Year: 2023

As the International Day to End Obstetric Fistula approaches Tuesday, scores of women who have been treated for the medical condition are encouraging their peers in northern Cameroon to get help. Many sufferers of obstetric fistula — characterized by urinary and fecal incontinence — believe the disease is a curse for wrongdoing. Now former patients and aid groups are telling families fistula can be treated. The network of women who have been successfully operated on for obstetric fistula in Cameroon’s northern region say they are educating communities that it is a disease that can be treated. Hospital workers say obstetric fistula is a hole between the birth canal and bladder or rectum, caused by prolonged, obstructed labor without access to timely, high-quality medical treatment. The disease leaves women and girls leaking urine, feces or both, and often leads to chronic medical problems, depression, social isolation and deepening poverty, medical staff members say. Catherine Debong, 31, is the spokesperson for Women in Maroua, a group of women who have been operated on for obstetric fistula. Maroua is a town in Cameroon’s far north that shares a border with Chad and Nigeria.  Debong said she is urging parents, husbands, clerics, community leaders and traditional rulers to educate others that obstetric fistula is not a curse or divine punishment for wrongdoing. She said she wants communities to encourage women who have gone into hiding due to the disease to seek treatment. Debong said a Roman Catholic priest took her to the hospital in …

The World Health Organization on Monday won basic approval for a $6.83 billion budget over the next two years, including a 20% hike in mandatory membership fees. As the U.N. health agency kicked off its annual decision-making assembly, member states in a key committee approved the budget without objection. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus hailed the move as “historic and a big milestone.” The budget still needs to be approved by all the member states at the end of the 10-day event, but the approval procedure is basically a formality. The decision comes after last year’s assembly agreed to a dramatic overhaul of WHO funding. Shaken by the COVID-19 pandemic, countries agreed on the need to provide more reliable and stable funding. The WHO is largely financed by its 194 member states. The portion of funding from mandatory membership fees — “assessed contributions” calculated according to wealth and population — had dwindled to below one-fifth, with the rest coming from “voluntary contributions.” This left WHO with limited leeway to respond to crises such as COVID-19, the war in Ukraine and other health emergencies. Last year’s assembly agreed to gradually increase the membership fee portion to 50% by the 2030-31 budget cycle at the latest. The 2024-25 budget cycle marks the first incremental increase, with countries agreeing to hike their assessed contributions by 20% from the 2022-23 budget. In return for the funding shift, WHO has begun implementing 96 reforms, including towards more transparency on its financing and hiring and broader …

Saudi Arabia’s first astronauts in decades rocketed toward the International Space Station on a chartered multimillion-dollar flight Sunday.  SpaceX launched the ticket-holding crew, led by a retired NASA astronaut now working for the company that arranged the trip from Kennedy Space Center. Also on board: a U.S. businessman who now owns a sports car racing team.  The four should reach the space station in their capsule Monday morning; they’ll spend just more than a week there before returning home with a splashdown off the Florida coast.  Sponsored by the Saudi Arabian government, Rayyanah Barnawi, a stem cell researcher, became the first woman from the kingdom to go to space. She was joined by Ali al-Qarni, a fighter pilot with the Royal Saudi Air Force.  They’re the first from their country to ride a rocket since a Saudi prince launched aboard shuttle Discovery in 1985. In a quirk of timing, they’ll be greeted at the station by an astronaut from the United Arab Emirates.  “Hello from outer space! It feels amazing to be viewing Earth from this capsule,” Barnawi said after settling into orbit.  Added al-Qarni: “As I look outside into space, I can’t help but think this is just the beginning of a great journey for all of us.”  Rounding out the visiting crew: Knoxville, Tennessee’s John Shoffner, former driver and owner of a sports car racing team that competes in Europe, and chaperone Peggy Whitson, the station’s first female commander who holds the U.S. record for most accumulated time …

The provincial health department in the South African province of Gauteng on Sunday announced 19 new cases of Cholera in Hammanskraal, including 10 deaths. South Africa reported its first cholera death in February, after the virus arrived in the country from Malawi. It was unclear how many cholera cases there was nationally as of Sunday, but the most populous province of Gauteng, where Johannesburg and Pretoria are situated, has been hardest hit. Cholera can cause acute diarrhea, vomiting and weakness and is mainly spread by contaminated food or water. It can kill within hours if untreated. The last outbreak in South Africa was in 2008/2009 when about 12,000 cases were reported following an outbreak in neighboring Zimbabwe, which led to a surge of imported cases and subsequent local transmission. …

Mexico’s Popocatepetl volcano rumbled to life again this week, belching out towering clouds of ash that forced 11 villages to cancel school sessions. The residents weren’t the only ones keeping a close eye on the towering peak. Every time there is a sigh, tic or heave in Popocatepetl, there are dozens of scientists, a network of sensors and cameras, and a roomful of powerful equipment watching its every move. The 5,426-meter volcano, known affectionately as “El Popo,” has been spewing toxic fumes, ash and lumps of incandescent rock persistently for almost 30 years, since it awakened from a long slumber in 1994. The volcano is 72 kilometers southeast of Mexico City, but looms much closer to the eastern fringes of the metropolitan area of 22 million people. The city also faces threats from earthquakes and sinking soil, but the volcano is the most visible potential danger — and the most closely watched. A severe eruption could cut off air traffic, or smother the city in clouds of choking ash. Ringed around its summit are six cameras, a thermal imaging device and 12 seismological monitoring stations that operate 24 hours a day, all reporting back to an equipment-filled command center in Mexico City. A total of 13 scientists from a multidisciplinary team take turns staffing the command center around the clock. Being able to warn of an impending ash cloud is key, because people can take precautions. Unlike earthquakes, warning times can be longer for the volcano and in general the …

The World Health Organization on Saturday launched a global network to help swiftly detect the threat from infectious diseases, like COVID-19, and share the information to prevent their spread. The International Pathogen Surveillance Network (IPSN) will provide a platform for connecting countries and regions, improving systems for collecting and analyzing samples, the agency said. The network aims to help ensure infectious disease threats are swiftly identified and tracked and the information shared and acted on to prevent catastrophes like the COVID pandemic. The network will rely on pathogen genomics to analyze the genetic code of viruses, bacteria and other disease-causing organisms to understand how infectious and deadly they are and how they spread. The data gathered will feed into a broader disease surveillance system used to identify and track diseases, in a bid to contain outbreaks and to develop treatments and vaccines. ‘Ambitious’ goals WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus hailed the “ambitious” goals of the new network, saying it could “play a vital role in health security.” “As was so clearly demonstrated to us during the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is stronger when it stands together to fight shared health threats,” he said. The IPSN, announced a day before the annual meeting of WHO member states begins in Geneva, will have a secretariat within the WHO’s Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence. It is the latest of several initiatives launched since COVID that aim to bolster the world’s ability to prevent and more effectively respond to pandemic threats. The network …

The U.S. space agency NASA announced Friday it has awarded the Jeff Bezos-owned aerospace company Blue Origin a contract to build a second lunar lander for the Artemis V moon mission, aiming to land a crew on the moon by 2029. At a Washington news conference, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said under the $3.4 billion contract, Blue Origin will design, develop, test and verify its Blue Moon lander to meet NASA’s human landing system requirements for recurring astronaut expeditions to the lunar surface, including docking with Gateway, a space station where crews will transfer in lunar orbit.  Two years ago, Blue Origin made a bid on the contract NASA awarded to the Elon Musk-owned company SpaceX to build NASA’s initial human landing system to be used in the agency’s Artemis III and Artemis IV missions. In a release, the agency said it also directed SpaceX to evolve its design to meet the requirements for sustainable exploration on the moon. Under its contract, Blue Origin will build a lander that meets the same sustainable requirements, including capabilities for a larger crew, longer missions and the delivery of more mass to the moon. NASA officials said the program is an important step toward their goal to establish “a regular cadence” of missions to the moon.  And, NASA said, that competitive approach, using multiple providers, drives innovation, brings down costs and invests in commercial capabilities that will foster “a lunar economy.” Nelson said Friday, “We are in a golden age of human spaceflight, …

More than half of the world’s large lakes and reservoirs have shrunk since the early 1990s, chiefly because of climate change, intensifying concerns about water for agriculture, hydropower and human consumption, a study published Thursday found. An international team of researchers reported that some of the world’s most important water sources — from the Caspian Sea between Europe and Asia to South America’s Lake Titicaca — lost water at a cumulative rate of about 22 gigatonnes per year for nearly three decades. That’s about 17 times the volume of Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States. Fangfang Yao, a surface hydrologist at the University of Virginia who led the study in the journal Science, said 56% of the decline in natural lakes was driven by climate warming and human consumption, with warming “the larger share of that.” Climate scientists generally think that the world’s arid areas will become drier under climate change and wet areas will get wetter, but the study found significant water loss even in humid regions. “This should not be overlooked,” Yao said. Scientists assessed almost 2,000 large lakes using satellite measurements combined with climate and hydrological models. They found that unsustainable human use, changes in rainfall and runoff, sedimentation, and rising temperatures have driven lake levels down globally, with 53% of lakes showing a decline from 1992 to 2020. Nearly 2 billion people who live in drying lake basins are directly affected, and many regions have faced water shortages in recent years. Scientists and …

Mexican authorities said Thursday that they were trying to locate several hundred people, including U.S. nationals, potentially at risk of developing fungal meningitis after medical treatment near the border. The announcement came a day after the United States warned that suspected fungal infections had led to severe illness and even death among U.S. residents returning from the Mexican city of Matamoros. Around 400 people were being traced, including roughly 80 from the United States, according to the health minister of Tamaulipas state, home to Matamoros, which sits across the border from Brownsville, Texas. “They’re going to be located to rule out that they are infected,” Vicente Joel Hernandez told AFP. Two clinics, River Side Surgical Center and Clinica K-3, have been closed following the death of an American and the infection of seven other people, he said. According to the U.S. government, the affected travelers had medical or surgical procedures, including liposuction, that involved injecting anesthetic into the area around the spinal column. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised canceling any procedure that involves an epidural injection in Matamoros until the problem is resolved. It urged anyone experiencing symptoms of fungal meningitis after having such an injection in the city to go to a hospital emergency department immediately. The symptoms include fever, headache, stiff neck, nausea, vomiting, confusion and sensitivity to light, it said, adding that fungal meningitis infections are not contagious or transmitted person-to-person. Mexico is one of the world’s top medical tourism destinations, largely due …

Shipwreck enthusiasts have cause for celebration because the Titanic ocean liner’s infamous wreck can now be visualized like never before. Deep-sea researchers have completed the first full-size digital scan of the Titanic, showing the entire wreck in clarity and detail. Researchers say it is the “largest underwater scanning project in history.” Unveiled on Wednesday, the 3D scan was the result of a six-week expedition to the North Atlantic wreck site in summer 2022, during which researchers used two remotely operated submersibles — named Romeo and Juliet — to map the entire shipwreck and the surrounding 3-mile debris field. The researchers took more than 700,000 images from every angle to create a virtual, exact 3D reconstruction. “It’s an absolutely one-to-one digital copy, a ‘twin,’ of the Titanic in every detail,” Anthony Geffen, head of documentary maker Atlantic Productions, told The Associated Press. Atlantic Productions is making a documentary about the project. The scan, which enables the ship to be seen as if the water has been drained away, may also reveal more details about the ship’s ill-fated trip across the Atlantic in 1912. An estimated 1,500 people died when the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912, after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage from England to New York. Richard Parkinson, founder of the deep-sea exploration firm Magellan, believes that the data amount to 10 times more than any underwater 3D model ever tried before. Magellan carried out the scan project in partnership with Atlantic Productions. “The depth of it, almost …

Drug overdose deaths in the U.S. went up slightly last year after two big leaps during the pandemic.  Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say the numbers plateaued for most of last year. Experts aren’t sure whether that means the deadliest drug overdose epidemic in U.S. history is finally reaching a peak, or whether it’ll look like previous plateaus that were followed by new surges in deaths.  “The fact that it does seem to be flattening out, at least at a national level, is encouraging,” said Katherine Keyes, a Columbia University epidemiology professor whose research focuses on drug use. “But these numbers are still extraordinarily high. We shouldn’t suggest the crisis is in any way over.”  An estimated 109,680 overdose deaths occurred last year, according to numbers posted Wednesday by the CDC. That’s about 2% more than the 107,622 U.S. overdose deaths in 2021, but nothing like the 30% increase seen in 2020, and 15% increase in 2021.  While the overall national number was relatively static between 2021 and 2022, there were dramatic changes in a number of states: 23 reported fewer overdose deaths, one — Iowa — saw no change, and the rest continued to increase.  Eight states — Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia — reported sizable overdose death decreases of about 100 or more compared with the previous calendar year.  Some of these states had some of the highest overdose death rates during the epidemic, which Keyes said might be …

“I remember my wife, Dora, coming home one day and telling me she had a problem while driving,” said Bill Collier, a marketing professional living near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. “She said she stopped at an intersection and suddenly couldn’t remember where she was going.”  That was in August of 2015. Then things got worse. Within months, Collier said Dora began experiencing nervous breakdowns and hallucinations on a nightly basis.  “She freaked out at me, at the world, at God — you name it,” he told VOA. “Most nights we both ended up in tears because we didn’t know what was going on or why it was happening.”  It wasn’t until nearly six years later, in February 2021, that Dora, now 57, was finally diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, a progressive mental deterioration most commonly suffered by the elderly, but which can also strike middle-aged people. The disease, the sixth leading cause of death in the United States and the only one in the top 10 without a cure or potentially reversible treatment, causes brain cell connections and the cells themselves to degenerate and die. The eventual result is the destruction of memory and other important mental functions.  “The day we got the diagnosis felt like getting a death sentence,” Collier said. “Dora is still alive, but it’s been the eight toughest years of my life. Alzheimer’s is like a slow motion, everyday horror movie with a senseless plot that haunts my thoughts each hour I’m awake.”  Diagnosing the disease “Alzheimer’s disease is …

Countries can reduce plastic pollution by 80% by 2040 using existing technologies and by making major policy changes, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said in a new report on Monday. The Kenya-based U.N. body released its analysis of policy options to tackle the plastic waste crisis two weeks before countries convene in Paris for a second round of negotiations to craft a global treaty aimed at eliminating plastic waste. The report focuses on three main market shifts needed to create a “circular” economy that keeps produced items in circulation as long as possible: reuse, recycling and reorientation of packaging from plastic to alternative materials. “If we follow this road map, including in negotiations on the plastic pollution deal, we can deliver major economic, social and environmental wins,” said Inger Andersen, UNEP executive director. The treaty negotiations, known as INC2, will be May 29 to June 2 and are expected to result in key inputs for the first treaty draft, which needs to be done before the third round of negotiations in Kenya in November. UNEP estimates that government promotion of reuse options such as refillable bottle systems or deposit return schemes could reduce 30% of plastic waste by 2040. It also says that recycling could achieve an additional 20% by that year if “it becomes a more stable and profitable venture” and fossil fuel subsidies are removed, and that the replacement of products such as plastics wraps and bags with compostable materials could yield an additional 17% reduction. Countries …

Edna Adan Ismail, a nurse-midwife, hospital founder, and health care advocate who for decades has combated female genital mutilation and strived to improve women’s health care in East Africa, was named Tuesday as winner of the 2023 Templeton Prize, one of the world’s largest annual individual awards. “Rooted in her Muslim faith, she receives this year’s award in recognition of her extraordinary efforts to harness the power of the sciences to affirm the dignity of women and help them to flourish physically and spiritually,” said the announcement. Among her achievements: the founding of a hospital and university which have significantly reduced maternal mortality in Somaliland. The Templeton Prize, valued at nearly $1.4 million, was established in 1973 by philanthropist Sir John Templeton. It honors those “who harness the power of the sciences to explore the deepest questions of the universe and humankind’s place and purpose within it.” Ismail, the first African woman to win the prize, “has used the teachings of her faith, family, and scientific education to improve the health and opportunities of some of the world’s most vulnerable women and girls,” said Heather Templeton Dill, president of the John Templeton Foundation. Ismail, 85, said she would donate some of her prize money to the U.S.-based Friends of Edna Maternity Hospital, for use in purchasing new equipment, hiring educators and “training the next generation of health care workers that East Africa so desperately needs.” Ismail was born in 1937 in Hargeisa, the capital of what was then British Somaliland. …