New, lighter, cheaper, sustainable and recyclable building materials are entering the market every day as developers try to lower costs and shrink their carbon footprint. But how safe are those materials? Are they resistant to fire? VOA’s George Putic visited a new U.S. government facility that can provide scientific answers to such questions.
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Month: June 2017
Kenya has become the latest African country to introduce HIV self-testing kits in a bid to get more people to know their status and seek treatment. The government estimates that there are as many as half a million people in Kenya who are HIV-positive but don’t know it. Lenny Ruvaga reports for VOA from Nairobi.
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From a Peruvian trout farm manager to the head of an Indonesian meatball company, a list of 500 women entrepreneurs in emerging markets was launched Thursday to challenge the stereotype of a typical company boss and inspire women globally.
The “Foundation 500” list features the portraits and careers of 500 female entrepreneurs in 11 emerging markets where women are often refused the same access to education, financial services and bank loans as men.
The list, an initiative of humanitarian agency CARE and the nonprofit H&M Foundation, mirrors the Fortune 500 list of U.S. companies but highlights unusual chief executives, ranging from a Zambian woman who set up a mobile drug store to a woman in Jordan who set up a temporary tattoo studio.
Create role models
Karl-Johan Persson, CEO of Swedish retailer H&M, said the project was designed to create role models for women in emerging markets and challenging perceptions in developed countries of business leaders.
“The entrepreneur is our time’s hero and a role model for many young but the picture given of who is an entrepreneur is still very homogenous and many probably associate it to men from the startup world,” Persson said in an email.
He said all the women in the list had made an incredible effort.
“But one that stands out to me is Philomene Tia, a multi-entrepreneur from the Ivory Coast who has overcome setbacks such as war and being a refugee, and who has, in spite of it, always returned to the entrepreneurship to create a better future and a strong voice in society.”
Buses, fish and tattoos
Tia is the owner of a bus company in the Ivory Coast, a chain of beverage stores, a hotel complex, and a cattle breeding operation.
“I often tell other women that it is the force inside you and your brains that will bring you wherever you want to go. I mean, I started with nothing and I don’t even speak proper French, but look at me now,” she was quoted on the project’s website www.foundation500.com.
The women featured are from Indonesia, the Philippines, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Peru, Guatemala, Jordan, Zambia, Burundi, the Ivory Coast and Yemen.
One of the women portrayed is Andrea Gala, 20, a trout farm manager in Peru and president of the women-only Trout Producers Association.
“This business has worked out so well for us now we don’t depend on our fields anymore, which is hard work and often badly paid,” Gala said in a report on the project.
“With the association we want to open a restaurant one day, next to the trout farm, so we can attract more visitors. We want to turn the area into a tourist zone, where people can come and relax and enjoy our restaurant with trout-based dishes.”
The H&M Foundation, privately funded by the Persson family that founded retailer H&M, said this was part of a women’s empowerment program started with CARE in 2014 in Latin America, Asia and Africa.
As part of this project H&M Foundation Manager Diana Amini said about 100,000 women in 20 countries had received between 2,000-15,000 euros in seed capital and skills training to start and expand businesses.
In Burundi, the average rate of increase in income among women in the program was 203 percent in the three years to the end of 2016, she said.
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The understanding of human origins was turned on its head on Wednesday with the announcement of the discovery of fossils unearthed on a Moroccan hillside that are about 100,000 years older than any other known remains of our species, Homo sapiens.
Scientists determined that skulls, limb bones and teeth representing at least five individuals were about 300,000 years old, a blockbuster discovery in the field of anthropology.
The antiquity of the fossils was startling – a “big wow,” as one of the researchers called it. But their discovery in North Africa, not East or even sub-Saharan Africa, also defied expectations. And the skulls, with faces and teeth matching people today but with archaic and elongated braincases, showed our brain needed more time to evolve its current form.
“This material represents the very root of our species,” said paleoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, who helped lead the research published in the journal Nature.
Before the discovery at the site called Jebel Irhoud, located between Marrakech and Morocco’s Atlantic coast, the oldest Homo sapiens fossils were known from an Ethiopian site called Omo Kibish, dated to 195,000 years ago.
“The message we would like to convey is that our species is much older than we thought and that it did not emerge in an Adamic way in a small ‘Garden of Eden’ somewhere in East Africa. It is a pan-African process and more complex scenario than what has been envisioned so far,” Hublin said.
The Moroccan fossils, found in what was a cave setting, represented three adults, one adolescent and one child roughly age 8, thought to have lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
These were found alongside bones of animals including gazelles and zebras that they hunted, stone tools perhaps used as spearheads and knives, and evidence of extensive fire use.
An analysis of stone flints heated up in the ancient fires let the scientists calculate the age of the adjacent human fossils, Max Planck Institute archaeologist Shannon McPherron said.
There is broad agreement among scientists that Homo sapiens originated in Africa. These findings suggest a complex evolutionary history probably involving the entire continent, with Homo sapiens by 300,000 years ago dispersed all over Africa.
Morocco was an unexpected place for such old fossils considering the location of other early human remains. Based on the shape and age of the Moroccan fossils, the researchers concluded that a mysterious, previously discovered 260,000-year-old partial cranium from Florisbad, South Africa also represented Homo sapiens.
The Jebel Irhoud people had large braincases that lacked the globular shape of those today. Max Planck Institute paleoanthropologist Philipp Gunz said the findings indicate the shape of the face was established early in the history of Homo sapiens, but brain shape, and perhaps brain function, evolved later.
But given their modern-looking face and teeth, Hublin said, these people may have blended in today if they simply wore a hat.
Homo sapiens is now the only human species, but 300,000 years ago it would have shared the planet with several now-extinct cousins in Eurasia – Neanderthals in the west and Denisovans in the east – and others in Africa.
Hublin did not hazard a guess as to how long ago the very first members of our species appeared, but said it could not have been more than 650,000 years ago, when the evolutionary lineage that led to Homo sapiens split from the one that led to the Neanderthals.
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Mexican sugar producers want an investigation into suspected dumping in Mexico by U.S. fructose producers even after a U.S.-Mexico deal on access to the U.S. sugar market, the head of the Mexican sugar industry group said Wednesday.
The sugar lobby last month said it had asked the Mexican economy ministry to investigate U.S. high-fructose corn syrup imports, saying there was evidence of dumping.
Mexico Tuesday conceded to U.S. demands for changes in the terms of Mexican access to the lucrative U.S. sugar market, but U.S. sugar producers refused to endorse the deal.
The agreement would avert possible steep U.S. import duties on Mexican sugar and had been seen as lowering the risk of Mexico slapping its own import duties on U.S. high-fructose corn syrup as a retaliatory measure.
“This issue with the U.S. sugar industry is not over,” Juan Cortina, the head of Mexican sugar industry group (CNIAA), told reporters at an event in Mexico City where he said the group would keep pressing for a fructose probe in Mexico.
The sweetener trade has been a longstanding source of disputes between the two countries that are preparing to start talks with Canada to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo on June 1 said he was reviewing the request by the Mexican sugar lobby to initiate the investigation.
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Small-business owners who install solar panels or help customers use clean energy don’t seem fazed by President Donald Trump’s plan to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord, saying they expect demand for their services will still keep growing.
They’re confident in two trends they see: A growing awareness and concern about the environment, and a desire by consumers and businesses to lower their energy costs.
“It’s an economic decision people are making, although it also makes environmental sense,” said Suvi Sharma, CEO of Solaria, a Fremont, California-based company that designs and sells solar energy panel systems.
Trump said he was putting U.S. interests ahead of international priorities in leaving the agreement that would, among other things, require the U.S. and other countries to report greenhouse gas emissions. The U.S. is the world’s second-largest emitter of carbon after China, and carbon is one of the gases that scientists cite as a key factor in global warming.
Reaction to withdrawal split
Many of the nation’s largest companies opposed Trump’s move, and some have already committed to reducing emissions and are spending billions to do it.
Small business advocacy groups are split over the impact of a U.S. withdrawal. The Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council doesn’t believe Trump’s action will hurt the United States.
“Even without the U.S.’s formal participation in the pact, we believe our nation will continue to lead in carbon reduction and clean energy,” said Karen Kerrigan, CEO of the group. “The market is demanding as much and the private sector and investment are responding.”
But the Small Business Majority, which has supported limits on greenhouse gas emissions as a way to help the environment and the economy, said the U.S. needs government policies that “promote the development of renewable energy and the implementation of energy efficiency standards.”
“America’s entrepreneurs understand that the future of our economy and the job growth associated therewith depends upon policies that move us forward, not backward,” said John Arensmeyer, the group’s CEO.
The American Sustainable Business Council also warned that global warming would hurt companies, giving them “a chaotic and unsustainable future of business disruptions from rising seas and changing weather patterns.”
Whether business owners outside energy-related industries are likely to support the Paris accord may depend on how much they’re worried about climate change, and whether they’re concerned about saving on energy bills.
Demand, awareness growing
A private equity firm that invests in clean energy companies doesn’t expect Trump’s action to have much impact on U.S. companies whose business is reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Neil Auerbach, CEO of Hudson Clean Energy in Teaneck, New Jersey, said the U.S. has been able to move away from carbon fuels with more use of natural gas and renewables.
Arcadia Power, which helps consumers and companies switch to wind and solar power for their electricity, has seen orders rise 5 percent from its usual pace since Trump’s announcement last week, says Ryan Nesbitt, president of the Washington, D.C.-based company. Demand was particularly strong for the electricity supply plans the company offers through solar power producers.
“They sold out over the weekend. We’re scrambling to get more,” Nesbitt said. Some customers who signed up for Arcadia’s service said they were doing so in response to Trump’s announcement, Nesbitt says.
State and local environmental laws, which can be tougher than federal statutes and regulations, have contributed to the growth of small businesses in the energy sector. So companies that help businesses track and report their carbon and other emissions shouldn’t see their business disappear if the U.S. isn’t part of the Paris accord.
At ERA Environmental Management Solutions, whose customers include companies that use paints and other chemicals, “nobody’s coming out and telling us they’re going to stop doing a project,” owner Gary Vegh said.
But Vegh, whose company is based in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, says companies are also reacting to changing perspectives.
“Each generation is getting more educated about the environment,” Vegh said. “Even preschool and elementary children — the new generation is already aware.”
Barry Cinnamon’s homeowner customers buy solar panels because they believe the climate is in trouble. “They understand from a science and engineering perspective that there’s a problem and there’s a solution,” said Cinnamon, the owner of Cinnamon Solar in Campbell, California.
Installing solar panels on a home can run into the tens of thousands of dollars, so owners aren’t expecting an immediate windfall from lower energy prices — they’re willing to wait five or 10 years for their investment to pay off, Cinnamon says.
For some owners, it’s the “what ifs” that are worrisome. Many business customers at Vitaliy Vinogradov’s lighting business base their buying decisions on tax rebates for green LED fixtures.
“What I am afraid of is that this may be a slippery slope — where eventually green technology loses subsidies, rebates, or gets taxed,” said Vinogradov, whose Modern Place Lighting is located in Pensacola, Florida.
Saagar Govil, CEO of Cemtrex Inc., an environmental technology company, fears it will lose business in the U.S. because there may be less need for his equipment that monitors and destroys greenhouse gases. He hopes the Farmingdale, New York-based company will be able to sell those products overseas, and in states that have pledged to follow the Paris accord.
“But until we start to see something concrete, it’s unclear how that will fly,” he said.
Some business owners, however, think Trump’s action will ultimately help their companies. John-Paul Maxfield, whose Denver-based Waste Farmers sells agricultural products and technology to greenhouse operators, believes it will raise awareness of global warming.
“It reinforces the need for alternative systems in the face of climate change,” Maxfield said.
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Nearly 16,000 young children die every day around the world, says researcher Sue Grady, citing U.N. figures. The Michigan State University medical geographer says newborns account for about half of the deaths.
A U.N. study of neonatal mortality around the world found that Africa has the highest rate, at 28 deaths for every 1,000 live births. In a study pertaining to 14 sub-Saharan African countries, Grady and her student investigators found that neonatal mortality was significantly associated with, among other factors, home births, where babies are delivered without the supervision of a trained professional.
Grady said many of the newborns succumbed immediately after birth to asphyxiation or an inability to take their first breath. Other common causes of death were infection and diarrhea from unclean water.
Grady said newborn deaths in East and West Africa could be dramatically reduced if babies were delivered in medical facilities with trained personnel standing by.
“Focusing on real hygienic conditions as the baby is being delivered, really cleaning the umbilical cord well [and] being very, very careful as far as the water the baby receives after birth” are critical, she added.
Targeting resources
The study conducted by Grady and colleagues is aimed at informing the United Nations in its global efforts to reduce infant mortality by targeting resources where they are most needed.
Since 1990, when the U.N. Millennium Development Goals were adopted, infant mortality has decreased 53 percent, from nearly 12 million deaths a year to about 6 million.
Those goals have been replaced by the Sustainable Development Goals, a universal call to action to reduce scourges of poverty.
In Africa, Grady said, many women can not afford or access medical care or prefer to deliver their babies at home, surrounded by family and community. Newborn mortality also increases with the age of the mother, she noted.
And a disturbing trend also was found: More female babies were dying than male infants. Grady’s study, which looked at more than 344,000 births in East and West Africa, did not identify the possible causes for that, but “we do know there is some bias, so we would want to better understand why female infants were less likely to survive.”
The findings were published in the journal Geospatial Health.
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A new report submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council has called for the urgent retooling of what it calls an outdated mental health care system. The report contends the current system is injurious to mental well-being and violates the human rights of patients.
Dainius Puras is the author of the report and special investigator on the right to physical and mental health. His work found that mental health was grossly neglected within systems around the world and where they exist, “they do so in isolation, segregated from regular health care despite the intimate relationship between physical and mental health.”
He said there is a harmful overreliance on biological factors in the treatment of mental illness to the exclusion of psychological, environmental and social influences.
“Today, there is unequivocal evidence that the…excessive use of psychotropic medicines is a failure,” he said. “Yet, around the world, biomedical interventions dominate mental health investment and services.”
He said people with mild and moderate forms of depression too often are encouraged to use psychotropic medications “despite clear evidence that they should not.”
Worldwide problem
The World Health Organization reports nearly one in four people in the world will be affected by mental or neurological disorders at some point in their lives. Currently, it estimates around 450 million people suffer from such conditions. It notes depression is the leading cause of ill health and disability worldwide, affecting more than 300 million people.
Despite the enormity of the problem, Puras said things have barely changed regarding the treatment of mentally ill people. He said governments worldwide continued to favor institutional care, a system he called outdated and open to human rights abuses.
He told VOA that the warehousing of people with mental disabilities in large institutions should stop and be replaced by community-based health care systems.
“The West investment is to invest in institutional care and I am very openly advocating to stop investing in institutional care. It is against human rights and it is the most expensive way of caring for people because it is 24-hour service.”
While community-based services may not be cheap, Puras said they respect the dignity of people with psychosocial, intellectual or other forms of mental disabilities. Unlike institutions, he said community systems do not “breed human rights violations, hopelessness and social exclusion.”
Outdated concepts
He said the entire mental health field has to be liberated from outdated and scientifically unsound concepts that undermine the human rights of people with mental disabilities.
For example, he said people who are diagnosed as having mental health conditions may be considered dangerous “and that is why they are often deprived of their liberty.”
He said another outdated, and seriously misused belief is that people who are diagnosed with a mental condition need some form of medical intervention.
“If they do not agree,” he said, “quite often force is used to provide treatment,” which research now shows “is not necessarily effective.”
Parus is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and professor at Vilnius University in Lithuania. He is particularly incensed at the thought that eight million children globally are living in institutional care, even though some of them have one or both parents.
“But, for some reason the State decides that they are better parents. So, instead of empowering parents, we enclose children into institutional care. This is a very bad investment,” he said.
Parus recommends that children without parental care be placed in a family setting instead. He said treating the mentally ill within communities breaks down dangerous and erroneous myths and lessens discrimination against them.
“If you have never seen and do not know a person with a psycho-social disability, your mind will be occupied by all these stigmatizing myths, that they are dangerous, they are hopeless and so on,” he said. “So, this integration of children and adults into society is very helpful. It brings about tolerance.”
“The biggest problems I see are not on the side of persons with disabilities, but on the side of so-called normal society, which is very seriously biased by all these outdated concepts,” he added.
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It was almost sunset as fishermen guided their boats back onto the beach at Joal, Senegal, after a long day at sea.
At first glance, it looks as though they’d collected a good day’s haul, but their nets were full of small sardinella, known locally as yaabooy.
Fisherman Mamdou Lamine had caught just one bucket of mackerel. He held one up next to a yaabooy to show how much bigger it was — and there are many more yaabooy than mackerel these days, he said. Furthermore, A local favorite, grouper, called thiof in Senegal, is getting harder to find.
The U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization says more than half of West Africa’s fisheries are dangerously depleted. Local officials in Senegal say it’s the foreign-owned industrial boats that have depleted fish stocks and destroyed marine habitats.
When fishermen at Joal set off on trips, they have to carry more fuel to reach waters farther away, and the added fuel costs cut into their earnings.
Longer trips, more fuel
Saff Sall was heading to Guinea-Bissau, about 200 kilometers south, in search of the elusive thiof. He said the fish are found among rocks, but that there are no more rocks because they have all been destroyed by the big industrial boats. That’s why they have to go to Guinea-Bissau to search for fish.
Before, Senegalese fishermen had to spend only a week at sea to have all the fish they needed, he said, but now they have to spend twice as long to catch what they need.
Under-regulated fishing by locals has also contributed to the problem, said Joal Fishing Wharf chief of operations El Hadji Faye.
He said the government was making an effort, but the situation was very complicated. He said that in the Senegalese city of Saint Louis, for example, each neighborhood has a designated day it can fish. But in Joal, they do not do that yet. Every day, he said, all the fishermen go to sea. Sometimes when a lot of them go, they bring back a lot of fish and the price is not good.
Economic staple
Fish are the backbone of the town’s economy. The day’s catch is taken to the local smokehouse, turned into fish meal for export abroad or sold fresh at the market, where knife-wielding female vendors prep the fish for sale.
Business is tough even for vendors with the rare large fish. Scarcity has driven up the prices. The price of thiof per kilogram has doubled in the past five years, local officials said.
Fish vendor Rose Ndour said that maybe those in the industry would do other work — if there were better jobs available.
The impact of overfishing is felt in households. The wife of the fishing wharf manager, Coumba Ndiaye, said that for the family’s evening Ramadan meal, she had to make due with sardinella because she could not get an affordable thiof at the market.
She made thieboudienne, Senegal’s national dish. Its name literally translates to “fish and rice.” But for a good thieboudienne, you need good fish like dorade or thiof.
The fish are a part of Senegal’s culture. Ndiaye said that “when someone says your husband is ‘thiofee,’ they are comparing him to thiof. The thiof is beautiful and noble. The thiof is classy.”
IN PHOTOS: No Good Fish in the Sea: Overfishing in Senegal
The children sat on their parents’ knees as the family ate around the large shared bowl of thieboudienne.
The fishermen would return to the sea the next day to try their luck again.
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India is likely to experience deadly heat waves more frequently in the years ahead, even though there only has been a slight increase in human-driven warming over the past few decades, according to a study released Wednesday.
“It’s getting hotter, and of course more heat waves are going to kill more people,” said climatologist Omid Mazdiyasni of the University of California, Irvine, who led an international team of scientists analyzing a half-century of data collected by the Indian Meteorological Department.
After tracking temperature, heat waves and heat-related mortality, Mazdiyasni said, “We knew there was going to be an impact, but we didn’t expect it to be this big.” The findings are especially sobering considering the average temperature in India rose about one-half of one degree Celsius over 49 years.
The unveiling of the study, published in the journal Science Advances, follows President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, which aims to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels during this century.
The scientists said that, even despite the relatively slight rise in mean temperatures in India between 1960 and 2009, the probability of India experiencing a massive heat-related mortality event – defined by more than 100 deaths – has shot up by 146 percent. Roughly speaking, that means dying in a heat wave in India is now about two and one-half times as likely as it was in the mid-20th century.
Country mostly unprepared
Most of India has experienced a 25 percent rise in the number of heat-wave days during that period. The study’s authors said the vast majority of the country’s cities and states are not prepared to handle such heat crises, even if they understand the devastation they can wreak.
In 2010, 1,200 people died from heat-related causes in the western city of Ahmedabad, prompting city officials to introduce seven-day weather forecasts and warnings, extra water supplies and cool-air shelters in the summer.
After more than 2,500 people were killed by heat in ravaged areas of India in 2015, nine other cities rolled out a plan to educate children about heat risk, stock hospitals with ice packs and extra water, and train medical workers to identify heat stress, dehydration and heat stroke.
But those nine cities have only about 11 million people, not even 1 percent of the country’s population.
The same methodology can be applied in any region to get a sense of how vulnerable a country or population might be, the authors said. Recent events underscore years of warnings by scientists that climate change will make future heat waves more intense, more frequent and longer lasting.
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Facebook announced three new features Wednesday that are intended to boost civic engagement among users in the United States on its platform by connecting them more easily with their elected representatives.
The new offerings come as the social media juggernaut has sought to rehabilitate its image as a credible source of information following a wave of criticism after last November’s presidential election that the company did too little to combat misleading or wholly fabricated political news stories during the campaign.
Among the features, Facebook will now allow a user to turn on a “Constituent Badge” to identify himself as living in his elected official’s district. The opt-in badge will be visible when a user comments on content shared by his federal, state and local representatives.
Facebook also announced “Constituent Insights,” which allows elected officials and other users to find local news stories that are popular in their districts.
“District Targeting” creates a new preset audience selection that lets politicians’ pages target posts to people likely to be their constituents.
Facebook has continued to come under attack from prominent Democrats and some technology experts despite a raft of changes it has made in recent months that seek to help users consume more legitimate political news.
Hillary Clinton, who ran for president as a Democrat last year but lost to President Donald Trump, a Republican, said last week that Facebook was flooded with false information about her during the campaign and that people were understandably misled.
She said she wanted Facebook to curate its network more aggressively.
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Peru joined Indonesia Wednesday as the only two countries worldwide to make their fishing boat tracking data available to the public.
Such access will give conservationists, along with those who buy, sell and eat seafood, a clearer picture where their favorite dishes come from.
Officials from both countries made their announcements Wednesday at the United Nations Ocean Conference in New York.
Indonesia said its data is available now, while Peru promised to follow suit.
“This is another demonstration of the Peruvian government’s commitment to fight illegal activities at sea,” fisheries vice minister Hector Soldi said. “The Peruvian government intends to make the utmost effort to achieve sustainable management of our fisheries in order to increase its contribution to nutrition and global food security.”
The independent Global Fishing Watch uses satellites and terrestrial receivers to track the activities of 60,000 commercial and private fishing boats across the globe.
Global Fishing Watch is not an enforcement agency but a tool for environmentalists and conservationists, and not available to private citizens.
Jackie Savitz, senior vice president of the Oceana conservation group, tells VOA that once a fishing boat leaves port and disappears over the horizon, it’s hard to monitor the vessels. For example, she says, are they fishing in protected parts of the sea or encroaching into another country’s exclusive economic zone?
Savitz says she applauds the very strong leadership by Indonesia and Peru in allowing anyone to monitor their fishing boats at any time.
“With more eyes on the ocean, there are fewer places for illegal fishers to hide,” she said.
Savitz says she hopes other countries will follow Indonesia and Peru in helping to ensure the sustainability and health of one of the world’s most valuable resources.
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Facebook is working with three global relief organizations to provide disaster maps — close to real-time data about where people are, where they are moving, and whether they are in danger in the hours and days after a flood, fire or earthquake.
The social networking giant — with nearly 2 billion users, or about 25 percent of the world’s population — said it has agreed to provide maps to UNICEF, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and the World Food Program, the food-assistance branch of the United Nations.
“We are excited about this,” said Toby Wicks, a data strategist at UNICEF. “Facebook has vast amounts of data.”
The company will provide maps of data in the aggregate. No Facebook user will be identified, the firm said.
After a disaster, “the first thing you need is data, which is extremely scarce and perishable,” said Molly Jackman, a public policy manager at Facebook. But Facebook, particularly in areas with a high concentration of users, can “present a more complete picture of where people are,” she said.
Types of maps
Facebook will offer the organizations three types of disaster maps that will be updated as frequently as possible.
Facebook’s location density maps show where people are located before, during and after a disaster. In addition to using satellite images and population estimates, these maps also draw from Facebook users who have their location data setting turned on.
Facebook’s movement maps show how people move during and after a disaster, and can help organizations with directing resources. For example, Facebook created maps after the 7.8-magnitude earthquake in Kaikoura, New Zealand, last year to show where people were going in the days after the quake struck.
Facebook’s Safety Check maps are based on where Facebook users are when they use the firm’s Safety Check service to tell friends and family they are safe. Facebook will create maps showing areas where people are declaring themselves safe and where help may be needed.
For example, after a disaster, “we might know where the house is, but we don’t know where the people are,” said Dale Kunce, global lead for information communication technology and analytics for the American Red Cross.
“Our first reaction may be to go to where the devastation happened,” Kunce said. “But maybe most people are 10 miles away, staying with families when they reported they were safe. So the place to go may be where they are. We’re excited to see what the possibilities and potential are.”
Snapshots
Wicks, of UNICEF, said the partnership is at the beginning stages, but daily snapshots of where populations are have the potential to help his organization with disaster planning. For example, knowing how close people are to a health facility and how long it takes for them to travel to a medical clinic can help with decisions such as where to deploy medical services in case of a disaster.
The data maps will be most helpful in places where internet connectivity is high and in regions with a lot of Facebook users, Wicks said.
“Are these data representative of the populations we are trying to serve?” Wicks asked. “That’s the key question.”
Facebook said that it intends to make it possible for other organizations and governments, including local organizations, to be part of the program.
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A global watchdog says the world economy is picking up speed but faces big political uncertainties and needs to be reformed to make growth work for a broader swath of people.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says in its latest outlook report, published Wednesday, that world growth should accelerate from 3 percent in 2016 to 3.6 percent in 2018.
The OECD, whose members comprise the richest economies in the world and that serves as a policy think tank, said businesses and consumers are increasingly confident and employment and trade are recovering.
OECD Chief Economist Catherine Mann said, however, that “policymakers cannot be complacent.” There is uncertainty over government policies in major countries and wages are not yet growing as much as hoped.
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Cancer patients are being urged to speak up about their experiences with side-effects from chemotherapy. This, following a new study that shows reporting symptoms can improve their chances of survival. Faith Lapidus reports.
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The United Nations Ocean Conference opens next week in New York and is to call for action to help protect marine life from the threats of global warming, over-fishing and pollution. But in some cases, climate change is already affecting some of the ocean’s iconic species. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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President Donald Trump has chosen a regional banker as his nominee for a key government position in bank regulation.
Trump announced late Monday he is naming Joseph Otting as comptroller of the currency, heading a Treasury Department agency that is the chief overseer for federally chartered banks. If confirmed by the Senate, Otting will play a role in the Trump administration’s efforts to ease rules written under the Dodd-Frank law that stiffened financial regulation after the 2008-09 crisis.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency charters and supervises national banks and savings and loans. The agency has hundreds of bank examiners, many of them working inside the nation’s largest financial institutions, who focus closely on lending practices.
Otting was CEO from 2010 to 2015 of OneWest Bank, where he worked with then-chairman Steven Mnuchin, who is now Treasury secretary. Democrats who objected to Mnuchin’s appointment as Treasury chief accused him of running a “foreclosure machine” when he headed the big California-based bank. The bank foreclosed on thousands of homeowners in the aftermath of the housing crisis caused by high-risk mortgages.
Mnuchin, who led an investor group that bought the failed IndyMac bank in 2009 and turned it into a profitable OneWest, has defended his actions as the bank’s chairman. He has said he worked hard during the financial crisis to help homeowners with refinancing mortgages so they could remain in their homes.
OneWest was among a number of big banks that signed consent orders with the OCC over alleged mortgage servicing abuses. The bank didn’t admit or deny wrongdoing under the 2011 order but agreed to undertake a plan to correct problems.
“If Mr. Otting didn’t deal fairly with the customers at his own bank, it’s difficult to see why he’s the best choice to look out for the interests of customers at more than 1,400 banks and thrifts across the country,” Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, senior Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said in a statement.
Before he worked at OneWest, Otting was vice chairman of U.S. Bancorp, parent of Minneapolis-based U.S. Bank, one of the largest banks in the country.
With Otting’s appointment, Trump continues to fill out his key team of financial regulators, as his administration looks to easing rules and meet his campaign promises. Republicans have long complained that regulations were made too restrictive following the financial meltdown and have hampered economic growth by making it harder for banks to lend.
Jay Clayton, a Wall Street lawyer with ties to Goldman Sachs, is now chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Trump has three vacancies to fill on the Federal Reserve’s board of governors, including the key slot that holds the portfolio of bank supervision.
Otting would replace Keith Noreika, a financial services lawyer who was installed last month as acting comptroller in an unusual move apparently aimed at avoiding Senate confirmation and normal ethics requirements.
Noreika succeeded Thomas Curry, an Obama appointee, who had been comptroller since 2012 and leaned toward strict bank oversight.
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A decade ago, the first inklings of the coming recession emerged as a housing bubble fueled by scant regulation, low interest rates and easy credit gradually began to crater and soon would take the rest of the economy along for the painful ride.
By the time the Great Recession ended in June 2009, almost no one was spared.
Home prices fell 30 percent on average, the unemployment rate nearly doubled and the S&P 500 lost about half its value. The net worth of U.S. households and nonprofit organizations fell by nearly $14 trillion, about 20 percent.
In the midst of a presidential election, Washington struggled in its response. The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the takeover of Merrill Lynch turned the spotlight on Democratic Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and Republican Senator John McCain even brighter, with McCain’s assertion that the “the fundamentals of our economy are strong” used to depict him as out of touch.
After the economy stabilized, Congress shifted from economic stimulus and bailouts to establishing the kind of regulatory framework that might keep another Great Recession from happening. The result was the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010.
This week, House Republicans will vote on legislation to gut Dodd-Frank and replace it with their own version. A look at the background of the legislation and the GOP plan.
Passed with little GOP support
In June 2010, the House passed the financial regulatory overhaul 237-192. Only three Republicans sided with the vast majority of Democratic members in support of the bill.
Two weeks later, the Senate passed the bill 60-39. This time, only two Republicans voted for the bill, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Scott Brown of Massachusetts. But that was just enough to overcome procedural hurdles that can stop major legislation in the Senate.
Obama signed Dodd-Frank into law on July 21, 2010: “In the end, our financial system only works — our market is only free — when there are clear rules and basic safeguards that prevent abuse, that check excess, that ensure that it is more profitable to play by the rules than to game the system,” Obama said. “And that’s what these reforms are designed to achieve — no more, no less.”
What does it do?
Under the act, large banks undergo “stress tests” to ensure they have enough capital necessary to absorb losses during an economic crisis. The law also put into place strict limits on how commercial banks could invest capital in speculative investments.
Dodd-Frank also established a process by which the federal government could break up and wind down a failing financial company whose failure threatened financial stability in the United States. And it established a new agency with a mission of ensuring that banks and other financial companies don’t abuse consumers.
That’s just a small snapshot of the changes put into place through the nearly 2,300-page bill.
Who were Dodd and Frank?
Representative Barney Frank was the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee. When the financial crisis hit, the Massachusetts lawmaker worked closely with the Bush administration to enact a historic bailout of the nation’s financial system so that the government could purchase as much as $700 billion in troubled assets to stabilize banks and get them lending again. Once the crisis began to subside, he turned his attention to an overhaul of the entire financial services industry. Frank was renowned for his knowledge of public policy and parliamentary rules, but also for his gruff, piercing criticism of those who disagreed with him. He declined to seek re-election in 2012 after serving 16 terms.
Senator Christopher Dodd was the chairman of the Senate’s Banking Committee. He announced in January 2010 that he would not seek re-election once his term ended, and he led the debate on the Senate side without fear of how it would harm his political standing. His home state of Connecticut counts several of the insurance companies that were shaken in the crisis.
Republican replacement
Republicans, most notably President Donald Trump, view the regulations associated with Dodd-Frank as increasing compliance costs for financial companies and making it harder to lend money and spur economic growth. Trump calls the law a “disaster.”
The replacement in the House has been authored by Texas Representative Jeb Hensarling, the chairman of the Financial Services Committee. At its core, the Financial Choice Act would give banks regulatory relief so long as they meet a strict basic requirement for the capital they build to cover unexpected big losses.
Federal regulators would also lose the power to dismantle a failing financial firm and sell off the pieces if they decide its collapse could endanger the system. The legislation also paints a bull’s eye on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which gained powers to scrutinize the practices of virtually any business selling financial products and services, such as credit card companies, payday lenders, mortgage servicers and debt collectors. Hensarling’s bill would eliminate those powers.
It would allow the president to remove the CFPB director at will, without needing a specific cause. Hensarling is backing off one provision, though, in the face of Republican division: He has promised to pull a provision that eliminates the cap on fees that banks can charge retailers when customers use a debit card.
What people are saying about the bill
House Republicans frequently speak about the need for economic growth.
“This is the Republican plan to reform Wall Street and revitalize Main Street — all while protecting the financial futures of Americans,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, said in a statement Monday.
No Democratic lawmaker voted for the bill when it was approved by the Financial Services Committee, saying it would allow a return to the kind of risky practices that crashed the economy nearly 10 years ago.
“It’s an invitation for another Great Recession, or worse,” said Representative Maxine Waters of California, the ranking Democratic member of the committee.
While the bill is expected to pass the House, its prospects are uncertain in the Senate, where Democrats have the votes to block it.
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A study gives reassuring news for breast cancer survivors who want to have children. Those who later became pregnant were no more likely to have their cancer come back than those who did not have a baby.
It’s a big issue — the average age of moms has been rising in the United States, and more women are being diagnosed with breast cancer in their childbearing years. About 11 percent of new breast cancer cases in the U.S. are in women under 45.
The study, done in Europe, is the largest so far on women whose cancers were fueled by hormones, which rise in pregnancy and, theoretically, might spur a recurrence.
“Having a family is one of the most important achievements in a person’s life,” said study leader Dr. Matteo Lambertini of the Jules Bordet Institute in Brussels, Belgium. These results show that “pregnancy after breast cancer can be considered safe.”
The research involved more than 1,200 breast cancer survivors. More than half had tumors whose growth was fueled by estrogen. After treatment, 333 became pregnant, about two and a half years after their cancer diagnosis, on average. Researchers compared them to 874 other survivors, matched for tumor type and other things, who did not.
More than 12 years after conception, recurrence rates were similar in both groups. Abortion had no impact on the rates either.
There was information on breast-feeding for 64 of the moms, with 25 reporting doing so successfully, suggesting it’s possible for some women even after breast surgery.
The results show “fairly convincingly” that women don’t have to worry, said Dr. Richard Schilsky, chief medical officer for the American Society of Clinical Oncology. The group featured the study at its annual conference that ended Tuesday in Chicago.
A big study under way in the U.S. and other countries is taking this research one step further, testing whether it’s safe for breast cancer survivors who want to get pregnant to temporarily suspend taking the hormone-blocking drugs like tamoxifen usually recommended for five years after initial treatment.
If they wait until all five years are past, they might be too old to have a baby, said Dr. Ann Partridge, who specializes in treating young women with breast cancer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. She is helping enroll patients in the study, called POSITIVE.
Participants must have used the hormone blockers for at least 18 months before stopping, and can suspend treatment for up to two years to enable pregnancy, delivery and breast-feeding.
Sarah Murray of Bridgeport, Connecticut, is the first U.S. woman in the study to have had a baby. She was 29 and planning her wedding when her breast cancer was found in 2013.
“We had just set the date when I got diagnosed, the same week. So obviously, children was on our minds,” she said.
Worries about triggering a recurrence if she got pregnant “did weigh on me quite a bit,” she said, but “I didn’t want the fear to have power over a decision that would bring so much joy.”
Her son, Owen, was born in December.
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Drinking even moderate amounts of alcohol is linked to changes in brain structure and an increased risk of worsening brain function, scientists said Tuesday.
In a 30-year study that looked at the brains of 550 middle-aged heavy drinkers, moderate drinkers and teetotalers, the researchers found people who drank more alcohol had a greater risk of hippocampal atrophy — a form of brain damage that affects memory and spatial navigation.
People who drank more than 30 units a week on average had the highest risk, but even those who drank moderately — between 14 and 21 units a week — were far more likely than abstainers to have hippocampal atrophy, the scientists said.
“And we found no support for a protective effect of light consumption on brain structure,” they added.
The research team — from the University of Oxford and University College London — said their results supported a recent lowering of drinking limit guidelines in Britain, but posed questions about limits recommended in the United States.
U.S. guidelines suggest that up to 24.5 units of alcohol a week is safe for men, but the study found increased risk of brain structure changes at just 14 to 21 units a week.
A unit is defined as 10 milliliters (ml) of pure alcohol. There are roughly two in a large beer, nine in a bottle of wine and one in a 25 ml spirit shot.
Harder to justify
Killian Welch, a Royal Edinburgh Hospital neuropsychiatrist who was not directly involved in the study, said the results, published in the BMJ British Medical Journal, underlined “the argument that drinking habits many regard as normal have adverse consequences for health.”
“We all use rationalizations to justify persistence with behaviors not in our long-term interest. With [these results], justification of ‘moderate’ drinking on the grounds of brain health becomes a little harder,” he said.
The study analyzed data on weekly alcohol intake and cognitive performance measured repeatedly over 30 years between 1985 and 2015 for 550 healthy men and women with an average age of 43 at the start of the study. Brain function tests were carried out at regular intervals, and at the end of the study participants were given an MRI brain scan.
After adjusting for several important potential confounders such as gender, education, social class, physical and social activity, smoking, stroke risk and medical history, the scientists found that higher alcohol consumption was associated with increased risk of brain function decline.
Drinking more was also linked to poorer “white matter integrity” — a factor they described as critical when it comes to cognitive functioning.
The researchers noted that with an observational study like this, no firm conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect.
They added, however, that the findings could have important public health implications for a large sector of the population.
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The World Health Organization published a new classification of antibiotics Tuesday that aims to fight drug resistance, with penicillin-type drugs recommended as the first line of defense and others for use only when absolutely necessary.
The new “essential medicines list” includes 39 antibiotics for 21 common syndromes, categorized into three groups: “Access,” “Watch” and “Reserve.”
Drugs on the “Access” list have lower resistance potential and include the widely used amoxicillin.
The “Watch” list includes ciprofloxacin, which is commonly prescribed for cystitis and strep throat but “not that effective,” Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO assistant director-general for health systems and innovation, told reporters.
Its use should be “dramatically reduced,” the WHO said.
“We think that the political will is there, but this needs to be followed by strong policies,” Kieny said.
The “Reserve” category antibiotics such as colistin should be seen as a last resort. That prompts questions about how producers of such antibiotics could make money, said Suzanne Hill, WHO’s director of essential medicines and health products.
‘Keep it in reserve’
“What we need to do is stop paying for antibiotics based on how many times they are prescribed, to discourage use. We don’t want colistin used very frequently. In fact, we don’t want it used at all,” Hill said. “What we need to do as a global community is work out how we pay the company not to market colistin and not to promote it and to keep it in reserve.”
The WHO classification takes into account the use of antibiotics for animal health use, and was developed together with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Organization for Animal Health.
Other changes to the list included the addition of two oral cancer treatments, a new pill for hepatitis C that combines two medicines, a more effective treatment for HIV, and new pediatric formulations of medicines for tuberculosis.
But the WHO also said Roche’s well-known flu drug oseltamivir, marketed as Tamiflu, may be removed from the list unless new information supports its use in seasonal and pandemic influenza outbreaks.
“There is an updated data set compared to when the committee evaluated this product last, and what that suggests is that the size of the effect of oseltamivir in the context of pandemic influenza is less than previously thought,” Hill said.
But oseltamivir was the only listed antiviral, and was still useful for pregnant women and patients with complications, so the drug should be restricted to the most critical patients, she added.
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The U.S. and Mexican governments reached a new agreement to significantly shift their sugar trade mix, but U.S. sugar producers have failed to endorse the deal, leaving question marks over whether it could still sour broader trade relations.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the “agreement in principle” with Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo calls for Mexico to reduce the share of refined sugar in its exports to the United States, while increasing the share of raw sugar.
He said Mexico met nearly every request by the U.S. sugar industry to fix problems with a 2014 sugar trade agreement.
“Unfortunately, despite all of these gains, the U.S. sugar industry has said it is unable to support the agreement in its present form,” Ross said without elaborating on their objections.
He added that the agreement would go through a final drafting stage in which he hoped that the U.S. producers could come on board with it.
Asked how long this would take, Ross said, “It should be days, not weeks or months.”
The deal cut by Ross and Guajardo leaves Mexico’s overall access to the U.S. sugar market unchanged but refined sugar must fall to 30 percent of overall imports from Mexico from a previous limit 53 percent.
It also lifts the U.S. price paid for Mexican raw sugar to 23 cents per pound from 22.25 cents, while, the price for refined sugar will rise to 28 cents per pound from 26 cents.
These prices exclude shipping and packaging costs, the Commerce Department said in a summary.
An agreement was expected to help avoid potential retaliation from Mexico on imports of U.S. high-fructose corn syrup, a trade battle that would heighten U.S.-Mexico tensions as both countries along with Canada prepare to begin renegotiating the 23-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement in August.
Ross on Monday extended the deadline for the negotiations by 24 hours to complete what he called “final technical consultations” for a deal.
Sources on both sides of the border said on Monday that the U.S. sugar industry had added new demands outside of the terms agreed on earlier in the day by the two governments.
U.S. refiners have complained that high-quality Mexican raw sugar was going straight to sugar consumers, rather than passing through U.S. refineries.
The deal would mark the culmination of a years-long dispute between the countries over sugar, after U.S. groups three years ago asked the government for protection from dumping of subsidized imports from Mexico.
In 2014, the U.S. government slapped large duties on Mexican sugar but hammered out a deal with Mexico that suspended those levies. Factions of the U.S. industry have said that the deal has failed to eliminate harm from Mexican imports.
The U.S. industry involved in the dispute include a coalition of cane and beet farming groups as well as ASR Group, the maker of Domino Sugar that is owned by the politically connected Fanjul family.
ASR and fellow cane refiner Imperial Sugar, owned by commodities firm Louis Dreyfus Company BV, have said they are being starved of raw supplies under the current deal.
They have asked the U.S. government to terminate the pact.
The latest talks began in March, two months after U.S. President Donald Trump took office vowing a tougher line on trade to protect U.S. industry and jobs.
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More international visitors came to the U.S. than expected in April 2017, according to a new report released Tuesday in Washington.
The U.S. Travel Association’s Travel Trends Index shows that international travel to the U.S. grew by about 4 percent in April, compared with data for April 2016.
The strong showing contradicted fears that tourism from abroad would slow in reaction to President Donald Trump’s proposed travel bans, which have been blocked by court challenges.
The Trump administration’s first ban on travel from a handful of mostly Muslim countries was issued Jan. 27. The Travel Association said any fallout from the travel bans would have begun to show up in April travel data.
“Are we surprised by this data? The honest answer is yes,” U.S. Travel Association CEO Roger Dow said in a statement. “There have been many claims that the administration’s actions on travel have tarnished America’s brand abroad, but we’re seeing hard economic evidence of the U.S. travel sector’s remarkable resilience.”
The U.S. Travel Association statistics also suggest that a slowdown in international arrivals that began in the spring of 2016 may be moderating.
Data from the U.S. Commerce Department has been showing a decline in international arrivals over the second and third quarters of last year. Those statistics take months to compile and will not reflect 2017 arrivals until next year. The government data is also more comprehensive, including, for example, border crossings by car from Canada and Mexico, which the U.S. Travel Association data does not include.
It’s also not unusual for travel spending and arrivals numbers to fluctuate month to month due to seasonal tourism and other economic factors.
The Travel Trends Index is compiled in partnership with Oxford Economics, using multiple sources including hotel and airline data.
The U.S. Travel Association is a national nonprofit organization representing the travel industry, dedicated to increasing travel within and to the U.S.
A large team of international researchers has found 30 percent of HIV positive individuals in nearly a dozen countries delay starting life-saving drugs.
A study spearheaded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked at the prevalence of HIV in Haiti, Vietnam, Nigeria, Namibia, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
Investigators reviewed more than 694,000 treatment records from 2004 to 2015, from nearly 800 clinical facilities, focusing on patients age 15 and older.
HIV expert Andrew Auld, Malawi Country Director at the CDC, is lead author of the study. He said in eight of the countries, the percentage of people receiving early treatment increased, in Haiti, Mozambique and Namibia by 40 percent or more during the time period.
But Auld said treatment is still not reaching a significant portion of HIV positive people.
“So some of the key things that still need to be done in these countries to further reduce the prevalence of advanced disease and HIV treatment initiation are to scale up testing strategies and facilitate HIV diagnosis at earlier disease stages, and also treatment policies that mean that patients once they are diagnosed are eligible to start HIV treatment the same day,” he said.
HIV infects and destroys the immune system’s CD-4 T-cells, so the body gradually loses its ability to fight off infections, eventually with lethal consequences in untreated individuals.
Ambitious target
UNAIDS has set a 90-90-90 target in dealing with the HIV epidemic.
By 2020, it’s hoped that 90 percent of all people with HIV will know their status, 90 percent will receive antiretroviral therapy and 90 percent of those receiving treatment will have viral suppression.
Not only does immediate antiretroviral treatment mean avoiding life-threatening complications, Auld said it reduces the risk of transmission.
Another study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2016, found treatment reduces the risk of spreading HIV to a sexual partner by up to 96 percent. The risk of vertical transmission, from pregnant women to their newborn babies, is also reduced if the mother is treated with antiretroviral drugs.
Despite advances in treatment and care of people infected with the AIDS virus, the NEJM article noted that there were more than two million HIV infections reported worldwide in 2014.
Auld said the main reason people wait until they are very sick to go for treatment is they are unaware that quick action increases their chances of survival.
Men with more advanced cases, according to Auld, point to work demands that keep them from seeking treatment earlier in the course of the disease. For women, childcare and family obligations are often cited. Among infected children, Auld said the problem is access to testing and treatment.
“HIV diagnosis is not a death sentence,” he stressed. “Excellent HIV treatment is available and people can live long, healthy, productive lives if they adhere to the HIV treatment. And it will increase demand for both testing and treatment services.”
The study by Auld and colleagues is published in the journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly.
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