Month: October 2017

From humanitarian crisis to health crisis, driving rains and floods threaten to turn devastation into disease more than three weeks after Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico. The entire island remains under flash flood warning as record rainfall continues to affect recovery efforts. What’s more, the medical community and the media are sounding the alarm for potential outbreaks of bacterial diseases as citizens search for new ways to get clean water. Nicole Chacon reports for VOA News. …

President Salva Kiir opened South Sudan’s first-ever kidney hospital Thursday in Juba, calling it a breakthrough for the country’s medical care. The facility — a welcome positive sign in conflict-torn South Sudan — is to provide free services to all kidney patients in the country, including foreigners who have been residing there for at least six months. However, the government has not explained how it will pay for the services. Oil production is the country’s main revenue-producer, and output remains far below normal as the country endures its fourth year of a civil war. The Al Cardinal group of companies, headed by investor Asraf Seed Ahmed, built the hospital, which boasts 10 dialysis machines and the capacity to treat at least 50 patients a day, although no transplants will be performed for the time being. As Asraf turned over management of the hospital to the government Thursday, he called on Kiir to ensure that the hospital remains well-staffed and continues to provide free care to all patients. “Mr. President, I want this center to be taken care of. If this center is managed well, it means citizens will get good services. I call upon all the organizations and foreign embassies here to work and provide for the other needs of South Sudanese citizens,” Asraf said. At a ribbon-cutting ceremony, guests clapped and women ululated as Kiir said citizens can now receive “first-class treatment right here at home.” “They will no longer have to travel abroad for diagnosis and long-term care,” …

A malaria outbreak has killed at least four people at a refugee camp in northwestern Kenya, according to local residents and health officials. Hundreds of people have come down with the infectious disease at the Kalobeyei refugee complex in Kenya’s Turkana County. “Already four to six people have died due to malaria,” Galama Guyo, a health care professional at Kalobeyei, told VOA’s Horn of Africa service. “Weekly, we report more than 200 malaria cases, especially people with low body resistance [immunity].” Health care providers do not have enough drugs to treat patients, and there is no major hospital in the area, so some patients have to travel to up to 30 kilometers for treatment, he said. The type of malaria hitting the camps is plasmodium falciparum, one of four types common in the Horn of Africa, said Guyo. The U.N. refugee agency is tracking the situation at Kalobeyei and the nearby town of Kakuma, says the agency’s communication director in Nairobi, Yvonne Ndege. “Our health partners have mobilized some resources to ensure they procure enough drugs and diagnostic kits to treat the increased cases of malaria that we have seen in Kakuma and Kalobeyei,” she said. “UNHCR is also planning to provide additional drugs to help address the situation.” Located in a very arid region, Kalobeyei hosts thousands of African immigrants, mostly from Ethiopia, Somalia and South Sudan. …

The parliament of Australia’s second largest state passed legislation Friday to allow terminally ill patients to seek medical help to end their lives, a bill that is expected to act as a catalyst for the rest of the country to adopt similar laws. Any resident of Victoria state older than 18, with a terminal illness and with less than 12 months to live can request a lethal dose of medication, the bill permits. Anyone that is too ill to administer the dosage can ask for a doctor to help. Many countries have legalized euthanasia or physician-assisted deaths, including Canada, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and some states in the United States. Federal government opposed But Australia’s federal government has opposed legalizing euthanasia even though the remote Northern Territory became the first jurisdiction in the world to do so in 1995. The federal government enacted its own legislation to override the Northern Territory law in 1997 under rules allowed by the constitution. State law cannot be overridden. The passage of the bill in Victoria is expected to herald assisted death legislation in other Australian states. “It is a landmark moment. Other states are likely to follow. We have seen this in other jurisdictions and I expect once politicians see how the system works, they will adopt similar models,” said Ben White, director of the Australian Centre for Health Law Research at Queensland University of Technology. Divisive issue The issue has divided lawmakers and medicinal professionals. Victorian premier Daniel Andrews introduced the bill after …

Air pollution in New Delhi hit 18 times the healthy limit Friday under a thick, toxic haze after a night of fireworks to celebrate the Hindu festival of Diwali, despite a court-ordered ban on their sales. Residents of the sprawling Indian capital, which ranks among the world’s most polluted cities, complained of eyes watering and aggravated coughs as levels of PM 2.5, tiny particulate matter that reaches deep into the lungs, rose alarmingly. Air quality usually worsens in New Delhi ahead of Diwali, the festival of lights, and the Supreme Court temporarily banned the sale of firecrackers, aiming to lessen the risk to health. ​But many still lit fireworks across the capital late into the night, either using old stocks or buying them from neighboring states. Some environment activists said the court order was poorly enforced and firecrackers were still available to celebrate one of north India’s biggest festivals. Air quality off charts An index of air quality had crossed the “hazardous” limit of 300 on Friday, the most severe level on a U.S. embassy scale of measurement which rates a reading of 50 as good and anything above that as a cause for concern. Some parts of Delhi such as Mandir Marg showed an air quality reading of 941, close enough to the level of 999 beyond which no readings are available. The index measures concentrations of PM 2.5, PM 10, ozone, nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide among other indicators. A hazardous level is an alert in which everyone …

Pollution is the world’s No. 1 killer, a new study says, causing more premature deaths than war, terrorism, natural disasters, cigarettes and disease. A new study in the medical journal Lancet said pollution, both outdoor and indoor, killed about 9 million people in 2015, or one out of every six deaths. “Pollution threatens fundamental human rights, such as the right to life, health, well-being, safe work as well as protections of children and the most vulnerable,” co-author Karti Sandilya said. Developing countries The study said the overwhelming majority of pollution-related deaths come in developing countries where the authors say leaders are more concerned about building their economies and infrastructure than environmental regulations. Bangladesh, China, Haiti, India, Pakistan, North Korea and South Sudan are some of the most affected countries. But one of the study’s authors, Richard Fuller, said pollution is tied to slow economic development in wealthy and poor nations. Conservative estimate “There is this myth that finance ministers still live by, that you have to let industry pollute or else you won’t develop. What people don’t realize … people who are sick or dead cannot contribute to the economy. They need to be looked after,” Fuller said. The study said the figure of 9 million premature deaths a year is a conservative estimate and that the actual number is likely to be much higher. A separate World Bank study has said slashing pollution must be a priority, saying that solving this problem would lead to solutions to other crises, …

Two weeks ago Carla Rountree of Washington, D.C., was enjoying an autumn afternoon with friends at the Maryland Renaissance Festival, gaily dressed in a tutu with a goofy unicorn horn tied to her head. While ordering a drink at a beverage stall, a man standing next to her said, “You know, I could grab that horn like you’re an ice cream cone, flip you over, and just lick you.” She retorted, “I don’t think you’d like the results of that.” He smirked and replied, “YOU might.” “No one within earshot, including the female bartender, said anything about it,” Rountree says. “It was just accepted, which infuriated me just as much as the god-awful comment.” That incident occurred as women all over the United States are tweeting and posting #MeToo, sharing their experiences with sexual harassment. The movement followed the fall from grace of movie producer Harvey Weinstein, the latest rich, famous and powerful man to be brought down by a series of allegations of sexual harassment dating as far back as 30 years and involving more than 20 women. Weinstein’s attorneys say he did not participate in any nonconsensual sex. If the number of women harassed by Weinstein looks dramatic, the number who have spoken up via #MeToo to reveal their own sexual harassment experiences is more startling. On Oct. 15, actress Alyssa Milano called for sexual harassment victims to post or tweet the two-word phrase. By the next day, Time magazine reported, more than 27,000 people had responded. By …

The number of cases of plague in Madagascar has doubled during the past five days, according to the United Nations. U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said Thursday as of Wednesday 1,032 cases were reported, 67 percent of which are pneumonic, which is more serious than bubonic plague. So far 89 deaths have been recorded, including 13 on Tuesday. Dujarric said the spread was “highly challenging” to control.   Medical teams in the country have stepped up efforts to combat the spread of the plague, but experts have said the situation will worsen if not rapidly funded. Only 26 percent of the $9.5 million requested has been contributed, Dujarric said. Pneumonic plague is a lung infection, transmitted through flea bites or from person to person through droplets in the air when someone coughs or sneezes.  A person can die within 48 hours of the disease’s onset if not treated with antibiotics.  Symptoms of pneumonic plague include coughing, fever, chest pain and difficulty breathing. While plague is a recurring problem in Madagascar, this particular outbreak has triggered a nationwide panic because it has moved from remote rural areas into the cities, including the capital, Antananarivo. VOA’s Margaret Besheer contributed to this report. …

Uganda’s ministry of health confirmed Thursday that one person has died of Marburg hemorrhagic fever, a close relative of the Ebola virus. Surveillance teams have deployed to the affected district in the eastern part of the country to contain the outbreak. Uganda’s Ministry of Health says one of the two suspected cases of Marburg virus disease has been confirmed via laboratory tests conducted by the Uganda Virus Research Institute. “The confirmed case was a 50-year-old female from Chemuron village, Kween District in Eastern Uganda. She presented with signs and symptoms suggestive of a viral hemorrhagic fever,” said Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng, the minister for health. “Preliminary field investigations indicated that prior to her death, the deceased had nursed her 42-year-old brother, who had died on September 25, 2017 with similar signs and symptoms.” According to the World Health Organization, Marburg is transmitted via contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person or the handling of infected animals. Local media report that the deceased woman’s brother was a hunter. The Ministry of Health has dispatched a rapid response team to the Kween district. “As of this morning, because their surveillance obviously started from the hospitals where the confirmed case passed away, we have ten health workers who have been listed as contacts, and they have already been isolated in their homes for follow up,”Aceng said. Uganda is no stranger to viral hemorrhagic fever. The country has battled several outbreaks of Ebola, including an outbreak in 2000 that killed over 200 …

The idea of gravitational waves has been around for over 100 years since Albert Einstein posited their existence. But in 2016 scientists proved they were out there using giant L-shaped detectors called gravitational wave observatories. But this week more news was made when scientists were able to watch the creation of gravitational waves. VOA’s Kevin Enochs report …

Back in the old days, movies were edited by simply cutting out a piece of film you didn’t want and replacing it with a new shot. That’s almost exactly how the CRISPR gene editing technology works, but on a cellular level. Researchers now say they are close to being able to use this technology to fix some genetic diseases. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports. …

Divers are removing hundreds of old tires, plastic jugs and other junk that was dumped off the Southern California coast nearly 30 years ago by a man who thought he was helping the ocean environment. The cleanup began last week off of Newport Beach, the California Coastal Commission announced Wednesday. “It’s about time this was cleaned up. Dumping plastic and other trash into our oceans is not the way to restore the marine ecosystem,” commission Chair Dayna Bochco said in a statement. “There is an estimated 18 billion pounds of plastic that enters the world’s oceans every year and we must do what we can to clean this up.” In 1988, Rodolphe Streichenberger created what he described as an experimental, artificial reef. The reef covered several acres of ocean floor and consisted of 1,500 used automobile tires, 2,000 one-gallon plastic jugs covered with plastic mesh, 100 sections of PVC pipe and other items, including fishing net, Styrofoam and iron roads, the commission said. Streichenberger believed the reef would spur the growth of kelp forests, provide a place to grow mussels for commercial harvest and rebuild ocean habitat damaged by pollution and development. The materials are “absolutely harmless,” Streichenberger told the Los Angeles Times in 1996. “You have seen no impact. Only fish. It’s very good for the fish.” But his research was “deeply flawed,” according to the Coastal Commission. “State scientists said the tires contained harmful toxins, the material was not dense enough to anchor to the ocean floor and …

Some flowers have found a nifty way to get the blues. They create a blue halo, apparently to attract the bees they need for pollination, scientists reported Wednesday. Bees are drawn to the color blue, but it’s hard for flowers to make that color in their petals. Instead, some flowers use a trick of physics. They produce a blue halo when sunlight strikes a series of tiny ridges in their thin waxy surfaces. The ridges alter how the light bounces back, which affects the color that one sees.   The halos appear over pigmented areas of a flower, and people can see them over darkly colored areas if they look from certain angles. The halo trick is uncommon among flowers. But many tulip species, along with some kinds of daisy and peony, are among those that can do it, said Edwige Moyroud of Cambridge University in England.     In a study published Wednesday by the journal Nature, Moyroud and others analyze the flower surfaces and used artificial flowers to show that bumblebees can see the halos.   An accompanying commentary said the paper shows how flowers that aren’t blue can still use that color to attract bees. Further work should see whether the halo also attracts other insects, wrote Dimitri Deheyn of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.   …