swine flu level 5

swine flu level 5

The World Health Organization has raised the swine flu pandemic alert level to phase 5 - just one step below the highest level. The decision comes as the number of countries with confirmed cases rises to at least 10.
World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan said the alert level was stepped up because influenza viruses are unpredictable and can spread quickly around the world.

"This change to a higher phase of alert is a signal to governments, to ministries of health and other ministries, to the pharmaceutical industry and the business community that certain actions should now be undertaken with increased urgency, and at an accelerated pace," said Margaret Chan.

The increase to level 5 indicates that there is sustained human-to-human transmission in communities in different geographical locations.

Dr. Chan said all countries should immediately activate their pandemic preparedness plans and countries should remain on high alert for unusual outbreaks of influenza-like illness and severe pneumonia.

"The biggest question, right now, is this: how severe will the pandemic be, especially now at the start?," she said.

The decision late Wednesday from the Geneva-based body comes the same day as Germany and Austria announced their first confirmed cases of swine flu, raising the total number of countries affected to 10. They include Mexico, the United States, Britain, Canada, Costa Rica, Israel, Spain and New Zealand. While Australia, France, Denmark and South Korea are investigating possible cases within their borders. Many of the infected persons had recently visited Mexico, which is the epicenter of the outbreak.

Assistant Director-General for Health Security and Environment at the World Health Organization, Dr. Keiji Fukuda, urged people to practice good hygiene, including washing their hands and covering their mouth when they cough, and if they become sick to stay home.

"If you are sick, if you have something that may well be swine flu, or any illness, it may be prudent to stay home until you are feeling better," said Keiji Fukuda. "This is a way of voluntarily preventing yourself from transmitting infection perhaps to others. It is also a way of getting rest and treatment. "

The most severe cases of swine flu have been found in Mexico, where the disease is suspected of killing more than 150 people and sickening hundreds more.

In the United States there have been more than 90 confirmed cases in 11 states. Earlier Wednesday, health officials announced the first swine flu fatality in the United States was a Mexican baby who was visiting relatives in the state of Texas.

aquada

aquada

Meselech Habte – one of the over 70 participants in the training session organized by VEGA-Ethiopia last week, a USAID sponsored programme that promotes Ethiopian businesses using the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) - is engaged in producing health and beauty care products.

She is among the businesspeople who aspire to have their products penetrate the US market; they hope the day-long training they took part in organized by the Ethiopian Chamber of Commerce and Sectoral Association (ECCSA) and VEGA-Ethiopia, would help them find a way.

After spending nearly 10 years in the business, Meselech considers the training as one opportunity to improve her business and start exporting her products - DM massage rollers and wooden hand-made massage equipment - to US consumers.

“I have introduced my products in different exhibitions and trade fairs over the years,” she said. “Now I want to export to the US market.”

The training held at ECCSA’s conference hall last Wednesday, April 1, 2009, was meant to help such Ethiopian micro businesses improve the standard and quality of their export products to the US market. This is achieved through the promotion of the products to consumers other than the Ethiopian community in the same country, and developing a culture of applying contemporary communication systems, such as electronic mail (e-mail).

But these are not the only problems.

“One of the challenges is that there is no packaging industry in the country,” Addis Alemayehu, VEGA-Ethiopia’s chief of party, told Fortune.

The mostly traditional business practice, lack of experience and the attitude that e-mail or Internet is a luxury are among the other challenges, according to Addis.

He considers this gap as a business opportunity for both domestic and foreign investors; thus advises establishing packaging companies as being lucrative.

Not more than five of the businesses that participated in the training have had the experience of exporting their products; nor have they ever participated in this type of training. After all, it is the first time VEGA-Ethiopia has organized such an event in conjunction with ECCSA.

Dubbed “Export Path Program,” the training has previously been held in several African countries, including Ghana, Nigeria and Liberia.

Emeka Nwankwo (PhD), from Vertical Optimization was the trainer. Vertical Optimization is a Washington based consultancy firm specializing in business development, product design, process and technology development, new markets and international development.

Nwankwo was born in Nigeria and obtained a Chemical Engineering Doctorate Degree from Columbia University, New York, in 1994. He has been the Chief Executive Officer of Vertical Optimization since 2006, and is also founder and Chairman (from 2003 to 2006) of Aquada Development Corporation Ltd, an international technology and manufacturing development firm based in Montchanin, Delaware, US.

It is the methodology, a well structured and disciplined process for assisting exporters develop their products; and it is about getting ‘Green Cards’ to the products, Nwankwo told Fortune.

“It is about making and selling high quality products in the international market,” he said.

Export Path, according to the trainer’s presentation, is essential for four reasons: international trade promotion is hard; the challenges of the public and private sector exacerbates these barriers; increasing competition in the international market does not help; and limited operational capacity in the private sector is a major impediment.

Phase One of the training is identified as Upstream Operations, which will work on access to information that is directly related to the product.

For instance, what kind of product is it? How much is it worth? What kind of package size and type is suitable with a branded package? How does the exporter find customers and how much will these customers be willing to pay? These were the points of discussion at the training session.

“Midstream Operations,” the Second Phase, deals with access to financing and capacity to put the product together.

Access to the market place is dealt with in the Third Phase, VEGA-Ethiopia has been instrumental in boosting Ethiopia’s earnings from exports through AGOA, especially from textiles, Addis told Fortune. Ethiopia’s earnings through AGOA have grown from three million dollars in 2005 to 18 million dollars in 2008.

If the training given is something that business people like Meselech can implement in their business to further penetrate the US market, perhaps it will be credited for fostering yet another increase in earnings through AGOA.

cow

cow

ON a stainless steel table in the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association test kitchen, a meat scientist named Bridget Wasser began dissecting a piece of beef shoulder as big as a couch cushion.

Her knife danced between long, thick muscles, then she flipped the whole thing open like book. After a tug and one final slice, she set before her visitor the Denver steak.

The three-quarter-inch-thick cut is an inexpensive, distant cousin of the New York strip. And it didn’t exist until the nation’s 800,000 cattle ranchers began a radical search for cuts of meat that consumers would buy besides steaks and ground beef.

The idea was simple. Dig around in the carcass and find muscles that, when separated and sliced in a certain way, were tender and tasty enough to be sold as a steak or a roast. “People know how to cook steaks,” said Dave Zino, executive director of the cattlemen’s Beef and Veal Culinary Center.

The Denver was invented after meat and marketing experts spent more than $1.5 million and five years on the largest study anyone had ever done on the edible anatomy of a steer.

The point was to increase the $15.5 billion a year that people spend at the supermarket buying beef. The association thinks consumers may pay $5.99 a pound for a Denver steak. As ground beef, it’s about $2.99.

“This has been an evolution in the way we think about taking apart that beef carcass,” said Chris Calkins, a University of Nebraska professor who was part of the muscle study. “It’s a profound shift.”

This year, the Beef Check-off program, which financed the meat study, will introduce five new cuts from the chuck. Four cuts from the round will be rolled out next year. A handful are already on the market. All of them have new names that are sure to confuse some shoppers and challenge butchers.

Selling the new cuts will mean persuading more than 600 meatpacking plants, thousands of processors and supermarket managers and, at the end of the chain, consumers who are already baffled by the names in the meat case.

Skeptics, who include old-fashioned beef cutters and a new breed of professional cooks who know European butchering techniques, say there is nothing new in a carcass.

Mike Debach, who runs the Leona Meat Plant in Troy, Pa., reviewed the cutting schematics for the Denver. His analysis: “This is just a glorified chuck steak that they cleaned the junk off of.”

Tom Mylan, a butcher who breaks down whole carcasses at Marlow & Daughters in Brooklyn, says the cattlemen are not inventing anything.

“The old Italians and French butchers have been doing this forever,” he said. The surprise, he said, is that it took the big producers this long to figure out how to process and market off-cuts.

“The difference in a good name is worth $3 or $4 a pound,” he said.

Of course, the names have to be good. One wonders if America’s beef roast, the name a focus group has given a new cut of chuck steak, stands a chance of becoming as familiar as prime rib.

The move to remake the supermarket meat case began in 1998, when meat scientists in Nebraska and Florida began pulling apart the chuck and the round, looking for diamonds in the rough.

The researchers studied 39 muscles, isolating ones that had enough tenderness or flavor to sell as inexpensive steaks or roasts.

In one tenderness test, researchers cooked muscles to medium, punched out half-inch plugs of meat and set them in a machine that measures the force it takes to shear them in half. Promising cuts were given names like the Sierra, the Western Griller and the Petite Tender.

“If we can dig out a muscle and use it in a new way that hasn’t been done before, it seems to me we are obligated to give that muscle an identity so someone can understand what it is,” said Dr. Calkins, the Nebraska professor.

Naming cuts of beef is a murky pursuit that is only lightly regulated by the government. Industry guidelines and even some local laws prevent butchers from calling a cut from the shoulder a flank steak or a piece of round a tenderloin. But there is no harm (except perhaps confusion) in giving the name Delmonico steak to any one of several cuts.