Month: December 2020

Affordable treatment will soon be available for children living with HIV in low- and middle-income countries thanks to an agreement between the global health agency UNITAID and the Clinton Health Access Initiative, or CHAI.The pediatric  treatment has been available in wealthy countries but out of reach for children in poor countries. A new agreement with two generic drug makers, Viatris and Macleods, will significantly lower the price. UNITAID and CHAI plan to roll out the first anti-retroviral treatments specifically designed for children next year in six African countries — Benin, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Uganda and Zimbabwe. FILE – A mother watches her HIV-positive child in the intensive care unit of the Bangui pediatric complex, while in the foreground, an HIV-positive child sleeps, in Central African Republic, Dec. 4, 2018.An estimated 1.7 million children globally live with HIV, but only half receive any treatment and 100,000 die every year.   UNITAID spokesman Herve Verhoosel said HIV is not suppressed for many of those children. That is due, in part, to the lack of availability of effective drugs that are properly adapted for them.   “Many children who are living with HIV have a poor response to treatment because they take anti-retroviral medication that are not correctly dosed or bitter to taste. … Now with this new drug … it will be much, much easier and much, much less expensive,” he said, adding that even the youngest children will like the strawberry-flavored pills.   Under the new pricing agreement, the cost for the yearly pediatric HIV treatment …

Members of a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory committee are meeting Tuesday to determine who should get inoculated first against the coronavirus once a vaccine receives final approval.The CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices wants to inform the public about its recommendation before a decision is announced by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, committee chairman Dr. Jose Romero told CNN on Tuesday.The FDA is considering an emergency request from Pfizer to authorize the use of its vaccine. Moderna said Monday it also would apply for emergency use authorization of its vaccine.The CDC has already recommended that front-line health care workers and support personnel receive the first doses. The CDC also said residents of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities should be among the first to receive vaccinations.Hours after Moderna’s announcement, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said the agency would announce its decision up to a week after it decides on Pfizer’s application.Dr. Larry Corey of the University of Washington, who leads vaccine clinical trials in the U.S., has said once Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines are approved, they could make 50 million doses in January.The advisory committee is meeting one day after nearly 139,000 new coronavirus cases and 826 deaths were reported in the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins University.As it has for months, the U.S. continues to lead the world in coronavirus infections, with more than 13.5 million of the world’s 63.3 million cases. Over 268,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the U.S., …

Climate change, voracious beetles and disease are imperiling the long-term survival of a high-elevation pine tree that’s a key source of food for some grizzly bears and found across the West, U.S. officials said Tuesday.A Fish and Wildlife Service proposal scheduled to be published Wednesday would protect the whitebark pine tree as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, according to documents posted by the Office of the Federal Register.But the agency said it does not plan to designate which forest habitats are critical to the tree’s survival, stopping short of what some environmentalists argue is needed.Live in harsh conditionsThe trees can live up to 1,000 years and are found at elevations up to 12,000 feet (3,600 meters) — conditions too harsh for most tress to survive.Environmentalists had petitioned the government in 1991 and again in 2008 to protect the trees, which occur across 126,000 square miles (326,164 square kilometers) of land in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada and western Canada.A nonnative fungus has been killing whitebark pines for a century. More recently, the trees have proven vulnerable to bark beetles that have killed millions of acres of forest, and climate change that scientists say is responsible for more severe wildfire seasons.The trees have been all but wiped out in some areas, including the eastern edge of Yellowstone National Park, where they are a source of food for threatened grizzly bears. More than half of whitebark pines in the U.S. are dead, according to a 2018 study …

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) has announced its Chang’e-5 spacecraft, designed to collect lunar samples and return them to Earth, successfully landed on the near side of the moon. China state media report the spacecraft arrived at the preselected landing area Tuesday and sent back images to the CNSA.  The spacecraft – composed of orbiter, lander, ascender and returner components – was launched a week ago.  The CNSA said the lander-ascender combination of the Chang’e-5 probe began a powered descent from about 15 kilometers above the lunar surface. They say the probe touched down on the north of the region known as Mons Rumker in Oceanus Procellarum, also called the Ocean of Storms, on the near side of the moon. Under ground control, the lander carried out a series of status checks and settings, preparing for about 48 hours of work on the lunar surface. The space agency said about 2 kilograms of samples are expected to be collected and sealed in a container. Then the ascender will take off and dock with the orbiter-returner combination in orbit. After the samples are transferred to the returner, the ascender will separate from the orbiter-returner. The orbiter is expected to carry the returner back to Earth. The returner is scheduled to reenter the atmosphere and land at Siziwang Banner in north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.  …

All Europeans want is a merry and bright Christmas season, just like the ones they used to know. And under public pressure some governments are easing their pandemic restrictions in a bid to salvage something of the holiday spirit.But as some governments plan to soften restrictions by increasing the number of separate households permitted to socialize and allowing people to travel, others are still grappling with how far they should go in easing lockdowns or lifting curfews, fearing that having a merry Christmas will likely mean suffering a miserable new year.Scientists across the continent, which already accounts for a quarter of the world’s coronavirus cases and deaths from COVID-19, the disease triggered by the virus, are warning of a doubling in infection rates, if the regime for the holiday is too liberal.European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said it was important for European states to coordinate any easing of pandemic restrictions. “We will make a proposal for a gradual and coordinated approach to lifting containment measures. This will be very important to avoid the risk of yet another wave,” von der Leyen said.European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, top, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, European Council President Charles Michel and Eurogroup President Paschal Donohoe attend a virtual meeting in Brussels, Nov. 26, 2020.Despite her call for coordinated action, national governments are making up their own minds without synchronizing approaches — as they have ever since the pandemic first struck the continent earlier this year. Many …

Members of a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory committee meet Tuesday to determine who should get inoculated first against the coronavirus once a vaccine receives final approval.The CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices wants to inform the public about its recommendation before a decision is announced by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, committee chairman Dr. Jose Romero told CNN on Tuesday.The FDA is considering an emergency request from Pfizer to authorize the use of its vaccine. Moderna said Monday it also would apply for emergency use authorization of its vaccine.The CDC has already recommended that front-line health care workers and support personnel receive the first doses. The CDC also said residents of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities should be among the first to receive vaccinations.Hours after Moderna’s announcement, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said the agency would announce its decision up to a week after it decides on Pfizer’s application.Dr. Larry Corey of the University of Washington, who leads vaccine clinical trials in the U.S., has said once Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines are approved, they could make 50 million doses in January.The advisory committee meets one day after nearly 139,000 new coronavirus cases and 826 deaths were reported in the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins University.As it has for months, the U.S. continues to lead the world in coronavirus infections, with more than 13.5 million of the world’s 63.3 million cases. Over 268,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the U.S., more …

Thabani Raymond Kalala, or “coach,” as he prefers to be called, was diagnosed with HIV six years ago. He lives in a small town in rural South Africa, but this year, as societies across the globe went into viral lockdowns, his world expanded.  The 33-year-old community development worker was part of a pilot project called Coach Mpilo — the word means “life,” or “health” in isiZulu. As a “coach,” he works with 54 newly diagnosed men and boys, supporting their battle against HIV and boosting them, in ways big and small.The launch of the project, earlier this year, coincided with the beginning of global shutdowns to stop the spread of coronavirus. However, he says, that hasn’t slowed down progress.  “I think the program has been successful,” he told VOA by phone from his rural village along South Africa’s southern coast. “However, the challenge is, we had to cut down many people, actually we had to cut down many coaches. … We need to try, I’m not sure if this is possible, but if we can get more coaches, because the program has been very successful to such an extent that even the facilities that we work in have seen the difference that we’ve been doing.”Laboratory technicians test a blood sample for HIV infection at the Reproductive Health and HIV Institute (RHI) in Johannesburg, Nov. 26 2020.This small initiative is one of the ways that, 40 years after the emergence of AIDS, the nation with the world’s heaviest burden of HIV …

The European Union said Tuesday it could be vaccinating citizens against COVID-19 by the end of the month if medical officials grant emergency approval of two vaccines candidates.  European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen told reporters in Brussels EU member states are working on logistics for the distribution of millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccine and if all goes well, she said, “the first European citizens would be vaccinated by the end of December.”Her comments came as U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech announced they have applied for conditional approval of their coronavirus vaccine with the European Medicines Agency. The companies said in a statement that the submission on Monday completes the rolling review process they initiated with the agency on October 6.The move comes a day after another U.S company, Moderna said it was asking U.S. and European regulators to allow emergency use of its COVID-19 vaccine. Both companies applied with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for emergency approval in November.In a statement, the European Medicines Agency said it would convene a meeting on December 29 to decide if there is enough data about the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech for it to be approved.The agency also said Tuesday it could decide as early as January 12 whether to approve a COVID-19 vaccine developed by Moderna.Last week, the EU said it had signed deals to acquire more than a billion doses of a total of six …

Four years ago, governments around the world committed to achieving targets in testing and treating the vast majority of people with HIV to the point where the AIDS pandemic would end. The tools to do this have been available for 20 years. In 2010, the National Institutes of Health, under the leadership of Dr. Anthony Fauci, found that HIV-negative men whose partners were positive, significantly reduced their chances of becoming infected by taking a daily pill that combined anti-AIDS medication. This has become known as pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP. PrEP can now be given as an injection. And people with HIV can take a single pill that makes the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the blood undetectable. Under Dr. Demetre Daskalakis’ direction, the goal by the United Nations in 2016 was achieved in New York City, but Dr. Chris Beyrer, an AIDS researcher at Johns Hopkins University, says it is way off track elsewhere. Beyrer spoke to VOA recently. His questions have been edited for brevity and clarity. VOA: Where are we in achieving the universal goals of having 90% of people with HIV diagnosed, 90% of those diagnosed on treatment, and 90% of those on treatment being able to suppress the virus to undetectable levels? Beyrer: “The 90-90-90 targets were based on the assumption that achieving those goals would also bring down the rate of new infections, because as more people are treated, and are successfully virally suppressed, they will be less infectious for sex partners or maternal-to-child transmission. “2020 was supposed to be the year in which we were going to see significant declines in new infections down under 500,000 worldwide, and we had more than 1.7 million new infections in 2019. So, we are way off the targets of actually getting control of HIV transmission.” VOA: Why are we way off track?Beyrer: …

Dr. Demetre Daskalakis will soon leave his position as deputy commissioner for disease control at the New York City Department of Health and move to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, where he will oversee the U.S. HIV/AIDS prevention office.   In New York, Daskalakis designed a plan that helped the city achieve the U.N. goals of 90-90-90, meaning that 90% of those with HIV were tested, 90% of those tested went on treatment and 90% of those in treatment saw their viral levels drop so low the virus was undetectable in the blood stream and they could not infect anyone else. Achieving this goal would effectively end HIV/AIDS.  In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo detailed a plan called Ending the AIDS Epidemic throughout the state. Under Daskalakis’ guidance in New York City, this program reduced AIDS-related illnesses from the third-leading cause of premature death in 2000 to the 10th by 2017.He spoke recently with VOA. His interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.  VOA: The Ending the Epidemic program in New York City is credited with decreasing HIV transmissions to a historic low. How did you do that?  Dr. Demetre Daskalakis: “It took a village; many, many people, and the very first people that helped design the program were actually the community and advocates that let me and others really know where we had gaps. “Ending the Epidemic program in the city was really a supplemental strategy that added to the programs that were already working through CDC funding as well as through HERSA funding the Ryan White.  (The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), an agency of the U.S. …

Four years ago, governments around the world committed to U.N. goals that would end the AIDS pandemic. VOA’s Carol Pearson tells us why these goals are so elusive, and how a major city succeeded. …

Tuesday is World AIDS Day, with organizations around the world highlighting the need to support those living with and affected by HIV, the virus that causes the disease, while also remembering those who have died. This year’s event comes amid the global coronavirus pandemic, which UNAIDS says has made it more difficult for those living with HIV to access health care and other services while also highlighting issues such as inequality and stigma. The agency is calling on governments to boost investment and action on HIV and other pandemics.  It says if there were better health and social safety nets in place, the world would have been better able to slow the spread of the coronavirus.Laboratory technicians test a blood sample for HIV infection at the Reproductive Health and HIV Institute (RHI) in Johannesburg, Nov. 26 2020.The United Nations said models show there could be an additional 123,000 to 293,000 new HIV infections and between 69,000 and 148,000 AIDS-related deaths by 2022 because of the coronavirus pandemic’s effects on HIV responses. “The collective failure to invest sufficiently in comprehensive, rights-based, people-centered HIV responses has come at a terrible price,” UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima said in a statement. “Implementing just the most politically palatable programs will not turn the tide against COVID-19 or end AIDS. To get the global response back on track will require putting people first and tackling the inequalities on which epidemics thrive.” The joint challenges of HIV/AIDS and the coronavirus are also the focus of a live-streamed event Tuesday by the National AIDS Memorial in the United States.  It includes …

Joseph Varon, a doctor treating coronavirus patients at a Texas hospital, was working his 252nd day in a row when he spotted a distraught elderly man in the COVID-19 intensive care unit. Varon’s comforting embrace of the white-haired man on Thanksgiving Day was captured by a photographer for Getty Images and has gone viral around the world. Varon, chief of staff at United Memorial Medical Center in Houston, told CNN he was entering the COVID-19 ICU when he saw the elderly patient “out of his bed and trying to get out of the room.” “And he’s crying,” Varon said. “So I get close to him and I (ask) him, ‘Why are you crying?’” “And the man says, ‘I want to be with my wife.’ So I just grab him and I hold him,” Varon said. “I was feeling very sorry for him. I was feeling very sad, just like him.” “Eventually he felt better, and he stopped crying,” Varon told CNN on Monday. “I don’t know why I haven’t broken down,” the doctor said. “My nurses cry in the middle of the day.” Varon said the isolation of the COVID-19 unit was difficult for many patients, particularly the elderly. COVID-19 is the disease caused by the coronavirus. “You can imagine,” he said. “You are inside a room where people are coming in spacesuits. “When you are an elderly individual, it’s more difficult because you are alone,” he said. “Some of them cry. Some of them try to escape,” he said. “We actually had somebody who tried to escape through a …

China has provided North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his family with an experimental coronavirus vaccine, a U.S. analyst said Tuesday, citing two unidentified Japanese intelligence sources. Harry Kazianis, a North Korea expert at the Center for the National Interest think tank in Washington, said the Kims and several senior North Korean officials had been vaccinated. It was unclear which company had supplied its drug candidate to the Kims and whether it had proven to be safe, he added. FILE – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un speaks in Pyongyang, North Korea, in this undated photo released Nov. 16, 2020, by KCNA.”Kim Jong Un and multiple other high-ranking officials within the Kim family and leadership network have been vaccinated for coronavirus within the last two to three weeks thanks to a vaccine candidate supplied by the Chinese government,” Kazianis wrote in an article for online outlet 19FortyFive. Citing U.S. medical scientist Peter J. Hotez, he said at least three Chinese companies were developing a coronavirus vaccine, including Sinovac Biotech Ltd, CanSinoBio and Sinophram Group. Sinophram says its candidate has been used by nearly 1 million people in China, although none of the firms was known to have publicly launched Phase 3 clinical trials of their experimental COVID-19 drugs. North Korea has not confirmed any coronavirus infections, but South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) has said an outbreak there cannot be ruled out as the country had trade and people-to-people exchanges with China, the source of the pandemic, before shutting the border in late January. Microsoft said …