A community of breastfeeding women in Uganda is helping mothers who are struggling not to just feed their newborn babies, but to keep them alive. Halima Athumani and Mukasa Francis report from Uganda’s capital Kampala.
…
BANGUI, Central African Republic — African health officials said mpox cases have spiked by 160% so far this year, warning the risk of further spread is high given the lack of effective treatments or vaccines on the continent.
The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report released Wednesday that mpox, also known as monkeypox, has now been detected in 10 African countries this year including Congo, which has more than 96% of all cases and deaths.
Officials said nearly 70% of cases in Congo are in children younger than 15, who also accounted for 85% of deaths.
There have been an estimated 14,250 cases so far this year, nearly as many as all of last year. Compared to the first seven months of 2023, the Africa CDC said cases are up 160% and deaths are up 19%, to 456.
Burundi and Rwanda both reported the virus for the first time this week.
New outbreaks were also declared this week in Kenya and Central African Republic, with cases extending to its densely populated capital, Bangui.
“We are very concerned about the cases of monkeypox, which is ravaging (the capital region),” the Central African Republic’s public health minister, Pierre Somsé, said Monday.
On Wednesday, Kenya’s Health Ministry said it found mpox in a passenger traveling from Uganda to Rwanda at a border crossing in southern Kenya. In a statement, the ministry said that a single mpox case was enough to warrant an outbreak declaration.
The Africa CDC said the mpox death rate this year, at about 3%, “has been much higher on the African continent compared to the rest of the world.” During the global mpox emergency in 2022, fewer than 1% of people infected with the virus died.
Earlier this year, scientists reported the emergence of a new form of the deadlier version of mpox, which can kill up 10% of people, in a Congolese mining town that they feared might spread more easily among people. Mpox spreads via close contact with infected people, including via sex.
An analysis of patients hospitalized from October to January in eastern Congo suggested that recent genetic mutations in the virus were the result of the ongoing spread in people.
Unlike in previous mpox outbreaks, where lesions were mostly seen on the chest, hands and feet, the new form of mpox causes milder symptoms and lesions mostly on the genitals, making it harder to spot.
The medical charity Doctors Without Borders called the expanding mpox outbreak “worrying,” noting the disease had also been seen in camps for displaced people in Congo’s North Kivu region, which shares a border with Rwanda.
“There is a real risk of explosion, given the huge population movements in and out,” said Dr. Louis Massing, the group’s medical director for Congo.
Mpox outbreaks in the West have mostly been shut down with the help of vaccines and treatments, but barely any have been available in African countries including Congo.
“We can only plead … for vaccines to arrive in the country and as quickly as possible so that we can protect the populations in the areas most affected,” Massing said in a statement.
In May, WHO said that despite the ongoing outbreak in Africa and the potential for the disease to spread internationally, not a single donor dollar had been invested in containing mpox.
Earlier this week, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations announced it was starting a study in Congo and other African countries next month to see if giving people an mpox shot after they had been exposed to the disease could help prevent severe illness and death.
…
PHOENIX, ARIZONA — Mexican farm worker Avelino Vazquez Navarro didn’t have air conditioning in the motor home where he died last month in Washington state as temperatures surged into the triple digits.
For the last dozen years, the 61-year-old spent much of the year working near Pasco, Washington, sending money to his wife and daughters in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit, Mexico, and traveling back every Christmas.
Now, the family is raising money to bring his remains home.
“If this motor home would have had AC and it was running, then it most likely would have helped,” said Franklin County Coroner Curtis McGary, who determined Vazquez Navarro’s death was heat-related, with alcohol intoxication as a contributing cause.
Most heat-related deaths involve homeless people living outdoors. But those who die inside without sufficient cooling also are vulnerable. They are typically older than 60, living alone and with a limited income.
Underscoring the inequities around energy and access to air conditioning as summers grow hotter, many victims are Black, Indigenous or Latino, such as Vazquez Navarro.
“Air conditioning is not a luxury, it’s a necessity,” said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association, which represents state energy assistance programs. “It’s a public health issue, and it’s an affordability issue.”
The most vulnerable
People living in mobile homes or in aging trailers and RVs are especially likely to lack proper cooling. Nearly a quarter of the indoor heat deaths in Arizona’s Maricopa County last year were in those kinds of dwellings, which are transformed into a broiling tin can by the blazing desert sun.
“Mobile homes can really heat up because they don’t always have the best insulation and are often made of metal,” said Dana Kennedy, AARP director in Arizona, where many heat-related deaths occur.
Research shows mobile home dwellers are particularly at risk in blistering hot Phoenix, where 45-degree Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) weather is forecast for this weekend.
“People are exposed to the elements more than in other housing,” said Patricia Solís, executive director of the Knowledge Exchange for Resilience at Arizona State University, who worked on mapping hot weather impacts on mobile home parks for a state preparedness plan.
Worse, some parks bar residents from making modifications that could cool their homes, citing esthetic concerns. A new Arizona law required parks for the first time this summer to let residents install cooling methods such as window units, shade awnings and shutters.
In Arizona’s Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, 156 of 645 heat-related deaths last year occurred indoors in uncooled environments. In most cases, a unit was present but was not working, was without electricity or turned off, public health officials said.
One victim was Shirley Marie Kouplen, who died after being overcome by high temperatures inside her Phoenix mobile home amid a heat wave when the extension cord providing her electricity was unplugged.
Emergency responders recorded the 70-year-old widow’s body temperature at 41.7 C (107.1 F). Kouplen, who was diabetic and had high blood pressure, was rushed to a hospital, where she died.
Kouplen apparently was struggling financially, if the shabby condition of her mobile home was any indication. It still sits on Lot 60, surrounded by a chain-link fence with a locked gate and a dirt driveway overgrown with weeds.
It’s unclear how the cord got unplugged, if Kouplen had an electricity account or how she got her power.
“Losing your air conditioning is now a life-threatening event,” said Texas A&M University climate scientist Andrew Dessler, who grew up in hot, humid Houston in the 1970s. “You didn’t want to lose your air conditioning, but it wasn’t going to kill you. And now it is.”
Arizona’s regulated utilities have been banned since 2022 from cutting off power during the summer, following the 2018 death of a 72-year-old woman after Arizona Public Service disconnected her electricity over a $51 debt.
Ann Porter, spokesperson for Arizona Public Service, which provides electricity to homes in the park where Kouplen lived, said “due to privacy concerns” the company could not say if she had an account at the time of her death or in the past. Porter said the utility does not cut power from June 1 to Oct. 15.
Cutoffs can occur after those dates if mounting debts are not paid.
Arizona is among 19 states with shut-off protections, leaving about half of the U.S. population without safeguards against losing electricity during the summer, the National Energy Assistance Directors Association said in a new study.
Almost 20% of very-low-income families have no air conditioning at all, especially in places such as Washington state, where they weren’t commonly installed before climate-fueled heat waves grew increasingly stronger, more frequent and longer lasting.
Not only in the Southwest
In the Pacific Northwest, several hundred people died during a 2021 heat wave, prompting Portland, Oregon, to launch a program to provide portable cooling units to vulnerable, low-income people.
Chicago, better known for its cold winters, saw a heat wave kill 739 mostly older people over five days in 1995. Amid high humidity and temperatures over 37.7 C (100 F), most victims had no air conditioning or couldn’t afford to turn on their units.
In 2022, Chicago adopted a cooling ordinance after three women died in their apartments in a building for older adults on an unusually warm spring day. Certain residential buildings must now have at least one air-conditioned common area for cooling when the heat index exceeds 26.6 C (80 F) and cooling is unavailable in individual units.
Nonprofits in historically hotter areas such as Arizona also are trying to better address the inequities low-income people face during the sweltering summers. The Phoenix-based community agency Wildfire recently raised money to buy over $2 million worth of air conditioning equipment to help 150 households statewide over three years, Executive Director Kelly McGowan said.
Laws protect renters in some places. Phoenix landlords must ensure that air conditioning units cool to 28 C (82 F) or below and that evaporative coolers lower the temperature to 30C (86 F).
Palm Springs, California, and Las Vegas, Nevada, both desert cities, have ordinances requiring landlords to offer air conditioning in rental dwellings. Dallas, where temperatures can pass 43.3 C (110 F) in the summer, has a similar law.
But most renters pay their own electricity costs, leaving them to agonize whether they can afford to even turn on the cooling or how high to set the thermostat.
A new report estimates the average cost for U.S. families to keep cool from June to September will grow nationwide by 7.9% this year, from $661 in 2023 to $719 this summer.
Wolf noted the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which grants money to states to help families pay for heating and cooling, is underfunded, with 80% going to heat homes in winter.
…
MEXICO CITY — Gliding above her neighborhood in a cable car on a recent morning, Sonia Estefanía Palacios Díaz scanned a sea of blue and black water tanks, tubes and cables looking for rain harvesting systems.
“There’s one!” she said, pointing out a black tank hooked up to a smaller blue unit with connecting tubes snaking up to the roof where water is collected.
“I’m always looking for different rainwater harvesting systems,” she said, smiling. “I’m also always looking for places to install one.”
Driven by prolonged drought and inconsistent public water delivery, many Mexico City residents are turning to rainwater. Pioneering company Isla Urbana, which does both nonprofit and for-profit work, has installed more than 40,000 rain catchment systems across Mexico since the company was founded 15 years ago. And Mexico City’s government has invested in the installation of 70,000 systems since 2019, still a drop in the bucket for the sprawling metropolis of around 9 million.
But there’s little education and limited resources to maintain the systems after installation, leading the systems to fall into disuse or for residents to sell off the parts.
Enter Palacios Díaz and a group of other women who make up the cooperative Pixcatl, which means harvest of water in the Indigenous Nahuatl language.
In lower-income areas like Iztapalapa — Mexico City’s most populous borough — the group tries to keep systems functioning while also educating residents on how to maintain them. That includes brainstorming their own designs and providing residents with low-cost options for additional materials.
Palacios Díaz has lived with water scarcity in Iztapalapa as far back as she can remember. “Here, people will get in line starting at 3 in the morning to get water (from distribution trucks) up until 2 in the afternoon,” she said from her mother’s home. “There was a time in which we went for more than a month without a regular supply of water.”
Earlier this year, the reservoirs that supply the capital were perilously low. Authorities reduced the amount of water being released and neighborhoods not accustomed to water scarcity faced a new reality.
Entering the rainy season, most of Mexico was in moderate to severe drought. Mexico’s reservoirs are beginning to approach half their capacity, but they haven’t filled by much, according to recent reports by the National Water Commission.
The country depends on the rains — which normally peter out in October — to fill the reservoirs, but the drought has taken them so low that that might take years.
That’s encouraged many Mexicans like Palacios Díaz to turn to rainwater harvesting.
At the height of the pandemic, she taught classes on urban farming and water harvesting at a local community space. It wasn’t until her students said they wanted to learn how to install and understand their own systems that she seriously considered taking a government course. After enrolling in a training program in 2022 to become an installer, she met other young women from the city interested in water harvesting systems and they formed the cooperative.
Near the skirt of a volcano on the fringes of Iztapalapa, Lizbeth Esther Pineda Castro, another member of the cooperative, and Palacios Díaz adjusted a ladder to reach the roof of a small house. The two-story home inherited by Sara Huitzil Morales and her niece sits in Iztapalapa’s Buenavista neighborhood.
Huitzil’s mother had qualified for a free water harvesting system from Mexico City’s government in 2021. After the installation, Huitzil requested Pixcatl’s maintenance since she wasn’t sure how to take care of the system.
Sporting their navy polos with the Pixcatl logo, Pineda and Palacios Díaz cleared debris off the roof so the system only collects fresh rain.
“We also add a little bit of soap and chlorine to clean the pipes,” said Palacios Díaz as she swept the liquid down a connecting tube that leads to the harvesting system.
Downstairs, they joined the other members of the cooperative in a courtyard to look at the giant 2,500-liter water tank, enough to serve Huitzil’s needs for several months when filled. The colossal container stood nearly as tall as Palacios Díaz. Another cooperative member cleared a filter of leaves and dirt.
Last, Palacios Díaz plopped in a couple of chlorine pills to clean and disinfect the water. The frequency of the entire maintenance process depends on several factors, including how much water is in the tank, how much has been used, and whether it has rained.
Huitzil said before the harvesting system, she endured water shortages and rationing. The publicly available water was consistently dirty and “dark like chocolate.” She often used the water that remained from doing laundry to clean the courtyard. Sometimes when dirty water would arrive, she would put it in buckets and wait for the dirt to settle to the bottom, using the cleanest for showering.
The system has transformed her daily use of water, and she doesn’t have to think twice about whether it’s safe. The system initially uses six filters, plus three more if the water is to be used for drinking.
“The water is good, it’s so good!” said Huitzil. “My clothes come out very clean and the water is sweet. You can even harvest it to be cleaner to drink.”
With more than 1.8 million residents, Iztapalapa has been one of the primary beneficiaries of Mexico City’s harvesting system program. But after two years, the city stopped giving away free systems when many residents, facing economic hardship and sometimes struggling to maintain the systems, sold off their parts.
“It should be easy to maintain, but it’s tedious,” Palacios Diaz said. “Unfortunately, we find ourselves in a scenario in which we not only have environmental problems, but economic problems.”
Loreta Castro Reguera, an architecture professor at Mexico’s National Autonomous University, focuses much of her work on water and urban design. She said rainwater harvesting is a great solution because during Mexico’s rainy season residents can use rainwater instead of water from the Cutzamala system — a reservoir that provides water to Mexico City and the State of Mexico.
Palacios Díaz dreams of rainwater systems in markets, malls, and other community spaces. The cooperative is also working on designs personalized for their clients’ needs — whether for a low-cost system or to fulfill a greater demand for water.
As women, she and the other members of Pixcatl want to set an example for those who want to get involved in water harvesting.
“I think it’s really beautiful we can inspire young girls and show women in another context,” said another member, Abigail López Durán, “that we can also use tools and aren’t afraid to get hurt.”
…
GENEVA — U.N. agencies warn that the demolition of a critical water facility in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip increases the risk of infectious diseases as people are forced to drink unsafe water while sanitary conditions continue to deteriorate.
“Until recently, that reservoir served thousands and thousands of internally displaced people who had sought refuge in Rafah in the area,” James Elder, UNICEF spokesperson, told journalists at a briefing in Geneva on Tuesday.
“Now without it, vulnerable children and families are likely to be forced again increasingly to resort to unsafe water, so putting them again at all those risks that we see time after time, day after day in Gaza — dehydration, malnutrition, diseases,” he said.
The Israeli daily Haaretz reported Monday that the troops blew up the central reservoir “on the orders of the brigade commanders” but without receiving permission from the senior level of the Southern Command. It added that the incident was being investigated by Israel’s Military Police as “a suspected violation of international law.”
Infections spreading
Elder said the destruction of the Canada Well reservoir “is yet another grim reminder of the assaults on families who already are in desperate need of water.”
“We have seen spikes in diarrhea, in skin infections — all due to a lack of access to hygiene and a lack of access to water,” he said, noting that people in emergencies require a minimum of 15 liters (almost 4 gallons) of water per person per day.
Now, the range of water availability in Gaza has been reduced to between 2 and 9 liters per person, per day, and some people are getting just a fraction of that, Elder said.
“Somehow, people are holding on, but of course, we are now in that deathly cycle whereby children are very malnourished. There is immense heat. There is [a] lack of water. There is a horrendous lack of sanitation, and that is the cycle,” he said.
The World Health Organization reports a surge in infectious diseases in the Gaza Strip. As of July 7, it has recorded nearly 1 million cases of acute respiratory infections, 577,000 cases of acute watery diarrhea, 107,000 of acute jaundice syndrome and 12,000 of bloody diarrhea. It also has recorded nearly 200,000 cases of scabies, lice, skin rashes, chicken pox and other illnesses.
Polio threat
The recent identification of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 in Gaza’s sewage system is of particular concern. Under prevailing conditions in Gaza, there is a high risk of spread of this paralytic, deadly disease within the Palestinian enclave and across borders.
“Having a vaccine-derived polio virus in the sewage very likely means that it is out there somewhere in people,” WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier said. “It most likely is in the population, but that does not necessarily mean that we see an outbreak of cases.
“But of course, we need to be prepared. We need to be utterly prepared. And we need vaccinations, and we need vaccination campaigns,” he said.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebteyesus has announced that the organization will be sending more than 1 million doses of polio vaccine to Gaza to avert the spread of the disease.
“While no cases of polio have been recorded yet, without immediate action, it is just a matter of time before it reaches the thousands of children who have been left unprotected,” he said, adding that infants under 2 are especially vulnerable “because many have not been vaccinated over the nine months of conflict.”
Before Israel began its military offensive in Gaza following a brutal attack on Israel by Hamas militants on October 7, nearly the whole population of Gaza had been immunized against polio.
However, due to the impact of the conflict, “coverage of polio now is around 89%, down from around 99% before the conflict,” UNICEF’s Elder said. “Hence, there is an increased risk for children. Now, if the child gets the full course of the vaccine, then the risk of the child getting paralyzed by polio is negligible.
“This is why it is so critical that all children are immunized. But the mass displacement, the decimation of the health infrastructure, the tremendously insecure operating environment — they all make it much more difficult, hence putting more children at risk,” he said.
Cases of polio have declined by 99% since WHO launched its global polio eradication campaign in 1988.
WHO reports polio now is endemic only in Pakistan and Afghanistan. However, more than 30 countries, including Egypt and Israel, are subject to outbreaks. The reemergence of polio tends to occur in areas of conflict or instability and within countries with poor health systems.
“We were very, very close to eradicating polio fully,” WHO spokesperson Lindmeier said. “As you know, wartime, unfortunately, creates the situation where it is very difficult to get that last mile. And it has been less than a mile that we needed to go.
“There are a few pockets around the world. Hopefully, Gaza will not become another one,” he said.
…
Bangkok — Millions of lives could be put at risk unless urgent action is taken to curb the spread of drug-resistant malaria in Africa, according to a new paper published in the journal Science.
The paper says the parasite that causes malaria is showing signs of resistance to artemisinin, the main drug used to fight the disease, in several east African countries.
“Mutations indicating artemisinin-resistance have been found in more than 10% of malaria infected individuals in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Rwanda, Uganda, and Tanzania,” according to the report.
Artemisinin Combination Therapies, or ACTs, have been the cornerstone of malaria treatment in recent years — but there are worrying signs that they are becoming less effective, says report co-author Lorenz von Seidlein of the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit in Bangkok.
“We have increasing reports from eastern Africa saying that they have documented resistance against the first line treatments against malaria,” he says. “The first line treatments are artemisinin combination therapy – that has been used for the last 20 years and has worked excellently well. And it’s now not working quite as well as it used to do.”
It’s estimated that over one thousand children die every day from malaria in Africa. The World Health Organization estimates that the global death toll from malaria in 2022 — the most recent figures available — was 608,000.
Past lessons
Before artemisinin therapies were developed, chloroquine was the medicine most used to treat malaria. The report authors say that in the 1990s and early 2000s, signs that the malaria parasite was developing resistance to chloroquine were widely ignored.
“When chloroquine resistance slowly sneaked into Africa there was a whole wave of childhood mortality followed by it. So really, a large number of children — probably in the millions — died because chloroquine didn’t work as well as it used to do. And now we see these first signs that something similar is happening with the ACTs. And that is of course very worrying,” von Seidlein says.
Urgent action
The report authors urge policymakers and global funding bodies to act now to prevent artemisinin resistance taking hold.
Their recommendations include combining artemisinin drugs with other medicines.
“Combining an artemisinin derivative drug with two partner drugs in triple artemisinin combination therapies [TACTs] is the simplest, most affordable, readily implementable, and sustainable approach to counter artemisinin resistance,” the report says.
The authors also call for the rollout of new, more effective insecticides and mosquito nets; better training of community health workers; the rapid deployment of new malaria vaccines; and better monitoring of parasite mutations.
Southeast Asia
Many of these methods were used to halt the spread of artemisinin resistance in south-east Asia since 2014, notes von Seidlein.
“Ultimately, there was an understanding that this could be a major health emergency globally and so there were a lot of investments from funders for the from high-income countries towards these countries in the Greater Mekong sub-region to stop the spread of artemisinin resistant parasites,” he says.
The report says that sense of urgency must now be applied to tackling artemisinin resistance in Africa.
“We ask funders, specifically the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria [GFATM] and the U.S. Government’s President’s Malaria Initiative, to be visionary and to step up funding for malaria control and elimination programs to contain the spread of artemisinin resistance in Africa — as they have done effectively in Southeast Asia since 2014,” says report co-author Ntuli Kapologwe, the director of preventive services at Tanzania’s Ministry of Health.
…
The malaria parasite is showing signs of resistance to artemisinin, the main drug used to fight the disease, in parts of Africa. A new report warns of potentially millions more deaths without immediate health policy changes. Henry Ridgwell has more from Bangkok.
…
GALAPAGOS ISLANDS, Ecuador — Warm morning light reflects from the remains of a natural rock arch near Darwin Island, one of the most remote islands in the Galapagos. In clear, deep blue water, thousands of creatures — fish, hammerhead sharks, marine iguanas — move in search of food.
The 2021 collapse of Darwin’s Arch, named for the famed British naturalist behind the theory of evolution, came from natural erosion. But its demise underscored the fragility of a far-flung archipelago that’s coming under increased pressure both from climate change and invasive species.
Warming oceans affect the food sources of many of the seagoing animals in the Galapagos. Marine iguanas — one of many species that are endemic, or unique, to the Galapagos — have a harder time finding the red and green algae they prefer. Sea turtles struggle to nest in warmer temperatures. Raising young gets harder as water warms and fewer nutrients are available.
While the Galapagos are known for a great multitude of species, their numbers aren’t unlimited.
“We have something of everything here – that’s why people say the Galapagos is so diverse – but we have a small number of each thing,” said Natasha Cabezas, a naturalist guide.
The Galapagos have always been sensitive to changes in ocean temperature. The archipelago itself is located where major ocean currents converge — cool from the south, warm from the north, and a cold upwelling current from the west. Then there’s El Nino, the periodic and natural Pacific Ocean warming that affects weather worldwide.
While temperatures vary depending on the season and other naturally-occurring climate events, ocean temperatures have been rising because of human-caused climate change as oceans absorb the vast majority of excess heat in the atmosphere. The ocean experienced its warmest decade since at least the 1800s in the last 10 years, and 2023 was the ocean’s warmest year on record.
Early June brings winter in the Southern Hemisphere, and the Cromwell current brings whale sharks, hammerheads, and massive sunfish to the surface. It also provides nutrients for penguins, marine iguanas and sea lions in search of food. As more of those animals make themselves known this season, scientists are tracking how they fared in the warming of the past year’s El Nino.
El Nino can bring food shortages for some species like marine iguanas and sea turtles, as the warmer ocean means dwindling food sources. Scientists observing the species have noted a significant decline in population numbers during El Nino events.
Marine iguanas swim like snakes through the water from rock to rock as waves crash against the shore of Fernandina Island. They latch themselves onto the undersea rocks to feed on algae growing there, while sea lions spin around them like puppies looking for someone to play with.
The iguanas were “one of the most affected species from El Niño last year and right now they are still recovering,” said Galapagos Conservancy Director Jorge Carrión.
As rising ocean temperatures threaten aquatic or seagoing life, on land there’s a different problem. Feral animals — cats, dogs, pigs, goats and cattle, none of them native — are threatening the unique species of the islands.
After the COVID-19 pandemic, many people are abandoning the dogs and cats they wanted to keep them company, Cabezas said.
“If you don’t take care of them they become a problem and now it’s a shame to see dogs everywhere. We have a big problem right now I don’t know what we’re going to do,” she said.
The non-native animals are a special threat to the giant tortoises closely associated with the Galapagos. The tortoises declined dramatically in the 19th century due to hunting and poaching, and authorities have worked to protect them from humans. It’s been illegal to kill a giant tortoise since 1933.
“In one night, a feral pig can destroy all nesting sites in an area,” Carrión said. Park rangers try to visit areas with nesting sites once a day, and kill pigs when they find them. But the pigs are elusive, Carrion said.
Feral cats feed on marine iguana hatchings, and both pigs and cats compete for food with the tortoises.
If invasive species and warming oceans weren’t enough, there’s the plastic that is a widespread problem in the world’s oceans. One recent study reported microplastics in the bellies of Galapagos penguins.
“There are no animals in the Galapagos that do not have microplastics in their food,” Carrión said.
…
Washington — New blood tests could help doctors diagnose Alzheimer’s disease faster and more accurately, researchers reported Sunday – but some appear to work far better than others.
It’s tricky to tell if memory problems are caused by Alzheimer’s. That requires confirming one of the disease’s hallmark signs — buildup of a sticky protein called beta-amyloid — with a hard-to-get brain scan or uncomfortable spinal tap. Many patients instead are diagnosed based on symptoms and cognitive exams.
Labs have begun offering a variety of tests that can detect certain signs of Alzheimer’s in blood. Scientists are excited by their potential, but the tests aren’t widely used yet because there’s little data to guide doctors about which kind to order and when. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration hasn’t formally approved any of them and there’s little insurance coverage.
“What tests can we trust?” asked Dr. Suzanne Schindler, a neurologist at Washington University in St. Louis who’s part of a research project examining that. While some are very accurate, “other tests are not much better than a flip of a coin.”
Demand for earlier Alzheimer’s diagnosis is increasing
More than 6 million people in the United States and millions more around the world
have Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia. Its telltale “biomarkers” are brain-clogging amyloid plaques and abnormal tau protein that leads to neuron-killing tangles.
New drugs, Leqembi and Kisunla, can modestly slow worsening symptoms by removing gunky amyloid from the brain. But they only work in the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s and proving patients qualify in time can be difficult. Measuring amyloid in spinal fluid is invasive. A special PET scan to spot plaques is costly and getting an appointment can take months.
Even specialists can struggle to tell if Alzheimer’s or something else is to blame for a patient’s symptoms.
“I have patients not infrequently who I am convinced have Alzheimer’s disease and I do testing and it’s negative,” Schindler said.
New study suggests blood tests for Alzheimer’s can be simpler, faster
Blood tests so far have been used mostly in carefully controlled research settings. But a new study of about 1,200 patients in Sweden shows they also can work in the real-world bustle of doctors’ offices — especially primary care doctors who see far more people with memory problems than specialists but have fewer tools to evaluate them.
In the study, patients who visited either a primary care doctor or a specialist for memory complaints got an initial diagnosis using traditional exams, gave blood for testing and were sent for a confirmatory spinal tap or brain scan.
Blood testing was far more accurate, Lund University researchers reported Sunday at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Philadelphia. The primary care doctors’ initial diagnosis was 61% accurate and the specialists’ 73% — but the blood test was 91% accurate, according to the findings, which also were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Which blood tests for Alzheimer’s work best?
There’s almost “a wild West” in the variety being offered, said Dr. John Hsiao of the National Institute on Aging. They measure different biomarkers, in different ways.
Doctors and researchers should only use blood tests proven to have a greater than 90% accuracy rate, said Alzheimer’s Association chief science officer Maria Carrillo.
Today’s tests most likely to meet that benchmark measure what’s called p-tau217, Carrillo and Hsiao agreed. Schindler helped lead an unusual direct comparison of several kinds of blood tests, funded by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, that came to the same conclusion.
That type of test measures a form of tau that correlates with how much plaque buildup someone has, Schindler explained. A high level signals a strong likelihood the person has Alzheimer’s while a low level indicates that’s probably not the cause of memory loss.
Several companies are developing p-tau217 tests including ALZpath Inc., Roche, Eli Lilly and C2N Diagnostics, which supplied the version used in the Swedish study.
Who should use blood tests for Alzheimer’s?
Only doctors can order them from labs. The Alzheimer’s Association is working on guidelines and several companies plan to seek FDA approval, which would clarify proper use.
For now, Carrillo said doctors should use blood testing only in people with memory problems, after checking the accuracy of the type they order.
Especially for primary care physicians, “it really has great potential to help them in sorting out who to give a reassuring message and who to send on to memory specialists,” said Dr. Sebastian Palmqvist of Lund University, who led the Swedish study with Lund’s Dr. Oskar Hansson.
The tests aren’t yet for people who don’t have symptoms but worry about Alzheimer’s in the family — unless it’s part of enrollment in research studies, Schindler stressed.
That’s partly because amyloid buildup can begin two decades before the first sign of memory problems, and so far, there are no preventive steps other than basic advice to eat healthy, exercise and get enough sleep. But there are studies underway testing possible therapies for people at high risk of Alzheimer’s, and some include blood testing.
…
KENITRA, Morocco — Golden fields of wheat no longer produce the bounty they once did in Morocco. A six-year drought has imperiled the country’s entire agriculture sector, including farmers who grow cereals and grains used to feed humans and livestock.
The North African nation projects this year’s harvest will be smaller than last year in both volume and acreage, putting farmers out of work and requiring more imports and government subsidies to prevent the price of staples like flour from rising for everyday consumers.
“In the past, we used to have a bounty — a lot of wheat. But during the last seven or eight years, the harvest has been very low because of the drought,” said Al Housni Belhoussni, a small-scale farmer who has long tilled fields outside of the city of Kenitra.
Belhoussni’s plight is familiar to grain farmers throughout the world confronting a hotter and drier future. Climate change is imperiling the food supply and, in regions like North Africa, shrinking the annual yields of cereals that dominate diets around the world — wheat, rice, maize and barley.
The region is one of the most vulnerable in the world to climate change. Delays to annual rains and inconsistent weather patterns have pushed the growing season later in the year and made planning difficult for farmers.
In Morocco, where cereals account for most of the farmed land and agriculture employs the majority of workers in rural regions, the drought is wreaking havoc and touching off major changes that will transform the makeup of the economy. It has forced some to leave their fields fallow. It has also made the areas they do elect to cultivate less productive, producing far fewer sacks of wheat to sell than they once did.
In response, the government has announced restrictions on water use in urban areas — including on public baths and car washes — and in rural ones, where water going to farms has been rationed.
“The late rains during the autumn season affected the agriculture campaign. This year, only the spring rains, especially during the month of March, managed to rescue the crops,” said Abdelkrim Naaman, the chairman of Nalsya. The organization has advised farmers on seeding, irrigation and drought mitigation as less rain falls and less water flows through Morocco’s rivers.
The Agriculture Ministry estimates that this year’s wheat harvest will yield roughly 3.1 billion kilograms, far less than last year’s 5.5 billion kilograms — a yield that was still considered low. The amount of land seeded has dramatically shrunk as well, from 36,700 square kilometers to 9,540 square miles 24,700 square kilometers.
Such a drop constitutes a crisis, said Driss Aissaoui, an analyst and former member of the Moroccan Ministry for Agriculture.
“When we say crisis, this means that you have to import more,” he said. “We are in a country where drought has become a structural issue.”
Leaning more on imports means the government will have to continue subsidizing prices to ensure households and livestock farmers can afford dietary staples for their families and flocks, said Rachid Benali, the chairman of the farming lobby COMADER.
The country imported nearly 2.5 million tons of common wheat between January and June. However, such a solution may have an expiration date, particularly because Morocco’s primary source of wheat, France, is facing shrinking harvests as well.
The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization ranked Morocco as the world’s sixth-largest wheat importer this year, between Turkey and Bangladesh, which both have much bigger populations.
“Morocco has known droughts like this and in some cases known droughts that las longer than 10 years. But the problem, this time especially, is climate change,” Benali said.
…
sydney, australia — The world’s largest platypus conservation center has welcomed its first residents as part of a project to protect the semi-aquatic mammal found only in Australia amid threats to its habitat from extreme weather and humans.
The four platypuses — two females and two males — were released over the last two weeks into a custom-built research facility at Taronga Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo, about 400 kilometers (250 miles), northwest of Sydney.
Featuring multi-tiered streams, waterfalls, pools and earth banks for burrowing, the facility will help researchers understand more about the species, Taronga Conservation Society Australia official Phoebe Meagher told Reuters.
“This facility will allow us to not only save the species from the immediate threats of climate change, but also in the long term, be able to repopulate those populations,” she said.
“We would love to see some puggles or baby platypus in the facility and understand what led to that reproductive success.”
The facility was formed as a partnership between the Taronga Conservation Society Australia, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, the University of New South Wales, the New South Wales state government and wildlife rescue organization WIRES.
Boasting the bill of a duck, webbed feet and a beaver-like tail, the platypus is unique to Australia. The nocturnal mammals lay eggs and live mostly across the eastern seaboard, from the far north of Queensland to the island state of Tasmania, close to rivers and streams whose beds and banks they forage for food.
Platypus numbers may have more than halved over several decades, research models show, but figures are hard to pinpoint. Environment groups estimate the total population between 30,000 and 300,000.
“Sadly, we’re not leaving many places left in the wild for platypus,” Meagher said. “So these platypus that we have here … will really fill those knowledge gaps and allow us to help save this species.”
…
HONOLULU — A Hawaii judge has temporarily blocked the state from enforcing a law requiring the licensing of practitioners and teachers of traditional Native Hawaiian midwifery while a lawsuit seeking to overturn the statute wends its way through the courts.
Lawmakers enacted the midwife licensure law, which asserted that the “improper practice of midwifery poses a significant risk of harm to the mother or newborn, and may result in death,” in 2019. Violations are punishable by up to a year in jail, plus thousands of dollars in criminal and civil fines.
The measure requires anyone who provides “assessment, monitoring, and care” during pregnancy, labor, childbirth and the postpartum period to be licensed.
A group of women sued, arguing that a wide range of people, including midwives, doulas, lactation consultants and even family and friends of the new mother would be subject to penalties and criminal liability.
Their complaint also said the law threatens the plaintiffs’ ability to serve women who seek traditional Native Hawaiian births.
Judge Shirley Kawamura issued a ruling late Tuesday afternoon barring the state from “enforcing, threatening to enforce or applying any penalties to those who practice, teach, and learn traditional Native Hawaiian healing practices of prenatal, maternal and child care.”
Plaintiffs testified during a four-day hearing last month that the law forces them to get licensed through costly out-of-state programs that don’t align with Hawaiian culture.
Ki’inaniokalani Kahoʻohanohano testified that a lack of Native Hawaiian midwives when she prepared to give birth for the first time in 2003 inspired her to eventually become one herself. She described how she spent years helping to deliver as many as three babies a month, receiving them in a traditional cloth made of woven bark and uttering sacred chants as she welcomed them into the world.
The law constitutes a deprivation of Native Hawaiian customary rights, which are protected by the Hawaii constitution, Kawamura’s ruling said, and the “public interest weighs heavily towards protecting Native Hawaiian customs and traditions that are at risk of extinction.”
The dispute is the latest in a long debate about how and whether Hawaii should regulate the practice of traditional healing arts that date to well before the islands became the 50th state in 1959. Those healing practices were banished or severely restricted for much of the 20th century, but the Hawaiian Indigenous rights movement of the 1970s renewed interest in them.
The state eventually adopted a system under which councils versed in Native Hawaiian healing certify traditional practitioners, though the plaintiffs in the lawsuit say their efforts to form such a council for midwifery have failed.
The judge also noted in her ruling that the preliminary injunction is granted until there is a council that can recognize traditional Hawaiian birthing practitioners.
“This ruling means that traditional Native Hawaiian midwives can once again care for families, including those who choose home births, who can’t travel long distances, or who don’t feel safe or seen in other medical environments,” plaintiff and midwife trainee Makalani Franco-Francis said in a statement Wednesday. “We are now free to use our own community wisdom to care for one another without fear of prosecution.”
She testified last month how she learned customary practices from Kahoʻohanohano, including cultural protocols for a placenta, such as burying it to connect a newborn to its ancestral lands.
The judge found, however, that the state’s regulation of midwifery more broadly speaking is “reasonably necessary to protect the health, safety, and welfare of mothers and their newborns.”
The ruling doesn’t block the law as it pertains to unlicensed midwives who do not focus on Hawaiian birthing practices, said Hillary Schneller, an attorney with the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents the women. “That is a gap that this order doesn’t address.”
The case is expected to continue to trial to determine whether the law should be permanently blocked.
The state attorney general’s office said in an email Wednesday that it was still reviewing the decision.
…
washington — NASA’s rover Perseverance on Mars has made what could be its most astonishing discovery to date: possible signs of ancient life on the Red Planet.
The six-wheeled robotic explorer came across an intriguing, arrow-shaped rock dubbed “Cheyava Falls” that may harbor fossilized microbes from billions of years ago, when Mars was a watery world.
Perseverance drilled into the enigmatic rock to collect a core sample on July 21, as it traversed Neretva Vallis, an ancient river valley.
The samples carefully stowed beneath the rover’s belly are destined to eventually return to Earth, where they will undergo more comprehensive analysis.
“Cheyava Falls is the most puzzling, complex, and potentially important rock yet investigated by Perseverance,” project scientist Ken Farley of Caltech said Thursday.
Three compelling clues have scientists buzzing.
White calcium sulfate veins run the length of the rock, a telltale sign that water once flowed through it.
Between these veins is a reddish middle area, teeming with organic compounds, as detected by the rover’s SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) instrument.
Finally, tiny off-white splotches ringed with black, reminiscent of leopard spots, contain chemicals that suggest energy sources for ancient microbes, according to scans by the PIXL (Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry) instrument.
“On Earth, these types of features in rocks are often associated with the fossilized record of microbes living in the subsurface,” said David Flannery, an astrobiologist and member of the Perseverance science team from the Queensland University of Technology in Australia.
The quest to confirm ancient Martian life is far from over, however.
The real test will come when Perseverance’s precious rock samples are returned to Earth as part of the Mars Sample Return Program, a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency slated for the 2030s.
While there are alternative explanations for these findings that do not involve microbes, there is a tantalizing chance that Perseverance’s core sample might contain actual fossilized microbes — potentially making history as the first proof of life beyond Earth.
“We have zapped that rock with lasers and X-rays and imaged it literally day and night from just about every angle imaginable,” said Farley.
“Scientifically, Perseverance has nothing more to give. To fully understand what really happened in that Martian river valley at Jezero Crater billions of years ago, we’d want to bring the Cheyava Falls sample back to Earth, so it can be studied with the powerful instruments available in laboratories,” he explained.
…
washington — Thousands of policymakers, health care professionals and advocates gathered this week in Munich, Germany, to take stock of the global fight against HIV as they try to meet the 2030 deadline set by world leaders for eliminating AIDS as a public health threat.
Advocates hailed sub-Saharan Africa’s progress in the global HIV response, with tens of millions of people now on lifesaving drugs.
A new UNAIDS survey released during the conference reported that “approximately 30.7 million of the estimated 39.9 million people living with HIV globally were receiving antiretroviral therapy in 2023.”
The report called that result a “landmark public health achievement,” and health officials at the conference said it would not be possible without the “immense political will” of regional leaders and NGOs.
Anne Githuku-Shongwe, the UNAIDS regional director for eastern and southern Africa, told VOA from Johannesburg that recently there has been a “huge focus” on ensuring that anyone living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa gets access to testing and treatment to ensure virus suppression, so the virus becomes untransmissible.
“The data is telling us that 84% of people living with HIV in our region have access to treatment. And 94% of those on treatment have been able to keep [the virus] suppressed so it is untransmissible,” she said.
However, Githuku-Shongwe pointed out that despite the progress that has been made, some countries in Africa are lagging behind in the battle against HIV/AIDS, partly because of civil wars, humanitarian setbacks and sheer negligence. She mentioned South Sudan, Angola, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles and the Comoros as examples.
“[Countries] like Mauritius are barely at 50% of the treatment target,” she said, adding that another critical challenge being faced is the lack of attention to children living with the virus.
The report said children aged 0-14 years are still contracting HIV. An estimated 120,000 children got the virus in 2023, bringing the number of children living with HIV globally to 1.4 million, 86% of whom are in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the UNAIDS report.
Worries about donor funding
Githuku-Shongwe said there have been major investments from partners – particularly from PEPFAR, a U.S.-funded initiative to tackle the HIV/AIDS crisis, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. She noted that in some countries, up to 99% of the HIV response is externally funded.
“But with time we are seeing that dwindling,” she said.
Nearly $19.8 billion was available in 2023 for HIV programs in low- and middle-income countries, almost $9.5 billion short of the amount needed by 2025, the report said.
Catherine Connor, vice president in charge of public policy and advocacy at the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, a Washington nonprofit, told VOA from Munich that the data on infections in children were “troubling” and pointed to a lackadaisical approach toward pediatric HIV.
“The report clearly shows that children are one out of every 10 new infections, which is really high,” she said. “But there’s also an outsized mortality issue around children. Children make up 3% of the HIV-infected population, but they represent 12% of deaths.”
Connor said there’s inequity in treatment, particularly for children living with HIV.
“Children can’t take themselves to clinics. They often don’t even know they’ve been exposed to HIV,” she said. “So they really rely on caregivers, the community around them, to ensure not just that they can be identified as being HIV-exposed or potentially HIV-positive, but also get the needed support to maintain their health, even if they are on treatment.”
Connor concluded that world leaders and policymakers should be made aware how significant it is to act on HIV prevention, because if the world fails to take steps to curtail the virus, then “we will not end AIDS.”
“It’s almost like having a dam holding back a river of water,” she said.
“HIV is preventable and treatable, but it is not curable. And so, if we let cracks in that dam get so bad, it’s going to break, and we are going to see a reemergence of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in ways we have never seen,” Connor said.
…
United Nations — The U.N. Secretary-General warned Thursday that the Earth is becoming hotter and more dangerous for everyone, killing nearly a half-million people annually, and he blamed fossil fuels for driving global warming.
“Billions of people are facing an extreme heat epidemic — wilting under increasingly deadly heat waves, with temperatures topping 50 degrees Celsius around the world. That’s 122 degrees Fahrenheit. And halfway to boiling,” Antonio Guterres told reporters.
Sunday was the Earth’s hottest day on record, only to have the record broken the following day. Temperatures have been rising steadily, with scientists declaring the last 13 consecutive months all heat record-breakers. Urban areas are heating up at twice the global average.
Heat waves have killed scores of people this year in India and in Africa’s Sahel region. Last month, extreme heat killed 1,300 Muslim pilgrims in Saudi Arabia. This month, Europe, the United States and Asia have also seen exceptional heat.
He said that the World Health Organization and World Meteorological Organization estimate that improvements to heat health warning systems in 57 countries could save nearly 100,000 lives a year.
Fossil fuels
Guterres has repeatedly called on greenhouse gas emitters to meet the 2015 Paris Climate Accord’s target of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius — a goal that many worry is slipping away. He said that fossil fuel expansion and new coal plants are obstacles to meeting that target.
“I must call out the flood of fossil fuel expansion we are seeing in some of the world’s wealthiest countries,” he said. “In signing such a surge of new oil and gas licenses, they are signing away our future.”
He urged leaders to quickly and fairly phase out fossil fuels and end new coal projects.
“The G20 must shift fossil fuel subsidies to renewables and support vulnerable countries and communities,” he said of the world’s largest economies.
And he urged more climate adaptation and mitigation financing from the richest countries — which are the biggest emitters — to help the poorest, most vulnerable nations that have contributed the least to global warming.
Guterres said he is launching a global call to action focused on caring for the most vulnerable, including protecting workers who are exposed to extreme heat.
“A new report from the International Labor Organization — being released today — warns that over 70% of the global workforce — 2.4 billion people — are now at high risk of extreme heat,” he said.
In addition to the rights and health of individual workers, there are economic impacts of extreme heat too.
“Heat stress at work is projected to cost the global economy $2.4 trillion by 2030. Up from $280 billion in the mid-1990s,” Guterres said, adding measures need to be taken to “heat proof” critical sectors of the global economy, like farming and construction work.
The U.N. chief warned that extreme heat widens social inequality, undermines development, furthers food insecurity, and pushes people deeper into poverty.
“Leaders across the board must wake up and step up,” he said.
…
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — A super Jupiter has been spotted around a neighboring star by the Webb Space Telescope — and it has a super orbit.
The planet is roughly the same diameter as Jupiter, but with six times the mass. Its atmosphere is also rich in hydrogen like Jupiter’s.
One big difference: It takes this planet more than a century, possibly as long as 250 years, to go around its star. It’s 15 times the distance from its star than Earth is to the sun.
Scientists had long suspected a big planet circled this star 12 light-years away, but not this massive or far from its star. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles. These new observations show the planet orbits the star Epsilon Indi A, part of a three-star system.
An international team led by Max Planck Institute for Astronomy’s Elisabeth Matthews in Germany collected the images last year and published the findings Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Astronomers directly observed the incredibly old and cold gas giant — a rare and tricky feat — by masking the star through use of a special shading device on Webb. By blocking the starlight, the planet stood out as a pinpoint of infrared light.
The planet and star clock in at 3.5 billion years old, 1 billion years younger than our own solar system, but still considered old and brighter than expected, according to Matthews.
The star is so close and bright to our own solar system that it’s visible with the naked eye in the Southern Hemisphere.
Don’t bet on life, though.
“This is a gas giant with no hard surface or liquid water oceans,” Matthews said in an email.
It’s unlikely this solar system sports more gas giants, she said, but small rocky worlds could be lurking there.
Worlds similar to Jupiter can help scientists understand “how these planets evolve over giga-year timescales,” she said.
The first planets outside our solar system — dubbed exoplanets — were confirmed in the early 1990s. NASA’s tally now stands at 5,690 as of mid-July. The vast majority were detected via the transit method, in which a fleeting dip in starlight, repeated at regular intervals, indicates an orbiting planet.
Telescopes in space and also on the ground are on the hunt for even more, especially planets that might be similar to Earth.
Launched in 2021, NASA and the European Space Agency’s Webb telescope is the biggest and most powerful astronomical observatory ever placed in space.
…
A group of young African students is shooting for the stars thanks to a program called ‘Pathways to Space.’ Aerospace company Boeing and a South African science organization backed an education program that just celebrated its first batch of graduates. Vicky Stark reports from Cape Town.
…
Geneva — A senior World Health Organization official expressed alarm Tuesday at the high risk of polio spreading within the Gaza Strip because of dire sanitary conditions in the war-wracked enclave, and that the paralytic disease it causes could spill across borders without prompt action to stem the outbreak.
“I am, like, super worried,” Dr. Avadil Saparbekov, team lead for health emergencies at the WHO in the occupied Palestinian territory, told journalists from Jerusalem. “I am extremely worried about an outbreak happening in Gaza … and that it may spill over internationally at a very high point.”
Saparbekov, who recently returned from a weeklong visit to Gaza, confirmed that “circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2” has been identified in samples of Gazan sewage assessed by researchers and that an epidemiological probe “to identify the potential source of this importation” is underway.
“Based on the results of the assessment, WHO and the GPEI (Global Polio Eradication Initiative) partners will consolidate a set of recommendations, including the need for a mass vaccination campaign,” he said.
On July 16, the Global Polio Laboratory Network isolated the virus in six environmental surveillance samples collected from sewage on June 23 in Khan Younis and Deir al Balah in Gaza.
The WHO reports that further genomic sequencing of the samples by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that they are related to environmental samples that were circulating in Egypt during the second half of last year.
“It is important to note that poliovirus has been isolated from environmental samples only at this time; no associated paralytic cases have been detected,” Saparbekov stressed.
Circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus is transmitted from person to person mainly through the fecal-oral route. It can invade a person’s nervous system and cause paralysis and death.
“We have not yet collected the human samples to identify any viruses because of the lack of equipment to collect those and lack of capacity to test those samples,” Saparbekov said, noting that WHO and UNICEF teams entering Gaza on Thursday will bring up to 50 sample collection kits “so we will be able to collect human samples, stool samples from humans.”
The samples, he said, will be sent to a lab in Jordan to confirm any cases of infection.
“Until that is done, I cannot say that there are any humans that are affected with this circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus,” he said.
The WHO said that wild poliovirus was eliminated more than 25 years ago in the Palestinian territories. Before the start of the war in Gaza, following a vicious attack on Israel by Hamas militants on October 7, the U.N. health agency says 89% of the population was vaccinated against polio, primarily conducted through routine immunization.
Last Sunday, Israel’s military said it would offer polio vaccinations to soldiers serving in Gaza to protect against the paralytic disease.
Saparbekov said the WHO will be reaching out to COGAT, the Israeli authority responsible for the coordination of government activities in the Palestinian territories, “to see how they can facilitate” the response to the outbreak. One way to do that, he added, is to have vaccines available for Gazans in case “there is a decision to conduct a mass campaign.”
“We have so far received assurances that this will be done,” he said.
The WHO official expressed hope that the epidemiological investigation and risk assessment would be completed by the end of the week, such that his team “will have a joint recommendation from the GPEI network about what to do with this particular outbreak” by Sunday.
In the meantime, he said, aid workers are doing their best to inform the population as to health measures they must take to prevent a polio outbreak.
“Given the water and sanitation limitations in Gaza, it will be very difficult for the population to follow the advice to wash their hands, to drink safe water,” he said.
“Unfortunately, the majority that live in shelters with one toilet for 600 people and maybe 1.5 liters of water per person, will definitely not be able to follow the recommendations that we are providing,” he said.
While reiterating concerns about polio spreading in the Palestinian enclave, WHO health emergency chief Saparbekov said he also is very worried about the possible outbreak of other communicable diseases.
“We had Hepatitis A confirmed last year and now we may have a polio outbreak,” he said. “So, with the crippled health system, lack of water and sanitation, as well as lack of access of the population to health services, specifically primary health services, this is going to be a very bad situation that will happen in Gaza.
“We may have more people dying from communicable diseases than from injuries and related conditions,” he warned.
…
Some people who have lost the ability to speak can still move their vocal cords. California researchers are working to transform those muscle movements into audible speech. Genia Dulot reports from Los Angeles in this week’s edition of LogOn.
…
United Nations — Nearly 40 million people were living with the HIV virus that causes AIDS last year, over 9 million weren’t getting any treatment, and the result was that every minute someone died of AIDS-related causes, the U.N. said in a new report launched Monday.
While advances are being made to end the global AIDS pandemic, the report said progress has slowed, funding is shrinking, and new infections are rising in three regions: the Middle East and North Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and Latin America.
In 2023, around 630,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses, a significant decline from the 2.1 million deaths in 2004. But the latest figure is more than double the target for 2025 of fewer than 250,000 deaths, according to the report by UNAIDS, the U.N. agency leading the global effort to end the pandemic.
Gender inequality is exacerbating the risks for girls and women, the report said, citing the extraordinarily high incidence of HIV among adolescents and young women in parts of Africa.
The proportion of new infections globally among marginalized communities that face stigma and discrimination – sex workers, men who have sex with men, and people who inject drugs also increased to 55% in 2023 from 45% in 2010, it said.
UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima said: “World leaders pledged to end the AIDS pandemic as a public health threat by 2030, and they can uphold their promise, but only if they ensure that the HIV response has the resources it needs, and that the human rights of everyone are protected.”
As part of that pledge, leaders vowed to reduce annual new HIV infections to below 370,000 by 2025, but the report said in 2023 new infections were more than three times higher at 1.3 million.
Last year, among the 39.9 million people globally living with HIV, 86% knew they were infected, 77% were accessing treatment, and for 72% the virus was suppressed, the report said
Cesar Nunez, director of the UNAIDS New York office, told a news conference there has been progress in HIV treatments — injections that can stay in the body for six months, but the two doses cost $40,000 yearly, out of reach for all but the richest people with the virus.
He said UNAIDS has been asking the manufacturer to make it available at lower cost to low and middle-income countries.
Nunez said there have also been seven cases where people with HIV who were treated for leukemia emerged with no sign of the HIV virus in their system.
He said injections and the seven cases will be discussed at the 25th International AIDS Conference which began Monday in Munich.
At present, he said, daily treatment with pills costs about $75 per person per year. It has allowed many countries to increase the number of people with HIV to receive treatment.
Nunez said UNAIDS will continue advocating for a vaccine to prevent AIDS.
…
BENGALURU, India — At a Coca-Cola factory on the outskirts of Chennai in southern India, a giant battery powers machinery day and night, replacing a diesel-spewing generator. It’s one of just a handful of sites in India powered by electricity stored in batteries, a key component to fast-tracking India’s energy transition away from dirty fuels.
The country’s lithium ion battery storage industry — which can store electricity generated by wind turbines or solar panels for when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing — makes up just 0.1% of global battery storage systems. But battery storage is growing fast, with around a third of India’s total battery infrastructure coming online just this year.
“Our orders are growing exponentially,” said Ayush Misra, CEO of Amperehour Energy, the company that installed the batteries at the Chennai factory. “It’s a really exciting time to be a battery storage provider.”
Businesses invest in industry
India currently has around 100 megawatts of storage capacity from batteries, with another 3.3 gigawatts of clean energy storage coming from hydropower. The Indian government estimates that the country will need about 74 gigawatts of energy storage from batteries, hydropower and nuclear energy by 2032, but experts think the country actually needs closer to double that amount to meet the country’s energy needs.
Some customers are still wary of using battery technology for storage, and the storage systems can be seen as more expensive than the more commonly used coal. The supply chain of batteries is also concentrated in China, meaning the sector is vulnerable to geopolitical volatility.
But markets don’t think customers will be hesitant about batteries for long, with major Indian businesses announcing significant investments in the industry.
In January this year, energy giant Reliance Industries said it will build a 5,000-acre factory in Jamnagar, Gujarat. And in March, Goodenough Energy said it will spend $53 million by 2027 to set up a 20 million kilowatt-hour battery factory in the northern region of Jammu and Kashmir.
Alexander Hogeveen Rutter, an independent energy analyst based in Bengaluru, said upping storage capacity should be done alongside ramping up renewables.
“Clean energy combined with adequate storage can be an alternative to coal. Not in the future but right now,” he said. He added that it’s a “myth” that clean energy is more expensive than coal, as current prices of renewable energy combined with storage is cheaper than new coal.
Global battery costs are declining faster than expected, and experts say that if costs continue to plummet, energy storage systems can better compete with both coal and clean energy sources like hydropower and nuclear energy that can also control their supply to meet demand.
“Battery storage is now the largest resource to meet California’s evening peak electricity requirements. It’s more than gas, nuclear or coal,” he said. This is being replicated in the U.K., China and even smaller nations like Tonga. “There’s no reason why this can’t happen in India too,” he said.
India’s energy needs grow
One of India’s unique challenges is that energy needs are growing more rapidly than most nations: the population is increasing and extreme heat fueled by climate change means more and more people are using energy-guzzling air conditioning. India’s electricity demand grew by 7% last year and is expected to grow by at least 6% every year for the next three years, according to the International Energy Agency.
“The country needs to quadruple its renewable energy deployment just to meet demand growth,” said Hogeveen Rutter.
Ankit Mittal, co-founder of Sheru, a software company that offers energy storage and management solutions, said that making battery storage sites more flexible can help the industry ramp up quickly.
Mittal said battery storage sites should be more accessible to the national energy grid, so they can provide electricity to whichever regions need the extra boost of energy most. Currently, battery storage sites in India only power up more local sites.
To encourage further growth of the battery sector, the Indian government announced last year a $452 million effort to support an additional four gigawatts of battery storage by 2031. But the government also provides subsidies for coal plants, making the electricity generated there a cheaper bet for some utility companies.
Future government policy could level the playing field. The country is set to announce a new national budget later in July that industry leaders hope will contain incentives for clean energy storage.
Akshat Singhal, co-founder of the Bengaluru-based battery tech startup Log 9 Materials, thinks that better government support can help the country meet growing energy demands “the right way,” with clean energy.
“One significant policy change can kickstart the entire ecosystem,” he said.
…