WHO official says world edging towards pandemic

WHO official says world edging towards pandemic

GENEVA (Reuters) - The spread of H1N1 flu in Australia, Britain, Chile, Japan and Spain has nudged the world closer to a pandemic, the World Health Organisation said on Tuesday.
The newly-discovered strain had caused more infections than seasonal influenza at the start of Chile's flu season, raising concern about how it would spread in the southern hemisphere, according to Keiji Fukuda, the WHO's acting assistant director-general.
The virus has mainly affected people aged below 60 and caused 117 deaths worldwide, including some otherwise healthy people, he said. For now, the WHO's pandemic scale remained at the second-highest level but the threshold may soon be crossed.

"Globally we believe that we are at Phase 5 but we are getting closer to Phase 6," Fukuda told journalists. "The future impact of this infection has yet to unfold."
He added: "It is probably fair to call the situation something like moderate right now. We do have some hesitation to call the situation mild."

The new flu, a mixture of swine, bird, and human viruses, remains most prevalent in North America but has infected nearly 19,000 people in 64 countries, according to the U.N. agency's latest toll, which tends to lag behind national figures but is considered more secure.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-SwineFlu/idUSTRE5514R920090602

Ancient water source vital for Australia

Ancient water source vital for Australia

SYDNEY (Reuters) - An ancient underground water basin the size of Libya holds the key to Australia avoiding a water crisis as climate change bites the drought-hit nation.
Australia's Great Artesian Basin is one of the largest artesian groundwater basins in the world, covering 1.7 million sq kms (656,370 sq miles) and lying beneath one-fifth of Australia.
The basin holds 65 million gigaliters of water, about 820 times the amount of surface water in Australia, and enough to cover the Earth's land mass under half a meter of water, says the Great Artesian Basin Coordinating Committee.
And it is slowly topped up with 1 million megaliters a year as rain filters through porous sandstone rock, becoming trapped in the underground basin.
"There is probably enough water in there to last Australia's needs for 1,500 years, if we wanted to use it all," says John Hillier, a hydrogeologist who has just completed the Great Artesian Basin Resource Study. Read article...

Download - Brochure.pdf

BACKGROUND BRIEFING: The Great Artesian Basin - the next water crisis?
As concern grows about how to share around Australia’s dwindling water supply, and how much to invest in engineering solutions like recycling and desalination, are we paying enough attention to the water we can't see?
John Hiller's Presentation, http://www.aussmc.org/JohnHillier3Dec08.pdf