Year: 2022

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Aid workers in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo warned Thursday of a possible “health disaster” because of an alarming surge in cholera cases in makeshift camps for displaced people.  Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, said that between November 26 and December 7, 256 patients had been admitted to its cholera treatment center in Munigi, near the eastern city of Goma.  A third of them were children under five, the aid agency added.  “In just 10 days, the number of people suspected of having cholera has increased alarmingly,” MSF said in a statement.  More than 177,000 people were “now trapped in dire conditions” in the Nyiragongo area north of the city, having fled the advance of the M23 rebel group in recent weeks.  And as heavy showers fell during the rainy season, these displaced people were forced to live in shelters made from nothing more than branches and tarpaulin.  “We have neither showers nor toilets,” Nyira Safari, the mother of an eight-year-old girl with cholera symptoms, told MSF.  She took her daughter, who was “very weak and could barely stand,” to an MSF-supported health center for treatment.  Aid response inadequate  Tens of thousands of people are living packed together with no access to sanitation.  “Given the lack of food, shelter, latrines and showers, all the ingredients are there for a health disaster,” said Simplice Ngar-One, head of MSF’s cholera response in Goma.  “Despite our repeated calls, the current humanitarian response is far from adequate,” Ngar-One said. …

The World Health Organization reports COVID-19 cases are continuing their downward spiral in Africa but warns the pandemic is not over and nations must remain vigilant. Following a recent four-week resurgence of COVID-19, cases and deaths once again are dropping in Africa. Since this month-long spike ended on November 20, the World Health Organization has recorded slightly more than 12,300 new cases and 50 deaths. The WHO regional director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, said these numbers are at their lowest levels since the start of the pandemic in 2020. “Despite the recent uptick, there is hope that Africa will be spared the challenges of the previous two years when surging cases marred the holiday season for many,” said Moeti. “While the current efforts keep the pandemic within control, we are carefully monitoring its evolution. We must remain vigilant and be ready to adopt more stringent preventive measures if necessary.” Moeti said investments in COVID-19 management over the last three years are paying off and the region is better able to cope with the virus. She notes the number of intensive care unit beds has increased and medical oxygen production has grown. She said Africa also has strengthened its laboratory capacity including conducting genomic sequencing. But she added that worrisome gaps in vaccination remain, especially among the most vulnerable. Moeti said it is urgent that health workers be vaccinated to protect them from getting severe illness and dying. Other high-risk groups who must be vaccinated, she said, include the elderly, people …

The COVID-19 pandemic has set global malaria control efforts back, especially in Africa, the World Health Organization says. However, this year’s World Malaria Report says countries were able to lessen disruptions to prevention, testing and treatment. In 2019, before the pandemic struck, there were 568,000 malaria deaths. Despite the pandemic and other humanitarian emergencies, WHO information shows concerted action by countries has prevented the worst potential impacts of COVID-19-related disruptions to malaria services. WHO officials say the world has largely managed to salvage many of the gains made against malaria during the past 20 years.  Abdisalan Noor, head of the WHO Global Malaria Program’s Strategic Information unit, said malaria cases dramatically increased in the first year of the pandemic. However, he said the number of cases last year remained largely the same as in 2020.  “Overall, however, the pandemic and its related disruptions have led to increases in malaria burden over the last two years, and we estimate that about 63,000 deaths and about 13 million cases [were] attributed to disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said. Most deaths and cases have occurred in the WHO African region, Noor said, adding that progress in malaria control is continuing. For example, he said 11 countries with the world’s highest malaria levels have largely held the line against the disease during the pandemic.  Among them are Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Mali and Tanzania, Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, Noor said nearly 300 million insecticide-treated bed nets …

Britain’s Conservative government on Wednesday approved the United Kingdom’s first new coal mine in three decades, a decision condemned by environmentalists as a leap backwards in the fight against climate change. Hours earlier, the government reversed a ban on building new onshore windfarms in Britain. Opponents called that announcement a cynical attempt to offset criticism of the mine decision. Cabinet Minister Michael Gove decided the mine in the Cumbria area of northwest England would have “an overall neutral effect on climate change and is thus consistent with government policies for meeting the challenge of climate change,” the government said. It said coal from the mine would be used to make steel — replacing imported coal — rather than for power generation. The mine will extract coking coal, the type used in steelmaking, from under the Irish Sea and process it on the site of a shuttered chemical plant in Whitehaven, a town 550 kilometers northwest of London. Supporters say the mine will bring much-needed jobs to an area hard hit by the closure of its mines and factories in recent decades. Opponents say the mine is a major blow to the U.K.’s status as a world leader in replacing polluting fossil fuels with clean renewable energy. They argue it will undermine global efforts to phase out coal and make it harder for Britain to meet its goals of generating 100% of electricity from clean energy sources by 2035 and reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. John Gummer, a Conservative politician …

Scientists discovered the oldest known DNA and used it to reveal what life was like 2 million years ago in the northern tip of Greenland. Today, it’s a barren Arctic desert, but back then it was a lush landscape of trees and vegetation with an array of animals, even the now extinct mastodon. “The study opens the door into a past that has basically been lost,” said lead author Kurt Kjaer, a geologist and glacier expert at the University of Copenhagen. With animal fossils hard to come by, the researchers extracted environmental DNA, also known as eDNA, from soil samples. This is the genetic material that organisms shed into their surroundings — for example, through hair, waste, spit or decomposing carcasses. Studying really old DNA can be a challenge because the genetic material breaks down over time, leaving scientists with only tiny fragments. But with the latest technology, researchers were able to get genetic information out of the small, damaged bits of DNA, said senior author Eske Willerslev, a geneticist at the University of Cambridge. In their study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, they compared the DNA to that of different species, looking for matches. The samples came from a sediment deposit called the Kap Kobenhavn formation in Peary Land. Today, the area is a polar desert, Kjaer said. But millions of years ago, this region was undergoing a period of intense climate change that sent temperatures up, Willerslev said. Sediment likely built up for tens of thousands of …

A law allowing limited euthanasia in Canada is set to expand to make the procedure available to people with mental illness. As Craig McCulloch reports, this is causing a variety of reactions. Canada’s law permitting euthanasia, or Medical Assistance in Dying, became personal for Vancouver-area resident Marcia McNaughton in November. Suffering from metastasized stomach cancer, her 80-year-old aunt Ella Tikenheinrich chose to end her life with medical assistance. McNaughton was not aware of her aunt’s choice until almost the end, and the extended family supported it. “As a family, all we did was support her and love her decision,” McNaughton said. “And I have to say one thing — to be in control of your own time, it is an amazing thing.” On March 17, the law permitting what is termed Medical Assistance in Dying — commonly called MAiD — will expand to include those suffering from mental illness. Currently, only individuals whose death is deemed to be reasonably foreseeable or who suffer from a debilitating illness, like McNaughton’s aunt, qualify to get medical assistance to end their life. Ottawa-based Canadian Physicians for Life has always been strongly opposed to any form of legalized euthanasia. Executive Director Nicole Scheidl said it is an abdication of responsibility of the government and doctors to offer death as a solution instead of treatment. She feels the coming changes allow for a doctor to decide who gets medical assistance to die and who gets suicide prevention. “That goes to the very heart of what …

Negotiators are meeting in Geneva this week to thrash out a pandemic treaty aimed at ensuring the flaws that turned COVID-19 into a global crisis could never happen again.  As the third anniversary of the emergence of the virus rolls around, negotiators are raking over an early concept draft of what might eventually make it into an international agreement about how to handle future pandemics.  “The lessons of the pandemic must not go unlearned,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the negotiating panel at the start of three days of talks, which conclude Wednesday.  An intergovernmental negotiating body is paving the way toward a global agreement that would regulate how nations prepare for and respond to future pandemic threats.  They are gathered for their third meeting, refining and going over their ideas so far.  A progress report will be put before WHO member states next year, with the final outcome to be presented for their consideration in May of 2024.  The dense, 32-page early draft “is a true reflection of the aspirations for a different paradigm for strengthening pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery,” said Tedros.  The so-called conceptual zero draft contains various notions, some of which will have to be developed and others thrown out as negotiators pare down the text ahead of the next meeting in February.  The trick will ultimately be finding the balance between something bold and with teeth, and something all countries can agree to.  ‘Don’t blow this opportunity’ “There’s a lot of material currently …

Price increases among seven out of 10 drugs in 2021 are behind an $805 million increase in U.S. spending from the year before and were not supported by clinical evidence, an influential U.S. pricing research firm said on Tuesday.  The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) said the spending increase in 2021 was less than the $1.67 billion rise in the previous year. This is the third year the group has looked at the top 250 drugs by spending and assessed if those driving U.S. spending increases were justified. “Last year, a huge part of the (increase in) spending was all one drug … this year, we saw the increase was more spread out across different drugs,” ICER’s Chief Medical Officer David Rind told Reuters.  In 2020, Abbvie’s rheumatoid arthritis therapy Humira led to an almost $1.4 billion increase in U.S. drug spending, accounting for more than 80% of the total increase.  Rind said Humira dropped off the list of the 10 costliest prescription drugs because its net price hike was lower in 2021. Since there was no single drug that drove the increase in spending this year, the rise is also relatively smaller compared with 2020, he added.  Bausch Health’s Xifaxan, an antibiotic drug for traveler’s diarrhea, led to an increase of nearly $175 million in spending, among the highest this year.  Johnson & Johnson’s schizophrenia therapy Invega Sustenna and Amgen’s osteoporosis drug Prolia followed closely with spending increases of $170 million and $124 million, respectively.  The three …

Aid groups say measles and cholera outbreaks at Kenya’s congested Dadaab refugee camp have killed at least five people and sickened more than 400.  The outbreaks come as thousands of Somalis have been arriving at the camp this year to escape record drought back home, stretching camp resources.  Juma Majanga reports from Dadaab refugee camp in northeast Kenya. …

NASA’s Orion spaceship made a close pass by the moon and used a gravity assist to whip itself back toward Earth on Monday, marking the start of the return journey for the Artemis-1 mission. At its nearest point, the uncrewed capsule flew less than 130 kilometers from the moon’s surface, testing maneuvers that will be used during later Artemis missions that return humans to the rocky celestial body. Communication with the capsule was interrupted for 30 minutes when it was behind the far side of the moon, an area more cratered than the near side and first seen by humans during the Apollo era, although they didn’t land there. The European Service Module, which powers the capsule, fired its main engine for more than three minutes to put the gumdrop-shaped Orion on course for home. “We couldn’t be more pleased about how the spacecraft is performing,” Debbie Korth, Orion Program deputy manager, said later. As spectacular footage flashed on their screens once communication was restored, she told a news conference, “everybody in the room, we just kind of had to stop and pause, and just really look — ‘Wow, we’re saying goodbye to the moon.’” Monday’s maneuver was the last major one of the mission, which began when NASA’s mega moon rocket SLS blasted off from Florida on November 16. From start to finish, the journey should last 25½ days. Orion will now make only slight course corrections until it splashes down in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego on …

Beijing is taking its first steps toward recovering from years of setbacks to its scientific, land-based projects in the Arctic, sending personnel to two outposts that have been vital to its policy of establishing China as a “near-Arctic” state. China’s Arctic policy document, published in 2018, said scientific research to “explore and understand” the Arctic is the “priority and focus” of Chinese participation in Arctic affairs. Over a 14-year period since 2004, China launched scientific projects in Arctic regions of four Western European nations — Norway, Iceland, Sweden and Finland — and sought to do the same in a fifth, Denmark’s autonomous island of Greenland. The Biden administration, which published its own “National Strategy for the Arctic Region” in October, said those scientific projects have helped China to increase its influence in the Arctic and “exacerbated” strategic competition in a region where the U.S. has long been a major power. The U.S. strategy document said China has “used these scientific engagements to conduct dual-use research with intelligence or military applications in the Arctic,” requiring the U.S. to respond by positioning itself to “effectively compete and manage tensions” in the region. China’s state-run Global Times newspaper quickly responded to the U.S. strategy with an article citing Chinese analysts as saying Washington has been “politicizing” China’s activities in the Arctic. It said the analysts see the U.S. “using ‘increased competition’ as an excuse in trying to control the region after seeing its increasingly prominent economic and military value.” As it snipes publicly …

“Today, there are more children in need of humanitarian assistance than at any other time in recent history,” according to UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.  Monday, UNICEF, the United Nations children’s agency, launched an emergency appeal for $10.3 billion, designed to help 173 million people, including 110 million children, that the agency says have been impacted by “humanitarian crises, the enduring effects of the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide and the growing threat of climate-impacted severe weather events.”  The agency says climate change “is also worsening the scale and intensity of emergencies,” with the last 10 years being the hottest on record. In the last 30 years, the number of climate-related disasters has tripled, UNICEF says.   “Today, over 400 million children live in areas of high or extremely high-water vulnerability,” according to UNICEF.   Russell said, “The devastating impacts of climate change are an ever-present threat to children” and that is why UNICEF is “prioritizing climate adaptation and resilience building as part of our humanitarian response.”    …

In a remote corner of the Western Australian outback, work has begun on the world’s largest radio telescope. Astronomers say the Square Kilometre Array will be capable of searching the stars for signals of intelligent life and listening back to the start of the universe. It is an international scientific collaboration. 130,000 antennas and 200 satellite dishes will make up the Square Kilometre Array project, or SKA. It will comprise two giant and super sensitive telescopes at observatories in Australia and South Africa. By listening and looking deep into space, scientists hope the project can help answer some fundamental questions: Are we alone in the universe? How did the first stars come to shine? and What exactly is “dark energy” — the mysterious phenomena that appears to be pulling the cosmos apart? Experts have said the SKA needs to be set up far away from the disturbances of radio frequencies on earth like those from computers, cars and planes. They have said it will be eight times more sensitive than existing telescopes and will map the sky 135 times faster. Danny Price, a senior research fellow at the Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy at Curtin University, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. Monday that the SKA has unprecedented astronomical power. “It is going to be one of the most sensitive instruments that humanity has ever built,” Price said. “To put it into perspective the SKA could detect a mobile phone in the pocket of an astronaut on Mars.” Australia, South Africa, …

China on Sunday reported two additional deaths from COVID-19 as some cities move cautiously to ease anti-pandemic restrictions following increasingly vocal public frustrations. The National Health Commission said one death was reported each in the provinces of Shandong and Sichuan. No information was given about the ages of the victims or whether they had been fully vaccinated. China, where the virus first was detected in late 2019 in the central city of Wuhan, is the last major country trying to stop transmission completely through quarantines, lockdowns and mass testing. Concerns over vaccination rates are believed to figure prominently in the ruling Communist Party’s determination to stick to its hard-line strategy. While nine in 10 Chinese have been vaccinated, only 66% of people over 80 have gotten one shot while 40% have received a booster, according to the commission. It said 86% of people over 60 are vaccinated. Given those figures and the fact that relatively few Chinese have been built up antibodies by being exposed to the virus, some fear millions could die if restrictions were lifted entirely. Yet, an outpouring of public anger appears to have prompted authorities to lift some of the more onerous restrictions, even as they say the “zero-COVID” strategy — which aims to isolate every infected person — is still in place. The demonstrations, the largest and most widely spread in decades, erupted Nov. 25 after a fire in an apartment building in the northwestern city of Urumqi killed at least 10 people. That set …

It’s now a lot easier — and cheaper — for many hard-of-hearing Americans to get help. Hearing aids can now be sold without a prescription from a specialist. Over-the-counter, or OTC, hearing aids started hitting the market in October at prices that can be thousands of dollars lower than prescription hearing aids. About 30 million people in the United States deal with hearing loss, according to the Food and Drug Administration. But only about 20% of those who could use a hearing aid seek help. Here’s a closer look: Who might be helped The FDA approved OTC hearing aids for adults with mild-to-moderate hearing loss. That can include people who have trouble hearing phone calls or who turn up the TV volume loud enough that others complain. It also can include people who have trouble understanding group conversations in noisy places. OTC hearing aids aren’t intended for people with deeper hearing loss, which may include those who have trouble hearing louder noises, like power tools and cars. They also aren’t for people who lost their hearing suddenly or in just one ear, according to Sterling Sheffield, an audiologist who teaches at the University of Florida. Those people need to see a doctor. Hearing test Before over-the-counter, you usually needed to get your hearing tested and buy hearing aids from a specialist. That’s no longer the case. But it can be hard for people to gauge their own hearing. You can still opt to see a specialist just for that test, …

Three Chinese astronauts landed in a northern desert on Sunday after six months working to complete construction of the Tiangong station, a symbol of the country’s ambitious space program, state TV reported. A capsule carrying commander Chen Dong and astronauts Liu Yang and Cai Xuzhe touched down at a landing site in the Gobi Desert in northern China at approximately 8:10 p.m. (1210 GMT), China Central Television reported. Prior to departure, they overlapped for almost five days with three colleagues who arrived Wednesday on the Shenzhou-15 mission for their own six-month stay, marking the first time China had six astronauts in space at the same time. The station’s third and final module docked with the station this month. The astronauts were carried out of the capsule by medical workers about 40 minutes after touchdown. They were all smiles, and appeared to be in good condition, waving happily at workers at the landing site. “I am very fortunate to have witnessed the completion of the basic structure of the Chinese space station after six busy and fulfilling months in space,” said Chen, who was the first to exit the capsule. “Like meteors, we returned to the embrace of the motherland.” Liu, another of the astronauts, said that she was moved to see relatives and her fellow compatriots. The three astronauts were part of the Shenzhou-14 mission, which launched in June. After their arrival at Tiangong, Chen, Liu and Cai oversaw five rendezvous and dockings with various spacecraft including one carrying the …

Authorities in China’s financial hub of Shanghai will from Monday scrap some testing requirements in the country’s latest relaxing of its strict zero-COVID policy following nationwide protests unseen in decades. Multiple cities have started to roll back some restrictions after public resentment at harsh and prolonged containment measures reached a boiling point last weekend, when spontaneous protests broke out in multiple Chinese cities. Shanghai residents will no longer need a 48-hour negative test result to use public transport and enter outdoor venues such as parks and tourist attractions, authorities said in a WeChat post on Sunday. The city of more than 23 million was sealed off for months this year, weighing heavily on domestic economic activity. Shanghai follows multiple cities including Beijing, Tianjin, Shenzhen and Chengdu, which all cancelled the testing requirement for public transport on Saturday. Beijing’s local authorities also abandoned on Saturday real-name registration that had been required to buy cold and fever medicine. Chinese health authorities last month released a list of measures designed to “optimize” zero-COVID and minimize its socio-economic impact, but local enforcement of the measures has varied widely. The northeastern city of Jinzhou said Thursday it would continue to impose lockdowns because “it would be a shame to not achieve zero-COVID when we are able to,” before backtracking the next day after public outcry. Officials in the eastern city of Jinan said Sunday that residents would still need to scan a health code and have a recent negative test result to access public toilets. …

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is unwilling to accept Western vaccines despite the challenges China is facing with COVID-19, and while recent protests there are not a threat to Communist Party rule, they could affect his personal standing, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said Saturday. Although China’s daily COVID cases are near all-time highs, some cities are taking steps to loosen testing and quarantine rules after Xi’s zero-COVID policy triggered a sharp economic slowdown and public unrest. Haines, speaking at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum in California, said that despite the social and economic impact of the virus, Xi “is unwilling to take a better vaccine from the West, and is instead relying on a vaccine in China that’s just not nearly as effective against omicron.” “Seeing protests and the response to it is countering the narrative that he likes to put forward, which is that China is so much more effective at government,” Haines said. “It’s, again, not something we see as being a threat to stability at this moment, or regime change or anything like that,” she said, while adding: “How it develops will be important to Xi’s standing.” China has not approved any foreign COVID vaccines, opting for those produced domestically, which some studies have suggested are not as effective as some foreign ones. That means easing virus prevention measures could come with big risks, according to experts. The White House said earlier in the week that China had not asked the United States for …