"Pathway To Peril"

"Scientists worry the next devastating disease could be born where animals and humans mix in a Third World slum – then cross the globe. Zika may have been a preview."

"NAIROBI, Kenya - Kenyan researcher James Miser Akoko stood at the edge of Nairobi’s vast Dandora dump in the late afternoon heat, staring down into a recipe for the next pandemic.

Below him, dozens of men and women scoured a 30-acre garbage pit in a grim version of recycling, gathering deflated soccer balls, soiled plastic toys, filthy clothing and blankets, even abandoned airline food. They worked with bare hands and no face masks, shrouded by smoke from small fires and shadowed by the large marabou storks with which they compete.

Free-ranging pigs, goats and other livestock grazed on refuse, marking time until the day they become food themselves – human food."

Mark Johnson and Devi Shastri report for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel July 13, 2017.