generalspeaking

Olympics in Rio? Bring it On!

"I don't believe it [that fecal bacteria, enteroviruses and rotaviruses are rife in the waters off Guanabara Bay, Brazil, where he fishes every day]."
"Sure, there is some pollution, but you get that anywhere in the world, not just in Rio. What the media says about Olympic sailors maybe getting sick is bulls--t. It has been greatly exaggerated for political reasons here so the government can steal more money."
"I mean, I've eaten fish from this bay every day for ten years and I've never had one problem. If there was a problem, why would the best restaurants on Copacabana be buying 80 or 90 percent of the fish that I catch and putting it on tourists' plates?"
Jose Nacimento de Oliveira, 51-year-old fisherman, Guanabara Bay, Brazil

Roberto de Oliveira, Brazil

It's human nature to be casually dismissive of outsiders' criticism of what you hold most dear; your country, your way of life, your pride and your profession. What else is there, after all? The first fisherman is prepared to take home part of his catch for his dinner table, and the major proportion of it will go to market and it will sell out quickly, as it always does. Water pollution from untreated waste is a reality in Brazil whose government has never, it seems, recognized the utility of waste treatment.

Just incidentally this a massively corrupt government in a torrent of turmoil with accusations against top-echelon politicians, including its president and former president and their cronies. It is also a country whose economic future looked far better a scant few years ago. And it is a country with an immense indigent population whose welfare successive governments have found it quite easy to overlook, people living in squalor for whom basic services are denied.

There is the calamity of the Zika virus, with an astonishing number of babies born with encephaly and newly discovering that a brain disorder is also surfacing among adults who contract Zika from the mosquitoes that carry it. But it is a country attempting to calm the fears of outsiders to ensure that their summer Olympics in Rio are a success in party city, an event in which the country has invested precious funds that could and should have gone to upgrading its basic civil amenities for the poor.

During last year's Olympic trials many who had inadvertently ingested the foul sea water were soon ill with gastrointestinal infections causing diarrhea and vomiting, or had to suffer the effects of headaches, skin infections and respiratory symptoms. While Rio officials are attempting to persuade the world that Zika will present no problems during the Olympics, they cannot possibly guarantee that the sport events requiring use of the seawater will be without health risks.

Matthew Fisher, in Brazil for the National Post to cover the Olympic events speaks of the likelihood of the cause of water-borne super bacteria resulting from untreated hospital waste. But that factory chemical waste is another obvious reason for the dreadful condition of the water, along with the usual suspect; untreated human waste spewing out of open sewers; visible, stinking and threatening to human health.

Sailors training close to the Botafogo Beach below Sugarloaf Mountain have reported a foul brown scum covering the bottoms of their boats once hauled out of the sea. A superbug known as carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae has been identified as lurking in the sea water, by the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation laboratory, a government research centre. The pathogens have been discovered at a rate thousands of percentages above safety levels in the Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon where the triathlon and 10-kilometre marathon swim are scheduled.

The Associated Press contracted for tests last year and those tests came back with the data that in some areas where the Olympic events will be taking place, contamination exceeded American safety standards by up to 1.7-million times. Brazil had pledged its intention to expend several billions in clean-up of the sanitation system of Rio de Janeiro. A fraction of that amount has gone the way of clean-up, leaving the problem of untreated waste to continue washing into the sea.

The good news,  however is that a few sewage plants have been built, capable now of cleansing 50 percent of the human waste representing the city's 12-million inhabitants' bodily cast-offs, an obvious improvement over the previous 11 percent figure. Crews of clean-up personnel in small boats have been set to work collecting the disgusting flotsam bobbing in the sea. Which hasn't gone too far in changing the condition of the beaches, still thought of as unsafe for recreational swimmers at least a third of the year.

The city that fun has never left has other problems apart from the millions in their slums and where close to 2,500 murders took place in the first six months of the year. A city where threats of violence vie with its good humour. While impeachment glares Brazil's president in the face, police bear signs printed in English at the airport, alerting incoming guests to the country that they shouldn't assume their security will be assured, since police haven't been paid and they're, ahem, on strike.

Labels: Brazil, Crime, Olympics, Pollution, Zika virus

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, August 03, 2016

Brazil, Zika, Olympics

"If Brazil is unable to get this thing under control, how are you going to do it in Congo? How are you going to do it in Nigeria?"
"The most prudent public health advice is, when you've got a fire burning, don't pour gasoline on it. That's what I worry is happening."
"We just have to be willing to accept that the Olympics are not too big to fail, that they are subject to the laws of gravity and public health."
Amir Attaran, professor of public health and law, University of Ottawa

"I'm less concerned about this biological entity, this Zika virus and the mosquitoes that carry it, than I am about the ability of this chaotic, disastrous mess that is called the government of Brazil to ... muddle through."
"I'm worried about the entire picture. There are just so many tiers to this that seem utterly chaotic and crazy. It's many factors beyond what we've seen in past Olympics. It makes the challenges South Africa faced look trivial."
"Brazil is facing a far larger dengue fever epidemic, a massive chikungunya epidemic. It has been struggling with all kinds of vector-borne diseases."
"So from the point of view of say, a team physician, I'm worried about the amalgam, the totality of this enormous burden of vector-borne diseases and whether I can provide to my athletes, particularly those who will be in outdoor venues, sufficient protection to ensure that they're not going to get bit by a mosquito that may give them dengue, may give them chikungunya, may give them Zika."
"If I were deciding based on what I know right now, as opposed to two months from now, I would say we'd better have a Plan B for the Olympics -- somewhere else."
Laurie Garrett, senior fellow for global health, Council on Foreign Relations, New York

"Those [H1N1 flu, SARS] would have been serious challenges to us, but I don't think either of those would have resulted in the games being cancelled, because you can put in place mitigation effects to try to manage the consequences."
"It seems to me that the residual risk of accelerating Zika is not that substantial, and history suggests that it doesn't really happen."
Brian McCloskey, adviser to medical director, International Olympic Committee

"If  you've got very poor areas that have no sanitation, no running water, and people have to travel a distance to lug water to their homes, then of course you're going to get a lot of standing water around the home, because they keep it there. And that is a perfect breeding ground for Zika, dengue fever and all those other things."
Joe Foweraker, emeritus fellow, St. Antony College, University of Oxford

Brazil's idea was that it was their turn to showcase their country, to proudly show off to the world how competent authorities there are, how advanced their society is, how capable they are of expending vast sums of money ($11-billion at last count, but then Russia spent five times that on the Sochi Olympics) in building superior facilities for the games. Of course endemic corruption would take its course, as it always did, and most certainly did at Sochi, but Brazil was certain its success would burnish its reputation as a world-class destination.

When it submitted its bid and it won, Brazilian authorities in government could hardly have envisioned the world's attention would be fixed on the country not necessarily for the upcoming Games venue, but for the alarming surfacing of a new medical threat in the form of mosquito-borne Zika virus which has already resulted in the birth of thousands of children born with microcephaly in which a shrunken skull and brain anomalies speak to the future of a generation.

Brazilian health authorities are convinced that this baby's head condition, known as microcephaly, is related to the Zika virus that infected her mother during pregnancy. (Felipe Dana/Associated Press)

As a staging ground for the Olympics, the city may not represent the most healthy of environments to begin with. Its waterways teem with raw sewage and this is what rowers will be faced with, and no one will expect the winners to leap into the water in celebration as is done traditionally. But for swimmers there will be no way to avoid the contaminated water, since that will be the venue they will compete in, hoping that pathogens will courteously pass them by.

The president of Brazil has been suspended, a most unusual and inauspicious situation since she would be the very person to welcome other world heads to the games, proudly showing off her country's values and valuable assets. Senior Brazilian former and current politicians and business elites have been implicated in a widespread corruption scandal. None of which bespeak a formula of pride and engagement with the world at large at a world-class arena of classical sports performance.

But all of which have spurred no fewer than 150 prominent physicians, bioethicists and scientists globally to form a committee writing to the World Health Organization asking its director-general, Margaret Chan, to use her clout to impress on the Olympic authorities the need to move the Olympics venue from Rio, or to delay the games in reflection of the dangers inherent in the Zika threat being spread by tourists coming to be a part of the festivities and leaving with more than they may have bargained for.

The games, they contend, could simply return to a previous venue where the facilities have already been established and could be re-used for this return event. It would certainly represent a financial loss, but it might be a prudent move at the same time to prevent an epidemic from spreading. The logistics facing Brazil's government with all the things occurring at this juncture, leaves many in doubt that it can also handle the transportation challenges in welcoming an estimated half-million visitors and athletes.

Living conditions in Brazil for millions of slum dwellers continue to be fraught with all manner of problems for the country, so on a moral plane it is difficult to justify the massive outlay invested in building the various games venues, rather than having been committed to an municipal infrastructure that would provide for Brazil's poor access to clean running water and electricity.

"These games were supposed to be a showcase for the Brazil that basically existed eight years ago, which was very successful, growing rapidly, with an expanding middle class and reduced rates of poverty. That Brazil is not really available to showcase any more", pointed out Harold Trinkunas, director, Latin America Initiative at the Brookings Institution's Foreign Policy Program in Washington.

Labels: Brazil, Controversy, Olympics, Zika virus

posted by Pieface @ Monday, May 30, 2016