One of the most common New Year’s resolutions is to lose weight and get fit. Faith Lapidus takes a look at how some people are trying to keep that commitment.
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From gritty neighborhoods in New York and Los Angeles to clinics in Kenya and Brazil, health workers are trying to popularize a pill that has proven highly effective in preventing HIV but which – in their view – remains woefully underused.
Marketed in the United States as Truvada, and sometimes available abroad in generic versions, the pill has been shown to reduce the risk of getting HIV from sex by more than 90 percent if taken daily. Yet worldwide, only about a dozen countries have aggressive, government-backed programs to promote the pill. In the U.S., there are problems related to Truvada’s high cost, lingering skepticism among some doctors and low usage rates among black gays and bisexuals who have the highest rates of HIV infection.
“Truvada works,” said James Krellenstein, a New York-based activist. “We have to start thinking of it not as a luxury but as an essential public health component of this nation’s response to HIV.”
A few large U.S. cities are promoting Truvada, often with sexually charged ads. In New York, “Bare It All” was among the slogans urging gay men to consult their doctors. The Los Angeles LGBT Center – using what it called “raw, real language” – launched a campaign to increase use among young Latino and black gay men and transgender women.
“We’ve got the tools to not only end the fear of HIV, but to end it as an epidemic,” said the center’s chief of staff, Darrel Cummings. “Those at risk have to know about the tools, though, and they need honest information about them.”
Truvada in the U.S.
In New York, roughly 30 percent of gay and bisexual men are using Truvada now, up dramatically from a few years ago, according to Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, a deputy commissioner of the city’s health department.
However, Daskalakis said use among young black and Hispanic men – who account for a majority of new HIV diagnoses – lags behind. To address that, the city is making Truvada readily available in some clinics in or near heavily black and Hispanic neighborhoods.
“We like to go to the root of the problem,” said Daskalakis, who personally posed for the “Bare It All” campaign.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , Truvada would be appropriate for about 1.2 million people in the U.S. – including sex workers and roughly 25 percent of gay men. Gilead Scientific, Truvada’s California-based manufacturer, says there are only about 145,000 active prescriptions for HIV prevention use.
Under federal guidelines, prime candidates for preventive use of Truvada include some gay and bisexual men with multiple sexual partners, and anyone who does not have HIV but has an ongoing sexual relationship with someone who has the virus.
An international approach
Abroad, a few government health agencies – including those in France, Norway, Belgium, Kenya, South Africa, Brazil and some Canadian provinces – have launched major efforts to promote preventive use of Truvada or generic alternatives, providing it for free or a nominal charge. In Britain, health officials in Scotland and England recently took steps to provide the medication directly through government-funded programs, though in England it’s in the form of a trial limited to 10,000 people.
Truvada was launched in 2004, initially used in combination with other drugs as the basic treatment for people who have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. It is primarily spread through sex.
Controversy arose in 2012 when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Truvada to reduce the risk of getting HIV in the first place, for what’s called pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP. It blocks the virus from making copies and taking hold. Critics warned that many gay men wouldn’t heed Truvada’s once-a-day schedule and complained of its high cost – roughly $1,500 a month.
Gilead offers a payment assistance plan to people without insurance that covers the full cost. Some cities and a few states – including Illinois, Massachusetts and Washington – also help cover costs. Activists have pressed Gilead to make its copay program more generous in light of its profits from Truvada.
“There’s no reason it has to cost so much,” said Krellenstein.
Gilead spokesman Ryan McKeel, in an email, said the company is reviewing the copay program.
“Like those in the advocacy community, we are committed to expanding access to Truvada for PrEP to as many people as possible,” he wrote.
In June, the FDA approved a generic version of Truvada, which is likely to push the price down, but it won’t be available in the U.S. for a few years.
The Truvada debate has taken many twists, as exemplified by the varying stances of the Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation – a leading HIV/AIDS service provider. In 2012, the group unsuccessfully petitioned the FDA to delay or deny approval of Truvada for preventive use. The foundation’s president, Michael Weinstein, belittled Truvada as “a party drug” and warned it would increase the spread of sexually transmitted infections by encouraging men to engage in sex without condoms.
But last year, the foundation, while still skeptical about some Truvada-related policies, urged Gilead to cut its price to make it more available.
“We have no dispute about its ability to prevent HIV transmission,” said spokesman Ged Kenslea. He noted that the organization’s 40 pharmacies across the U.S. handle many Truvada prescriptions.
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Three people in South Sudan have died of a suspected viral hemorrhagic fever and 60 of their contacts are being monitored for any infection, the World Health Organization said Monday.
Ebola, Marburg and yellow fever are among viral hemorrhagic fevers that have caused deadly outbreaks in Africa. More than 11,300 people died during the worst outbreak of Ebola, a highly contagious disease, which mainly affected Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone from 2013 to 2016.
The three people in South Sudan — a pregnant woman, a teenage girl and a boy — all died in December and were from the same village in Yirol East county in the eastern Lakes State. But there had been no known contact among them.
No tissue or blood samples were collected from their bodies for analysis, and South Sudan health authorities reported the cases on Dec. 28, the WHO said in a statement.
“The outbreak of suspected viral hemorrhagic fever in South Sudan could rapidly evolve, and critical information including laboratory confirmation of the etiology of disease is needed to direct response efforts,” it said.
National health authorities and WHO are investigating and have found evidence of zoonotic hemorrhagic illness in goats and sheep in the area, including some deaths, as well as deaths among wild birds at the time, it added.
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The death toll from an outbreak of listeria in South Africa has jumped beyond 60 in the past month, health authorities said Monday, adding they had closed a poultry abattoir where the bug that causes the disease had been detected.
Since monitoring of the outbreak began last January, 720 laboratory-confirmed cases of food poisoning due to the disease, also known as listeriosis, have been reported, the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) said.
That was up from 557 in December, since when recorded deaths had risen to 61 from 36.
A food microbiologist said the “alarming” outbreak appeared to be the biggest ever recorded and could spread further if it was not tackled urgently.
“Of the documented outbreaks globally that we know of … our numbers are way above any of those other cases,” said Dr. Lucia Anelich, who runs her own food safety consultancy.
The Department of Health said it had closed a poultry abattoir operated by Sovereign Foods in the capital Pretoria after detecting listeria there, and had banned the facility from preparing food in December.
The department said it did not yet know whether this abattoir was the source of the outbreak, which the NICD said was still unknown.
Sovereign Foods, which delisted from the Johannesburg stock exchange in November, said the prohibition on the abattoir was lifted Monday after the listeria bacterium was not found in the latest samples from the plant.
“Despite being declared clean and free of the listeria bacterium, we are further strengthening steps to render products safer than they already are,” said Sovereign Foods head of production Blaine van Rensburg.
Listeria food poisoning is a bacterial infection that can be treated with antibiotics if diagnosed in time. The bacteria can be found in animal products including cold cut meats, poultry and unpasteurized milk, as well as fresh fruits and vegetables.
The disease can cause flu-like symptoms and diarrhea, and in more severe cases spread from the intestine to the blood, causing bloodstream infections, or to the central nervous system, causing meningitis.
Anelich said a listeriosis strain known as ST6 had been identified in nine out of 10 of the South African cases. That should make tracing the source easier, “because now we know that it probably originates from one processing facility.”
A health department official said the strain was not drug-resistant and that the deaths were due to delays in diagnosis, meaning cases were not treated in time.
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In 2012, Britons delighted in the spectacular opening ceremony of the London Olympics celebrating British history. One of the curtain-raiser’s most popular sequences, drawing loud applause, involved 1,800 dancers and 320 hospital beds honoring the country’s National Health Service.
Six years on, and Britons are more likely to moan about the world’s largest single-payer health care system than praise it.
According to patients, doctors and analysts, the NHS is buckling and close to collapse, with emergency departments over-burdened, hospital wards full and all nonessential operations — more than 55,000 of them — suspended because of a winter surge in demand.
Fueled in part by unseasonably cold weather, an especially virulent flu strain and cuts in social care, leaving hospital beds occupied by the elderly who have nowhere else to go, the winter crisis has brought home to the country the fragile state of the NHS.
Last week, an 81-year-old pensioner suffering chest pains died after waiting four hours for the ambulance service to respond to her emergency call. Patients are being left on gurneys for hours in drafty corridors waiting for beds to become free, and hospitals in the northeast are reporting an outbreak among patients of the gastroenteritis norovirus, dubbed the vomiting bug.
Politics involved
Norman Lamb, a former health minister, blames “tribal politics” for failing to deliver “a solution to the existential challenges facing the NHS and social care.”
“The winter crisis of the past few weeks is unfortunate proof that the current situation is unsustainable, and these pressures will only get worse as we contend with an aging population and rising demand for care and treatment,” he said.
British Prime Minister Theresa May has apologized for the suspension of non-urgent operations and for some emergency departments having to turn away all but the most grave cases, but she insists there isn’t a crisis and the government is on top of things.
Asked during a BBC interview Sunday if she could remember a worse winter crisis, May said, “The NHS has actually been better prepared for this winter pressures than it has been before.” She added, “You mentioned operations being postponed. That was part of the plan.”
May pointed to top-up funding of $450 million announced last month. But her own health minister, Jeremy Hunt, has hinted much more needs to be done to restore the world’s fifth largest employer, and argues it would be better if NHS funding were set on a 10-year time frame.
More than 90 lawmakers have signed a letter calling for a cross-party convention to discuss how the NHS can be funded to cope with a graying population that lives longer. The Center for Policy Studies warned Sunday that money from general taxation won’t be enough to fund the growing pressures of an aging population and increasing demand. “Alternative, additional sources of revenue for the NHS” need to be identified, it argued.
Long view needed
Lord Saatchi, a coauthor of the CPS report, said a long-term funding plan not tied to short-term political objectives is needed.
“The wonderful dream of the NHS is turning into a recurring winter nightmare, and leaving it alone is a recipe for long-term catastrophe,” he said.
The NHS lags behind many of Europe’s other health systems — most funded by a mixture of private and public means — when it comes to medical outcomes. Britain has the most overweight young adults in Europe, with 29 percent of women under 25 classified as obese. Obesity, depression and dementia are all on the rise.
Analysts say the NHS can take partial credit for the rise by about 10 years in life expectancy during the past half century. But it is ill-equipped to deal with one of the spin-offs of increased life expectancy — chronic ill-health.
The service’s annual budget has risen over a hundredfold since its founding in 1948 — its annual budget is $170 billion, about 10 percent of the country’s GDP. But chronic care costs now account for more than 80 percent of the NHS budget. Some analysts are forecasting that treating patients suffering Type 2 diabetes alone will account for 25 percent of the NHS budget by 2025.
The frontline NHS emergency departments are taking more of the strain as other services are cut, including walk-in clinics — 40 percent of which have been closed in recent years. The service is woefully short of family doctors and nurses, whose salaries have been cut, and it is finding it hard in the wake of the Brexit referendum to recruit more from Europe, which supplies a large proportion of the NHS’s junior doctors and nurses.
A group of disabled Egyptians is not letting the lack of having lost a leg get in the way of playing football. They have formed a team they hope will be a part of a soccer league for people with special needs. Faith Lapidus reports.
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The unpredictable and aggressive nature of wolf-dog hybrids makes them difficult to keep as household pets. But the founders of the Lockwood Animal Rescue Center in California say the dual nature of these animals makes them ideal therapists for combat veterans who suffer from PTSD. VOA’s Genia Dulot has more on the “Wolves and Warriors” program.
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A remote island volcano in Papua New Guinea has begun spewing ash into the air, forcing the evacuation of more than 500 residents, media and nonprofit groups said.
Kadovar Island, a 365-meter (1,197 feet) tall volcano on the north coast of PNG, was thought to be dormant until it began erupting Jan. 5.
“It’s just a continuous emission of volcanic ash at the moment,” Cheyne O’Brien, a forecaster at the Darwin Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre, told Reuters by telephone Sunday.
The ash clouds have been thrown up steadily to a height of 2,133 meters (7,000 feet), forming a plume that is traveling west-northwest, he added.
The plume does not yet pose a hazard to aviation, but a change in wind direction could hit operations at PNG’s Wewak airport, O’Brien said.
All the residents of the island have been evacuated with no loss of life, U.S.-based charity Samaritan Aviation, which operates seaplanes to remote areas of PNG, said on Facebook.
The eruption may become explosive, bringing a risk of tsunamis and landslides, domestic online media Loop PNG quoted the Rabaul Volcanological Observatory as saying.
There are no confirmed records of a previous eruption of Kadovar, said Chris Firth, a volcanologist at Macquarie University, but scientists speculate it could have been one of two “burning islands” mentioned in the journals of a 17th-century English pirate and maritime adventurer, William Dampier.
Dampier may have recorded the last eruption of Kadovar during a voyage in search of “Terra Australis,” the southern continent once thought to be mythical, Firth said.
Volcanologists are interested to observe its behavior now, Firth added.
“It’s hard to predict what might happen, as there’s nothing to compare it to,” he said.
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The World Health Organization classifies alcohol as a “group 1 carcinogen.” That means there is convincing evidence it can cause cancer in humans. But new research shows how alcohol can damage the body on a genetic level. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Health experts say the influenza season in the United States is proving to be more severe than usual, with about twice the number of people reporting flu-like illness to their doctors compared with the same time last year.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that in the week ending December 23, 36 states reported widespread flu. The agency said that nearly 2,500 people have been hospitalized for flu-related symptoms and that 13 children have died of the virus in the current season, which started in October.
The CDC said that across the nation, about 5 percent of patients saw their doctors for flu-like symptoms in the week ending December 23, compared with 2.2 percent of patients doing so during the same week in 2016.
Hospitals in California are particularly overwhelmed, with some Southern California pharmacies running out of flu medication. Health officials told the Los Angeles Times on Friday that 27 people younger than 65 had died of the flu in California since October. Only three people died of the flu in the same time period a year ago.
Medical experts say this year’s strain of influenza may just be peaking early in the season. By February last year, flu deaths had gone from the three reported in December to 68.
Experts say it is also possible that this year’s dominant strain, H3N2, is more resistant to treatment than some others. Health officials say more people may be getting ill because the vaccine is less effective against H3N2.
Los Angeles County’s interim health officer, Jeffrey Gunzenhauser, told the Times that this strain of flu causes more hospitalizations and more deaths than other strains that respond better to treatment. He said influenza is especially dangerous for the elderly, who are at greater risk of developing pneumonia or other complications along with the flu — conditions that could be fatal when combined.
Gunzenhauser said vaccination against influenza lowers one’s chances of catching the flu or being a carrier. Also, if the flu does later strike someone who has been vaccinated, his illness is likely to be less severe.
The stakes are low, Gunzenhauser said, noting that the worst side effect from the shot is likely to be “a sore arm.”
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Veteran U.S. astronaut John Young, who walked on the moon and even smuggled a corned beef sandwich into orbit during one of his six missions in space, has died at age 87, NASA said Saturday.
Young, a former Navy test pilot, in 1972 became the ninth of 12 people ever to set foot on the moon.
“We’re saddened by the loss of astronaut John Young,” the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said on Twitter.
The time and cause of Young’s death were not immediately clear.
Young became one of the most accomplished astronauts in the history of the U.S. space program. He flew into space twice during NASA’s Gemini program in the mid-1960s, twice on the Apollo lunar missions and twice on space shuttles in the 1980s.
He retired in 2004 after 42 years with the U.S. space agency.
Moon mission
The Apollo 16 mission in April 1972, his fourth space flight, took Young to the lunar surface.
As mission commander, he and crewmate Charles Duke explored the moon’s Descartes Highlands region, gathering 90 kilograms (200 pounds) of rock and soil samples and driving more than 26 kilometers (16 miles) in the lunar rover to sites such as Spook Crater.
Recalling his lunar exploits, Young told the Houston Chronicle in 2004: “One-sixth gravity on the surface of the moon is just delightful. It’s not like being in zero gravity, you know. You can drop a pencil in zero gravity and look for it for three days. In one-sixth gravity, you just look down and there it is.”
Young’s first time in space came in 1965 with the Gemini 3 mission that took him and astronaut Gus Grissom into Earth orbit in the first two-man U.S. space jaunt. It was on this mission that Young pulled his sandwich stunt, which did not make NASA brass happy but certainly pleased Grissom, the recipient of the snack.
Astronaut Wally Schirra, who was not flying on the mission, bought the corned beef sandwich on rye bread from a delicatessen in Cocoa Beach, Florida, and asked Young to give it to Grissom in space. During the flight, as they discussed the food provided for the mission, Young handed Grissom the sandwich.
NASA later rebuked Young for the antics, which generated criticism from lawmakers and the media, but his career did not suffer.
Rehearsal for moon landing
His May 1969 Apollo 10 mission served as a rehearsal for the historic Apollo 11 mission two months later in which Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon.
Young and his crew undertook each aspect of that subsequent mission except for an actual moon landing.
Young’s fifth space mission was as commander of the inaugural flight of NASA’s first space shuttle, Columbia, in 1981. In 1983, he became the first person to fly six space missions when he commanded Columbia on the first Spacelab trek, with the crew performing more than 70 scientific experiments.
He never went to space again. Young had been due to command a 1986 flight that was canceled after the explosion of the shuttle Challenger earlier that year. He ended up as the only person to fly on space shuttle, Apollo and Gemini missions.
Young was born September 24, 1930, in San Francisco and grew up in Orlando, Florida. After receiving a degree in aeronautical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1952, he entered the Navy and graduated from its test pilot school. NASA picked him in 1962 for its astronaut program.
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Emergency authorities in Australia have released a virtual reality program recreating potentially catastrophic bushfire scenarios. The project aims to encourage residents in the state of Victoria to prepare for extreme danger.
“This emergency warning is being issued for Hare Creek. There is a bushfire at Hare Creek that is out of control. The bushfire is traveling in a north-westerly direction towards Upper Hare Creek,” says the program’s warning.
The virtual reality programs have three different scenarios. They show how residents who leave it too late to respond to an advancing bushfire can face disastrous consequences.
Officials say the technology allows Australians to get a taste of the type of hostile conditions they might face and helps them make better decisions. The simulation urges homeowners to decide early whether to leave, seek shelter, or stay and defend their property.
South-eastern Australia, one of the world’s most fire-prone regions, has been preparing for a scorching weekend with temperatures forecast as high as 45 degrees Celsius.
Victoria state Emergency Management Commissioner, Craig Lapsley, says the bushfire risk in some areas will be extreme.
“Obviously it is about heat, it is about fire. We are going to see a fire today that is going to be hot, dry and windy, and with a wind change late in the day that if we had fires running in the afternoon the wind change will change the direction of the fires and traditionally that is where we lose most of our property after the wind change. So it is one of those days that has got everything in it. Look after yourself, your neighbors, your family, your friends,” Lapsley said.
Australia’s most deadly bushfire killed 173 people in Victoria in 2009. However, Australia’s deadliest natural hazard is extreme heat. More than twice as many victims lost their lives in the heatwave that preceded the so-called ‘Black Saturday’ blazes. It is the very young, the infirm, and those over the age of 75 who are most risk from searing temperatures. Heat-related illness, which can occur when body temperature exceeds 37.8°Celsius, includes dehydration, cramps, heat exhaustion and heat stroke. The consequences can be catastrophic, resulting in heart attacks, brain damage and death.
Firefighters have been predicting one of the worst fire seasons on record. They say warmer conditions have been coupled with a very dry winter.
The World Health Organization warns that children in Yemen are dying as diphtheria, a preventable disease, spreads rapidly throughout the country.
Forty-six of the more than 470 people with clinically diagnosed diphtheria in Yemen — or nearly 10 percent — have died in less than four months, according to WHO.
“Diphtheria is a highly infectious but vaccine-preventable disease,” WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said. “It can be treated with antitoxins and antibiotics, both of which are in short supply in Yemen. The diphtheria vaccine is normally administered as a part of routine immunization programs for children around the world.
“The rapid spread of diphtheria in Yemen highlights major gaps in routine vaccination and also means the health system is under severe strain.”
Sixty-eight percent of suspected diphtheria cases are children under 15 years old, Jasarevic said.
WHO has deployed Rapid Response Teams throughout affected parts of the country to ensure proper case detection, contact tracing and follow up, as well as health education.
WHO has delivered $200,000 worth of antibiotics and 1,000 vials of diphtheria antitoxins, Jasarevic said. The medication can help stop the spread of the bacterium to vital organs in patients already infected with diphtheria.
However, prevention remains the best way to contain the spread of the disease. In preparation for a nationwide immunization campaign, the U.N. children’s fund imported 5.5 million doses of anti-diphtheria vaccines into the country December 20.
The final decision on when the campaign will kick off rests with Yemeni health authorities, who have not yet given the go-ahead.
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People walking outdoors with masks are an increasingly common sight in the capital of India, where the toxic air, which ranks among the world’s dirtiest, has rung alarm bells. Now a team of innovators from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, is offering another solution: a tiny respiratory filter that can be stuck in the nose to restrict particulate matter from entering the body without hampering breathing.
The project involved creating a thin, flexible membrane which blocks out most dust and air pollutants, including concentrations of the deadly PM 2.5, the tiny particulate matter which doctors say causes maximum damage to lungs.
The innovation, called Nasofilters, won the Indian president’s “National Startups Award” last May and was featured in South Korea’s 2017 list of “Top 50 technical startups in the world.”
The idea of nasal filters is not new, and some are available in Western countries to help reduce exposure to allergens such as pollen. One study conducted in 2016 on a product made in Denmark found it reduced symptoms of allergies and was comfortable to use.
The Indian device, however, focuses on the country’s pressing problem of air pollutants. Working out of one room on the sprawling IIT campus, which has been the home of several innovations, the young team is optimistic it will find acceptance in a city where the toxic cocktail of vehicle fumes, construction dust and burning waste spikes to as much as 30 times the safe limit in winter.
Shaped roughly like a fingernail, the dark brown membrane is made by assembling millions of small-sized pores and resembles a fine, porous cloth.
The costs have been held down to ensure the filter is within the reach of most people: It is priced at approximately 16 cents. Effective for around eight hours, the innovators claim it can filter out 95 percent of the pollutants.
Origins of the invention
Prateek Sharma started working on the idea along with some faculty members and others when he enrolled at IIT for engineering studies. The inspiration: His mother suffered from asthma.
“The initiation of this story was about a decade back. I always noticed my mother is wearing some kind of cloth on her face. That has always annoyed me,” said Sharma, the 25-year-old who now heads the startup which produces the filters, Nanoclean Global Private Ltd.
Noticing she refused to wear a mask when she went outside, he set out to search for another solution.
“The problem is mega, the product is nano,” said Sharma, pointing to the filters. “It’s comfortable to wear, it is aesthetically not bothering them like a face mask which covers half of your face. There is a problem — I can’t even eat, can’t even talk to you while putting on a face mask.”
Growing curiosity
Reports of the product in Indian media have piqued curiosity in the city.
Ashok Joshi, a retired senior army officer who lives in Delhi, made the trip to IIT with his wife to find out more about the filters and pick them up after reading reports about it in newspapers.
“We are outdoor people by and large, being in the army, mostly I am outdoors,” he said. “If something is there, which does not look very ugly and you can wear it comfortably, excellent idea. Why not?”
On days when air pollution is categorized as severe, doctors advise people, especially children and the elderly, against outdoor activities. On New Year’s Day, New Delhi’s air pollution levels bordered on severe.
The nose filter’s real test lies in winning acceptance from people like Joshi as they try it out in the weeks and months ahead.
While the invention, if it proves acceptable to consumers, may help people protect themselves from the dirty air, environmental activists stress that the pressing need is to address the causes of the air pollution: the city’s huge vehicle fleet and smoke from fires.
India’s air pollution crisis is not restricted to New Delhi — nine other Indian cities figure among the WHO’s list of the world’s 20 most polluted cities.
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America’s space agency wants you to head for the mountains with a smartphone and a measuring stick.
NASA’s earth science arm is funding research that recruits citizen scientists on skis, snowshoes and snowmobiles to measure the depth of snow in backcountry locations in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.
Their measurements will be incorporated into computer models that calculate how much water will end up in the region’s rivers and reservoirs.
Early results promising
“Our initial model runs show that citizen science measurements are doing an amazing job of improving our simulations,” said David Hill, an Oregon State University professor of civil engineering, who is collaborating with Alaska and University of Washington researchers. They received one of 16 NASA citizen science grants for the project.
The snowpack measurements are incorporated into computer models estimating “snow-water equivalent,” the amount of liquid water contained in snow cover, of a watershed.
In Western states, according to NASA, nearly three-fourths of annual stream flow that provides drinking water comes from spring and summer melt.
NASA in February began a multiyear research project to improve the accuracy of its snow measurements with partners in Europe and Canada, trying to solve challenges such as detecting snow through trees.
Several projects
The grant awarded to Hill, Anthony Arendt of the University of Washington and Gabriel Wolken, a research geologist with the Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys, is not directly connected to that project but has a mutual interest, said Kevin Murphy, a program executive for science data systems at NASA headquarters.
“We decided about two years ago to start this program, which really looks at how can we harness the creativity and the capabilities of citizens to augment a lot of our satellite or aircraft measurements,” Murphy said.
Cheap, plentiful volunteers
Snow telemetry stations maintained by the U.S. Agriculture Department are another important tool for measuring snow in high-elevation and other hard-to-access places, Hill said. The unmanned stations collect data using a system of automated sensors.
But too few of them exist, Hill said. “They’re expensive to install, they’re expensive to maintain, so there just aren’t that many.”
The citizen snow-measuring program, Community Snow Observations, aims to supplement that with people.
“We want to turn the public into these mobile snow telemetry stations,” he said. “You just need a probe to do it.”
The measuring device can be as rudimentary as a yardstick, Hill said, but most people venturing into mountains already carry an avalanche probe, a 5- to 6-meter stick that folds down like a tent pole. After an avalanche, the probes are used to feel for people buried in the snow. Probes typically carry measurement markings.
“You want to know when you actually find that person how deep they are,” Hill said. “They’re really just a big, long ruler.”
First volunteers in Alaska
For the citizen science program, an online tutorial tells participants to find undisturbed snow, push the probe firmly to the ground, read the depth in centimeters and enter the data onto a smartphone app. Participants are asked to repeat that several times and average the measurements.
The app records the location and time of the measurement and uploads the information. The program accounts for measurements in continental climate locations with light, dry snow or the wet, dense snow of maritime climates.
Initial measurements were made last winter in Alaska’s Thompson Pass north of Valdez, where other snow research was being conducted.
“I recruited some of the folks from Valdez Avalanche Center. They brought friends along,” said Wolken, the Alaska research geologist. “That was our first go at getting sort of a grassroots, citizen science team.”
The hundreds of measurements collected far outpaced what the scientists could gather themselves. When NASA announced grants for citizen scientist projects, the researchers jumped to apply, Wolken said.
Modeling errors plunge
Preliminary calculations have been “striking,” Hill said, and the subject of a paper written by a doctoral student.
“He has results that basically show that the errors in our modeled snow-water equivalent are cut by about 90 percent with this input from public,” Hill said. “We’re thrilled about that.”
Other NASA grants in the program will use citizen scientists to collect data on mosquito populations and their breeding environments around the world, water depths in lakes in North Carolina and elsewhere, moisture in soil at various locations, changes in giant kelp across the globe, and images of clouds from the ground in Colorado.
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A life threatening cold front swept across North America, bringing piles of snow and icy conditions. The National Weather Service issued wind chill advisories and freeze warnings covering a vast area from South Texas to Canada and from Montana through New England. VOA’s Carol Pearson reports doctors are issuing warnings about injuries from frostbite and ice.
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A major outbreak of coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish has been found munching Australia’s world heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef, scientists said Friday, prompting the government to begin culling the spiky marine animals.
The predator starfish feeds on corals by spreading its stomach over them and using digestive enzymes to liquefy tissue, and the outbreak hits as the reef is still reeling from two consecutive years of major coral bleaching.
“Each starfish eats about its body diameter a night, and so over time that mounts up very significantly,” Hugh Sweatman, a senior research scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, told Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) radio.
“A lot of coral will be lost,” he said.
That would be a blow for both the ecosystem and the lucrative tourism industry which it supports.
The crown-of-thorns starfish were found in plague proportions last month in the Swains Reefs, at the southern edge of the Great Barrier Reef, by researchers from the reef’s Marine Park Authority, a spokeswoman for the authority told Reuters by phone.
The remote reefs, about 200 km (120 miles) offshore from Yeppoon, a holiday and fishing town some 500 km north of Queensland state capital, Brisbane, are well south of the most-visited sections of the Great Barrier Reef, where most culling efforts are focused.
But the government’s Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority already killed some starfish at Swains Reefs in December and will mount another mission this month, a director at the authority, Fred Nucifora, told the ABC.
“The complexity with the Swains Reef location is … they are logistically difficult to access and it is actually quite a hostile environment to work in,” Nucifora said.
Previous outbreaks
There have been four major crown-of-thorns outbreaks since the 1960s in the Great Barrier Reef, but it recovered each time because there were always healthy populations of herbivorous fish. The outbreaks are usually triggered by extra nutrients in the water but the reason for the current outbreak was unclear, Sweatman said.
The reef is still recovering from damage wrought by the worst-ever coral bleaching on record, which in 2016 killed two-thirds of a 700 km stretch of reef.
On Friday, a report published in the journal Science found that high ocean temperatures are harming tropical corals much more often than a generation ago, putting reefs under pressure.
The Great Barrier Reef, covering 348,000 square kilometers, was World Heritage listed in 1981 as the most extensive and spectacular coral reef ecosystem on the planet, according to the UNESCO website.
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A new study has found that anti-tuberculosis drugs killed more bacteria in laboratory mice given a vitamin C supplement than those given drugs alone.
If the findings hold up in human studies, the authors say, the result could be that there’s a cheap, safe way to reduce the months-long treatment time for one of the world’s leading killers. Also, the vitamin supplement could offer a way to cut down on the development of drug-resistant TB, a serious health threat.
Tuberculosis is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. According to the World Health Organization, 1.7 million people died of the disease last year. Of more than 10 million new infections, about 600,000 were resistant to the leading drug.
Front-line drugs attack TB cells as they multiply, but a small proportion of the bacteria survive by going dormant. If therapy stops too soon, these “persisters” start multiplying and the patient relapses, often with strains that are resistant to the drugs.
Current TB treatment takes six months, largely to outlast the persisters. But it’s hard for patients to stay on treatment for so long.
Accidental discovery
Albert Einstein College of Medicine microbiologist William Jacobs and colleagues previously discovered by accident that antioxidants like vitamin C stopped TB bacteria in a test tube from becoming persisters.
“When we first discovered it, it was like, ‘Wow! There’s just so much we don’t know yet. And wouldn’t that be really cool if it really works,’ ” Jacobs said.
The study in the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy said Jacobs and colleagues found that TB-infected mice treated with two standard drugs plus a high dose of vitamin C had roughly tenfold fewer bacteria in their lungs after several weeks than mice treated with drugs alone.
“It’s not sterilization yet,” he added, “but it’s heading in that direction.”
But will it work in people?
“The bottom line is that we don’t know the answer,” Jacobs acknowledged. “But I think what this study suggests is we should really go and [find out].”
Other experts not connected to the study agreed.
Even though there has been very little research on vitamin C and tuberculosis, the nutrient is “a safe compound, it’s widely available, it’s inexpensive,” noted David Alland, associate dean of clinical research at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. “I think that when we have those kinds of options to look at, we should look at them without having to spend decades trying to figure out exactly how they work.”
And if it does work, he added, “you’d get a big bang for your buck.”
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Patients in African hospitals are twice as likely to die after surgery than the global average, according to a new study.
Although African patients were younger and at lower risk than average, 1 percent died of complications after elective surgery, compared to a 0.5 percent death rate worldwide.
“It’s really concerning when you see how high the mortality is, considering that the patients are generally fit and they’re having a lot more minor surgeries,” lead author Bruce Biccard of the University of Cape Town said.
Workforce and resource shortages across the continent are likely a major factor, the authors of the study write in the journal The Lancet.
The group of more than 30 African researchers took a one-week snapshot of surgeries at 247 hospitals in 25 African countries, from Algeria to Madagascar.
The study found a severe shortage of African surgeons, obstetricians and anesthesiologists. Previous research has found that fewer patients die after surgery when there are 20 to 40 specialists per 100,000 population. Across the continent, this study found an average of less than one per 100,000.
In addition to the high death rate, “the most alarming finding was how few people actually received surgery,” noted a commentary accompanying the study. An expert panel has estimated that 5 percent of the population needs surgery in a year. African hospitals on average performed less than one-twentieth of that figure.
It noted that patients were receiving surgery later in the course of their diseases. Nearly 60 percent of the operations were urgent or emergency procedures, compared with about a quarter in high-income countries.
Most of the patients who died did not do so on the operating table, but in the days following surgery.
“We’re actually failing to recognize patients who are having complications in the post-op period,” study author Biccard said. “So a minor complication becomes a major complication.”
That offers an opportunity for improvement, Biccard noted. Since increasing the number of doctors is unlikely in the short term, his group is working on a method “that will tell us before surgery which patients we think are going to get into trouble.”
His group is planning a study in 2019 to see if they can reduce patient deaths by focusing limited resources on patients at the highest risk.
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The recreational use of marijuana is now legal in California. But only a few cities in the U.S. state are ready to start selling pot, which was officially legalized on Jan. 1. The logistics of creating new business models is complicated, but it’s clear the demand is high. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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American astronauts aboard the International Space Station told VOA on Wednesday that their excitement about recently announced plans to restore U.S. manned space missions to lunar orbit was eclipsed only by their skepticism about the logistical feasibility of completing the mission within six years.
“Going back to the moon is a bigger project than a lot of people think,” said Expedition 54 Flight Engineer Scott Tingle, who joined fellow NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei at the ISS on December 19.
Just last month, David Kring, head of the Lunar and Planetary Institute at the Universities Space Research Association, said the first unmanned launch in the program to get back to the moon could come in a little more than a year.
Kring, who was present at Trump’s signing ceremony for the new lunar policy directive, which came 45 years to the day after Apollo 17’s final moon landing on December 13, 1972, said an unmanned mission to lunar orbit could happen by 2019.
“That will launch the Orion crew vehicle and will orbit the moon without astronauts,” Kring told VOA. “Then in 2023 the vehicle launches again, this time with astronauts who will orbit the moon and return. After that is successful, we can actually deploy the astronauts in space [in between the Earth and the moon].”
US, Russia to cooperate
Russia and the United States in September agreed to cooperate on a NASA-led program to build the first lunar space station as part of a longer-term mission to send humans to Mars. Both countries said a manned lunar spaceport could be orbiting the moon by 2024, when the International Space Station program is slated to end.
Speaking with VOA’s Russian service via an ISS live-feed broadcast by NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas, Tingle said successfully launching a manned vehicle into lower-moon orbit by 2023 might not be as simple as it sounds.
“Just because we’ve done it before doesn’t mean we’re that close to doing it now,” Tingle said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do, a lot of engineering to do, a lot of planning to do, a lot of operations to do, and it’s going to be expensive. It’s going to take a lot of manpower, and it’s going to take a lot of thinking outside the box to make it as quickly and efficiently as we can.
“And we can’t do that alone,” he added. “We’re going to need to do it with international partners. So I do believe the international partnership will work; I believe it will be necessary to have a really good product and to be able to achieve success with that mission goal.”
‘A wise step’
Despite the logistical challenges, Tingle’s U.S. colleague aboard the ISS, Mark Vande Hei, expressed optimism about the new lunar directive.
“I think it’s an extremely wise step,” Vande Hei said. “I think the moon provides us an excellent opportunity to rehearse, relatively close to the Earth, inhabiting a planetary-sized object with the ability, if things go wrong, to get people back relatively easily when compared with going to Mars.”
“I think it’s going to be a huge step for humanity to have a lasting presence anyplace other than lower-Earth orbit,” he added. “I’m really looking forward to getting people on the moon, keeping them there for long periods of time, and then using that as a way to test out equipment to get ready to make sure we do it safely when we finally do get to Mars.”
Tingle was part of a trio of U.S., Japanese and Russian astronauts to join Vande Hei aboard the ISS on December 19.
Vande Hei, who has been aboard the ISS since September, floated aside Tingle and Norishige Kanai of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency throughout the interview.
New Year’s in space
The three astronauts, Tingle said, shared a New Year’s Eve dinner with the three Russian astronauts inhabiting another wing of the ISS.
“New Year’s Day, we took a little bit of time off, but more importantly we celebrated by having a nice, good dinner with our Russian colleagues down in the Russian segment,” Tingle said. “They were hospitable to us, and it was fun to sit and relax with them.”
Asked if they popped a bottle of champagne to ring in 2018, Tingle paused, passing the microphone to Vande Hei.
“No, we’re not allowed any alcohol,” said Vande Hei. “But our Russian crewmates went ahead and made us some grape juice with labels that made it look like we had champagne, so that was kind of fun to pretend.”
This story originated in VOA’s Russian service.
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Health workers are concerned with outbreaks of diseases in the massive Rohingya camps housing more than 650,000 people. Cramped quarters, malnourishment and pre-existing health conditions add up to real concerns as new cases of diphtheria worry aid workers. Steve Sandford reports from Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh.
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Mormon church leader Thomas Monson has died, the church announced Wednesday from its Salt Lake City headquarters.
He was 90 years old and led the church for 10 years.
Monson became a church bishop when he was just 22, and at age 36 became the youngest apostle in Mormon church history.
Monson was well-respected by Mormons all over the world for his dedication to humanitarian causes, from disaster relief to the simplicity of urging members to bring comfort to someone who is lonely.
Monson was also a successful newspaper publisher.
The Mormon church is formally known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and was founded in New York state in 1830.
Its 16 million followers around the world regard the church leader as a prophet who received define revelation.
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At Balukhali refugee camp in Bangladesh, unclean water, cramped living quarters and squalid conditions create a prime environment for outbreaks of preventable diseases among the estimated 650,000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled strife in neighboring Myanmar.
While 900,000 doses of oral cholera vaccine already have been delivered by more than 200 mobile vaccination teams, another contagious bacterial infection, diphtheria, has emerged.
“Diphtheria is a vaccine preventable disease. It’s an illustration of how the Rohingya population that are living in the makeshift settlements here had very little access to health care in their place of origin in Myanmar,” said Kate Nolan, emergency coordinator with international aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders.
Diphtheria often causes the buildup of a sticky grey-white membrane in the throat or nose. The infection causes airway obstruction and damage to the heart and nervous system. The fatality rate increases without the diphtheria antitoxin.
“This is an extremely vulnerable population with low vaccination coverage, living in conditions that could be a breeding ground for infectious diseases like cholera, measles, rubella and diphtheria,” said Dr. Navaratnasamy Paranietharan, the World Health Organization representative to Bangladesh.
Myanmar’s health sector is rated among the worst in the world, particularly in the ethnic regions where conflict and poverty have delayed medical development.
The Rohingya refugees fled Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state after insurgents attacked security forces in late August, prompting a military crackdown that has since been described as ethnic cleansing.
‘Appalling’ health care
Myanmar’s government denies it has engaged in ethnic cleansing, and it insists that a majority of the violence and burning of Rohingya villages was done by the Rohingya militants who attacked the Myanmar security forces.
“The health care facilities for the Rohingya in Rakhine state are appalling and just a small amount of the needs were being met, even before the attacks in August,” said Rohingya expert Chris Lewa of the Arakan Project, a human rights organization that monitors and documents the situation.
According to Lewa, the impoverished Rohingya population in northern Rakhine say they are treated with discrimination by Myanmar medical staff at government hospitals and face severe movement restrictions when traveling to health care facilities.
Lewa points to Myanmar’s Maungdaw District, where the army conducted so-called “clearance operations” following deadly insurgent attacks last year.
“Health facilities set up by INGOs [international nongovernmental organizations] in Maungdaw have been burned to the ground, which will make it even more difficult for them if and when they are allowed to return,” Lewa added.
Currently, INGOs are not allowed in the areas outside Maungdaw.
Doctors Without Borders has responded to the rapid spread of diphtheria in neighboring Bangladesh by converting one of its mother and child inpatient facilities at the Balukhali makeshift settlement, and at another inpatient site, into treatment centers.
“The emergence of this disease is a concern because it contributes to an existing precarious public health situation that we have in the makeshift settlements,” Nolan said.
Tracking down carriers
Now, potential carriers must get antitoxins and antibiotics to prevent the further spread of the bacterium and kill it.
“We need to find all the suspected cases in the camps and get them all here to start the antibiotic treatment and keep them isolated for 48 hours,” said on-duty doctor Thomas Hansen.
Because the disease spreads easily through water droplets from sneezing and coughing, medical teams are tasked with following up on initial quarantine with visits to a patient’s family to trace and treat people who might have come in contact with the disease in the community.
Doctors Without Borders and health partners like the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies are working together to isolate suspected cases.
One of the biggest challenges for health workers, however, is getting to remote locations where potential outbreaks can occur.
With the sudden influx of the 650,000 refugees, new land clearance has led to huts being constructed well beyond the main roadways.
“They live in areas that are difficult to reach. You cannot reach them by cars or Tom Toms [three-wheeled taxis] because of no roads, so they will have to carry their patients to where they can get treatment,” said Dagne Hordvei, team leader with the Norwegian Red Cross.
“We have an agreement with [Doctors Without Borders] that we take the measles patients from them, and they take the diphtheria patients, with lots of activity going out to the communities to try to reduce the speed of the spreading of diphtheria.”
Vaccination campaign
As Bangladesh’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare — working with the World Health Organization, UNICEF and other health partners — implements a vaccination campaign to prevent future outbreaks of diphtheria, it appears that at least some of the next generation of Rohingya will have protection from preventable diseases.
“We are working with partners to ensure that clinical guidance is available to health workers, and that there are enough beds and medicines for those who get sick. But the only way to control this outbreak is to protect people, particularly children, through vaccination,” said the WHO’s Paranietharan.
As of December 21, Doctors Without Borders has seen more than 2,000 suspected diphtheria cases in its health facilities, and the number is rising daily. Most of the patients are between the ages of 5 and 14 years old.
More than 20 Rohingya in Bangladesh have died from the disease.
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