Bruno's Mauritian Blog

A novel study has attempted to understand and predict the impact of climate change on the price of staple foods. Ahmed et al. (2009) established that extreme climate events places huge pressure on the price of staple food; these staple foods are essential to poor households in developing countries and form a significant portion of [...]

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned against the use of homeopathy for the treatment of HIV, TB, malaria, influenza and infant diarrhoea. Scientists and medics around the world have welcome WHO’s clear position.

I do not, and never will, understand the panic in Mauritius right now. H1N1 killed a few people; so what? Flu kills, everyone knows that! We are not dealing with Spanish flu here; the mortality rate is not alarming. Actually, I think now is the best time to catch H1N1.

Most Mauritians I know are poor at Mathematics. They are even worse at making sense of statistics. Is this the result of our distorted educational system, where C.P.E. kids learn how to solve maths problem by heart? Where later on, UoM students learn programs by heart before going to the exams? Who knows, who cares?! [...]

This is not a joke; this is a serious post. The panic surrounding the H1N1 (A) flu in Mauritius is a symptom of a greater disease: the disproportionate fear of death in Mauritius. Of course everyone in every country is scared of death. Of course every country is anxious about the flu pandemic. But the [...]

This is my second post on the flu outbreak. Yesterday, I argued that a prevention campaign such as lave la main is productive. Today I will demystify some myths about this particular flu strain.

Another patient died from respiratory complications due to flu today. This is worrying news for all; however letting panic settling in is not an option. What needs to be done is to give the population practical advice on how to combat flu propagation. Unfortunately, the ministry has waited for far too long before launching a [...]