ROTTERDAM, October 14 -- Ebola is threatening much of the world’s chocolate supply. Ivory Coast, the world’s largest producer of cacao, the raw ingredient in M&M’s, Butterfingers and Snickers Bars, has shut down its borders with Liberia and Guinea, putting a major crimp on the workforce needed to pick the beans that end up in chocolate bars and other treats just as the harvest season begins. The West African nation of about 20 million — also known as Côte D’Ivoire — has yet to experience a single case of Ebola, but the outbreak already could raise prices. The world’s chocolate makers have taken notice. The World Cocoa Foundation is working now to collect large donations from Nestlé, Mars and many of its 113 other members for its Coca Industry Response to Ebola Initiative. The initiative hasn’t been publicly unveiled, but the WCF plans to announce details Wednesday, during its annual meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, on how the money will fuel Red Cross and Caritas Internationalis work to help the infected and staunch Ebola’s spread. Morristown, N.J.-based Transmar Group, an international cocoa supplier, already has pledged $100,000, and Mars has indicated its support, too. “As a member of the WCF and a supporter of the CocoaAction strategy, Mars is pleased to see the industry coming together to help organizations on the ground in the prevention and eradication of the Ebola virus,” the company said in a statement provided to POLITICO. “We look forward to the WCF partnership meeting in Copenhagen next week where we will learn more about the industry effort.” Ivory Coast, which produces about 1.6 million metric tons of cacao beans per year — roughly 33 percent of the world’s total, according to data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization — closed its borders in August to Guinea and Liberia. More than 8,000 have been diagnosed with Ebola, and nearly 4,000 have died in those two countries and Sierra Leone. Next to Ivory Coast is Ghana, the world’s third-largest producer of cacao beans — 879,348 metric tons per year — or 15 percent of the world’s total. Tim McCoy, a senior adviser for the WCF, said signs that Ivory Coast residents already are concerned were immediately obvious during his last trip to the country in September. “Going into meetings where … you always shake hands and often times, with men and women, you do the cheek kiss thing … They weren’t doing that,” McCoy said. The market is worried, too. Prices on cocoa futures jumped from their normal trading range of $2,000 to $2,700 per ton, to as high as $3,400 in September over concerns about the spread of Ebola to Côte D’Ivoire, noted Jack Scoville, an analyst and vice president at the Chicago-based Price Futures Group. Since then, prices have yo-yoed down to $3,030 and then back to $3,155 in the past couple of weeks.
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Africa has been politically backward and naïve throughout the last century with so many atrocities, anomalies and injustices. Its children thought that, one day, things will be better, but since the era of independence dawned the situation has remained the same or even got worse. Ills, evils and self-destructions of all kinds continue to plague the African continent. Africa has lost its natural, human and material resources to wars and massacres. Coups and counter-coups have continued to play havoc with African society. Should confidence have been reposed in the statements of the likes of Kwameh Nkrumah, Thomas Sankara and Patrice Lumumba, to the effect that Africa's problems will turn to brightness? Is there any optimism for Africa? Will African children live to see this happen? One may ask why Africa has remained the poorest continent the world has ever produced. The answer is simple. Firstly, the self-centredness and mass corruption of African leaders plays a pivotal role in the continent's Waterloo. Most African heads only came into power to enrich themselves. The poor and the underprivileged are always the victims of these despots. Statistics have revealed that millions of African farmers go without a piece of farmland when their leaders have uncountable hectares of farmland in and out of the continent; millions are dying of sicknesses and diseases everyday when potential medical facilities would be more than enough; millions are suffering from starvation and malnutrition when there is sufficient food; and millions more are living in absolute poverty when individual leaders are saving millions of dollars in foreign banks for their own interests. Secondly, the intolerance and lack of respect for one another among Africans, combined to invite trouble in Africa. Africans are killing each other and destroying the continent's resources all because of these leaders' power hunger. It is enough to mention the gun rule and slaughtering of people in Algeria, massacres in Burundi, Angola, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and killing of innocent civilians in Cassamance (southern Senegal) among others. These indicate that African leaders are themselves responsible for Africa's underdevelopment and political mayhem. With this era of political ignorance and naivety occupying Africa, there is more than ever need for a continent, indeed a world, without leaders or political borders. As we entered the dawn of the new millennium, intellectual sycophants have started howling and trumpeting that it will be a millennium of African peace and development. One renowned intellectual was quoted as saying that "in the next millennium, Europeans will come to Africa as refugees." Is it not during this prelude stage of the millennium that floods occurred in Mozambique, killing hundreds of people? That hunger and starvation entered Ethiopia? That thousands died in Nigeria as a result of the religious wars? That mass religious suicide occurred in Uganda? That the senseless land dispute heated up in Zimbabwe? And the wars in Rwanda, Cassamance and Burundi intensified? With these madnesses in our midst, only the insane would predict a bright future for Africa. Until socialist politics is introduced in Africa, the gloom of this "Heart of Darkness" shall continue. LONDON, October 10 -- Health authorities in many European countries have been preparing for the possible arrival of suspected and confirmed cases of Ebola, following guidelines issued by the World Health Organisation. The British government announced on Thursday it was stepping up its Ebola screening at airports, responding to growing public fears about the spread of the virus to Europe, and following reports of the death of a British citizen in Macedonia. The government announced that screening will start at London’s Heathrow and Gatwick airports, and at the Eurostar train terminal. British authorities said travellers from Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea will be asked about recent travel, who they have been in contact with and their onward travel plans. Medical assessment could be given by trained staff on site. The Russian Emergencies Ministry displayed on Thursday a Russian plane designed to transfer any infected Ebola patients. The ministry has also offered help to European states to work with those who are infected with Ebola. The news of the unidentified Briton's death in Skopje on Thursday comes as the head of the World Bank and West African leaders warned that the virus threatens the entire African continent. Health officials in the Macedonian capital, however, cautioned that the diagnosis could not be confirmed until a German laboratory had completed its analysis. Britain's Foreign Office in London said it was investigating the case. The Briton was taken to Skopje's hospital for Infectious Diseases after the hotel where he was staying called the emergency services, Macedonia's health ministry spokeswoman Jovanka Kostovska said. He complained of stomach pain and "refused to eat or to see a doctor," she said. The patient was admitted to the hospital and passed away shortly after. Officials said the man's symptoms, and the speed at which they developed, led them to suspect Ebola. Under quarantine The Skopje hotel where he was staying was sealed off and those thought to have had contact with him were put under quarantine. Health officials did not name the victim, saying only that he was born in 1956. The man arrived in Macedonia from London on October 2 and was not thought to have travelled to any countries affected by the Ebola virus, his friends were reported to have said. The world's largest outbreak of the disease has killed 3,865 people out of 8,033 infected so far this year, mainly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, according to the World Health Organisation's latest count. Source: Agencies BEIJING, September 24 -- The government of China has offered Ebola disease prevention materials worth $840,000 to Benin, an unnamed source in Cotonou told Xinhua on Wednesday. The corresponding agreement was signed by Benin's Foreign Minister Arifari Bako Nassirou and China's ambassador to the country Tao Weiguang on Monday. Weiguang also announced that the Chinese Embassy would give $20,000 to the Benin Red Cross to speed up preparations for the Ebola disease. The current Ebola outbreak was first reported in the beginning of the year in Guinea and then spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Senegal. The Ebola death toll in West Africa has risen to more than 2,800 since the epidemic started, according to the latest WHO estimates. There has been no recorded Ebola cases in Benin yet but the country, which borders Nigeria in the east, fears that commercial traffic from Lagos (Nigeria's economic capital) might trigger the outbreak of the disease. There is no officially approved medication for Ebola. However, several countries, including Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Japan, are currently working on vaccines. Source: Xinhua WASHINGTON, September 16 -- The United States plans to send 3,000 military personnel to the West African countries fighting against the Ebola outbreak, according to the President Barack Obama administration. Obama, who has called the US response to the disease a “national-security priority,” is expected to detail the plan during his visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta later on day. Washington plans to construct 17 new Ebola treatment units for a total of 1,700 beds. The effort will also see the US train 500 health workers per week. The United States has called an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on Thursday to discuss the Ebola crisis in West Africa. The death toll from the Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa has exceeded 2,400 among 4,784 reported cases, the World Health Organization (WHO) said last week. Most victims died in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. WHO officials expect several thousand more cases in Liberia over the next three weeks. The worst-ever Ebola outbreak began in December 2013 in Guinea. Cases have also been reported in Nigeria, where eight people died, and in Senegal, where one patient is being treated in hospital. The Ebola virus disease (formerly known as Ebola haemorrhagic fever) was first reported in 1976 in Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) and took its name from the river, in the northern Congo basin of central Africa, near which the first outbreak occurred. It is a severe, often fatal illness, with a case fatality rate of up to 90% The infection is transmitted by direct contact with the blood, body fluids and tissues of infected animals or people. Severely ill patients require intensive supportive care. Source: Agencies BANGKOK, September 12 [5:15pm, GMT] -- A Dutch man suspected of having contracted the deadly Ebola virus has been cleared of the disease by a first round of blood tests, health authorities said on Friday. Dr Naruemol Sawanpanyalert, public health expert of the Department of Medical Services, said results from the tests conducted by the Faculty of Medicine of Chulalongkorn University and the Department of Medical Sciences showed the 52-year-old Netherlands national, who arrived from Africa with a fever, only had the flu. The man departed from Ebola-stricken Nigeria Aug 28. He arrived at Suvarnabhumi airport on Wednesday and, that night, his body temperature rose to 38 degrees Celsius. Isolated at Rajavithi Hospital in Bangkok, the man's temperature dropped to 37 degrees and he exhibited the general symptoms of the flu on Friday, Dr Naruemol said. The second round of blood tests is set for Monday, five days after the illness was spotted, which is according to standard practices. If the second round shows negative results again, the man will be discharged. Dr Opas Karnkavinpong, deputy director-general of the Department of Disease Control, added that monitoring of 21 people who were in close contact with the patient would also be lifted if tests proved negative. He said there have been no reported cases of Ebola in Thailand and only two had warranted testing. The first one was a Guinean woman who eventually was diagnosed with malaria. About 1,100 people had arrived in Thailand from countries with Ebola outbreaks and none of them had showed any serious clue of the disease, Dr Opas said. GENEVA, September 9 -- The World Health Organization has warned that Liberia is set to see a huge spike in infections from the Ebola epidemic ravaging west Africa, with thousands of new cases imminent. The UN agency on Monday said the country, worst-hit in the outbreak with almost 1,100 deaths, faced "many thousands" of new infections in the next three weeks. "WHO and its director-general will continue to advocate for more Ebola treatment beds in Liberia and elsewhere, and will hold the world accountable for responding to this dire emergency with its unprecedented dimensions of human suffering," it said in a statement. The deadliest Ebola epidemic the world has ever seen is spreading across west Africa, with Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone the countries worst affected. The death toll has topped 2,000, out of nearly 4,000 people infected. Liberia already accounts for about half of all cases and deaths, and "the number of new cases is increasing exponentially", the WHO warned. Key development partners trying to help Liberia respond to the outbreak "need to prepare to scale up their current efforts by three- to four-fold," it added. The countries bearing the brunt of the epidemic are among the world's poorest, with dilapidated medical infrastructures that have all but buckled under the strain of trying to contain the virus. Before the outbreak, Liberia had only one doctor to treat every 100,000 patients in a total population of 4.4 million people. Now that 152 healthcare workers in the country have been infected and 79 have died, the WHO said the ratio had worsened significantly. "Every infection or death of a doctor or nurse depletes response capacity significantly," it said.
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