Nepal makes first arrest over 'menstruation huts' after woman dies

Yahoo – AFP, December 6, 2019

Many communities in Nepal view menstruating women as impure and in some
remote areas they are forced to sleep in a hut away from the home, following a
centuries-old tradition known as "chhaupadi" (AFP Photo/PRAKASH MATHEMA)

Nepali police have detained the brother-in-law of a woman who died in a 'menstruation hut' in what is believed to be the first arrest over the outlawed tradition, officials said Friday.

Many communities in Nepal view menstruating women as impure and in some remote areas they are forced to sleep in a hut away from the home, following a centuries-old tradition known as "chhaupadi".

The practice leads to the death of women every year due to smoke inhalation, snake bites and even attack by animals.

Parbati Buda Rawat, 21, was found dead on Sunday morning in the western Accham district in a smoke-filled hut because of a fire she had lit to keep warm.

"We arrested the brother-in law of the victim yesterday for investigation after suspecting his involvement in forcing the deceased to stay in chhaupadi shed," local police official Janak Bahadur Shahi told AFP.

"I believe this is the first arrest in such a case."

If convicted, the man will serve a three-month jail sentence and be fined 3,000 rupees ($27) under a law introduced last year against anyone caught imposing chhaupadi.

"It is positive to see the police act proactively and it will help discourage people from following the tradition. But there is a long way to go to end it," said Radha Poudel, an activist working against chhaupadi.

Rawat's death is at least the third this year. Two more women have died of smoke inhalation in menstruation huts in neighbouring districts.

However, Poudel said that many deaths go unreported and authorities often sympathise with family members in reported cases.

Chhaupadi was outlawed in 2005 but is still enforced in parts of Nepal, particularly in remote and conservative western regions.

It is linked to Hinduism and considers women untouchable during menstruation and after childbirth.

Women are banished from the home, barred from touching food, religious icons, cattle and men, and forced to sleep in basic huts known as chhau goth.

Modi hails toilet 'milestone' as India marks Gandhi's 150th

Yahoo – AFP, Premal Balan with Aishwarya Kumar and Abhaya Srivastava in New Delhi, October 2, 2019

Experts say millions still lack access to a toilet, and that because of old habits many
of the tens of millions of new facilities that have been built are not even being used
(AFP Photo/Prakash SINGH)

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday declared the country of 1.3 billion people free of open defecation, and turned his sights towards eradicating single-use plastic next.

Modi -- whose claim has been challenged by experts -- made his ambitious "latrines for all" pledge when he first took office in 2014 and his announcement late Wednesday coincided with the 150th birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, an icon not just for Indian independence but also sanitation.

"In 60 months, 600 million people have been given access to toilets, more than 110 million toilets have been built," Modi said in a speech to 20,000 village chiefs in western Ahmedabad city in his and Gandhi's home state of Gujarat.

"The women of our country no longer have to wait for darkness to descend. Innocent lives of young children are being saved... the expense on healthcare has come down," Modi added, calling the achievement a significant milestone for the vast developing country.

However, despite huge progress, experts have expressed scepticism about his bold claim, saying millions still lack access to a toilet, and that because of old habits many of the new facilities that have been built are not being used.

Modi acknowledged that challenges remained, saying "we have to continue the journey to make India clean. We have to make this change in behaviour permanent".

"We have to make sure that the toilets are used for the purpose for which they have been built. People who are still left out must be connected to (them)."

Plastic-free ambitions

Modi, who stormed to a second term in office in May, also pledged to embark on another major project -- to eradicate the country of single-use plastic.

"Plastic is a big danger to health, environment and cleanliness. We must achieve the target of making India plastic free by 2022," he said, reiterating a recent promise.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's claim that India is "open-defecation free" has been 

questioned by experts, who cite data from rural as well as urban areas (AFP Photo/

Prakash SINGH)

While some states have already banned the use of such plastics, enforcement of the rules has been lax.

"I know that the use of plastic bags has already come down. Millions of households have taken a decision not to use single-use plastics," he said.

"This will benefit the environment. Roads and sewers won't get blocked. Cattle and marine life would be saved."

Toilet claim doubts

Modi's claim that India is "open-defecation free" has been questioned by experts, who cite data from rural as well as urban areas.

"Latrine ownership increased from about 35 percent to about 70 percent... That did accelerate the reduction of open defecation," said Sangita Vyas from the Research Institute for Compassionate Economics (RICE).

"But in December 2018 we estimated about half of people in the states of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan still defecated in the open," she told AFP.

She doubts the shortfall has been made up since. Those four states are home to more than 450 million people.

For instance across from Modi's office, on the other side of New Delhi, Vijaya relieved herself next to the tracks near Hazrat Nizamuddin railway station early in the morning.

"There is no toilet (where we live). We all go out in the open," she told AFP.

"We have been here for years and nobody has constructed a toilet, despite our repeated pleas," Kaveri, a domestic helper, said in her nearby home in the poor neighbourhood of Barapullah.

"We go out in the public and it's not safe, but what do we do?" said the mother-of-three.

Many of the toilets that have been constructed are often locked, used for storage, or some other purpose.

Cultural barriers, engrained habits or a lack of knowledge about sanitation also create barriers to more widespread usage.

"If you're going to change the behaviour of rural folk on a sustainable, long term, permanent basis, the only way you're going to be able to do it would be by first focusing on behaviour change," Santosh Mehrotra, a development economist at Jawaharlal Nehru University, told AFP.

Sierra Leone's first Ebola-hit community reconsiders its traditions

Yahoo –AFP, Jennifer O'Mahony, May 12, 2016

Bendu Alliou sits with her infant daughter outside a hospital in Kailahun, eastern
Sierra Leone (AFP Photo/Marco Longari)

Kailahun (Sierra Leone) (AFP) - Violently coughing up blood, the woman was close to collapse when brought to Kailahun hospital in eastern Sierra Leone from her village close to the Guinean border.

For nursing staff, the spectre of the killer Ebola virus had returned.

"My staff went into PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder)," said Samuel Massaquoi, medical superintendent of the hospital. "People said that if she came from near Guinea she had Ebola."

Hard hit by the Ebola virus the capacity

of the small hospital in Kailahun, Sierra

Leone, has been stretched over the 

course of the epidemic (AFP Photo/

Marco Longari)

Urging calm, the doctor immediately implemented the screening measures used at the outbreak's height, when Ebola cases arrived on a daily basis.

That was one month ago -- the patient was instead diagnosed with advanced tuberculosis -- but it is a clear example of how the the fear of Ebola still grips the heart of this community.

The district was the first in the country to record cases back in May 2014 after the initial outbreak in southern Guinea.

The virus killed around 230 people in Kailahun but its impact did not end when the area was declared Ebola-free a year ago: residents say entrenched attitudes to health and tradition have changed significantly.

"The outbreak started here. Every patient at that time was considered a suspected case," Massaquoi said, standing metres from the now empty triage building, where health workers in hazmat suits once worked in scenes resembling a horror film.

His hospital received a real boost, he said, with extra funding for equipment from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and targeted training for staff from Britain's Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.

"It was not like this two years back. It has improved significantly," the general practitioner said. That was reflected by an uptick in the number of patients admitted post-Ebola, many of whom previously viewed the hospital as a place of death, not healing.

Traditions upended

Kailahun's first spate of cases is believed to have originated from the funeral of a traditional healer in a village close to where the Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone borders meet.

Ebola sufferers were crossing to see her from Guinea before she too succumbed to the virus. Many west Africans believed Ebola was a curse, and turned to their local witchdoctor rather than attempt the long distances and meet the elevated costs of government health facilities.

"Ebola came, but it came with lessons. Most of them who treated Ebola patients died," Massaquoi said.

"It was only when the powerful healers started dying that people started believing this is real. We lost quite a good amount of them," he said, with many no longer as convinced of their invincibility.

Health workers in Sierra Leone are battling a teenage pregnancy epidemic that 

peaked when the Ebola crisis was at its height late in 2014 (AFP Photo/Marco Longari)

The Red Cross sought to engage the healers in the fight against the virus, persuading some to advise visitors that they could not cure Ebola, and pointing them to dedicated treatment centres.

Prevention in the form of better hygiene is highly visible in the proliferation of hand-washing stations at the string of villages that dot this rural district.

Another influential group has altered its activities post-Ebola in Kailahun: the female secret societies that dominate rural life in this part of west Africa, whose primary role is to initiate girls into womanhood.

Traditionally they would carry out female genital mutilation (FGM), a practice performed on 90 percent of girls in Sierra Leone, according to UNICEF.

But in 19-year-old Baindu Alie's village, they have stopped.

"(Families) are afraid, so there is less trust in the societies," she said.

The girls' loss of blood during the excision, usually performed with a razor, was now known to be a possible transmission point for Ebola, medical professionals in the community confirmed to AFP.

Survivor communities

Naima Morie, 20, lives down the road from the district hospital and is an Ebola survivor. Three of her family members were not so lucky, including a sister who died in her arms.

Morie had symptoms of fever, headache, vomiting and diarrhoea when she arrived at the Ebola treatment unit (ETU), and was driven there semi-conscious.

When she came round, "my whole system was very hot, boiling hot inside," she told AFP.

Morie made a full recovery, and in February gave birth to a baby boy named Joseph.

Health workers carry the body of a suspected Ebola victim for burial at a cemetery

in Freetown December 21, 2014. Reuters/Baz Ratner/File Photo

"When I was out of the ETU and went back home they were all rejoicing," she said, describing the reaction back in her village. "Now babies that are sick, they visit the hospital after seeing me survive."

Not everyone is so accepting. The stigma of Ebola remains a problem, and survivors have held protests in recent months against the government, claiming free follow-up treatment and scholarships for their children have not been delivered as promised.

According to Doctors Without Borders (MSF) there are more than 4,000 Ebola survivors living in Sierra Leone, and the virus killed many of country's already limited number of health workers.

Ebola is one in a long list of epidemics that have ravaged this community, each leaving its own generation of survivors and broken families.

Huge roadside signs in the district now proclaim: "It's not the end for Ebola survivors; it's the end for stigma", alongside more faded billboards that read "An HIV test saved my life".

Health workers assist a patient suspected of having Ebola on their way to a

 treatment centre run by the French Red Cross in Patrice, Guinea, on

November 21, 2014 (AFP Photo/Kenzo Tribouillard)

Related Articles:

WHO declares Ebola outbreak over

"Revelations of Darkness" - Oct 1, 2014 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Text version)

“ .. The Role of Gaia in Human Consciousness

One of those times might be frightening for you to know about, since it was a full cooperation with Gaia for your termination, and a pandemic almost wiped humanity off the map. A pandemic! Now, you say, "What has that got to do with Human consciousness, Kryon?" Pay attention, dear ones, because this is the day where the teaching was given by my partner, and he put together the Nine Human Attributes. One of the attribute sets included three Gaia attributes and one of them was the consciousness of the planet. Gaia is related to Human consciousness!

Are you starting to connect the dots? You are connected to this planet in a profound and spiritual way. As goes humanity goes the planet's consciousness. Gaia, Mother Nature, whatever you want to call it, cooperates with Human consciousness. If you spend 1,000 years killing each other, then Gaia will do its best to cooperate with your desires! Gaia will look at Human consciousness and try to help with what you have shown you like to do! Did you know this role of Gaia with you? It's a partner with you, fast tracking what you give to it. You may wish to review what the indigenous of the planet still understand. Gaia is a partner!

Pandemic: Don't you find it odd that in the last 50 years, when you have a population of seven billion Human Beings, with up to 2,000 airplanes in the air at any given moment, going between almost every conceivable place, that there has not been a pandemic in your lifetime? There have been five starts of potential pandemics over the last 20 years, yet none became serious. Did any of you put this together? Dear ones, when the world was far less populated a few hundred years ago, with no mass travel to spread a virus, there were still millions wiped out by a pandemic. With the increased population and mass travel, there is far more danger today than before. It doesn't make sense, does it? What happened to stop it?

When you know humanity's relationship to Gaia, it makes sense. Gaia is a life-force that is your partner, watching you change the balance of light and dark and reflecting what Humans want. It has polarity, too! Perhaps it's time to start your meditations with thanking your planet Earth for supporting you in the spirituality of your Akash, for always being with you, a life-force that is always present. The ancients started their ceremonies in that way. Have you forgotten?

Ebola

Now, I've just set the stage for the next subject, haven't I? Ebola. Are you afraid yet? Gaia is a life-force that is a part of Human consciousness. My partner put it on the screen today so you could see the connections [during the lecture series]. Now it's time to connect the dots. Dear one, Gaia is in the battle, too, for here comes something scary that you haven't had in your lifetime and you're afraid of it - the potential of a pandemic on the planet.

There's a very famous film that has some dialogue that my partner will quote. Some of you will know it and some of you won't, but here it is: "Have a little fire, scarecrow?" What are you afraid of? Darkness? Gaia is in the battle with you and is actively pursuing solutions through light. The energy of the planet is with you in this fight! The ebola virus is a shock and a surprise. It is propelled by ignorance and fear, so it can flourish. Look at where it started and look at how it gets its ability to continue. It expands its fear and power easily with those who believe it's a curse instead of those who understand the science.

Villages are filled with those who refuse to leave their family members because they believe the disease is a curse! FEAR! Instead of understanding that they should be in isolation from the virus, the family dies together through ignorance and fear. This represents how darkness works. Are you going to become afraid also? Dear ones, ebola will be conquered. Know this and be at peace. Pray for light for those in the villages who are afraid, that they can know more about how to keep the spread of this disease and live to see their families. .”

Tiny village becomes Indonesian anti-smoking champion

Yahoo – AFP, Andi Cora Uleng, With Dessy Sagita in Jakarta, 11 March 2016

Bone-Bone village looks like any other rural hamlet in Indonesia, but it is an unlikely

 champion in the fight against smoking in one of the world's most tobacco-addicted 

countries (AFP Photo/Cening Unru)

Bone-Bone (Indonesia) (AFP) - Nestled amid mountains in remote central Indonesia, Bone-Bone looks like any other rural hamlet in the archipelago, with a modest collection of houses, shops and mosques and people quietly going about their daily lives.

But it is an unlikely champion in the fight against smoking in one of the world's most tobacco-addicted countries, after it became the first village in Indonesia to impose a total ban on smoking.

"Thank you for not smoking, say no to cigarettes" reads a sign at the entrance to the settlement to Sulawesi, one of the archipelago's main islands, while another says "Please enjoy the scenery and fresh air in our village".

Children play football in Bone-Bone, the
first village in Indonesia that has imposed
a total ban on smoking (AFP Photo/
Cening Unru)

The move has inspired other villages around the country to follow suit and take the law into their own hands as the central government shows little sign of launching a determined, nationwide fight against tobacco.

Such bans are just a small step in a country where 30 percent of the adult population are smokers, and more than 200,000 die every year due to tobacco-related illnesses, according to public health experts in Indonesia.

More than two thirds of adult males in Indonesia use tobacco, the highest rate in the world, according to the World Health Organisation's Global Adult Tobacco Survey, although far fewer women smoke.

In recent decades, many countries in the developed world have launched campaigns to cut tobacco use, ramped up prices, restricted cigarette advertising and banned smoking in public places, leading to sharp falls in smoking rates.

While Indonesia is not alone among developing countries in lagging behind in efforts to tackle tobacco use, even by regional standards it fares poorly.

Tobacco adverts remain highly visible around Indonesia, on billboards and posters, it is the only country in Southeast Asia that still allows cigarette advertising on television, and the only one in the Asia-Pacific region not to have ratified a key UN treaty on tobacco control.

The domestic tobacco industry remains hugely lucrative and powerful, and it is common to see children smoking a sweet-tasting clove cigarette -- an extremely popular Indonesian speciality, which dominates the local market.

Village head Abdul Wahid stand next to an anti-smoking campaign poster that 
reads "Cigarettes are a killer" and "You the one who smoke, we the one who 
die" at his house in Bone-Bone village (AFP Photo/Cening Unru)

'I can save money'

But in Bone-Bone, it is a different story. Smoking has almost entirely disappeared among the population of around 800 inhabitants since the ban came into force a decade ago.

Rather than worries about villagers contracting cancer, economic concerns were what prompted then village head, Muhammad Idris, to implement the ban through a local bylaw.

He said that many poor families in the area could not afford to send their children to school because their fathers were spending too much on smoking, and the youngsters themselves got addicted to the costly habit at a young age.

While cigarettes are cheap by international standards in Indonesia -- with a packet of a local brand costing around the equivalent of a dollar -- a heavy habit can strongly impact the finances of poor families with meagre incomes.

"I went to college with 13 other students from this village, only six graduated, the rest dropped out because they spent their tuition money on cigarettes," Idris told AFP.

The ban was implemented in stages. In 2000, local authorities prohibited the sale of cigarettes in Bone-Bone, smoking in public places was forbidden from 2003, and then a full ban on both smoking and selling tobacco products -- for residents and visitors -- came into force in 2006.

A family works at a house in Bone-Bone village in Enrekang, South Sulawesi (AFP

Photo/Cening Unru)

Punishments for those caught breaking the rules include community service, such as cleaning up mosques in the staunchly Muslim village and their neighbourhood, while some have even been forced to issue a public apology to the entire village through a loudspeaker.

Amir, a blacksmith and father of nine in Bone-Bone, was forced to end his 40-a-day habit by the ban, but has found himself much better off.

"I can save money, I can buy what my family needs and -- most importantly -- I can pay for my children's education," said Amir, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.

About 10 villages across the country have followed Bone-Bone's example by imposing a smoking ban, a move made possible by the heavy decentralisation of power introduced in the archipelago after the end of authoritarian rule in 1998.

Government backsliding

But the numbers of people affected out of a population of 250 million remain tiny, there is little sign of an effective, national strategy to tackle the problem, while activists accuse the government of backsliding in the fight against tobacco.

In August, the industry ministry set a target for domestic producers to produce around 130 billion cigarettes a year over the coming four years, around fifty percent higher than the previous four-year target.

In 2000, local authorities prohibited the sale of cigarettes in Bone-Bone, smoking

 in public places was forbidden from 2003, and then a full ban on both smoking and

selling tobacco products came into force in 2006 (AFP Photo/Cening Unru)

"The government want our people to smoke as many cigarettes as possible," said prominent tobacco control activist Kartono Muhammad.

Indonesia's health ministry has produced a roadmap to fight smoking but officials admit implementation has been poor, with a lack of coordination between different branches of the notoriously bloated and ineffective bureaucracy undermining efforts.

In the face of growing evidence that smoking is affecting Indonesians' health and making them poor, the tobacco industry remains defiant.

Ismanu Sumiran, chairman of the association of Indonesian cigarette producers, most of whose members produce clove cigarettes, insisted smoking rates were falling and that "kretek" cigarettes are part of local culture.

"Even before this country was formed, kreteks already existed and were used in traditional ceremonies," he told AFP.

European toilets a mystery to many refugees

Refugees often find European toilets mystifying. Pictograms and instructions in Arabic don't always have the desired effect - but help is on the way in the form of a novel kind of toilet for all.

Deutsche Welle, 17 February 2016

The influx of more than 1 million refugees last year is German society's "rendezvous with globalization," according to Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble.

It's undoubtedly a rendezvous of different cultures. And in the rush to provide housing, cots, clothing, food, language training and health care for the thousands of newcomers, no one thought to explain Western-style flush toilets.

The mayor of Hardheim, a small town in the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg, raised the issue in October - and was ridiculed for thinking it necessary to admonish the town's asylum-seekers not to relieve themselves in gardens, parks, behind hedges and behind bushes.

European sanitation norms

The difficult and often tense situation in overcrowded emergency refugee shelters, tents and gyms isn't made easier by different toilet standards and rituals.

Squat toilets are traditional in many parts of the Muslim world. Baffled by ordinary Western-style flush toilets, refugees nationwide have squatted on toilet rims or the floor of the bathroom when nature called; others have relieved themselves in the shower stalls, leaving behind human excrement on the floors.

It's not a central problem, says Manfred Nowak of Arbeiterwohlfahrt (AWO), a social welfare organization in Berlin that currently looks after 4,000 refugees in six initial reception facilities in the capital. But it does exist, he told DW, adding that the severity of the problem depended on where the refugees were from.

Many refugees find themselves confronted with outside portable toilets

Many migrants will have never seen toilet paper before, and even if they have, water-free wiping is widely thought to be an unsanitary way of cleaning oneself. Sit-down flush toilets are a mystery despite the pictogram instructions that have meanwhile been put up.

Co-existence of cultures

A remedy is in the works, however: Sanitary specialists at the Global Fliegenschmidt toilet manufacturers in Coswig in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt have come up with a portable "multicultural toilet."

It's been on the market for just a few days, company head Peter Fliegenschmidt told DW. His company has sold squat toilet units for years, he said, but in the wake of the refugee crisis in Germany, the challenge was to come up with a combined Western-style/squat toilet. He has already received queries from organizations that run refugee shelters.

His firm specializes in portable toilets, which are currently in high demand for use in emergency refugee shelters. "Generally, about 60 percent of our toilets are found on construction sites, and about 30 percent are used at special events like fairs and concerts," he said. Equipping refugee shelters is a new development that's bound to be "temporary," he said, adding that he saw a market for the new portable squat toilet abroad and at construction sites, which often employ foreigners.

Fliegenschmidt's design is actually surprisingly simple. It's a regular Western-style toilet bowl with a sizeable squatting platform to the left and the right.

Different body hygiene standards

Toilet routines differ, and Islamic culture has detailed toilet etiquette.

Islamic countries traditionally use water to wash. The myreligionislam.com website lists 20 rules and practices "to be followed when answering the call of nature." One rule stipulates using fingers to clean oneself, and "if there are still traces," washing them with water. Cleaning the private parts "with stones and similar materials" is regarded as an "acceptable substitute for cleaning them with water."

Other rules forbid talking, singing, smoking or reading the paper while on the toilet. People are also advised to enter the bathroom left foot first, while exiting with the right.

Chinese herbal expert among Nobel medicine prize winners

Yahoo – AFP, Pia Ohlin, 5 Oct 2015

The portraits of the winners of the Nobel Medicine Prize 2015 (L-R) Irish-born

 William Campbell, Satoshi Omura of Japan and China's Youyou Tu are displayed

 on a screen during a press conference of the Nobel Committee (AFP Photo/

Jonathan Nackstrand)

A trio of scientists earned the 2015 Nobel Prize for Medicine on Monday for unlocking revolutionary treatments for malaria and roundworm, helping to roll back two parasitic diseases that blight millions of lives.

Tu Youyou of China won half of the award for her work on artemisinin, an anti-malarial drug based on ancient Chinese herbal medicine, the Nobel jury announced.

She is the first Chinese woman national to win a Nobel prize in science, and only the 12th woman to win the medicine prize among the 210 laureates honoured since 1901.

Irish-born William Campbell and Satoshi Omura of Japan shared the other half for an anti-roundworm treatment dubbed avermectin, derived from soil-dwelling bacteria.

"These two discoveries have provided humankind with powerful new means to combat these debilitating diseases that affect hundreds of millions of people annually," the Nobel committee said.

Tu Youyou, who helped discover the therapeutic treasures of artemisinin in lab

 work at the height of China's Cultural Revolution, was honoured with the 2015

Nobel Prize for Medicine (AFP Photo/Jonathan Nackstrand)

"The consequences in terms of improved human health and reduced suffering are immeasurable."

Tu, 84, has been chief professor at the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine since 2000.

She conducted research in the 1970s, at the height of China's Cultural Revolution, that led to the discovery of artemisinin, a drug that has slashed the number of malaria deaths.

Traditional medicine

The treatment is based on traditional medicine -- a herb called sweet wormwood or Artemisia annua.

Artemisinin-based drugs are now the standard combination for treating malaria since the mosquito-transferred Plasmodium parasite developed resistance to other drug types like chloroquine.

Irish-born scientist William Campbell was praised for helping to develop a new

 therapy against infections caused by roundworm parasites (AFP Photo/Jonathan

Nackstrand)

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there were about 198 million malaria infections in 2013 and 584,000 deaths -- most of them African children.

Social media users in China saw the award as a source of national pride for the country.

"Nobel Prize, good. More international achievements recognised globally represent China's rise," read one post on Sina Weibo, a Chinese version of Twitter.

The other half of the prize honoured Omura and Campbell for "a new class of drugs with extraordinary efficacy against parasitic diseases," the Nobel statement said.

Registered drugs derived from avermectin "have radically lowered" the incidence of river blindness and elephantiasis, both caused by parasitic worms, it added.

River blindness

River blindness, also known as onchocerciasis, is caused by a worm transmitted to humans through the bites of infected blackflies. Its symptoms include disfiguring skin conditions and visual impairment, including permanent blindness.

More than 99 percent of those affected by it live in Africa.

Elephantiasis, or lymphatic filariasis, is a mosquito-borne infection which causes grotesque and disfiguring swelling of the limbs.

Japanese scientist Satoshi Omura was praised for developing Avermectin, 

a drug that radically lowered the incidence of River Blindness and Lymphatic

Filariasis (AFP Photo/Jonathan Nackstrand)

Omura, a microbiologist, isolated new strains of a group of bacteria called Streptomyces, and successfully cultured them in the lab.

Campbell, a research fellow emeritus at Drew University in New Jersey in the United States, was born in Ramelton in County Donegal in northwest Ireland.

His role was to show that a component from one of Omura's cultures was active against parasites -- this became avermectin.

Campbell, who made his discovery while working for pharmaceutical group Merck, thought he might be the victim of a prank when the committee called to tell him he had won.

"You must be kidding!" the 85-year-old told the Nobel Foundation.

"First thing I did was to ask for a way to verify that this could be genuine because it just seemed impossible," he said, adding that he only believed it after checking the Nobel website.

"I humbly accept the prize," 80-year-old Omura, a professor emeritus at Kitasato University, said in an interview with the Nobel Foundation.

He thanked the "many, many researchers" who had contributed to his findings, saying he was "very, very lucky".

Satoshi Omura, professor of Kitasato University,

 reacts as he is congratulated by students after

 winning the 2015 Nobel Prize for Medicine, while 

attending a press conference at the Kitasato

 campus in Tokyo on October 5, 2015 (AFP Photo/

Yoshikazu Tsuno)

Juleen Zierath, the head of the Nobel committee, said she believed Swedish scientist and philanthropist Alfred Nobel -- who created the awards in his 1895 will, to be given to those who "have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind" -- would have been pleased with this year's choice of laureates.

'Saving lives'

"I think we have examples here that have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind. These therapies, they save lives, they prevent disability, and they prevent the spread of infection. And they also improve the life, the well-being of individuals and economic growth. So I think this is a great example. Nobel would have been happy," she told the Nobel Foundation.

This year's Nobel laureates will share the prize of eight million Swedish kronor (about $950,000 or 855,000 euros).

The Nobel awards week continues with the announcement of the prize for physics on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday.

The peace prize will be awarded in Oslo on Friday, with the economics prize wrapping up the Nobel season next Monday.

The laureates will receive their prizes at formal ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of Alfred Nobel.

Chinese herbal expert among #Nobel medicine prize winners http://t.co/z2Hk81ydCY pic.twitter.com/WxkeWY5Ndz

— Agence France-Presse (@AFP) 5 oktober 2015

Related Article:

"The Biggest Filter" - July 18-19, 2015 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Text version)

“..  The Biggest Filter that Hinders Truth is Your Biased Knowledge

The biggest filter of humanity, the one that keeps Humans from actual truth, believe it or not, is called knowledge. We speak of that which humanity perceives currently as knowledge. That which you do not know is, therefore, future knowledge. Now, every single scientist understands the difference - every single one - for they know what is coming is going to teach them what they don't know yet. This is part of the scientific process. Even so, they take what they know, or think they know, and completely let it temper the experiments for what they don't know. They base the future on what they know or believe, even though they know better!

A medical doctor will look in the past and he'll remember being taught about a time when humans would report to the barbershop for healing. That's when they would actually bleed people for healing. By the way, that's the reason for the barber pole having the red stripe on it - it's the tradition of barbers doing the bleeding. So back then, you went to get healed in the barbershop by being bled! This, of course, led to many deaths because there was no understanding of germs, sterilization or today's common sense. Doctors know this, and they laugh at how far you all have come from this. So doctors absolutely know that what is coming will someday be actually laughable, yet they are also absolutely and completely closed to what it might be. They just think it will be an advancement of what they currently know.  ….”

“..  Medicine - Where It's Going

I want to show you some other areas to consider. There are several categories that we'd like to talk about, but they're not in a specific order except for the last one. So let's talk about medicine. What is future medicine going to look like?

The most elegant predictions of medicine fall short of what's really coming. What you have today is a high-tech approach to designer chemistry. Now, since the body is made up of chemistry, it makes sense to look at this chemistry and work with it. It makes total sense to discover how it reacts to disease and then design cures with more chemistry. It's absolutely normal what you have done, but it's going to reach an end very soon. Because the future of medicine is physics, dear ones, not chemistry.

You're going to start understanding and developing new medical physics. You will discover that medi-physics is going to literally speak to cellular structure and give it instructions, without one chemical involved. There's always a reaction to chemistry, isn't there? There's always a side effect. When you push one thing, something else reacts, doesn't it? How do you like it so far? Your most elegant chemical designs, the ones that are helping with the worst diseases on the planet, all have side effects - and some of those side effects are death! I say to you, how do you like it so far?

Does it really seem elegant to you? Or perhaps it's just a more sophisticated way of bleeding in the barbershop? Dear ones, that's how you're going to look at it someday! You're going to slap your heads and say, "Remember the day when we did everything with chemistry and drugs?"

Right now, these kinds of changes have already started in several areas. There are discoveries being made that are healing some of the most heart-breaking diseases you have. I reveal one, because it's not a secret. I will always give you information that is either being worked on or has been postulated through free choice on this planet. That is the guideline of channelling. We can't give it to you. You've got to develop it yourself. However, we can put you in an energy that has a faster discovery potential - that is to say, discoveries become more obvious.

Alzheimer's is heart breaking. There are millions on this planet who develop this condition, more all the time. You're living longer and a plaque-like material that literally obfuscates your memory within the brain is becoming more common. It clings to certain parts of your brain, encrusting and restricting it, imprisoning the Human's ability to remember and eventually process information at all. The result is death, slow death. It's caused by your environment, a fact which will be discovered eventually. Your long-lived Ancients didn't have it.

It's going to be cured with physics. Your science is starting to find out that the plaque-like substance has a resonance that allows it to be weakened with sound. High-frequency sound, tuned to a certain frequency and amplitude, will cause the sheaths to weaken, dissolve, and come off. There's a lot of research to do yet, but it's a Eureka! moment - realizing that physics alone, without chemistry, can change the structure of biology. This is with no side effects whatsoever. It's coming, it's coming.

There are those working with fresh umbilical cord stem cells right now who are using pure physics to guide the stem cells to a specific destination in the body in order to repair failing systems. Dear ones, the future of health and healing is not through better chemistry, yet medicine is still waiting for better pills! Did you connect the dots and realize that all biology is physics based? There is magnetics, leverage, the energy of consciousness, electricity and much more within cellular structure. With physics alone, you can "tune in" to disease and destroy it! You can fine-tune your system with cooperative resonances and extend life with benevolent, physical assistance. Sixteen years ago, I told you this when I spoke of the Temple of Rejuvenation. I described the super-cooling needed to do it and the temperatures needed to work with it (-55C). This is physics!

Now, the false expectation of greater chemistry for the future is totally caused from the filter of knowledge. What you have and know then gives you your expectation of what is going to take place. It literally blocks you from seeing some of the potentials that you may have.  ….”