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On the table, unconscious and stretched out on a pillow, Joe Mangy looks deceptively peaceful. The koala's watery, red-rimmed eyes are the only sign of the disease at war with his body. Tubes snarl out of a mask covering his face as a vet tech listens to his chest with a stethoscope. He is not healing as well as they had hoped. Eight days earlier, Joe Mangy – who is about two years old – was found wandering in the middle of a suburban road. Dazed and confused, eyes nearly glued shut with mucus, he was rushed here, to the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary's hospital. Enveloped by rainforest on Queensland's Gold Coast, the park is full of koalas like this. Outside the clinic, in a "Koala Rehab Centre" faintly perfumed by eucalyptus leaves, is a three-year-old recovering from a hysterectomy. "It saved her life... but she can't reproduce," the head vet Michael Payne says. Another male koala stares blankly through narrowed slits. His left tear duct is so inflamed his eyeball is barely visible. This hospital is ground zero of a grim chlamydia epidemic which is killing thousands of koalas and making even more sterile, pushing the national icons to the brink of extinction. But it's also at the core of desperate bid to save them with a vaccine – frustrated efforts which, after over a decade, are still tied up in regulation and running out of both time and money. Even a few decades ago, spotting a koala snuggled in a backyard tree was nothing out of the ordinary. They were plentiful on the country's populous east coast. But in recent times the species has been in dramatic decline – in some places plummeting by 80% in just 10 years. Land clearing and urbanisation are leaving the marsupials hungry and homeless, while natural disasters are drowning or cooking them en masse. "[But] it's the chlamydia that shot up tremendously - almost exponentially," says Dr Payne, who has run the Currumbin clinic for more than 20 years. "You get days where you're euthanising heaps of koalas that just come in completely ravaged." Estimates vary greatly – koalas are famously difficult to count – but some groups say as few as 50,000 of the animals are left in the wild and the species is officially listed as endangered on most of the eastern seaboard. There are now fears the animals will be extinct in some states within a generation. Dr Payne wistfully recounts "the early days" when his hospital only saw a handful of koalas a year. They now see 400. So many come through the door that the team has started giving them two names, a vet nurse says, cradling Joe Mangy as he wakes from the anaesthetic. His last name is a nod to the state of his eyes when he first arrived, she explains. Of the top reasons koalas are brought into wildlife hospitals – vehicle strikes, pet attacks and chlamydia – the bacterial infection is the biggest and deadliest. It results in conjunctivitis for koalas like Joe Mangy, but presents as an infection of the genitals and urinary system for others. Particularly unlucky animals, get both at the same time. At its worst, the ocular form can be so bad koalas are blinded and starve to death, while the urogenital infection produces giant fluid-filled cysts so "nasty" everyday bodily functions like passing urine make the animals cry out in pain. "Their reproductive system falls apart," Dr Payne explains. If caught early enough, treatment is an option, but that in itself is a potentially fatal "nightmare" as the antibiotics destroy the gut bacteria which allow koalas to digest otherwise toxic eucalyptus leaves – their main food source. On a species level though, the disease, which spreads through bodily fluids, causes even greater ruin. Chlamydia is not uncommon in other animals – koalas are suspected to have first caught it from livestock – but the spread and intensity of the disease amongst the marsupials is unmatched. Experts estimate around half of koalas in Queensland and New South Wales could be infected, but just a suburb away from Currumbin, in Elanora, that has climbed beyond 80%. It is the most diseased population in the region and numbers have been "falling off a cliff", Dr Payne says. "It's a disaster." Enter the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and their vaccine, which aims to prevent and treat chlamydia in koalas and has been almost two decades in the making. Alongside Currumbin, they're trying to save the Elanora koalas from oblivion: capturing 30 youngsters and vaccinating them, before recatching them at intervals over three years to track their health. So far only three of the vaccinated koalas in this research trial have contracted the disease, though all recovered, and encouragingly, more than two dozen joeys have been born - bucking the infertility trend. "There's generations of koalas now that have come through. We've got grand joeys," Dr Payne says excitedly. Currumbin has also been vaccinating every koala which comes through their hospital, and have reached about 400 koalas this way. But treating and vaccinating each koala with chlamydia costs them about A$7,000 (£3,500, $4,500). Capturing, jabbing, and tracking each wild Elanora koala is basically double that. Two hours away, researchers at the University of the Sunshine Coast (UniSC) are doing their best to flatten the wave of disease too, with a separate vaccine. They inoculate about 2,000 koalas a year through wildlife hospital trials and tack themselves onto development projects or research studies in the region that involve their capture. They've just wrapped a decade's-worth of those projects into one study of more than 600 animals – the largest and longest of its kind. Incredibly, deaths dropped by two thirds among vaccinated koalas. Molecular biologist Samuel Phillips tells the BBC about one local koala population they studied which was at risk of extinction. Authorities are now looking at translocating some animals so they don't overpopulate the area. "It turned it around completely." And crucially, the study found that the koalas that did contract chlamydia were doing so later in life, after their peak breeding years had begun. Dr Phillips and his research partner Peter Timms have now submitted their vaccine to the federal regulator for approval but say they're keeping their hopes in check. "There'll be hurdles," Dr Timms explains. In the meantime, for their small, overstretched team, dividing time and funding is an impossible balance. Do they involve themselves in as many trials as possible to help small groups of koalas now, or do they devote their efforts to advancing the tedious research and approval process which could help a huge cohort of them down the track? "People come to us semi-regularly and say, 'Can we vaccinate more koalas?' And the answer at some point is 'No', because otherwise we're just spending all our time and energy doing [that]," Dr Timms says. It has now been a decade since these two research teams first started seeing results, and there is still no real timeline on when a jab will be ready. And even when it is, there are huge barriers to any roll out. While making the vaccine isn't that costly, finding, capturing, and vaccinating wild koalas is extraordinarily expensive and time-consuming. Dr Phillips says they would have to strategically target select populations, though they're not yet sure how many koalas in each they'd need to treat to reverse decline. That challenge will be doubly complicated with the QUT vaccine, though, because it requires two doses, as opposed to UniSC's single-shot formula. The QUT team has been developing an implant – inspired by a human contraceptive device – that dissolves after four weeks to provide the booster. It will be trialled on Currumbin's captive koalas next year. Then there is the question of funding, which has been, and continues to be, fickle. Both vaccine developers provide their shots to wildlife hospitals and research trials for free, relying on individual donors, generosity from their universities, and the unpredictable whims of election cycles. State and federal governments are the biggest financial backers of the vaccine projects – last year Canberra gave QUT and UniSC A$750,000 each. "No-one wants to imagine an Australia without koalas," Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said at the time. But government contributions are random, and never quite enough. "I cannot believe somebody will not come along tomorrow and say 'You need to vaccinate? Here's my cheque to cover the next 10 years'. But we can't find them," Dr Timms says. However, the biggest barrier is the mountain of red tape researchers are yet to cut through. Both groups have conservation charities and wildlife hospitals knocking down the door, desperate for access, but until they go through the "painful" approval process, their hands are largely tied. "[It's] a critical step that is just taking too long. It kills me," Dr Payne says. "We've kind of passed it being urgent. It was urgent probably 10 years ago." Adding to their despondency, is a fact all involved stress repeatedly: the vaccine is simply not enough to save the species. And so even the lucky koalas like Joe Mangy, who dodge death by chlamydia and return to the wild, still must face off against a myriad of other mortal threats. "It's death by a thousand cuts, right?" 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Forthright and fearless, the Nobel Prize winner took pot-shots at former prime minister Tony Blair and ex-US president George W Bush among others. His death came after repeated bouts of illness in which images of the increasingly frail former president failed to erase memories of his fierce spirit. Democrat James Earl “Jimmy” Carter Jr swept to power in 1977 with his Trust Me campaign helping to beat Republican president Gerald Ford. Serving as 39th US president from 1977 to 1981, he sought to make government “competent and compassionate” but was ousted by the unstoppable Hollywood appeal of a certain Ronald Reagan. A skilled sportsman, Mr Carter left his home of Plains, Georgia, to join the US Navy, returning later to run his family’s peanut business. A stint in the Georgia senate lit the touchpaper on his political career and he rose to the top of the Democratic movement. But he will also be remembered for a bizarre encounter with a deeply disgruntled opponent. The president was enjoying a relaxing fishing trip near his home town in 1979 when his craft was attacked by a furious swamp rabbit which reportedly swam up to the boat hissing wildly. The press had a field day, with one paper bearing the headline President Attacked By Rabbit. Away from encounters with belligerent bunnies, Mr Carter’s willingness to address politically uncomfortable topics did not diminish with age. He recently said that he would be willing to travel to North Korea for peace talks on behalf of US President Donald Trump. He also famously mounted a ferocious and personal attack on Tony Blair over the Iraq war, weeks before the prime minister left office in June 2007. Mr Carter, who had already denounced George W Bush’s presidency as “the worst in history”, used an interview on BBC radio to condemn Mr Blair for his tight relations with Mr Bush, particularly concerning the Iraq War. Asked how he would characterise Mr Blair’s relationship with Mr Bush, Mr Carter replied: “Abominable. Loyal, blind, apparently subservient. “I think that the almost undeviating support by Great Britain for the ill-advised policies of President Bush in Iraq have been a major tragedy for the world.” Mr Carter was also voluble over the Rhodesia crisis, which was about to end during his presidency. His support for Robert Mugabe at the time generated widespread criticism. He was said to have ignored the warnings of many prominent Zimbabweans, black and white, about what sort of leader Mugabe would be. This was seen by Mr Carter’s critics as “deserving a prominent place among the outrages of the Carter years”. Mr Carter has since said he and his administration had spent more effort and worry on Rhodesia than on the Middle East. He admitted he had supported two revolutionaries in Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo, and with hindsight said later that Mugabe had been “a good leader gone bad”, having at first been “a very enlightened president”. One US commentator wrote: “History will not look kindly on those in the West who insisted on bringing the avowed Marxist Mugabe into the government. “In particular, the Jimmy Carter foreign policy... bears some responsibility for the fate of a small African country with scant connection to American national interests.” In recent years Mr Carter developed a reputation as an international peace negotiator. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his commitment to finding peaceful solutions to international conflicts, his work with human rights and democracy initiatives, and his promotion of economic and social programmes. Mr Carter was dispatched to North Korea in August 2008 to secure the release of US citizen Aijalon Mahli Gomes, who had been sentenced to eight years of hard labour after being found guilty of illegally entering North Korea. He successfully secured the release of Mr Gomes. In 2010 he returned to the White House to greet President Barack Obama and discuss international affairs amid rising tensions on the Korean peninsula. Proving politics runs in the family, in 2013 his grandson Jason, a state senator, announced his bid to become governor in Georgia, where his famous grandfather governed before becoming president. He eventually lost to incumbent Republican Nathan Deal. Fears that Mr Carter’s health was deteriorating were sparked in 2015 when he cut short an election observation visit in Guyana because he was “not feeling well”. It would have been Mr Carter’s 39th trip to personally observe an international election. Three months later, on August 12, he revealed he had cancer which had been diagnosed after he underwent surgery to remove a small mass in his liver. Mr Obama was among the well-wishers hoping for Mr Carter’s full recovery after it was confirmed the cancer had spread widely. Melanoma had been found in his brain and liver, and Mr Carter underwent immunotherapy and radiation therapy, before announcing in March the following year that he no longer needed any treatment. In 2017, Mr Carter was taken to hospital as a precaution, after he became dehydrated at a home-building project in Canada. He was admitted to hospital on multiple occasions in 2019 having had a series of falls, suffering a brain bleed and a broken pelvis, as well as a stint to be treated for a urinary tract infection. Mr Carter spent much of the coronavirus pandemic largely at his home in Georgia, and did not attend Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration in 2021, but extended his “best wishes”. Former first lady Rosalynn Carter, the closest adviser to Mr Carter during his term as US president, died in November 2023. She had been living with dementia and suffering many months of declining health. “Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished,” Mr Carter said in a statement following her death. “She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me.”Chlamydia could make koalas extinct. Can a vaccine save them in time?
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