Year: 2023

Most transplanted hearts are from donors who are brain dead, but new research shows a different approach can be just as successful and boost the number of available organs. It’s called donation after circulatory death, a method long used to recover kidneys and other organs but not more fragile hearts. Duke Health researchers said Wednesday that using those long-shunned hearts could allow possibly thousands more patients a chance at a lifesaving transplant — expanding the number of donor hearts by 30%. “Honestly if we could snap our fingers and just get people to use this, I think it probably would go up even more than that,” said transplant surgeon Dr. Jacob Schroder of Duke University School of Medicine, who led the research. “This really should be standard of care.” The usual method of organ donation occurs when doctors, through careful testing, determine someone has no brain function after a catastrophic injury — meaning they’re brain dead. The body is left on a ventilator that keeps the heart beating and organs oxygenated until they’re recovered and put on ice. In contrast, donation after circulatory death occurs when someone has a nonsurvivable brain injury but, because all brain function hasn’t yet ceased, the family decides to withdraw life support and the heart stops. That means organs go without oxygen for a while before they can be recovered — and surgeons, worried the heart would be damaged, left it behind. What’s changed: Now doctors can remove those hearts and put them in a …

Schools across the U.S. East Coast canceled outdoor activities, airline traffic slowed, and millions of Americans were urged to stay indoors Wednesday as smoke from Canadian wildfires drifted south, blanketing cities in thick, yellow haze. The U.S. National Weather Service issued air quality alerts for virtually the entire Atlantic seaboard. Health officials from Vermont to South Carolina and as far west as Ohio and Kansas warned residents that spending time outdoors could cause respiratory problems due to high levels of fine particulates in the atmosphere. “It’s critical that Americans experiencing dangerous air pollution, especially those with health conditions, listen to local authorities to protect themselves and their families,” U.S. President Joe Biden said on Twitter. U.S. private forecasting service AccuWeather said thick haze and soot extending from high elevations to ground level marked the worst outbreak of wildfire smoke to blanket the Northeastern U.S. in more than 20 years. New York’s famous skyline, usually visible for miles, appeared to vanish in an otherworldly veil of smoke, which some residents said made them feel unwell. “It makes breathing difficult,” Mohammed Abass said as he walked down Broadway in Manhattan. “I’ve been scheduled for a road test for driving, for my driving license today, and it was canceled.” The smoky air was especially tough on people toiling outdoors, such as Chris Ricciardi, owner of Neighbor’s Envy Landscaping in Roxbury, New Jersey. He said he and his crew were curtailing work hours and wearing masks they used for heavy pollen. “We don’t have …

Months after a 6-year-old child was hospitalized in an attack by stray dogs in a housing complex near Mumbai, more than 80 dogs still roam the community’s compound, regularly attacking other residents. Yet community leaders say they are powerless to deal with the problem because of an animal welfare law, first enacted in 2001 and updated this year, which protects the right of the dogs to roam freely and even requires that they be fed on the streets where they live. It also prohibits euthanization. “Neither concerned agencies are doing anything, nor can we do anything because of the [Animal Birth Control] policy,” said Nagendra Rampuria, a member of the managing committee at the gated housing society in Pune, 110 kilometers southeast of Mumbai. “These dog bites are making a mark upon the collective consciousness of India,” he told VOA in an interview. Similar incidents take place regularly across India, where an average of 5,739 dog bites are reported every day. A group called End Pet Homelessness has calculated that India has more than 60 million stray dogs, with 77% of the population saying they see a stray dog at least once a week. According to estimates by the World Health Organization, India accounts for 36% of the world’s rabies deaths in humans, with 30% to 60% of the cases involving children under 15, who are less able to defend themselves against aggressive dogs. Abdul Hamid Dar, the in-charge medical officer at an anti-rabies clinic in Srinagar, told VOA that …

Kilauea, one of the most active volcanoes in the world, began erupting Wednesday after a three-month pause, displaying spectacular fountains of mesmerizing, glowing lava that’s a safe distance from people and structures in a national park on the Big Island. The U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said in a statement that a glow was detected in webcam images from Kilauea’s summit early in the morning, indicating that an eruption was occurring within the Halemaumau crater in the summit caldera. The images show fissures at the base of the crater generating lava flows on the crater floor’s surface, the observatory said. Before issuing the eruption notice, the observatory said increased earthquake activity and changes in the patterns of ground deformation at the summit started Tuesday night, indicating the movement of magma in the subsurface. “We’re not seeing any signs of activity out on the rift zones right now,” said Mike Zoeller, a geologist with the observatory. “There’s no reason to expect this to transition into a rift eruption that would threaten any communities here on the island with lava flows or anything like that.” All activity was within a closed area of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. “The lava this morning is all confined within … the summit caldera. So plenty of room for it still to produce more without threatening any homes or infrastructure,” said park spokesperson Jessica Ferracane. “So that’s the way we like our eruptions here.” She said park officials are bracing for crowds to arrive because visitors …

As communities in countries rich and poor face soaring costs from extreme weather and rising seas, governments are grappling with how to set up a new fund to tackle “loss and damage” driven by global warming. The topic was for years controversial at U.N. climate talks, as wealthy nations rejected demands for “compensation” for the impacts of their high share of the planet-heating emissions that are turbo-charging floods, droughts and storms around the world. However, at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt last November, a group of 134 African, Asian and Latin American states and small island nations finally won agreement on a new fund that will pay to repair devastated property, or preserve cultural heritage before it disappears forever. But the details of where the money will come from and how it will be disbursed were left to be worked out by this December’s COP28 conference in Dubai. As mid-year U.N. climate talks got underway in Bonn in June, Saleemul Huq, director of the Dhaka-based International Centre for Climate Change and Development, called on the United Arab Emirates to declare its intention for COP28 — which it will host — to create the “Dubai Loss and Damage Fund.” Here’s why the issue of “loss and damage” has grown in importance this past decade — and where the sticking points in finding finance to address it could lie. What is climate change “loss and damage”? “Loss and damage” refers to the physical and mental harm that happens to people and places when they …

Moving around metropolitan areas can present challenges for individuals who are obese or have height limitations, as many public spaces are not designed to accommodate their needs. However, a new law adds weight and height to the list of characteristics that are protected from discrimination in New York City. Aron Ranen has the story. …

China, where COVID-19 was first identified in humans more than three years ago, expects its current wave of infection to hit as many as 65 million cases per week by late June, according to official accounts of models presented at a medical conference. While that may be an exhausting number to a post-pandemic world wearied by a still rising toll of 767 million confirmed cases and more than 6.9 million deaths, the predicted onslaught in China comes with less severe symptoms, Wang Guiqiang, director of the Department of Infectious Diseases at Peking University First Hospital, told the official newspaper Beijing Daily. And, experts say, the outbreak is likely to be confined to China. Raj Rajnarayanan, assistant dean of research and associate professor at the New York Institute of Technology and a top COVID-variant tracker, told Fortune that when it comes to XBB variants, “the rest of the world has seen them all.” But up until recently, “China hasn’t.” Respiratory disease specialist Zhong Nanshan, who spoke on May 22 at a conference in the southern city of Guangzhou, said the current wave of infections that started in late April was “anticipated.” His modeling suggested that by the end of June, the weekly number of infections will peak at 65 million, according to the official Global Times. After Beijing relaxed the draconian lockdowns enforced under its “zero-COVID” policy, an omicron variant different from the current one ripped through China in December 2022 and January 2023. About 80% of China’s 1.4 billion people …

New advances in the fight against a range of cancers have been revealed at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), which wraps up in Chicago on Tuesday. Here are some of the announcements that have most excited experts. Lung cancer One of the trial results that caused a stir in Chicago has raised hopes for a new weapon against lung cancer, the deadliest of all cancers. The treatment osimertinib was shown to halve the risk of death from a certain type of lung cancer when taken daily after surgery to remove the tumor. Developed by the pharmaceutical group AstraZeneca, the daily pill targets patients with non-small cell cancer — by far the most common type — as well as a mutation of their epidermal growth factor receptor, or EGFR. Iris Pauporte, head of research at France’s League Against Cancer, told AFP the advance was a “big ray of hope” for this type of cancer, for which progress has been slow. Muriel Dahan, head of research at Unicancer, said that if the results are confirmed, it “should change” common practice in treating this kind of lung cancer. Systematic testing for the EGFR mutation would also become necessary for lung cancer patients, she added. Brain cancer Another treatment, called vorasidenib, was found to significantly prolong the progression-free survival of patients with brain tumor glioma, according to clinical trial results. The daily pill, developed by French pharma firm Servier, aims to block an enzyme responsible for the progression of some …

Global leaders in the battle against global warming convened in Bonn, Germany, on Monday for the start of the final phase of a two-year long assessment of the progress being made to limit rising temperatures. The annual Bonn Climate Change Conference is part of the “global stocktake” — a process by which countries around the world assess how much progress has been made toward compliance with the 2015 Paris Agreement, a worldwide effort to prevent global temperatures from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial era average. “The global stocktake is an ambition exercise. It’s an accountability exercise. It’s an acceleration exercise,” U.N. Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell said in a statement. “It’s an exercise that is intended to make sure every Party is holding up their end of the bargain, knows where they need to go next and how rapidly they need to move to fulfill the goals of the Paris Agreement.” However, Stiell warned that the findings will only be meaningful if they are paired with action. “The global stocktake will end up being just another report unless governments and those that they represent can look at it and ultimately understand what it means for them and what they can and must do next. It’s the same for businesses, communities and other key stakeholders,” he said. The stocktake will conclude in November, when the annual U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP28) is held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Stocktake process The global stocktake is a two-year process that …

The European Union is pushing online platforms like Google and Meta to step up the fight against false information by adding labels to text, photos and other content generated by artificial intelligence, a top official said Monday. EU Commission Vice President Vera Jourova said the ability of a new generation of AI chatbots to create complex content and visuals in seconds raises “fresh challenges for the fight against disinformation.” Jourova said she asked Google, Meta, Microsoft, TikTok and other tech companies that have signed up to the 27-nation bloc’s voluntary agreement on combating disinformation to dedicate efforts to tackling the AI problem. Online platforms that have integrated generative AI into their services, such as Microsoft’s Bing search engine and Google’s Bard chatbot, should build safeguards to prevent “malicious actors” from generating disinformation, Jourova said at a briefing in Brussels. Companies offering services that have the potential to spread AI-generated disinformation should roll out technology to “recognize such content and clearly label this to users,” she said. Jourova said EU regulations are aimed at protecting free speech, but when it comes to AI, “I don’t see any right for the machines to have the freedom of speech.” The swift rise of generative AI technology, which has the capability to produce human-like text, images and video, has amazed many and alarmed others with its potential to transform many aspects of daily life. Europe has taken a lead role in the global movement to regulate artificial intelligence with its AI Act, but the …

A pill has been shown to halve the risk of death from a certain type of lung cancer when taken daily after surgery to remove the tumor, according to clinical trial results presented on Sunday. The results were unveiled in Chicago at the largest annual conference of cancer specialists, hosted by the American Society for Clinical Oncology. Lung cancer is the form of the disease that causes the most deaths, with approximately 1.8 million fatalities every year worldwide. The treatment developed by the pharmaceutical group AstraZeneca is called osimertinib and is marketed under the name Tagrisso. It targets a particular type of lung cancer in patients suffering from so-called non-small cell cancer, the most common type, and showing a particular type of mutation. These mutations, on what is called the epidermal growth factor receptor, or EGFR, affect 10% to 25% of lung cancer patients in the United States and Europe, and 30 to 40% in Asia. The clinical trial included some 680 participants at an early stage of the disease (stages 1b to 3a), in more than 20 countries. They had to have been operated on first to remove the tumor, then half of the patients took the treatment daily, and the other a placebo. The result showed that taking the tablet resulted in a 51% reduction in the risk of death for treated patients, compared to placebo. After five years, 88% of patients who took the treatment were still alive, compared to 78% of patients who took the placebo. …

Tour de France organizers have set up an anti-COVID protocol for this year’s race, with riders and team staff banned from signing autographs and eating out of their hotels, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters Saturday.  Riders and staff members were allowed out of their hotels last year. Access to the paddock at the start of the stages was open to reporters until midway through the race, when organizers decided to close it to “fight against the propagation of COVID-19.”  Access to the paddock will be allowed when the Tour starts in Bilbao, Spain, on June 29, with everyone required to wear a mask.  “For all the team members: Respect a confinement – Limit the interactions outside the race bubble. No eating out. Respect social distancing at the hotel,” the chart, seen by Reuters, said.  “Do not get too close to the spectators – Social distancing, no selfies, no autograph.”  On Friday, France reported 3,204 COVID-19 cases in the country. At this time last year, there were about 25,000 reported daily cases in France.  Giro d’Italia organizers last month set up an anti-COVID protocol near the halfway point of the race after overall leader Remco Evenepoel pulled out after testing positive for coronavirus.  …

The latest threat to the life of Txai Surui is still fresh in her mind. Protesting deforestation in the Amazon with other Indigenous people last week, she found herself held at gunpoint. “They got out guns and ambushed two days ago,” Surui said. The Indigenous campaigner recalled the confrontation with gunmen in a telephone interview from Brazil with VOA. “I am 26 and my parents have been getting death threats since before I was born. We are threatened all the time,” Surui said. Her testimony speaks of the dangers faced by Indigenous protesters and the journalists who report their stories from gunmen hired by illegal loggers or fishermen. On June 5, 2022, Dom Phillips, a British journalist who wrote for The Guardian and The Washington Post, and Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, went missing. They had been on a four-day reporting trip looking at the situation for communities in the Javari region of the Amazon and were working on a book together. Ten days after they went missing, their bodies were found.   In May 2023, Brazilian federal police brought criminal charges against the former head of Brazil’s Indigenous protection agency for alleged acts of omission they believe indirectly paved the way for the killings. Marcelo Xavier, a former police chief and head of the protection agency that covered the region where the killings took place, has not commented on the accusations. Three fishermen are being held in high-security prisons for their alleged involvement in the killings while a judge prepares to rule on whether …

While judges, lawyers and support staff at the federal courthouse in Concord, New Hampshire, keep the American justice system buzzing, thousands of humble honeybees on the building’s roof are playing their part in a more important task — feeding the world.  The Warren B. Rudman courthouse is one of several federal facilities around the country participating in the General Services Administration’s Pollinator Initiative, a government program aimed at assessing and promoting the health of bees and other pollinators, which are critical to life on Earth.  “Anybody who eats food, needs bees,” said Noah Wilson-Rich, co-founder, CEO and chief scientific officer of the Boston-based Best Bees company, which contracts with the government to take care of the honeybee hives at the New Hampshire courthouse and at some other federal buildings.  Bees help pollinate the fruits and vegetables that sustain humans, he said. They pollinate hay and alfalfa, which feed cattle that provide the meat we eat. And they promote the health of plants that, through photosynthesis, give us clean air to breathe.  Yet the busy insects that contribute an estimated $25 billion to the U.S. economy annually are under threat from diseases, agricultural chemicals and habitat loss that kill about half of all honeybee hives annually. Without human intervention, including beekeepers creating new hives, the world could experience a bee extinction that would lead to global hunger and economic collapse, Wilson-Rich said.  The pollinator program is part of the federal government’s commitment to promoting sustainability, which includes reducing greenhouse gas emissions …

Tanzania on Friday declared the end of a deadly outbreak of the Marburg virus, more than two months after it was first confirmed, the World Health Organization said.  Nine cases – eight confirmed and one probable – and six deaths were recorded in the outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever in the northwestern region of Kagera, the WHO said in a statement.  The U.N. health agency said it was the first such outbreak in Tanzania, an East African country with a population of almost 62 million.  The last confirmed case tested negative on April 19, setting off the 42-day mandatory countdown to declare the end of the outbreak, it added.  Neighboring Uganda, which witnessed its last outbreak in 2017 and shares a porous border with Tanzania, had gone on high alert after Marburg was confirmed by Tanzania’s health ministry on March 21.  Uganda had just emerged in January from an almost four-month-long Ebola outbreak, which killed 55 people.  The WHO said Tanzania’s health authorities, with help from the U.N. agency and other partners, had “immediately rolled out outbreak response to stop the spread of the virus and save lives.”  The Marburg virus is a highly virulent microbe that causes severe fever, often accompanied by bleeding and organ failure.  No vaccines  It is part of the so-called filovirus family that also includes Ebola, which has caused havoc in several previous outbreaks in Africa.  Fatality rates from Marburg in confirmed cases have ranged from 24% to 88% during previous outbreaks, according to the …

In March, U.S. President Joe Biden announced the creation of a marine sanctuary across a wide swath of the Pacific Ocean. If finalized, it would help the U.S. meet its goal of protecting 30% of its oceans by 2030. The public comment period is underway, revealing the competing interests of conservation and economic development across the region. VOA’s Jessica Stone reports. …

Summer is in the air — cigarette smoke is not — in Sweden’s outdoor bars and restaurants. As the World Health Organization marks “World No Tobacco Day” on Wednesday, Sweden, which has the lowest rate of smoking in the Europe Union, is close to declaring itself “smoke-free” — defined as having fewer than 5% daily smokers in the population. Many experts give credit to decades of anti-smoking campaigns and legislation, while others point to the prevalence of “snus,” a smokeless tobacco product banned elsewhere in the EU but marketed in Sweden as an alternative to cigarettes. Whatever the reason, the 5% milestone is now within reach. Only 6.4% of Swedes over 15 were daily smokers in 2019, the lowest in the EU and far below the average of 18.5% across the 27-nation bloc, according to the Eurostat statistics agency. Figures from the Public Health Agency of Sweden show the smoking rate has continued to fall since then, reaching 5.6% last year. “We like a healthy way to live, I think that’s the reason,” said Carina Astorsson, a Stockholm resident. Smoking never interested her, she said, because “I don’t like the smell; I want to take care of my body.” The risks of smoking appear well understood among health-conscious Swedes, including younger generations. Twenty years ago, almost 20% of the population were smokers — which was a low rate globally at the time. Since then, measures to discourage smoking, including bans on smoking in restaurants, have brought down smoking rates across …

An all-private astronaut team of two Americans and two Saudis, including the first Arab woman sent into orbit, splashed down safely off Florida on Tuesday night, capping an eight-day research mission aboard the International Space Station. The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying them parachuted into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Panama City, Florida, after a 12-hour return flight and blazing re-entry plunge through Earth’s atmosphere. The splashdown was carried live by a joint webcast presented by SpaceX and the company behind the mission, Axiom Space. It concluded the second space station mission organized, equipped and trained entirely at private expense by Axiom, a seven-year-old Houston-based venture headed by NASA’s former ISS program manager. The Axiom 2 crew was led by retired NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, 63, who holds the U.S. record for most time spent in orbit with 665 days in space over three long-duration missions to the ISS, including 10 spacewalks. She now serves as Axiom’s director of human spaceflight. “That was a phenomenal ride. We really enjoyed all of it,” Whitson radioed to mission controllers moments after splashdown. Ax-2’s designated pilot was John Shoffner, 67, an aviator, race car driver and investor from Alaska. Rounding out the crew as mission specialists were the first two astronauts from Saudi Arabia to fly aboard a private spacecraft: Ali Alqarni, 31, a fighter pilot for the Royal Saudi Air Force; and Rayyanah Barnawi, 34, a biomedical scientist in cancer stem cell research. Barnawi was the first woman from …

Almost two dozen people have died from cholera just outside South Africa’s capital, Pretoria, over the past two weeks, and hundreds have been hospitalized. VOA spoke to residents who have been affected and officials who are still searching for the source. Kate Bartlett reports from Hammanskraal, South Africa. Camera: Zaheer Cassim. …