Experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have helped Bangladesh assess the current dengue outbreak in the country and draw up a plan to test a nuclear technique to suppress the mosquitoes spreading the disease.

Veterinarians are joining forces in the fight against the African Swine Fever, or ASF, an animal disease that has recently hit seven countries in Asia with devastating effects on the pig market in a region where pork is a major source of food. Nuclear and nuclear-derived techniques are central to combatting the spread of the disease, rapidly and accurately detecting the virus before more animals are affected. The IAEA, in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), is supporting national laboratories in their diagnostic efforts with equipment, expertise, advice and training.

The leader of the United Nations body responsible for assessing climate change science will headline a group of prominent speakers at the International Conference on Climate Change and the Role of Nuclear Power, to be held in Vienna from 7 to 11 October.

Operators of nuclear facilities act promptly on the findings of IAEA Operational Safety Review Team (OSART) missions, a recent IAEA analysis has shown. Over 95% of the findings are resolved or in satisfactory progress by the time of follow-up missions, usually conducted 18 months after the main mission. This was the conclusion of an analysis of the effectiveness of the OSART service, based on the 35 OSART follow-up missions that were conducted between 2012 and 2018.

Electron beams can be used to treat and destroy industrial pollutants. 

Each year, approximately 3000 cancer patients in Tajikistan require radiotherapy as part of their treatment. Until last week, patients living in the Sughd region, Tajikistan’s northernmost province, would have to travel across 300 kilometres of mountainous roads to reach the country’s only operational radiotherapy clinic, located in the national capital, Dushanbe. On 18 August, this gap separating cancer patients from the care they require was finally closed when a new radiotherapy facility was officially inaugurated in Khujand, the capital of Sughd province. 

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in cooperation with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), has helped Mauritius take an important step in the suppression of agricultural pests with the inauguration of a new facility to apply a nuclear technique to fight insects that cause annual losses of around US $6 million to farmers.

With populations growing rapidly, particularly in Asia and the Pacific, farmers and scientists are all the more drawing on the benefits of using irradiation to develop new crop varieties and meet farmers’ needs: higher, stable yields and high-quality plants that can resist disease and climate change.

he IAEA is organizing the 2019 International Conference on Climate Change and the Role of Nuclear Power in Vienna from 7 to 11 October 2019.