No conflict of interests on pesticide advice | Letters

The assertion by Professor Dave Goulson (Farmers could slash pesticide use without losses, research reveals, 6 April) cannot go unchallenged. He says that pesticides are massively over-used because farmers are advised by agronomists working on commission to sell products.

The Agricultural Industries Confederation represents the majority of businesses that supply both agronomy advice and crop protection products to UK farmers. Farmers can elect to pay separately for agronomy advice and crop protection products. Farmers also have access to information from agrochemical manufacturers as well as independent agronomy research organisations – much of it free online. In many instances, those delivering advice do not receive commission.

The UK crop protection industry is focused on ensuring optimum, rather than maximum, use of crop protection products to ensure the farming industry delivers safe, wholesome and affordable food. It is a legal requirement that agronomists selling crop protection products are highly trained and kept up to date with agronomic developments to deliver advice to ensure efficient production and environmental protection.
Hazel Doonan
Head of the crop protection and agronomy sector, Agricultural Industries Confederation

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No conflict of interests on pesticide advice | Letters

Malnutrition in conflict: the psychological lead to

In Central African Republic babies have proven indications of post-traumatic anxiety disorder. Photograph: Stephanie Duvergé for ACF International

Treating malnutrition in humanitarian crises, such as conflict and organic disaster, is far a lot more complicated than just curing disease and offering kids with therapeutic meals. Typically, submit-traumatic pressure disorder – frequent in severe scenarios – hinders remedy and its success. In Bangui, in the Central African Republic (Automobile), the amount of youngsters struggling from existence-threatening malnutrition has tripled since the outbreak of violence in December 2013.

Every single month, 180 sufferers are being seen in a ward that at first had just 49 beds obtainable for malnourished youngsters. For many weeks, two to 3 individuals – and their caregivers – were sharing single beds, escalating the risk of cross-infection of sickness and delaying recovery.

The cause of severe acute malnutrition runs far past financial hardship and lack of food. Many of the hundreds of thousands of folks displaced by fighting have been straight exposed to death threats, witnessed the deaths of neighbours or household members, and misplaced nearly all of their belongings. They are frequently exhausted by the harsh residing circumstances in camps.

75% of more than one,000 case research of the dad and mom of malnourished children collected by Action Against Hunger amongst July 2013 and March 2014 presented signs and symptoms of post-traumatic anxiety linked to their exposure to severe violence. The anxiety prompted behavioural modifications, flashbacks, fatigue, isolation, excessive irritability, and feelings of hopelessness and despair.

These experiences also provoked reactions that – even though understandable, typical, and usually short-term – can be disabling adequate to effect a mother’s ability to nurse and feed her child. Nurses leading pre- and publish-natal sessions with girls in the 12 overall health centres around Bangui have reported that some mothers turn into convinced they can’t create milk, or fail to reply to their child’s demands, resulting in early weaning that can be fatal for babies in an already difficult environment. In intense instances, some mothers have attempted suicide and infanticide.

Young children, whilst too younger to entirely realize what they have witnessed, could develop physical signs and symptoms such as constant crying, refusing to consume and bed wetting. Even modest babies can present signs of trauma, this kind of as feeding and sleep disturbances, continuous crying, and bad interaction. Not recognising the indications, some parents will not make the connection and severely scold their young children. To combat this, malnourished children and their carers are obtaining psychological and social assistance.

At the dietary therapeutic ward of Bangui’s primary pediatric hospital, Action Towards Hunger’s dietary, psychological and social teams provide free of charge treatment for severely malnourished youngsters from a specialised counselling staff. Feeding occasions, health-related monitoring and psychological and motor activities tempo the everyday schedule.

When Dieumerci Tsongbele, a single parent to his six-yr-previous daughter Jessica, arrived at the hospital, she had been refusing foods and was not interacting with other individuals. When he joined a welcoming session led by psychological and social authorities, Tsongbele and other parents realized about factors that exacerbate malnutrition, including trauma. The info evoked an emotional response from the father, who had witnessed people killed. While he managed to escape the violence, the experience had left him unable to rest, irritable and hypervigilant. Overwhelmed by the situation, he admitted he had been less attentive to his daughter’s needs.

For the duration of the programme, Tsongbele and the other dad and mom participated in different pursuits with their kids ranging from toy creating to little one massage, which aim to provide each parents and kids with a safe area to recreate natural and essential bonds that are crucial for human improvement. Perform sessions aid to limit the unfavorable effects of malnutrition strengthen mother or father-youngster relationships. Malnutrition therapy is not just about filling stomachs, but also restoring the desire to eat.

Names have been altered to protect identities.

Stephanie Duvergé is a Action Towards Hunger psychologist in the Central African Republic. Adhere to @ACF_United kingdom on Twitter.

Go through more stories like this:
• Mothers towards malnutrition
• ‘Cow will make your little one fat’: breaking foods taboos in west Africa
• The economic rationale for investing in undernutrition

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Malnutrition in conflict: the psychological lead to

Outbreaks of ailment and war: polio"s historical past with conflict | Dora Vargha

Standing in line at the airport safety final year, a poster caught my eye. “We are this close to ending polio”, Jackie Chan was saying, displaying a small gap with his fingers. You could uncover Desmond Tutu, Jane Goodall, and Itzhak Perlman doing the very same on billboards all around the globe. There was even a Gangnam Fashion version of the poster. A year later on that modest gap that celebrities have been demonstrating with their hands looks to be widening, with a pace that now gives cause for alarm.

The Globe Health Organization (WHO) declared polio as a Public Wellness Emergency of International Concern on Might 5, 2014. The variety of circumstances has increased considerably this 12 months and, in accordance to the WHO, especially in conflict-stricken areas, like the Middle-East and Central Asia. One of the primary worries is that the virus has re-appeared in locations the place the condition had been eradicated. For instance, Syria was polio-free of charge for 14 years till an outbreak started out in 2013.

Polio and Cold War

The history of polio vaccination has been riddled with conflict. The Sabin vaccine itself, which is used nowadays in eradication efforts, was created in the midst of a international political crisis: the Cold War.

The ailment opened avenues between the two sides of the Cold War that otherwise would have been unimaginable. The American Albert Sabin and the Russian Mikhail Chumakov worked together to orchestrate one particular of the greatest vaccine trials in history, testing the dwell virus vaccine in the Soviet Union. West Germans answered the distress calls of Hungarian revolutionaries on Free of charge Europe Radio and sent life-conserving health-related products throughout a polio outbreak in the 1956 revolution, 1 of the crucial moments of the Cold War. Mass vaccination campaigns in countries like Cuba served as the basis of the WHO’s eradication techniques with the Sabin vaccine decades later.

The Cold War partly explains why polio due to the fact so crucial in the 20th Century. For Americans, polio meant President Roosevelt’s heroic struggle and, by way of the March of Dimes campaign, the triumph of the voluntary cooperation of American citizens, who funded polio care and vaccine analysis, the latter resulting in the Salk vaccine. For the Soviets, testing the oral Sabin vaccine on in excess of 7 million citizens symbolized the victory of the communist ideal, while curbing polio with the reside virus vaccine was a strong demonstration of state authority. The stakes have been higher for each sides: polio threatened to cripple the bodies of the new, submit-war generations. And in war, nonetheless cold, bodies matter.

David Henseley, youthful American child crippled by polio with the two legs in braces, soliciting funds in public fund-raising driver for a new polio hospital. Photograph: Martha Holmes/Time &amp Life Pictures/Getty Image

Eradication and priorities

Around the world polio eradication began in 1988, with the launch of the International Polio Eradication Initiative, spearheaded by the WHO. Though Sabin and Chumakov had previously mentioned the dwell vaccine as a instrument for eliminating polio in the 1950s, it was the effective eradication of smallpox, the initial condition to be wiped off the face of the Earth, that provided the institutional infrastructure for a international task. The unique goal was the eradication of polio by the 12 months 2000. But polio is a tricky disease to tackle: most folks who contract the virus have really mild signs and symptoms and do not become paralysed. In addition, in unusual cases, the reside vaccine itself can lead to polio. Still, it appears to be the most efficient technique of curbing the disease in regions where polio is even now present (polio-totally free nations, like the Uk, are utilizing inactivated vaccine to sustain immunity). Though the authentic target – and some later on ones – have been not met, polio had been drastically reducing worldwide, with new supporters of the enterprise, like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. There have been no polio situations in India because 2011: the WHO declared the nation officially polio totally free just above a month in the past, a fantastic milestone in the eradication efforts.

Nonetheless, eradication itself can lead to new difficulties or develop its own hurdles. In places the place polio is a distant memory for most, some former polio patients, now faced with the submit-polio syndrome, complain that physicians are no longer ready to provide sufficient care for them. Given that polio is not noticed as a threat in the Global North, it is of low priority and its treatment method is not element of doctors’ coaching. Frequently, the repositories of the expertise of polio care are the former patients themselves. In spots the place polio is – or is turning out to be – an everyday reality, some argue that it is not high sufficient on the priority listing. In Nigeria, for instance, some mother and father are far more concerned about the lack of entry to simple health care care than about a condition that is normally not lifestyle-threatening, and therefore resist vaccination. In countries going through extended armed conflict, like Syria, men and women are less probably to go by means of the trouble of vaccinating or carry their vaccination cards with them when they flee – understandably so. Conflict can also affect eradication efforts in more direct ways, top to distrust in vaccinators and occasionally to violence against them.

In the 1950s and 60s, political and military conflict proved to be productive in avoiding polio. Curbing the condition, which became especially important in the Cold War, warranted worldwide cooperation at a time of antagonism. Now, conflict is bringing polio back into the limelight, generating it a substantial international problem again. It remains to be seen if the charm can operate twice, and collaboration can conquer the unfolding of new global epidemics.

Outbreaks of ailment and war: polio"s historical past with conflict | Dora Vargha

Fiona Nash says staffer’s curiosity in wife’s lobbying company poses "no conflict"

The assistant wellness minister, Fiona Nash, says her chief of workers has “no conflict of interest” simply because he “receives no income” from a “shareholding” in his wife’s lobbying company, which represents chocolate and soft drink makers, but the opposition says there has been a “serious breach” of specifications.

Getting initially insisted that her chief of employees, Alistair Furnival, had “no connection whatsoever” with the organization, she conceded that Furnival, who intervened to pull down a healthy foods rating site that had been opposed by elements of the foods business, was a “shareholder in the lobbying firm owned by his wife, Tracey Cain, Australian Public Affairs (APA)”.

APA acts for Cadbury’s parent business, the snack foods giant Mondelez, as properly as soft drink sector group Australian Drinks Council. Furnival was when chairman of APA and chief economist for Cadbury.

Investigations by Guardian Australia present he also remains a director of one particular of three businesses that type the APA partnership, which is registered with NSW Honest Trading.

The government’s “standards for ministerial staff” need that personnel “divest themselves, or relinquish manage, of interests in any private organization or company and/or direct curiosity in any public business involved in the spot of their ministers’ portfolio responsibilities”.

Nash also conceded that Furnival had not declared any conflict of interest at a meeting of federal, state and New Zealand ministers on December 13, which Nash chaired and Furnival attended, and which voted to approve the wholesome meals rating scheme.

“Yes, I can verify it was an item on the agenda. Yes, I can verify that I was chairing the meeting. Yes, I can confirm that my chief of staff did not declare an interest.

“I was completely mindful of the romantic relationship amongst my chief of employees, APA and his earlier position inside Cadbury and the confectionery market … my chief of workers complies with suitable inner standards under the statement of requirements for ministerial workers,” Nash said underneath a sustained opposition assault for the duration of Senate query time.

“Operating procedures” for the legislative and governance forum on food regulation call for that “members and supporting workers have a responsibility to disclose and take affordable methods to steer clear of any conflict of curiosity, true or obvious, in connection with their membership or help of the Forum or its subordinate bodies.”

Nash said she had had discussions with the prime minister’s workplace soon after the conflict of interest claims had been aired earlier this week and was assured that the arrangements in place meant he “complies with appropriate inner standards”.

“I am assured there is no conflict of curiosity,” Nash insisted.

But veteran Labor senator John Faulkner mentioned the revelations represented “serious negligence in her carry out of her ministerial responsibilities” and a “very significant breach”.

Late on Tuesday Nash unveiled that Cain had given undertakings that both she and the organization would not make representations to both Nash, wellness minister Peter Dutton or the Division of Wellness.

“On the tips accessible to me these undertakings have been honoured in total,” Nash informed parliament. “Indeed, neither my chief of workers nor my office has met with Mondelez – formerly Kraft – the owners of Cadbury, with whom he worked as a chief economist.”

The prime minister promised Cadbury $ 16m prior to the election to upgrade their factory.

Nash confirmed on Tuesday that Furnival, on her orders, intervened to pull down a healthy food internet site that rated packaged food on a 1-five star basis. She said the website had been launched prematurely.

The voluntary method had been two and a half years in the generating and had been accredited by the forum of state, federal and New Zealand ministers, which has oversight of foods regulation. The forum took the unusual phase of voting to approve the system at the December meeting.

All public stakeholder groups were advised the site would be published last week but inside hrs Furnival rang the division to have it taken down.

The Guardian understands that when workers refused simply because they were below orders from the ministerial forum rather than the minister, Furnival went to the department ’s senior executive ranks to intervene.

Nash made the unusual move of incorporating to her question time response in the Senate adjournment debate just ahead of 9pm on Tuesday.

“In brief, each Mr Furnival and Ms Cain have taken suitable and suitable steps to prevent conflicts or possible conflicts between the personal business and his duties as my chief of workers by withdrawing from any work for consumers in the overall health portfolio,” she explained.

“At the time of answering Senator Wong’s question I did not have each and every detail of this details at hand, but, getting produced even more checks after question time I give this info to the Senate.”

APA is a partnership registered with NSW Fair Trading. NSW Honest Trading information demonstrate APA’s partners are 3 firms – APA Pty Ltd, Strategic Issues Management Pty Ltd and Centre for Litigation Communications Pty Ltd.

Australian Securities and Investment Commission paperwork display that Furnival is a director of Strategic Troubles Management Pty Ltd along with Tracey Cain, who is also secretary.

The chief executive of the Public Well being Association, Michael Moore, stated it was clear that some influence had been “brought to bear” and client and wellness advocates would be pushing to have the website reinstated.

“We have been really appalled and shocked when it came down,” said Moore, who was an independent member in the ACT Legislative Assembly and a former well being minister.

“There is clearly politics but we just to get the site back up. We have a voluntary code that some parts of the sector needs to get up.

“This was a method in spot ready to go and some influence had been brought to bear to deliver it down.”

Fiona Nash says staffer’s curiosity in wife’s lobbying company poses "no conflict"