Epilogue of the World Health Summit, Berlin, October 2022

 Epilogue of the World Health Summit, Berlin, October 2022

Almost everything discussed, health, sustainability, and planetary issues, were related to animal exploitation.  This was never mentioned.

Only one Speaker in the entire Summit, at the Closing Ceremony, mentioned the word ‘Justice’.  Injustice to non-humans is the cause of everything discussed in the Summit.

Zoonotic pandemic was foremost, followed by the NCDs of diabetes, heart disease, some cancers, mental health including suicide, responsible for more human deaths than the entire pandemic.  All are related to exploitation and eating non humans.

Another concern was Anti-Microbial Resistance, the focus of copious amounts of research, but not on the copious amounts of anti-biotics fed to unjustly incarcerated individuals slaughtered and eaten by humans. 

To their credit, the Hotel served Breakfast, Lunch, and Snacks which were mostly plant-based.  Items were elegant, imaginative, and delightful.  No one complained that there was no meat, and very little dairy.

The buffets at the World Health Summit taught more of a lesson than many of the high-level meetings.  The simple answer to the complex problems of health and environmental issues is a Plant-Based lifestyle.

 

 

Where Is Volodymyr Zelensky? By Sharon L. Wallenberg

President Volodymyr Zelensky, the most courageous, creative, and determined leader of our time, has not been seen recently.  

Concerned individuals are speculating if Zelensky has been assassinated as threatened by the Russians.  Ukraine has prudently made plans for government continuity in that event. 

International Representatives investigating War Crimes in Ukraine have recently uncovered mass graves of men, women, and CHILDREN dressed in civilian clothes, their hands tied behind their backs, and bullet holes in their heads.  

NATO nations seem to have decided to stop sending weapons to Ukraine in case they need those weapons themselves.  The United States supplies non-long-range weapons carefully designed not to inflict too much damage on the Russians, presumably to avoid retaliation to the US.

Does this remind of you Hitler’s attempt to capture then Czechoslovakia?  The Nazi aggression could have easily been stopped there.  However, nations found it easier to acquiesce to a bully then to prevent future bloodshed.

We are now in the next stage of acquiescing to the bully Putin, and it is becoming bloodier, and bloodier.  This is a replay of the appeasement of World War II that did not work.  Too many lives have been lost already which could have been prevented if nations had been willing to provide fighter jets and other necessary long-range support to Ukraine.

The blood of these innocent Ukrainian individuals is not only on the hands of the instigating and complicit Russians, but also on the nations which could have done more and did not.

 

 

 

When Will NATO Stand Up to Russia? by Sharon Leontine Wallenberg

The courage and creativeness of Ukrainian President Zelensky is in stark contrast to the lack of fortitude, and decisiveness of the leaders of the NATO nations.  President Biden could learn a lesson from his predecessor, President Kennedy’s response to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Direct confrontation and zero tolerance is the only effective means to solve a problem like the one the world now faces.

Not giving Ukraine the fighter jets needed is resulting in an extremely bloody and destructive war.  The mortality, morbidity, torture, and displacement resulting from this protracted war is inexcusable, not only for the Russians, but for those nations which have not given the needed fighter jets, while making outward shows of ineffective support.

In addition, the billions of dollars spent on sending band aid weapons to a patient fighting for life, not only causes extended suffering, but also unnecessary future economic hardship for the United States and other donor nations.

Poland, Moldova, Romania, and other nations hosting the countless Ukrainian refugees are among the few heros in this conflict besides the super-human Ukrainians.

While attention is on the unjustly incarcerated US citizens in Russia, where is the concern for the thousands of Russians also unjustly imprisoned in Russia?  Or those people forcibly ‘filtrated’, tortured and relocated?  Or the children forced to watch their Mothers gang raped and murdered?  Or the ten-year old Ukrainian boy ‘conscripted’ into the Russian army to kill his own people?  Not to mention the thousands of innocent peopled killed in a conflict not of their making?

I pray every night for peace and justice in Ukraine.  But right now, prayers are not enough!  Where is the courage of the NATO nations?

CHOLESTEROL by Sharon Leontine Wallenberg

Cholesterol is a white, waxy substance, not found in plants – only in humans and animals.  It is used in the membranes that coat cells and is the main ingredient in some hormones.  It is also in the thin cell membranes that surround each cell in the body.  The liver sends particles containing cholesterol from digestion into the bloodstream for the cells to use.  Cholesterol also acts as a kind of glue that holds the membranes together. Cholesterol is the basic ingredient of the sex hormones testosterone and estrogen.  

Human bodies need cholesterol and manufacture it on their own.  When humans consume other individuals in the form of meat, poultry, fish, and other non-plant-based foods, such as dairy and eggs, they take in excess amounts of fat and cholesterol.  Additionally, although it seems counterintuitive, eating fat and cholesterol causes the human body to manufacture even more excessive amounts of cholesterol of its own.  This is why vegans who eat oil, plant butter, vegan cheese, and non-dairy ice cream, can also exhibit excess cholesterol.  

The best, most healthful, sustainable and kind diet is the low fat vegan diet, and it is also delicious!

Social Media Intelligence Enriches Corporations Who Exploit the Defenseless by Sharon Leontine Wallenberg

The UN World Health Organization purchased services from social media intelligence to “listen” to billions of daily exchanges and conversations among social media users on digital platforms, websites, forums, Facebook, and monitor for key words, phrases, and gather, organize, analyze it on immoral and illegal marketing practices of multi-national formula milk manufacturers exploiting parents, mothers, infants.   

Formula milk companies pay social media platforms and influencers for access to pregnant women and mothers who are targeted with personalized social media content not recognizable as advertising.  Content is posted approximately 90 times a day, reaching 229 million users - three times those reached by informational posts with evidence that breastfeeding improves health for Infants and Mothers,

If current formula milk marketing strategies continue, that proportion could fall still further, while boosting companies’ profits of more than $55 billion per year globally.

“The promotion of commercial milk formulas should have been terminated decades ago,” said Dr Francesco Branca, Director of WHO Nutrition and Food Safety Department. “The fact that formula milk companies are now employing even more powerful and insidious marketing techniques to drive up their sales is inexcusable…”

 

 

 

Dairy in Chocolate directly related to Deadly Infection Outbreak by Sharon Leontine Wallenberg

The United Kingdom recently notified WHO of monophasic Salmonella Typhimurium infections linked to dairy in chocolate and distributed to 113+ countries. 

The United Kingdom National Focal Point reported a cluster of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium.  Evidence linked the outbreak to chocolate products.  Monophasic S. Typhimurium was identified in buttermilk tanks used to make chocolate.  Products included all Kinder products including Kinder Surprise, Kinder Mini Eggs, Kinder Surprise Maxi 100g and Kinder Schoko-Bons.

According to the United Kingdom Health Security Agency, the outbreak strain is resistant to six types of antibiotics: penicillins, aminoglycosides (streptomycin, spectinomycin, kanamycin, and gentamycin), phenicols, sulfonamides, trimethoprim, tetracyclines.

Salmonellosis causes fever, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea (sometimes bloody).  Symptoms occur 6–72 hours after eating food or water contaminated with Salmonella; illness lasts 2–7 days.  In children and elderly, the associated dehydration can become severe and life-threatening.

Salmonella bacteria are found in animals and their secretions, eaten as food including poultry, eggs, cattle, dairy, and pigs, and can be life threatening in some cases.  Don’t eat animals or their secretions!

Overweight and Obesity are Leading Causes of Death and Disability By Sharon L.Wallenberg

Overweight and obesity are leading causes of death and disability according to the World Health Organization European Regional Obesity Report, published by the WHO European Office for the Prevention and Control of Non-communicable Diseases May 3, 2022.  The report contains country-specific data drawn from the 53 WHO European Member States and reveals:  

Overweight and obesity are among the leading causes of death and disability in the WHO European Region, increasing the risk for many non-communicable diseases, including cancer, cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes mellitus and chronic respiratory diseases. 

Two thirds of adults in the WHO European Region, and one in three school-aged children, are living with overweight or obesity. 

The meat and dairy based diet is the source of fat and cholesterol which causes overweight and obesity.  The low fat, high fiber plant-based diet is the antidote to this health dilemma. 

Eliminating all milk products: including cheese, yogurt, ice cream and butter, as well as meat, poultry, fish and seafood, and substituting delicious plant-based alternatives will save human lives, reduce pollution and decrease global warming.   The plant-based diet is both delicious and healthful. 

Save your own life!  Go vegan!

 

PEACE ON ALL LEVELS By Sharon L. Wallenberg

 

Now more than ever, the world needs Peace, a peace that is on all levels: between countries, between individuals, and between species. 

‘As long as humans continues to be ruthless destroyers of lower living beings, they will never know health or peace.  For as long as humans massacre animals, they will kill each other.  Indeed, people who sow the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap joy, love, and peace.’  (adapted from) Pythagoras.

Let’s end all wars now and forever starting with what we do, what we say, and what we eat.  Pray for Peace in Ukraine and Go Vegan!!

 

 

END ALL WARS by Sharon L. Wallenberg

While war continues to rage in Ukraine, and the pragmatic, imaginative and determined President Volodymyr Zelenskyy continues to ceaselessly create innovative solutions, we can all hope for peace.  It is my hope that this can and will be accomplished, and that those responsible for the atrocities be punished. 

But what really underpins war, aggression, genocide and fratricide?  Here is some ancient wisdom:

As long as humans continues to be ruthless destroyers of lower living beings, they will never know health or peace.  For as long as humans massacre animals, they will kill each other.  Indeed, people who sow the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap joy, love, and peace.  (adapted from) Pythagoras.

It is my hope that the war in Ukraine ends, rebuilding starts, people who have left return, the healing process begins, the guilty are punished, and this never happens again.  And that all wars end or never start including war on the most defenseless of all, the individuals of other species.

STOP THE DEATH AND DESTRUCTION By Sharon L. Wallenberg

“The most urgent health care need is peace,” according to World Health Organization Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

In Ukraine, almost 1,000 innocent civilians have been killed, more than 100 of them were children.  Approximately 7,000 Russian soldiers were killed.  Without medical help, those who survived, but were injured are likely to perish also.

Along with the loss of life of innocent Ukrainian civilians including children, destruction of buildings, roads and infrastructure puts people with cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, HIV and TB, the leading causes of mortality in Ukraine, at risk.  Displacement, poor shelter, and overcrowded living conditions will increase the risk of measles, pneumonia and polio.

War has exacerbating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Only one-third of the adult population is fully vaccinated.  Critical shortages of oxygen impact the ability to treat patients with COVID-19 and other conditions.

Health care needs are immense for basic illnesses, and more complex issues like cancer, renal dialysis, maternal and child health, HIV, TB, and mental health.

Refugees and those displaced in Ukraine are vulnerable, especially women and girls.  Protecting them from abuse and exploitation of all kinds must be a top priority for hosting governments and international organizations.

Although Ukraine is rightly the focus of the world’s attention, there are many other crises in which people are suffering:

In Afghanistan, more than half the population is in need, with widespread malnutrition and a surge in measles, among many other challenges.

In Ethiopia, the blockade of 6 million people in Tigray for almost 500 days has created a catastrophic food and health crisis.

In the Syrian Arab Republic, more than 12 million people are in need of health assistance, almost half of them children.

In Yemen, roughly two-thirds of the population, more than 20 million people, are estimated to be in need of health assistance.

The life-saving medicine we need right now is peace.

Send MiG - 29s! by Sharon L. Wallenberg

 

The courage, resilience, resourcefulness, determination, loyalty, imagination, and resolve of Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian people in the current unprovoked act of Russian aggression is way beyond anyone’s expectations.  Also astonishing are the shocking actions of Vladimir Putin in waging a bloody, destructive unprovoked war against peaceful neighbors while telling lies to the Russian people.  This can only be described as pure evil. 

Failure of the United States and NATO to provide Ukraine with MiG -29 aircraft to defense of their lives and property in Vladimir Putin’s War, is nothing short of complicity in evil - motivated by cowardice.  No one wants a nuclear war – not even Putin.  The United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) should replace cowardice with courage and send the MiGs!

 

BABY MILK FORMULA IS UNETHICAL AND UNHEALTHY by Sharon L. Wallenberg

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and partners will launch a new report on baby milk formula.  This report is the largest of its kind to date and draws on the experiences of over 8,500 women and 300 health professionals across eight countries.  

The report exposes the unethical and aggressive marketing practices used by the formula milk industry in violation of international standards.  The report also highlights the negative impact of this aggressive marketing on the health and well-being of infants and young children from families’ decisions regarding feeding their babies and young children. 

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends “exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months of life” with “continued breastfeeding up to two years of age or beyond.”

Human breast milk is the best source of nutrition for human infants.  Nature has designed it as the perfect first food.  In addition, immunities from the Mother are transferred to her Infant through breast milk.  Baby infant formulas most commonly use cow’s milk as the primary ingredient.  Milk from cows is designed by nature to be the perfect food for baby calves, not baby humans.

According to the marketers of baby formula, many parents have trouble producing enough milk for their infants or don’t have the proper support to help them breastfeed, which is alleged to be very hard, and rarely comes easy to anybody.  This is completely unsupported by facts. 

Baby formula ingredients include whey and casein as a protein source (milk proteins associated with allergies and autoimmune disease), a blend of vegetable oils as a fat source, lactose as a carbohydrate source (a milk sugar associated with lactose intolerance), a vitamin-mineral mix from undisclosed sources, and other miscellaneous ingredients depending on the manufacturer.

Nestle is the most famous and infamous brand in child nutrition products.  The Nestle formulas include NAN, Good Start Essentials and Good Start Supreme.  According to a Nestlé Investor Seminar, the infant nutrition market is expected to expand to more than $92 billion globally by 2023.  The focus is on the health of the financial bottom line and not on human health.

Other companies with large market shares in the baby food manufacturing industry include Abbott Laboratories, which makes the Similac, Alimetum and EleCare brands, Mead Johnson and Beechnut.  Other baby formula manufacturers include Danone, a multinational food product company headquartered in Paris, France, Reckitt Benckiser, Abbott Nutrition, Friesland Campina, Bellamy's Organic, Kraft Heinz, and HiPP.

Baby formulas have been responsible for bacterial infections including cronobacter sakazakii and salmonella causing infant morbidity and mortality.

Nature has provided the best nutrition for human babies in human breast milk.  Although there are some circumstances which require nutritional alternatives, such as mortality or morbidity of the mother, or baby adoption, it is best to avoid enriching those individuals who place their own financial greed above the well-being of innocent individuals, including the mother cows and their babies who do without what is rightfully theirs.

Female Genital Mutilation, A Form of Supremacy by Sharon L. Wallenberg

Female genital mutilation is a performed on more than 200 million girls and women worldwide, and more than 3 million girls are at risk annually in parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia.  FGM is a global concern.

FGM involves the partial or total removal of the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.  Immediate complications can include severe pain, excessive bleeding, genital tissue swelling, fever, infections, tetanus, urinary problems, wound healing problems, injury to surrounding genital tissue, shock, and even death.

Long-term complications of FGM can include infections, bleeding, urinary, vaginal, and menstrual problems, the need for later surgeries, the sealing or narrowing of the vaginal opening may lead to the practice of cutting open the sealed vagina later to allow for sexual intercourse and childbirth.  

Women can go through repeated opening and closing procedures, further increasing risks.   Sexual problems - including pain during intercourse, decreased satisfaction, and increased risk of childbirth complications including difficult delivery, excessive bleeding, caesarean section, need to resuscitate the baby, newborn deaths, and psychological problems including severe depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, low self-esteem, and others can occur.  Chronic health conditions can occur throughout life.

Reasons to perform FGM include social pressure to conform, fear of rejection by the community, considering it a way to prepare girls for adulthood and marriage, associating it with cultural ideals of femininity and modesty including the idea that girls are clean and beautiful after removal of body parts.  The real reason is supremacy: of men over women.

“The position of the United Nations World Health Organization is clear: there is no justification – medical or otherwise – for carrying out female genital mutilation. It only causes harm and is a grave violation of human rights.”

 

 

 

 

 

Neglected Tropical Diseases Affect More Than A Billion People by Sharon L. Wallenberg

Neglected tropical diseases (NTD) are diseases that cause illness for more than one billion people globally, effecting the world’s most economically challenged people, disproportionally affecting women and children.  NTD’s are painful, debilitating, impair development, and cause 170,000 deaths worldwide annually, usually to women and children.

 NTDs cause deformed legs, blindness, social isolation.  Children suffer from

malnutrition, cognitive impairment, stunted growth, and cannot attend school. Disability makes working extremely difficult, resulting in unavoidable poverty.

 

The heart-breaking part of the Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) is that they are relatively easy and inexpensive to prevent and treat.  Some NTDs can be eliminated with safe and effective medicines administered annually or biannually.  

While relatively inexpensive annual medication can save lives and prevent permanent disability from Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) in the developing nations, individuals in the developed nations are suffering from, and expensively medicating, the preventable Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD) of heart disease, diabetes, some cancers, and obesity.

Moving away from the unsustainable meat, dairy and water animal diet would eliminate methane which causes global warming, waste which causes air, land and water pollution, deforestation, and most importantly, eliminate Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD) which could free up resources to save innocent lives and eliminate the Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD).

 

An Invitation To Zoonotic Disaster: Meat and Dairy by Sharon L. Wallenberg

Zoonotic disease, including Covid 19, is directly linked to human - animal interactions initially then transmitted directly among humans.

Meat and dairy production involves billions of high-risk interactions between humans and animals.  Innocent, incarcerated animals in the food system are relentlessly stressed, confined, forced to share space with dead or diseased animals, share bodily fluids and airborne pathogens, expel waste on each other, all while being fed a steady supply of antibiotics.  The physiological stress that animals endure weakens their immune systems making them much more likely to become vectors of disease.  The system invites zoonotic disaster.

Factory farms are epicenters of disease for humans as well as the billions of unfortunate animals involuntarily incarcerated there.  Thousands of genetically similar animals are packed together in unsanitary, overcrowded spaces. They are vulnerable to disease and stress placed on their immune systems by these horrific conditions.  Factory farms are ideal environments for viruses and other pathogens to circulate, mutate and ‘spill over’ to human exploiters.  United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) maintains that farmed animals are the weakest link in our global health.

An estimated 99% of the ten billion land animals murdered for food every year in the US alone are imprisoned in factory farms, and murdered with impunity. Innocent animals in factory farms or live markets are severely stressed, cannot engage in natural behaviors, experience frustration, and maladaptive behaviors such as injuring or murdering one another out of survival instinct.  Pigs can drop dead from the stress of being confined.  All these conditions make animals (amplifier hosts) more susceptible to pathogens, which then get passed on to their human abusers (bridge population), and the human population in general through zoonotic pandemics.

Expensive Health Care Doesn't Equal Good Health by Sharon L. Wallenberg

 

US has most expensive health care in the world and, according to UN statistics, some of the least healthy people in the world.  Why?  Meat and dairy!  Cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, & more, can be prevented, often reversed, with plant-based diet.  Eating fruits, vegetables is more healthful & affordable than meat and dairy which causes these diseases.

The meat and dairy based diet causes catastrophic health concerns - such as skyrocketing diabetes, cancer, heart disease, potentially devastating antibiotic resistance, along with accompanying rising health care costs. 

 

A plant-based diet is the best for optimal health – human, animal, and planet.  It has been proven to prevent and reverse heart disease, prevent and treat cancer, and prevent and reverse diabetes, the three largest causes of mortality and morbidity in both men and women. 

 

In addition, it is globally sustainable.  The meat and dairy based diet is not sustainable because of the vast amounts of water, grain, and land needed, and the pollution produced.  Methane from animals raised for food traps heat in the atmosphere much more effectively than carbon dioxide, making it the single largest cause of global warming. 

 

Political Subsidies on Meat and Dairy are Deadly! By Sharon Leontine Wallenberg

Last year, 149 million children had stunted growth due to poor diets.  Almost half of the children under 5 years of age that die, have undernutrition as cause of death.  One third of all people around the world are affected by malnutrition. Over 40% of all men and women, approximately 2.2 billion people, are currently overweight or obese.

The unhealthy, government subsidized, fat, cholesterol, hormone, antibiotic, and disease ladened meat and dairy based diet causes at least 8 million deaths per year.  In the next decade, one in two people will be malnourished, and an estimated 40 million children will suffer from obesity or overweight.

Eliminating government subsidies on meat and dairy in the high-income nations will substantially improve human health and save lives worldwide.  Politically induced subsidies promote deadly disease by making unhealthy food choice artificially affordable.  Worldwide, they force low- income nations into poverty and starvation by keeping world produce prices artificially skewed.

We all need to rethink our relationship to each other – of all incomes and species – to our shared scarce resources, to the treatment of flora and vegetation, to the planet, and everything on it.  We need to eat plants, not animals.

 

Low and Middle Income Countries Benefit from Generosity of USA Research by Sharon L. Wallenberg

United Nations World Health Organization and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in the USA, founded by Danny Thomas to advance research and treatment of childhood cancer, created a platform to dramatically increase access to childhood cancer medicine.  The Global Platform for Access to Childhood Cancer Medicines will provide an uninterrupted supply of quality-assured childhood cancer medicines to low- and middle-income countries. 

 “Close to nine in ten children with cancer live in low-and middle-income countries,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “Survival in these countries is less than 30%, compared with 80% in high-income countries. This new platform…will help redress this unacceptable imbalance and give hope to many thousands of parents faced with the devastating reality of a child with cancer.”

 Each year, an estimated 400 000 children worldwide develop cancer. The majority of children living in low-and middle-income countries are unable to consistently obtain or afford cancer medicines. As a result, nearly 100 000 children die each year.  This initiative strives to end this inequity.

 

St. Jude is making a six-year, US$ 200 million investment to launch the platform, which will provide medicines at no cost to countries participating in the pilot phase. This is the largest financial commitment for a global effort in childhood cancer medicines to date.