Monthly Archives: January 2014

Polio as a weapon in Syria

Posted on by
Reply

While the civil war in Syria has left hospitals and clinics in ruin, leaving millions without proper healthcare, it also had an unexpected side effect. Polio, which had disappeared in Syria since 1995, reemerged in mid-October in Deir-ez-Zor province, a rebel-controlled area. The politicized lines that the disease breakout is following may suggest that it is being used as a weapon against rebels.

So far, 90 cases of polio have been documented in seven different provinces, all rebel-controlled. Since the war started, the immunization rate, which the WHO had previous put at around 91%, has dropped to around 52%, and the WHO estimates that more than half a million children have not been immunized. Poliovirus, the virus which causes the disease, is highly contagious. Only a tiny number of those infected develop the crippling symptoms of polio, which means that the 90 cases could be the tip of the iceberg, with some 90,000 children carrying the disease.

Now, according to The New York Review, President Assad’s regime may be using polio immunization as a weapon in the war against rebels. According to the article, not a single case has been documented in areas controlled by the government. It contends that Assad has been channeling vaccines and relief to areas sympathetic to the government and denying them to people in rebel-controlled territories.

A recent review in The Lancet of health in the Arab world touched on the militarisation of healthcare during conflict. In most conflicts of the region, including the ongoing war in Syria, healthcare has been denied to opponents. While UN organizations have launched a major vaccination campaign for children in neighbouring countries, it can be too dangerous for healthcare providers to enter the country.

The New York Review quotes Mohamed Wajih, the former head of the Aleppo Medical Council saying: “In some liberated areas supplies to the health centers still existed but nurses stopped being paid, or the centres had no power to refrigerate the vaccines. For many nurses it was too dangerous to get to work.”

The problem is compounded since the regime controls the transfer of aid and relief from UN organizations. The UN rules mean that organizations such as WHO and UNICEF can only work with sovereign governments. This means the government receives all the aid and distributes it in rebel areas through the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, which the New York Review contends is government-dominated.

Zaher Sahloul, president of the Syrian-American Medical Association, told Nature Middle East at the break of the epidemic that “the only hope of controlling it is if the UN and international NGOs are allowed unfettered access to all areas in Syria.”

Morocco’s Atlas Mountains are floating on molten rock

Posted on by
Reply
atlas mountains

{credit}Martin Fisch/Flickr{/credit}

The Atlas Mountains in Morocco are unusually high, given that they do not have roots that are deep enough to maintain them, according to standard models for mountain formation. However, a team of researchers who measured seismic data found the mountain range is floating on a bed of hot molten rocks which gives them extra buoyancy.

Meghan Miller and Thorsten Becker at the University of Southern California (USC), who published their work in Geology, suggest the layer of molten rocks flows beneath the lithosphere in the region, and may extend from the volcanic Canary Islands just off the western coast of Morocco. According to their model, the hot mantle is rising up and pushing the mountain range from beneath, which explains why the Atlas mountains are unusually high.

“Our findings confirm that mountain structures and their formation are far more complex than previously believed,” said Miller, assistant professor of Earth sciences at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences in a press release.

The standard model suggested that the higher mountains are, the deeper the roots they need to support them, similar to how the visible part of an iceberg above water is supported by a large mass of ice beneath the surface. This property is known as “istostacy.”

When the researchers measured the roots of the 4,000 metres high Atlas Mountains, they found them to extend to 35 km into the crust, slightly more than two thirds of what the traditional model predicts.

The researchers found the asthenosphere, which is the layer just below the lithosphere and which contains flowing mantle, was shallow beneath the mountains and pushed upwards when compared to the surrounding region, which the researchers suggest is due to the hot mantle rising up beneath the mountains.

Fellowship opportunity for researchers in the Middle East

Posted on by
Reply

This is a guest blogpost from Mohammed Jawad, an honorary clinical research fellow at Imperial College London who recently spent a month at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, thanks to a grant from the Daniel Turnberg Travel Fellowship scheme. The scheme, led by the Academy of Medical Sciences, provides opportunities for biomedical researchers to travel from the Middle East to the UK, or vice versa, for up to four weeks at a time. This year, A small number of three-month fellowships will also be available.

mohammed JawadLate in 2012, as a recent graduate from Imperial College School of Medicine, I found myself developing a strong interest in academic public health medicine, and began to search for ways to enhance my research skills.

At the time, I was beginning to develop an expertise in waterpipe tobacco smoking (also known as narghile, or shisha), a traditional form of smoking originating from the Middle East that has seen a recent popularity surge in the West. I was making good progress in the field, taking every opportunity to conduct research and present my findings at conferences.

Amidst my busy working life as a junior doctor, I stumbled across the Daniel Turnberg UK/Middle East Travel Fellowship scheme. I was cautiously optimistic when I applied for a Fellowship in January 2013, but was delighted when I was selected and it became an important step in my career.

I visited the Faculty of Health Sciences at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, in September 2013, where my supervisors would be leading experts in waterpipe tobacco smoking. I went with a bag full of enthusiasm and motivation, which was wholly reciprocated by my supervisors.

By liaising with several members of the Faculty and maintaining a strong work ethic, I was able to initiate no less than six research projects, and ended the Fellowship with three draft manuscripts to take away with me. During my time at the university, I was also given the opportunity to present my research to students and faculty staff on two occasions, the latter receiving local media attention, which was a new but very enjoyable experience.

For those thinking of applying to the Fellowship, I do have some advice to share. Match your area of research interest with a suitable colleague at your host institution, and start early discussions in order to show commitment to the Fellowship on your application form. This will also help generate potential project ideas that will make your visit more effective. Bear in mind that a month’s visit is not usually enough to time to complete a full research project, so use the time wisely to establish a healthy rapport with your team. Constructing a strong foundation during your stay will enable you to continue your project(s) when you return to your home institution.

Finally, be initiative-seeking and enjoy your time! Academics do work hard, but you have to show to your colleagues that you have a personality beyond the library. I joined the university football team, experienced the culture and lifestyle of a Middle Eastern city and made a host of friends on the way. It certainly was a new and uplifting experience that I wholeheartedly recommend to those wishing to expand their academic credentials. If you’re not successful in your application, don’t be disheartened, for the early discussions with your potential supervisor will certainly pave the way for continued future collaborations with that institution. Just keep hunting for opportunities, and eventually it will pay off.

 

Round 6 of the Daniel Turnberg UK/Middle-East Travel Fellowship Scheme is now open for applications. More details can be found on the Academy of Medical Sciences website. The deadline to submit applications is Wednesday 15 January 2014, 17:00 (GMT).

Applications are sought from clinical and non-clinical researchers from Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories and the UK, whose research falls within the broad scope of medical or bioscience research.

2013: Nature Middle East’s Special Editions

Posted on by
Reply

For Nature Middle East, 2013 has been an exciting year — with wider coverage of the latest in science and research from across the region, and the beta-launch of our monthly special editions earlier in the year, and regularly starting October.

Our specials section decided to go nuclear, in its experimental edition in April 2013, highlighting the four major players in the region on the this front. We explored the potential and ambitions of Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE in nuclear energy development. The overarching question was: What kind of progress these countries can generate as they muddle through complex politics and logistics?

Our debut in October produced multiple features and news pieces on one of the most feared diseases of the century: cancer, whose incidence is expected to increase in the Middle East more than any other part of the world. From cancer screening in Algeria, which sadly occurs too late for many patients, to a prevalence of advanced breast cancer in Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Sudan, and the presence of a uniquely vicious type of the malignant disease in the Arab world, our cancer special balanced statistics from the ground with eye-opening lab findings in this area.

In November, the spotlight has shone on stem cell research in the region — one that experienced a head-start when Muslim scholars green-lighted basic research using embryonic stem cells. Promising research, such as that carried out by a team of scientists in Egypt using stem cells to find a cure for diabetes, is juxtaposed against opinions by experts from the field on regional policies, and how to move forward, logistical problems and financing shortages notwithstanding.

Finally, in December, Nature Middle East decided to get closure by talking about the elephant in the room: the rising prevalence rate of the HIV and AIDS in the region, which remains to be one of the most pressing issues thus far considering how little information we have regarding its spread.

You can’t talk about HIV without tackling stigma, which, as it turns out, is a solid force in the region; thwarting proper assessment of the incidence of the virus in 10 countries, affecting the reach of treatment (and in turn its effectiveness), and putting up proverbial walls between risk groups and health workers trying to help.

It’s a mixed bag. Worrying trends persist in some countries; for example around 80% of people living with HIV/AIDS in the region are not aware they’re carriers of the virus. While in others, there’s a measure of progress, with countries like Lebanon, Morocco, Jordan, Syria and Tunisia, adopting a hard reduction approach to curb the virus.

2013 Year In Review: News highlights

Posted on by
Reply

Looking back, 2013 carried as much good news as it did bad news for the Middle East, especially so in the fields of science, technology and health.

Perhaps the biggest story so far—political turbulence aside—is Syria’s polio problem.

The outbreak of polio virus in Syria put the entire region at risk of infection of the once-thwarted virus, especially that refugee traffic in and out of the war-torn country continued unabated regardless of health risks. There are still question marks over how the vaccination campaigns were handled in war time, whether some areas were deliberately overlooked during vital health campaigns, and currently, how international organizations working in the region are planning to face up to the challenges of mobility and access, walking a thin line between attending to a public health emergency of international concern and maneuvering delicate politics.

The region had already plunged into 2013 heavyhearted with fears of the spread of another pandemic in the wake of the outbreak of the coronavirus, known as MERS-COV in September 2012. However, despite reported infections, some fatal, mostly in Saudi Arabia, in addition to Jordan, Qatar, UAE, and Tunisia among others, the outbreak did not warrant an international emergency status. In fact, research in 2013, has brought some significant revelations about the virus to light — including how complicated its transmission chain is, and how Omani camels may have been the elusive intermediate host that carried this virus to humans.

On the water front, both literal and figurative, 2013 saw the birth of a new partnership between Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. The countries will start feeding water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea, in the belief that this grand project — which involves installing a 180-kilometre connection between the two sees — will save the latter from shrinking. And the World Bank is backing their game, releasing a new study that considers connecting the two seas via a channel as one of the feasible scenarios that could breathe life into the Dead Sea.

But the region’s water predicament, as revealed in 2013, is much more serious than the shrinking of the heavily saline lake. The Middle East, it turns out, has lost a drastic amount of fresh water—a Dead Sea’s worth of that.

A team of scientists released satellite images of water stores in the north-central Middle East, taken between 2003 and 2009, showing that, during this period, there was approximately 143.6 km3 less fresh water in the region between Tigris and Euphrates, which includes Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

Now on the geeky front, things have been looking up, with scientists at Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz’s City of Science and Technology and Texas A&M University in the US, publishing a new “mind-bogging” study that shows that communication can occur over vast distances without a physical medium—well, at least in principle.

The scientists challenged the long-held belief that for information to travel in empty space, physical particles have to be transferred — they use a complex assortment of beam splitters, mirrors and detectors to illustrate their point.

Now, on the health front, the region’s women have some work to do. Like exercise, and counting calories. A new study reveals that a dramatic increase in obesity among Arab women is threatening to become a health crisis with almost half of adult females overweight in some countries – double the rate of men.

But as some women are getting fatter, on this side at least, some are actually getting smarter. Like Iqbal El-Assad, who graduated medical school in May at the age of 20—possibly becoming the youngest Arab doctor ever.

Perhaps hers is the most inspiring story yet, out of the Middle East in 2013.

El Assad, a Weill Cornel Medical College graduate, a Palestinian by birth and Lebanese by nationality, considers herself luckier than many men and women from her generation; at least she didn’t grow up on a run-down refugee camp as many of her Palestinian brethren who were forced to leave their homes did.  That said, she says she was always close to the suffering of her people; her parents took her on multiple visits to the camps, and she saw first-hand how dire and desperate the situation can get.

The young achiever says she learnt algebra as a toddler, and she spends her free time solving mathematical problems. She made the decision to be a medical doctor at 12.

Now if this is not a beam of light in all this darkness, this editor doesn’t know what is.