Link hosts: Lynn Desjardins, Marc Montgomery, Levon Sevunts

Link hosts: Lynn Desjardins, Marc Montgomery, Levon Sevunts
Photo Credit: RCI

The LINK Online Sun. June 25, 2017

your hosts, Lynn, Levon, and Marc  (video at bottom)

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 A boy eats out of a ladle at his home in Ngop in South Sudan’s Unity State on March 10, 2017.
A boy eats out of a ladle at his home in Ngop in South Sudan’s Unity State on March 10, 2017. © ALBERT GONZALEZ FARRAN

South Sudan may not be in the enormously critical food crisis it was just a short while ago, but in June and July, the number of people in need of urgent food assistance will rise to six million up from 5.5 million last month.

That is half of the population in South Sudan and according to the World Food Programme, 1.7 million people still face extreme hunger – one step below famine.

Three years of vicious civil war along ethnic lines have contributed to an economic crisis that has been exacerbated by crop failures, sending food prices skyrocketing. The result has been a food crisis that continues to spread throughout the country.

Levon spoke to Canada’s International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau who returned from a four-day trip to South Sudan on Tuesday where she said the situation remains desperate.

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Huge numbers of people fleeing their own countries are placing heavy burdens on neighbouring countries sheltering them. © Sunday Alamba/AP Photo/file

The Sudanese situation is part of an overall humanitarian crisis.

Since 2000, the United Nations reports that the number of people who have been forced to flee their homes has reached over 65 million.

The UN human rights commission, UNHCR, says that last year, one of every two people displaced was a child.

While millions are living in refugee camps, over a million of them need to resettled in host countries.

Lynn spoke to Jean-Nicolas Beuze, UNHCR’s representative in Canada, who said his organisation is underfunded, and also that more countries need to come forward to help in resettlement.

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The fungus Aspergillus fumigatus produces a sticky sugar molecule (seen in this microscopic image as a speckled meshwork) in order to make its biofilm. It covers the fungus and allows it to stick to surfaces and tissues, making it difficult to remove and treat patients. Scientists from the Research Institute of the MUHC and SickKids have developed a new innovative technique aimed at destroying biofilms.Technique used: Scanning electron microscopy
The fungus Aspergillus fumigatus produces a sticky sugar molecule (seen in this microscopic image as a speckled meshwork) in order to make its biofilm. © Fabrice N. Gravelat, Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre

Canadian researchers in Montreal and Toronto have made a potentially huge breakthrough in fighting infections.

Scientists know that infectious microbes create a biofilm around themselves. It helps them stick to surfaces like artificial hips, heart valves, catheters, and even tissue.

It also protects them like armour against the body’s immune system and from drugs targetting them.  What the MUHC and Toronto Sick Kids researchers found was a way to destroy this “armour” and make the bacteria and fungus much more vulnerable to treatment.

It could mean that old drugs for which bacteria have developed resistance cold become quite effective again, and current drugs up to hundreds of time more effective.

Marc spoke to Dr. Don Sheppard of the MUHC in Montreal, co-lead on the research

Posted by Radio Canada International on Friday, June 23, 2017

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