Scientists say they are making headway in getting to know how Covid supresses sense of smell
Researchers are finally making headway in understanding how the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus causes loss of smell. And a multitude of potential treatments to tackle the condition are undergoing clinical trials, including steroids and blood plasma. Once a tell-tale sign of Covid-19, smell disruption is becoming less common as the virus evolves....
Funding disaster: UN emergency aid coordination agency has no classification for forgotten disasters
Bangladesh’s population is nearly 168 million – 99,000 of whom were displaced following 31 disasters in 2021. Nepal’s population is 30 million, meaning that proportionally almost exactly the same amount of displacement occurred. Azmat Ulla, head of Nepal’s delegation at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies...
Disasters: Most times when aid response fails to mitigate losses victims opt to put their lives on the line
Four months on from the landslide, the devastation was still clear to see: long and wide fissures crisscrossed San Isidro’s few main roads, running both down and across the hillside, while the collapsed and dangerously cracked buildings remained eerily empty. “I worked hard to have this and to raise my...
UN predicts disasters, fuelled by climate change, will rise sharply by 2030 as funding dips steeply
Every year for the past two decades, an estimated 350 to 500 medium-to-large disasters have taken place globally; numbers only expected to rise further due to the climate crisis. But many, like the case studies we report on here in Peru and Nepal, receive little attention beyond the areas directly...
‘Weed’ is currently subject of political storm in Kenya, but is the interest in its hyped medicinal efficacy genuine?
Three weeks ago, I wrote about the various medical approaches to treating pain, and one reader emailed to ask why I hadn’t mentioned cannabis. I had been thinking about more mainstream options, but I was wrong to ignore cannabis because, in several parts of the world, this drug has now...
