China sends Yolanda aid, giant ‘Peace Ark’

SMOOTHER TIES: China may not have been there on the first day after typhoon Yolanda ravaged the Visayas last Nov. 8 and left more than 5,000 dead, but it is fast gearing up its own massive pouring of medical aid and relief to the victims.

The first medical team of more than 50 doctors and nurses flew into Cebu last Thursday along with supplies worth P37.8 million, including 2,000 tents, 2,000 sleeping bags, medicine and medical devices.

The team was followed by 10 members of Red Cross Society of China that had linked up with another group of 19 in Palo, Leyte, where there was no international medical team yet. They are all professionals who had worked either in China’s Sichuan earthquake in 2008 or Indonesia’s tsunami devastation in 2004.

Ambassador Ma Keqing flew to Cebu to see the teams off to their assigned areas. Properly handled, the interaction of Chinese medical workers with Filipino typhoon victims and local officials may help smooth out the troubled relations between the two countries.

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HOSPITAL SHIP: Eagerly awaited tomorrow is the Peace Ark Hospital Ship carrying 106 medical professionals and world-class equipment. It is the first 10,000-ton-class hospital ship in the world.

The Peace Ark is equipped with 217 types and 2,406 units of advanced medical systems, including CT Scan room, digital X-ray photographic studio, blood bank, oxygen generation station, compressed air system, and complete pharmacy.

It has 300 ward beds, including 20 ICU beds, 109 beds for serious injury, 67 burn beds, 94 regular beds, 10 beds of quarantine ward. It also has a tele-medicine diagnose system, and three special lifts for transferring the wounded on board.

Local Chinese firms have been mobilized to extend aid. Initially, the Association of Chinese Companies in the Philippines has donated P7.5 million to buy three payloaders for clean-up of the disaster areas.

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PRESUMPTUOUS: The European activist group Greenpeace showed both political ingenuity and human insensitivity when it bewailed the government’s stand favoring the use of agricultural biotechnology.

Pressing its public relations campaign against genetically modified plants, Greenpeace bewailed what it said was the government’s stubborn insistence on using genetically modified crops despite opposition (?) of farmers, scientists and environmentalists.

The truth is that the supposed objection comes mostly from Greenpeace and its local operatives who reportedly were involved in the destruction and burning of a trial farm run by the University of the Philippines-Los Baños.

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TALONG VARIETY: Filipino scientists have been the target of Greenpeace’s well-funded PR campaign for their efforts to develop and commercialize the Bt Talong eggplant that does not rely on chemical pesticides made in Europe because it is naturally resistant to pests.

Filipino scientists have been brought to court by the European interest group, vilified in media and their trial farm raided and razed.

Now it seems Greenpeace’s next target is President Noynoy Aquino himself!

Before Yolanda struck, the President was reported to have told a gathering of highly-respected agricultural scientists that the Philippines values the role of modern agricultural biotechnology in the country’s food security program.

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P-NOY TARGETED: This must have riled Greenpeace, which previously sounded confident that it could easily torpedo the President’s favorable stand on food biotechnology.

If their analysis were correct, then the move to hit the President’s pro-biotechnology stance shows political acumen on the part of the European interest group as the timing could not have been better.

Its analysts must have thought the President is now vulnerable, for two reasons: One is the long-drawn controversy involving pork barrel funds, and another the apparent controversial handling of the Yolanda calamity.

With $350 million in its PR funds, Greenpeace appears over-confident in its assumptions that Filipinos will take its side against their President and that Filipinos will swallow its scary biotechnology messages.

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MALUNGGAY: On a related front, a growing number of entrepreneurs have gone into the processing of malunggay leaves (known worldwide as Moringa) into powder form to supply foreign manufacturers and exporters of food supplements and health products.

This was reported last Friday by Dr. Ed Araral, a consultant of the Pampanga State University on agricultural crop propagation and animal husbandry, at the weekly forum of the Capampangan in Media Inc. (CAMI) at its Bale Balita (House of News) at the Clark Freeport in Pampanga.

Araral noted that Philippine malunggay powder shipped abroad is repackaged and imported back into the country as food supplements in capsule form and sold at an average of P8.50 a piece.

But as malunggay trees abound in the country, local processors are able to produce the same Moringa capsules and sell them for only P1 a piece, or P7.50 lower than those re-packed abroad!

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GOV’T SUPPORT: Other malunggay-based products, such as butter processed abroad from the seeds of the tree, are marketed locally in high-end outlets at prices beyond the reach of ordinary consumers.

Araral said: “That’s why I’m advocating state action to spur the malunggay processing industry, as well as encourage the wider cultivation of malunggay trees, and the consumption of products derived from the now widely recognized ‘super food’.”

One initiative Araral planned to submit to the 5th National Moringa Convention at the Mimosa Convention Center in Clark calls on the Food and Drugs Administration to adopt a policy that will hasten the accreditation of locally-made Moringa food supplements and health products.

This lack of policy has hampered the growth of the local Moringa industry for medical and food supplements and put it at a disadvantage vis-a-vis its foreign competitors.

Araral’s other initiative prompts the Department of Education to require primary and secondary students to plant at least three Moringa trees and encourage the consumption of processed products of malunggay.

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