2014 | House of Wisdom

In retrospect, 2014 was a mixed bag for the region – with some significant research produced on one hand, but on the other, in some countries, education, health and sectors in academia received some hard blows as a result of conflict and war.

In Syria for instance, the risk of infectious diseases is at its highest, warned a study published in PLOS Pathogens. The crisis was branded “a public health emergency of global concern” – with vaccine-preventable diseases not only reappearing in Syria but spreading to other countries with the outpouring of refugees, such as Lebanon and Iraq, which itself is reeling from years of damage to infrastructure and a myriad of health disasters.

Outbreaks of polio were reported – years after the Middle East was deemed “clean” – with WHO, UNICEF and ministries of health rushing to contain it. But even the largest vaccination campaign in the region’s history couldn’t reach its target as hundreds of thousands of children remain vaccinated, especially with access to hot zones barred.

Measles and rubella continue to be a burden in Syria, and in one instance, the vaccine killed instead of saved. At least 15 children died last September after being administered vaccines that were wrongly formulated, probably turning families away from seeking it and leaving many children unprotected.

Also in Syria, the lack of medical personnel is forcing untrained volunteers to tend to the injured and sick in hospitals.

Adding insult to injury, a study in The Lancet this year says that civilians aren’t even a priority for hospitals in a country like Syria, torn by civil wars. Fighters take up the majority of the available spots. In other hospitals, doctors risk their lives when they treat patients from the “opposite camps.”

In Iraq, the Islamic State (IS) is spreading its own brand of terror – taking over big universities and closing them down, including the historic University of Mosul. The education hubs are now used as makeshift camps for the militants. An independent Baghdad-based research tells Nature Middle East that soon conducting quality research in Iraq will be impossible. Skilled professors are already migrating in droves, in fear for their lives. “Many won’t come back even if the conflict ends,” says the researcher.

The International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) conservation agriculture project that helps local farmers increase food production has been in jeopardy in Iraq since IS takeover. Insecurity, fuel shortages and lack of necessary equipment is breaking them, they decry.

Nearby, an estimated 3,900 schools in Syria had been destroyed or closed down during the first two years of the war. By April 2013, “22% of the country’s 22,000 schools [were] rendered unusable,” according to UNICEF.

The year 2014 also saw a comeback by Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), which killed and inflected hundreds worldwide across 19 countries, with most of the infections concentrated in Saudi Arabia, where the virus was first discovered.

Nature Middle East was lucky to exclusively speak to the Egyptian virologist who first identified the virus, telling us the story of “patient zero” who died from an acute respiratory condition which was later revealed to be MERS itself. The mystery of MERS’ transmission was not lifted in 2014, but at least some countries are speeding up research into antiviral drugs that could contain it, or hinder its spread. Still, the fact remains, there are no anti-MERS drugs on the market so far.

In fact, overall things have been going south – health wise – for many in the region; not counting conflict victims and health complications due to war. A silent yet lethal predator, diabetes, has been preying upon the masses – with 35 million diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in the region.

Essentially, we have the highest prevalence level of in the world – with 1 in every 10 people living with it. Type 2 is tied to lifestyle, while type 1 has to do with genetics, autoimmune and environmental factors – and the incidence of the latter is rising sharply.

The highest rate of type 1 diabetes is in Saudi Arabia, with a shocking incidence of 14,900 children living with the disease, approximately a quarter of those in the Middle East and North Africa.

But in slightly better news, the region has managed (so far) to evade Ebola, which transmits through direct contact with bodily fluids and gains access to the body through skin abrasions and mucous membranes. The virus, however, has culled many in the central parts of Africa, and has fatality rates of up to 90%.

In terms of research, the region has been more prolific. Nature Middle East‘s chief editor Mohammed Yahia writes about the freshly released Nature Index, which was released in November and tracks where high impact research is being conducted around the world, and it shows many positive trends in the region – with Saudi Arabia leading with 358 papers, followed by Egypt.

Examples of prominent regional research includes one showing how Neolithic North Africans began exploiting cereal crops at least 500 years earlier than previously thought, published in PLOS ONE. The earliest evidence of cereal crop domestication in North Africa comes from the Fayum area of middle Egypt, and dates back to around 4350 BC.

In Lebanon, researchers from the American University of Beirut identified an algae species that can be a possible source of superfood and cheap renewable energy. In neighboring Syria, it turns out, two areas have the world’s highest concentration of wild-growing crops. The potential for these crops, distantly related to today’s agriculturally produced crops, lies in their gene pool, and adaptability – something that can provide breeders with genes that could enhance crop resistance to stresses such as climate change, pests, and disease.

Other breakthroughs include: In Sudan, a stunning discovery of a 3,000-year-old skeleton with metastatic carcinoma challenges the notion that cancer is a modern disease, opening new horizons for specialists to research cancer’s etiology and evolution. The ancient Nubian is probably the first cancer victim in archaeological record. As well, dinosaurs lived in Saudi Arabia, it seems. Fossilized remains identify specific dinosaur species from millions of years ago in the Arabian Peninsula when the area was covered by lush vegetation.

That being said, this year was not easy on the region, and infrastructures that provide the backbone of scientific endeavors have bore the brunt of political upheavals. In terms of progress – if we choose to compare notes with developed countries – we’re only barely inching forward.

Independent or university-backed research in the Arab world, collaborations with world-class institutions notwithstanding, is not enough to help Arab-affiliated researchers catch up with an incredibly prolific West. Governments must step in, opines Nobel laureate Ahmed Zewail and the academic president of Zewail City of Science and Technology Sherif Sedky.

“Renaissance in the Arab world will not be possible without genuine government recognition of the critical role of science in development and policies providing commensurate funding for basic research and reform of rigid bureaucracy which thwarts progress,” the experts say.

And considering it’s politics that seems to be setting the region back, Zewail and Sedky’s words ring true.

It is essentially a tug of war – between competent scientists and experts who’re aspiring to propel this region into the future, and governments staggering to make ends meet for their people, giving science a cold shoulder in the process. The next year may not tell us who wins, but it may very well give us indications – through statistics above all – of who is tugging harder.

Turns out being popular might not save you from sneering, jabbing and harassment in school yards, a new University of California study concludes – the persecution is certainly not exclusive to those who are poor or “physically vulnerable.” In fact, becoming popular increases the risk of getting bullied, and worsens the negative consequences of being victimized, according to the same study.

“In contrast to stereotypes of wallflowers as the sole targets of peer aggression, adolescents who are relatively popular are also at high risk of harassment, the invisible victims of school-based aggression,” says Robert Faris, associate professor of sociology at UC Davis and co-author of the study, “Casualties of Social Combat: School Networks of Peer Victimization and their Consequences.”

“Do aggressors attack the weak?,” the study asks. “According to our findings, the answer to this question is: not as often as they attack the strong. Aside from a few isolated students, the highest rates of victimization are observed among students of relatively high social standing.” The brunt of it decreases however as students rise to the pinnacle of the hierarchy of social standing.

Being “easier targets,” girls face much harassment too, but are not under-represented in studies on school violence and bullying. And what usually goes unchecked is their repertoire of retaliation, like using gossip in counter strikes for instance. Girls are not always physically aggressive, while guys are expected to “defend their honor with brute force.” It’s a play between social expectations and constraints, the study explains.

It’s worth noting however that “girls do not harass other girls generally, but focus their harassment on girls who date,” since they pose threats to other female students’ social standing, and “represent potential rivals when it comes to securing a boyfriend.” It’s also interesting that once a victim of bullying, you put your friends at higher risk of being victimized by proxy.

“It’s kind of a hidden pattern of victimization that is rooted in the competition for social status,” the author was quoted as saying in a press release.

“We view aggression as fundamentally rooted in status processes, and we identify an overlooked class of victims, who, by virtue of their relatively lofty social positions, experience at least as much distress—at the margin—as do those for whom victimization is routine,” reads the study, which used social network centrality as an indicator of status. The research sample was predominantly white and African American but roughly split between genders.

There isn’t a country or community that is absolutely immune to school victimization, it seems – in Egypt alone, statistics by the National Centre for Social and Criminal Research suggest that 30 per cent of students suffer from some type of harassment or bullying in schools, and across the Arab World, a 2012 study published in the Arab Journal of Psychiatry, confirmed that the phenomenon is prevalent, especially among middle-school adolescents. In the United Arab Emirates, 20 per cent of teens are bullied, in Morocco, 31.9 per cent are, in Lebanon the number rises to 33.6 per cent, as per the same study, and Oman and Jordan reportedly suffer from the highest prevalence of school bullying at 39.1 per cent and 44.2 per cent respectively.

During reporting on sectarian violence in several towns in Upper Egypt, this writer has personally come across several cases where Coptic Christian students complained they were specifically targeted –sometimes physically attacked– by their Muslim peers for their beliefs. But no official figures or studies that assess the extent or range of religious-based bullying –or bullying of minorities– in Egypt have yet been released. The same goes for studies that measure the relation between bullying and social status within school hierarchy.

Bullying –unlike school violence—usually happens in the absence of provocation, and is marked by a clear power imbalance between the bully and the bullied. Recent scholarship, according to Faris’ study, even points out traditional views that saw bullies as mentally troubled or socially marginalized seem to be outdated, and that students usually harass their peers, not to reenact their troubled home lives, but to gain status.

I showed Faris’ research to Melanie Hayden, a secondary school counselor based in Cairo, Egypt. She found the findings “interesting” adding that she has “occasionally been aware of a ‘popular’ student being targeted in some way by others who saw them as a threat (either to their own ‘popularity’ position or a jealousy issue).” And as a psychologist, she “can certainly understand where a student trying to ‘work their way up’ the hierarchy is also vulnerable to being bullied, certainly before they’ve ‘arrived’ and they’re becoming a threat to others’ status etc.”

“For those ‘at the top’ I can see how they’re much less vulnerable due to the ‘power’ of being very popular, or very successful – and likely better self-esteem, which I’d think is a key factor,” she says.

It’s not clear however whether the conclusions of this study can be used to generalize about bullying dynamics across cultures; and whether or not school structures in the United States, or the degree of competitiveness between students in certain schools, contribute to the instrumental factors that shape this brand of victimization. Then again, sample students from the research played sports, went on dates, and lived with parents, at least one of who attended college.

These factors may not be present in many Arab schools that are often gender-segregated, may not be as ripe with extra-curricular activities as U.S. schools are, may not place strong emphasis on sports as an indicator of student status and are certainly more conservative than their American counterparts in terms of tolerating “cross-gender” relationships.

Finally, the study mentions how such findings related to bullying are not merely theoretical and carry practical implications—as they should—on national discourse; the ranks of victims are not exclusively dominated by vulnerable, socially marginal students, but are also full of many students who relatively popular, and who seem well-adjusted, at least on the surface. “We hope these more central victims, hidden in plain sight, are acknowledged in the national dialogue,” says Faris. “And that the current focus on bullying expands to include more subtle forms of harassment and cruelty.”

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