Month: April 2019

Today as we observe World Immunization Week, we’re going to focus on a disease that could be eradicated from the earth, just like smallpox was, and as just as international programs are doing with polio. But instead, as we hear from Carol Pearson, this deadly disease is making a comeback. …

Climate change protesters who have brought parts of London to a standstill said Sunday they were prepared to call a halt if the British government will discuss their demands. Some 963 arrests have been made and 42 people charged in connection with the ongoing Extinction Rebellion protests. On the seventh day of demonstrations that have occupied key spots in the British capital, Swedish teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the demonstrators, telling them: “Humanity is standing at a crossroads.” Organizers said they were willing to switch tactics from disruption to dialogue next week — if the government enters talks. “We are prepared to pause, should the government come to the negotiating table,” Extinction Rebellion spokesman James Fox told AFP. “What the pause looks like is us stopping an escalation. “We can discuss leaving if they are willing to discuss our demands. “At the moment, we haven’t received a response from the government… so we’re waiting on that.” Extinction Rebellion was established last year in Britain by academics and has become one of the world’s fastest-growing environmental movements. Campaigners want governments to declare a climate and ecological emergency, reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2025, halt biodiversity loss and be led by new “citizens’ assemblies on climate and ecological justice. “We’re giving them an opportunity now to come and speak to us,” Fox told AFP. “If they refuse to come and negotiate with us, then this is going to continue and this is going to escalate in different, diverse and …

On April 22, more than 1 billion people in 192 countries are expected to take part in a global day of political and civic action for the Earth. People will march, plant trees, clean up their cities, parks, beaches and waterways, politicians will announce policies, and corporations will pledge to work toward sustainability — all to mark Earth Day 2019. Earth Day Network, the organization that leads Earth Day observances worldwide, has designated 2019 to be the year to “Protect Our Species.” According to EDN, the theme was picked to highlight the fact that human activities are directly linked to what environmental journalist Elizabeth Kolbert refers to in her book, “The Sixth Extinction,” which describes a mass extinction caused by human activity rather than natural causes. “The good news is that the rate of extinctions can still be slowed, and many of our declining, threatened and endangered species can still recover if we work together now to build a united global movement of consumers, voters, educators, faith leaders and scientists to demand immediate action,” EDN President Kathleen Rogers told VOA. Earth Day brings, in general, a greater awareness to environmental concerns. The Pew Research Center released a report last week that found climate change was the top concern in half the countries it surveyed last year. At the top of the list was Greece, where 90 percent of those surveyed called it a major threat and only 4 percent did not view climate change as a threat at all. Their …

Trained to aid and accompany people with disabilities at all times, assistance dogs are much more than dedicated friends, they are the ears, the eyes and the moral support that is so needed, whether their companion has a physical disability or an emotional one, like PTSD. Anush Avetisyan learned more about training assistance dogs and matching them with companions. …

The U.N. children’s fund says at least 1.6 million children in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe need help right away to recover from the affects of Cyclone Idai, which battered their countries more than one month ago. Cyclone Idai, the deadliest storm to hit southern Africa in more than two decades, killed at least 1,000 people, and destroyed crops, livelihoods and hundreds of thousands of homes. The U.N. children’s fund says the emergency phase of its response in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe is winding down. But the road to recovery will remain very long, especially for children, who are the most vulnerable. It says children lack essential services, including healthcare, nutrition, water and sanitation, protection and education. It says the situation is particularly dire for some one million children in Mozambique where the storm hit with particular ferocity. UNICEF spokesman Christophe Boulierac says conditions in that country are ripe for an explosion of disease, noting more than 5,000 cases of cholera have already been reported. “We also have a concern with malaria, with more than 7,500 cases confirmed. And UNICEF is distributing 500,000 mosquito nets. I also understand that in the coming weeks, campaigns are planned around measles vaccination, deworming and vitamin A boosters,” he said. Boulierac says UNICEF also is supporting the establishment of several health clinics in resettlement areas. The agency reports nearly one-half-million children in Malawi need humanitarian assistance to recover from the impact of Cyclone Idai. It says many children are living in crowded evacuation centers. It …

Three months ago, this flu season was shaping up to be short and mild in the U.S. But a surprising second viral wave has made it the longest in 10 years. This flu season has been officially going for 21 weeks, according to reports collected through last week and released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That makes it among the longest seen since the government started tracking flu season duration more than 20 years ago. Some experts likened the unusual double waves to having two different flu seasons compressed, back-to-back, into one. “I don’t remember a season like this,” said Dr. Arnold Monto, a University of Michigan researcher who had been studying respiratory illnesses for more than 50 years. The previous longest recent flu season was 20 weeks, which occurred in 2014-2015. Flu can cause a miserable, relatively mild illness in many people and a more severe illness in others. Young children and the elderly are at greatest risk from flu and its complications. Flu vaccinations are recommended annually for all but the very young. The current season began the week of Thanksgiving, a typical start time. At the beginning, most illnesses were caused by a flu strain that tends not to cause as many hospitalizations and which is more easily controlled by vaccines. But in mid-February, a nastier strain started causing more illnesses and driving up hospitalizations. Not helping matters: The harsher bug is not well matched to the vaccine, said the CDC’s Lynnette Brammer, …

One of the key components of empathy is what scientists call facial mimicry. It seems complicated, but is as simple as smiling when someone smiles at you, and that conveys a lot of information. Scientists have always thought that animals who do it, humans included, are a small group, but maybe not. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports. …

Attackers stormed a hospital at the epicenter of Congo’s Ebola outbreak and killed “a dear colleague,” the head of the World Health Organization said Friday as he condemned the latest violence against health workers trying to contain the virus. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a Twitter post others were injured in the attack Friday in Butembo, a city in eastern Congo. The world’s response to the second-deadliest Ebola outbreak in history has been hampered by a series of deadly attacks on health centers in Butembo and elsewhere that have disrupted medical care and vaccination efforts, leading to a rise in new Ebola cases in the sprawling African nation. Butembo’s deputy mayor, Patrick Kambale Tsiko, identified the slain WHO staffer as a doctor from Cameroon and blamed a militia group for the attack. He said the militiamen erroneously believed that foreigners had brought the disease with them to Congo. “According to witnesses at the scene, these militiamen wanted all the expatriates to go home because according to them, Ebola does not exist in Butembo,” Tsiko said. “They said they will continue if these expatriates do not return as soon as possible.” Police were pursuing the attackers, Tsiko said. Congo’s health ministry confirmed the assault on the Catholic University of Graben hospital. One aid group, the International Rescue Committee, said the hospital held only non-Ebola patients and many of them fled during the attack. Dozens of rebel groups are active in eastern Congo. There also has been some community resistance …

Some information in this report came from Reuters.  More than 1 million Afghan children, particularly in conflict-stricken regions of the country, were deprived of polio vaccinations in 2018 because of actions taken by Taliban and Islamic State militants, Afghanistan health officials tell VOA. “Overall, 1.2 million children were deprived of vaccinations in the country,” Dr. Gula Khan Ayoubi, public affairs director of the mass immunization program at the Afghan Ministry of Public Health, told VOA. “And the hope this year is to bring down the number to about 200,000 children. The remaining 200,000 children are living in areas where the Islamic State terror group has a strong presence and does not allow any vaccinations.”    “To a large extent, the southern provinces of Zabul, Kandahar, Helmand, Uruzgan, and in the east, Kunar, have been affected the most due to the Taliban’s opposition,” Ayoubi added.     Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria are the only three countries in the world where polio is still not eliminated and continues to threaten the lives of millions of children.    In 2018, Afghanistan had the most cases of polio among the three, with 21 cases reported across the country.    Afghan officials charge that contentious fighting, unrest, and the Taliban, IS and other armed groups are the main obstacles in the hard-to-reach areas in southern, southeastern and eastern Afghanistan.   ​Immunization ban    The Afghan Taliban last week told Reuters the group had banned the activities of World Health Organization and the International Committee of the Red Cross in areas under their influence …

A Brooklyn judge on Thursday ruled against a group of parents who challenged New York City’s recently imposed mandatory measles vaccination order, rejecting their arguments that the city’s public health authority exceeded its authority. In a six-page decision rendered hours after a hearing on the matter, Judge Lawrence Knipel denied the parents’ petition seeking to lift the vaccination order, imposed last week to stem the worst measles outbreak to hit the city since 1991. The judge sided with municipal health officials who defended the order as a rare but necessary step to contain a surge in the highly contagious disease that has infected at least 329 people so far, most of them children from Orthodox Jewish communities in the borough of Brooklyn. Another 222 cases have been diagnosed elsewhere in New York state, mostly in a predominantly ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Rockland County, northwest of Manhattan. The New York outbreaks are part of a larger resurgence of measles across the country, with at least 555 cases confirmed in 20 states, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Health experts say the virus, which can cause severe complications and even death, has spread mostly among school-age children whose parents declined to get them vaccinated. Most profess philosophical or religious reasons, or cite concerns — debunked by medical science — that the three-way measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine may cause autism. The judge rejected the parents’ contention that the vaccination order was excessive or coercive, noting it does not call for …

The Israeli start-up behind last week’s failed lunar landing says human error may have caused the spacecraft to crash into the moon. SpaceIL, the non-profit that undertook the botched lunar mission, said Thursday that its engineers collectively decided to restart the inertial measurement unit, a critical part of the spacecraft’s guidance system, following its malfunction in the lander’s final descent. The team says the command triggered a “chain of events” that culminated in the spacecraft slamming into the moon, otherwise “things may have been OK, but we’re still not sure.”   SpaceIL says it will continue to analyze the fatal glitch and publish a formal assessment in the coming weeks.   Had the mission succeeded, it would have marked a first for Israel and for privately-funded lunar voyages.   …