting advice from officials on how to avoid the disease. In Baghdad, leaflets have been handed out at army checkpoints and schools were making pupils aware of the risks.

In Sulaimaniya, most measures have been lifted but officials are monitoring juice stalls to make sure they use mineral water and restaurants are not allowed to serve salads or tap water.

“We are about to root out the epidemic completely from the Kurdistan region,” Zairyan Othman, health minister in Kurdistan, told Reuters.

“At the outbreak of the disease, there were 200-250 cases of diarrhoea and vomiting at hospitals in Sulaimaniya. In Arbil it was less, there were 100 or fewer each day, in Kirkuk, 150-200. But the rate has decreased gradually. In the last 24 hours there were 10 cases in the region.” said Othman. (Additional reporting by Sherko Raouf in Sulaimaniya and Mustafa Mahmoud in Kirkuk)

Source: Reuters

Hero mom, 2 sons killed in Queens fire

BY TANANGACHI MFUNI, NICHOLAS HIRSHORN and JONATHAN LEMIRE
DAILY NEWS WRITERS

Wednesday, October 31st 2007, 4:00 AM

A veteran Correction Department captain ran back into her burning Queens home Tuesday to save her two young sons – but all three were killed when the floor collapsed.

Renee Chong, 40, was holding her 5-year-old son, Noah, when her body was found after the raging three-alarm fire destroyed their two-family home on 149th Road in Rosedale, fire officials said.

Her other son, 10-year-old Elliot, was found dead just a few feet away.

“Oh, my goodness, she was more than a mother, she was protecting them,” said Chong’s 80-year-old mother, Josephine Chong Beswick.

Intense flames and choking smoke filled Chong’s second-floor apartment soon after the fire ignited at 4:55 a.m., FDNY officials said.

Renee Chong ran downstairs to cry for help but then raced back into the flames to find her children, witnesses said.

“We lost one of the finest captains we ever had,” Correction Capt. Valerie Oliver said. “She had tremendous command; she could move a mountain just with her presence.”

Firefighters arrived five minutes after the first 911 call but had to retreat from the building after the building’s third floor collapsed. Seven firefighters suffered minor injuries battling the blaze.

The deadly blaze erupted when the motor of a Jacuzzi in Chong’s bathroom caught fire, according to the NYPD arson and explosives squad.

Chong, assigned to the Queens courts detention complex, had worked nearly 20 years in the Correction Department. She was considering retiring in a few months to spend more time with her children, her family said.

“I’m so proud of her … and now she’s gone,” Chong’s grieving mother said.

Source: http://www.nydailynews.com