Month: April 2023

April 24 – April 30, is World Immunization Week. The theme of this year’s observance is “The Big Catch-Up.” The idea is for everyone, especially children, to catch up on the vaccinations they might have missed during the COVID outbreak. The ultimate goal of World Immunization Week, according the World Health Organization, is for more children, adults and their communities to be protected from vaccine-preventable diseases, like polio and measles.   ...

Air pollution still causes more than 1,200 premature deaths a year in under 18's across Europe and increases the risk of chronic disease later in life, the EU environmental agency said Monday.    Despite recent improvements, "the level of key air pollutants in many European countries remain stubbornly above World Health Organization" (WHO) guidelines, particularly in central-eastern Europe and Italy, said the EEA after a study in over 30 countries, including the 27 members of the European Union.    The report did not cover the major industrial nations of Russia, Ukraine and the United Kingdom, suggesting the overall death tolls for the continent could be higher.    The EEA announced last November that 238,000 people died prematurely because of air pollution in 2020 in the EU, plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey.   …

At age 93, struggling with the effects of a stroke, heart failure and recurrent cancer, Teri Sheridan was ready to end her life using New Jersey's law that allows medically assisted suicide — but she was bedbound, too sick to travel. So last Nov. 17, surrounded by three of her children, Sheridan drank a lethal dose of drugs prescribed by a doctor she had never met in person, only online. She died within minutes. Soon, others who seek Sheridan's final option may find it out of reach, the unintended result of a federal move to roll back online prescribing of potentially addictive drugs allowed during the COVID-19 pandemic. "How much should one person suffer?" said Sheridan's daughter, Georgene White, 68. "She wanted to just go to sleep and not wake…

An organ transplant surgeon from New York is planning a third trip to Ukraine, where he has been working with doctors to help patients caught up in Russia’s war on Ukraine. The surgeon, Dr. Robert Montgomery, is also working to raise money to buy medical equipment for a hospital in Lviv. Iryna Solomko has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. VOA footage by Pavlo Terekhov. ...

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday preserved access to the abortion drug mifepristone while a lawsuit challenging the use of the drug plays out in lower courts. The high court issued a brief on Friday evening granting emergency requests from the Biden administration and the drug's manufacturer, Danco Laboratories, to continue to allow women to access the drug. The ruling puts on hold a preliminary injunction from a federal judge in Texas, who earlier this month ordered restrictions on the abortion drug. Two justices on the nine-member court — conservatives Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito — dissented from the decision. The court had set a deadline for itself of midnight Friday to either approve the Biden administration's request — to keep the drug available while the administration challenges a lower…

Looking back at 2022's weather with months of analysis, the World Meteorological Organization said last year really was as bad as it seemed when people were muddling through it. And about as bad as it gets — until more warming kicks in. Killer floods, droughts and heat waves hit around the world, costing many billions of dollars. Global ocean heat and acidity levels hit record highs and Antarctic sea ice and European Alps glaciers reached record low amounts, according to the United Nations' climate agency's State of Global Climate 2022 report released Friday. While levels have been higher before human civilization, global sea height and the amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and methane in the air reached highest modern recorded amounts. The key glaciers that scientists use as a health…

The Supreme Court is facing a self-imposed Friday night deadline to decide whether women's access to a widely used abortion pill will stay unchanged or be restricted while a legal challenge to its Food and Drug Administration approval goes on. The justices are weighing arguments that allowing restrictions contained in lower-court rulings to take effect would severely disrupt the availability of the drug, mifepristone, which is used in the most common abortion method in the United States. It has repeatedly been found to be safe and effective, and has been used by more than 5 million women in the U.S. since the FDA approved it in 2000. The Supreme Court had initially said it would decide by Wednesday whether the restrictions could take effect while the case continues. A one-sentence…

President Joe Biden announced plans Thursday to increase U.S. funding to help developing countries fight climate change and curb deforestation in Brazil's Amazon rainforest. During a virtual meeting of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, Biden urged his counterparts to be ambitious in setting goals to reduce emissions and meet a target of limiting overall global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. "We’re at a moment of great peril but also great possibilities, serious possibilities. With the right commitment and follow-through from every nation ... on this call, the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees can stay within reach," Biden said. The countries that take part in the forum account for about 80% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions and global gross domestic product, according to the White…

SpaceX’s giant week meets a fiery end. But company officials still say the launch of Starship was a success. Plus, the European Space Agency sets sail for Jupiter’s icy moons. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space. ...

The U.S. government and state legislators are ramping up efforts to limit the use of toxic chemicals known as PFAS (pronounced pee-fas) in everyday products and to regulate levels in drinking water. But as VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias found out, scientists are going a step further by exploring ways to fully eliminate the so-called “forever chemicals.” ...

The U.N. children’s fund, UNICEF, warns many children are likely to die from vaccine preventable diseases because of a decline in routine immunization during the COVID-19 pandemic. New data in UNICEF’s State of the World’s Children 2023 report show a significant drop in confidence in the importance of vaccines for children in 52 out of 55 countries studied, noting that vaccination rates have declined by more than a third in South Korea, Papua New Guinea, Ghana, Senegal, and Japan. Only in three countries — China, India, and Mexico — did the data show people remained positive about the health benefits of vaccination. In most countries, the study said, “people under 35 and women were more likely to report less confidence about vaccines for children after the start of the pandemic.” This…

The Supreme Court initially gave itself a deadline of Wednesday to decide whether women seeking access to a widely used abortion pill would face more restrictions while a court case plays out. But on the day of the highly anticipated decision the justices had only this to say: We need more time. In a one-sentence order, the court said it now expects to act by Friday evening. There was no explanation of the reason for the delay. The new abortion controversy comes less than a year after the Supreme Court's conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed more than a dozen states to effectively ban abortion outright. The following is a look at the drug at issue in the new case, how the case got to the nation's highest…

Astronomers from around the world gathered in a small town in Western Australia for one of the wonders of the universe - a total eclipse of the sun.  First landfall occurred over the northwestern tip of Australia at Exmouth, along the Ningaloo Coast before moving on to parts of East Timor and Indonesia.  Thousands of people gathered at the remote corner of the Western Australian coast to marvel at this rare cosmic symmetry when the sun, the moon and the Earth aligned.   The total solar eclipse was part of a hybrid eclipse, which happens only a handful of times each century.  In Western Australia, it stretched across three hours. The most dramatic part, when the sun was completely blocked out, lasted for barely a minute.   Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research…

At least 67 million children partially or fully missed routine vaccines globally between 2019 and 2021 because of lockdowns and health care disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the United Nations said Wednesday. "More than a decade of hard-earned gains in routine childhood immunization have been eroded," read a new report from the U.N.'s children's agency, UNICEF, adding that getting back on track "will be challenging." Of the 67 million children whose vaccinations were "severely disrupted," 48 million missed routine vaccines entirely, UNICEF said, flagging concerns about potential polio and measles outbreaks. Vaccine coverage among children declined in 112 countries and the percent of children vaccinated worldwide slipped 5 percentage points to 81%, a low not seen since 2008. Africa and South Asia were particularly hard-hit. "Worryingly, the backsliding during…

Older Americans and people with weak immune systems can get an extra COVID-19 booster dose this spring. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday signed off on a more flexible booster schedule for people who remain at the highest risk from COVID-19 — giving them the choice of a second "bivalent" Pfizer or Moderna booster, the most up-to-date formula. "Many in the population are experiencing vaccine fatigue but there is a subset who are eager to receive additional doses," CDC's Dr. Sara Oliver told an agency advisory panel that expressed support for the change. The move came a day after the Food and Drug Administration took steps to make coronavirus vaccinations simpler for everyone. From now on, anyone getting a Pfizer or Moderna dose — whether it's a…

The Supreme Court is deciding whether women will face restrictions in getting a drug used in the most common method of abortion in the United States, while a lawsuit continues. The justices are expected to issue an order on Wednesday in a fast-moving case from Texas in which abortion opponents are seeking to roll back Food and Drug Administration approval of the drug, mifepristone. The drug first won FDA approval in 2000, and conditions on its use have been loosened in recent years, including making it available by mail in states that allow access. The Biden administration and New York-based Danco Laboratories, the maker of the drug, want the nation's highest court to reject limits on mifepristone's use imposed by lower courts, at least as long as the legal case…

A group of American plastic surgeons has been working in  Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s invasion, helping  wounded soldiers and civilians recover from war injuries. Omelyan Oshchudlyak has the story. Camera: Yuriy Dankevych     ...

Virtual medicine, or medical extended reality, uses virtual reality headsets and imaging software to supplement conventional medical treatments. Practitioners from around the world shared best practices at a recent conference in Los Angeles. Mike O'Sullivan reports. ...

Nigeria's National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, NAFDAC, announced a provisional approval of the R21 vaccine during a media briefing on Monday. The regulatory agency's consent came days after Ghana approved the vaccine. NAFDAC said the vaccine is 70 to 80 percent efficient in preventing the mosquito-borne disease and could protect millions of children. The agency's director general, Mojisola Adeyeye, spoke to journalists in Abuja. "The vaccine is indicated for prevention of clinical malaria on children from five months to 36 months of age," Adeyeye said. NAFDAC did not say when the vaccine will be rolled out, but Adeyeye said Nigeria will conduct in-country clinical trials and pharmacovigilance study. The WHO says some 600,000 people die of malaria every year, most of them in Africa, many of them…