radical to keep. for 24. hours this is. tragic reality. july 24th. this is. coming up on the program southeast asia combats a deadly outbreak of dengue a fever we take a closer look at the philippines which has declared a national alert after almost a doubling in the number of cases from last year we asked the delta h o about the battle within the skill borne disease plus. japan in the morning after the

country's worst mass killing in almost 2 decades at least 33 died in an arson attack on an animation studio in kyoto look at the tragedy that still has many questions unanswered and. planting the seeds for cleaner air in talk stocks the city of karachi is growing the country's 1st urban forest it's going talk to the jungle is that the way forward in tackling the toxic smog. i'm melissa chan and welcome to news asia it's good to have you with us hospitals across southeast asia are reporting a sharp rise in dengue fever cases and deaths it's a major outbreak of the disease dengue fever is the world's most. common mosquito

borne disease according to the w.h.o. it infects 390000000 people around the world every year killing more than 25000 this week for the very 1st time the philippines declared a national alert to combat an almost doubling of dengue cases but treatment of the disease has been complicated by public mistrust after a recent immunization program there went wrong i'm talking about the health scare in 2017 when dozens of children died after receiving denver of exene administered to $800000.00 children as part of a government health program that program was quickly scuttled and earlier this year manila banned the drug officials also opened criminal proceedings against the vaccines manufacturer and against public health officials. to talk more about this we're joined by dr viler the w.h.o. representative to the philippines dr violet can you give us

a sense of what's happening on the ground how bad is the situation. has good afternoon we share the concern of the government about the repartee increase in the cases now with more than 100000 cases reported so find close to 500 deaths we are seeing on the ground almost twice as many as cases as in the same period of last year and it is clear that we have to brace for more with the onset of the rains we usually see that in the 2nd half of the year we will have 3 times as many cases as in the 1st half so so we are concerned about the situation i want to talk a bit more about denver the vaccine against dengue fever it looks like the philippines was one of the few countries to have a nationwide rollout of administering this vaccine and i'm a little curious if other countries have had similar programs with no incident

because it's caused a lot of controversy in the country. riot here the philippines was one of the 1st countries that has introduced a vaccine at large scale and the doing of it soon is a fairly recent vaccine and it's important to recognize the scene can protect some of those who've received the vaccine against onset of severe thank you disease but has never been designed as a vaccine to control the epidemic so we wouldn't have expected a decrease of the an impact on the dying epidemic because of the think of it seen rather we know that the epidemic sort of following more. every 3 to 4 years we will see increasing cases around the world and also in the region so the situation that we now see in the philippines here is not unique few other countries who are also affected. malaysia singapore they all experience right

now increases and thank you cases on what is the w.h.o. position on denmark c.-a though because the philippines the government there saying that it is the cause of the death of quite a number of children. so the. vaccine program in the philippines has been suspended and that is mostly due to. the problem of trying those who can most benefit from the vaccine potentially which are people who've already had some pretty exposure to the virus and there's no easy measure at this point in time to identify those people who would be most benefiting from the doing a vaccine at large scale and that's the main reason why the program has been the think of x. nation program has been suspended for now now for the epidemic control we do recognize that the main measure to now control in mitigate the effects of the

during the epidemic is actually to seek and destroy breeding sides of the most key to those who have busy a vector for transmitting that then the virus and that really is the emphasis right now over the ongoing control efforts in this acute situation that we are experiencing so just to get clarification the delegate hill can't really comment on whether this vaccine was the cause of these deaths are we just don't know right now it's very hard to to stablish cause ation with this kind of thing it is a very serious accusation that's why i wanted to get clarity on it. they feel we know that there were death cases recorded amongst people who received think of x. and these are cases of people who've really of developing the disease and it think infection even after having received the vaccine we know that even with the effects in for those who receive the vaccine while it will decrease in those who've been

pre-exposure through the virus the chances of developing the disease we know that was it is not a vaccine that will reduce those chances to 0 so this is the context for having seen also some of the death cases amongst those who receive the vaccine. dr thank you we head to japan now which on thursday suffered the worst mass killing in 18 years in arson attack on an animation studio in kyoto people are rather police are investigating a suspect in his forty's after a man broke into the building doused it with fuel and reportedly shouted you die as he set it alight the subsequent blaze killed more than 30 people and injured dozens more some are still in critical condition. devastating details are emerging of the arson attack that shocked japan witnesses

say the fire at the cato animation studio spread so quickly that people jumped from windows to escape the flames. others scrambled up the stairs in a desperate and futile attempt to save their lives many of the bodies were found in a staircase leading to the roof. police believe it was this man who was responsible for the deadly inferno he wasn't employed by the firm and questions over his motive remain local media reporting that the suspect had planned the attack because he believed the studio had plagiarized his work. a woman who wanted to remain anonymous says she interacted with the suspect at the scene. there was i asked the man whether he was ok then he yelled at me saying don't talk to me don't mess with me he seemed strange and he was so burned that i couldn't see his facial expression . as investigators sought says residents pay

tribute to the victims still in disbelief over what happened in the neighborhood you'll better not bother. to animation studio really cares about its anime fans. i'm different i don't understand why workers at the studio had to go through this. on the radio this is unforgivable. this could have that amount of food that these young people were the same age as my grandchildren if my grandchildren had died in these conditions i wouldn't want to live any more. the japanese anime community is also one shock and fans from around the world are rallying around the stricken studio. a crowdfunding campaign to help the company rebuild riced past its original target within hours. environmental experts in pakistan have called air pollution a public health emergency and in the country's largest city of karachi the small og

together with frequent heat waves make for tough reading for its 15000000 residents they're trying their best to offset the problem in ways big and small ash molokai reports. not the typical sounds you would expect to hear in the middle of pakistan's most popular duke city. but this is the country's 1st self-sustaining urban forest in can are cheap. it uses a method inspired by a japanese botanist their trees grew bent. then in nature. the 1st suits were planted 3 years ago when the 400 square metre plot looked like this now it has flourished and grown into something quite spectacular. it's beautiful to see trees you plant at a very young age and see them blossoming into

a tree becoming a dense forest it brings the temperatures down it brings it brings health to people it for it does that brings food it brings all kinds of good things for the neighborhood. in pakistan $212000.00 deaths per year are caused by air pollution according to their need which will putting it in the top 5 countries with a high used mortality greet you to toxic year but despite the up ali was due to sticks there is still no reliable officially to go on inequality so it has been left to community driven groups to fund their own monitoring and this defendant says these people don't know what is in the air is it fog is it smog is it pollution is it bad for our health we don't know what the government is doing and that's where citizens. can play an active role in pushing forward the conversation and awareness about air pollution. the local environmental agency admits the

situation is alarming and they haven't been monitoring the air here because their equipment is out of order these government policies have been promised over the years but that really might be a life and people off and out. like business student will manage on them there are plenty of money and good running but has developed asthma which makes it hard for him to breed. like a one millisecond gap between 20. 5 years but. to me the fact that i have figured out maybe there are more that i don't know or that a naked eye cannot see but there will be many more in the.

idea also now been finest has scored detention off other cities and is being called speed across the country behind the project now one of the government to help convert to n.t. 5 more pounds into foreigners but until that happens this small he no way says is the only one offering the people of cannot see a vital breath of fresh air. that's it for now be sure to check out our other stories on dot com for slash age up on facebook or twitter thanks for watching and goodbye. bursts. home. of speech it's. worth saving. yes those are big changes and most start with this. small steps little ideas tell stories of creative people and innovative projects around the

world. music to limit games to green energy solutions and reforestation. interactive content teaching the next generation the boston bombing took such action. using channels available to people to take action and more determined to build something new for the next generation the idea is the environment series of global 3000 on t.w. and online. leave. japan denies its trade with south korea threatens the global high tech sector instead tokyo puts the onus on the soul to return to the negotiating table and rebuild trust. the global grounding of the 737 max drags on costing us playmaker boeing billions of dollars more. and space agency said companies

joined forces to exploit the potential of asteroids we speak to a scientist to find out more about finding the milky way. again for let's do business critics accuse the japanese prime minister of using his trade dispute with south korea to ghana votes. with tokyo curbing exports of high tech materials to seoul there is an election in japan this weekend and shinzo ave may have reason to celebrate the latest polls predict his coalition will come out on top when the nation votes for a new upper house of parliament positive economic data is also helping his chances japan's economy beat expectations expanding by 2.2 percent in the 1st quarter but it's not all good news exports fell by 2.4 percent in the same time period with japan shipping fewer cars trucks and steel pipes abroad the burgeoning trade conflicts around the world could sour the outlook you.