Month: October 2017

At least one in 10 people globally lives near the coast in a low-lying area. As the population increases and sea level rises, their homes are increasingly being threatened. The countries with the most people at risk include the United States, China, India and Bangladesh, and Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam and Indonesia. Scientists say climate change is to blame for the threat, and it has far reaching implications. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee explains. …

People are big polluters, on the land, in the sea and even in outer space, that can include anything from a hammer that floats away from the space station, to radiation from a nuclear weapons test in the atmosphere. “This can range from little chips of paint all the way up to spent rocket bodies and things like that,” said Dan Baker, director of the Laboratory of Atmosphere and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “We’ve been trying to figure out how can we most effectively eliminate this debris without causing more of a problem.” Space debris travels so fast, even an orbiting chip of paint can poke a hole in a satellite. But Baker says something tinier, and natural, is a bigger hazard: It’s the highly charged “killer electrons” of the magnetized zone above the earth called The Van Allen Belts. “We’ve observed them to cause very significant problems for spacecraft,” Baker said. Electro-magnetic planetary blanket The doughnut-shaped Van Allen Belts around our planet protect life on earth from solar winds and cosmic rays. But their highly energetic charged particles can damage the circuitry in space stations, weather satellites and other machines that travel through that region of space. Baker notes that “killer electrons” can also come from some human activities, like the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. “Back in the 1950s and especially in the 1960s, there were nuclear explosions that put huge amounts of radiation into space that caused many satellites to ‘die’ because of radiation …

The latest movie adaptation of Steven King’s terrifying book “IT” brought in a record $123 million in its opening weekend. But in real life, there’s nothing fun about being scared, so why do people flock to scary movies, and around Halloween, haunted houses and participate in other frightening activities? New research has the answer. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports. …

Laws criminalizing consensual gay sex have been scrapped in about 25 countries in the last 20 years, but more than 70 nations still have such prohibitions, a U.N. expert said Friday in a first-of-its-kind report at the General Assembly.              And in many places around the world, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people live in “a crucible of egregious violations” of human rights, enduring violence and discrimination, said Vitit Muntarbhorn, the U.N.’s first independent expert investigating violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation. The world body’s Human Rights Council appointed him last year, in a move that met significant opposition amid deep international divisions on gay rights.   Addressing a U.N. General Assembly committee for the first time Friday, Muntarbhorn noted “a global trend toward decriminalization of consensual same-sex relations.” At least five countries — Belize, Lesotho, Mozambique, Palau and Seychelles — have scrubbed such laws in the last five years.   “The gaps are, however, ubiquitous,” Muntarbhorn added. Besides the dozens of countries where it’s a crime — sometimes punishable by death — for people of the same gender to have sex, some countries also have criminal laws aimed at transgender people.   While some laws are rarely applied, they still fuel other forms of discrimination, Muntarbhorn said. He called for reforming all criminal laws against same-sex relations and for establishing more anti-discrimination laws. Muntarbhorn’s job became a flashpoint last year, when African nations tried to stop his work. They questioned its legal basis and said the U.N. …

The Trump administration Friday proposed new health insurance regulations that could affect basic benefits required by the Affordable Care Act, but not for a couple of years. Loosening “Obamacare” benefit requirements was a major sticking point for congressional Republicans in thus-far fruitless efforts to repeal the law. The complex new plan from the administration would give states a potential path to easing some requirements. Starting in 2019, states could select from coverage levels in another state, which could be less generous. Ten broad categories of services required by the health law would still have to be covered, but the fine print could change. Plan issued late Friday Issued late in the day, the 365-page plan also proposes other changes to the inner workings of the health insurance markets created under the Obama-era law. The marketplaces offer subsidized private plans to people who don’t have access to job-based coverage. The changes proposed by the Trump administration cover areas from consumers’ eligibility for subsidies to how insurers are reimbursed. It could take days for consumer groups, insurers, benefits experts and others to assess the potential impact of the proposal. Among the biggest uncertainties is whether the proposed changes would appeal to state officials, who generally try to protect standards established on their home turf. The basic benefits that could be affected include: Outpatient, inpatient and emergency care Prescription drugs and labs Preventive care Pregnancy, maternity and newborn care Mental health and substance abuse Rehabilitation Children’s services, including vision and dental While those …

A major health care system serving the upper Midwest said this week that the number of opioid pills it prescribes has fallen by almost a quarter as it works to respond to America’s opioid epidemic. South Dakota-headquartered Sanford Health started analyzing its prescribing last year to direct its response to rising opioid and heroin overdose deaths, said Doug Griffin, who spearheaded the system’s data collection as vice president and medical officer for Sanford in Fargo, North Dakota. Griffin said the health system learned that the numbers are “staggering”: The system reported prescribing 4.3 million opioid pills in the first quarter of 2016, a figure that doesn’t include cancer patients’ prescriptions. Sanford took steps as a result, including mandating opioid education for providers and using its electronic health record system to alert doctors about safe prescribing habits, Griffin said. Sanford has since seen a significant reduction in both the number of pills prescribed and prescriptions written. Sanford providers wrote 18 percent fewer prescriptions for opioids in the third quarter of 2017 compared to the first quarter of 2016, amounting to 24 percent, or about 1.25 million, fewer pills prescribed, according to the health system. The Sioux Falls, South Dakota, region saw a 19 percent reduction in pills prescribed, while the Fargo area experienced a 33 percent drop and the Bemidji, Minnesota, region saw a 37 percent decrease, according to Sanford. ​‘Knowledge has changed’ “The stance that we have taken is clearly opioid overdoses, both illicit and prescription overdoses, are a problem …

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Friday welcomed President Donald Trump’s declaration of the opioid epidemic as a public health emergency, saying he agreed with Trump that the war on addiction was “winnable.” Trump on Thursday directed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to declare a 90-day public health emergency, but he stopped short of declaring the epidemic a national emergency or asking Congress for additional funds. Trump’s declaration nonetheless gives states more flexibility to use federal funds, although it will not provide funds specifically for the opioid crisis. The White House said the administration had allocated more than $1 billion for the opioid epidemic, including $800 million for prevention, treatment, first responders and prescription drug monitoring programs. ‘Make a difference’ Sessions, speaking to law enforcement officials at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, called Trump’s announcement a “rare step” that “will make a difference by getting more help to those who need it.” “In confronting the worst drug crisis in our history, we need to use every lawful tool we have,” Sessions said. “But if we do, there is hope. I agree with the president — I’m convinced that this is a winnable war.” In August, the Department of Justice formed the Opioid Abuse and Detection Unit, a pilot program that places prosecutors in so-called opioid “hot spots” and uses data to investigate and prosecute opioid-related health care fraud. Sessions said the program had begun to produce results. On Thursday, he announced the first case brought …

A Kenyan university student has won a $100,000 research grant for an idea aimed at decreasing maternal and infant deaths among cattle-raising families on the Kenya-Ethiopia border. Dahabo Adi Galgalo secured the 2017 innovation award from AESA, Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa, for designing a GPS-like device to track expectant mothers in the area and ensure they seek health care for themselves and their babies. Born into a pastoralist family in Kenya’s Marsabit County, Dahabo told VOA Horn of Africa that she always wanted to improve health care for families in the border area who depend on raising and selling livestock to make a living. “The area of the pastoral community is so vast. The hospitals and health workers are very few. In fact, Marsabit County is among the top counties in Kenya in maternal and infant death,” she said. One of the key factors contributing to the high death rates, she believes, is a lack of antenatal care (ANC) for pregnant women. ANC clinics providing prenatal services are few and far between in the area, and pastoralists don’t often visit the ones that do exist, partly because of the long distances they would have to cover. Dahabo says that in 2015, she conducted a study of mothers who gave birth at a regional hospital. Out of 1,042 mothers who delivered during the one-year period, she says, 116 lost their babies during delivery. Of those 116 women, she says, 40 percent had never gone to an ANC …

In 2015, 92 million Americans used prescription opioids to alleviate or manage pain, with 11.5 million reporting they misused them. Now more than ever, patients are seeking alternative treatments to avoid using potentially addictive pain pills. VOA’s Elizabeth Cherneff introduces us to a Washington doctor who is helping people manage their pain and combat their addictions. …

More than 10,000 mainly Syrian refugees who escaped fighting in their country are living on five Greek islands. About 2,500 of them are crowded into camps on the island of Samos, even though there is only room for about 800. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports aid groups say there is a growing mental health crisis among those refugees. …

U.S. public health advocates welcomed President Donald Trump’s decision to declare the U.S. opioid epidemic a national public health emergency, but say the crisis needs additional funds to be addressed. The 90-day order enables states to use federal emergency funds to fight the crisis, but, although it can be extended, it does not provide a long-term budget. Also, as VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports, there are fears that emergency resources may be depleted by the cost of natural and other disasters. …

The World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say the rate of deaths from measles has dropped 84 percent since the beginning of a global vaccination campaign in 2000. Experts say the number of people who died from measles in 2016 was about 90,000, compared to more than 550,000 deaths in 2000. This marks the first time that worldwide measles deaths have fallen to less than 100,000 per year. Robert Linkins, of the Measles and Rubella Initiative at the CDC, said in a statement that “saving an average of 1.3 million lives per year through measles vaccine is an incredible achievement and makes a world free of measles seem possible, even probable, in our lifetime.” Since 2000, some 5.5 billion doses of measles vaccine have been administered to children through routing immunization services and mass vaccination campaigns. The disease is contagious through air particles and can spread quickly. Measles kills more people every year than any other vaccine-preventable disease. But the WHO says the world is still far from reaching regional measles elimination goals. Since 2009, officials have managed to deliver a first dose of the vaccine to 85 percent of the babies who need it, but there has been no improvement in that rate in eight years. And only 64 percent of the affected population has gotten the second dose, which comes when a child is four or five years old. The WHO says “far too many children” — about 20.8 million — …