Juan Convers

Last month, I had the privilege of returning to one of my home countries with my family, and we used this trip to visit some of the most beautiful places Colombia has to offer. I always tell my friends and acquaintances that if they visit the country, one of the most memorable spots is the coffee-growing region — in particular, the "Valle del Cocora" (Cocora Valley) with its unique wax palm trees.

I've had the chance to visit several countries around the world, and this spot is still one of my favorites. During that trip, we visited Salento and took a Willys jeep to the Valle del Cocora. Once I was there, hiking uphill through the wax palm tree forest, I remembered why this place is truly special. I would definitely recommend it to anyone visiting Colombia.

If you want to check out the exact place where that picture was taken, this is the point on the map.

With five votes in favor and four against, Colombia's constitutional court issued a ruling yesterday decriminalizing abortion in this South American republic. Given that like many of its neighbors, Colombia is a Catholic country, where the church and right-wing parties exert a strong influence in the judicial decisions, this is undoubtedly a landmark ruling that continues a trend that has already set its pace in Mexico and Argentina.

I am aware that the issue of abortion is quite contentious and generates many conflicting opinions, but that a woman who wishes to have an abortion (and who is going to do it in any case), can do it in a safe way, is a huge achievement, Well done!

In a couple of week we have in the news stories about Harvey and now Irma. Harvey caused a lot of havoc in Texas and now Irma seems to be on the same path in the caribbean islands and florida. The Hurricane Division of the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratories track on their website the number of storms per year and based on the data it looks like the number is steadly increasing. sigh ... climate change.

According to the Panamerican Health Organization, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela and Martinique are the countries most affected by Zika, based on the cummulative incident suspected and confirmed cases. Brazil is by far the most affected country with more than 148k cases suspected and almost 40k cases confirmed.

I was reading today in the news that the Vezuelan economy is in real troubles with an inflation going up to the roof and a lot of shortages even in the most basic products. It's sad that the country with one of the biggest oil reserves in the world is in such a bad shape. The IMF publishes data about the inflation and even if the newest data is from 2014 you can see the upward trend.

Last weekend I was checking out different alternatives for holidays in the American continent and I started to wonder what is the most visited country on that region. US and Mexico are the most visited countries. Brazil and Argentina are the most visited in South America and the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean.

The following chart shows the number of visitors in millions during 2014 (light green) and 2013 (dark green)

I saw an editorial piece last weekend on the guardian where the author asked the question: If condoms are OK for Zika, why not Aids, Pope Francis? and I thought it's true the HIV Virus / AIDS infection is rarely mentioned in the news nowadays. There have been a huge progress in the HIV / Aids treatments, since the times I was a medical student, but the prevalence of HIV (the percentage of a population that is affected with a the virus at a given time), is still bad, particularly in Subsaharian Africa:

The Statistical Office of Berlin-Brandenburg publish some very interesting reports including: Einwohnerinnen und Einwohner im Land Berlin (Residents in the State of Berlin, 31 December 2014). One of the remarkable sections of this document, is about the country of origin, of the foreign residents living in Berlin. It offers a break down per continents, regions and countries, so I was curious about the top countries in South America:

I'm not surprised to discover Brazil (3948 people) is the top #1 on the list but I wasn't expecting that Colombia (1527) was going to be second one in that region. Interesting.

I have to confess I have never heard about the Zika virus, until it started to read about it in some Colombian newspapers articles a couple of weeks ago. The outbreak of this virus in South America and the Caribbean has been in the international news lately because the infection in pregnant women is unfortunately associated to microcephaly cases.

The incidence of those malformations have increased substantially in Brazil and it's apparently related to the Zika, so there are now travel warnings in place to the countries affected by this virus: