A pill could soon radio signals from inside your gut to help doctors diagnose diseases from ulcers to cancer to inflammation, according to a new study.

Scientists have developed a small, ingestible capsule that mixes synthetic biology and electronics to detect bleeding in the digestive tract.

The system can be adapted for a range of medical, environmental and other uses, the researchers say.

The biological part of the pill uses bacteria engineered to glow when exposed to heme, the iron-containing molecule in blood.

The electronic side includes a tiny light detector, computer chip, battery and transmitter that sends data to a cellphone or computer.

“A major challenge for sensing in the GI tract is, the space available for a device is very limited,” said Massachusetts Institute of Technology electrical engineer Phillip Nadeau.

Using very low-power electronics that Nadeau and his colleagues designed, they fit all the components into a capsule about 3 centimeters long by 1 centimeter wide.

It’s still a bit big to swallow, but Nadeau says it likely can be engineered to a third that size.

The engineered bacteria are contained in chambers covered by a membrane that lets small molecules in, but does not let the organisms out. The researchers say the bacteria can be engineered to die if they accidentally leak from the capsule; or, future models may just use the key enzymes, rather than whole bacteria.

In laboratory tests, the pill successfully distinguished pigs fed small amounts of blood from those not given blood. The capsule has not been tested on humans, but the team aims to do so in the next year or two.

Since the components are all fairly inexpensive to manufacture, researchers speculate that the cost would be in the range of tens to hundreds of dollars.

And they say the same platform could be used to detect markers of a range of illnesses, or to sense chemicals in the environment.

“It’s really exciting, and I think it’s got a lot of legs,” said Rice University bioengineer Jeff Tabor, who was not part of the research team.

But Tabor notes that the sensors may need to be much more sensitive than what was used in the pig tests. He says there may be much less blood in the guts of actual patients than what the pigs were given. Other conditions may have the same limitations.

“For many actual diseases, you might have far less of the molecule that you need to sense available to you,” he added.

The research was published in the journal Science. 
…

Oceanographers often say we know much more about the surface of the Moon and Mars than we do about nearly 70 percent of our own planet. That is because most of the Earth is covered in water, most of it deeper than 200 meters. There are several initiatives to map the oceans’ floors and the latest comes from Japan. VOA’s George Putic reports.
…

In Thailand, the Giant African Snail, once condemned as a slimy pest that ruins crops, is now being bred for the same reason some people found them so unappealing in the first place — their slime. Experts say the slime produced by these giant snails is full of collagen and other ingredients that can regenerate skin cells for use in the cosmetics industry. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.
…

A new study by Johns Hopkins University says urban foraging, the act of finding naturally growing, edible food in urban settings in the U.S. is on the rise. But before setting out with basket and blade, experts recommend would-be foragers to take classes to determine what’s edible and what might make you sick. Fortunately, foraging classes are cropping up across the country. Faith Lapidus reports on one of them.
…

President Donald Trump’s top health official said Wednesday that the U.S. and global partners will “take the steps necessary” to try to contain a new Ebola outbreak, asserting that the fight against infectious diseases is one of the administration’s top priorities for the World Health Organization, the U.N. agency taking the lead. 

Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar stopped short of predicting whether the outbreak in Congo that’s believed to have killed at least 27 people will be contained, but he praised WHO’s early response and vowed: “If it spreads, we will take further actions.”

Azar’s comments on Ebola came in a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press, which also touched on universal health care, U.S. prescription-drug prices, and the recent revelations of a $1.2 million payout by Swiss drugs giant Novartis last year to Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. 

Novartis, one of the world’s largest pharma companies, said Cohen was hired to advise on how the Trump administration might approach health care policy. Experts have pointed out that Novartis needs FDA approval for the sale of its drugs and that company officials have spoken approvingly of rolling back the Obama-era Affordable Care Act, a Trump campaign promise largely unfulfilled.

“I don’t and won’t comment on the particulars of any individual situation,” said Azar, a former executive with drugmaker Eli Lilly. 

“The president has talked about how extensively ‘pharma’ generally spends money on lobbying. And we have said: You really don’t need to spend that money on lobbying because the president and the secretary have been very transparent about where we are going with drug prices: We’re going to lower drug prices in the United States,” he said.

The response to the Ebola outbreak by WHO and its director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has emerged as a major concern as ministers like Azar and his counterparts from other nations gather this week for the World Health Assembly in Geneva. The conclave lays out the agenda of the U.N. agency, which reaps hundreds of millions in U.S. funding each year.  

“I think it best not to make predictions when dealing with infectious disease,” Azar said cautiously, when asked if the outbreak will be contained. “We will take the steps necessary, we will act aggressively, forcefully, in partnership across the world community to do everything to contain it.” 

“I think that what we’re seeing is that we’re taking it very seriously from Day One,” he said. 

A day earlier, Azar told the Assembly the U.S. was committing an additional $7 million for the Ebola response, raising its total to $8 million. The WHO has launched a “strategic response plan” for itself and partner organizations that seeks nearly $26 million to battle the outbreak, a figure that’s expected to rise.

“We’re also grateful for other countries that have stepped up to the plate. And we hope others will do the same,” Azar added. 

Azar said the “first and foremost mission” that the U.S. and the world community look to the WHO for is its “central role around infectious disease and emergency preparedness and response.”

Azar also underscored a Trump administration grievance: that other developed countries are “free riding off U.S. investment and innovation” in medicines and health care. The White House says countries that regulate the price of drugs contribute to higher costs in the U.S. and keep their own costs artificially low.

Azar said he delivered that message to his peers in Geneva.

“It has been a thoughtful response,” he said, when asked about their reaction. “It has not been reflexive, it has been a sense of, ‘We’re in this together. We do need to work to support innovation.’”

But he said he was leaving the details to others.

“I’m not here to do trade negotiations. I have delivered the message and said our trade negotiators are coming: Be ready!” he said with a laugh. “I have said we have our own job: The president is going to bring down American drug costs. But they’ll have their job.”
…

When Ebola broke out in West Africa in late 2013, no one was prepared. A potential vaccine had been in limbo since a previous outbreak a decade earlier. Governments dragged their feet while failing to recognize the risks the outbreak carried. Local health workers were quickly overwhelmed. And aid agencies were scrambling to catch up.

By the time the epidemic was brought under control in 2016, more than 11,300 people had died in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone and the costs had risen to $4.3 billion.

Flash forward to May 8, when word emerged about a possible Ebola outbreak in a remote village in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Within two days, the DRC had dispatched experts to the scene. International agencies shipped in personnel, mobile medical labs and a batch of vaccine that had been tested during the West African outbreak. 

Painful lessons from the last Ebola outbreak are being applied in the current one, in hopes of limiting its scope. 

‘Quick and robust response’

“The coordinated action is essential,” said Tarik Jasarevic, spokesman for the World Health Organization (WHO), which so far is reporting 27 deaths among 51 cases of hemorrhagic fever.

“We know how damaging Ebola can be in the communities,” Jasarevic told VOA in a phone interview from Geneva. “And we have to mount a quick and robust response not to get to the point where a transmission chain would get out of control.”

But concerns remain that the virus could elude containment efforts. 

The aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), or Doctors Without Borders, reported that three patients left an isolation ward at a treatment center in the port city of Mbandaka sometime between Sunday and Tuesday. Two of the patients died; a third had been scheduled for discharge.

“You can imagine having the Ebola virus in a community is a cause of concern for the local population,” Jasarevic said. The city has roughly a million residents.

The Associated Press quoted MSF emergency coordinator Henry Gray as saying in a statement Wednesday, “One of the men died at home and his body was brought back to the hospital for safe burial with the help of the MSF teams; the other was brought back to the hospital yesterday morning and he died during the night.”

Thursday brought an alarming new development: MSF said that the two patients who died first had attended a prayer meeting with 50 people, Reuters reported.

Every epidemic has its unique challenges. In this case, the villages initially affected were in remote locations. Land had to be cleared, first for helicopters and then planes.

With quick action came the need for funding. Last Friday, the WHO requested $26 million. More than half of that had been pledged as of Tuesday, with the United States committing $8 million of the amount.

Jasarevic said the requested amount was small, given the costs of the last outbreak.

“It’s better to spend more today than to be forced to spend much, much more afterward, because we know what damage, economic damage, was done to the countries in West Africa in 2014,” Jasarevic said.

One upside

The repeated outbreaks have had the positive side effect of developing a core of health workers whose experience is proving priceless, including those in the DRC, now dealing with its ninth outbreak. 

“Obviously, they are leading the response,” Jasarevic said of the Congolese. 

The DRC’s health minister, Dr. Oly Ilunga Kalenga, discussed the country’s experience in responding to the current outbreak. In a separate phone interview Monday with VOA’s French to Africa service, he confirmed that the first patient to test positive for Ebola in the northwestern Bikoro health zone had been discharged.

“From the start, the sick people were put in good conditions,” Kalenga said. “All the complications they developed were correctly treated, and they were healed and discharged. It is not unusual. People survived Ebola in the past.”

He added that WHO also had created an international emergency medical team roster, which includes experts who’ve participated in previous outbreaks. 

The experts include anthropologists, who can help explain how individuals can safeguard themselves and others. The experts can instruct that anyone showing symptoms consistent with the virus, such as flu-like symptoms, “should be brought to the treatment center so they don’t affect other people,” Jasarevic said.

Health experts also want to increase awareness of safe burial practices, limiting exposure to the body of someone who has died of the infectious disease. It can spread through direct contact with bodily fluids.

The bottom line now is to keep the outbreak from spreading.

Kalenga, the health minister, emphasized to VOA that “one must know that the virus is present in the forest, and cannot be easily eradicated. In fact, it is a challenge for world scientists.

“The measures taken by the DRC include always having strict monitoring guidelines, and when a case is detected, we want a very effective response,” he said. “The most important thing is an effective response based on case detection, contacts monitoring, and implementation of hygiene measures in all public areas and homes, and the other aspect is burials, which must be secured.”

The vaccine is being used first on health workers and the friends and relatives of those who already have been infected.

If these precautions and responses all work, the aid agencies and various governments soon will be looking for new lessons. 
…

Health Experts at the World Health Assembly in Geneva agree the next few weeks will be crucial in determining whether the Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo can be contained and prevented from spreading to highly-populated urban areas.

Two weeks have elapsed since the first laboratory-confirmed case of Ebola was discovered in the remote, rural town of Bikoro in DR Congo’s northwestern Equateur Province.

Soon after the Ebola outbreak was declared May 8, World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and several associates went to the region to assess the situation.

Tedros said he was pleased by the government’s quick response.

“The government had already triggered the community committees so that communities can take the ownership and contribute, and they are going house to house to identify cases and to identify contacts.Starting from the Government leadership, everything is triggered,” he said. “We are watching it around the clock, 24/7, and we hope it will have a better outcome.”

This rapid response to the current emergency is a sea change from the way the WHO and other agencies reacted to the West African Ebola epidemic.More than 11,000 people were killed before it was brought under control in 2016.

This is the 9th Ebola outbreak in DRC since the disease was simultaneously discovered in DRC and South Sudan in 1976. In the eight previous outbreaks, Ebola occurred in either isolated rural areas or in small towns where the disease remained largely confined.

Peter Salama, WHO Deputy Director-General, Emergency Preparedness and Response, said the current outbreak has features of two previous typologies — a combination of rural villages, and larger towns and cities. These factors “have given us concern that the outbreak has the potential to expand,” he said.

“First is the involvement of a town — Mbandaka — which is the capital of the Equateur Province in that region with a population of more than 1 million people,” he added. “Secondly, that town is on the Congo River and its tributaries, which ultimately connects this outbreak potentially to Kinshasa and also to surrounding countries such as the Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic.”

He said five health care workers in Mbandaka have been infected with the virus, which is a potential signal for further amplification. He noted there are 58 confirmed and suspected cases of Ebola, including 27 deaths.He said health agencies and the government are actively following 600 contacts to learn the specific locations of the outbreak.

“It is really the detective work of epidemiology that will make or break the response to this outbreak,” he said. “It is documenting how people are getting infected and, therefore, managing control, the control of transmission. … We are following three separate chains of transmission, and each one has the potential to expand, if not controlled.”

One potentially powerful tool for containing the spread of Ebola is an experimental, protective vaccine that was not available during the West African epidemic. More than 7,500 doses of the vaccine have been sent to DRC.

Salama said a ring vaccination program began Monday in Mbandaka.

“This is not mass immunization,” he noted. “This is highly targeted ring vaccination where concerned or probable cases are identified and then each and every contact is traced and vaccinated, and then the contacts of those contacts are then traced and vaccinated, forming protective rings around that case — to protect the people themselves — the contacts, but also to prevent further community transmission.”

Salama said this is the same approach used in the 1970s for the elimination of smallpox.

Regional risk

On a regional level, the World Health Organization has designated nine neighboring countries, which share porous borders with DRC at high risk of Ebola. Those most at risk are the Republic of Congo and Central African Republic.The others include Angola, Burundi, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, Zambia and Uganda.

WHO Regional Director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, said WHO is helping these countries scale up preparedness so they can detect, investigate, and manage the disease.

“We are helping countries to pre-position the supplies that they will need, including personal protective equipment, infra-red thermometers, rapid diagnostic test kits and other critical supplies,” said Moeti. “We are working with members states and partners at all levels to scale up surveillance, detection, case management at the border areas surrounding the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”

Salama said the exceptionally rapid, robust response to the outbreak and strong multi-partner effort bodes well for the work ahead.

“It is not over yet,” he cautioned. “We are really just at the beginning … we are on the epidemiological knife-edge of this response.The next few weeks will really tell if this outbreak is going to expand to urban areas or if we are going to be able to keep it under control.”

The World Health Organization is appealing for $26 million to keep the operation going for the next six months.It says strong, continued international support is essential for combating this deadly disease.
…

Two infected patients who fled from an Ebola treatment center in a Congo city of 1.2 million people later died, an aid group said Wednesday while asserting that “forced hospitalization is not the solution to this epidemic.”

As the number of suspected Ebola cases continued to rise, experts emphasized that more community engagement is needed to prevent the spread of the deadly virus.

Three patients left of their own accord from the isolation zone of the Wangata hospital in Mbandaka city between Sunday and Tuesday, said Henry Gray, emergency coordinator for Medecins Sans Frontieres.

One patient had been about to be discharged, he said.

“The two others were helped to leave the hospital by their families in the middle of the night on Monday. One of the men died at home and his body was brought back to the hospital for safe burial with the help of the MSF teams; the other was brought back to the hospital yesterday morning and he died during the night,” Gray said in a statement.

Hospital staff made every effort to convince the patients and their families not to leave and to continue treatment, Gray said.

Three Ebola deaths have been confirmed since Congo’s health ministry announced the current outbreak of the often lethal hemorrhagic fever on May 8. It was not immediately clear if the two deaths reported by MSF were confirmed Ebola ones.

Congo’s health ministry on Wednesday announced six new suspected cases in the rural Iboko health zone in the country’s northwest and two in Wangata. There are now 28 confirmed Ebola cases, 21 probable ones and nine suspected. Overall the death toll stands at 27.

“We’re on the epidemiological knife’s edge of this response. The next few weeks will really tell if this outbreak is going to expand to urban areas or if we’re going to be able to keep it under control,” Dr. Peter Salama, the World Health Organization emergencies chief, told a World Health Assembly session Wednesday.

Worrying factors include the spread of confirmed cases to Mbandaka city and the fact that five health workers have been infected, signaling “a potential for further amplification,” he said. Front-line workers are especially at risk of contracting the virus, which spreads in contact with the bodily fluids of infected people, including the dead.

Finally, Salama said, the outbreak has “three or four separate epicenters,” making it more challenging to contain. “It’s really the detective work of epidemiology that will make or break the response to this outbreak. It’s documenting how people are getting infected and therefore managing to control the transmission,” he said.

“We are following three separate chains of transmission,” he said. “One associated with a funeral that took place in a neighboring town of Bikoro; one associated with a visit to a health care facility more than 80 kilometers (50 miles) away in the small village of Iboko and one where we’re still gathering data on that’s related to a church ceremony.”

WHO is accelerating efforts with nine countries neighboring Congo to try to prevent the Ebola outbreak from spreading beyond the border.

The top two priorities are Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo near the epicenter of the outbreak, Matshidiso Moeti, WHO’s director for Africa, told the WHA session. The other countries are Angola, Burundi, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, Zambia and, to a lesser extent, Uganda.

WHO began vaccinations this week and is using a “ring vaccination” approach, targeting the contacts of people infected or suspected of infection and then the contacts of those people. More than 600 contacts have been identified, WHO said.

There is no specific treatment for Ebola. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding. The virus can be fatal in up to 90 percent of cases, depending on the strain.

The UK on Wednesday pledged another 5 million pounds ($6.6 million) to help combat the outbreak.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said simply: “We are watching it around the clock, 24-7.”
…

In this arid stretch of Kajiado County, where worsening heat and drought have been tough on livestock farmers, Arnold Ole Kapurua is experimenting with a hot new crop: chilis.

Ole Kapurua, 29, a farmer and agronomist, now grows two acres of the fiery pods — and is training other farmers to do the same — as a way to protect their incomes in the face of harsher weather linked to climate change.

“With time we realized that we weren’t making good money as our livestock income stagnated,” he said. “During drought we lost our herds to hunger and diseases while during the rainy season we lost some to floods making us live on a lean budget.”

But after a bit of research, “I realized that chilis had climate friendly features,” he said.

While some farmers still rely entirely on livestock in the region, a growing number are now concentrating their energy on farming chili, which can be grown with limited amounts of water, said Samuel Ole Kangangi, another new chili farmer.

Over the last five years, more than 100 farmers in the region have begun growing chili, most after trying other crops, including maize and beans, that didn’t cope as well with drought and brought in little money, the farmers said.

Well-managed chili farms can produce an ongoing harvest over six months, with an acre of land producing up to two tons of peppers a week, Ole Kapurua said.

That level of harvest can bring as much as 80,000 Kenyan shillings ($800) a season, he said.

“That cannot be compared to livestock rearing as one cannot afford to be selling a cow every week, thus making chili farming a better option,” said the farmer.

Solomon Simingor, another farmer in Kajiado County, said a farmer with at least two acres of land can earn as much as three times more with chili than with cattle, in his experience.

To provide enough water to keep their plants irrigated, farmers in the region are turning to building small dams to catch water in the rainy season.

Mulch around the plants — usually grass or plastic — also helps hold onto limited water and keep down weeds.

Kenyan farmers have been growing and exporting chilies to Britain, Germany, Norway and France for about 10 years. Chili is also sold in local markets and supplied to supermarkets.

Many of the new farmers also have turned to eating the vitamin-rich peppers at home — often fried with onions and meat — in a dietary change for families in the region.

Now, “when children are asked to fetch vegetables from the farm, they also fetch chili as to them it is part and parcel of their diet,” Ole Kapurua said.

Paul Rangenga, a chili farming expert who has been advising farmers on taking up the crop and who runs a produce company, said he believes chlli can provide a workable alternative for herders dealing with worsening drought stress.

“Chili farming is a long-term form of investment and the risks involved are minimal, as the crops are drought resistant and well adapted to arid regions,” he said.
…

The last thing Lizabeth Loud, a month from giving birth, wanted was to be forced into treatment for her heroin and prescription painkiller addiction.

But her mother saw no other choice, and sought a judge’s order to have her committed against her will. Three years later, Loud said her month in state prison, where Massachusetts sent civilly committed women until recent reforms, was the wake-up call she needed.

“I was really miserable when I was there,” the 32-year-old Boston-area resident said. “That was one bottom I wasn’t willing to revisit again.”

An Associated Press check of data in some key states has found that the use of involuntary commitment for drug addiction is rising. And in many places, lawmakers are trying to create or strengthen laws allowing authorities to force people into treatment.

But critics, including many doctors, law enforcement officials and civil rights advocates, caution that success stories like Loud’s are an exception. Research suggests involuntary commitment largely doesn’t work and could raise the danger of overdose for those who relapse after treatment.

And expanding civil commitment laws, critics argue, could also violate due process rights, overwhelm emergency rooms and confine people in prison-like environments, where treatment sometimes amounts to little more than forced detox without medications to help mitigate withdrawal symptoms.

At least 35 states currently have provisions that allow families or medical professionals to petition a judge, who can then order an individual into treatment if they deem the person a threat to themselves or others. But the laws haven’t always been frequently used.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signed a law last year allowing police officers to civilly commit a person into treatment for up to three days. In Washington state, legislation that took effect April 1 grants mental health professionals similar short-term emergency powers. In both states, a judge’s order would still be required to extend the treatment.

Related bills have also been proposed this year in states including Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Massachusetts, where involuntary commitment has emerged as one of the more controversial parts of Republican Gov. Charlie Baker’s wide-ranging bill dealing with the opioid crisis.

Massachusetts already allows for judges to order people to undergo up to three months of involuntary treatment, but lawmakers are considering giving some medical professionals emergency authority to commit people for up to three days without a judge’s order.

Burden on hospitals?

The proposal is a critical stopgap for weekends and nights, when courts are closed, said Patrick Cronin, a director at the Northeast Addictions Treatment Center in Quincy, who credits his sobriety to his parents’ decision to have him involuntarily committed for heroin use almost 15 years ago.

But giving doctors the ability to hold people in need of treatment against their will, as Massachusetts lawmakers propose, will burden emergency rooms, which already detain people with psychiatric problems until they can be taken to a mental health center, said Dr. Melisa Lai-Becker, president of the Massachusetts College of Emergency Physicians, an advocacy group.

“We’ve got a crowded plane, and you’re asking the pilots to fly for days waiting for an open landing strip while also making sure they’re taking care of the passengers and forcibly restraining the rowdy ones,” Lai-Becker said.

Baker’s administration stressed the proposal wouldn’t take effect until 2020, providing time to work out concerns.

Rising numbers

Even without the state legislative efforts, use of involuntary commitment for drug addiction is rising, according to information the AP obtained from states that have historically used it the most.

Florida reported more than 10,000 requests for commitment in both 2016 and 2015, up from more than 4,000 in 2000, according to court records.

Massachusetts reported more than 6,000 forced commitments for drug addiction in both fiscal years 2016 and 2017, up from fewer than 3,000 in fiscal year 2006.

In Kentucky, judges issued more than 200 orders of involuntary commitment for alcohol or drug abuse in the last calendar year, up from just five in 2004, according to court records. The state has so far reported nearly 100 such commitments this year.

But researchers caution there hasn’t been enough study on whether forced treatment is actually working. And many states don’t track whether people are being civilly committed multiple times, let alone whether they get sober for good, the AP found.

In Massachusetts, where fatal overdoses dropped for the first time in seven years in 2017, state public health officials don’t credit increased use of civil commitment, but rather better training for medical professionals, tighter regulations on painkillers, more treatment beds, wider distribution of the overdose reversal drug naloxone, and other initiatives.

A review published in the International Journal of Drug Policy in 2016 found “little evidence” forced treatment was effective in promoting sobriety or reducing criminal recidivism.

Another 2016 study by Massachusetts’ Department of Public Health found the involuntarily committed were more than twice as likely to die of an opioid-related overdose than those who went voluntarily, but those findings shouldn’t be viewed as an indictment of the process, argues Health and Human Services office spokeswoman Elissa Snook.

“Patients who are committed for treatment are among the sickest, most complex and at the greatest risk for an overdose,” she said. “Involuntary commitment is an emergency intervention, to help individuals stay alive until they are capable of entering treatment voluntarily.”

Most states send the civilly committed to treatment facilities run or contracted by public health agencies. The costs generally fall on patients, their families or insurance providers.

Minimum-security prison

Massachusetts stands out because, until recently, it sent those civilly committed for drug addiction to prisons. That decadeslong practice ended for women in 2016, but many men are still sent to the Massachusetts Alcohol and Substance Abuse Center, which is housed in a minimum-security prison in Plymouth, near Cape Cod.

Patients wear corrections-issued uniforms and submit to prison regulations like room searches and solitary confinement. They also aren’t given methadone or buprenorphine to help wean off heroin or other opioids, as they might in other treatment centers.

Michelle Wiley, whose 29-year-old son David McKinley killed himself there in September after he asked her to have him civilly committed for the third time, said she isn’t opposed to expanded use of the practice as long as those with addiction aren’t sent to places like Plymouth.

In the days before he hanged himself in his room, Wiley said, her son had complained to her about dirty conditions, poor food and not enough substance abuse counselors while he went through withdrawal.

“You think it’s going to be helpful until you hear what it’s like,” she said. “If I had to do it over, I wouldn’t send him to that place.”

The corrections department has since taken steps to improve conditions, including more frequent patrols by prison guards and extended hours for mental health professionals, department spokesman Jason Dobson said.

As for Loud, the Massachusetts woman civilly committed while pregnant, she said she has found peace.

After briefly relapsing following her son’s birth, she has been sober for about a year and a half. She focuses her energies on raising her son, attending regular support meetings and pursuing a passion sidelined by her addiction: competitive Muay Thai fighting. Her fourth bout is in July.

Loud has also reconciled with her mother. The two now live together, along with her son. 

“It took me a long time to understand what she was going through,” Loud said. “She was just trying to save her daughter.”
…

Health officials in Nigeria say 12 people have died from cholera in recent days.

More than 100 people have been sickened in the outbreak located in the Mubi district in the northeastern state of Adamawa.

Cholera is a bacterial disease spread by contaminated food or drinking water. It causes severe diarrhea and subsequent dehydration, and can kill within hours if not treated.
…

Preparations are under way for a mass Ebola vaccination campaign in the Democratic Republic of Congo as the Ministry of Health and international aid agencies hold a second day of inoculations in northwestern Equateur Province. The latest World Health Organization estimates report 51 cases of Ebola, including 27 deaths.

The World Health Organization said 33 people, most of them front-line health care workers, were vaccinated against Ebola on Monday in Mbandaka, a city of more than one million people. It said a few high-risk people from the community also were vaccinated during the first day of the campaign.

More than 7,500 doses of the Ebola vaccine have been shipped to the Democratic Republic of Congo. WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told VOA he expects the campaign to accelerate and ultimately reach thousands of people.

He said a lot of work has to be done before this complex operation can hit its stride. For example, he said transporting the vaccines and storing them in freezers in affected areas is a major challenge.

“You need to have vaccination teams to be trained so they know exactly what they need to do, how to get a consent, how to define eligibility of a contact and contacts of contacts,” he added. “So, all of that has to be done in a very, very short period of time under very difficult conditions.”

Jasarevic said a team from Doctors Without Borders will begin vaccinations later in the week in Bikoro, the remote rural town in northwestern Equateur Province, where the deadly Ebola virus was discovered two weeks ago.

The Ebola vaccine is not licensed, but a major trial in 2015 in Guinea showed it gave a high rate of protection against the disease. A so-called ring vaccination strategy is being applied. It relies on tracing all the contacts and extended contacts of a recently confirmed case as soon as possible. More than 600 contacts have been identified.
…

The Ebola outbreak that has killed more than two dozen people in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo could be as devastating as the one that hit West Africa several years ago, if left unchecked.

But first responders say things are different this time. That’s in large part thanks to a vaccine they couldn’t use in late 2013, when Ebola cases were first reported in Guinea.

The pharmaceutical giant Merck has shipped about 8,600 doses of its experimental vaccine, V920, to the site of the outbreak in Equateur province. The drug has gone through Phase 3 trials, but has not yet received regulatory licensure in any country.

It will be administered in Congo by the World Health Organization, a Merck spokesperson told VOA.

‘Ring vaccination’

Having an effective vaccine isn’t enough, the head of policy and health diplomacy at the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Benjamin Djoudalbaye, told VOA by phone from Geneva.

V920 isn’t designed for mass vaccination. People who have come in contact with a patient must be identified and given the drug.

“But the difficult part,” Djoudalbaye said, “is to properly list down all the contacts and press them in such a way that they (understand they) can benefit from the vaccine and it will stop the spread of the disease.”

The WHO will follow the “ring vaccination” approach, wherein anyone who has come into contact or may come into contact with an infected person is vaccinated to contain the threat.  This could include family members, funeral workers, health workers and others in close contact with a patient.

So far, V920 has prevented everyone vaccinated from contracting the virus. In a 2015 trial, none of the 5,837 people who received the vaccine became sick.

A Merck spokesperson said in an email that the company plans to file for licensure in 2019, but it has made the vaccine available due to the Congo outbreak.

The WHO has requested an additional 8,000 doses, and Merck said it is working to fulfill that request.

Spread to neighboring countries?

On May 18, the East African Community regional bloc warned its members that the virus could potentially spread from the DRC due to direct flights between the countries and extensive trade relations.

“Five out of six EAC partner states share borders with the DRC, and all of them maintain close trade relations with high border traffic,” the statement alerted.

The WHO has not declared a state of emergency, and travel to and from the DRC has not been restricted.

But Djoudalbaye, who just returned from the DRC, said there are no sure things in disease control. It’s just a matter of lowering the risk as much as possible. “The risk ‘zero’ doesn’t exist,” he said, “That is what we need to have all keep in mind.” But strong action from the government can limit the disease from spreading, he added.

Djoudalbaye says health officials, NGOs and governments learned many lessons from the West Africa Ebola outbreak in 2014 and 2015, including the importance of a health-response infrastructure to support rapid intervention.

Key to that effort has been the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, which opened in early 2017.

Existing systems and earmarked resources have enabled a speedy response in the DRC, Djoudalbaye said. “After the declaration of the Ebola outbreak in DR Congo on the eighth (of May), by the tenth, we were on the ground.”

V920 isn’t new. A team of scientists led by University of Manitoba researchers Steven M. Jones and Heinz Feldmann invented the vaccine in 2003 at the Public Health Agency of Canada, in Winnipeg. Initial tests showed promise. Just one shot of the vaccine prevented macaque monkeys exposed to high levels of Ebola from getting sick.

But development of the drug faltered. Lengthy, expensive clinical trials didn’t happen, until the worst Ebola outbreak in recorded history unfolded more than a decade later, in 2014 and 2015. By then, the vaccine had been licensed to Merck, and its effectiveness in humans had been established.

More than 11,000 people died in the West Africa outbreak four years ago, and nearly 30,000 cases were recorded, mainly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Trials of V920 in the outbreak region helped reduce the caseload and ultimately stop the epidemic.

Ongoing funding

Keeping the virus contained and the death toll as low as possible will require ongoing funding, experts say.

“If funding is cut, it will really be pulling the rug out from under health security. And countries that look to other countries that can help will be left alone again as these things will continue,” said Cyrus Shahpar, the director of the Prevent Epidemics team at the Resolve to Save Lives initiative, a New York-based organization working to manage disease threats.

“The spread hasn’t gone away. Obviously we have this new Ebola outbreak, but I think that the memory of what happened in West Africa has kind of waned a bit, and so funding is also starting to wane. And I think it’s absolutely the wrong thing to do,” Shahpar said.
…

Supervised by young engineers, workers at the start-up company Chakr Innovation in New Delhi cut and weld sheets of metal to make devices that will capture black plumes of smoke from diesel generators and convert it into ink. 

In a cabin, young engineers pore over drawings and hunch over computers as they explore more applications of the technology that they hope will aid progress in cleaning up the Indian capital’s toxic air – among the world’s dirtiest. 

While the millions of cars that ply Delhi’s streets are usually blamed for the city’s deadly air pollution, another big culprit is the massive diesel generators used by industries and buildings to light up homes and offices during outages when power from the grid switches off – a frequent occurrence in summer. Installed in backyards and basements, they stay away from the public eye. 

“Although vehicular emissions are the show stoppers, they are the ones which get the media attention, the silent polluters are the diesel generators,” says Arpit Dhupar, one of the three engineers who co-founded the start up. 

The idea that this polluting smoke needs attention struck Dhupar three years ago as he sipped a glass of sugarcane juice at a roadside vendor and saw a wall blackened with the fumes of a diesel generator he was using. 

It jolted him into joining with two others who co-founded the start-up to find a solution. Dhupar had experienced first hand the deadly impact of this pollution as he developed respiratory problems growing up in Delhi.

A new business

As the city’s dirty air becomes a serious health hazard for many citizens, it has turned into both a calling and a business opportunity for entrepreneurs looking at ways to improve air quality.

According to estimates, vehicles contribute 22 percent of the deadly PM 2.5 emissions in Delhi, while the share of diesel generators is about 15 percent. These emissions settle deep into the lungs, causing a host of respiratory problems. 

After over two years of research and development, Chakr has begun selling devices to tap the diesel exhaust. They have been installed in 50 places, include public sector and private companies.

The technology involves cooling the exhaust in a “heat exchanger” where the tiny soot particles come together. These are then funneled into another chamber that captures 70 to 90 percent of the particulate matter. The carbon is isolated and converted into ink. 

Among their first clients was one of the city’s top law firms, Jyoti Sagar Associates, which is housed in a building in Delhi’s business hub Gurgaon. 

Making a contribution to minimizing the carbon footprint is a subject that is close to Sagar’s heart – his 32-year-old daughter has long suffered from the harmful effects of Delhi’s toxic air.

“This appealed to us straightaway, the technology is very impactful but is beautifully simple,” says Sagar. Since it could be retrofitted, it did not disrupt the day-to-day activities at the buzzing office. “Let’s be responsible. Let’s at least not leave behind a larger footprint of carbon. And if we can afford to control it, why not, it’s good for all,” he says. 

At Chakr Innovation, cups, diaries and paper bags printed with the ink made from the exhaust serve as constant reminders of the amount of carbon emissions that would have escaped into the atmosphere. 

There has been a lot of focus on improving Delhi’s air by reducing vehicular pollution and making more stringent norms for manufacturers, but the same has not happened for diesel generators. Although there are efforts to penalize businesses that dirty the atmosphere, this often prompts them to find ways to get around the norms. 

Tushar Mathur who joined the start up after working for ten years in the corporate sector feels converting smoke into ink is a viable solution. “Here is a technology which is completely sustainable, a win-win between businesses and environment,” says Mathur. 
…

The government of Rwandan President Paul Kagame — accused by some of imposing authoritarian rule on the country — received almost unanimous praise for its strides in health care. Kagame had a chance to tout his health care policy as an example to other African nations at the opening of the World Health Assembly in Geneva Monday.

According to Rwandan officials, the country’s universal health care system has brought coverage to more than 90 percent of its population.

 

Kagame, an advocate for the adoption of universal health coverage in Africa,  leads a country that has a successful, widely-admired system. As chairman of the African Union, he has promoted universal coverage as the continent’s top strategic objective.

The effort is receiving full support from the World Health Organization, which aims to achieve coverage for one billion more people by 2023 as part of a five-year strategic plan.

Touting his own efforts as an example, Kagame says achieving universal health coverage is feasible for countries at every income.These systems, he says, avoid catastrophic out-of-pocket health expenditures, which are an increasing source of impoverishment in Africa.

He says community-based, primary health systems all around Africa have shown good results.

“In Rwanda,” he said, “a combination of community-based health insurance, community health workers, and good external partnerships led to the steepest reductions in child and maternal mortality ever recorded.”

Kagame says more than 90 percent of Rwandans are enrolled in health insurance today. He says two-thirds of the costs are borne by the beneficiaries, with the government subsidizing the remaining one-third.

He says it acts as a boon for entrepreneurship, helps families invest in their children’s education, and allows for the economic empowerment of women.

Kagame’s account of his success is largely uncontested by the WHO, western aid agencies, and the media. Virtually all of the publicity surrounding Rwanda’s health care achievements in the West has been overwhelmingly positive.

But to international human rights organizations and his political opponents at home, Kagame is using the success of his health care policy to shadow a more sinister aspect of his rule. Amnesty International says this is characterized by widespread human rights abuses including unlawful killings and unresolved disappearances.

Rwanda’s clampdown on freedom of expression is so severe, the group Reporters Without Borders calls Kagame a “predator of press freedom.”
…

A southern white rhino at the San Diego Zoo in California has become pregnant as a result of artificial insemination with sperm from a male southern white rhino. The development increases hopes that a nearly extinct close relative, the northern white rhino, can be saved.

News that the female southern white rhino named Victoria is pregnant is seen as a breakthrough, and a step toward saving the northern white rhino species. The pregnancy was confirmed last week. If Victoria is able to carry the calf to term, it will be born in about a year.

The San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research issued a statement that said confirmation of this pregnancy through artificial insemination represented a “historic event” for the organization and was a critical step in the effort to save the northern white rhino.

The world’s last male northern white rhino, Sudan, died after age-related complications in March at Kenya’s Ol Pejeta Conservancy, his home for 10 years after being transferred from a zoo in the Czech Republic. Sudan was 45 years old and had been in ailing health.

Sudan’s death was seen as a tragedy, as it marked the possible end of a species.

Researchers optimistic

Reproductive options for producing a northern white rhino include artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer, with the southern white rhinos possibly serving as surrogates for northern white rhino embryos. 

The statement from the institute said researchers were optimistic that a northern white rhino calf could be born from these procedures within 10 to 15 years. 

Kenya is home to the last remaining northern white rhinos, Sudan’s daughter Najin, and granddaughter, Fatu.

The second-to-last male northern white rhino, Suni, died in 2014. Suni had also been brought back to Africa from the Czech Republic.

Sudan and Suni were too old to mate by the time they left Europe.

A team at Ol Pejeta is also working on a different project that seeks to save the northern white rhino from extinction.

Serve as surrogate

The plan is to harvest eggs from the two remaining northern white females. The animals cannot be artificially inseminated because they are infertile. Scientists intend to use an Ol Pejeta southern white rhino as a surrogate for northern white rhino eggs.

“Ol Pejeta is working on invitro fertilization,” said Richard Vigne, CEO of Ol Pejeta Conservancy.

“There are two northern white rhino females left. Both are infertile — they cannot get pregnant. So, what we want to do is remove eggs from their ovaries. We want to take the eggs, and we want to fertilize them in a test tube with northern white rhino sperm to create an embryo which can then be implanted into southern white rhino females acting as surrogate mothers, to eventually produce a pure bred northern white rhino calf exactly as it happens in humans.”

Paul Gathitu,  a Kenya Wildlife Service spokesman, said any news toward wildlife conservation is good news.

“Any indication that technology, science, will be able to propagate this creates hope, and particularly for animals that are on the extinction path,” Gathitu said. “For humanity, it’s a good sign. It means that there is a possibility we could turn to science and technology and see contributions toward conservation.”

Human big part of problem

Vigne said people have a responsibility to help save endangered species because humans are the top reason for endangerment.

“I think there is a bit of hope for the northern white rhino, but I think the important point that people need to understand is that it is not only the northern white rhino that is threatened by extinction,” Vigne said.

“There are thousands of other species across the planet that are currently facing extinction as a result of human activity. While we may be able to save the northern white rhino by spending a lot of money on it, the truth of the matter is, all of the other species that are threatened by extinction will go extinct unless the way that humans interact with our environment changes.”

Poaching has escalated in recent years and is being driven by the demand for Ivory. Rhino populations worldwide, in the meantime, continue to dwindle due to poaching. 
…

In homes and pubs, on leaflets and lampposts, debate is raging in Ireland over whether to lift the country’s decades-old ban on abortion. Pro-repeal banners declare: “Her choice: vote yes.” Anti-abortion placards warn against a “license to kill.”

 

Online, the argument is just as charged — and more shadowy, as unregulated ads of uncertain origin battle to sway voters before Friday’s referendum, which could give Irish women the right to end their pregnancies for the first time.

 

The emotive campaign took a twist this month when Facebook and Google moved to restrict or remove ads relating to the abortion vote. It is the latest response to global concern about social media’s role in influencing political campaigns, from the U.S. presidential race to Brexit.

 

“We shouldn’t be naive in thinking Ireland would be immune from all these worldwide trends,” said lawmaker James Lawless, technology spokesman for the opposition Fianna Fail party.

 

“Because of the complete lack of any regulation on social media campaigning in Ireland, somebody at the moment can throw any amount of money, from anywhere in the world, with any message — and there’s nothing anybody can do about it.”

 

The role of online ads in elections is under scrutiny following revelations that Russian groups bought ads on platforms such as Google and Facebook to try to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential race. Many of the ads were designed to sow confusion, anger and discord among Americans through messages on hot-button topics.

 

Few subjects are more emotive than abortion, especially in largely Roman Catholic Ireland. Despite the country’s growing diversity and liberalism — voters legalized gay marriage in a 2015 referendum — the vote is expected to be close. The campaign is being watched, and sometimes influenced, by anti-abortion groups in the U.S. and elsewhere.

 

Voters are being asked whether they want to keep or repeal the eighth amendment to Ireland’s constitution, added in 1983, which commits authorities to defend equally the right to life of a mother and an unborn child. Abortion is legal only in rare cases when the woman’s life is in danger, and several thousand Irish women travel each year to terminate pregnancies in neighboring Britain.

 

Prime Minister Leo Varadkar’s center-right government backs lifting the ban and allowing abortion on request up to 12 weeks of pregnancy.

 

Ireland is no stranger to referendums — this is its fifth in five years — and the country’s electoral laws regulate traditional forms of campaigning. Radio and television ads are banned completely, and foreign political donations are outlawed. But the 20-year-old electoral rules don’t cover social-media advertising, and there is no limit on campaign spending.

 

“It’s a complete Wild, Wild west,” said Craig Dwyer of the Transparent Referendum Initiative, a volunteer group set up to collect information on the ads being used to target Irish Facebook users. “When we started collecting this information there was absolutely zero regulation.”

 

The group has compiled and analyzed almost 900 Facebook ads connected to the referendum. Many were placed by registered lobby groups, and most came from inside Ireland. But several dozen were either untraceable or from overseas, including some that have been linked to U.S.-based anti-abortion organizations.

 

Several pages, with names like “Just the Facts About the 8th Amendment” and “Undecided on the 8th,” claimed to give neutral information but had a clear anti-abortion agenda.

 

Such pages can be used to identify undecided voters, who can then be targeted with tailored ads — a practice that has been under scrutiny since revelations that political consultancy Cambridge Analytica harvested Facebook users’ data to micro-target select groups during the U.S. presidential race.

 

Concern about the impact of online ads led Facebook to announce May 8 that it would no longer accept referendum-relayed advertisements from outside Ireland in order to “ensure a free, fair and transparent vote.”

 

A day later, Google went even further, halting all referendum advertising as part of efforts to protect “election integrity.” The company said it was aware of “concerns” around the issue but declined to say what prompted the decision.

 

Research by the Transparent Referendum Initiative and University College Dublin found “some indications of large-scale spending on unregulated Google and YouTube ads” before Google’s ban.

 

Google’s decision infuriated anti-abortion campaign Save the Eighth, which was about to launch a series of YouTube ads when Google, which owns the video-sharing site, pulled the plug.

 

Spokesman John McGuirk accused the Mountain View, California-based search giant of “direct foreign interference in a referendum campaign.”

 

“You have a multinational corporation essentially saying that this country’s democracy is compromised, and they have provided no evidence for that whatsoever,” he said.

 

McGuirk dismisses the role of overseas ads in the referendum, saying most were “small, amateurish ads basically made by John and Mary in New Jersey telling Irish people to pray the rosary for a `no’ vote. They weren’t helping us in the first place.”

 

McGuirk sees allegations of shady social-media advertising as an attempt to undermine the “no” campaign because it was winning the online war. As with the Trump and pro-Brexit campaigns, Save the Eighth paints itself as an underdog, battling what it sees as pro-repeal bias among mainstream media and politicians.

 

The pro-repeal campaign insists it was equally disadvantaged by the Google ban.

 

“We had a Google strategy that was in place, we were spending money,” said Peter Tanham, head of digital for Together For Yes. “We had to spend a day readjusting our plans.”

 

Both sides agree that tech firms should not be the ones making important decisions about Ireland’s democracy. Lawless has introduced a bill to parliament that would require all online advertisers to disclose the publishers and sponsors behind ads.

 

“We should not be looking to boardrooms in Silicon Valley to see how our elections should be governed,” he said.

 

The lawmaker’s bill may become law later this year, too late to influence Friday’s vote. Polls suggest the “yes” side has a lead, but it may be narrowing — and almost one in five voters say they are undecided.

 

While both sides say online ads are an important part of their strategy, many feel the argument will be won the old-fashioned way: through personal contact, one voter at a time.

 

“It was a blow when Google said they weren’t going to play more ads,” said Siobhan McAteer, a 25-year-old “no” campaigner distributing leaflets on a Dublin street. “It was a bit upsetting, but the momentum is in the streets. It’s our campaigners talking to people on the streets.”

 

 

 

 
…

 In an energetic presentation, World Health Organization director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has kicked off the agency’s annual conference in Geneva by vowing to use his position to keep the world safe and to serve the vulnerable by promoting health for all.

The overflow audience at the Assembly enthusiastically marked the World Health Organization’s 70th Birthday. WHO Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus agreed there was much to celebrate. But noted there was little joy in the Democratic Republic of Congo where health workers were risking their lives to stop the Ebola outbreak in that country.

“It is concerning that we now have cases of Ebola in an urban center, but we are much better placed to deal with this outbreak than we were in 2014. I am pleased to say that vaccination is starting as we speak today,” he said.

Tedros said this was only the latest of 50 emergencies in 47 countries and territories to which WHO has responded in the past year. He noted the best way to prevent future disease outbreaks and emergencies was to strengthen health systems everywhere.

“That is why we established a High-Level Commission on Noncommunicable Diseases, to stop the premature and preventable deaths of millions of people,” he said. “It is why we established an initiative on climate change and health in small island developing states … It is why we are working on an aggressive new initiative to jumpstart progress against malaria, an entirely treatable disease that still kills half a million people every single year.”

WHO has rolled out an ambitious new five-year strategic plan, which aims to make a big impact on health. Tedros said the goal is to achieve the highest attainable standard of health for all peoples in the world, poor and rich alike.
…

China launched a relay satellite early on Monday designed to establish a communication link between earth and a planned lunar probe that will explore the dark side of the moon, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Citing the China National Space Administration, Xinhua said the satellite was launched at 5:28 a.m. (2128 GMT Sunday) on a Long March-4C rocket from the Xichang launch center in the southwest of the country.

“The launch is a key step for China to realize its goal of being the first country to send a probe to soft-land on and rove the far side of the moon,” Xinhua quoted Zhang Lihua, manager of the relay satellite project, as saying.

It said the satellite, known as Queqiao, or Magpie Bridge, will settle in an orbit about 455,000 km (282,555 miles) from Earth and will be the world’s first communication satellite operating there.

China aims to catch up with Russia and the United States to become a major space power by 2030. It is planning to launch construction of its own manned space station next year.

However, while China has insisted its ambitions are purely peaceful, the U.S. Defense Department has accused it of pursuing activities aimed at preventing other nations from using space-based assets during a crisis. 
…

The Democratic Republic of Congo plans to launch an Ebola vaccination program Monday to stop another widespread outbreak of the deadly disease.

More than 4,000 doses of vaccine have been shipped to the large port city of Mbandaka, where three cases of the virus have been confirmed since last week and two are suspected. More vaccine is on the way.

Twenty-six Ebola-related deaths have been reported in northwestern DRC since April along with a number of suspected cases.

“Previous outbreaks have demonstrated the importance of a rapid and well-resourced response in order to save lives, but also prevent an exponential increase in the economic cost of a response,” World Health Organization spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said Sunday.

The WHO and Congolese health officials are striving to stop outbreak from moving down river from Mbandaka to Kinshasa, where 10 million people live.

President Joseph Kabila and his Cabinet have increased Ebola emergency response funds to more than $4 million.

The latest Ebola outbreak is the ninth in the DRC since the 1970s.

A 2013 outbreak in West Africa lasted more than two years and killed more than 11,300 people. Most of the victims lived in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone with other cases scattered as far away as the United States.

Ebola causes internal bleeding, vomiting, and diarrhea and is spread through direct contact with a victim’s bodily fluids. There is no specific treatment.

An outbreak in a densely populated urban area could be catastrophic, experts say.

 
…

Congo’s health ministry announced one new death from Ebola Sunday, bringing to 26 the number of deaths from the deadly outbreak in Equateur province in the country’s northwest.

Four new cases of the Ebola virus have been confirmed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to country’s health ministry most recent statement.

A total of 46 cases of the hemorrhagic fever have been reported in the current outbreak: 21 confirmed cases of Ebola, 21 probable and four suspected.

President Joseph Kabila and his Cabinet decided Saturday to increase funds for Ebola emergency response which amounts to more than $4 million.

Health Minister Oly Ilunga said late Friday the new cases of the often lethal virus were confirmed in Mbandaka city, a city of 1.2 million people where another case was confirmed days earlier.

The United Nations World Health Organization declined to declare the outbreak an international health emergency but said the risk of the virus spreading within the country was “very high.” The WHO said there was also a high risk of it spreading to nine neighboring countries but maintained there should be no travel or trade restrictions in the region.

A new, experimental vaccine is expected to be administered beginning early next week. The vaccine was effective in a West African outbreak a few years ago. Four-thousand doses are already in Congo and more shipments are enroute. Congolese health officials are challenged with keeping the vaccine cold in a large country where the infrastructure is in poor condition.

This is the ninth Ebola outbreak in Congo in more than 40 years, but the earlier ones were limited to rural areas. There were two outbreaks in the capital of Kinshasa, which has a population of 10 million people, but they were quickly stopped.

There is no specific treatment for the virus, which is lethal and highly contagious. The latest virus is of the same strain that spread in three West African countries for two years beginning in 2013, creating global panic. By the time its spread was halted, the virus had killed more than 11,300 people, making it the most deadly Ebola outbreak ever.

 
…

Three new cases of the often lethal Ebola virus have been confirmed in a city of more than 1 million people, Congo’s health minister announced, as the spread of the hemorrhagic fever in an urban area raised alarm.

The statement late Friday said the confirmed cases are in Mbandaka city, where a single case was confirmed earlier in the week.

There are now 17 confirmed Ebola cases in this outbreak, including one death, plus 21 probable cases and five suspected ones.

The World Health Organization on Friday decided not to declare the outbreak a global health emergency, but it called the risk of spread within Congo “very high” and warned nine neighboring countries that the risk to them was high. WHO said there should be no international travel or trade restrictions.

The outbreak is a test of a new experimental Ebola vaccine that proved effective in the West Africa outbreak a few years ago. Vaccinations are expected to start early in the week, with more than 4,000 doses already in Congo and more on the way.

A major challenge will be keeping the vaccines cold in the vast, impoverished country where infrastructure is poor.

While Congo has contained several Ebola outbreaks in the past, all of them were based in remote rural areas. The virus has twice made it to Congo’s capital of 10 million people, Kinshasa, in the past but was rapidly stopped.

Health officials are trying to track down more than 500 people who have been in contact with those feared infected, a task that became more urgent with the spread to Mbandaka, which lies on the Congo River, a busy traffic corridor, and is an hour’s flight from the capital.

The outbreak was declared more than a week ago in Congo’s remote northwest. Its spread has some Congolese worried.

“Even if it’s not happening here yet I have to reduce contact with people. May God protect us in any case,” Grace Ekofo, a 23-year-old student in Kinshasa, told The Associated Press.

A teacher in Mbandaka, 53-year-old Jean Mopono, said they were trying to implement preventative measures by teaching students not to greet each other by shaking hands or kissing.

“We pray that this epidemic does not take place here,” Mopono said.

The WHO, which was accused of bungling its response to the West Africa outbreak, the biggest Ebola outbreak in history with more than 11,000 deaths, appears to be moving swiftly to contain this latest epidemic, experts said.

There is “strong reason to believe this situation can be brought under control,” said Dr. Robert Steffen, who chaired the WHO expert meeting on Friday. But without a vigorous response, “the situation is likely to deteriorate significantly.”

This is the ninth Ebola outbreak in Congo since 1976, when the disease was first identified. The virus is initially transmitted to people from wild animals, including bats and monkeys. It is spread via contact with bodily fluids of those infected.

There is no specific treatment for Ebola. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding. The virus can be fatal in up to 90 percent of cases, depending on the strain.
…

Conservationists around the world are making great strides in rescuing animal species from the brink of extinction. Despite the recent death of the last male white rhinoceros, there is hope that science can bring the species back. In Europe, scientists are raising bison almost a century after they vanished from the wild, and California’s population of sea otters has rebounded from only 50 specimens in the 1930s. VOA’s George Putic has more.
…

Congo’s latest Ebola outbreak does not yet warrant being declared a global health emergency, the World Health Organization announced Friday, as health officials rushed to contain the often deadly virus that has spread to a city of more than 1 million.

The vast, impoverished country now has 14 confirmed Ebola cases, with dozens of others probable or suspected.

WHO officials, speaking after an experts’ meeting on the outbreak, said vaccinations could begin as early as Sunday in a key test of an experimental vaccine.

The health agency called the risk to the public in Congo “very high” and the regional risk high, with the global risk low. The Republic of Congo and Central African Republic are nearby and are among nine neighboring countries alerted. WHO said there should be no international travel or trade restrictions.

Dr. Robert Steffen, who chaired the expert meeting, said there was “strong reason to believe this situation can be brought under control.”

He noted the almost immediate response by WHO and partners after Ebola was announced in Congo last week. Without a vigorous response, “the situation is likely to deteriorate significantly,” he added. If the outbreak spreads internationally, the expert committee would reconvene to reconsider its assessment of the epidemic.

Congo has contained several past Ebola outbreaks but the spread of the hemorrhagic fever to an urban area poses a major challenge. The city of Mbandaka, which has one confirmed Ebola case, is an hour’s flight from the capital, Kinshasa, and is located on the Congo River, a busy travel corridor.

For a health crisis to constitute a global health emergency it must meet three criteria stipulated by WHO: It must threaten other countries via the international spread of disease, it must be a “serious, unusual or unexpected” situation, and it may require immediate international action for containment.

‘Major, major game-changer’

Ebola has twice made it to Congo’s capital in the past and was rapidly stopped. Congo has had the most Ebola outbreaks of any country, and Dr. David Heymann, a former WHO director who has led numerous responses to Ebola, said authorities there have considerable expertise in halting the lethal virus.

The Ebola vaccine proved highly effective in the West Africa outbreak a few years ago, although the vaccine was used long after the epidemic had peaked. More than 4,000 doses have arrived in Congo this week, with more on the way, and vaccinations are expected to start next week. One challenge will be keeping the vaccine cold in a region with poor infrastructure and patchy electricity.

Just one Ebola death in the current outbreak has been confirmed so far. Congo’s health ministry late Thursday said the total number of cases is 45, including 10 suspected and 21 probable ones.

The health ministry said two new deaths have been tied to the cases, including one in a suburb of Mbandaka. The other was in Bikoro, the rural area where the outbreak was announced last week. It is about 150 kilometers (93 miles) from Mbandaka.

“This is a major, major game-changer in the outbreak,” Dr. Peter Salama, WHO’s emergency response chief, warned Thursday after the first urban case was announced. “Urban Ebola can result in an exponential increase in cases in a way that rural Ebola struggles to do.”

Until now, the outbreak had been confined to remote rural areas, where Ebola, which is spread via contact with bodily fluids of those infected, travels more slowly.

Health teams

Doctors Without Borders said 514 people believed to have been in contact with infected people were being monitored. WHO said it was deploying about 30 more experts to Mbandaka.

Amid fears of the outbreak spreading to neighboring countries, the U.N. migration agency said Friday it would support the deployment of Congolese health teams to 16 entry points along the nearby border with the Republic of Congo for infection control and prevention.

The U.N. children’s agency said it was mobilizing hundreds of community workers to raise awareness on protection against the disease.

This is the ninth Ebola outbreak in Congo since 1976, when the disease was first identified. The virus is initially transmitted to people from wild animals, including bats and monkeys.

There is no specific treatment for Ebola. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding. The virus can be fatal in up to 90 percent of cases, depending on the strain.
…