Cigarette smoking in Costa Rica is a long-honored custom, so observers are watching to see if the Tobacco Control Law will prove, as it has in other countries, that it is easier to persuade people to buy something than to avoid using it. This week, the Ministry of Health reduced to three months the 12-month deadline covering prohibiting the sale of packs of cigarettes of less than 20. The idea ...

This article was graciously contributed by Gustavo Gutierrez, who runs GGS Fotografia here in Costa Rica. You can find more pictures related to this article on The Costa Rica Star Facebook page. The joy of over 120 children from the indigenous community of Tanagra, Sixaola, on southern border of Costa Rica, contrasts the poverty in which they live in. They live between two countries, Pan...

Source: Wikimedia Commons If conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh is a man of his word, he may be visiting Costa Rica as a medical tourist in the future. In 2010, Mr. Limbaugh stated that if the Affordable Care Act legislation passed in the United States, he would come to Costa Rica. A major ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday gave the green light to the legislation some people refer t...

Costa Rican Police destroyed over 500,000 marijuana plants over the last two weeks in the remote region of the Talamanca. According to the Minister of Security, no arrests were made during the operation. Talamanca holds some of the most inaccessible areas in Costa Rica. The country’s highest mountains lie thickly forested without much development. This makes traveling into Talamanca’s interior ...

On June 14th, Costa Rica celebrated World Blood Donor Day with a shortage. The director of the National Blood Bank, Erna Melendez, made the rounds of various media outlets and called upon Ticos to step up their donations, which earlier this year were estimated to be around 150 per day. According to microbiologist Sebastian Molina of the National Blood Bank of Costa Rica, the adequate and sustainab...

The Constitutional Court upheld the ban on selling junk food products in Costa Rican school cafeterias yesterday. Food products with high concentrations of sugar, oil or salt such as chips, cookies, candy and carbonated sodas have been banned from elementary schools and high schools since January of this year. The ban was appealed under claims of unconstitutionality manifesting that such reg...

Conservationists from Paso Robles, California are riding their bicycles across five of the more centralized United States to raise funds and spread awareness against the slaughter of oceanic top predators (sharks), which is throwing our marine eco-systems out of balance. Devon Lambert, a conservation biology major and his former teacher Mark DiMaggio are taking a twelve hundred mile bike ride f...

Recently, internal audits and investigative reports of Costa Rica’s Social Security department (Caja), which funds the country’s sorely flawed universal healthcare system, have shown some serious expenditure increases on medicinal procurement in the recent past. It has been discovered that Caja has been purchasing “emergency orders” of medicines for upwards of ten times the normal price. So, wh...

In an effort to stop the illegal cattle meat trafficking, the MICIT’s Financing Incentive Fund will make it possible to resolve crimes by performing livestock paternity tests. Twenty eight million colones will be destined to this project during a twelve month period. Recently the instances of meat being sold from illegally butchered animals in unsanitary conditions has plunged farmers into a se...

In Costa Rica, a total of 53,792 mammogram appointments are currently on the waiting lists of the public health care system (La Caja), according to a report issued last week by the National Union of Social Security Employees (UNDECA). The labor union requested the intervention of the Ministry of Health, the National Ombudsman and the National Institute for Women (INAMU) to investigate the company...

Fifty percent of all municipal solid waste generated in Costa Rica comes from organic matter, according to a recent report issued by the World Bank. Twenty-one percent of garbage discarded by Ticos comes from paper, 18 percent from plastic, two percent from glass, and two percent from metal sources. In "What a Waste: A Global Review of Solid Waste Management" (PDF), Costa Rica is classified as a ...

A United States federal district court in Miami recently sentenced a Miami-based supplier of organic fruit and vegetable products for tricking clients into believing that their food products came from Costa Rica. The company in question operated under the name Pure Nature Organics, and in 2007 it sold broccoli and green beans labeled as produce grown in Costa Rica. In reality, the produce came fro...

Doctors and nurses assigned to two public health clinics in the Northern Zone of Costa Rica were busy cleaning and painting instead of looking after patients after cockroaches and mice were reported in their facilities. The clinics were closed on two separate Fridays: May 25th and June 1st. According to digital newspaper El Pais, patients were extremely aggravated by the closures. One patient com...

More than 57 percent of school-age children in Costa Rica are currently affected by intestinal parasites and infections, while 32 percent of children attending preschool and kindergarten are also at risk. Such are the results of the recently conducted National Survey of Nutrition. According to a news report by Alonso Solis of Radio Reloj 94.3 FM, intestinal illnesses tend to increase during the...

Earlier this week the Minister of Public Health of Costa Rica, Daisy Corrales Diaz, launched a national campaign to pick up scrap tires as part of a broader initiative to prevent the propagation of the dreaded Aedes aegypti mosquito, a known carrier of dengue fever. Minister Corrales did a lot more than simply announce the campaign: she pulled up her blouse sleeves and picked up a few tires by her...

In early May, neighbors of Barrio Goban near downtown Limon in the Caribbean Zone of Costa Rica complained to the municipality about an unsightly garbage problem in the Chocolate River. Roberto Portuguez of La Prensa Libre described the situation: "Food, dead animals, garbage bags, discarded appliances, and even construction debris are turning the river into a dump where the stench is permanent."...

Earlier this month, the Humane Society International announced its support of the following restaurants in Costa Rica for their use of cage-free eggs: Alquimia Healthy Buena Tierra Jardin del Parque Oasis Veggie House The restaurants above are located in the the Greater Metropolitan Area of San Jose. Regarding Oasis' choice of cage-free eggs, Cynthia Dent, Regional Manager for Lati...

Is there a relation between a high Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the obesity rates of a country? Are prosperous countries with high GDP rates doomed to have an overweight population and all the health problems it entails? Such are the questions posited in an article by Haley Sweetland Edwards, published last year in The Atlantic. That article, entitled "The Richest, Fattest Nation on Earth (...

Costa Rica has one of the highest rates of childhood asthma in Latin America. According to online news daily Costa Rica On, 32 percent of Tico children between the ages of 6 and 7 suffer from asthma, and two of the major factors exacerbating the respiratory disease are vitamin D deficiency and not enough time spent playing out in the sunshine. A genetic research study conducted by Dr. Manuel So...

Canopy tours and zip line adventures have become iconic among visitors to Costa Rica. They are a great way to explore our forests and they boast a great safety record, but a recent zip line-related tragedy in the United States has some tourists wondering about secondary dangers of canopy tours. The case of a young woman in the southern state of Georgia, who is currently being treated for a fles...

People in Costa Rica are getting fatter, and this weight increase is not in character with our country's goal of becoming a carbon-neutral nation by the year 2021. Such is the conclusion of respected agricultural and ecosystems expert Don Alexander Bonilla Duran. A lot has been written about the recent report released by the Centers of Disease Control (CDC) in the United States concerning obesity...

Costa Rica outperforms her Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in terms of child nutrition, but it needs to do more to protect Tica mothers. Save the Children, an international non-profit organization dedicated to improving the lives of children through better education, health care, and economic opportunities, recently issued its annual State of the World's Mothers report. Costa Rica was placed on...

Costa Rica is already famous for her ecolodges and yoga retreats, but the Sanctuary at Two Rivers is the ultimate destination for travelers seeking to combine fitness, relaxation and luxury. The Sanctuary was recently mentioned as the "ultimate jungle gym" by Kathryn Branch in The New York Times Style Magazine. The founders are Jeff Gossett and Perrey Reeves, an actress who is perhaps best remembe...

Author's Note: A previous article in The Costa Rica Star touched on the "Top 10 Things You Should Know Before Moving to Costa Rica." The most important advice on that article bears repeating at this time: "A sensible word of advice for anyone who is planning to move here, or to any other nation for that matter: the worst time to undertake a country relocation is whilst experiencing severe emotion...

Costa Rica’s educational system is continually highlighted as one of the best in Latin America and it continues to produce quality graduates that are rapidly absorbed by private companies and state institutions. In 2011, Costa Rica’s Office of Planning for Superior Education and the Commission of Directors for Planning initiated the National Education Plan-2011-2015 in accordance with the internat...

Molecular biologist Carlos Santamaria is a Tico researcher working at the University of Salamanca in Spain. Working with a team of microbiologists, Dr. Santamaria has been investigating several bone marrow specimens, looking for elusive proteins which could be crucial for the development of therapeutic solutions for the treatment of acute myeloblastic leukemia. This type of leukemia is the ...

Paseo Colon, Second Avenue and other main streets in San Jose were awash in orange during the morning hours of April 15. Such was the color of the shirts worn by hundreds of cyclists who took to the busy streets of Costa Rica’s capital for an event coordinated by the Embassy of the Netherlands and ChepeCletas, a group dedicated to promoting bicycle culture in Costa Rica. According to event orga...

A new establishment in Escazu intends to become Costa Rica's first "smoke-easy" in defiance of the Tobacco Control Law which was enacted in early April. This law explicitly prohibits smoking in many places where the public gathers, particularly bars and restaurants. The Tobacco Control Law does not seem to concern Don Sergio Martinez too much. Mr. Martinez is the businessman behind "9 Degrees N...

One of the major concerns surrounding the passing of the Tobacco Control Law (law number 9028), which is now in effect and being implemented, is that it could leave the door open to unprincipled individuals who could take advantage of the new taxation regime applied to cigarette sales. Those opposed to the law argued that it would create a black market and possibly lead to organized crime. Whil...

A group of six men armed with AK-47 assault rifles and 9mm handguns forced their way into a nursery set up to protect the large Leatherback sea turtles and stole their eggs. According to a televised news report broadcast by Repretel channel 6, the gunmen descended upon a beach encampment in Playa Moin, in the province of Limon. A group of volunteer workers, many of them foreigners, were bound a...

Three years ago, the National Tourism Board (Spanish acronym: ICT) launched an initiative to provide clear warnings to foreign and domestic tourists about certain risks they may face during their relaxing or adventurous activities in Costa Rica. The initiative called for a closer involvement by Fuerza Publica in looking after the safety of visitors to our country. The first stage of the project c...

As Easter celebrations mark the end of Lent season, emergency management and public safety authorities in various Central American nations are reporting the grim tally of injuries and deaths during the week. Many decades ago, the casualty counts during Semana Santa were negligible, as the majority of devout Catholics used to stay at home and only ventured out to church and religious process...

Costa Rica, with a growing population of over 4.3 million people with about 60% of them living in the urban areas, has made significant progress over the last decade in expanding the coverage of water services to the non-rural areas. Approximately 99% of the urban population is now connected to water supply systems. The level of coverage in rural areas is lower; only about 92% of the 1.7 millio...

It’s been almost three months since the red tide phenomenon became visible in the waters of our Pacific coast. According to scientists at the Costa Rican Institute of Fishing and Aquaculture (INCOPESCA in Spanish), the ominous-looking red tide this season has not presented high levels of toxicity. Online news daily Costa Rica Hoy has been following the red tide occurrence this summer with a...

Costa Rica is known as one of the happiest countries in the world, a fact that has been widely publicized and even adopted by the national tourism board (ICT)  in an effort to attract even more visitors to our nation. This happiness has been attributed to our commitment to environmental protection, and it is inferred from self-reporting among Ticos; but when it comes to more personal matters of op...

As we head into Easter, thousands of people are expected to crowd the beaches, rivers, lakes, and swimming pools of Costa Rica. The Red Cross has published a set of reminders for families who are planning to spend the next few hot summer days near the water. Most of the advice is common sense, and yet Red Cross volunteers find themselves busy each year responding to situations caused by fai...

If you think that the recent signing of Costa Rica's new anti-smoking law imposes too many restrictions, then you should not plan to move to the city Elk Grove in Sacramento County, California. According to a recent article written by Mary Elizabeth Williams for online magazine Salon, the council of Elk Grove is currently debating a citywide ban on smoking inside housing units in residential a...

SAN JOSE – Minister of Public Health Daisy Corrales has sent instructions to regional directors in Costa Rica to notify private businesses that they should immediately begin taking down all "Area de Fumado" (Smoking Area) signs. The old signs should be discarded and replaced with the new "Prohibido Fumar" 8.5" x 11" official posters. The measure described above can be implemented now, witho...

RPP Noticias, a major news broadcaster in Peru, has announced that the Executive Branch of the South American country has approved a legislative measure that will prohibit all physical aggression against children and adolescents. With this historical approval, Peru will join Costa Rica, Uruguay and Venezuela in Latin America as countries where corporal punishment of children is a serious crimi...

Marcela Castro Wedel is a physiotherapist and certified instructor of the Pilates and yoga disciplines. She is also a dog trainer who believes that doga, the practice of yoga with a canine companion, is a discipline that carries even more benefits than traditional yoga. Doga combines a series of yoga poses and breathing exercises that humans can perform along with canines. The idea is for both ...