Year: 2023

The COP28 climate summit gets under way in Dubai Thursday. As Henry Ridgwell reports, the meeting comes at what scientists say is a crucial moment in the fight against global warming, with warnings the world is on the brink of irreversible and catastrophic climate change …

U.S. life expectancy rose last year — by more than a year — but still isn’t close to what it was before the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2022 rise was mainly due to the waning pandemic, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers said Wednesday. But even with the large increase, U.S. life expectancy is only back to 77 years, 6 months — about what it was two decades ago. Life expectancy is an estimate of the average number of years a baby born in a given year might expect to live, assuming the death rates at that time hold constant. The snapshot statistic is considered one of the most important measures of the health of the U.S. population. The 2022 calculations released Wednesday are provisional, and could change a little as the math is finalized. For decades, U.S. life expectancy rose a little nearly every year. But about a decade ago, the trend flattened and even declined some years — a stall blamed largely on overdose deaths and suicides. Then came the coronavirus, which has killed more than 1.1 million people in the U.S. since early 2020. The measure of American longevity plunged, dropping from 78 years, 10 months in 2019 to 77 years in 2020, and then to 76 years, 5 months in 2021. “We basically have lost 20 years of gains,” said the CDC’s Elizabeth Arias. A decline in COVID-19 deaths drove 2022’s improvement. In 2021, COVID was the nation’s third leading cause of death (after heart disease …

Children made up nearly half of the people driven into hunger and malnutrition by extreme weather events in countries heavily impacted by the climate crisis in 2022, according to a UK-based charity. Citing data by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC hunger monitoring system, Britain’s Save the Children said Tuesday that children made up 27 million of the 57 million “people pushed into crisis levels of acute food insecurity or worse across 12 countries because of extreme weather events in 2022.” “As climate-related weather events become more frequent and severe, we will see more drastic consequences on children’s lives,” said Gwen Hines, Chief Executive Officer of Save the Children UK. “In 2022, 135% more children were pushed into hunger due to extreme weather events than the year before.” Half of the 27 million affected children came from the most affected countries of Ethiopia and Somalia. Save the Children highlighted Somalia as particularly vulnerable to climate crises, pointing to the country’s five consecutive failed rainy seasons and the recent impact of flooding that displaced 650,000 people, about half of which are children. Save the Children also identified Pakistan, which last year saw floods affect some 33 million people, with half being children. A year after the flood, “2 million flood-affected children are acutely malnourished, with almost 600,000 children suffering from the deadliest form of malnutrition,” the charity said. Save the Children also called on world leaders from high income nations ahead of the COP28, the United Nations climate summit, …

Disease could pose a bigger threat to human life than bombings in Gaza, the World Health Organization said.  Overcrowding and a lack of access to clean drinking water or sanitation systems has led to a breeding ground for infectious disease, particularly diarrhea in children, which has reached nearly 100 times its normal level, according to the WHO. “Eventually we will see more people dying from disease than we are even seeing from the bombardment if we are not able to put back (together) this health system,” said WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris at a U.N. briefing Tuesday in Geneva.   The WHO says food shortages have added to the disease risk, as people are getting weak from hunger, causing them to be more prone to illness.  People in Gaza also face difficulty in getting treatment, as there is limited medical staff and a shortage of access to medicines and vaccinations.   Disruptions in collection of garbage from crowded shelters has furthered concern over risk of disease. The WHO, in response to the conditions in Gaza, has called for a cease-fire, “sustained access for aid into Gaza,” “protection of civilians and health care,” and “respect for international humanitarian law,” on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter. Israel declared war on U.S.-designated terror group Hamas after its shock October 7 attack on southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people and led to the Hamas capture of about 240 hostages. Israel’s campaign against Hamas militants has killed more than 14,000 people, according to …

When world leaders gather in Dubai beginning Thursday for COP28, this year’s U.N. climate summit, the heads of the world’s two largest economies will be notably absent. U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping have no plans to attend the two-week event, which is aimed at marshaling governments around the world behind the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 2015 Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Both countries will send high-level representatives. Former Secretary of State John Kerry, the Biden administration’s special envoy for climate change, will attend. China’s climate envoy, Xie Zhenhua, is also expected. Among the main issues addressed at the conference will be the structure of a “loss and damage” fund meant to compensate low-income countries that are suffering disproportionately from climate change despite having contributed little to its causes. Another important topic of discussion will be the adoption of an agreement to phase out the use of fossil fuels, the single largest contributor to carbon emissions. The fossil fuel discussion may be complicated by the fact that the host country, the United Arab Emirates, is one of the world’s largest producers of oil and gas. UAE oil deals In a development that may further snarl the talks in Dubai, the news organization Centre for Climate Reporting, in conjunction with the British Broadcasting Corp., on Monday revealed leaked documents suggesting that the COP28 organizing authority in the UAE has scheduled talks about oil and …

National and regional authorities in Spain signed an agreement Monday to invest 1.4 billion euros ($1.5 billion) in areas around the treasured national park of Donana in a bid to stop the park from drying up. Ecological Transition Minister Teresa Ribera said the plan was aimed at encouraging farmers to stop cultivating crops that rely heavily on water from underground aquifers that have been overexploited in recent years, damaging one of Europe’s largest wetlands. “This is an agreement with which we put an end to pressure on a natural treasure the likes of which there are few in the world,” Ribera said. Andalusia regional President Juan Moreno said farmers will receive financial incentives to stop cultivating and to reforest land in and around some 14 towns close to Donana. He said farmers who wish to continue cultivating will receive less money but must switch to farming dry crops ecologically. As part of the agreement, Andalusia will cancel previously announced plans to expand irrigation near Donana, a decision that UNESCO, the central government and ecologists criticized for putting more pressure on the aquifer. A UNESCO World Heritage Site and Biosphere Reserve, Donana is a wintering site for half a million waterfowl and a stopover spot for millions more birds that migrate from Africa to northern Europe. Ecologists working in and near the park have long warned that its ecosystem of marshes and lagoons is under severe strain because of agriculture and tourism. The situation has been made worse by climate change …

Pakistan launched a week-long nationwide polio vaccination campaign Monday, as the country remains one of only two around the world where the paralyzing virus still exists. This year, so far, Pakistan has reported five cases of the highly infectious disease. The latest polio eradication campaign will target more than 4.4 million children across much of the country, as well as in Pakistani-administered Kashmir.   The South Asian nation came close to eradicating polio in 2021 when it reported only one case of paralysis from the virus. However, last year the country saw a spike with 20 cases on the record. The virus generally spreads through the fecal matter of a carrier that has contaminated the water supply.  Two of this year’s five cases were detected in the country’s most populous city Karachi in the southern province of Sindh. This came after the city recorded zero cases in the last two years.   A spokesperson of the provincial Emergency Operation Center, Syed Nofil Naqvi, told VOA both cases are children from Afghan families settled in Pakistan for years.   Naqvi blamed cross-border movement between Pakistan and Afghanistan for the disease. Afghanistan, the only other country fighting to eliminate the virus has reported six cases so far in 2023.   “The environmental samples found across Pakistan are genetically linked to Afghanistan,” Naqvi said.   To counter the spread of the virus through travelers, Naqvi said, polio teams vaccinate children at bus stops and other transit points.    All of Pakistan’s remaining polio …

A surge in respiratory illnesses across China that has drawn the attention of the World Health Organization is caused by the flu and other known pathogens and not by a novel virus, the country’s health ministry said Sunday. Recent clusters of respiratory infections are caused by an overlap of common viruses such as the influenza virus, rhinoviruses, the respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, the adenovirus as well as bacteria such as mycoplasma pneumoniae, which is a common culprit for respiratory tract infections, a National Health Commission spokesperson said. The ministry called on local authorities to open more fever clinics and promote vaccinations among children and the elderly as the country grapples with a wave of respiratory illnesses in its first full winter since the removal of COVID-19 restrictions. “Efforts should be made to increase the opening of relevant clinics and treatment areas, extend service hours and increase the supply of medicines,” said ministry spokesman Mi Feng. He advised people to wear masks and called on local authorities to focus on preventing the spread of illnesses in crowded places such as schools and nursing homes. The WHO earlier this week formally requested that China provide information about a potentially worrying spike in respiratory illnesses and clusters of pneumonia in children, as mentioned by several media reports and a global infectious disease monitoring service. The emergence of new flu strains or other viruses capable of triggering pandemics typically starts with undiagnosed clusters of respiratory illness. Both SARS and COVID-19 were first reported …

Growing calls for the world to come to grips with the many ways that global warming affects human health have prompted the first day dedicated to the issue at crunch UN climate talks starting next week. Extreme heat, air pollution and the increasing spread of deadly infectious diseases are just some of the reasons why the World Health Organization has called climate change the single biggest health threat facing humanity. Global warming must be limited to the Paris Agreement target of 1.5 degrees Celsius “to avert catastrophic health impacts and prevent millions of climate change-related deaths,” according to the WHO. However, under current national carbon-cutting plans, the world is on track to warm up to 2.9C this century, the U.N. said this week. While no one will be completely safe from the effects of climate change, experts expect that most at risk will be children, women, the elderly, migrants and people in less developed countries which have emitted the least planet-warming greenhouse gases. On December 3, the COP28 negotiations in Dubai will host the first “health day” ever held at the climate negotiations. Extreme heat This year is widely expected to be the hottest on record. And as the world continues to warm, even more frequent and intense heatwaves are expected to follow. Heat is believed to have caused more than 70,000 deaths in Europe during summer last year, researchers said this week, revising the previous number up from 62,000. Worldwide, people were exposed to an average of 86 days …

In the Pacific Northwest, one U.S. state is trying a novel approach to combatting opioid abuse — decriminalizing small amounts of hard drugs. From Oregon, Deborah Bloom has our story. …

On the cusp of the COP28 climate talks, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres visited frozen but rapidly melting Antarctica and said that intense action must be taken at the conference where countries will address their commitments to lowering emissions of planet-warming gases. “We are witnessing an acceleration that is absolutely devastating,” Guterres said Thursday about the rate of ice melt in Antarctica, which is considered to be a “sleeping giant.” “The Antarctic is waking up, and the world must wake up,” he added. Guterres was on a three-day official visit to Antarctica. Chilean President Gabriel Boric joined him for an official visit to Chile’s Eduardo Frei Air Force Base on King George Island. Guterres also was scheduled to visit the Collins and Nelson glaciers by boat. He described the U.N. climate change conference that begins in Dubai next week as an opportunity for nations to “decide the phase-out of fossil fuels in an adequate time frame” to prevent the world from warming 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial temperatures. Guterres said the COP28 conference also gives nations the chance to commit to more renewable energy projects and to improve energy efficiency of existing grids and technologies. The U.N. chief also said he thinks that Sultan al-Jaber, the president of the upcoming climate talks and head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, has a “bigger responsibility” to encourage the fossil fuel industry to make more clean energy investments because of his ties to the sector. “He needs to be …

Japan detected the first case of highly pathogenic H5-type bird flu this season at a poultry farm in the south of the country, public broadcaster NHK reported Saturday. The local government in Saga prefecture will cull about 40,000 birds on the farm, NHK said, citing agriculture ministry officials it did not name. Ministry officials were not immediately available for comment outside of business hours. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will convene relevant Cabinet ministers to discuss measures to prevent spreading of the virus, NHK said. The virus was detected as a result of genetic testing conducted after some poultry birds were found dead at the farm on Friday, the report said. Highly pathogenic avian influenza has spread around the globe in recent years, leading to the culling of hundreds of millions of birds. In Japan a record 17.7 million poultry birds were culled last season, prompting the authorities to stay on high alert. …

On the eve of international climate talks, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres visited globally important Antarctica, where ice that’s been frozen for millions of years is melting because of human-caused climate change, to send the message that “we absolutely need to act immediately.”  “What happens in Antarctica doesn’t stay in Antarctica,” Guterres said. In addition to reflecting lots of sunlight away from the Earth, Antarctica regulates the planet’s climate because its ice and cold waters drive major ocean currents. When massive amounts of ice melt, it raises sea levels and changes things like salinity and the habitats of ocean animals.  At the annual Conference of the Parties known as COP, nations are supposed to gather to make and strengthen commitments to addressing climate change, but so far these have not been nearly enough to slow the emissions causing the warming.  Guterres is on a three-day official visit to the southern continent. Chilean President Gabriel Boric joined him for an official visit to Chile’s Eduardo Frei Air Force Base on King George Island. Scientists and members of the Chilean military gathered with Guterres aboard a ship where they viewed glaciers and sea birds, including penguins.  Guterres described COP28, which begins next week in Dubai, as an opportunity for nations to “decide the phase-out of fossil fuels in an adequate time frame” to prevent the world from warming 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial temperatures. Scientists have considered that an important demarcation that could have avoided devastating climate change for millions …

The World Health Organization said it has confirmed sexual transmission of mpox in the Democratic Republic of Congo for the first time as the country experiences its biggest outbreak, a worrying development that African scientists warn could make it more difficult to stop the disease. In a statement issued late Thursday, the U.N. health agency said a resident of Belgium traveled to Congo in March and tested positive for mpox, or monkeypox, shortly afterward. The WHO said the individual “identified himself as a man who has sexual relations with other men” and that he had gone to several underground clubs for gay and bisexual men. Among his sexual contacts, five later tested positive for mpox, the WHO said. “This is the first definitive proof of sexual transmission of monkeypox in Africa,” said Oyewale Tomori, a Nigerian virologist who sits on several WHO advisory groups. “The idea that this kind of transmission could not be happening here has now been debunked.” Mpox has been endemic in parts of central and west Africa for decades, where it mostly jumped into humans from infected rodents and caused limited outbreaks. Last year, epidemics triggered mainly by sex among gay and bisexual men in Europe hit more than 100 countries. The WHO declared the outbreak as a global emergency, and it has caused about 91,000 cases to date. The WHO noted there were dozens of discrete clubs in Congo where men have sex with other men, including members who travel to other parts of Africa …

South Africa, Colombia and other countries that lost out in the global race for coronavirus vaccines are taking a more combative approach toward drugmakers and pushing back on policies that deny cheap treatment to millions of people with tuberculosis and HIV. Experts see it as a shift in how such countries deal with pharmaceutical behemoths and say it could trigger more efforts to make lifesaving medicines more widely available. In the COVID-19 pandemic, rich countries bought most of the world’s vaccines early, leaving few shots for poor countries and creating a disparity the World Health Organization called “a catastrophic moral failure.” Now, poorer countries are trying to become more self-reliant “because they’ve realized after COVID they can’t count on anyone else,” said Brook Baker, who studies treatment-access issues at Northeastern University. One of the targets is a drug, bedaquiline, that is used for treating people with drug-resistant versions of tuberculosis. The pills are especially important for South Africa, where TB killed more than 50,000 people in 2021, making it the country’s leading cause of death. In recent months, activists have protested efforts by Johnson & Johnson to protect its patent on the drug. In March, TB patients petitioned the Indian government, calling for cheaper generics; the government ultimately agreed Johnson & Johnson’s patent could be broken. Belarus and Ukraine then wrote to the company, also asking it to drop its patents, but with little response. In July, Johnson & Johnson’s patent on the drug expired in South Africa, but the …

Chinese officials say they did not detect any “unusual or novel diseases” in the country, the World Health Organization said Thursday, following an official request by the U.N. health agency for information about a potentially worrying spike in respiratory illnesses and clusters of pneumonia in children.  WHO cited unspecified media reports and a global infectious-disease monitoring service as reporting clusters of undiagnosed pneumonia in children in northern China and formally requested more details from China earlier this week.  Outside scientists said the situation warranted close monitoring, but they were not convinced that the recent spike in respiratory illnesses in China signaled the start of a new global outbreak.  The emergence of new flu strains or other viruses capable of triggering pandemics typically starts with undiagnosed clusters of respiratory illness. Both SARS and COVID-19 were first reported as unusual types of pneumonia.  WHO noted that authorities at China’s National Health Commission on November 13 reported an increase in respiratory diseases, which they said was the result of the lifting of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions. Other countries also saw a jump in respiratory diseases such as respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, when pandemic restrictions ended.  WHO said that about a week later, media reported clusters of undiagnosed pneumonia in children in northern China.  The U.N. agency said it held a teleconference with Chinese health officials on Thursday, during which the data it requested were provided. Those showed an increase in hospital admissions of children due to diseases including bacterial infection, RSV, influenza and …

Authorities in several West African countries are trying to manage their huge diphtheria outbreaks, including in Nigeria where a top health official said Thursday that millions are being vaccinated to cover wide gaps in immunity against the disease. At least 573 people out of the 11,640 diagnosed with the disease in Nigeria have died since the current outbreak started in December 2022, though officials estimate the toll — now on the decline because of treatment efforts — could be much higher across states unable to detect many cases. In Niger, 37 people had died out of the 865 cases as of October, while Guinea has reported 58 deaths out of 497 since its outbreak started in June. “As far as the history that I am aware of, this is the largest outbreak that we have had,” Ifedayo Adetifa, head of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, told The Associated Press. The highly contagious bacterial infection has been reported in 20 of Nigeria’s 36 states so far. A major driver of the high rate of infection in the region has been a historically wide vaccination gap, the French medical organization Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, said in a statement on Tuesday. In Nigeria, only 42% of children under 15 years old are fully protected from diphtheria, according to a government survey, while Guinea has a 47% immunization rate — both far below the 80-85% rate recommended by the World Health Organization to maintain community protection. The fate of the affected countries …

A 14-year-old Ethiopian-born American in the U.S. state of Virginia has won the 3M Young Scientist Challenge, an annual science competition for U.S. students in grades five through eight. VOA’s Eden Geremew recently spoke with the winner in Fairfax County, Virginia, in this report narrated by Salem Solomon. Camera: Karina Choudhury …

For most of her life, Claudia Stearns dreaded Thanksgiving. As a person who struggled with obesity since childhood, Stearns hated the annual turmoil of obsessing about what she ate — and the guilt of overindulging on a holiday built around food.  Now, after losing nearly 100 pounds using medications including Wegovy, a powerful new anti-obesity drug, Stearns says the “food noise” in her head has gone very, very quiet.  “Last year, it felt so lovely to just be able to enjoy my meal, to focus on being with friends and family, to focus on the joy of the day,” says Stearns, 65, of Somerville, Massachusetts. “That was a whole new experience.”  As millions of Americans struggling with obesity gain access to a new generation of weight-loss drugs, Stearns’ experience is becoming more common — and more noticeable at the times of year when cooking, eating and a sense of abundance can define and heighten gatherings of loved ones and friends. Medical experts and consumers say the drugs are shifting not only what users eat, but also the way they view food. For some, it means greater mental control over their meals. Others say it saps the enjoyment from social situations, including traditionally food-centric holidays like Thanksgiving, Passover and Christmas. “It’s something that really changes a lot of things in their life,” says Dr. Daniel Bessesen, chief of endocrinology at Denver Health, who treats patients with obesity. “They go from food being a central focus to it’s just not.” Undermining the …

Rising sea levels, extreme weather and rising temperatures are threatening coastal communities in South Africa. For VOA, Derick Mazarura has the story from Eastern Cape, South Africa. Camera — Buhle Ndamase and Norah Chisa. …