Sep
30
2014
Hong Kong was braced for more thousands-strong protests last night, following a weekend of chaos with police repeatedly launching tear-gas attacks to push back crowds of passionate pro-democracy demonstrators.
Mosquito-borne and dangerous
Sep
25
2014
The commercial roll-out of the world’s first dengue vaccine is in sight, but tropical disease experts are already questioning the breakthrough vaccine’s drawbacks. Often known as “breakbone fever”, with symptoms of excruciating joint pain, high fevers, and, in severe cases, internal bleeding – dengue is carried by mosquitos.
Street fighter
Sep
20
2014
Scott Neeson frowns as he reads the message on his computer screen. Another child has been beaten and raped. “Oh, it’s Siem Reap again,” he says grimly, referring to the town in Cambodia’s north, near the wildly popular Angkor Wat temples. He reads on, noting that the child has been airlifted to a hospital in …read more
Asia grapples with dengue, malaria threats
Sep
5
2014
The current outbreak of dengue fever in central Tokyo underscores recent World Health Organisation warnings that climate change is increasingly extending the range of potentially fatal tropical diseases like malaria and dengue. Dr Rabindra Abeyasinghe, a World Health Organisation entomologist based in the Philippines, told the Nikkei Asian Review that global warming is continuing to …read more
Final Justice
Aug
2
2014
Here in Bill Smith’s office there’s a very fat text, maybe 10 centimetres thick, bound in pale pink paper. It’s one of thousands of so-called “confessions”, extracted by torture at the notorious Tuol Sleng prison run by the Khmer Rouge in Phnom Penh. The text sits in a bookcase stacked with fat folders bulging with …read more
The northern front in the war on dengue
Jun
21
2014
Far North Queensland’s wet season begins with a drumroll of heavy raindrops splattering on roofs and sidewalks and the inevitable arrival of hordes of newly hatched mosquitoes. Floating in and around houses and yards, these tiny blood-suckers are on a relentless search for unprotected human flesh.
The mosquito solution
May
10
2014
Hungry mosquitos float out into the steamy air as soon as Sularto snaps open the container lid. Blowing the insects gently on their way, as gently as he might blow on a spoonful of hot soup, the stocky Indonesian waits for a minute before hitching his denim bag more securely onto his shoulder and setting …read more
Kindness of Strangers
May
10
2014
Aung Lin Tin is a tiny, struggling scrap of humanity. Born six weeks prematurely, he weighed 1.08 kilograms when he arrived. He couldn’t suckle. He had a fever. He lost more weight in his first days of life. His mother, Tin Zar, is 24 years old and a Karen – one of the long-battling people …read more
Bad Air Days
May
3
2014
Massive LED screens in Beijing’s famous Tiananmen Square glow red through the haze. Pedestrians, many wearing space-age face masks to filter the toxic air, rarely even glance at the screens’ bold instructions: “Implement the Clean Air Action Plan”, “Improve air quality, start from myself, start with the small things, start now” and “It is everyone’s …read more
Out of the Middle East
Apr
25
2014
An often fatal respiratory virus has made the leap from the Middle East to south-east Asia, spurring governments across the region to swing into action to contain the disease. The Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, has similar characteristics to the SARS virus that emerged in China a decade ago, killing 750 people and bringing …read more