Month: April 2019

Americans are becoming increasingly sedentary, spending almost a third of their waking hours sitting down, and computer use is partly to blame, a new study found.   Over almost a decade, average daily sitting time increased by roughly an hour, to about eight hours for U.S. teens and almost 6 1/2 hours for adults, according to the researchers. That includes school and work hours, but leisure-time computer use among all ages increased too.   By 2016, at least half of American kids and adults spent an hour or more of leisure time daily using computers. The biggest increase was among the oldest adults: 15 percent of retirement-aged adults reported using computers that often in 2003-04, soaring to more than half in 2015-16.   Most Americans of all ages watched TV or videos for at least two hours daily and that was mostly unchanged throughout the study, ranging from about 60 percent of kids aged 5 to 11, up to 84 percent of seniors.   “Everything we found is concerning,” said lead author Yin Cao, a researcher at Washington University’s medical school in St. Louis. “The overall message is prolonged sitting is highly prevalent,” despite prominent health warnings about the dangers of being too sedentary.   The researchers analyzed U.S. government health surveys from almost 52,000 Americans, starting at age 5, from 2001-2016. Total sitting time was assessed for teens and adults starting in 2007. The results were published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.   Studies have …

The World Health Organization says Malawi has become the first country to begin immunizing children against malaria, using the only licensed vaccine to protect against the mosquito-spread disease. Although the vaccine only protects about one-third of children who are immunized, those who get the shots are likely to have less severe cases of malaria. The parasitic disease kills about 435,000 people every year, the majority of them children under 5 in Africa. “It’s an imperfect vaccine but it still has the potential to save tens of thousands of lives,” said Alister Craig, dean of biological sciences at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, who was not linked to WHO or to the vaccine. Craig said immunizing the most vulnerable children during peak malaria seasons could spare many thousands of children from falling ill with malaria or even dying. The vaccine, known as Mosquirix, was developed by GlaxoSmithKline and was approved by the European Medicines Agency in 2015. A previous trial showed the vaccine was about 30% effective in children who got four doses, but that protection waned over time. Reported side effects include pain, fever and convulsions. WHO’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus welcomed the new program, noting progress has “stalled and even reversed” in the ongoing fight against malaria. In the coming weeks, WHO said similar vaccination programs would begin in Kenya and Ghana together with other partners and that they aimed to reach about 360,000 children across the three countries. GSK is donating up to 10 million vaccine doses. …

Communist Vietnam is moving to privatize some parts of its health care system, raising questions about the state’s duty to guarantee care for all as a basic right, and about its budget to do so.  A publicly funded medical school in Ho Chi Minh City said this month it is looking for a private investor to help it build a new training and outpatient center on its campus. The Pham Ngoc Thach University of Medicine said the idea is for it to handle the clinical operations and training, while a private company would handle the actual construction. Tapping private funding “Ho Chi Minh City’s health care needs are critical due to rapid urbanization and a growing population,” said Dr. Ngo Minh Xuan, who is the rector of the Pham Ngoc Thach University of Medicine. “However, we cannot cater to these needs effectively and timely by relying solely on public budget.” The shift to partially privatize these health services is an ongoing trend as the country of 100 million people turns ever closer to capitalism. More and more international hospitals are popping up and expanding, like Hanh Phuc and the Vietnam Germany Hospital, as the government increasingly opens up the sector to private parties, such as through a trade deal with the European Union that permits higher foreign investment. A record of health care for all Since its establishment as a communist nation at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, the country has provided universal health care, with most …

An animal orphanage in Zimbabwe is one of the organizations leading efforts to ensure poaching and development do not wipe out the wildlife of the southern African nation.  About half an hour drive southeast of Bulawayo is a special orphanage caring for abandoned and injured animals. The Chipangali Wildlife Orphanage is home to 25 animal species, some endangered, some rescued from poachers. Vivian and Paddy Wilson established the orphanage in 1973 and a second generation now runs it.  Chipangali’s co-director Nicky Wilson explains what motivated her in-laws to begin rescuing wildlife. ​“(When) Chipangali was formed there was only CROW (Centre for Rehabilitation of Wildlife), which was in Durban (South Africa) and Daphne Sheldrick Orphanage in Kenya. There was no other places where you would put animals that wouldn’t survive in the wild,” Wilson said. Animals are brought to Chipangali after being injured, seized, or orphaned, says Wilson. Some are later released into the wild, and some are not. “Some birds might have flown into power lines and are missing part of their wings, they won’t be able to be released. We also have baby animals, sometimes if they are reared, they become too tame and assume that every human is friendly, unfortunately that is not the case in our world. So, they will stay here permanently and utilize them for our education,” Wilson said. ​The oldest resident of the orphanage is a crocodile rescued four decades ago from a community angry it was eating their goats and cattle.  The locals …

The world’s recyclable plastic is being shipped to Asia where it is illegally dumped, buried or burned in the country with the lightest regulations, environmentalists warned on Tuesday calling for greater transparency in the global waste trade. A report by Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) and Greenpeace East Asia analyzed the top 21 exporters and importers of plastic recyclable waste from 2016 until 2018 – before and after China stopped taking such waste last year. It found that plastic waste imports into Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam jumped from mid-2017 to early 2018, leading to illegal operations dumping and open-burning, contaminating water supplies, killing crops and causing respiratory illnesses. “For the first world, it makes them feel good about their waste supposedly being recycled but in reality it ends up in countries that cannot deal with the waste,” said Beau Baconguis, a plastics campaigner at GAIA in Manila. “So the pollution is heading south to countries that do not have that capacity,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. As pollution and environmental damage linked to the rise in plastic waste became known in countries like Malaysia and Thailand during 2018, protests led to tighter waste regulations and import restrictions by authorities, the study found. Large volumes of plastic waste then diverted to other countries in the region, like Indonesia and India, where regulations on the waste trade are more lenient, the study said. “Once one country regulates plastic waste imports, it floods into the next un-regulated destination,” said Kate Lin, …

A new study shows that many teenagers who use e-cigarettes do not understand the amount of addictive nicotine they are inhaling.  The study, published in the American Academy of Pediatrics, found that 40 percent of adolescents who believed they were only using nicotine-free products were actually vaping significant amounts of the substance.  The research involved 517 adolescents, aged 12 to 21, who were questioned about their use of e-cigarettes, traditional cigarettes and marijuana.  Researchers from Stony Brook University in New York state compared adolescents’ responses about their use of such substances against urine samples taken from the teenagers. They found that almost all of the respondents were honest about their substance use, however, they discovered the biggest discrepancy in the study came from teens who thought they were using nicotine-free e-cigarettes.  “Many of our participants were unaware of the nicotine content of the e-cigarette products they were using,” the researchers concluded.  Pros and cons The study comes at a time when the popularity of e-cigarettes is on the rise and their use has become a divisive topic in the public health community.  Advocates for e-cigarettes say the products have the potential to shift lifelong smokers of traditional cigarettes onto less-harmful nicotine products, including e-cigarettes, while critics say that vaping risks bringing a new generation into nicotine addiction. Critics also point out that the health effects from the chemicals in e-cigarettes are not fully known. E-cigarettes contain nicotine, which is addictive, but they do not contain tar or many of the …

The endangered killer whales of the Pacific Northwest live very different lives from orcas in captivity. They swim up to 100 miles (161 kilometers) a day in pursuit of salmon, instead of being fed a steady diet of baitfish and multivitamins. Their playful splashing awes and entertains kayakers and passengers on Washington state ferries instead of paying theme park customers. But the captive whales are nevertheless providing a boon to researchers urgently trying to save wild whales in the Northwest. SeaWorld, which displays orcas at its parks in California, Texas and Florida, has recently published data from thousands of routine blood tests of its killer whales over two decades, revealing the most comprehensive picture yet of what a healthy whale looks like. The information could guide how and whether scientists intervene to help sick or stranded whales in the wild. “For us, collecting blood from free-ranging killer whales is exceedingly difficult, so it’s something we would rarely ever do,” said Deborah Fauquier, a veterinary medical officer at the National Marine Fisheries Service. “Having partners that are in the managed-care community that can provide us with blood values from those animals is very useful. It’s giving us a very robust baseline data set that we haven’t had previously for these whales.” The round-up of killer whales for theme-park display in the 1960s and ’70s was devastating for the Pacific Northwest’s resident orcas: At least 13 were killed and 45 kept to awe and entertain paying crowds around the world, according to …

Denis Hayes, the man credited with founding Earth Day, predicted 2020 will be a turning point in the global climate change movement. “I’m confident that the end is in sight. When conditions are right, people are ready to demand change, and America can turn on a dime,” Hayes told reporters Monday during a news conference on Earth Day, which he helped established in 1970. Hayes said people around the world are demanding change, especially the young, and that makes him optimistic.  “It recently happened in the United States on gay marriage. It more recently happened in New Zealand on gun control. It happened globally on the ozone hole,” Hayes said. Tens of thousands of students around the world skipped school for one day last month to protest inaction on climate change. There were protests in South Africa, India, New Zealand and South Korea. In Europe, students packed streets in London, Lisbon, Vienna, Rome and Copenhagen, among other cities.  Mass climate change protests have been taking place in London for the past week. On Monday, police said they have arrested 1,065 people since Extinction Rebellion began, aimed at paralyzing parts of central London to emphasize the need for sharp reductions in carbon use.  “Most social movements are powered by youth,” he told reporters. Hayes said even though U.S. President Donald Trump has “taken a wrecking ball to international climate treaties, appointed the two worst EPA administrators in history, and pledged to resuscitate the dead coal industry, I’m confident that the end …

Fighting to immunize the world has always been a challenging line of work, but in some cases it is becoming increasingly deadly. As the world marks World Immunization Week humans have much to celebrate. Smallpox has been effectively eradicated from the world, and according to the World Health Organization, more children than ever are getting routine vaccinations every year. And aid workers scouring the globe have come very close to eradicating diseases like diphtheria and polio saving countless lives in the process. But health workers are also fighting a disturbing trend of misinformation urging people to ignore the science of vaccination. The result has been fear and even violence in some rural areas and lesser developed countries where aid workers are attempting to immunize those most vulnerable, and eradicate the last holdouts of diseases like polio. Ignorance, fear and violence In early April a worker in Pakistan was shot outside a family home as he attempted to talk the family into vaccinating their child against polio. And late last year, two aid workers were gunned down as they were on a vaccine drive. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, a doctor administering what looks to be a highly effective vaccine against Ebola was attacked and killed last week. Local health centers have become targets of violence because of rumors being spread that the Ebola crisis in the region was concocted by government officials in the capital, Kinshasa. In the United States, some people oppose vaccinations for religious reasons, while others …