Word: gambian
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...handler, Shirima Vendeline Emmanuel, who stands in a safe zone a few yards away that he has found a landmine. "Good boy, Samo," shouts Emmanuel, as he scampers over to receive his reward - a banana. Samo is not some exploited child-soldier, however; he is a bristly giant Gambian pouched...
...away from the bank of the River Gambia. Normally, the rusting blue barge would be packed with people and vehicles, while the road that runs up to the river would teem with taxis and trucks, traders shouting for business and farmers herding cows and donkeys. But this afternoon, the Gambian port of Farafenni is a ghost town. Bereft of customers, traders are closing their shops, pulling down corrugated shutters and tugging on the padlocks to make sure they're secure. A two-month-old dispute between Gambia and its enveloping neighbor Senegal has cut river crossings, the lifeblood of Farafenni...
Infectious diseases routinely leap from animals to humans, often with devastating effects. AIDS and Ebola originated in apes, Creutzfeldt-Jakob in cattle, West Nile in birds and SARS in a little-known animal called the palm civet. Last year the exotic-pet trade took a 3-lb. Gambian rat from Africa to Wisconsin, where it infected a prairie dog with monkeypox--the first occurrence in North America. From the prairie dog, it jumped to a human and ultimately to 87 people in six Midwestern states. Increased globalization means these alien diseases are borne around the world with appalling speed. Makes...
...less lethal relative of the smallpox virus, monkeypox has hitherto been endemic only in Africa. So it came as little surprise when health authorities traced the outbreak to 28 prairie dogs in Milwaukee, Wis., destined to become household pets, that had come into contact with an infected giant Gambian pouched rat while in transit with a distributor. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson announced an embargo on the importation of all rodents from Africa and a ban on the sale and transfer of pet prairie dogs within...
...idea is spreading. Last year more than 100 former circumcisers from across Africa grouped together and agreed to put down their knives and razor blades for good. Now they instruct rural women on health and childbirth. "We teach [the circumcisers] a trade that responds to their economic needs," Gambian Fatou Waggeh, an anti-FGM campaigner who was circumcised at 15 and is now 32, told a Rome conference in March. "[We] recognize that we must provide them with alternatives for training and [keeping their] power within the community...