1. Art and Diseño

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2015
H E A LT H & S C I E N C E
Cold-stunned turtles rehabilitated in New Orleans, released
GRAND ISLE, Louisiana: Nearly two
dozen turtles that were stranded by cold
weather last year in Massachusetts have
successfully undergone rehab and have
been returned to waters off Louisiana’s
coast. More than 1,200 young, “coldstunned” Kemp’s ridley sea turtles were
stranded in November and December.
According to the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, “cold-stunning” occurs when the circulatory systems of sea turtles exposed to frigid
water temperatures for several days slow
down to a point where the turtles cannot function. Various sea-turtle rehabilitation facilities along the east and Gulf
coasts joined in the effort to care for the
stunned turtles. Suzanne Smith, stranding-and-rescue coordinator for the
Audubon Nature Institute for Marine
Mammals and Sea Turtles, said 21 of the
27 turtles she and her colleagues
received were released into the Gulf of
Mexico, 24 miles (38 kilometers) off the
coast of Grand Isle, on Thursday. “It was a
beautiful day,” she said. “We couldn’t
have asked for a more beautiful day.”
The turtles were placed in open produce boxes and carefully transported for
about 100 miles from the institute’s
GRAND ISLE, Louisiana: Suzanne Smith, Stranding & Rescue Coordinator of Marine Mammals & Sea Turtles for the Audubon Nature Institute, releases an endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtle, which was rescued in New England, and rehabilitated by the institute, into the Gulf of Mexico, 24 miles off the coast of Louisiana, yesterday. (Right) The endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtle, swims away as it is released into the Gulf of Mexico.— AP photos
aquatic center before being loaded onto
the back of two boats, one provided by
Audubon and the other by the state
Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.
Carefully shielded from the sun, they
were then transported out to sea, where
the boats’ engines were shut off to
ensure the turtles’ safe re-entry into the
wild.
Each turtle was released by hand on a
cloudless, sunny day with temperatures
in the low 70s and calm seas - a sharp
contrast to the conditions that existed
when they were stranded in New
England. The turtles immediately swam
from the boats, disappearing into the
sun-warmed water as Smith and
Audubon Nature Institute veterinarian
Dr Tres Clarke exchanged a triumphant
high-five. One of the 27 turtles the
Audubon institute received did not sur-
vive, Smith said. The other five, which
had suffered from pneumonia or problems with their shells and flippers, will
remain in the rescuers’ care for about a
month to receive antibiotics and nutrition. “Their prognosis, though, is good,”
she said. —AP
Black breast-feeding gatherings
battle troubling health gaps
‘In the African-American community, we don’t see breast-feeding publicly’
GERMANY: Little Siberian tiger Dragan makes its way through the snow in its enclosure at
the zoo in Eberswalde, eastern Germany, on January 31, 2015. Dragan was born on
October 7, 2014 and belongs to the most endangered species of the amur tigers. — AFP
‘Tiger heavyweight’ Nepal
hosts anti-poaching summit
KATHMANDU: Nepal’s success in turning
tiger-fearing villagers into their protectors
has seen none of the endangered cats killed
for almost three years, offering key lessons for
an anti-poaching summit opening in
Kathmandu yesterday. Experts from conservation group WWF, which is co-hosting the
conference with Nepal’s government, said the
Himalayan nation was a “tiger heavyweight”
in the battle to fight poaching and protect
them from extinction.
“Nepal and India are our tiger heavyweights leading the region. India excels at
recovering tiger numbers and Nepal at zero
poaching,” said Mike Baltzer of WWF Tigers
Alive Initiative. India in January reported a 30
percent jump in tiger numbers since 2010,
while Nepal saw numbers rise almost two
thirds between 2009 and 2013. Its last reported poaching incident was in March 2012.
Decades of trafficking and habitat destruction have slashed the global tiger population
from 100,000 a century ago to approximately
3,000, according to the International Union
for the Conservation of Nature. Tikaram
Adhikari, director general of Nepal’s department of national parks and wildlife conservation, said an initiative to convince villagers to
inform on poachers and pay them half of
tourism revenues had paid huge dividends.
“Earlier, some villagers even protected
poachers because they didn’t want tigers
attacking them. We heard them out, built
electric fences, focused on increasing tourism
and gave them a big cut of the revenues,”
Adhikari said. “Now they know the benefits of
protecting tigers and they want to help. The
survival of the animal is a matter of prestige
for them,” he told AFP.
Hundreds of young volunteers act as unofficial guards for Nepal’s national parks, home
to 198 tigers and 534 rhinos-both listed as
critically endangered species by WWF. A tipoff by local villagers meant police were able
to arrest four poachers less than a week after
they allegedly killed a tiger in 2012, Adhikari
said. Nepal has twice been recognized for
going a full year with no poaching incidents
involving tigers or rhinos.
The impoverished country’s success in
combating wildlife crime sends a clear signal
that “anti-poaching cannot be left only to
conservationists,” WWF Nepal’s Diwakar
Chapagain said. “We have to involve people
on the ground-volunteers and local law
enforcement must have a stake in the
process. Otherwise conservation is not sustainable,” Chapagain told AFP. —AFP
Ebola-hit Liberia delays
school reopening
MONROVIA: Liberia’s education ministry
said yesterday it had postponed by two
weeks the reopening of the country’s
schools, which were closed six months
ago to limit the spread of the Ebola virus.
Classes had been set to resume yesterday, but the ministry said in a statement
parents and students needed more time
to prepare for the new school year.
“Classes will start on Monday, February
16, 2015,” the statement said. Liberia is
one of three West African countries hit by
the deadliest Ebola outbreak on record,
together with Guinea and Sierra Leone.
Schools in all three countries were
closed last year over the outbreak, which
has killed around 9,000 people. The rate
of new infections has slowed significantly
in recent weeks, paving the way for a
gradual return to normal. In Guinea, children returned to school on January 19.
Sierra Leone has said it will restart classes
in March. Liberia’s President Ellen
Johnson Sirleaf this week cited cost as a
factor hampering the resumption of
classes in her country. “The cost of opening shools, as proposed by public, private
schools and higher education institutions, is simply prohibitive,” she told parliament. The education ministry said it
was working to ensure that Ebola-related
“safety protocols, logistics” and “health
and training requirements” were in place
before classes resumed. —AFP
MILWAUKEE: Once a month, baby-toting young
women gather in a YMCA conference room to
share tips, talk about and demonstrate breast-feeding - an age-old yet sometimes shunned practice in
their community. It’s part of a grassroots movement that breast-feeding advocates think just
might yield profound benefits - potentially helping
diminish health gaps facing black Americans, from
higher rates of infant mortality and childhood obesity, to more breast cancer deaths and heart disease in adults. Breast-feeding is thought to help
protect against these ills - and it’s much less common among US black women than in whites and
others. Rates have improved in recent years but the
disparity remains.
“In the African-American community, we don’t
see breast-feeding publicly - our sisters and aunts
aren’t breast-feeding in the living room, they’re not
talking about it in the kitchen. It’s different in the
Caucasian community,” said Dalvery Blackwell, a
lactation consultant-educator and co-founder of
the Milwaukee-based African American
Breastfeeding Network. The networks’ gatherings
aim to change that. Similar groups meet in Detroit,
Atlanta and other cities, organized by black
women, for black women. While promoting breastfeeding, they acknowledge obstacles that are more
prevalent in black communities - absent partners,
employers who discourage workplace nursing and
flex time for new moms, hospitals that feed newborns formula. The gatherings encourage new
mothers to breast-feed for as long as possible; the
American Academy of Pediatrics recommends
doing it for at least a year. Just over 60 percent of
US black mothers have tried breast-feeding but
only 16 percent continue for a full year, federal data
show. By comparison, more than 80 percent of
Hispanics and whites have tried it and at least 25
percent do it for a year.
‘I learn so much’
A government report last year cited the breastfeeding network among efforts to improve rates.
Dr Myrtis Sullivan, a black pediatrician and former
maternal and child health director for Illinois, said
this type of community gathering can be particularly effective. “The synergy that goes on when
women interact with other women that are similar
to them both culturally and socioeconomically ...
seems to be very supportive for breast-feeding,”
Sullivan said. At a recent Milwaukee gathering,
mothers nursed and shared a meal provided by a
University of Wisconsin public health partnership
program. Blackwell offered tips about the best
breast-feeding diet, how to hold a nursing baby,
and signs that a baby is hungry.
Retail worker Leslie Curtis, 22, has breast-fed her
6-month-old son, Jace, since his birth. She said the
meetings have helped her stick with it. “I learn so
much,” she said. “I learn how to properly latch,
properly pump, all the nutrition he’s getting, I learn
a lot and I love it.” Most of her friends think breastfeeding is too time-consuming, or too painful, and
Curtis said her baby’s father “doesn’t understand
the whole breast-feeding thing so I don’t even try
to explain it.” But Curtis is determined to keep it up
for their son’s sake. “Just coming to this group tells
me why it’s important,” she said. “It’s really healthy, I
know what he’s drinking and he’s eating, compared
to formula.” In Detroit, educator Kiddada Green
runs the Black Mothers Breastfeeding Club as a
modern day old front porch, a place to encourage
breast-feeding while building sisterhood. The club
meets in women’s homes, drawing a mix of working women and stay-at-home moms.
“We work with many women who have never
seen a woman breast-feed,” Green said. “We’re making it visible.” “Although you’re getting medical
benefits, you’re also getting connections and relationships and bonds that are also healthy for
women,” she said. Breast-feeding’s benefits include
fewer infant infections and reduced risks for infant
mortality, asthma, type 2 diabetes and obesity which all disproportionately affect black children.
Effects on moms’ long-term health are less studied
but breast-feeding has been linked with lower
breast and ovarian cancer rates, while emerging
ers’ babies, Blackwell said. Kimarie Bugg, a nurse
and founder of the Atlanta-based Reaching Our
Sisters Everywhere, said many doctors never discuss
breastfeeding with black patients “because they
just assume they’re not going to do it - they don’t
even mention it.” No one thinks that breast-feeding
is a magic panacea and scientific evidence is mixed
on some of its purported advantages. But few
experts dispute that breast milk is the best nourishment for infants, with potential lifelong benefits.
“We know there are significant underlying conditions that lead to poor health outcomes - socioeco-
MILWAUKEE : Volunteer Monet Williams, center, holds a friend’s baby whose mother is participating in a monthly gathering that promotes breast-feeding, as she talks to another volunteer
at a YMCA. — AP photos
MILWAUKEE: Dalvery Blackwell, co-founder of the African American Breastfeeding Network,
talks with young mothers as she holds a baby from an attendee.
research suggests women who breast-feed may
have less heart disease later in life.
Reasons why some blacks shun breast-feeding
vary but slavery’s legacy is often cited among them.
Breast-feeding was common in Africa but became a
stigma when women were separated from their
own children and forced to breast-feed slave-own-
nomic disparities, racism - all play a part,” said
Laurence Grummer-Strawn, a longtime breast-feeding advocate and former chief of the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention’s nutrition branch.
Lack of breast-feeding contributes and improving
rates could help reduce disparities, although by
how much is uncertain, he said. — AP
White House: Science indicates
parents should vaccinate kids
WASHINGTON: Amid the measles outbreak
stemming from California, the White House is
telling parents that science indicates they
should vaccinate their children. President
Barack Obama’s spokesman, Josh Earnest, said
Friday that decisions about vaccinations should
be left to parents, but the science on vaccinations “is really clear.” Some parents continue to
believe debunked research linking vaccines to
autism and refuse vaccinate their children. “I’m
not going stand up here and dispense medical
advice,” Earnest said when asked whether the
president supports parents who choose not to
vaccinate.
“But I am going to suggest that the president’s view is that people should evaluate this
for themselves, with a bias toward good science
and toward the advice of our public health professionals, who are trained to offer us exactly
this kind of advice.” About 100 cases of the
measles have been reported in the US since last
month in the second-biggest outbreak in at
least 15 years. Most have been traced directly or
indirectly to Disneyland in Southern California.
The Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention says measles-mumps-rubella vaccine is 97 percent effective at preventing
measles. The American Academy of Pediatrics
says doctors should bring up the importance of
vaccinations during visits but should respect a
parent’s wishes unless there’s a significant risk
to the child. — AP
MILWAUKEE: A doll used for breast-feeding training sits on a table
with literature during a monthly gathering that promotes breastfeeding at a YMCA.
MILWAUKEE: Irena Bottoms feeds her baby as mothers and supportive
family members attend a monthly gathering.