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News/Event Item
Google’s Philanthropy Arm Leads Effort to Use Weather Data to Fight Disease
Sept. 1, 2008
After three months of unusually heavy rainfall in late 2006, an outbreak of Rift Valley fever in Kenya left 118 people and hundreds of cattle dead. Kenya’s Meteorological Department predicted the outbreak, but health officials failed to act on the warning until it was too late.
This month Google.org, the technology company’s philanthropic arm, is convening African health, weather, insect and climate experts in Nairobi to identify research gaps and opportunities for collaboration. In many countries, meteorological systems set up in colonial times have deteriorated, and the scant data gathered never reaches the health officials who could use it in an early warning system.
As floods, drought and variable weather increase, Google.org is looking at the effects of climate change on the distribution and severity of diseases like cholera, Rift Valley fever and malaria.
© 2008 The New York Times Company
For full article, visit:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/science/02glob.html
category: News from Other Sources : General Health News
contributed by Liza Nanni on 5 September 2008
Global :
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