Month: September 2024

Tuberculosis remains a critical public health issue in many countries and is a leading cause of death in South Africa. Over the past six years, the BEAT Tuberculosis study, conducted in South Africa and focused on children and pregnant women, has revealed a promising new oral treatment that could mark a significant breakthrough in the fight against drug-resistant TB. Zaheer Cassim reports. ...

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new york — Get ready for a partial lunar eclipse and supermoon, all rolled into one.  The spectacle will be visible in clear skies across North America and South America Tuesday night and in Africa and Europe Wednesday morning.  A partial lunar eclipse happens when the Earth passes between the sun and moon, casting a shadow that darkens a sliver of the moon and appears to take a bite out of it.  Since the moon will inch closer to Earth than usual, it'll appear a bit larger in the sky. The supermoon is one of three remaining this year.  "A little bit of the sun's light is being blocked so the moon will be slightly dimmer," said Valerie Rapson, an astronomer at the State University of New York at Oneonta.  The…

Chinhoyi, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe's government has given in to pressure from rights groups and is now providing free treatment to women with obstetric fistula, a condition that makes it hard for mothers who went through difficult labor to control their bowels. For a closer look, VOA visited Chinhoyi, a farming and mining area about 150 kilometers west of Harare, where early marriages are common, and where the treatment is being offered. Among the first beneficiaries of the treatment were young women at Chinhoyi Provincial Hospital after government gynecologists had performed surgery to address their cases of obstetric fistula. Twenty-three-year old Chiedza, not her real name as she requested that VOA protect her identity, was visibly happy as she had not been able to control her bowels since giving birth to her…

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LONDON — Less than two months ahead of the COP29 United Nations Climate Summit, the Azerbaijani leadership laid out its plans on Tuesday for what it hoped to achieve, as countries continue to wrestle with how to raise ambitions for a new financing target. The main task for the November summit is for countries to agree on a new annual target for funding that wealthy countries will pay to help poorer nations cope with climate change. Many developing countries say they cannot upgrade their targets to cut emissions faster without first receiving more financial support to invest in doing this. With countries remaining far from agreement on the financing goal, the COP29 presidency this week outlined more than a dozen side initiatives that could raise ambitions, but do not require party…

LONDON — Malnutrition is the world's worst child health crisis and climate change will only make things more severe, according to Microsoft-co-founder turned philanthropist Bill Gates. Between now and 2050, 40 million more children will have stunted growth and 28 million more will suffer from wasting, the most extreme and irreversible forms of malnutrition, as a result of climate change, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said in a report on Tuesday. “Unless you get the right food, broadly, both in utero and in your early years, you can never catch up,” Gates told Reuters in an online interview last week, referring to a child’s physical and mental capacity, both of which are held back by a lack of good nutrition. Children without enough of the right food are also more…

Authorities in Nairobi are trying to tackle the Kenyan capital’s chronic and worsening air pollution. With help from the U.S. Agency for International Development, authorities are placing sensors that can monitor air quality around the densely populated city. Victoria Amunga reports from Nairobi. Camera: Jimmy Makhulo ...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — A billionaire spacewalker returned to Earth with his crew on Sunday, ending a five-day trip that lifted them higher than anyone has traveled since NASA's moonwalkers. SpaceX's capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico near Florida's Dry Tortugas in the predawn darkness, carrying tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, two SpaceX engineers and a former Air Force Thunderbird pilot. They pulled off the first private spacewalk while orbiting nearly 740 kilometers above Earth, higher than the International Space Station and Hubble Space Telescope. Their spacecraft hit a peak altitude of 1,408 kilometers following Tuesday's liftoff. Isaacman became only the 264th person to perform a spacewalk since the former Soviet Union scored the first in 1965, and SpaceX's Sarah Gillis the 265th. Until now, all spacewalks were done by…

JOHANNESBURG — Thethiwe Mahlangu woke early on a chilly morning and walked through her busy South African township, where minibuses hooted to pick up commuters and smoke from sidewalk breakfast stalls hung in the air. Her eyes had been troubling her. But instead of going to her nearby health clinic, Mahlangu was headed to the train station for an unusual form of care. A passenger train known as Phelophepa — or "good, clean, health" in the Sesotho language — had been transformed into a mobile health facility. It circulates throughout South Africa for much of the year, providing medical attention to the sick, young and old who often struggle to receive the care they need at crowded local clinics. For the past 30 years — ever since South Africa's break with…

Geneva, Switzerland — Limited capacity is keeping mpox testing coverage low in the DR Congo — the epicenter of the international emergency — the World Health Organization said Saturday in its latest situation report.  "Testing coverage in the Democratic Republic of the Congo remains low, due to limited testing capacity," the United Nations health agency said in its update.  It said the mpox case fatality ratio in the DRC in 2024 was 0.5% among confirmed cases — or 25 deaths from 5,160 cases — and 3.3% among suspected cases, both tested and untested — or 717 deaths among 21,835 cases.  "Due to limited access to laboratory testing in remote areas, only about 40% of all suspected cases have been tested in 2024 (up from 9% in 2023), and among these, around…

brasilia — In a visit to see the damage caused by drought and fire in the Amazon, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva pledged to pave a road that environmentalists and some in his own government say threatens to vastly increase destruction of the world's largest tropical forest — and contribute to climate change.  The BR-319 roadway is a mostly dirt road through the rainforest that connects the states of Amazonas and Roraima to the rest of the country. It ends in Manaus, the Amazon's largest city with over 2 million people, and runs parallel to the Madeira River, a major tributary of the Amazon River. The Madeira is at its lowest recorded level, disrupting cargo navigation, with most of its riverbed now endless sand dunes under a sky thick with…

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — A tech billionaire performed the first private spacewalk hundreds of kilometers above Earth on Thursday, a high-risk endeavor reserved for professional astronauts — until now. Tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman teamed up with SpaceX to test the company's brand new spacesuits on his chartered flight. The daring spacewalk also saw SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis going out once Isaacman was safely back inside. This spacewalk was simple and quick — less than two hours — compared with the drawn-out affairs conducted by NASA. Astronauts at the International Space Station often need to move across the sprawling complex for repairs, always traveling in pairs and lugging gear. Station spacewalks can last seven to eight hours. Isaacman emerged first from the hatch, joining a small elite group of spacewalkers who until…

Gaborone, Botswana — Botswana and an American biotech firm, Ginkgo Bioworks, have partnered to conduct pathogen surveillance at the country’s entry points. Health officials say the proactive move is meant to safeguard public health as the world faces emerging disease threats. Botswana introduced mpox screening last month for travelers at its entry points. In a statement Wednesday, Ministry of Health spokesperson Christopher Nyanga said a pathogen-monitoring program is critical to detecting similar emerging health threats. Dr. Mbatshi Mazwiduma, a public health expert, said the pathogen-surveillance program will complement existing strategies to prevent disease threats. "The initiative by the Ministry of Health is a very welcome development in the sense that it is at least demonstrating that they are both embracing traditional methods of surveillance and disease detection plus at the same…

MOSCOW — A Soyuz spacecraft carrying two Russians and an American blasted off Wednesday for an express trip to the International Space Station.  The space capsule atop a towering rocket set off at 1623 GMT from Russia's manned space launch facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, and was scheduled to dock with the space station three hours later, in contrast to some missions that last for days.  The mission commander is Alexei Ovchinin, with Russian compatriot Ivan Vagner and American Donald Pettit in the crew.  The blast-off took place without obvious problems and the Soyuz entered orbit eight minutes after liftoff, a relief for Russian space authorities after an automated safety system halted a launch in March because of a voltage drop in the power system.  On the space station, Pettit, Vagner and…