Month: December 2022

The World Health Organization says the arrival of one of three trial Ebola vaccines in Uganda Thursday “marks a historical milestone in the global capacity to respond to outbreaks.” The 1,200 doses of the Sudan ebolavirus vaccine arrived “just 79 days after the outbreak was declared on 20 September,” the WHO said. “Uganda is showing that life-saving research can be promptly organized in the midst of an outbreak,” said Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng Acero, Uganda’s minister of health. In contrast, WHO said that “To start Phase 3 trials in Guinea during the West Africa Ebola outbreak in 2015, it was 7 months from declaration to arrival of vaccines. This was a great achievement and set historical records at the time.” The vaccine for the Sudan ebolavirus is one of the…

While China is beginning to loosen its COVID-19 restrictions, medical practitioners there are preparing for a possible onslaught of COVID cases, which analysts predict could be just weeks away. China had one of the toughest anti-COVID policies in the world. Its zero-COVID campaign put anyone with COVID in a hospital or locked them up in their residences. In a change announced Saturday, officials said truck drivers and ship crews transporting anti-virus goods domestically would no longer be stopped at checkpoints to confirm their COVID-negative status. The move comes as people in China are stockpiling masks, food and medicine, fearing a next wave of COVID cases as restrictions are loosened. Demonstrations across China in recent days, protested the government’s handling of the COVID crisis as people tired of lockdowns and constantly…

Australian scientists have discovered a deep-ocean sharks’ graveyard containing the fossilized teeth of the ancient ancestor of the megalodon shark. They have also found a new species of shark. The discoveries were made across two expeditions on the research vessel (RV) Investigator, which is operated by Australia’s national science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, or the CSIRO. It has explored Australia's newest marine sanctuaries; the Cocos (Keeling) Islands Marine Park in the remote Indian Ocean, and the Gascoyne Marine Park off the coast of Western Australia. At depths of more than 5 kilometers, researchers have recovered remnants of ancient and modern sharks, including the teeth of a 12-meter-long shark that was the closest known relative to the mighty megalodon. It’s considered to have been one of the…

 This past year has seen a horrific flood that submerged one-third of Pakistan, one of the three costliest U.S. hurricanes on record, devastating droughts in Europe and China, a drought-triggered famine in Africa and deadly heat waves all over. Yet this wasn't climate change at its worst. With all that death and destruction in 2022, climate-related disaster damages are down from 2021, according to insurance and catastrophe giant Swiss Re. That's the state of climate change in the 2020s that $268 billion in global disaster costs is a 12% drop from the previous year, where damage passed $300 billion. The number of U.S. weather disasters that caused at least $1 billion in damage is only at 15 through October and will likely end the year with 16 or 17, down…

As the global program for distributing COVID-19 vaccinations to low and middle-income countries is set to be phased out after next year, experts are warning of a messy transition to ensure countries with the lowest inoculation rates are protected against the coronavirus and new variants are prevented. The sunsetting of COVAX was agreed to earlier this week in a meeting of the board of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization known as GAVI. The alliance is the driving force behind the international vaccine-sharing mechanism, along with the World Health Organization and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). GAVI said COVAX has enough capacity to continue through 2024. At that point, it plans to phase out the program to 37 developing countries while continuing to provide COVID vaccine doses…

Populations of a vulnerable species of marine mammal, numerous species of abalone and a type of Caribbean coral are now threatened with extinction, an international conservation organization said Friday.  The International Union for Conservation of Nature announced the update during the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, or COP15, conference in Montreal. The union's hundreds of members include government agencies from around the world, and it's one of the planet's widest-reaching environmental networks.  The IUCN uses its Red List of Threatened Species to categorize animals approaching extinction. This year, the union is sounding the alarm about the dugong — a large and docile marine mammal that lives from the eastern coast of Africa to the western Pacific Ocean.  The dugong — a relative of the manatee — is vulnerable throughout…

Chinese boats are decimating West Africa's fish stocks and fishing communities in the Gulf of Guinea, say environmental groups. The Institute for Security Studies, a South African think tank, said the communities could be losing more than $2 billion each year to illegal fishing, mainly from Chinese-owned boats. Beninese fisherman Geoffroy Gbedevi said it’s getting harder to feed his daughter and pregnant wife. He said the community is suffering and the number of fish being caught is much lower than it used to be. "Nothing is going the way it used to,” he said. Yaya Toshu Koma Benoit is a community leader in Grand Popo, a small fishing town in Benin close to the border with Togo, where houses are empty as community members have been forced to leave to…

A report released Friday by the World Health Organization indicates high levels — above 50% — of bacterial resistance to treatment around the world, based on data collected from 87 countries since 2020. The study, called the Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System report, found levels of resistance above 50% were reported in bacteria such as Klebsiella pneumoniae and Acinetobacter spp, which frequently cause bloodstream and surgical wound infections in hospitals, as well as pneumonia. These life-threatening infections require treatment with powerful, “last resort” antibiotics, such as carbapenems. However, the study also found 8% of bloodstream infections caused by these bacteria were reported to be resistant to carbapenems, increasing the risk of death due to unmanageable infections.   The study found that while most treatment-resistance trends have remained stable over…

COVAX, the global program for distributing COVID-19 vaccines to poorer countries, will soon be integrated into more routine vaccination programs, Gavi said Thursday. Gavi, the nonprofit vaccine alliance that provides an array of vaccines to developing countries, said its board agreed during a meeting in Geneva to phase out COVAX after 2023, stressing that the COVID-19 vaccine would still be made available to less well-off countries, alongside other vaccines. "While COVAX continues to have in place plans for worst-case scenarios, the board agreed, in principle, to explore integrating future COVID-19 vaccinations into Gavi's core programming," it said in a statement. The aim, it said, is "to improve synergies, be more responsive to countries' needs," and to reduce the current burden on countries of having a specialized emergency response in place.…

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Aid workers in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo warned Thursday of a possible "health disaster" because of an alarming surge in cholera cases in makeshift camps for displaced people.  Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, said that between November 26 and December 7, 256 patients had been admitted to its cholera treatment center in Munigi, near the eastern city of Goma.  A third of them were children under five, the aid agency added.  "In just 10 days, the number of people suspected of having cholera has increased alarmingly," MSF said in a statement.  More than 177,000 people were "now trapped in dire conditions" in the Nyiragongo area north of the city, having fled the advance of the M23 rebel group in recent weeks.  And as heavy…

The World Health Organization reports COVID-19 cases are continuing their downward spiral in Africa but warns the pandemic is not over and nations must remain vigilant. Following a recent four-week resurgence of COVID-19, cases and deaths once again are dropping in Africa. Since this month-long spike ended on November 20, the World Health Organization has recorded slightly more than 12,300 new cases and 50 deaths. The WHO regional director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, said these numbers are at their lowest levels since the start of the pandemic in 2020. “Despite the recent uptick, there is hope that Africa will be spared the challenges of the previous two years when surging cases marred the holiday season for many," said Moeti. "While the current efforts keep the pandemic within control, we are…

The COVID-19 pandemic has set global malaria control efforts back, especially in Africa, the World Health Organization says. However, this year's World Malaria Report says countries were able to lessen disruptions to prevention, testing and treatment. In 2019, before the pandemic struck, there were 568,000 malaria deaths. Despite the pandemic and other humanitarian emergencies, WHO information shows concerted action by countries has prevented the worst potential impacts of COVID-19-related disruptions to malaria services. WHO officials say the world has largely managed to salvage many of the gains made against malaria during the past 20 years.  Abdisalan Noor, head of the WHO Global Malaria Program's Strategic Information unit, said malaria cases dramatically increased in the first year of the pandemic. However, he said the number of cases last year remained largely…

Britain's Conservative government on Wednesday approved the United Kingdom's first new coal mine in three decades, a decision condemned by environmentalists as a leap backwards in the fight against climate change. Hours earlier, the government reversed a ban on building new onshore windfarms in Britain. Opponents called that announcement a cynical attempt to offset criticism of the mine decision. Cabinet Minister Michael Gove decided the mine in the Cumbria area of northwest England would have "an overall neutral effect on climate change and is thus consistent with government policies for meeting the challenge of climate change," the government said. It said coal from the mine would be used to make steel — replacing imported coal — rather than for power generation. The mine will extract coking coal, the type used…

Scientists discovered the oldest known DNA and used it to reveal what life was like 2 million years ago in the northern tip of Greenland. Today, it's a barren Arctic desert, but back then it was a lush landscape of trees and vegetation with an array of animals, even the now extinct mastodon. "The study opens the door into a past that has basically been lost," said lead author Kurt Kjaer, a geologist and glacier expert at the University of Copenhagen. With animal fossils hard to come by, the researchers extracted environmental DNA, also known as eDNA, from soil samples. This is the genetic material that organisms shed into their surroundings — for example, through hair, waste, spit or decomposing carcasses. Studying really old DNA can be a challenge because…

A law allowing limited euthanasia in Canada is set to expand to make the procedure available to people with mental illness. As Craig McCulloch reports, this is causing a variety of reactions. Canada’s law permitting euthanasia, or Medical Assistance in Dying, became personal for Vancouver-area resident Marcia McNaughton in November. Suffering from metastasized stomach cancer, her 80-year-old aunt Ella Tikenheinrich chose to end her life with medical assistance. McNaughton was not aware of her aunt’s choice until almost the end, and the extended family supported it. “As a family, all we did was support her and love her decision,” McNaughton said. “And I have to say one thing — to be in control of your own time, it is an amazing thing.” On March 17, the law permitting what is…

Negotiators are meeting in Geneva this week to thrash out a pandemic treaty aimed at ensuring the flaws that turned COVID-19 into a global crisis could never happen again.  As the third anniversary of the emergence of the virus rolls around, negotiators are raking over an early concept draft of what might eventually make it into an international agreement about how to handle future pandemics.  "The lessons of the pandemic must not go unlearned," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the negotiating panel at the start of three days of talks, which conclude Wednesday.  An intergovernmental negotiating body is paving the way toward a global agreement that would regulate how nations prepare for and respond to future pandemic threats.  They are gathered for their third meeting, refining and going over…

Price increases among seven out of 10 drugs in 2021 are behind an $805 million increase in U.S. spending from the year before and were not supported by clinical evidence, an influential U.S. pricing research firm said on Tuesday.  The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) said the spending increase in 2021 was less than the $1.67 billion rise in the previous year. This is the third year the group has looked at the top 250 drugs by spending and assessed if those driving U.S. spending increases were justified. "Last year, a huge part of the (increase in) spending was all one drug … this year, we saw the increase was more spread out across different drugs," ICER's Chief Medical Officer David Rind told Reuters.  In 2020, Abbvie's rheumatoid…

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

NASA's Orion spaceship made a close pass by the moon and used a gravity assist to whip itself back toward Earth on Monday, marking the start of the return journey for the Artemis-1 mission. At its nearest point, the uncrewed capsule flew less than 130 kilometers from the moon’s surface, testing maneuvers that will be used during later Artemis missions that return humans to the rocky celestial body. Communication with the capsule was interrupted for 30 minutes when it was behind the far side of the moon, an area more cratered than the near side and first seen by humans during the Apollo era, although they didn't land there. The European Service Module, which powers the capsule, fired its main engine for more than three minutes to put the gumdrop-shaped…

Beijing is taking its first steps toward recovering from years of setbacks to its scientific, land-based projects in the Arctic, sending personnel to two outposts that have been vital to its policy of establishing China as a "near-Arctic" state. China’s Arctic policy document, published in 2018, said scientific research to “explore and understand” the Arctic is the "priority and focus" of Chinese participation in Arctic affairs. Over a 14-year period since 2004, China launched scientific projects in Arctic regions of four Western European nations — Norway, Iceland, Sweden and Finland — and sought to do the same in a fifth, Denmark’s autonomous island of Greenland. The Biden administration, which published its own "National Strategy for the Arctic Region" in October, said those scientific projects have helped China to increase its…

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