Kickstarter: The Island of Widows →

Help support our colleagues Sasha Chavkin and Anna Maria Barry-Jester as they further investigate the reach of the Chronic Kidney Disease epidemic. They are more than half way to their goal. There are 13 days left to help them reach $7500.

About the project:
A deadly disease is killing thousands of the world’s poorest laborers - and no one knows what is causing it.

In the United States, chronic kidney disease is a manageable illness that mostly affects older people with diabetes and high blood pressure. But during our recent visits to Central America, we encountered a deadly mystery. Each year thousands of agricultural laborers - almost all men, lacking the usual risk factors, and as young as their 20s - are dying of a new strain of chronic kidney disease that has baffled scientists for more than a decade. The disease has so decimated one community of sugarcane workers in Nicaragua called La Isla, or The Island, that it is now known to locals is La Isla de las Viudas - The Island of the Widows.

Last December, Sasha published a story about the epidemic for the investigative newsroom Center for Public Integrity, in partnership with the BBC, PRI/The World, and leading outlets in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. The report revealed the magnitude of the epidemic that is sweeping the region, prompting the Costa Rican government to launch a study and a leading Costa Rica plantation to announce an overhaul of its worker safety practices. Anna produced an award-winning photo gallery on the Island of the Widows that shows the day-to-day routines of a community where an incredible 40 percent of the working-age population suffers from the disease.

New evidence suggests that the same kind of deadly outbreaks are happening in other parts of the world. We suspect that the new strain of chronic kidney disease that affects otherwise healthy young men working in agriculture is not an anomaly to Central America but a serious international epidemic. 

We’re asking for your support to travel to another region affected by the disease and report on our findings. Sasha plans to write a series of articles exploring this new international threat, and Anna will produce a photo gallery and video illustrating its human consequences.  You will get a first look at our materials from the field and updates as the story unfolds, and we will acknowledge all of our backers on the Center for Public Integrity website. Each year this deadly epidemic is killing thousands of the world’s poorest citizens - please help make the world take notice.

Thousands of sugar cane workers die as wealthy nations stall on solutions

To our donors and supporters,

La Isla Foundation acted as fixers for the following story:

Thousands of sugar cane workers die as wealthy nations stall on solutions

The article will appear in radio form on BBC’s The World Service and PRI’s The World.

Please read this article in full. Among the key take aways and other points of interest around this issue are the following:

• Pellas Group, the parent company of Nicaragua’s largest sugar mill has known since 2001 that this disease was work related yet they’ve blamed it on everything from volcanoes, to alcohol to hypertension.
• The big motivator for cane expansion in Central America is indeed biofuels and the US government has had a direct stake in it for geopolitical reasons.
• The CDC showed an incredible lack of vision and compassion while basically ignoring the epidemic and denying it proper recognition at the WHO in order to push through their own narrow agenda.
• It is clear that the State Department knows far too little about the actual epidemic because they get their information from the Pellas Group, Ponteleon (2nd largest Nicaraguan producer and largest in the region) and the Nicaraguan Sugar Producers Association. Creating a echo chamber of narrow interests and greed.
• The World Bank issued more than $100 million in loans to Nicaragua’s sugar industry during the height of the epidemic without formal consideration of the kidney disease among its workers.
• One-fourth of the sugar is consumed in the U.S. Those with the resources to solve the mystery — the U.S. and other wealthy nations and international development agencies — largely have resisted pleas to investigate.
• The ethanol produced by Grupo Pellas goes to Rotterdam
•  La Isla Foundation has helped get new funding to research the cause of the epidemic in the last month but we need more support!