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.