A separate influenza strain, H1N1, that emerged from pigs and spread rapidly worldwide among humans led the WHO to declare an influenza pandemic in 2009-10. The outbreak turned out to be mild among humans.

Russia registered the first case of a strain of bird flu virus named influenza A (H5N8) being passed to humans from birds and has reported the matter to the WHO, Anna Popova, head of consumer health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor, said on Saturday.

Seven people in Russia were found to be infected with H5N8, but all were asymptomatic following an outbreak on a poultry farm in the southern oblast (region) of Astrakhan, a WHO statement said. The death of 101,000 of the farm’s 900,000 egg-laying hens in December had sparked the investigation, it said.

“All close contacts of these cases were clinically monitored, and no one showed signs of clinical illness,” it said. “Based on currently available information, the risk of human-to-human transmission remains low.”

The WHO advised against any special traveller screening at points of entry or restrictions on travel and or trade with the Russian Federation, it added.

Outbreaks of the H5N8 strain were reported last year in poultry or wild birds in Britain, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Germany, Hungary, Iraq, Japan, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania and Russia, according to WHO.

The WHO statement said that developing zoonotic influenza candidate vaccine viruses for potential use in human vaccines remains an essential part of WHO strategy for influenza pandemic preparedness.

— Stephanie Nebehay reports on international health issues for Reuters from Geneva.

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Tomas Ojea Quintana, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, urged the U.N. Security Council to reconsider sanctions imposed on the isolated country over its nuclear and missile programs, so as to ensure food supplies.

North Korea, where a famine in the mid-1990s is believed to have killed three million people, does not report COVID-19 cases to the World Health Organization.

The pandemic has brought “drastic economic hardship” to North Korea, Ojea Quintana said, with a 90 per cent fall in trade with China in March and April leading to lost incomes.

Expressing concern about reports of an increase of homeless people in large cities and skyrocketing medicine prices, he said in a statement: “An increasing number of families eat only twice a day, or eat only corn, and some are starving.”

Ojea Quintana urged Pyongyang to allow humanitarian aid to be delivered “without restrictions.” Operations have been suspended outside the capital, leaving vaccine stocks and other aid “stranded” at the border.

He urged North Korea to free prisoners during the pandemic, citing accounts of prisoner deaths caused by hard work, lack of food, contagious diseases and overcrowding.

Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman for the U.N.’s World Food Programme, told reporters the humanitarian situation in North Korea remained “bleak.”

More than 10 million people, or 40 per cent of the population, need humanitarian aid, she said. The WFP hopes to reach 1.2 million people there with food rations this year.

Byrs said widespread malnutrition had damaged the health and development of children — with one in five under the age of five stunted — as well as pregnant and nursing mothers.

— Reporting for Reuters by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva.

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The Trump administration has been blocking appointments to the WTO’s seven-member Appellate Body that rules on trade disputes for more than two years, with U.S. officials saying the court had gone beyond its remit.

The Appellate Body needs a minimum of three judges to function but the terms of two of the three remaining members of the appeals panel expire on Tuesday and there are no replacements in sight because of the U.S. blocking strategy.

Another attempt was made on Monday to reach a consensus on laying down arrangements for filling the vacancies, as well as obliging the appeals panel to issue rulings within 90 days.

But the U.S. ambassador to the WTO, Dennis Shea, said other members had not addressed Washington’s concerns about what he called the court’s “overreach” and “disregard” of WTO rules.

Shea said in a speech, the text of which was released by the U.S. mission, that the United States did not support the proposal to start filling Appellate Body positions.

Much of the U.S. displeasure stems from how the WTO has tied its hands in dealing with China. In binding rulings, WTO judges have given Beijing the benefit of the doubt on subsidies and rejected Washington’s treatment of dumping.

One Asian ambassador told Reuters: “The United States said it can’t join a consensus. We’ll be writing the obituaries.”

But WTO director-general Roberto Azevedo said that a “well-functioning, impartial and binding dispute settlement system is a core pillar of the WTO system”, adding: “We cannot abandon what must be our priority, namely finding a permanent solution for the Appellate Body.”

China’s trade ambassador, Zhang Xiangchen, who wore a black tie for the occasion, said: “This is no doubt the most severe blow to the multilateral trading system since its establishment.”

Joao Aguiar Machado, the European Union’s ambassador, put the blame squarely on Washington.

“In two days from now, we will have an unprecedented situation in the World Trade Organization, which will no longer be able to deliver binding resolution of trade disputes and will no longer guarantee the right to appeal review,” Machado said.

“The actions of one member will deprive other members of their right to a binding and two-step dispute settlement system, even though this right is specifically envisaged in the WTO contract,” he said.

The EU would continue supporting efforts to unblock Appellate Body appointments while preparing its own contingency measures, Machado said.

The EU has already reached agreements with Canada and Norway to subject any appeals to ad hoc adjudication by former Appellate Body members.

David Walker, New Zealand’s ambassador who chairs the WTO’s committee on dispute settlement, proposed to WTO members last week that the Appellate Body should at least be allowed to conclude four cases that have already had hearings.

Ten pending appeals would be left in limbo, along with 100 or so more further back in the system.

— Stephanie Nebehay is a senior Reuters reporter based in Geneva.

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Although the report stopped short of explicitly advocating going meat-free, it called for big changes to farming and eating habits to limit the impact of population growth and changing consumption patterns on stretched land and water resources.

Plant-based foods and sustainable animal-sourced food could free up several million square kilometres of land by 2050 and cut 0.7 to eight gigatonnes a year of carbon dioxide equivalent, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said.

“There are certain kinds of diets that have a lower carbon footprint and put less pressure on land,” Jim Skea, professor at London’s Imperial College, said on Thursday.

The IPCC met this week in Geneva to finalize its report which should help to guide governments meeting this year in Chile on ways to implement the 2015 Paris Agreement.

“The IPCC does not recommend people’s diets… Dietary choices are very often shaped or influenced by local production practices and cultural habits,” Skea, who is one of the report’s authors, told reporters in Geneva.

Land can be both a source and sink of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming, and better land management can help to tackle climate change, the IPCC said.

But it is not the only solution and cutting emissions from all sectors is essential to quickly curtail global warming.

“The window for making these changes is closing fast. If there is further delay in reducing emissions, we will miss the opportunity to successfully manage the climate change transition in the land sector,” it said.

Since the pre-industrial era, land surface air temperature has risen by 1.53 C, twice as much as the global average temperature (0.87 C), causing more heatwaves, droughts and heavy rain, as well as land degradation and desertification.

Human use directly affects more than 70 per cent of the global, ice-free land surface and agriculture accounts for 70 per cent of freshwater use, the IPCC added in the report.

Agriculture, forestry and other land use activities accounted for 23 per cent of total net man-made greenhouse gas emissions during 2007-2016. When pre- and post-production activity in the food system are included, that rises to up to 37 per cent.

Last year the IPCC’s first special report warned that keeping the Earth’s temperature rise to 1.5 C, rather than the 2 C target agreed under the Paris accord, required rapid change across society.

Food security

The IPCC warned of more disruption to global food chains as extreme weather becomes more frequent due to climate change and said environmental costs should be factored into food.

It projects a median increase of 7.6 per cent in cereal prices by 2050, meaning higher food prices and an increased risk of hunger.

While an estimated 821 million people are undernourished, changing consumption habits have already contributed to about two billion adults being overweight or obese.

Per capita supply of vegetable oils and meat has more than doubled based on data since 1961 but 25-30 per cent of total food produced is still lost or wasted.

Yields of crops such as maize and wheat have declined in some regions, while those of maize, wheat and sugar beets have increased in others in recent decades.

Forest factor

While forests can soak up heat-trapping gases from the atmosphere, desertification and deforestation can amplify warming due to the loss of vegetation cover and soil erosion.

Measures to cut emissions, such as the production of biofuels and biochar — made from biomass — as well as planting trees, will also increase demand for land conversion.

Reducing deforestation and forest degradation could result in a reduction of 0.4-5.8 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent, the report said.

The Amazon, about 60 per cent of which lies in Brazil, is sometimes called the “lungs of the world” due to the amount of CO2 it can absorb but it was not directly mentioned in the IPCC’s summary for policymakers.

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has supported opening up protected areas of the world’s largest tropical rainforest to facilitate agriculture and mining since taking office in January.

The report text is prepared by over 100 scientists but has to be approved by governments. In those discussions, Brazil and India were very active to protect their national agro-industrial interests, a source familiar with the talks said.

— Reporting for Reuters by Nina Chestney in London and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; additional reporting by Megan Rowling.

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So far the variant strain has only been detected in Guangdong province, but given the wide circulation of livestock and poultry in the country, it would be difficult to prevent its spread to other areas, the broadcast said, citing the agriculture ministry.

Until now, the H7N9 virus has shown little or no clinical symptoms in birds, despite being highly pathogenic when it infects humans.

But China has detected an evolution in the virus that is capable of causing severe disease in poultry and requires close monitoring, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.

Samples of the virus taken from two infected humans were injected into birds in a laboratory and became “highly pathogenic” for poultry, it said.

But that designation applies only to birds, not humans, WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier said, and there is “no evidence that the changes in the virus affect the virus’ ability to spread between humans.”

A total of 304 new laboratory-confirmed human infections were reported in mainland China between Jan. 19 and Feb. 14, along with 36 deaths, the WHO said in its latest update on Monday.

The evolution of the virus may mean that the disease will become more apparent in some flocks, if birds begin to die off, making detection and control easier.

“This is the first time these changes have been detected. These are the only two cases in Guangdong province, China. So far, there have been no reports if similar changes have occurred elsewhere,” Lindmeier said.

“It is a reminder that we have to keep looking closely,” he told Reuters.

Any culling carried out in response to the detection of the virus on farms would be compensated, the Chinese report added.

Animal health experts say bird flu infection rates on Chinese poultry farms may be far higher than previously thought, because the strain of the deadly virus in humans is hard to detect in chickens and geese.

In all, since the “fifth wave” of the virus, first identified in 2013, began in October 2016, 425 human cases have been recorded in China, including 73 deaths officially reported by authorities, according to WHO figures.

“Most of these cases had known exposure to poultry or its environment, that is the main important link to this influenza type,” Lindmeier told a news briefing.

In all since 2013, there have been 1,200 laboratory-confirmed cases in China, including more than one-third since October, he said.

— Reporting for Reuters by Stephanie Nebehay, Reuters’ Beijing Newsroom and Dominique Patton.

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Many farmers have had to abandon their land, unable to afford the soaring cost of seeds, fertilizers and tractor fuel, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme said.

Wheat output — vital for making flat loaves of bread which are a staple of the Syrian diet — dropped from an average 3.4 million tonnes harvested before the war began in 2011 to 1.5 million this year, they said in a joint report.

“There is an estimated shortfall of about 838,000 tonnes in the country’s national wheat requirement of 3.854 million tonnes taking into account commercial imports,” it said.

The area planted for cereals in the 2015-16 cropping season is the “smallest ever,” they added. Field visits and surveys showed higher than average production of barley, which some farmers switched to as the rain-fed crop is more resistant than wheat, and “large patches of cropland affected by drought.”

“Food production in Syria has hit a record low due to fighting and insecurity but also bad weather conditions,” World Food Programme spokeswoman Bettina Luescher told a news briefing.

Food shortages are particularly worrying in east Aleppo, the rebel-held part of the city besieged by government forces where the U.N. says 250,000-275,000 civilians still live.

“The last food rations provided by the U.N. have been given out (in east Aleppo). It is very hard to say how people will be coping there. Of course it is a very different situation than in the capital where food is readily available at the markets,” Luescher said.

Reuters reported last month that Syria’s state grain buying agency Hoboob struck a deal to purchase one million tonnes of wheat from political ally Russia, covering the needs of government-controlled areas for a year.

Before the war, Syria was an exporter of livestock. “Now herds and flocks have shrunk significantly, there are 30 per cent fewer cattle, 40 per cent fewer sheep and goats and a staggering 60 per cent less poultry which of course is the most affordable source of animal protein,” Luescher said.

More than seven million people in Syria are classified as “food insecure”, meaning they are not always sure where their next meal is coming from, she said, adding: “Eighty per cent of the households across Syria struggle with a lack of food or lack of money to buy food.”

The World Food Programme is distributing rations to more than four million people in Syria each month.

— Stephanie Nebehay reports on the United Nations and humanitarian aid issues for Reuters from Geneva.

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Consumption of water in the volatile region with rising populations was already at unsustainable levels in many areas hit by record-low rainfall and drought, but wars have pushed systems “close to the breaking point,” the aid agency said.

Miilitants in Syria, Iraq and Gaza have also used access to water and electricity supplies as “tactical weapons or as bargaining chips,” the ICRC said in a report.

“Heavy fighting and direct targeting have destroyed water pipes and power lines, leaving this vital resource away from hundreds of millions of people that are at great risk of water-borne diseases,” said Robert Mardini, head of ICRC operations for North Africa and the Middle East.

Sanitation often got a low priority during the fighting, the ICRC said.

“It is a ‘ticking time bomb’ in terms of its impact on the general environment, water resources (surface and groundwater), and by extension, to human health,” said Michael Talhami, ICRC regional water and habitat advisor.

Gaza’s only power plant was damaged during the 2014 war between Israel and Palestinian militants. The Gaza Company for Generating Electricity said an Israeli tank shell hit the main fuel tanks, taking out almost all capacity.

“Leakages everywhere”

In Syria, now in a fifth year of war, drought has greatly reduced wheat production, meaning higher imports, the ICRC said.

Areas around the capital Damascus are hard-hit, with some systems losing more water to leaks than they are able to deliver, the report said. “The network is severely damaged in every corner of the city, so you have leakages everywhere.”

Syria’s two main waste-water treatment plants, for Aleppo and Damascus, are virtually destroyed, according to the ICRC which helps disinfect nearly 80 percent of the country’s water.

“One of the greatest concerns is that untreated waste-water might seep into local aquifers, thereby contaminating water supplies and leaving an already vulnnerable population more susceptible to water-borne diseases,” it said.

Water scarcity is a pressing problem in Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country that has descended into civil war, and where the water table is dropping every year, it said.

“In Yemen, it’s foreseen that by 2025 Sana’a the capital will have no more water.”

— Stephanie Nebehay reports on United Nations agencies and aid programs for Reuters from Geneva.

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Chinese authorities have slaughtered thousands of birds and closed some live poultry markets to try to slow the rate of human infection, but many questions remain unsolved, including whether the H7N9 strain is being transmitted between people.

WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl confirmed that “there are people who have no history of contact with poultry,” after a top Chinese scientist was quoted as saying this applied to about 40 per cent of those infected.

“This is one of the puzzles still (to) be solved and therefore argues for a wide investigation net,” Hartl said in emailed comments.

Hartl an international team of experts going to China soon would include in their investigation the possibility that the virus can be spread between people, although there was “no evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission.”

“It might be because of dust at the wet markets, it could be another animal source beside poultry, it could also be human-to-human transmission,” he said by telephone.

Wendy Barclay, an influenza expert at Imperial College London, said it could be hard to reveal or rule out exposure to poultry — or to wild birds, which could also be a possible source of infection:

“The incubation time might be quite long, so visiting a market even 14 days before might have resulted in infection.”

Hartl said two new suspected cases of possible human-to-human transmission were being investigated.

The first is a couple in Shanghai who tested positive, Hartl said, adding that the wife had died and husband was still sick. A seven-year-old girl in Beijing was the first case in the capital at the weekend and the boy next door has also tested positive, but is not showing symptoms, he said.

Numbers to rise

The WHO had previously reported two suspected family “clusters” but the first turned out to be a false alarm and the second was inconclusive.

China has warned that the number of infections, 82 so far, could rise. Most of the cases and 11 of the deaths have been in the commercial capital Shanghai.

China reported three new outbreaks to the World Animal Health Organisation (OIE) this week, bringing the total number of locations to 11, the OIE said.

Poultry markets remain the focus of investigation by China and the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

But Zeng Guang, chief scientist in charge of epidemiology at the China Disease Prevention and Control Centre (CDPCC), said about 40 per cent of human victims had no clear history of poultry exposure, the Beijing News reported.

The centre declined to comment on state media reports saying only 10 of the 77 cases known by Tuesday had had contact with poultry.

A study published last week showed the H7N9 strain was a so-called “triple reassortant” virus with a mixture of genes from three other flu strains found in birds in Asia. One of those three strains is thought to have come from a brambling, a type of small wild bird.

“We can’t rule out that this… has passed through poultry but then been reintroduced to a wild bird population from which some spread to humans might be occurring,” Barclay said.

China’s poultry sector has recorded losses of more than 10 billion yuan (US$1.6 billion) since reports of the strain emerged two weeks ago.

— Reporting for Reuters by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Sui-Lee Wee, Michael Martina and Huang Yan in Beijing, Kate Kelland in London and Sybille de La Hamaide in Paris.

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In advice to its 194 member states on Thursday, the United Nations agency noted high sodium levels were a factor behind elevated blood pressure, which increases the risk of heart disease and stroke, the number one cause of death and disability worldwide.

Heart disease, stroke and other non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes, cancer and chronic respiratory disease kill more people globally each year than all other causes combined, the agency said.

"Diet-related NCDs are chronic, and take years and decades to manifest; thus, delaying the onset of these diseases could improve lives and result in substantial cost savings," it said.

"Thus, addressing, during childhood, the problem of elevated blood pressure and other risk factors for NCDs that could manifest later in life is crucial to combat NCDs," it said.

The guidelines vary depending on the child’s size, age and energy needs, and apply to children over the age of two.

Beans over bacon

The WHO also somewhat revised its recommendations for adults, down to less than 2,000 milligrams of sodium intake per day, from the current 2,000 mg, in addition to a recommendation of at least 3,510 mg of potassium a day.

"Currently, most people consume too much sodium and not enough potassium," the WHO said. Potassium-rich foods include beans and peas, nuts, vegetables such as spinach and cabbage, and fruits such as bananas, papayas and dates.

Sodium is found naturally in many foods such as milk products and eggs but is present in much higher levels in processed foods, the WHO said. One 100-gram serving of bacon, pretzels or popcorn has nearly as much sodium as the daily recommended maximum, for example, at about 1,500 mg.

Sticking to the WHO’s recommendations would mean people would consume roughly equal amounts of potassium and sodium every day, whereas most people consume twice as much sodium as potassium, the WHO said.

"The successful implementation of these recommendations would have an important public health impact through reductions in morbidity and mortality, improvement in the quality of life for millions of people, and substantial reductions in health-care costs," the agency said.

It would be updating soon WHO guidelines on the consumption of fats and sugars, also linked to obesity and disease.

— Stephanie Nebehay writes for Reuters from Geneva, Switzerland. Additional reporting for Reuters by Tom Miles in Geneva.

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