We producing nearly 300 million tons of plastic every year, half of which is used once, then thrown away. In the United States, we discard more than 33 million tons of plastics, and only a little more than 14 percent is recycled or used as fuel. The rest ends up in landfills or strewn along roadways or washed into the ocean. Getting rid of it will be an enduring challenge, but one man has a plan to start cleaning up our mess. VOA’s Faith Lapidus reports.
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Despite the health warnings, smoking in many places is still the “thing to do.” For those who have quit but still want to hang out with their smoking friends, a French design group has the Sifflu. It lets people act like they are smoking while teaching them how to breathe, but without the worry of cancer and a shortened life span. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Most doctors did not discuss the cost of cancer treatment with patients, spent less than two minutes on it when they did, and usually did so only after patients brought it up, a study that taped hundreds of visits at several large hospitals finds.
Cancer patients are three times more likely to declare bankruptcy than people without cancer are, but many doctors are not having the conversations that might help prevent this and sometimes don’t know the cost themselves, the results suggest.
“That would not occur in any other industry I can think of” where a service or product is sold, said the study leader, Dr. Rahma Warsame of the Mayo Clinic.
Results were released Wednesday by the American Society of Clinical Oncology and will be discussed next month at its annual meeting in Chicago.
The study has some limitations – it’s not nationwide, and it includes newly diagnosed patients, where cost is most likely to come up, as well as others further along in treatment who may have discussed this earlier.
But the larger point is clear, Warsame said: The “financial toxicity” of treatments that can cost more than $100,000 a year is growing, and talks about that aren’t happening enough.
“I’ve had people say ‘no’ to really life-extending therapies” because of worries about bankrupting their family, she said.
For the study, researchers taped 529 conversations between doctors and patients with various types of cancer at three outpatient clinics – the kind of places chemo often is given – at Mayo, Los Angeles County Hospital and the University of Southern California’s Norris campus in Los Angeles.
Patients and doctors knew they were being taped but didn’t know why. Cost came up in 151 of the visits. Patients brought it up in 106 cases and doctors did in 45.
Appointments lasted about 15 minutes on average at the two California hospitals and half an hour at Mayo, but cost discussions ran only one to two minutes when they occurred at all.
Even when doctors acknowledged a cost concern, they rarely acted on it. Only six patients were referred to social services to seek help with affording care.
“Maybe a lot of patients don’t know to ask questions” about cost, said Karla Mees, 63, a nursing instructor from Rochester, Minnesota, who was treated for breast cancer at Mayo Clinic.
Doctors warned her in advance that she might have to pay $4,500 for gene tests on her tumor to help determine care, but she never knew how much chemo and radiation would cost until the bills came.
“I just remember thinking, ‘I need the stuff, I’ll worry about payment later,’” she said, thankful that her insurance capped her annual out-of-pocket costs at $2,500.
Doctors also may be reluctant to talk money and have to give medical issues top priority in the short time they have during patient visits, said Dr. Lowell Schnipper, a cancer expert at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and head of the cancer group’s panel on value in cancer care.
“Most of us are not very well skilled in bringing it up,” he said. “In school you’re trained to simply take the best care you can of your patient and not worry about anything other than doing exactly that.”
In 2015, the cancer society launched a tool to help doctors and patients decide whether a cancer drug is worth it – the amount of benefit it gives versus its cost. It’s a good starting point for money talks, he said.
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Scientists say they have identified the “sea monster” that washed ashore on an Indonesian beach.
The badly decomposing carcass measures over 15 meters long and baffled scientists since it washed up on Seram Island last week.
Marine biologists now believe the carcass is a dead baleen whale, largely because of a visible skeleton, which would rule out speculation that the creature was a giant squid.
“Giant squid are invertebrates and there are clearly bones visible, so I am very comfortable saying it’s some type of rorqual whale,” said Regina Asmutis-Silvia, executive director of Whale and Dolphin Conservation in an interview with the Huffington Post. “Certain species of baleen whales (rorquals) have ‘ventral grooves’ which run from their chin to their belly button. It is stretchy tissue that expands when they feed.”
Alexander Werth, a whale biologist at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia agrees with the assessment after seeing photos of the carcass on social media that showed the nearly amorphous carcass surrounded by blood in the water. He added that the carcass probably stinks “to high heaven.”
“That’s yet another reason you don’t want to be close to these things, not because it’s a scary, spooky creature, but [because] it would just be releasing some pretty foul, noxious gases,” Werth told Live Science.
Locals have asked the government for help in removing the whale.
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Pregnant women who come down with the flu are at greater risk of illness requiring hospitalization. A new study found that in resource-poor countries, flu vaccination reduced the risk of illness to mother and baby.
An estimated 40 percent of the world’s population lives in subtropical and tropical zones, where influenza sometimes circulates year-round. Yet influenza vaccine is rarely used.
Mark Steinhoff is director of the Global Health Center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital in Ohio. He said the influenza virus, which is often mild in healthy people, can result in hospitalization of pregnant women.
With a growing fetus pressed up against their lungs, Steinhoff says, women with the flu can have trouble breathing. He also said a pregnant woman is more susceptible to illness as the growing baby siphons off her natural defenses.
But in a first-of-its-kind study, Steinhoff and colleagues found vaccinating women year-round in a developing country, Nepal near the Indian border, dramatically reduced the incidence of influenza in mothers and benefited their babies.
The study was published in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.
“It reduced disease in the mothers and in the infants by about 60 percent reduction in the second year. It’s really quite remarkable. But it also reduced the rate of low birth weight — that is, kids born less than 2.5 kilos. It reduced that by 16 percent,” said Steinhoff.
Babies benefited from the shots because they received antibodies against the illness from their mothers while in the womb.
The study
The study ran between April 2011 and September 2013 and involved a total of 3,693 mothers between the ages of 15 and 40.
There were two phases of the trial, with one group of women being vaccinated in the first year and a different group of pregnant women the following year. Half of the women received a placebo.
Because influenza in some countries can circulate year-round, there’s no particular flu season as in more temperate climates. The women were therefore vaccinated at various times with a shot that contained three inactivated flu strains. Each group was followed for up to 180 days to see whether they developed fevers and body aches.
Steinhoff said the benefits of influenza vaccination have long been known in the United States and other Western countries.
“The vaccine you know was developed many years ago. It was known to be safe. There were no bad reactions to it,” Steinhoff said.
He said it’s up to individual countries to decide whether they want to launch influenza vaccination campaigns for pregnant women. In the meantime, he said, researchers will be obtaining additional data on year-round immunization programs in developing countries.
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A regional drought has displaced more than half a million people in Somalia and left the country at risk of famine. A cholera outbreak is further complicating relief efforts, in particular in the southern part of the country where some villages remain under al-Shabab control.
Bay Regional Hospital, the biggest in the southwest federal state, is filled with patients suffering from stomach pain, vomiting, and diarrhea.
Cholera has sickened more than 40,000 people in Somalia since December. More than half of the cases have been in this state. Most of the victims have been malnourished children.
Five-year-old Fatuma was admitted to the cholera treatment ward last night. Her mother Bisharo Mohammed says she can not lose another child.
She says her eldest daughter was suffering from diarrhea, and she died two months ago in Busley village on the outskirts of Baidoa. She says the girl was seven years old.
Cholera treatment
Cholera is treatable. The World Health Organization recommends “prompt administration of oral rehydration salts.” Mohamed says Fatuma is already feeling better with treatment. They hope to be released soon.
But they will not be going home.
Aid agencies say the areas worst hit by cholera and hunger are villages like Busley which are under al-Shabab control. Accessing them is a challenge. Fatuma and her family are among the tens of thousands of people who have walked to government-controlled areas like Baidoa to seek help and are now living in makeshift camps.
World Health Organization cholera expert Dr. Abdinasir Abubakar says the outbreak is getting worse due to security challenges.
“If you look at Bay, Bakool, Middle Juba, Gedo some of those areas where none of us is able to access, the deaths and cases due to cholera is very high, and we expect the situation will get worse,” says Abubakar.
Rains this month in southern and central Somalia have contributed to a surge in cholera cases, according to Bay Regional Hospital cholera treatment ward deputy supervisor Salima Sheikh Shuaib.
She says “the cholera cases were going down, but the past three days we have seen an increase in cholera cases. This morning, we have received 16 cases and most of them are children under the age of five.”
Life in camps
More than 150,000 displaced people are living in the makeshift camps around Baidoa and more continue to arrive.
At the camps, many families do not have plastic tarps or covered places to sleep. Stagnant puddles and mud dot the walkways. There is no regular food provided. Clean water is available, but it is not enough.
Medics supported by UNICEF and the WHO are going to IDP camps around Baidoa to provide oral cholera vaccination to children.
But Abubakar of the WHO says it is hard to contain the spread of cholera so long as the general humanitarian situation is not improving.
“We cannot only solve cholera. We cannot only deal with cholera unless we deal with food insecurity, unless we deal with water issues, malnutrition and I think collectedly both the wash, the health, the nutrition, and the food security partners we are working closely and we are coordinating but again in Somalia one of the challenges. We are facing a shortage of resources to support all these interventions,” says Abubakar.
Somalia continues to report between 200 and 300 cases of cholera nationwide each day.
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The beaches on a remote, uninhabited island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean have the highest amount of plastic debris in the world.
Researchers from the University of Tasmania say Henderson Island, which is more than 5,000 kilometer from any major population center, is strewn with roughly 37.7 million pieces of plastic waste.
Put another way, the beaches on Henderson Island are covered with about 671 pieces of plastic litter per square meter, which researchers say is the highest density ever recorded.
“What’s happened on Henderson Island shows there’s no escaping plastic pollution even in the most distant parts of our oceans,” said Jennifer Lavers of the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies and lead author of a paper about the pollution in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Henderson Island, which is part of the UK’s Pitcairn Islands territory, sits right in the middle of the Pacific Gyre current, which makes it a “focal point” for garbage from South America as well as from fishing boats.
Researchers say their sampling of the debris at five sites on the island leads them to believe there is more than 17 tons of plastic on the island and around 3,570 new pieces of litter being deposited every day.
Lavers noted, “It’s likely that our data actually underestimates the true amount of debris on Henderson Island as we were only able to sample pieces bigger than two millimeters down to a depth of 10 centimeters, and we were unable to sample along cliffs and rocky coastline.”
Every year, the world produces some 300 million tons of plastic, much of which is not recycled. Plastic disintegrates very slowly, and when it ends up floating in the ocean, it can lead to “entanglement and ingestion” by animals, birds and fish.
“Research has shown that more than 200 species are known to be at risk from eating plastic, and 55 percent of the world’s seabirds, including two species found on Henderson Island, are at risk from marine debris,” Lavers said.
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One of the effects of progressive muscle diseases like cerebral palsy is muscle stiffness. There are drugs and therapies that are supposed to help but gauging their effectiveness is challenging. Now there’s a high-tech way that may help provide relief for patients. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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A small outbreak of Ebola virus in Democratic Republic of the Congo is causing alarm among public health officials. A new study outlining containment strategies may help prevent an epidemic similar to the one that engulfed a number of western African countries two years ago.
In the timely report, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an international team of researchers culled 37 studies for the most effective containment strategies.
Pennsylvania State University biology professor Katriona Shea, co-author of the study, said, “The best strategy that we found out of the five that we looked at were funeral containment and public information campaigns [for the] sort of care in the community.”
Ebola virus is spread through coming into contact with the bodily fluids of infected individuals.
Shea said investigators found the No. 1 way to prevent transmission was for loved ones to avoid washing bodies of the deceased prior to burial.
Shea said that information is best conveyed through public health campaigns that also stress the importance of handwashing, personal hygiene and self-quarantine in high-transmission areas.
Don’t wait to get treatment
People suspected of being infected with Ebola, the report found, should also not hesitate to go to the hospital or clinic for evaluation and treatment. But researchers concluded building more hospitals in response to an epidemic to be the least effective way to prevent spread of Ebola within communities.
Shea said investigators undertook the study in response to the Ebola epidemic of 2014-2015, when 28,646 people became infected. Of these, 11,323 people died in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone died as of March 2016, according to the report.
Forty cases of the disease were also reported in the DRC.
Using the prevention strategies outlined in the study and the incidence data from the epidemic, researchers estimated that there would have been a reduction of 3,266 cases of Ebola and 1,633 lives saved.
No consensus on containment
At the height of the epidemic, Shea said there was no consensus on the best ways to contain the Ebola epidemic, and that’s why researchers decided to look into the matter.
“We really wanted to try to do something. Many of us have children, and were moved by stories, individual horrors and so forth,” she said. “Others of us felt something we did scientifically might contribute to making the future outbreaks less horrific.”
There are now three confirmed Ebola deaths in a remote part of the DRC. Public health officials are reportedly investigating a total of nine suspicious cases of the deadly viral infection.
With the virus once again threatening to become a public health menace, Shea said it’s not too early to begin taking aggressive measures to prevent another Ebola epidemic.
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Florida’s Indian River lagoon is considered the most biologically diverse estuary in the Northern Hemisphere. But it is facing a serious threat to the plants and animals in its waters. The water’s surface is increasingly dotted with thousands of dead fish, manatees, birds and other creatures. Faiza Elmasry has more about the problem, the cause and the solution. VOA’s Faith Lapidus narrates.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed on Sunday a second case of Ebola in Democratic Republic of Congo after an outbreak this week of 17 other suspected cases.
Health officials are trying to trace 125 people thought to be linked to the cases identified in the remote northeastern province of Bas-Uele province in northeastern Congo near the border with Central African Republic, WHO’s Congo spokesman Eugene Kabambi said.
Three people have so far died among the 19 suspected and confirmed cases, he added.
It was not immediately clear how the first victim, a deceased male, caught the virus, although past outbreaks have been linked to contact with infected bush meat such as apes.
The outbreak comes just a year after the end of an epidemic in West Africa killed more than 11,300 people mostly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
However, Congo, whose dense forests contain the River Ebola near where the disease was first detected in 1976, has experienced many outbreaks and has mostly succeeded in containing them without large-scale loss of life.
The GAVI global vaccine alliance said on Friday some 300,000 emergency doses of an Ebola vaccine developed by Merck could be available in case of a large-scale outbreak and that it stood ready to support the Congo government on the matter.
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Dr. David Nabarro says he wants to rid the world of two diseases that are close to being eradicated: polio and guinea worm. Polio exists mainly on the Pakistani-Afghan border and in northern Nigeria. Both are conflict zones, where vaccine workers risk their lives to immunize children.
“The last part of eradicating any disease is always the hardest part,” Nabarro said during a visit to VOA. “If you don’t do it, you lose everything. To do it, you’ve got to really bring all the energy and commitment you can to bear.”
The World Health Organization has worked to eliminate polio for more than 30 years. Nigeria was to be declared polio-free this year, meaning the country had no cases for three continuous years, but then the disease returned.
“We must remain vigilant and focused until we are certain that the last case has been found and that we have got everybody protected,” Nabarro said.
Watch: WHO to Vote on New Director-General; David Nabarro Wants the Job
Guinea worm
Nabarro also wants to rid the world of Guinea worm, a disease that starts when people drink water containing fleas infected with guinea worm larvae. The larvae grow in human intestines. And while it is not life-threatening, it is painful when the worm emerges.
In 1986, about 3.5 million people had Guinea worm disease. Last year, 25 people had it. This was the result of efforts by United Nations agencies, the Carter Center, which was founded by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nabarro wants to make more inroads in ending malaria, a disease that threatens nearly half the world’s population. Even through malaria can be prevented and cured, the WHO says it caused nearly half a million deaths in 2015.
Ebola epidemic
During the Ebola epidemic, Nabarro visited the West African countries ravaged by the disease as the U.N. special envoy on Ebola. It took the world a long time to put together an effective response to the epidemic, and before it was over more than 11,000 people died.
The WHO was heavily criticized for the way it handled the pandemic. Nabarro wants to make sure a tragedy of this magnitude does not happen again because of a lack of preparedness.
“I want to be sure the world as a whole helps nations to respond quickly when there’s a threat of infection. Usually, that means that the problem doesn’t get out of control,” he told VOA.
Life of public health service
Nabarro has spent his life working in public health. He worked in Iraq with Save the Children in 1974. He continued to work in public health positions until he joined the World Health Organization in 1999 and has worked at the WHO and for the U.N. since then. Nabarro has worked on malaria programs.
Now, he hopes to be elected director-general of the World Health Organization when the World Health Assembly meets in Geneva May 23.
This is the first time candidates will be elected to become director-general of WHO by member nations.
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Dr. David Nabarro says he wants to rid the world of two diseases that are close to being eradicated: polio and guinea worm. During a visit to VOA, he also said he wants to work to end malaria if he becomes the next head of the World Health Organization. This is the first time candidates will be elected to become director-general of WHO. VOA’s Carol Pearson has more.
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Democratic Republic of Congo Ebola Outbreak
On May 13, the World Health Organization declared an Ebola outbreak in Bas-Uele province, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, after a person tested positive for the Ebola virus.
The last Ebola outbreak in Congo happened in 2014 and killed more than 40 people.
In 2013, an Ebola crisis began in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
Congo’s outbreaks have all been in areas not linked to the West African cases.
2013-16 Western Africa Ebola Outbreak
Where: Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone
Began: December 2013
Ended*: March 2016
* WHO declared the outbreak in West Africa a public health emergency in August 2014. It declared the end of the transmission of Ebola in Guinea in December 2015, Liberia in January 2016 and in Sierra Leone in March 2016.
Even after the last transmission, WHO warned the countries were still at risk of sporadic transmission of Ebola because of the presence of the virus in some survivors.
WHO noted flare-ups of Ebola cases in Guinea in March 2016 and Liberia in June 2016.
2013-16 West Africa Ebola Outbreak, Death Tolls*
Guinea 3,814 cases 2,544 deaths
Liberia 10,678 cases 4,810 deaths
Sierra Leone 14,124 cases 3,956 deaths
Total 28,616 cases 11,310 deaths
Source: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
* The 2013-16 West Africa Ebola outbreak was the largest in history.
Ebola Symptoms
Symptoms of the virus may include:
Fever
Severe headache
Muscle pain
Weakness
Fatigue
Diarrhea
Vomiting
Abdominal (stomach) pain
Unexplained hemorrhage (bleeding or bruising)
* Symptoms may appear anywhere from two to 21 days after exposure to Ebola, but the average is eight to 10 days.
Prevention
Avoid areas of known outbreaks
Wash hands frequently
Avoid bushmeat
Take precautions and avoid direct contact with infected people
* There is no known treatment for Ebola. Symptoms of Ebola and complications are treated as they appear.
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The World Health Organization says the Democratic Republic of the Congo is again facing an outbreak of the contagious and deadly Ebola virus.
Congolese Health Minister Oly Ilunga announced Saturday that three people had died of the virus in the northeast of the country.
Ilunga urged people not to panic and said officials had taken all necessary measures to respond to the outbreak.
The World Health Organization said it was working with Congolese authorities to deploy health workers in the remote area where the three deaths occurred, all on April 22. Eleven other cases are suspected in the area.
WHO’s regional director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, went to the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, on Friday to discuss disease response.
The remoteness of the affected area, 1,300 kilometers from Kinshasa, means word of the outbreak was slow to emerge. WHO said specialist teams were expected to arrive in the area, known as the Likati health zone, within the next day or two.
This was the first outbreak of the virus in DRC since 2014, when 49 people died of Ebola.
Larger outbreak
Experts say the 2014 DRC outbreak was not linked to a much larger outbreak that killed 11,000 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, beginning in 2013. They say active virus transmission for that outbreak was halted last year.
In December 2016, The Lancet, a medical journal, published results of a WHO-led trial showing that the world’s first Ebola vaccine provides substantial protection against the virus. Among more than 11,000 people who were vaccinated in the trial, no cases of Ebola virus disease occurred.
Reports say the vaccine is now awaiting formal licensing clearance.
Ebola, named for the Congolese river near where it was first identified in 1976, begins with a sudden fever, aching muscles, diarrhea and vomiting. It is a hemorrhagic fever, marked by spontaneous bleeding from internal organs and, in most cases, death. It can be transmitted by close contact with infected animals or people, usually through blood or other bodily fluids.
People can contract the virus through direct contact with victims’ bodies at funerals. Caretakers, nurses and doctors treating Ebola patients also are at high risk.
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Violence in the southeastern part of the Central African Republic, where five U.N. peacekeepers were killed this month, has made it tougher for HIV-positive residents in the remote, lawless region to get treatment.
The prevalence rate of HIV in southeastern C.A.R. is 13 percent, nearly three times the national average.
The migration of people between the bordering areas of South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo contributes to the spread of the disease in all three countries.
“Here, it’s a crossing where everything converges. It’s why the level of HIV is high,” said Bienvenu Sapioko, a government nurse who works at the only hospital in Zemio. He said the rebels and refugees in the area also increase the high prevalence.
An internal U.N. report obtained by VOA found HIV rates increased following the arrival of the Ugandan security forces in the C.A.R. in 2009. The Ugandan and American forces tasked with tracking down Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army ended their mission in April and are heading home.
With prostitution, polygamy and effectively no state authority in the area, weak education contributes to the problem.
Stigma, superstition
“People believe in the power of nature and traditional doctors. So bush doctors, shamans are also very common in the community,” said Olivier Pennec, the Doctors Without Borders project coordinator in Zemio.
Stigma compounds the problem.
“Before, the people didn’t treat themselves. The people would hide the microbes, this disease,” said Marcel Elonga, a community leader. They would hide and “speak about this parasite, parasite, parasite.”
HIV-positive people in local communities can also find themselves shunned by their peers.
“They don’t want him in the community,” community leader Pierre Yakanza said, describing how some people here see an HIV-positive person. “They don’t want to be close to him. ‘Leave him over there. We don’t want to associate with him or have him in the community meetings or give him a job.’ He’s rejected.”
Local health workers spread information about safe sex, but even access to condoms remains a challenge.
Treatment available
More than 1,500 people now come to Zemio’s hospital from nearby and as far away as Uganda, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo for the free HIV treatment offered by Doctors without Borders.
Hospital officials said previously one person would die every month or so from the disease, but they haven’t registered a death since 2014.
In 2012, Agnes Davouragouni said she used to be sick all the time.
“When I did the test and found out I was positive, my husband said he doesn’t have HIV, so he left me the same day,” said the 35-year-old woman, who now lives alone with her three children, selling wood and charcoal to get by.
Once a year, Davouragouni walks 45 kilometers to Zemio over the course of two days in order to get a checkup as part of her treatment. She walks mostly at night and sleeps under a tree along the way.
“The roads are very insecure. I don’t have a motorcycle or the money to pay to get here,” she said. “There’s a lot of fear to travel on these roads.”
Bandits and rebel groups, including the remnants of the Lord’s Resistance Army, all move around the area. The security void will worsen with the departure of Ugandan and American forces in the next few months.
Group efforts
Recognizing the challenges of getting medication, Doctors Without Borders developed a new community approach in which HIV-positive patients work in groups to bring back antiretroviral drugs in bulk every six months, reducing travel time, costs and exposure to risk.
Farmer Moïse Ouele picks up the antiretroviral drugs for his group of about 30 people and drives them two hours down the road to his village Kitesa, about 50 kilometers away.
“It was really tiring for me to come each month to the hospital,” Ouele said. “But now, this program helps a lot with this problem, despite the insecurity of the LRA that is growing.”
Doctors Without Borders is transitioning out of the area at the end of the year and is handing over the administration of the program to the Ministry of Health.
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Postpartum hemorrhaging is the leading cause of maternal deaths. An estimated 127,000 women bleed to death after giving birth. But there are hopeful signs that a widely available drug could save a third of those who hemorrhage after birth. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Among the first executive actions at the White House this year, President Donald Trump reinstated a law that bans any U.S. aid to international organizations that support the practice of abortion.
Trump’s memorandum on the “Mexico City policy” reversed one aspect of U.S. foreign aid policy that had been in effect under former President Barack Obama. It changed the way U.S. financial assistance is distributed internationally, and most likely will affect the lives of many women in developing countries.
The “Mexico City policy” dates to 1984, when then-President Ronald Reagan declared it at a population conference in the Mexican capital. Opponents call the U.S. prohibition on aid to groups that perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning a “global gag rule.”
U.S. foreign aid practices have switched back and forth several times since 1984; aid was barred to pro-abortion-rights groups whenever a Republican president was in power, then was reinstated when a Democrat controlled the White House.
WATCH: Reaction to Trump’s ‘Global Gag Rule’
Abortion stance affects aid
The political divide between the two major U.S. political parties is based on a fundamental issue: Republicans consider abortion an assault on human life, and most pledge to resist it in every way possible; Democrats say a woman should have the right to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy, for financial or personal reasons, and that the decision should not be directed by government.
The deep ideological divide over abortion affects many aspects of American politics, and certainly permeates considerations about U.S. foreign aid.
“The guiding principle for our policy,” said Melissa Israel of the conservative Heritage Foundation, “really needs to be rooted in the respect for the most important fundamental human right of all, and that’s the right to life.”
Restoring the “Mexico City policy” was expected when a Republican administration took over this year, following eight years of Democratic control of the White House. What was not expected was how vigorously Trump would expand the scope of the anti-abortion rule.
Trump policy affects $9.5 billion
He broadened the policy to affect about $9.5 billion in U.S. global health aid, said Amanda Klasing of Human Rights Watch — funds that would have been destined for programs to combat HIV/AIDS, to promote maternal and child health and to prevent childhood diseases.
Organizations working on AIDS, malaria, or maternal and child health will have to make sure that none of their programs involves so much as an abortion referral.
The Heritage Foundation’s Israel disagrees with the notion that Trump’s action has greatly expanded the effect of Republicans’ anti-abortion principles.
“We are not cutting funding for family planning services or for women’s health,” she said. “We are saying that if you want to partner with the United States, then there are some fundamental things you have to agree to as a condition to receiving these funds.”
Ban on abortion information, too
Not-for-profit groups hoping to get U.S. funds to support their work around the world must not perform abortions or provide any information about them, even if they use their own funds, from nongovernment sources, for abortion services.
Opponents say this will have a chilling effect on women’s health.
“It means,” said Klasing of Human Rights Watch, “that when a doctor sits down with a woman, if she has a health complication and she’s entitled under her local law to access a safe abortion, that doctor cannot give her a referral, or provide her information she needs to take care of herself.”
In rural areas of developing countries, a physician often takes care of a variety of medical needs, including providing information about reproductive health. Such medical practices would be proscribed from receiving any U.S. assistance. Advocates cite research that has shown family planning services result in fewer unplanned pregnancies, fewer maternal deaths and fewer abortions.
56 million abortions worldwide each year
The World Health Organization estimates that approximately 56 million abortions take place every year worldwide. More than half of those are in developing countries.
“Trump’s global gag rule will have a direct and devastating effect in Kenya and sub-Saharan Africa in several ways,” said Liza Muringo Kimbo, the director in Kenya for Ipas Africa Alliance, a nonprofit group whose principal goal is advocating for safe abortion and reforming laws that harm women.
The current U.S. policy “will lead to more unwanted pregnancies,” Muringo Kimbo said. “It will lead to more unsafe abortions, increased deaths of women and young women, and even increased numbers of newborn deaths.”
Muringo Kimbo noted that her predictions have been borne out in the past, whenever a Republican administration in Washington reinstated the “Mexico City policy.”
Other countries have begun their own initiatives to counter the impact of U.S. anti-abortion policies. The Dutch have created the “She Decides Initiative,” and in Britain, an upcoming conference, “Family Planning 2020,” will try to bring together donor and recipient countries.
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Former U.S. first lady Michelle Obama has criticized the new Trump administration’s directives on school lunches during her first high-profile public appearance since leaving the White House.
Obama, who led a nationwide effort to reduce childhood obesity while first lady, told an annual health conference Friday in Washington that more nutritious school lunches are important because millions of children receive federally subsidized meals at school.
The Trump administration recently said it would delay federal rules promoted by Obama aimed at trying to make school lunches healthier.
Without mentioning the Trump administration by name, Obama urged parents to think about the new government directives and the motives behind them.
“I don’t care what state you live in, take me out of the equation — like me, don’t like me — but think about why someone is OK with your kids eating crap. Why would you celebrate that?” she said during the keynote speech.
She said healthier school lunches should not be a political issue.
“You have to stop and think, ‘Why don’t you want our kids to have good food at school?’ What is wrong with you? And why is that a partisan issue? Why would that be political? What is going on?’ ” she asked.
In one of his first major actions, Sonny Perdue, Trump’s new agriculture secretary, said the department will delay some school lunch rules, including reducing sodium in the meals and increasing whole wheat.
“If kids aren’t eating the food and it’s ending up in the trash, they aren’t getting any nutrition … undermining the intent of the program,” Perdue said earlier this month. The secretary said he appreciates what Obama wanted to do, but he said his department wants to adjust the program to make the healthier food more appetizing.
Under the 2012 Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, schools that wanted federal meal subsidies would have to put limits on salt and fat in lunches, and add more fruit, vegetables and whole grains to the menus.
Health experts say U.S. children do not exercise enough and that one child in six is overweight.
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The killing of five U.N. peacekeepers in the Central African Republic this month points to the continued insecurity in the southeastern part of the country. That violence has had an impact on public health with the southeast reporting a rate of HIV infection that is three times the national average and HIV-positive residents struggle to get treatment. For VOA, Zack Baddorf has the story from the town of Zemio.
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An exoplanet located 437 light years away could shed light on the different ways planets form around their stars.
HAT-P-26b, which astronomers call a “warm Neptune,” has a “primitive” atmosphere made almost entirely of hydrogen and helium. Its atmosphere is not cloudy and has a “strong water signature,” astronomers say.
They say the planet, which was first spotted in 2011, is like Neptune and Uranus on mass, but that HAT-P-26b probably formed closer to the star it orbits, or at some point later in the development of the system – or both.
“Astronomers have just begun to investigate the atmospheres of these distant Neptune-mass planets, and almost right away, we found an example that goes against the trend in our solar system,” said Hannah Wakeford, a post-doctoral researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the study published in the May 12, 2017, issue of Science. “This kind of unexpected result is why I really love exploring the atmospheres of alien planets.”
The analysis of HAT-P-26b’s atmosphere was done using both the Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes as the planet transits its star. That allows astronomers to peek into the planet’s atmosphere and analyze the light wavelengths that pass through the planet’s atmosphere.
“To have so much information about a warm Neptune is still rare, so analyzing these data sets simultaneously is an achievement in and of itself,” said co-author Tiffany Kataria of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
Astronomers were also able to use that data to determine the planet’s metallicity, as a measure of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium in the atmosphere. Metallicity can be used to determine how the planet formed.
For example, Jupiter has a metallicity about two to five times that of our sun. Saturn has about 10 times as much. Astronomers say those planets, referred to as gas giants, are almost entirely composed of hydrogen and helium.
The next two planets out, Neptune and Uranus, which are called ice giants, have metallicities about 100 times that of the sun.
Astronomers say that’s because Neptune and Uranus formed on the colder part of the disk of debris that circled our sun as the planets developed. They were likely bombarded by icy debris rich in heavier elements.
Jupiter and Saturn formed in a warmer part of the disc, meaning they weren’t hit by as many of those objects.
This pattern has been observed on two other exoplanets, HAT-P-11b and WASP-43b.
HAT-P-26b does not follow that pattern because despite being relatively close to its star, it has low metallicity, similar to Jupiter.
“This analysis shows that there is a lot more diversity in the atmospheres of these exoplanets than we were expecting, which is providing insight into how planets can form and evolve differently than in our solar system,” said David Sing of the University of Exeter and the second author of the paper. “I would say that has been a theme in the studies of exoplanets: Researchers keep finding surprising diversity.”
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A person has tested positive for the Ebola virus in the northern Democratic Republic of Congo.
A spokesman for the World Health Organization says officials declared an Ebola outbreak in Bas-Uele province after laboratory tests confirmed the presence of the virus.
The spokesman, Christian Lindmeier, tells VOA English to Africa that nine people in the area fell sick with what is currently listed as hemorrhagic fever. He said three people have died.
The WHO said on its Twitter feed it is working with Congo’s Ministry of Health to contain the outbreak.
The ministry says in a statement that teams of doctors, coordinators and specialists are headed to the remote area and should arrive by Saturday.
The last Ebola outbreak in Congo happened in 2014 and killed more than 40 people.
A much larger outbreak swept across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone that year and killed more than 11,000.
After several large-scale incidents at nuclear power plants around the globe, public pressure in some countries led to abandoning the technology. But manufacturers say the new generation reactors are much safer, and their use will dramatically lower the air pollution that causes global warming. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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The foreign ministers of the eight Arctic Council nations will meet to discuss climate change this week, amid news last month that temperatures in the pristine region are warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world.
A high-level meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and his counterparts from Russia, Greenland, Canada, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Iceland begins Thursday in Fairbanks.
As Tillerson joins the talks, the Trump administration has not yet decided whether to remain a party to the 2015 U.N. Paris Agreement on responding to climate change.
Watch: Alaskan Natives Look to Arctic Council to Preserve Waters, Way of Life
Any changes to U.S. climate policy would directly affect the lives of Alaska Natives, who depend on the Arctic Sea to survive.
In recent reports, scientists said the temperatures in the Arctic were warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world, sea ice was at record lows and permafrost was thawing.
If current warming rates hold, the world could see an ice-free Arctic by 2040, researchers said.
Worrisome
The studies have alarmed Alaska Natives.
Gabe Tegoseak spoke to VOA about growing up in an Inuit household.
“To put that in perspective, I grew up with no running water most of my life,” Tegoseak said. “A very old-school tradition, my parents they favored it that way and it humbles me.
“I had to walk to a freshwater lake, break some ice on my sled — and this is a wooden sled I used to pull around and break it up — and then bring it home, and that was our drinking water, this big block of ice,” he said.
As the ice block melted, Tegoseak’s family first used it for drinking water, then to wash their faces and bodies, and then to clean the floor, not wasting a drop, he said.
Many people in Alaska, including indigenous people, depend on the oil and gas industry for a paycheck, he told VOA. But he said he thought an executive order signed this month by President Donald Trump to reverse Obama administration policy and open up Arctic waters to drilling was shortsighted.
“We’re trading our rights and our ability to subsistence hunt and live traditionally, which is over 10,000-plus years old, for a cash economy, which [is a] different mindset. So when we catch a whale, for instance, we share it all,” Tegoseak said.
“Our view is that everybody gets to [have] a piece of whale, and it doesn’t matter, creed or color. Everybody gets a fair share,” he stressed.
Tegoseak said he had asked many Alaska Natives on the North Slope about what they’d do if they had to choose between having their beloved whale meat, called muktuk, or an iPad. They responded that they’d choose muktuk, he said.
Seen as shortsighted
Many environmental experts agree that drilling in the Arctic is risky and shortsighted, including Sally Yozell of the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan research center in Washington.
“I think it’s rather shortsighted for a number of reasons. You know the Arctic waters are cold, and it’s hard to — we have not figured out yet how to address an oil or gas calamity up there at all. I mean, the cold water, all one has to do to is to have witnessed what happened with the Exxon Valdez many years ago to see that that oil stayed in those waters for 20 years,” Yozell said.
The Valdez tanker struck a reef in Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989. Nearly 11 million gallons of oil was spilled.
Experts said the accelerated melting of Arctic Sea ice will most likely lead to more shipping, drilling and other economic activity in the region.
Mark Royce of Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship told VOA he was concerned.
“Unfortunately, the retreating ice, the diminution of the perpetual winters there, and the warming of their environment is giving rise to still more steam for plans for rapacious exploration and exploitative development,” Royce said. “It’s a vicious cycle. But what we’re seeing in the Arctic, in the very seas around Alaska, presents just a particularly virulent form of this at a crucial time.”
Tillerson’s remarks will most likely be followed closely by the other seven Arctic Council partners, who want to make climate change a focus of the final statement when the meeting concludes Thursday.
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