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NAIROBI, Kenya — Doctors at Kenya’s public hospitals began a nationwide strike Thursday, accusing the government of failing to implement a raft of promises from a collective bargaining agreement signed in 2017 after a 100-day strike that saw people dying from lack of care.

The Kenya Medical Practitioners Pharmacists and Dentists Union said they went on strike to demand comprehensive medical cover for the doctors and because the government has yet to post 1,200 medical interns.

Davji Bhimji, secretary-general of KMPDU, said 4,000 doctors took part in the strike despite a labor court order asking the union to put the strike on hold to allow talks with the government. And Dennis Miskellah, deputy secretary general of the union, said they would disregard the court order the same way the government had disregarded three court orders to increase basic pay for doctors and reinstate suspended doctors.

Miskellah said medical interns make up 27% of the workforce in Kenya’s public hospitals, and their absence means more sick people are being turned away from hospitals. Some doctors, however, have remained on duty to ensure patients in the intensive care units don’t die.

In an interview with broadcaster Citizen TV, Miskellah said doctors were committing suicide out of work-related frustration, while others have had to fund-raise to get treated for sickness due to a lack of comprehensive health coverage.

The impact of the strike was felt across the country with many patients left unattended or being turned away from hospitals across the East African nation.

Pauline Wanjiru said she brought her 12-year-old son for treatment on his broken leg, which had started to produce a smell, but she was turned away from a hospital in Kakamega county in western Kenya.

In 2017, doctors at Kenya’s public hospitals held a 100-day strike — the longest ever held in the country — to demand better wages and for the government to restore the country’s dilapidated public-health facilities. They also demanded continuous training of and hiring of doctors to address a severe shortage of health professionals.

At the time, public doctors, who train for six years in university, earned a basic salary of $400 to $850 a month, similar to some police officers who train for just six months.
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Windhoek, Namibia — A top Namibian health official tells VOA the southern Africa country is set to begin distribution of the HPV vaccine to adolescent girls in April as a preventative measure in the fight against cervical cancer.

Namibia has a population of about 1 million women ages 15 years and older who are at risk of developing cervical cancer.

Each year, about 375 women in Namibia are diagnosed with the disease, and the fatality rate is over 50%.

The Human Papillomavirus Vaccine, known as HPV, has been proven to greatly lessen the chance of getting cervical cancer.

Ben Nangombe, executive director at Namibia’s Ministry of Health and Social Services, says health workers will begin vaccinating about 183,000 girls between the ages of nine and 14 next month.

He says the ministry has been allocated $7 million to procure single dose vaccines for this purpose.

Mehafo Amunyela, who works at the #Be Free Youth Program in the capital’s Katutura Township, told VOA that vaccine hesitancy could be a hurdle to fully immunizing the target population. She said she hopes that through awareness campaigns, children and their families can be educated about the advantages of getting the vaccine.

“We saw the reaction of the public toward the COVID vaccine when it came out, but I think we need to be honest with ourselves and remember that the reason we don’t have illnesses like polio is because of vaccines, that they worked then, and they still do now,” she said.

The Cancer Association of Namibia says the vast distances between most towns and villages in Namibia could present another logistical challenge in the immunization program.

The association says to achieve the target of immunizing 183,000 girls, awareness campaigns should be undertaken in the different indigenous languages spoken in the country.

With the rollout of the HPV vaccine, Namibia is on the path to do its part in meeting the World Health Organization’s goal of vaccinating 90% of girls worldwide by 2030, with the long-term goal of eliminating cervical cancer within the next century.

Although cervical cancer is preventable and curable, the disease claimed 350,000 lives worldwide in 2022 according to the WHO. 
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Malawi has embarked on trials of genetically modified maize aimed to curb recurrent hunger and pests like fall armyworms and caterpillars. The trials come amid concerns about the possible effects genetically modified organisms have on health and the environment. Lameck Masina reports from Lilongwe.
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Washington — A polio survivor known as the “man in the iron lung” has died aged 78, according to his family and a fundraising website.

Paul Alexander of Dallas, Texas contracted polio at the age of six, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down and reliant on a mechanical respirator to breathe for much of the time.

Though often confined to his submarine-like cylinder, he excelled in his studies, earned a law degree, worked in the legal field and wrote a book.

“With a heavy heart I need to say my brother passed last night,” Philip Alexander posted on Facebook early Wednesday. “It was an honor to be part of someone’s life who was as admired as he was.”

Christopher Ulmer, a disability advocate running a fundraiser for Alexander, also confirmed his death in a GoFundMe update posted on Tuesday.

“His story traveled wide and far, positively influencing people around the world. Paul was an incredible role model that will continue to be remembered,” said Ulmer.

A prior update on Alexander’s official TikTok account said he had been rushed to the emergency room after contracting Covid-19.

Iron lungs are sealed chambers fitted with pumps. Raising and lowering the pressure inside the chamber expands and contracts the patient’s lungs.

Invented in the 1920s, their use fell away after the invention of the polio vaccine by Jonas Salk, which became widely available in 1955 and helped consign the devastating paralytic illness to history.

Alexander held the official Guinness World Record for time spent in a lung.

According to his Guinness page, he was able to leave the device for periods of time after he learned to “frog breathe” with the help of a physical therapist.

This involved “using his throat muscles to force air into his lungs, gulping down air one mouthful at a time.” Eventually, he only returned to his iron lung at night to sleep.

As a practicing lawyer, he was able to represent clients in court in a special wheelchair that held his paralyzed body upright.

Seventy-five-year-old Martha Lillard of Shawnee, Oklahoma is reportedly the last surviving person in an iron lung. 
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UNITED NATIONS — The number of children worldwide who died before age 5 reached a record low in 2022, the United Nations said in a report published Tuesday, as for the first time fewer than 5 million died.

According to the estimate, 4.9 million children died before their fifth birthday in 2022, a 51% decrease since 2000 and a 62% drop since 1990, according to the report, which still warned such progress is “precarious” and unequal.

“There is a lot of good news, and the major one is that we have come to a historic level of under-five mortality, which … reached under 5 million for the first time, so it is 4.9 million per year,” Helga Fogstad, director of health at the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF, told AFP.

According to the report, prepared by UNICEF in conjunction with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank, progress was particularly notable in developing countries such as Malawi, Rwanda and Mongolia, where early childhood mortality has fallen by more than 75% since 2000.

“Behind these numbers lie the stories of midwives and skilled health personnel helping mothers safely deliver their newborns … vaccinating … children against deadly diseases, and [making] home visits to support families,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said in a statement.

But “this is a precarious achievement,” the report warned. “Progress is at risk of stagnation or reversal unless efforts are taken to neutralize the numerous threats to newborn and child health and survival.”

Researchers pointed to already worrying signs, saying that reduction in under-5 deaths has slowed at the global level and notably in the sub-Saharan Africa region.

In total, 162 million children under the age of 5 have died since 2000, 72 million of whom perished in the first month of life, as complications related to birth are among the main causes of early childhood mortality.

Between the ages of 1 month and 5 years, respiratory infections, malaria and diarrhea become the main killers — ailments that are all preventable, the report points out.

To reach the U.N.’s goal of reducing under-5 deaths to 25 per 1,000 births by 2030, 59 countries will need urgent investment in children’s health, researchers warned. And without adequate funding, 64 countries will miss the goal of limiting first-month deaths to 12 per 1,000 births.

“These are not just numbers on a page; they represent real lives cut short,” the report said.

The numbers also reveal glaring inequalities across the world, as the sub-Saharan Africa region accounted for half of all deaths of children under age 5 in 2022.

Babies born in countries with high early childhood mortality, such as Chad, Nigeria or Somalia, are 80 times more likely to die before their 5th birthday than babies born in countries with low childhood mortality rates, such as Finland, Japan and Singapore.

“Where a child is born should not dictate whether they live or die,” WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
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Cape Canaveral, Florida — Four astronauts from four countries caught a lift back to Earth with SpaceX on Tuesday to end a half-year mission at the International Space Station.

Their capsule streaked across the U.S. in the predawn darkness and splashed into the Gulf of Mexico near the Florida Panhandle.

NASA’s Jasmin Moghbeli, a Marine helicopter pilot, led the returning crew of Denmark’s Andreas Mogensen, Japan’s Satoshi Furukawa and Russia’s Konstantin Borisov.

They moved into the space station last August. Their replacements arrived last week in their own SpaceX capsule.

“We left you some peanut butter and tortillas,” Moghbeli radioed after departing the orbiting complex on Monday. Replied NASA’s Loral O’Hara: “I miss you guys already and thanks for that very generous gift.”

O’Hara has another few weeks at the space station before leaving aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule.

Before leaving the space station, Mogensen said via X, formerly known as Twitter, that he couldn’t wait to hear “birds singing in the trees” and also craved crunchy food.

NASA prefers multiple travel options in case of rocket trouble. Boeing should start providing astronaut taxi service with a two-pilot test flight in early May.
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The United Nations says at least 20 children in Gaza have died of starvation and doctors say many more are increasingly suffering from grave physical and mental illnesses. VOA’s Heather Murdock reports from Istanbul with Nedal Hamdouna and Amjed Tantesh in Rafah, Gaza. Camera: Ihab Abu Riyash, Yan Beochat.
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SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea will start deploying military physicians and doctors from public health centers to strike-hit hospitals on Monday to help care for patients affected by the walkout of nearly 12,000 trainee doctors from 100 hospitals over government reform plans.

Twenty military surgeons along with 138 public health doctors will be assigned to 20 hospitals for four weeks, Health Minister Cho Kyoo-hong said at a meeting on Sunday.

The number of military physicians called on to help so far was only a small fraction of the roughly 2,400 military doctors, according to a defense ministry briefing.

The government has denied the walkout which started on Feb. 20 has caused a full-blown health crisis, but some hospitals have had to turn away patients and delay medical procedures.

As of Friday morning, nearly 12,000 protesting doctors at 100 hospitals had left their posts in a dispute over a government plan to increase medical school admissions, health ministry data showed, defying pressure from authorities to return to work.

South Korean authorities have been trying to coax the doctors to return to work by warning them that their medical licenses could be suspended but so far appear to have had little success with the tactic.

The health ministry said notices had been sent to more than 4,900 doctors as of Friday to instruct them that authorities could start suspending licenses if they did not explain their action.

Doctors who returned to work before the administrative measure to suspend licenses was complete would be “given leniency,” Cho told KBS Radio on Monday.

The government has the power to order doctors back to work if it deems there is a serious risk to lives and public health.

The government has said the plan to increase annual medical school admissions by 2,000 starting from 2025 is vital to remedy a shortage of doctors in one of the world’s fastest-ageing societies.

The striking doctors argue that simply adding medical students will not address pay and work conditions, and could possibly exacerbate the problems.

Critics of the policy also accuse President Yoon Suk Yeol of picking a fight over medical reforms to benefit his party ahead of parliamentary elections in April.

A survey published last week by the Yonhap news agency found 84% of respondents supported adding more doctors, while 43% said striking physicians should be sternly punished.
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In Malawi, 35,000 backstreet abortions were carried out in 2022 and 2023, according to its Ministry of Health. These unsafe procedures are just one reason support for abortion rights has increased in recent years. Chimwemwe Padatha has more from Lilongwe.
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Zambia has received the first shipment of a new medicine to prevent HIV infection. The delivery makes Zambia only the second country in the world after the United States to offer the injectable preventative outside of a research setting. Kathy Short reports from Lusaka, Zambia. Camera and video editing by Richard Kille.
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Paris — French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday for the first time that he backed new end-of-life legislation that would allow what he called “help to die” and wanted his government to put forward a draft bill to parliament in May.

France’s neighbors Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands have adopted laws that allow medically assisted dying in some cases. But France has resisted that step, in part under pressure from the Catholic Church.

The Claeys-Leonetti law on the end of life, adopted in 2016, authorizes deep sedation but only for people whose prognosis is threatened in the short-term.

In an interview with Liberation newspaper, Macron said he did not want to call the new legislation euthanasia or assisted suicide, but rather “help to die.”

“It does not, strictly speaking, create a new right nor a freedom, but it traces a path which did not exist until now and which opens the possibility of requesting assistance in dying under certain strict conditions,” he said.

Macron said those conditions would need to be met and a medical team would assess and ensure the criteria for the decision was correct.

It would concern only adults capable of making the decision and whose life prognosis is threatened in the medium-term such as final-stage cancer, he said.

Family members would also be able to appeal the decision, Macron said.

The bill builds on the work of a group of 184 randomly appointed French citizens who debated the issue.

They concluded their work last year with 76% of them saying they favored allowing some form of assistance to die, for those who want it.

The decision to push ahead with the end-of-life legislation comes after the right to abortion was enshrined into the French constitution, following an overwhelming vote by lawmakers earlier this month.

Macron has sought to bolster his image as a social reformer just three months before June’s European parliamentary elections. His party is more than 10 points behind the far-right Rassemblement National party in polls.
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washington — A Pentagon study released Friday that examined reported sightings of UFOs over nearly the last century found no evidence of aliens or extraterrestrial intelligence, a conclusion consistent with past U.S. government efforts to assess the accuracy of claims that have captivated public attention for decades. 

The study from the Defense Department’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office analyzed U.S. government investigations since 1945 of reported sightings of unidentified anomalous phenomena, more popularly known as UFOs. It found no evidence that any of them were signs of alien life, or that the U.S. government and private companies had reverse-engineered extraterrestrial technology and were hiding it. 

“All investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification,” said the report, which was mandated by Congress. Another volume of the report focused on more recent research will be out later. 

U.S. officials have endeavored to find answers to legions of reported UFO sightings over the years, but so far have not identified any actual evidence of extraterrestrial life. 

A 2021 government report that reviewed 144 sightings of aircraft or other devices apparently flying at mysterious speeds or trajectories found no extraterrestrial links, but it drew few other conclusions and called for better data collection. 

The issue received fresh attention last summer when a retired Air Force intelligence officer testified to Congress that the U.S. was concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reverse engineers unidentified flying objects. The Pentagon has denied his claims and said in late 2022 that a new Pentagon office set up to track reports of unidentified flying objects — the same one that released Friday’s report — had received “several hundreds” of new reports but had found no evidence so far of alien life. 

The authors of Friday’s report said the purpose was to apply a rigorous scientific analysis to a subject that has long captured the American public’s imagination. 

“AARO recognizes that many people sincerely hold versions of these beliefs which are based on their perception of past experiences, the experiences of others whom they trust, or media and online outlets they believe to be sources of credible and verifiable information,” the report said. 

“The proliferation of television programs, books, movies, and the vast amount of internet and social media content centered on UAP-related topics most likely has influenced the public conversation on this topic and reinforced these beliefs within some sections of the population,” it added. 
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State Department — The United States and China have agreed to extend a science and technology agreement for another six months, the U.S. State Department said Thursday.

“The Department of State on behalf of the U.S. government is negotiating to amend, extend and strengthen protections within the U.S.-PRC Science and Technology Agreement (STA). In February 2024, the United States and PRC agreed to an additional short-term six-month extension of the U.S.-PRC STA,” a spokesperson told VOA.

“The short-term six-month extension keeps the agreement in force while we continue negotiations,” the spokesperson added.

U.S. officials have said the STA provides consistent standards for government-to-government scientific cooperation between the U.S. and China.

While the agreement supports scientific collaboration in areas that benefit the United States, U.S. officials acknowledge the challenges posed by China’s national science and technology strategies and its domestic legal framework.

Critics, including U.S. lawmakers, point out China’s restrictions on data and a lack of transparency in sharing scientific findings. Washington is also concerned about Beijing’s potential military application of shared research.

The STA was originally signed in 1979 by then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter and then-PRC leader Deng Xiaoping.

The agreement has been renewed about every five years since its inception, with the most recent 5-year extension occurring in 2018. Last August, it received a 6-month extension as officials from the two countries undertook negotiations to amend and strengthen the terms.
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A new climate satellite takes off. Plus, a fresh crew arrives at the International Space Station, and NASA may want to hire you. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.
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Many ranchers in Panama are making the transition from breeding livestock to much smaller creatures – butterflies. Not only is it good for the planet, but for some, it’s proven to be an economic winner. Oscar Sulbaran reports in this story, narrated by Veronica Villafane.
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A Seattle startup’s drones are helping first responders by providing them with “eyes and ears” in hazardous environments. Natasha Mozgovaya in Seattle has the story.
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SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s government began steps Monday to suspend the medical licenses of thousands of striking junior doctors, days after they missed a government-set deadline to end their joint walkouts, which have severely impacted hospital operations.

Nearly 9,000 medical interns and residents have been on strike for two weeks to protest a government push to sharply increase the number of medical school admissions. Their action has led to hundreds of canceled surgeries and other treatments and threatened to burden the country’s medical service.

Monday, officials were sent to dozens of hospitals to formally confirm the absence of the striking doctors as the government began steps to suspend their licenses for at least three months, Vice Health Minister Park Min-soo told a briefing.

Park said authorities will later notify the striking doctors of their expected license suspensions and give them a chance to respond. He suggested the license suspensions would take weeks to go into effect. 

“Despite repeated appeals by the government and other parts of society, the number of trainee doctors returning to work is very insignificant. Starting from today, we begin the execution of law with the on-site inspection,” Park said.

Park again repeated the government’s call for the doctors to end their walkouts. 

“We again strongly urge them to return to patients by not ignoring the pains of patients hovering between life and death — and their families,” he said.

South Korea’s government earlier ordered the striking doctors to return to work by Feb. 29. South Korea’s medical law allows the government to make such back-to-work orders to doctors when it sees grave risks to public health. Anyone who refuses to follow such orders can be punished with a suspension of his or her license for up to one year, and three years in prison or a roughly $22,500 fine. 

Last month, the South Korean government announced it would raise the country’s medical school enrollment cap by 2,000 starting next year, from the current 3,058. 

Officials said it’s urgent to have more doctors to deal with a fast-aging population and resolve a shortage of physicians in rural areas and essential yet low-paying specialties like pediatrics and emergency departments. 

Officials say South Korea’s doctor-to-population ratio is one of the lowest among developed countries.

But many doctors have opposed the plan, arguing universities can’t offer quality education to such an abrupt increase in students. They also say adding so many new doctors would also increase public medical expenses since greater competition would lead to excess treatments. They also predict newly added students would also want to work in high-paying, popular professions like plastic surgery and dermatology.

Critics say many doctors oppose the government plan simply because they worry adding more doctors would result in a lower income.

The striking junior doctors are a small fraction of the country’s 140,000 doctors. But they account for 30-40% of the total doctors at some major hospitals, where they assist senior doctors while training. 

Senior doctors have staged a slew of street rallies supporting the young doctors but haven’t joined their walkouts. Police said they were investigating five ranking members of the Korea Medical Association, a body that represents South Korean doctors, for allegedly inciting and abetting the walkouts.
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March 4 is World Obesity Day. Indonesia is facing a disparity in obesity rates among adults. Almost half of the country’s women are overweight or obese, nearly double the rate of Indonesian men according to data from the country’s Ministry of Health. Dave Grunebaum looks at the issue. (Camera: Dave Grunebaum)
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