Month: April 2022

Cases of a parasitic disease called Leishmaniasis are increasing at an alarming pace in a town in northeastern Syria called Tel Tamr. VOA’s Zana Omer has more in this story narrated by Sirwan Kajjo. Camera: Zana Omer …

Climate scientists warn the world is courting disaster if it fails to swiftly do what’s required to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The International Panel on Climate Change released a report on mitigating climate change. After two previous reports on the physical science behind climate change and on its potential impacts, the United Nation’s top climate body says changes are now causing huge disruptions in the natural world and in human well-being.  Over the last decade, the report says average annual global greenhouse gas emissions were at their highest levels in human history.     However, the co-chair of the panel’s third working group, Jim Skea, says the rate of growth has slowed in the last two years along with increasing evidence of many countries taking climate action.  “Despite this progress, our assessment concludes that unless there are immediate and deep emission reductions across all sectors, limiting warming to 1.5 degrees will be beyond reach,” he said. “Now limiting warming to around two degrees still requires global emissions to peak before 2025 at the latest, and be reduced by a quarter by 2030.”  The report says the energy sector accounts for a third of all emissions, and major transitions will be required to slow global warming. This, it says, will involve substantial reductions in fossil fuel use, widespread electrification, improved energy efficiency, and the use of alternative fuels.  The vice-chair of the third working group, Diana Urge-Vorsatz, says the right policies can result in a 40 to 70 …

The United Nations’ top climate body says drastic measures, including significant cuts in fossil fuel use, are necessary to contain global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperatures.  Monday’s report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change showed that the world is “on a fast track to climate disaster” and that governments and organizations have engaged in “a litany of broken climate promises,” said U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. “It is a file of shame, cataloguing the empty pledges that put us firmly on track towards an unlivable world,” he said in a video message released alongside the report. Guterres said the world’s current trajectory is global warming of more than double the 1.5-degree limit agreed at climate talks in Paris in 2015. To keep the 1.5-degree limit within reach, he said that the world would need to cut global emissions by 45% this decade.  The 2,800-page report said only such severe emissions cuts this decade could turn the situation around. Even then, it said such measures would need to be combined with governments planting more trees and developing technologies that could remove some of the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere. “It’s now or never,” IPCC report co-chair James Skea said in a statement with the report. “Without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, it will be impossible,” he added. The report said that in the next three years — by 2025 — the world would need to stop greenhouse gas emissions from rising further to be …

The World Health Organization reports 13 million people die every year from environmental causes, including more than seven million who are killed each year from exposure to air pollution. New data released by the World Health Organization confirms that practically the whole world is breathing in unhealthy air. The WHO is calling for urgent action to curb the use of fossil fuels to reduce air pollution levels. This, it says threatens the health of billions of people, leading to the preventable deaths of millions. Sophie Gumy is technical officer in WHO’s department of environment, climate change and health. She says the data show air quality is poorest notably in the eastern Mediterranean, Southeast Asian, and African regions. “Most of the seven million deaths, they come from low and middle-income countries, indeed they do,” Gumy said. “That does not mean that the high-income countries are not impacted. You know we are using mortality to calculate the impact of air pollution on health. However, we are very much aware that you should actually count for morbidity — all the disease that it creates…There are a lot of costs associated with air pollution, which are not necessarily captured in the deaths.” The WHO report says significant harm is being done by even low levels of many air pollutants. It says particulate matter can penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream. This can cause cardiovascular disease, stroke, and respiratory impacts. It says nitrogen oxide or NO2 can cause asthma and other respiratory …

Cameroon observed World Autism Awareness Day Saturday with rights groups advocating for autistic children to be given an education. Supporters say autistic children often can’t go to school because autism is falsely believed to be a result of witchcraft. The Timely Performance Care Center, a school for disabled children in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, organized a campaign for parents and communities to stop the stigma that autistic kids often are subject to. The center has an enrollment of 70 autistic children. The school’s manager, Betty Nancy Fonyuy, said autistic children are frequently kept at home because of stigma. She said many communities and parents abuse the rights of autistic children by refusing to educate them or give them the freedom to socialize with other children. “We want parents to accept the children that God has given them and to be able to educate the society that these children are not a form of divine punishment for witchcraft or a class of any evil thing. These children have a lot to offer to society if given a chance. Give them the chance. The world needs to know what autism is. Accept individuals born and living with autism,” she said. Fonyuy said in January 2021, the center organized a door-to-door campaign to urge parents to send their autistic children to school. She said the response was encouraging, but that many parents still hide their autistic children at home. To mark World Autism Awareness Day on Saturday, scores of community leaders, parents of autistic …

Britain is experiencing a record number of COVID-19 cases, with almost 5 million people, or 1 person in every 13 infected, according to official data. The news of the spike in infections came on the same day that Britain stopped giving free rapid COVID tests to most of its population, as part of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s “living with COVID” plan. Under Johnson’s plan, people who do not have conditions that make them vulnerable to COVID-19 must pay for tests to find out if they have been infected. The uptick is blamed on the highly contagious omicron variant BA.2, which is also causing an increase in hospitalization and death rates. However, the number of infections is expected to start decreasing this month and next month, officials say. “Any infection that spreads rapidly, peaks quickly and decreases rapidly on the other side,” Paul Hunter, professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia, told The Guardian. According to an Associated Press report, a University of Oxford biology professor said he believes most people in the country will be infected with the variant this summer. James Naismith said, “This is literally living with the virus by being infected with it.” Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Sunday that it has recorded more than 490,000 global COVID cases and more than 6 million deaths.  Nearly 11 billion vaccines have been administered, according to Johns Hopkins. …

Irina, her husband and 4-year-old son hid in the cellar of their house in Chernihiv, north of Kyiv, for three weeks as intense fighting, including a tank battle, raged around them. “At first my son seemed to be coping okay,” she says. “But then with unrelenting stress, shelling and blasts, there was a deterioration — the boy started to become withdrawn. He became nervous. He started to stutter,” she says. Their escape from Chernihiv wasn’t gentle either. “We had to drive along a road, which we knew was mined. And we saw a lot of burned-out cars with people, families, scorched inside. We tried to ignore it all and just continue because we had our kid and just wanted to save him,” she says. She doesn’t know what her son saw, what he took in from the carnage and how it is churning inside him. He was in his booster seat in the back of their car. She hopes he slept through a lot of the dangerous and terrifying journey from Chernihiv. “I have not tried to raise anything with him about what he saw,” she added. She has heard that drawing is good therapy for traumatized children and has been encouraging him to do so. So far, he has been drawing repeatedly the yellow and blue Ukrainian colors. Many Ukrainian evacuees say they have noticed their children have changed and seemed to be displaying signs of trauma and stress, even those who did not witness at first hand horrifying …

The future of abortion rights is in flux in the U.S. as the Supreme Court is expected to weigh in on the issue in June. Since September, Texas has banned abortions after six weeks. Amy, a spoken-word poet, recently had an abortion. And it was no easy task. The divorced mother of a 3-year-old said she barely had time to think once she realized she was pregnant — because she is in Texas. “If I would have had a little bit more time, lowered my blood pressure a little bit — maybe I would have made a different decision. We’ll never know,” she said. In September, the state enacted the most restrictive abortion law in the U.S. Amy, who declined to give her last name, knew she had just days to make her decision, find a place to get an abortion, and then go through with it. “I don’t even think I had gotten the results from the pregnancy test, and I was already googling where to get an abortion in Texas, just so that I could have the option,” she said. Amy’s experience in Texas may soon become reality for more women in the U.S. The Supreme Court is expected to decide on an abortion case in June that could spur a wave of abortion rights restrictions throughout the nation. Worried abortion rights advocates point to life in Texas under the new law, where abortion is illegal after a fetal heartbeat is detected, which is around six weeks of …

The future of abortion rights is in flux in the U.S. as the Supreme Court is expected to weigh in on the issue in June. Since September, Texas has banned abortions after six weeks. For women seeking an abortion, many are in a race against time. Deana Mitchell has the story.  Camera: Deana Mitchell Produced by: Deana Mitchell …

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters a second month, social media and television continue to constantly broadcast disturbing images and news about the conflict. That’s raising some concerns about the effect it might be having on children’s mental health. Video: Artyom Kokhan …

Cameroon is struggling to contain a cholera outbreak that has sickened 6,000 people with the bacteria and killed nearly 100 since February. Authorities have dispatched the ministers of health and water to affected areas and have begun quarantining cholera patients to prevent it from spreading. Cameroon’s Public Health Ministry said the number of cholera patients received in hospitals was growing by the day.   In the seaside city of Limbe in the past week alone, 200 of 300 patients were treated and discharged from the government hospital.  Filbert Eko, the highest-ranking official in Cameroon’s Southwest region where Limbe is located, said the region was the worst hit by cholera, with more than 800 cases since February, forcing the the quarantining of patients to prevent the disease from spreading. “The treatment center will be separated from the hospital and from the public. No outsider will be allowed to have access to the patients,” Eko said. “We don’t want contact between families and the patients. We are taking [efforts] upon ourselves, searching for resources to feed these patients free of charge.” Cameroon’s Public Health Ministry says many of those sickened by cholera do not go to hospitals, seeking only traditional cures, and end up dying at home, though no official figures are given.   Health officials are urging traditional healers to direct their cholera patients to the closest hospital.  Linda Esso, director of epidemics and pandemics at Cameroon’s Public Health Ministry, said cholera has spread to more than 40% of major towns, including the …

Golden butterflies adorn the walls of the Netherland’s only euthanasia expertise center, put up in remembrance of thousands of patients who have chosen to die with dignity over the past two decades. Situated in a leafy upmarket suburb of The Hague, the Euthanasia Expertise Center is the only one of its kind, giving information, assisting medical doctors and providing euthanasia as end-of-life care, which was legalized in a world first in the Netherlands on April 1, 2002. Belgium soon followed later that year and Spain last year became the sixth country to adopt euthanasia — the act of intentionally ending a life to relieve a person’s suffering, for instance through a lethal injection given by a doctor. The number of people seeking euthanasia is growing in the Netherlands, with some 7,666 last year, up by more than 10 percent from the year before, according to official figures. The vast majority are aged 60 or over, suffering from cancer or other terminal illnesses. “Twenty years ago, when the law was passed, it was known, but certainly not used as often as today,” said Sonja Kersten, director of the Euthanasia Expertise Center. The reasons are many: an ageing Dutch population; the fact that euthanasia is no longer a taboo subject and society has opened up to the issue. “Dying with dignity is a debate that’s growing within Dutch society, which is quite open to the subject,” Kersten said. ‘Existential question’ Euthanasia is only authorized in a few countries around the world. In …

When the end of the COVID-19 pandemic comes, it could create major disruptions for a cumbersome U.S. health care system made more generous, flexible and up-to-date technologically through a raft of temporary emergency measures. Winding down those policies could begin as early as the summer. That could force an estimated 15 million Medicaid recipients to find new sources of coverage, require congressional action to preserve broad telehealth access for Medicare enrollees, and scramble special COVID-19 rules and payment policies for hospitals, doctors and insurers. There are also questions about how emergency use approvals for COVID-19 treatments will be handled. The array of issues is tied to the coronavirus public health emergency first declared more than two years ago and periodically renewed since then. It’s set to end April 16 and the expectation is that the Biden administration will extend it through mid-July. Some would like a longer off-ramp. Transitions don’t bode well for the complex U.S. health care system, with its mix of private and government insurance and its labyrinth of policies and procedures. Health care chaos, if it breaks out, could create midterm election headaches for Democrats and Republicans alike. “The flexibilities granted through the public health emergency have helped people stay covered and get access to care, so moving forward the key question is how to build on what has been a success and not lose ground,” said Juliette Cubanski, a Medicare expert with the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, who has been researching potential consequences of winding down …

Laura Purdy is a U.S. doctor on Ukraine’s front lines. In her case, that’s a computer screen in Tennessee. “Patients that I have talked to from some of the larger cities in Ukraine are fearful of leaving their homes because of air raid sirens or offshore attacks,” said Purdy, a surgeon who, until 2016, served in the U.S. Army’s units that provide health care to civilians worldwide. “They need/want to speak to a physician but are fearful to venture out to do so.” Purdy now cares for patients in Kyiv and other cities under Russian attack through Starlink, an internet constellation of some 2,000 satellites operated by billionaire Elon Musk’s private firm SpaceX. Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, and as of March 30, 1,189 Ukrainians had been killed and 1,901 injured, according to the U.N. Human Rights Office. U.S. doctors are stepping up to provide much-needed advice via telehealth, a practice honed during the pandemic, to the Ukranian soldiers, civilians and refugees injured in the fighting or attempting to manage chronic diseases amid the chaos. Purdy is just one of the many physicians who have joined Aimee, a 10-year-old telehealth platform headquartered in Silicon Valley. Having built the telehealth systems for the International Space Station and SpaceX, Aimee is staffed by self-described “nerds who want to make a difference” and are now partnering with Ukraine’s Ministry of Health to provide Ukrainians with free telemedicine visits. By using the Aimee app, Purdy said, patients can get advice and treatment recommendations …

The U.K. will ban conversion therapy for gay or bisexual people in England and Wales, but not for transgender people, ITV reported Thursday. Hours earlier, the government had confirmed an ITV report that it would drop a plan to introduce legislation to ban LGBT conversion therapy and would instead review how existing law could be utilized more effectively to prevent it. That prompted an angry response from LGBT groups and some lawmakers. “The Prime Minister has changed his mind off the back of the reaction to our report and he WILL now ban conversion therapy after all,” ITV political reporter Paul Brand tweeted. “Senior Govt source absolutely assures me it’ll be in Queen’s Speech (of planned legislation). But only gay conversion therapy, not trans,” he said. A Downing Street spokesperson declined to comment. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government has come under increasing pressure on the issue after former leader Theresa May vowed in 2018 to eradicate a procedure that aims to change or suppress someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. In May last year, when the government set out its post-pandemic parliamentary agenda, it said measures would be brought forward to prevent these “abhorrent practices which can cause mental and physical harm,” starting with a consultation on how best to protect people and how to eliminate coercive practices. …