Year: 2022

NASA tries to save the world. Plus, the agency inches closer to its next moon mission, and geopolitical rivals unite in space. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space. …

A new study released this week “conservatively” estimates there are 20 quadrillion ants on the planet Earth—or about 2.5 million ants for every person. The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Hong Kong and Germany’s University of Wuerzburg, who noted ants are some of the most successful and dominant forms of life on earth but found most estimates of their numbers to be lacking, and, essentially, educated guesses. In the study, published this week in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they explain they compiled data on both ground and tree-dwelling ants from 489 studies, spanning “all continents, major biomes, and habitats” to arrive at what they call a “conservative” estimate of 20 quadrillion ants, representing a biomass of 12 megatons. The researchers say this is more than the combined biomass of wild birds and mammals and is equivalent to 20% of human biomass. In a release from the University of Hong Kong, the researchers explain that having an accurate count of the world’s ants and an understanding of their abundance patterns may help preserve ecosystems and species around the world The study also found ants are unevenly distributed over the global land surface. As a general pattern, ants are more common in tropical regions, but their numbers vary from place to place depending on the ecosystem. University of Hong Kong School of Biological Sciences researcher Sabine Nooten, a co-lead author on the study, said the ants perform “ecological services” such as decomposition …

Malawi has become the first country in southern Africa to eliminate trachoma, the leading infectious cause of blindness, the World Health Organization announced. It is the fourth country in Africa to stamp out the bacterial infection, after Ghana, Gambia and Togo. The WHO said in a statement that Malawi has been known to be endemic for trachoma since the 1980s.  The disease received due attention in 2008 following a survey conducted in support of the WHO and Sightsavers, a nongovernmental organization.  The findings spurred the country to step up efforts against trachoma by establishing a national taskforce which implemented the WHO-recommended strategy known as SAFE to control the spread of the disease. The SAFE strategy comprises provision of surgery, antibiotics to clear the infection, facial cleanliness and environmental improvement through access to water and sanitation.  Bright Chiwaula, country director for Sightsavers in Malawi, said besides the SAFE strategy, the achievement is also a result of several elements, including training of surgeons and the promotion of good hygiene education.  “Another element is where we assured that we had a monitoring mechanism in place that was effective and efficient, making sure that we were able to track what was happening in the country as regards trachoma elimination,” Chiwaula said.   Trachoma is one of a number of neglected tropical diseases, or NTDs, and is endemic in nearly half the countries in Africa.    In a statement Wednesday, Malawi President Lazarus Chakwera paid special tribute to community health workers, many of them women, …

Uganda has confirmed seven cases of Ebola including that of a 24-year-old man who died earlier this week, and an additional seven deaths are being investigated as suspected Ebola cases, a health ministry official said on Thursday. The man who died had developed a high fever, diarrhea and abdominal pains, and was vomiting blood. After initially being treated for malaria, he was diagnosed as having contracted the Sudan strain of the Ebola virus. “As of today, we have seven confirmed cases, of whom we have one confirmed death,” Dr Kyobe Henry Bbosa, Ebola Incident Commander at the Ugandan Ministry of Health, told a briefing. “But also we have seven probable cases that died before the confirmation of the outbreak.” Uganda last reported an outbreak of Ebola Sudan strain in 2012. In 2019, the country experienced an outbreak of Ebola Zaire. The virus was imported from neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo which was battling a large epidemic in its north-eastern region.  In August, a new case of Ebola virus was confirmed in the city of Beni in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. An Ebola vaccination campaign was launched last month in the Congolese city of Beni last month. …

Displaced by some of the worst flooding in years, hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis now face the threat of disease. Infections are on the rise due to unsanitary conditions, and health facilities damaged by historic rains are struggling to cope. VOA’s Sarah Zaman has more. …

Commenters in China’s tightly controlled online communities are raising an angry howl at what they see as the latest outrage stemming from President Xi Jinping’s draconian zero-COVID policy. After at least 27 people died when a bus in southwest China’s Guizhou Province crashed while transporting them to a coronavirus quarantine facility, online comments revealed the magnitude of frustration of ordinary citizens enduring a policy that forces them into lengthy lockdowns and daily testing in the effort to contain COVID. “27 people, who did not die in the coronavirus, but died in the bus accident [on the way to] quarantine? Even if they are positive, the death rate of the virus is extremely low, who made such a tragedy?” “No ordinary people are against epidemic prevention. What the ordinary people oppose is … harassment of people.” “So many people concentrated in a bus transport for quarantine. If there was a positive case, how likely would all the people in the bus get infected? I don’t understand the current policy. ​” “We are all on the bus leading to death.” Censors quickly scrubbed the comments saved by FreeWeibo, a website that tracks comments blocked on China’s Twitter-like platform, Weibo. According to Lin Gang, Guiyang’s deputy mayor, the bus was carrying 47 people who were under “medical observation” from Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou Province, to a remote county, Libo, when it overturned on a highway around 170 kilometers from its destination about 2:40 a.m. Sunday. In addition to the deaths, 20 people …

Turkey’s plastic recycling industry is strongly criticized in a Human Rights Watch report released Wednesday. The report highlights health problems for workers and residents and criticizes the European Union, for which Turkey is the main plastics recycler. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul. …

The World Health Organization warns noncommunicable diseases kill 41 million people each year, equivalent to 74 percent of all deaths globally. A new global report by the World Health Organization finds noncommunicable diseases now outnumber infectious diseases as the top killers globally. Each year, it says 17 million people under age 70 die prematurely from noncommunicable diseases or NCD. The biggest killers are cardiovascular diseases, followed by cancers, chronic respiratory diseases, and diabetes. WHO director of noncommunicable diseases, Bente Mikkelsen, says most of these deaths are preventable. “Every two seconds, someone under the age of 70 is dying from an NCD,” said Mikkelsen. “And many people do not still realize that 86 percent of these premature deaths, namely dying too young are taking place in low-and-middle-income countries, making NCD an issue of equity and sustainable development as well as health.” WHO blames most of these preventable deaths on four key risk factors. It cites high blood pressure as the biggest threat, noting 1.3 billion adults worldwide have this condition. Mikkelsen says too many people are unaware they have this potentially deadly condition. Consequently, they are not getting the lifesaving treatment they need. “If people had access to health services where they could get their blood pressure checked and get support to manage hypertension, nearly 10 million heart attacks and strokes could be averted by 2030,” said Mikkelsen. “Other major risk factors like unhealthy diet, tobacco use, and harmful use of alcohol are heavily influenced by industry, including the formulation, packaging …

For the first time in India, a domestically-made vaccine that provides protection against cervical cancer—the second-most common type of cancer afflicting women in the country—will be accessible to the majority of the population, including the poorest, according to leading healthcare professionals. The vaccine, Cervavac, is produced by The Serum Institute of India (SII), the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer. The vaccine shot is expected to launch by December this year, SII chief executive Adar Poonawalla said in a statement Tuesday. “Cervavac will make India self-sufficient in controlling female mortality caused by cervical cancer. The government of India will induct it in the national [vaccination] program in a few months,” Poonawalla said. The vaccine protects against the Human Papilloma Virus, the main cause of cervical cancer and a potential cause of other cancers. SSI says it will be accessible to both men and women at a price range of 200 to 400 rupees—about $2.50 to $5. Dr. Smita Joshi, leader of the SII’s HPV vaccine study, said “The vaccine will be chiefly beneficial for girls aged 9 to 15 or women who are not yet sexually active. “If we vaccinate adolescent girls now, its effect on reducing the cancer burden in the country will be seen within three to four decades,” she said. According to Joshi, the effectiveness of the vaccine is lower among adult women, who will require cervical cancer screenings—preferably with an HPV test—followed by appropriate management for those who test positive for sexually transmitted HPV. Dr. Mayoukh Kumar Chakraborty, …

Hollywood actress and U.N. humanitarian Angelina Jolie made a surprise visit to one of the worst flood-hit areas in southern Pakistan on Tuesday, officials said, as the death toll from months-long deluges rose to 1,559. TV footage showed Jolie arriving at an airport in Karachi, the capital of southern Sindh province, where floods since mid-June have killed 692 people, damaged hundreds of thousands of homes and left half a million people homeless. Later, she visited some of the flood-affected areas, according to local media. According to the IRC, a prominent international aid group, Jolie is visiting Pakistan to support communities affected by the devastating floods. There was no comment from the government about Jolie’s visit to Dadu, one of the worst-hit districts where waterborne diseases have also caused nearly 300 deaths since July. Currently, doctors are trying to contain the outbreak of waterborne diseases among flood survivors. The visit comes as Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif is in New York for the 77th session of the U.N. General Assembly. In his speech, Sharif will highlight the damages caused by climate-change induced floods in the impoverished country. Pakistan says the floods have caused $30 billion in damages to the country’s economy. …

Officials in Uganda have confirmed an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus. The country’s Ministry of Health says a young man died of the virus in central Uganda Monday, and several of his relatives who died earlier this month are also suspected to have had Ebola. The government has sent a rapid response team to the area to investigate.  Uganda’s Ministry of Health officials say the suspected Ebola case was identified Saturday in a village in the central Mubende district.   The ministry’s permanent secretary, Dr. Diana Atwine, says a 24-year-old man was admitted to a hospital for pneumonia and diarrhea.   But his symptoms also included those of the deadly virus — a dry cough, high fever, convulsions, blood-stained vomit and bleeding in the eyes.  Speaking at a press conference Tuesday, Atwine said the clinical team and the Uganda Virus Research Institute conducted tests for Ebola. “The results were released yesterday evening and they confirmed Ebola, the Sudan strain,” she said. “Unfortunately, that morning of 19th, the patient who had been confirmed with Ebola passed on.” Atwine said six of the man’s relatives who died earlier this month — three adults and three children from the same family — also may have had Ebola.  The World Health Organization’s Uganda office says there are eight more people with suspected cases that are receiving care at a health facility.   Uganda’s health ministry has yet to identify the source of the infection but suspects wildlife to human contact. A rapid response team was …

A bay-breasted warbler weighs about the same as four pennies, but twice a year makes an extraordinary journey. The tiny songbird flies nearly 4,000 miles (6,437 kilometers) between Canada’s spruce forests and its wintering grounds in northern South America. “Migratory birds are these little globetrotters,” said Jill Deppe, the senior director of the migratory bird initiative at the National Audubon Society. A new online atlas of bird migration, published on Thursday, draws from an unprecedented number of scientific and community data sources to illustrate the routes of about 450 bird species in the Americas, including the warblers. The Bird Migration Explorer mapping tool, available free to the public, is an ongoing collaboration between 11 groups that collect and analyze data on bird movements, including the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, the U.S. Geological Survey, Georgetown University, Colorado State University, and the National Audubon Society. For the first time, the site will bring together online data from hundreds of scientific studies that use GPS tags to track bird movements, as well as more than 100 years of bird-banding data collected by USGS, community science observations entered into Cornell’s eBird platform, genomic analysis of feathers to pinpoint bird origins, and other data. “The past twenty years have seen a true renaissance in different technologies to track bird migrations around the world at scales that haven’t been possible before,” said Peter Marra, a bird migration expert at Georgetown University who collaborated on the project. The site allows a user to …

Marking World Patient Safety Day, Saturday, the World Health Organization warns unsafe medication practices and errors are a leading cause of avoidable harm in world health care systems.  The WHO is calling for urgent action to stop the medication errors putting millions at risk of severe harm or even death.   The agency’s quality of care coordinator, Neelam Dhingra-Kumar, noted everyone will, at some point take medicine, expecting to benefit.  However, she said they can be harmful with improper use. “There is ample evidence around the world that unsafe medication practices and medication errors is actually avoidable,” she said. “Such as incorrect prescriptions, wrong dispensing, wrong use of medicines, lack of proper monitoring. Once the physicians prescribe medicines, they are not monitored and even use of substandard and falsified medicines are a leading cause of avoidable harm in health care systems.” The WHO said half of all preventable harm in medical care is medication-related and that a quarter of these patients suffer clinically severe or life-threatening harm. It said the elderly are most at risk, especially those taking multiple medications. It said high rates of medication-related harm also occur in surgical care, intensive care, and emergency medicine. Dhingra-Kumar said the amount of harm related to medication is twice as prevalent in low- and middle-income countries as in rich countries. “That is primarily because of weak medication systems, lack of resources, lack of human workforce, not a fully trained workforce,” she said. “And even the culture; it is very, very difficult to …

Two Chinese astronauts went on a spacewalk Saturday from a new space station that is due to be completed later this year. Cai Xuzhe and Chen Dong’s installed pumps, a handle to open the hatch door from outside in an emergency, and a foot-stop to affix an astronaut’s feet to a robotic arm, state media said. China is building its own space station after being excluded by the U.S. from the International Space Station because its military runs the country’s space program. American officials see a host of strategic challenges from China’s space ambitions, in an echo of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry that prompted the race to the moon in the 1960s. The latest spacewalk was the second during a six-month mission that will oversee the completion of the space station. The first of two laboratories, a 23-ton module, was added to the station in July and the other is to be sent up later this year. The third member of the crew, Liu Yang, supported the other two from inside during the spacewalk. Liu and Chen conducted the first spacewalk about two weeks ago. They will be joined by three more astronauts near the end of their mission in what will be the first time the station has six people on board. China became the third nation to send a person into space in 2003, following the former Soviet Union and the United States. It has sent rovers to the moon and Mars and brought lunar samples back to Earth. …

Research to develop a pill form of insulin is showing promise at the University of British Columbia in western Canada. The goal is to eliminate the need for diabetics to inject themselves with the lifesaving medication. According to the World Health Organization, there are an estimated 422 million diabetics worldwide. The disease claims 1.5 million lives each year. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 30 million Americans have diabetes. Although widely available in the developed world, current forms of insulin require refrigeration, which can be a stumbling block in developing nations. An oral version of insulin, in the form of an everyday pill, could change everything, making it easier and cheaper to transport and distribute — even to remote regions of the planet. Researchers at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver think they might have discovered a formula for a pill that effectively delivers a full dose of insulin to a patient’s liver — where it is needed to regulate blood sugar levels — without dissipating uselessly in the stomach. The trick is to not swallow the pill, according to Anubhav Pratap-Singh, an assistant professor at the school’s Faculty of Land and Food Systems and the project’s lead researcher. He said the pill can be absorbed in the mouth by wedging it between the cheek and gums. In laboratory studies on rats, full doses of insulin reached the liver, he said. “So we are getting quite a high amount of yield and so we hope that …

The World Health Organization has declared an end to Ghana’s outbreak of the deadly Marburg virus after more than six weeks without any new cases.  Three cases of the virus were recorded in the West African country in late June, killing two people.    Marburg is a highly infectious viral hemorrhagic fever in the same family as Ebola. The symptoms of Marburg include diarrhea, fever, nausea and vomiting.    Speaking at a press conference Friday in Accra, head of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, said having passed the mandatory 42-day period without a new case, the country is now free of the virus.    “I do hereby state that, the appropriate outbreak reasons to Marburg disease have been implemented during the 42 days, following the last negative PCR test result for the sole surviving patient with recommendation from WHO,” he said. “Ghana has, therefore, successfully interrupted the first Marburg virus disease outbreak and hereby declare that the outbreak is over.” A total of 198 people were tested for the virus when it first broke in Ghana. They all tested negative.    It is the second time Marburg made a West African appearance. The first outbreak was in Guinea in September of last year.    Marburg has also appeared in Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda.    There are no vaccines or antiviral treatments for Marburg, but WHO says supportive care — rehydration with oral or intravenous fluids — and treatment of specific …

Mount Everest base camp, a sprawling tent village that is home away from home during climbing season for hundreds of aspiring summiteers and support staff, may soon be on the move. Nepalese officials say they are considering the move to a lower elevation because the Khumbu glacier on which the camp sits is being melted away by climate change, which is undermining its foundation and slowly releasing decades worth of frozen trash and human waste. But some of the Sherpa climbing guides who make Everest ascents possible are not happy with the idea, arguing that the government should first consider less drastic measures such as limiting the ballooning number of climbing permits, which at around $11,000 apiece have become an important source of revenue for the country. “I see glaciers vanishing on daily basis. Uncontrollable number of visitors is a problem and it doesn’t make any sense to shift the base camp down,” said Dawa Chhiri Sherpa, 57, who began his career as a cook for a trekking company 35 years ago. “Consult experts and relevant stakeholders is what should be government doing and not rushing to any decision,” agreed 62-year-old Kay Sherpa, who was born in Scotland and has been living in Nepal since 2009. He added that the government should try to reduce the influx of helicopters ferrying climbers and other visitors to landing pads at either end of the approximately 22-hectare site to minimize the damage to the ecologically fragile area. Nepal’s Department of Tourism recommended earlier …

The 60th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s “moonshot” speech, which rallied a nation behind NASA. Plus, President Biden calls for a moonshot of his own, and a private spaceflight company suffers its first failure. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space. …

Russia’s war on Ukraine has seen scores of hospitals and clinics bombed, and frequent power cuts that can turn off lifesaving machines. Medical aid groups are using a Kenyan-manufactured breathing device for premature babies that works without electricity, helping save vulnerable newborns in countries affected by conflict. Victoria Amunga reports from Nairobi, Kenya. Camera – Jimmy Makhulo. …

With monkeypox cases subsiding in Europe and parts of North America, many scientists say now is the time to prioritize stopping the virus in Africa. In July, the U.N. health agency designated monkeypox as a global emergency and appealed to the world to support African countries so that the catastrophic vaccine inequity that plagued the outbreak of COVID-19 wouldn’t be repeated. But the global spike of attention has had little impact on the continent. No rich countries have shared vaccines or treatments with Africa, and some experts fear interest may soon evaporate. “Nothing has changed for us here. The focus is all on monkeypox in the West,” said Placide Mbala, a virologist who directs the global health research department at Congo’s Institute of Biomedical Research. “The countries in Africa where monkeypox is endemic are still in the same situation we have always been, with weak resources for surveillance, diagnostics and even the care of patients,” he said. Rich countries hoard vaccine Monkeypox has sickened people in parts of West and Central Africa since the 1970s, but it wasn’t until the disease triggered unusual outbreaks in Europe and North America that public health officials even thought to use vaccines. As rich countries rushed to buy nearly all the world’s supply of the most advanced shot against monkeypox, the World Health Organization said in June that it would create a vaccine-sharing mechanism to help needy countries get doses. So far, that hasn’t happened. “Africa is still not benefiting from either monkeypox vaccines …