BEMA's March 12, 2014 Meet & Greet at Busboys & Poets. NEMA Policy and Leadership Forum

Enough of the snow already!

9 Days Left before our next meeting.   For those members needing an extra incentive Busboys & Poets will also be having the following event that evening:

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

ZAMI presents author Melinda Chateauvert to sign and discuss

"Sex Workers Unite: A History of the Movement from Stonewall to Slutwalk" 6:30pm @ 5th & K
Wed Night Open Mic Poetry 9pm @ 5th & K, $5

Before you really start to get into your pre-Spring workout come out to BEMA’s Wednesday, March 12, 2014 ‘Meet & Greet’ at Busboys and Poets 5^th & K-Street N.W. location to meet members visiting the area to attend the 2014 NEMA Mid-Year Policy & Leadership Forum March 9-14^th  by the National Emergency Management Association (NEMA).  See registration information listed below.

The Winter Season is just about over.  So come on out and enjoy.  Let’s talk about BEMA, the snow storm, laugh a little about your snow shoveling horror, or share a little pain. 

“Did your car really do a 360-degree spinout”?

Date:    Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Time:   5:30 PM – 9:00 PM

Location:

              Busboys & Poets

              5^th and K Street, N.W.

              Washington, D.C.

Parking:

a.      On Street

b.     Off Street Parking

  -Parking lot

  -Basement of neighboring Safeway Store

Public Transportation:

a.      Gallery Place\Chinatown

b.      Mt.Vernon Square\7^th Street Convention Center

See you there! 

Black Emergency Managers Association  

1231  Good Hope Road  S.E.

Washington, D.C.  20020

Office:   202-618-9097 

bEMA 

Leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders.   Tom Peters

…….The search is on.

National Emergency Management Association (NEMA)

Registration is now open for the Registration is now open for the 2014 NEMA Mid-Year Policy & Leadership Forum March 9-14^th at the Hilton Alexandria Mark Center in Alexandria, Virginia. 

REGISTER NOW

Register on or before January 12^th, 2014 to receive a $50.00 discount

Exhibitor and sponsorship opportunities are still available.  Please contact Karen Cobuluis for additional information or to secure your space.

Please visit our website for additional information and conference materials.

at the Hilton Alexandria Mark Center in Alexandria, Virginia. 

b in BEMA is still non-negotiable.

BUSBOYS AND POETS TRIBAL STATEMENT...

Busboys and Poets is a community where racial and cultural connections are consciously uplifted...

a place to take a deliberate pause and feed your mind, body and soul...a space for art, culture and

politics to intentionally collide...

we believe that by creating such a space we can inspire social change and begin to transform our community and the world.

Middle Eastern Virus More Widespread Than Thought 28 February 2014

http://news.sciencemag.org/africa/2014/02/middle-eastern-virus-more-widespread-thought

Middle Eastern Virus More Widespread Than Thought

28 February 2014 12:45 pm

Bernard Gagnon/Wikimedia Commons

Trail of infection. Scientists have found MERS virus in camels from Sudan and Ethiopia, suggesting the virus is more widespread than previously thought.

It's called Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS, after the region where almost all the patients have been reported. But the name may turn out to be a misnomer. A new study has found the virus in camels from Sudan and Ethiopia, suggesting that Africa, too, harbors the pathogen. That means MERS may sicken more humans than previously thought—and perhaps be more likely to trigger a pandemic.

MERS has sickened 183 people and killed 80, most of them in Saudi Arabia. A couple of cases have occurred in countries outside the region, such as France and the United Kingdom, but those clusters all started with a patient who had traveled to the Middle East before falling ill.

Scientists have uncovered more and more evidence implicating camels in the spread of the disease. They found that a large percentage of camels in the Middle East have antibodies against MERS in their blood, while other animals, such as goats and sheep, do not. Researchers have also isolated MERS virus RNA from nose swabs of camels in Qatar, and earlier this week, they showed that the virus has circulated in Saudi Arabian camels for at least 2 decades.

Malik Peiris, an infectious disease researcher at the University of Hong Kong, and colleagues expanded the search to Africa. In a paper published last year, they showed that camels in Egypt carried antibodies against MERS. For the new study, they took samples from four abattoirs around Egypt; again they found antibodies against MERS in the blood of 48 out of 52 camels they tested. But the most interesting results came from taking nose swabs from 110 camels: They foundMERS RNA in four animals that had been shipped in from Sudan and Ethiopia.

Peiris cautions that it is unclear whether the infected camels picked up the virus in Sudan and Ethiopia or on their final journey in Egypt. Abattoirs could help spread MERS just like live poultry markets do for influenza, he says. "You cannot point the finger exactly at where those viruses came from," he says. "But I would be very surprised if you do not find the virus in large parts of Africa."

If so, that changes the picture of MERS considerably. No human MERS cases have been reported from Egypt or anywhere else in Africa, but if camels are infected, they may well occur, says Marion Koopmans, an infectious disease researcher at Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. "It would be important to look systematically into that," she writes in an e-mail. "Health authorities really need to test patients with severe pneumonia all across Africa for MERS," Peiris says.

The researchers were able to sequence the virus of one of the camels almost completely, and it is more than 99% identical with viruses found in people. "I would be very surprised if this virus cannot infect humans," says Christian Drosten, a virologist at the University of Bonn in Germany. But the virus also shows a few intriguing differences from known camel samples, he says. "We have to analyze this carefully in the next few days, but it looks like this sequence broadens the viral repertoire found in camels," he says. If the viruses found in camels show more genetic variation than those isolated from humans, that is further strong evidence that camels are infecting humans and not the other way around.

Anthony Mounts, the point person for MERS at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, says that it is very likely that human MERS cases occur in Africa. "Wherever we find [infected] camels, there is a good chance we'll find [human] cases if we look closely," he says. And humans may be exposed to camels in Africa much more often than in the Middle East: There were about 260,000 camels in Saudi Arabia in 2012, but almost a million in Ethiopia and 4.8 million in Sudan, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. The more human cases there are, the higher the risk that the virus will one day learn how to become easily transmissible between people, which could set off a pandemic.

The researchers also looked at the blood of 179 people working at the camel abattoirs for antibodies against MERS virus, but found none. That shows that the virus is only rarely successful in infecting human beings, Peiris says. "What we need to find out now is the reason for these rare transmissions."