The rivers, Enyidah said, “became breeding grounds for all kinds of waterborne diseases.” Nonyenim Solomon Enyidah, health commissioner for Rivers State, where Ebocha is located, cite an oil spill clogging rivers as a cause of cholera, another scourge the foundation is battling. Oil bore holes fill with stagnant water, which is ideal for mosquitoes that spread malaria, one of the diseases the foundation is fighting. Oil workers, for example, and soldiers protecting them are a magnet for prostitution, contributing to a surge in HIV and teenage pregnancy, both targets in the Gates Foundation’s efforts to ease the ills of society, especially among the poor. Indeed, local leaders blame oil development for fostering some of the very afflictions that the foundation combats. and Total of France - the companies responsible for most of the flares blanketing the delta with pollution, beyond anything permitted in the United States or Europe. At the same time that the foundation is funding inoculations to protect health, The Times found, it has invested $423 million in Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. The Gates Foundation has poured $218 million into polio and measles immunization and research worldwide, including in the Niger Delta. But authorities expect the flares to burn for years beyond the deadline. The gases would be injected back underground, or trucked and piped out for sale. Under pressure from activists, however, Nigeria’s high court set a deadline to end flaring by May 2007. The oil plants in the region surrounding Ebocha find it cheaper to burn nearly 1 billion cubic feet of gas each day and contribute to global warming than to sell it. “We’re all smokers here,” Okey said, “but not with cigarettes.”
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |