Crop diversity between 20 and 90 percent crop losses in the Congo. The FAO emergency relief and rehabilitation program is assisting vulnerable returnee populations in the African Great Lakes Region through mass propagation and distribution of CMD resistant or highly tolerant cassava. A well known occurrence of disease susceptibility in crops lacking diversity concerns the 'Gros Michel', a seedless banana that saw world marketing in the 1940s. As the market demand became high for this particular cultivar, growers and farmers began to use the Gros Michel banana almost exclusively. Genetically, these bananas are clones, and because of this lack of genetic diversity,
Health measures during the construction of the Panama Canal had died during the construction of the Panama Railway and over 22,000 during the French effort to build a canal. Many of these deaths were due to disease, particularly yellow fever and malaria. At several times, construction on the Panama Railway had actually halted due to the lack of healthy workers. The high rate of deaths among workers on the Panama Canal due to disease was the source of a great deal of controversy in the United States. Newspapers, such as "The Independent", frequently reported on the poor conditions workers in the Canal Zone experienced, including the rampant disease. Poultney