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!