Author: Sellheal

The US-based National Kidney Foundation says that each year, kidney disease kills millions of people worldwide because they don’t have access to affordable or available care. This problem of cost and access to care is also seen in Ghana, where kidney-related cases are on the rise in the Northern region’s Tamale Teaching Hospital. Alhassan Abdul Washeed reports. Camera: Eyor Zamani …

State and local health departments across the U.S found out in June they’d be losing the final two years of a $1 billion investment to strengthen the ranks of people who track and try to prevent sexually transmitted diseases — especially the rapid increase of syphilis cases. The fallout was quick. Nevada, which saw a 44 percentage-point jump in congenital syphilis from 2021 to 2022, was supposed to get more than $10 million to bolster its STD program budget. Instead, the state’s STD prevention budget fell by more than 75%, reducing its capacity to respond to syphilis, according to Dawn Cribb at the Nevada Division of Public and Behavioral Health. Several states told The Associated Press the loss of funding is affecting efforts to expand their disease intervention workforce. These are people who do contact tracing and outreach and are key in stopping the spread of syphilis, which reached a low point in the U.S. in 2000 but has increased almost every year since. In 2021, there were 176,713 cases — up 31% from the prior year. “It was devastating, really, because we had worked so hard to shore up our workforce and also implement new activities,” said Sam Burgess, the STD/HIV program director for the Louisiana Department of Health. His state was slated to receive more than $14 million overall, but instead got $8.6 million to stretch until January 2026. “And we’re still scrambling to try to figure out how we can plug some of those funding gaps,” he …

Mouse embryos have been grown on the International Space Station and developed normally in the first study indicating it could be possible for humans to reproduce in space, a group of Japanese scientists said. The researchers, including Teruhiko Wakayama, professor of University of Yamanashi’s Advanced Biotechnology Centre, and a team from the Japan Aerospace Space Agency (JAXA), sent frozen mouse embryos on board a rocket to the ISS in August 2021. Astronauts thawed the early-stage embryos using a special device designed for this purpose and grew them on the station for four days. “The embryos cultured under microgravity conditions developed” normally into blastocysts, cells that develop into the foetus and placenta, the scientists said. The experiment “clearly demonstrated that gravity had no significant effect,” the researchers said in a study that was published online in the scientific journal iScience on Saturday. They also said there were no significant changes in condition of the DNA and genes, after they analysed the blastocysts that were sent back to their laboratories on Earth. This is “the first-ever study that shows mammals may be able to thrive in space,” University of Yamanashi and national research institute Riken said in a joint statement on Saturday. It is “the world’s first experiment that cultured early-stage mammalian embryos under complete microgravity of ISS,” the statement said. “In the future, it will be necessary to transplant the blastocysts that were cultured in ISS’s microgravity into mice to see if mice can give birth” to confirm that the blastocysts …

Runners undeterred by thick smog engulfing the Chinese capital ran the Beijing Marathon maskless on Sunday, many wearing shorts in one of the warmest Octobers on record. Despite a greyish brown smog settling, some 30,000 marathoners set off at 7:30 a.m. (2330 GMT) from Tiananmen Square on the route through four districts of the Chinese capital over 42.195 km (26.2 miles). Beijing was the second most-polluted major city in the world on Sunday, according to Swiss air-quality technology firm IQAir. In the Haidian district on Beijing’s outskirts, the sky looked dreary, but hikers and visitors showed up at the Fragrant Hills Park where many go to enjoy autumn foliage, according to a Reuters witness. China’s national forecaster advised the public to wear masks, warning on Sunday morning that air quality was reaching moderate or severe pollution. Smog and fog will blanket parts of China for the next few days, reducing visibility and affecting travel in northeastern, northern, central and some eastern provinces, the National Meteorological Center said on Sunday. Beijing’s observatory cautioned in the evening that visibility in most areas of the city will drop to less than 1 km (0.62 mile) overnight. The smoggy weather is expected to gradually weaken and dissipate from Friday, but not before heavy fog forecast to cover parts of Jiangsu, Anhui and Sichuan provinces over the next three days could reduce visibility to less than 200 meters (650 feet), the forecaster said. Steel production hubs in Tangshan, Handan and other cities in the northern …

The Australian Capital Territory, which includes Canberra and surrounding areas, Saturday became Australia’s first jurisdiction to decriminalize possession of small amounts of illegal drugs. The Australian Capital Territory, or ACT, now considers illegal drug use a health, not criminal, issue. While the ACT government has promised to remain tough on dealers and traffickers, it wants low-level cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine users to receive treatment, a police caution or a fine rather than going to court. Drugs will be confiscated. The law was passed in 2022 by the ACT Legislative Assembly. Hard drugs, including LSD, cocaine and methamphetime, remain illegal. Welfare and health campaigners welcomed the new measures, saying they will lead to more drug users getting help rather than being treated as criminals. Alice Salomon, the Head of Media and Advocacy at Uniting ACT, a community services organization, said in a statement Thursday that “a shift to a focus on health-based and community responses for drug use and dependency rather than seeing the police and the courts as the place where we seek to address this is long overdue but warmly welcomed.” Senior police officials say they fear the changes could encourage people to take illicit substances for the first time. ACT Chief Police Officer Neil Gaughan told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. the new laws are too permissive. “You know, I am concerned about people trying drugs that have not historically done it because I think there will be confusion between, particularly young people, who will not understand the difference …

Fighting the global environmental impacts of climate change unfortunately requires local impacts from mining the minerals needed for electric vehicles, wind turbines and power grids. The Biden administration aims to increase U.S. production of these critical minerals that China and other countries with weaker environmental standards have come to dominate. But local opposition is complicating the effort. VOA’s Steve Baragona looks at the battle over one such mine in the northern U.S. state of Minnesota. …

Iceland’s meteorological office reported Friday the Nordic Island nation’s southwestern Reykjanes Peninsula has been experiencing a “seismic swarm” of small earthquakes over the last three days, with at least 5,800 recorded since it began and around 1,000 since midnight Thursday. In a series of reports on its website, the meteorological office — known as the “Met” office — said the vast majority of the quakes have been under magnitude 3, although two in the last three days were over 4. The largest tremor, on Wednesday, measured 4.5 north of the town of Grindavík. While small earthquakes are a daily occurrence in the nation, situated between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates, the so-called seismic swarm is unusual. The earthquakes prompted the national police commissioner to declare a Civil Protection “Level of Uncertainty,” encouraging residents to secure loose objects in their homes and noting that the earthquakes could trigger rocks or loose earth to slide in areas with steep slopes. The Met office attributed the seismic swarm to stress changes in the earth’s crust induced by the flow of magma — molten rock — toward the surface beneath the Fagradalsfjall volcanic system. In an interview with Reuters, Met Office Research division chief Matthew Roberts said the earthquakes are a warning sign for a volcanic eruption sometime in the next 12 months, although he added that predicting the timing of earthquakes is difficult. Iceland’s last volcanic eruption, in July, occurred in an uninhabited part of the Reykjanes Peninsula after similar intense …

Wu Zunyou, an epidemiologist who helped drive the country’s strict zero-COVID measures in China that suspended access to cities and confined millions to their homes, died on Friday. He was 60. An announcement from China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention about Wu’s death gave no cause but said that “rescue measures failed.” Wu’s health had been poor. He disappeared from the public eye for months last year while battling cancer. Wu, who earned his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles, had spent much of his early career working on HIV/AIDS prevention in China. Wu was instrumental in developing China’s flagship policy in the HIV epidemic among intravenous drug users, according to his biography on the UCLA website. In recognition of this work, he was awarded the 2005 International Rolleston Award. Later, he was also awarded a UNAIDS Gold Medal in 2008 for his overall work. Yet, as China battled the COVID-19 virus, Wu came to be criticized by some for his choice to publicly voice support for the country’s strict virus control measures even as the weaknesses of the strategy became more pronounced. “Dynamic zero-COVID is appropriate for China’s reality and is the best choice to control our country’s current COVID situation,” he said in April 2022, during the height of Shanghai’s lockdown. The strategy bought China time in the early days of the pandemic, but by 2022, as the virus became more and more easily spread, it showed signs of strain. The mega …

Researchers in Brazil have developed a vaccine designed to fight addiction to cocaine and its potent derivative crack — by preventing addicts from feeling the effects of the drugs and helping them stay on track for recovery. The drug, known as Calixcoca, was developed by a team at Brazil’s Federal University of Minas Gerais. Preliminary tests on animals were positive and the drug is set to move to human trials. Should it receive regulatory approval, the drug would be the first vaccine used to fight cocaine addiction, said the coordinator for the research team, psychiatrist Frederico Garcia. Garcia told Agence France-Presse the drug works by prompting the body to produce anti-cocaine antibodies that bind to the drug, making them too large to pass into the brain’s mesolimbic system, or “reward center,” where the drug normally stimulates high levels of pleasure-inducing dopamine. Testing suggests the drug also could reduce the risk of overdosing, as cocaine molecules, bound to the antibodies produced by the vaccine, would be unable to act on the heart or the arteries.  Tests on pregnant rats indicated the antibodies are passed on through a mother’s milk, suggesting the vaccine could protect nursing babies as well. Garcia cautioned the vaccine would not be a panacea and said it would be most helpful for recovering addicts who do not want to get hooked on the drug again following rehabilitation. He said clinical trials conducted by Brazil’s health regulator Anvisa will be needed to determine how the drug might be used …

The United Nations has begun an effort to help the world manage the risks and benefits of artificial intelligence. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday launched a 39-member advisory body of tech company executives, government officials and academics from countries spanning six continents. The panel aims to issue preliminary recommendations on AI governance by the end of the year and finalize them before the U.N. Summit of the Future next September. “The transformative potential of AI for good is difficult even to grasp,” Guterres said. He pointed to possible uses including predicting crises, improving public health and education, and tackling the climate crisis. However, he cautioned, “it is already clear that the malicious use of AI could undermine trust in institutions, weaken social cohesion and threaten democracy itself.” Widespread concern about the risks associated with AI has grown since tech company OpenAI launched ChatGPT last year. Its ease of use has raised concern that the tool could replace writing tasks that previously only humans could perform. With many calling for regulation of AI, researchers and lawmakers have stressed the need for global cooperation on the matter. The U.N.’s new body on AI will hold its first meeting Friday. Some information for this report came from Reuters.  …

China launched its youngest-ever crew for its orbiting space station on Thursday as it seeks to put astronauts on the moon before 2030. The Shenzhou 17 spacecraft lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on the edge of the Gobi Desert in northwestern China atop a Long March 2-F rocket at 11:14 a.m. (0314 GMT) According to the China Manned Space Agency, the average age of the three-member crew is the youngest since the launch of the space station construction mission, state broadcaster CCTV earlier reported. Their average age is 38, state media China Daily said. Beijing is pursuing plans to place astronauts on the moon before the end of the decade amid a rivalry with the U.S. for reaching new milestones in outer space. This reflects the competition for influence between the world’s two largest economies in the technology, military and diplomatic fields. The trio — Tang Hongbo, Tang Shengjie and Jiang Xinlin — will replace a crew that has been on the station for six months. Tang is a veteran who led a 2021 space mission for three months. The new crew will conduct experiments in space medicine, space technology and other areas during their mission and will help install and maintain the equipment inside and outside the station, the agency said. On Wednesday, the agency also announced plans to send a new telescope to probe deep into the universe. CCTV said the telescope would enable surveys and mapping of the sky, but no timeframe was given …

A month after federal officials recommended new versions of COVID-19 vaccines, 7% of U.S. adults and 2% of children have gotten shots. The numbers, presented Thursday at a meeting held by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, come from a national survey of thousands of Americans conducted two weeks ago.  The data also indicated that nearly 40% of adults said they probably or definitely would not get the shot. A similar percentage of parents said they did not plan to vaccinate their children.  In late summer, government health officials made the nation’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign more like the annual flu campaign.  Officials approved updated shots that have a single target, an omicron descendant named XBB.1.5. They replaced vaccines that targeted the original coronavirus strain and a much earlier omicron version. Last month, the CDC recommended the new shots for everyone 6 months and older.  The government also transitioned to a commercialized system that relied on the health care industry — not the government — to handle the distribution of the shots. Many people who immediately went for shots said pharmacies or doctors didn’t have them.  Americans have been urged to get different iterations of the vaccines for more than 2½ years. This year, COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations fell to lower levels than seen in the previous three years.  Cases remain low compared with the pandemic’s early months. Even so, health officials say about 18,000 hospitalizations and 1,200 deaths are still being reported each week.  One expert at the meeting, …

Political leaders in the Mississippi River area are looking to form a multistate compact to manage threats from climate change, water pollution and drought-affected regions elsewhere. “Twenty million people drink from the Mississippi River and its tributaries every day, including me and my family,” said Colin Wellenkamp, executive director of the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative. With the world’s fourth-largest basin, the Mississippi River supports more than 400 species of wildlife, has led to more than 350,000 jobs and generates more than $21 billion in annual tourism, fishing and recreation spending, according to the nonprofit group American Rivers. “Whether you’re looking at it from a clean water standpoint, an ecological standpoint, a shipping of goods standpoint, or even from national security, there’s not a more important waterway in our country,” Wellenkamp told VOA. “We need to come together to protect and manage this critical resource.” That’s what community and political leaders hope to do with a Mississippi River Compact to help unify lawmakers and residents along more than 3,700 kilometers (2,300 miles) of America’s most important river. The compact’s framework would join 10 states in the collective management of river resources in consultation with stakeholders, including environmental groups, businesses and riverfront communities, to promote transparency and a shared sense of responsibility for the river’s well-being. “When a farmer in a state upriver uses harmful fertilizer, for example, it affects the ability for fishermen to catch healthy fish at the bottom of the river in the Gulf of Mexico,” Wellenkamp …

Malawi is seeing a spike in cholera cases. This, just two months after the government lifted a public health emergency declaration that had been in place since early 2022. Chimwemwe Padatha has this story from Lilongwe, Malawi …

According to a 2023 report by the Global Action for Sustainable Development, Liberia is losing an entire generation to drug abuse, with its capital, Monrovia, alone having more than 800 drug hubs and an estimated 100,000 drug users. An older generation of rehabilitated child soldiers have moved to join the fight against drugs, using a behavioral therapy approach. Senanu Tord reports from Monrovia. Video editor: Henry Hernandez. …

Japan’s Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that a law requiring transgender people to undergo sterilization surgery in order to officially change their gender is unconstitutional. The decision by the top court’s 15-judge Grand Bench was its first on the constitutionality of Japan’s 2003 law requiring the removal of sex organs for a state-recognized gender change, a practice long criticized by international rights and medical groups. The decision, which requires the government to reconsider the law, is a first step toward allowing transgender people to change their identity in official documents without getting sterilized. But it was not a full victory because the Supreme Court sent the case back to the high court to further examine the requirement for gender-affirmation surgery. The case was filed in 2020 by a claimant whose request for a gender change in her family registry — to female from assigned male at birth — was turned down by lower courts. The decision comes at a time of heightened awareness of issues surrounding LGBTQ+ people in Japan and is a partial victory for that community. The judges unanimously ruled that the part of the law requiring sterilization for a gender change is unconstitutional, according to the court document and the claimant’s lawyers. But the top court ordered the case to be sent back to the high court for further review of the requirement for gender-affirmation surgery — a decision the claimant’s lawyers said was regrettable because it delays the settlement of the issue. Under the law, transgender …

The UK Space Agency and a U.S. spaceflight services company have signed an initial agreement as they bid to send British astronauts into orbit for two weeks, the agency said Wednesday. The memorandum of understanding with Houston-based Axiom Space sets out plans for a flight that would see British astronauts conduct a two-week mission in space. “On this future flight, the UK astronauts would launch to space, spending up to two weeks on orbit to carry out scientific research, demonstrate new technologies, and participate in education and outreach activities,” the agency said. Axiom was founded by its chief executive Michael Suffredini, who served as NASA’s International Space Station (ISS) program manager from 2005 to 2015. It has sent two crewed missions into orbit with SpaceX rockets in April 2022 and in May this year. The first mission carried an astronaut and three “investors” with the crew spending 17 days in orbit. The second mission carried a crew of four and lasted 10 days. Axiom says it is working on what will become the first-ever commercial space station. The mission with the UK would be commercially sponsored and supported by the European Space Agency. It would build on the UK government’s space strategy which identifies five technologies as critical: artificial intelligence, engineering biology, telecommunications, semiconductors and quantum technologies. “With this agreement as the initial foundation, we will build a comprehensive mission plan in support of the UK’s national and agency objectives to advance its capabilities in space exploration and discovery,” Suffredini …

Bird flu has been detected in the Antarctica region for the first time, according to British experts, raising concerns the deadly virus could pose a threat to penguins and other local species. Scientists had been fearing that the worst outbreak of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) in history would reach Antarctica, a key breeding ground for many birds. The British Antarctic Survey said its staff took samples from brown skua seabirds after they died on Bird Island in South Georgia, a British overseas territory east of South America’s tip and north of Antarctica’s main landmass. The tests were sent to Britain and came back positive, the U.K.’s polar research institute said in a statement on Monday. The virus was most likely brought by birds returning from their migration to South America, where there has been a huge number of bird flu cases, it added. Visitors to South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands are under enhanced biosecurity measures, and scientific field work involving birds there has been stopped, the statement said. There have been regular bird flu outbreaks since the virus first emerged in 1996. Since mid-2021, much larger outbreaks started to spread southward to previously untouched areas including South America, leading to mass deaths among wild birds and tens of millions of poultry being culled. ‘Devastating news’ Michelle Wille, a bird flu expert at the University of Melbourne, said the spread of bird flu to the Antarctica region was “devastating news.” “The situation could change rapidly,” she wrote on …

Artificial intelligence companies and governments should allocate at least one third of their AI research and development funding to ensuring the safety and ethical use of the systems, top AI researchers said in a paper on Tuesday.  The paper, issued a week before the international AI Safety Summit in London, lists measures that governments and companies should take to address AI risks.  “Governments should also mandate that companies are legally liable for harms from their frontier AI systems that can be reasonably foreseen and prevented,” according to the paper written by three Turing Award winners, a Nobel laureate, and more than a dozen top AI academics.  Currently there are no broad-based regulations focusing on AI safety, and the first set of legislation by the European Union is yet to become law as lawmakers are yet to agree on several issues. “Recent state of the art AI models are too powerful, and too significant, to let them develop without democratic oversight,” said Yoshua Bengio, one of the three people known as the godfather of AI. “It [investments in AI safety] needs to happen fast, because AI is progressing much faster than the precautions taken,” he said. Authors include Geoffrey Hinton, Andrew Yao, Daniel Kahneman, Dawn Song and Yuval Noah Harari. Since the launch of OpenAI’s generative AI models, top academics and prominent CEOs such as Elon Musk have warned about the risks on AI, including calling for a six-month pause in developing powerful AI systems. Some companies have countered this, saying …

The World Health Organization reported Monday that progress was being made in efforts to prevent and respond to cases of sexual misconduct but acknowledged that abuse by WHO staff remained problematic.       “For the past two years, WHO has intensified our work to prevent and respond to any form of sexual misconduct, sexual exploitation, sexual harassment, said Gaya Gamhewage, director of prevention and response to sexual misconduct at WHO. “However, the numbers are still going up for the simple reason, I believe, that all the cases have not surfaced yet. So, the numbers will keep going up for some time. But this does not mean that what we are doing is not having any effect. In fact, what we are doing is surfacing this issue, as well,” she said. The numbers would seem to bear this out. Over the past 12 months, the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services, or IOS, reports it has investigated 287 allegations of sexual misconduct in all WHO regions. Gamhewage said, “WHO is working on preventing and responding to sexual misconduct related to its own workforce—our staff, our contractors, our implementing partners.  This does not include numbers for peacekeepers.” Approximately 83 of these cases are related to the 10th Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with 25% of that number pertaining to alleged abuse by WHO personnel.   According to a WHO press release, the remaining allegations were related to other agencies operating during the outbreak. The WHO received investigation …

The world is moving too slowly to meet pledges to end deforestation by 2030, with the destruction worsening in 2022, according to a report by a coalition of environmental organizations released on Monday. More than 140 countries – representing the vast majority of the world’s woodlands – pledged at the 2021 United Nations climate summit in Glasgow to halt and reverse forest loss and degradation by the end of the decade. Yet deforestation increased by 4% worldwide in 2022 compared with 2021, as some 66,000 square kilometers (25,000 square miles) were destroyed, the annual Forest Declaration Assessment report said. That means the world is 21% off track to end deforestation by 2030. “The world’s forests are in crisis. The opportunity to make progress is passing us by,” said Erin Matson, a senior consultant at environmental group Climate Focus. The report was conducted by a coalition of civil society and research organizations who assess progress toward pledges to eliminate deforestation by 2030. That includes the Glasgow pledge and the 2014 New York Declaration on Forests, which saw a shorter list of countries as well as dozens of the world’s biggest companies make a similar commitment. Efforts to preserve old-growth tropical forests — prized for their dense carbon content and rich biodiversity — are 33% off track, with 4.1 million hectares lost in 2022, according to the study. In a news briefing, the researchers involved in the report stressed that the annual $2.2 billion in public funds channeled to projects to protect …

Nigeria is ramping up its environmental education efforts as floods and soil erosion increase due to climate change. The latest education initiative is a card game called Play, Learn and Act Now, or PLAN. Gibson Emeka has this story from Abuja, Nigeria. …

The coming election to choose the World Health Organization’s next chief of the South-East Asia Regional Office, or SEARO, has become contentious as the person who takes up that post could influence the health of billions of people.  The daughter of Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is one of two candidates for the SEARO position. Saima Wazed’s nomination has sparked controversy with many health experts calling it “nepotism,” and expressing concern over the election process to fill senior roles at the U.N. health body.  A candidate for the SEARO post should have a “strong technical and public health background and extensive experience in global health”, according to the WHO website. The candidate should also have “competency in organizational management” and “proven historical evidence for public health leadership”, the website says. The next SEARO chief will be elected through a secret ballot by the region’s 11 member countries, which include Bangladesh, Nepal and India. The vote is scheduled to take place in New Delhi during a WHO regional committee meeting Oct. 30-Nov. 2.  Countries in the region nominate candidates to head the WHO regional office. Wazed was nominated by the government of Bangladesh.  In addition to Wazed, who is a mental health advocate, only one other candidate has been put forward: Shambhu Acharya, a public health expert and senior WHO official who was nominated by Nepal.  Questions have been raised about the disparity between the candidates’ qualifications.   Wazed has a master’s degree in clinical psychology from Barry University, a school …

Countries are deadlocked over how to design a fund to help countries recover and rebuild from climate change-driven damage, with just over 30 days left before crucial United Nations climate negotiations kick off in Dubai.   Two dozen countries involved in a committee tasked with designing a “loss and damage” fund wrapped up the last meeting in the early hours of Saturday in Aswan, Egypt, with developing and developed countries at odds over central questions: which entity should oversee the fund, who should pay and which countries would be eligible to receive funding.   The committee was expected to draft a list of recommendations for implementing the fund, which was agreed in a breakthrough last year at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, and would be the first U.N. fund dedicated to addressing irreparable climate-driven damage from drought, floods and rising sea levels.   Instead, the group agreed to meet one more time in Abu Dhabi on Nov. 3 before the COP28 U.N. summit begins in Dubai on Nov. 30 to try to bridge divisions, which could set the tone for the two-week climate negotiations.   “The entire COP28 negotiations could get derailed if developing countries’ priorities on funding for loss and damage are not adequately addressed,” said Preety Bhandari, a senior adviser on finance at the World Resources Institute.   Among the most contentious issues last week was whether the World Bank should host the fund – a position pushed by the U.S. and developed countries – or whether the …