A cholera epidemic in Yemen, which has infected more than 332,000 people, could spread during the annual hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia in September, although Saudi authorities are well prepared, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.

The pilgrimage draws 2-4 million Muslims every year, including 1.5-2 million foreigners, raising the risk from diseases such as dengue, yellow fever, Zika virus and meningococcal disease as well as cholera, the WHO said.

“The current highly spreading outbreak of cholera in Yemen, as well as in some African countries, may represent a serious risk to all pilgrims during the [hajj] days and even after returning to their countries,” a WHO bulletin said.

Dominique Legros, a WHO cholera expert, said Saudi Arabia had not had a cholera outbreak in many years thanks to reinforced surveillance and rapid tests to detect cases early.

“Don’t forget that today we are speaking of Yemen but they are receiving pilgrims from a lot of endemic countries, and they managed not to have an outbreak, essentially by making sure that living conditions, access to water in particular, hygienic conditions, are in place,” he told a regular U.N. briefing.

“They are well-prepared in my view.”

The incubation period of the disease, which spreads through ingestion of fecal matter and causes acute watery diarrhea, is a matter of hours. Once symptoms start, cholera can kill within hours if the patient does not get treatment.

But people with symptoms are just the tip of the iceberg because 80 percent of patients show no symptoms, Legros said.

“That’s why we advise countries against airport screening for patients. The Saudis don’t do that. It’s useless, technically speaking.”

The United Nations has blamed the warring sides in Yemen and their international allies, including Saudi Arabia, for fueling the 11-week cholera outbreak, driving millions of people closer to famine, and for hindering aid access.

The WHO has rolled out an emergency treatment program, based on the vestiges of Yemen’s shattered health system, to try and catch new cases early and stop the explosive spread of the disease.

The number of new cases has continued to grow by about 6,000 per day, but the number of deaths appears to have slowed dramatically, according to Reuters analysis of WHO data.

Death rates have slumped from 20-40 in recent weeks to an average of nine per day over the past six days.
…

A cholera epidemic in Yemen, which has infected more than 332,000 people, could spread during the annual haj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia in September, although Saudi authorities are well prepared, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.

The pilgrimage draws 2-4 million Muslims every year, including 1.5-2 million foreigners, raising the risk from diseases such as dengue, yellow fever, Zika virus and meningococcal disease as well as cholera, the WHO said.

“The current highly spreading outbreak of cholera in Yemen, as well as in some African countries, may represent a serious risk to all pilgrims during the (haj) days and even after returning to their countries,” a WHO bulletin said.

Dominique Legros, a WHO cholera expert, said Saudi Arabia had not had a cholera outbreak in many years thanks to reinforced surveillance and rapid tests to detect cases early.

“Don’t forget that today we are speaking of Yemen but they are receiving pilgrims from a lot of endemic countries, and they managed not to have an outbreak, essentially by making sure that living conditions, access to water in particular, hygienic conditions, are in place,” he told a regular U.N. briefing.

“They are well-prepared in my view.”

The incubation period of the disease, which spreads through ingestion of fecal matter and causes acute watery diarrhea, is a matter of hours. Once symptoms start, cholera can kill within hours if the patient does not get treatment.

But people with symptoms are just the tip of the iceberg because 80 percent of patients show no symptoms, Legros said.

“That’s why we advise countries against airport screening for patients. The Saudis don’t do that. It’s useless, technically speaking.”

The United Nations has blamed the warring sides in Yemen and their international allies, including Saudi Arabia, for fueling the 11-week cholera outbreak, driving millions of people closer to famine, and for hindering aid access.

The WHO has rolled out an emergency treatment program, based on the vestiges of Yemen’s shattered health system, to try and catch new cases early and stop the explosive spread of the disease.

The number of new cases has continued to grow by about 6,000 per day, but the number of deaths appears to have slowed dramatically, according to Reuters analysis of WHO data.

Death rates have slumped from 20-40 in recent weeks to an average of nine per day over the past six days.
…

 A NASA spacecraft circling Jupiter is revealing the up-close beauty of our solar system’s biggest planetary storm.

Juno flew directly over Jupiter’s Great Red Spot on Monday, passing an amazingly close 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometers) above the monster storm. The images snapped by JunoCam were beamed back Tuesday and posted online Wednesday. Then members of the public — so-called citizen scientists — were encouraged to enhance the raw images.

 

Swirling clouds are clearly visible in the 10,000-mile-wide (16,000-kilometer-wide) storm, which is big enough to swallow Earth and has been around for centuries.

​“For hundreds of years scientists have been observing, wondering and theorizing about Jupiter’s Great Red Spot,” said lead researcher Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “Now we have the best pictures ever of this iconic storm.”

Information was still arriving Thursday from Juno’s science instruments. Bolton said it will take time to analyze everything to shed “new light on the past, present and future of the Great Red Spot.”

 

Juno’s next close encounter with the giant gas planet will be in September. The Great Red Spot won’t be in Juno’s scopes then, however.

Launched in 2011, Juno arrived at Jupiter last July. It is only the second spacecraft to orbit the solar system’s largest planet, but is passing much closer than NASA’s Galileo did from 1995 through 2003.

 
…

A new mosquito net made by German chemicals company BASF has been given an interim recommendation by the World Health Organization (WHO), containing a new class of insecticide that the company hopes will aid the fight against malaria.

Death rates from malaria have dropped by 60 percent since 2000, according to the WHO, but attempts to end one of the world’s deadliest diseases — which kills around 430,000 people a year — are under threat as mosquitoes become increasingly resistant to measures such as insecticide-treated bed nets and anti-malarial drugs.

BASF’s new net is based on chlorfenapyr, which has been used in agriculture and urban pest control for over two decades, but BASF reworked it to make it effective on mosquito nets and meet targets for the public health market.

It said the net will provide protection for at least three years or 20 washes.

The new Interceptor G2 insecticide-treated net is expected to be available to health ministries and aid organizations beginning toward the end of this year, BASF said.

A WHO spokesman said the Geneva-based organization’s interim recommendation meant it still had to evaluate the net’s public health impact and it was requesting more data from the chemicals company.

BASF is also waiting for the WHO to evaluate another chlorfenapyr product, an indoor spray for walls and ceilings called Sylando 240SC.

“This development breakthrough strengthens my personal belief that we really can be the generation to end malaria for good,” said Egon Weinmueller, head of BASF’s public health business.
…

The malaria parasite owes its devastating success to a finely tuned genome that can survive attacks and evade human immune defenses because it retains only the bare essential genes it needs to thrive, scientists have found.

In a detailed study analyzing more than half the genes in the genome of Plasmodium, the parasite that causes malaria, researchers found that two-thirds of those genes are essential for survival. This is the largest proportion of essential genes found in any organism studied to date, they said.

The scientists discovered that the parasite often disposes of genes that produce proteins that give its presence away to its host’s immune system. This allows malaria to swiftly change its appearance to the human immune system and hence build up resistance to a vaccine, posing problems for the development of effective shots.

“Our study found that below the surface the parasite is more of a Formula 1 race car than a clunky people carrier: The parasite is fine-tuned and retains the absolute essential genes needed for growth,” said Julian Rayner, who co-led this study at Britain’s Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.

Good and bad

He said this discovery, published Thursday in the journal Cell, had both positive and negative implications.

“The bad news is it can easily get rid of the genes behind the targets we are trying to design vaccines for, but the flip side is there are many more essential gene targets for new drugs than we previously thought,” he said.

Malaria kills about half a million people a year, the vast majority of them children and babies in the poorest parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Beyond that, almost half the world’s population is at risk of becoming infected with malaria, and more than 200 million people fall sick with it each year, according to World Health Organization figures.

Despite decades of scientific endeavor, the genetics of Plasmodium parasites have proved tricky to decipher.

This is partly because they are ancient organisms and about half their genes have no similar genes — homologs — in any other organism, Rayner’s team explained, making it difficult for scientists to find clues to their function.

Francisco Javier Gamo, a malaria expert at GlaxoSmithKline, a British drugmaker active in this field of research, said the highest achievement for malaria scientists would be to discover genes that are essential across all of the parasite life cycle stages.

“If we could target those with drugs, it would leave malaria with nowhere to hide,” he said.
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An expert panel of scientists says the U.S. Food and Drug Administration should review the safety and effectiveness of all opioids and consider the real-world impacts the powerful painkillers have, not only on patients but also on families, crime and the demand for heroin.

In a sweeping report Thursday, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine pushed the FDA to bolster a public health approach that already has resulted in one painkiller being pulled from the market. Last week, the maker of opioid painkiller Opana ER withdrew its drug at the FDA’s request following a 2015 outbreak of HIV and hepatitis C in southern Indiana linked to sharing needles to inject the pills.

“Our recommendation is for a much more systematic approach, integrating public health decision-making into all aspects of opioid review and approval,” said Dr. Aaron Kesselheim of Harvard Medical School, a member of the report committee. “It would be an ambitious undertaking.”

The report details how two intertwining epidemics — prescription painkillers and heroin — led to the worst addiction crisis in U.S. history and provides a plan for turning back the tide of overdose deaths.

Gateway drugs

Prescribed, legal drugs are a gateway to illicit drugs for some, the report says. Other users start with pills diverted to the black market. Crush-resistant pills and other restrictions have unintended consequences, shifting use to heroin and illicit fentanyl.

The epidemic’s broad reach into rural and suburban America “has blurred the formerly distinct social boundary between use of prescribed opioids and use of heroin and other illegally manufactured ones,” the report says.

The authors say it will be possible to stem the crisis without denying opioids to patients whose doctors prescribe them responsibly. But long-term use of opioids by people with chronic pain should be discouraged because it increases dangers of overdose and addiction.

Requested by the FDA last year under the Obama administration, the report was greeted by FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a Trump appointee. Gottlieb said in a statement that the opioid epidemic is his “highest immediate priority” and he “was encouraged to see that many of [the] recommendations for the FDA are in areas where we’ve already made new commitments.”

Still, no immediate review of opioids as a class of drugs is planned by the FDA, other than the agency’s routine safety surveillance. Gottlieb said the FDA re-evaluates the safety of approved drugs with post-market information required from drugmakers and other sources.

“We will continue to consider what additional information is needed to ensure we have the right data to make important, science-based decisions,” he said.

Other strategies

Beyond the FDA, the report recommends:

— Better access to treatment for opioid addiction, including use of medications such as buprenorphine, in settings including hospitals, prisons and treatment programs.

— Year-round programs that allow people to return unused opioids to any pharmacy at any time, rather than only at occasional events. Some pharmacies, including Walgreens, have installed kiosks where people can get rid of pills.

— Insurers pay for pain control that goes beyond opioids to include non-drug treatment. The report doesn’t specify which treatments insurers should cover, but it does outline what early evidence exists for acupuncture, physical therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness meditation, calling them “powerful tools.”

— More research on the nature of pain and dependency on opioids and development of new non-addictive treatments.
…

Moon dust that Neil Armstrong collected during the first lunar landing was displayed Thursday at a New York auction house — a symbol of America’s glory days in space now valued at $2 million to $4 million.

The late astronaut brought the dust and some tiny rocks back to Earth in an ordinary-looking bag.

It’s one of 180 lots linked to space travel that Sotheby’s is auctioning off July 20 to mark the 48th anniversary of the pioneer lunar landing on that date in 1969.

The moon dust is the first sample of Earth’s satellite ever collected.

The bag has had a storied existence, a decades-long trajectory during which it was misidentified and nearly landed in the trash. About two years ago, it appeared in a seized assets auction staged on behalf of the U.S. Marshals Service. The owner, whose name has not been made public, purchased the treasure and sent it to NASA for testing.

After a legal tussle, a federal judge granted the owner full rights over the curiosity. 

Other items on the block are Armstrong’s snapshot of fellow Apollo 11 astronaut “Buzz” Aldrin standing on the moon, with an estimated value of $3,000 to $5,000.

A documented flight plan astronauts used to return to Earth is valued at $25,000 to $35,000.

In a photo valued at $2,000 to $3,000, astronaut Gene Cernan from Apollo 17 is seen rolling around in the lunar rover through a valley on the moon.

Capping the sale is a touch of humor: The Snoopy astronaut doll that was the mascot of the Apollo 10 crew, at an estimated pre-sale price of $2,000 to $3,000.

Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon. He died in 2012 in Ohio.

The first human to venture into outer space was Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who orbited Earth in a spacecraft in April 1961.

Gagarin’s description of the planet — translated from Russian — is being offered as part of his observations on being in space, at an estimated price of $50,000 to $80,000.

Calling it “a magnificent picture,” he wrote: “The Earth had a very distinct and pretty blue halo. This halo could be clearly seen when looking at the horizon. It had a smooth transition from pale blue to blue, dark blue, violet and absolutely black.”
…

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell plans to unveil a revised health care bill to Republican colleagues Thursday, as he makes a push to achieve one of the top legislative goals for the party and President Donald Trump.

McConnell last month withdrew an earlier plan after it became clear there was not enough support for it in the Republican-led Senate.

Trump has been vocal this week in pushing Senate Republicans to finish work on a health care bill before leaving for their annual August vacation.

His latest comments came Wednesday in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, with Trump saying he would be “very angry” if a health care bill does not pass.

McConnell has postponed the scheduled recess by two weeks in order to give lawmakers more time.

An assessment of the previous Senate bill by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said the number of uninsured Americans would rise by 22 million during the next decade when compared to the current system.

Without details of the new plan, it is unclear how different it will be, but McConnell faces a similar challenge in keeping the support of his fellow Republicans. The party has a 52-48 majority in the Senate, and with no Democrats voicing support for the effort to revamp the health care system they passed under President Barack Obama, only a few Republicans can oppose the measure and still have it succeed.

The main Republican criticisms of the existing Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, are that it is too costly and unfairly requires people to purchase health insurance or else face a penalty.

Sen. Ted Cruz has proposed allowing health insurance companies that are currently required to cover certain services in their plans to be allowed to offer much more basic options that would be less costly for healthier people who need less care. But opponents of that initiative say that will only serve to allow coverage for people with more medical problems to become unaffordable.

Some senators want to eliminate as much as possible of Obama’s signature law, while others are looking to preserve popular parts of it, including insurance funding for poorer Americans.

The House of Representatives narrowly approved repeal of the legislation in May. Trump initially cheered the passage of that bill at a White House rally, but since has called it “mean” and lobbied the Senate to approve an overhaul with “heart.”
…

New research published this week in the journal Brain suggests that the lack of quality sleep could raise your chances of contracting Alzheimer’s disease. And the Centers for Disease Control reports that more than 30 percent of Americans do not get enough sleep. That problem is creating a whole new tech market promising ways to get some sleep. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…

The World Health Organization says that there are over 350 million people worldwide who suffer or have suffered from depression. They classify it as the leading cause of disability around the globe. There are all kinds of therapies, and a lot of drugs, designed to provide relief to people who suffer. One new therapy uses magnets, and seems to work. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…

Researchers have developed a blood test that could help with the early detection of pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest forms of the disease.

Doctors usually are unable to diagnose cancer of the pancreas until it is too late. Most patients die within a year.

The new test uses stem cell technology to look for markers in the blood of people who, because of diabetes or family history, are more likely to develop pancreatic cancer.

Scientists took late-stage cancer cells from a patient and used technology to genetically regress those cells to a stem cell state.

They were able to return those cells to an early cancerous state and find what are called biomarkers in the blood to detect the disease early enough for treatment.

The researchers say the new test has an 87 percent accuracy rate in identifying someone with stage 1 or 2 pancreatic cancer, and a 98 percent rate in ruling out the disease in those who are not sick.

The study appears in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
…

Novartis AG’s pioneering cancer drug won the backing of a federal advisory panel Wednesday, paving the way for the first gene therapy to be approved in the United States.

An advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration voted 10-0 that the drug, tisagenlecleucel, should be approved to treat patients with relapsed B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most common form of U.S. childhood cancer.

The FDA is not obliged to follow the recommendations of its advisers, but typically does so. The agency is expected to rule on the drug by the end of September.

Approval of tisagenlecleucel would have significant implications not only for Novartis but for companies developing similar treatments, including Kite Pharma Inc, Juno Therapeutics Inc and bluebird bio Inc.

All four are developing chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapies (CAR-T), which harness the body’s own immune cells to recognize and attack malignant cells.

If approved, the drugs, which are infused just once, are expected to cost up to $500,000 and generate billions of dollars for their developers. Success would also help advance a cancer-fighting technique that scientists have been trying to perfect for decades and lift the broader field of cell therapy.

“In the last five years, there have been a significant number of cell therapy companies that have gone public or gotten investment in hopes of moving this type of therapy forward,” said Reni Benjamin, an analyst at Raymond James. “This is our first glimpse from a commercial and regulatory perspective about how the FDA is thinking about this space.”

A clinical trial of Novartis’ drug showed that 83 percent of patients who had relapsed or failed chemotherapy, achieved complete or partial remission three months post-infusion.

Patients with ALL who fail chemotherapy typically have a 16 to 30 percent chance of survival.

Novartis is also testing the drug in diffuse large b-cell Lymphoma (DLBCL), the most common form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, as is Kite. Part of the competitive landscape will include which company is best able to manufacture its product most efficiently and reliably.

The products are made by extracting and isolating a patient’s T cells, genetically engineering them to recognize and target specific cancer cells, and then infusing them back into the patient.

Novartis said the entire process will take 22 days by the time it is launched.

More than half of patients experienced a serious complication known as cytokine release syndrome (CRS), which occurs when the body’s immune system goes into overdrive.

Doctors were able to manage the condition, and the syndrome caused no deaths.

The FDA expressed concern that the drug could cause new malignancies over the long term, but panelists generally felt that risk was low.
…

A new report finds more than two billion people lack access to safe drinking water and more than twice that number or 4.5 billion people lack safe sanitation. The report by the World Health Organization and U.N. Children’s Fund is the first global assessment of water, sanitation and hygiene for the Sustainable Development Goals.

The United Nations reports nearly 850,000 people die every year from lack of access to good water, sanitation and hygiene. This includes more than 360,000 children under age five who die from diarrhea and many others from diseases such as cholera, dysentery, hepatitis A and typhoid.

The joint report by the World Health Organization and U.N. Children’s Fund finds people living in rural areas in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia are most at risk of disease and death from poor water and sanitation-related sources.

WHO Coordinator for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, Bruce Gordon says this report is the first to assess the importance of hygiene to good health. He says many homes, healthcare facilities and schools have no soap and water for handwashing.

“The one figure I would kind of like to emphasize here is that in sub-Saharan Africa, 15 percent of the population only has access to a hand-washing facility with soap and water,” he said. “And, as we know, good hygiene is one of the simplest and most effective ways to stop the spread of disease.”

One of the U.N.’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals calls for universal and equitable access to safe water and sanitation for all by 2030. UNICEF Chief of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, Sanjay Wijesekera says such progress would have a knock-on effect on other development areas.

“For children, access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene not only keeps them alive and healthy, but it gives them a chance to go to school and gain an education. It reduces inequality … and it just gives them a fair start to life,” said Wijesekera.

The SDGs are calling for an end to open defecation, which perpetuates a vicious cycle of disease and poverty. Open defecation is practiced by more than 890 million people, mainly in rural areas, who have no toilet or latrine.

 

 

 
…

Scientists say an iceberg the size of Bali has broken away from the continent of Antarctica.

The iceberg, which is likely to be named A68, measures 5,800 square kilometers and weighs over one trillion tons, making it one of the biggest on record. It is slightly larger than the Indonesian island of Bali, which has a population of well over 4 million people.

Iceberg calving, when bergs break away from a larger ice sheet, is a natural process, although global warming is believed to have accelerated the trend. This new mass of free-floating ice has been separating from Antarctica’s Larsen C Ice Shelf for months.

Scientists say there is no immediate impact on global sea levels, but the huge iceberg is a risk to ships in the area. The extreme south Atlantic is outside major maritime trade routs, but Antarctica is is a popular destination for cruise ships, most of them traveling from South America.

The Larsen C ice shelf is still attached to land, but already largely afloat off the coast of northwestern Antarctica. It is one in a series of three connected formations that grew out from the Antarctic mainland over tens of thousands of years.

Larsen A, the most northern and smallest of the three segments, broke free of the mainland in 1995. The Larsen B Ice Shelf, somewhat larger at about 3,200 square km, with an average ice thickness of 220 meters, disintegrated into the sea in 2002.
…

Donor countries at a London summit pledged Tuesday to increase funding for family planning, but proposed cuts to family planning programs by the U.S. government overshadowed the conference.

The largest boost in donations announced at the Family Planning Summit came from the U.S.-based Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which sought to improve women’s access to contraceptives.

“The $375 million that the foundation announced today, that is absolutely not a reaction to President [Donald] Trump,” Melinda Gates said. “There is not anything anyone can do to fill the bucket of the money that the U.S. has committed to family planning.”

The United States is by far the biggest donor to global family planning programs, giving $600 million this year. But Trump announced in April that he planned to withdraw financial support for the U.N. Population Fund, accusing it of using what he called “coercive” family planning practices, including providing abortions. The United Nations strongly rejected the claims.

Nigeria’s minister of health, Isaac Adewole, told VOA the cuts would have an impact.

“Every country in the developing world will be worried, because it really signifies an increase in the [funding] gap,” he said. “We know family planning is one of the strongest anti-poverty strategies the world has ever known. It is a low-hanging fruit for reducing maternal mortality. It will contribute to shared prosperity.”

Call for action

By 2050, Nigeria is on course to be the third most populous country, with more than 400 million people. Nigeria’s minister of budget and national planning, Zainab S. Ahmed, said action was needed fast.

“Our economy cannot grow fast enough to be able to sustain that size of population,” Ahmed said, “so it is a very significant challenge and we need to address it now.”

Nigeria is budgeting $3 million for family planning programs in 2017 and says more is needed. Ministers say reaching young people is key.

The African MTV drama “Shuga” weaves messages around sexual health, contraception and HIV, and it reaches an estimated 720 million people. It’s currently partly funded by the U.S. government.

Georgia Arnold, executive director of the MTV Staying Alive Foundation, said, “It is much harder for governments and organizations to be able to speak openly about sex. That is where we come in. We can use our brand. We can use our access to young people and all of the media platforms that they use.”

Delegates expressed hope that partnering between the private sector and governments can provide improved access to contraceptives and family planning advice.
…

Doctors and parents involved in female genital mutilation will face up to 15 years in prison under new Michigan laws.

Female circumcision or cutting is already a federal crime punishable by five years in prison. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed legislation on Tuesday that creates a state crime with harsher penalties.

The legislation was proposed after six people from an India-based Muslim sect called Dawoodi Bohra were charged in a genital mutilation case involving six girls at a suburban Detroit clinic. Two of the girls are from Minnesota, and four are from Michigan.

Michigan is the 26th state to officially ban the practice, which is common in some parts of the world.

The new laws also require increased public education and lengthen the statutes of limitations to file charges and lawsuits.

The laws take effect in October. 
…

Reports over the past decade have drawn global attention to shocking abuses some women have been subjected to during childbirth in developed and developing countries.

The maltreatment has ranged from lack of privacy and neglect to forced sterilization, sexual and physical assault, and refusal to release a mother or child from a birth facility without payment. The problems are especially acute in sub-Saharan Africa, which accounts for 66 percent of all maternal deaths per year worldwide, according to a February report from UNICEF, the U.N. Children’s Fund.

A four-year study by researchers in the United States and Tanzania looked at ways to reduce abuse of mothers-to-be. Keys included gathering community stakeholders and health care workers to define standards of care and identifying barriers to change.

Previous efforts to reduce mortality of women giving birth focused on getting them into health care facilities to deliver their children. Despite dramatic increases in facility-based childbirth, however, decreases in mortality remained modest. Even when facilities are equipped to save a mother’s life, reports of abuse can keep women from seeking medical treatment during birth.

Site is no guarantee

“It doesn’t matter where you give birth — just because it’s a building doesn’t mean you survive,” Lynn Freedman of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health told VOA.

With colleagues from Columbia, the Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania and Harvard University, Freedman designed one of the first attempts to show how abuse could be reduced. The researchers followed facilities in the Tanga Region of Tanzania for their study and randomly selected one to receive the intervention. They called their project Staha, which means “respect” in Swahili.

They first gathered stakeholders in the community and asked them to develop a set of standards for what appropriate care during childbirth should be. The residents were able to provide a unique local perspective. In this case, stakeholders felt it was important to foster a mutual respect between patients and health providers.  

Freedman agreed, saying, “Patients can blame the health workers, who are more an expression of systemic problems and not the sole cause of them.”

Quality improvement

Researchers then distributed the standards in the facility and convened a quality-improvement team made up of its employees. The team determined drivers of abuse and implemented changes to correct them. Changes included continuous patient surveys, increased oversight by management and educators, and tea for the staff to show appreciation on difficult days.

A year after they finished working with the facility, the researchers went back to see whether there had been changes in reported abuse and if progress had been sustained.  They found that there was a 66 percent decrease in levels of reported abuse. The sharpest decreases were seen in reports of neglect and physical assault.

But Freedman warned against immediately recommending that others implement these changes. Getting the community involved is most important, she said.

It’s not, ” ‘Here’s the best practice.  Do this,’ ” she said. It’s vital “that people themselves analyze the situation and develop the intervention.”

While attention has been growing, Freedman hopes for more. This is an issue that “everyone who actually lives with and works in the system knows is there, but has been so not the priority of policymakers and donors — almost like a silent emergency.”
…

American technology companies are bringing automation and robotics to the age-old task of battling mosquitoes in a bid to halt the spread of Zika and other mosquito-borne maladies worldwide.

Firms including Microsoft and California life sciences company Verily are forming partnerships with public health officials in several U.S. states to test new high-tech tools.

In Texas, Microsoft is testing a smart trap to isolate and capture Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, known Zika carriers, for study by entomologists to give them a jump on predicting outbreaks.

Verily, Alphabet’s life sciences division based in Mountain View, California, is speeding the process for creating sterile male mosquitoes to mate with females in the wild, offering a form of birth control for the species.

While it may take years for these advances to become widely available, public health experts say new players bring fresh thinking to vector control, which still relies heavily on traditional defenses such as larvicides and insecticides.

“It’s exciting when technology companies come on board,” said Anandasankar Ray, an associate professor of entomology at the University of California, Riverside. “Their approach to a biological challenge is to engineer a solution.”

Smart traps

The Zika epidemic that emerged in Brazil in 2015 and left thousands of babies suffering from birth defects has added urgency to the effort.

While cases there have slowed markedly, mosquitoes capable of carrying the virus  — Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus — are spreading in the Americas, including large swaths of the southern United States.

The vast majority of the 5,365 Zika cases reported in the United States so far are from travelers who contracted the virus elsewhere. Still, two states — Texas and Florida — have recorded cases transmitted by local mosquitoes, making them prime testing grounds for new technology.

In Texas, 10 mosquito traps made by Microsoft are operating in Harris County, which includes the city of Houston.

Roughly the size of large birdhouses, the devices use robotics, infrared sensors, machine learning and cloud computing to help health officials keep tabs on potential disease carriers.

Texas recorded six cases of local mosquito transmission of Zika in November and December of last year. Experts believe the actual number is likely higher because most infected people do not develop symptoms.

Pregnant women are at high risk because they can pass the virus to their fetuses, resulting in a variety of birth defects.

Those include microcephaly, a condition in which infants are born with undersized skulls and brains. The World Health Organization declared Zika a global health emergency in February 2016.

Most conventional mosquito traps capture all comers — moths, flies, other mosquito varieties — leaving a pile of specimens for entomologists to sort through. The Microsoft machines differentiate insects by measuring a feature unique to each species: the shadows cast by their beating wings. When a trap detects an Aedes aegypti in one of its 64 chambers, the door slams shut.

The machine “makes a decision about whether to trap it,” said Ethan Jackson, a Microsoft engineer who is developing the device.

The Houston tests, begun last summer, showed the traps could detect Aedes aegypti and other medically important mosquitoes with 85 percent accuracy, Jackson said.

The machines also record shadows made by other insects as well as environmental conditions such as temperature and humidity. The data can be used to build models to predict where and when mosquitoes are active.

Mustapha Debboun, director of Harris County’s mosquito and vector control division, said the traps save time and give researchers more insight into mosquito behavior.

“For science and research, this is a dream come true,” he said.

The traps are prototypes now. But Microsoft’s Jackson said the company eventually hopes to sell them for a few hundred dollars each, roughly the price of conventional traps. The goal is to spur wide adoption, particularly in developing countries, to detect potential epidemics before they start.

“What we hope is [the traps] will allow us to bring more precision to public health,” Jackson said.

Sorting mosquitoes with robots

Other companies, meanwhile, are developing technology to shrink mosquito populations by rendering male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes sterile. When these sterile males mate with females in the wild, their eggs don’t hatch.

The strategy offers an alternative to chemical pesticides.

But it requires the release of millions of laboratory-bred mosquitoes into the outdoors. Males don’t bite, which has made this an easier sell to places now hosting tests.

Oxitec, an Oxford, England-based division of Germantown, Maryland-based Intrexon Corp, is creating male mosquitoes genetically modified to be sterile. It has already deployed them in Brazil, and is seeking regulatory approval for tests in Florida and Texas.

MosquitoMate, a startup formed by researchers at the University of Kentucky, is using a naturally occurring bacterium called Wolbachia to render male mosquitoes sterile.

One of the biggest challenges is sorting the sexes.

At MosquitoMate’s labs in Lexington, immature mosquitoes are forced through a sieve-like mechanism that separates the smaller males from the females. These mosquitoes are then hand sorted to weed out any stray females that slip through.

“That’s basically done using eyeballs,” said Stephen Dobson, MosquitoMate’s chief executive.

Enter Verily. The company is automating mosquito sorting with robots to make it faster and more affordable. Company officials declined to be interviewed. But on its website, Verily says it’s combining sensors, algorithms and “novel engineering” to speed the process.

Verily and MosquitoMate have teamed up to test their technology in Fresno, California, where Aedes aegypti arrived in 2013.

Officials worry that residents who contract Zika elsewhere could spread it in Fresno if they’re bitten by local mosquitoes that could pass the virus to others.

“That is very much of a concern because it is the primary vector for diseases such as dengue, chikungunya and obviously Zika,” said Steve Mulligan, manager of the Consolidated Mosquito Abatement District in Fresno County.

The study, which still needs state and federal approval, is slated for later this summer.
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Eleven of the world’s biggest banks pledged on Tuesday to find out how much exposure they have to risks related to climate-change, a move backed by environmentalists who say better information on the costs of global warming will push lenders to transition towards green investments.

With more than $7 trillion under management, some of the biggest names in global finance have signed onto the United Nations-backed disclosure effort for information on new risks presented by climate change.

Information on banks’ climate risks could eventually be reviewed by regulators as part of their financial disclosures, said Simone Dettling, a researcher with the U.N. Environment Program working on the transparency plan.

“The goal is to shift lending away from carbon intensive sectors that are becoming risky towards green technologies that are becoming more attractive,” Dettling told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview.

Before banks can change their lending patterns they need to understand how their portfolios will be impacted by climate change. Most currently do not have this information, Dettling said.

“They have committed to finding these numbers,” she said of the voluntary plan.

Once banks have information on their exposure to climate risks they can begin disclosing how these risks will impact investors while looking for new sustainable alternatives, she said.

That disclosure could happen within the next year, she said, although banks and U.N. officials are still hammering out the details.

Information on investments in fossil fuel firms, renewable energy businesses and transportation companies is likely to be among the data disclosed as part of banks’ climate-risk assessments, Dettling said.

Banks backing the plan for new research into climate risks include ANZ, Barclays, Bradesco, Citi, Itaú, National Australia Bank, Royal Bank of Canada, Santander, Standard Chartered, TD Bank Group and UBS, said the U.N. Environment Program.

“The scale and sophistication of climate risk and opportunity continue to grow,” Citi Bank spokesman Ed Skyler said in a statement on Tuesday. “Working together to refine our approaches to enhanced disclosure will help accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy.”
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Average households use a lot of water that cannot be re-used and it goes to waste. A new project in Sweden is testing a water treatment system that would put to use the nutrients and other useful elements from used water while eliminating the toxic parts. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.
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Insecticides, mosquito nets, and disrupting breeding grounds all reduce mosquito populations and slow the spread of malaria. Now, researchers want to take away the insect’s food to fight the disease that kills a child every two minutes.

Mosquitoes mostly feed on plant sugars that can be hard to find during the dry season in Africa, where 90 percent of malaria cases develop. Researchers thought one potential source of food might be from the flowers on a small type of mesquite tree. The tree, imported from Mexico 40 years ago to provide firewood and shore up irrigation dykes, quickly became invasive and grew out of control.  

To test their idea, researchers monitored mosquito populations in six villages in the Bandiagra District of Mali. After a week, they removed the flowers from the mesquite trees in half of the villages.

The report, published in Malaria Journal, found that with less food around, the mosquitoes didn’t live as long and populations dropped 69 percent. This didn’t just mean fewer mosquitoes, it meant fewer old mosquitoes. That’s important because it takes 12 days for the malaria virus to get to the salivary glands of a mosquito where it could infect a human. So if mosquitoes die even a couple of days earlier, that could greatly reduce the number of mosquitoes that pose a threat.

“This suggests that removal of the flowers could be a new way to shift inherently high malaria transmission areas to low transmission areas,” said Gunter Muller, lead author of the study from Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School.

Devil tree

But getting rid of mesquite is easier said than done. It’s not as if people haven’t tried to control the tree before. It encroaches on crop lands, makes areas inaccessible, and can use up what little water there is. It has been known to grow up though the floors of huts. Even getting to the flowers is a challenge, due to the 10-centimeter-long thorns that grow along the branches.  

Many refer to it as the devil tree, but Medusa tree may be just as apt a name, since it can grow back from just its roots after it is cut down.

Biologist Dawn Wesson from the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine said this was one of the first attempts she has seen to control mosquito populations by restricting their food source.

Wesson, who was not involved in the research, highlighted that not only were populations depressed, but that the degree of impact varied greatly depending on the species of mosquito. In this case all of the species can carry malaria, but Wesson hopes that in other contexts this could be used to help a benign species of mosquito displace a dangerous species of mosquito. That impact could extend beyond the end of any food control measures.

Approach could backfire

But Wesson also cautioned that removing mesquite might backfire. Without flowers to feed on, these mosquitoes might turn to blood meals. This could lead to more frequent bitings and increased transmission of malaria. “It’s probably unlikely,” she told VOA. “They did show a nice decrease … in the older female mosquitoes. But remember their study only took place over a period of about eight days.”

The next step, she suggests, should be to measure the impact of removing mesquite, not just on mosquito populations, but also on the incidence of malaria.

 
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A cholera outbreak in Yemen “continues to spiral out of control,” according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which says there are now over 300,000 suspected cases of the water-borne disease.

The country is also struggling to battle famine in the midst of a two-year war between a Saudi-led coalition and Shiite rebels who control the capital city of Sana’a.

The World Food Program has reported that two-thirds of Yemen’s population does not know where their next meal will come from.

 

“Disturbing. We’re at 300k+ suspected cases with ~7k new cases/day,” ICRC Regional Director Robert Mardini said in a tweet.

“More than 1,600 have died,” the ICRC tweeted.

Cholera is a highly contagious bacterial infection that can be spread through contaminated food and water. The disease thrives in impoverished areas like Yemen.

Although easily treatable, the disease is spreading in war-torn Yemen as less than half of all medical facilities have become useless.

 

According to the U.N’.s Humanitarian coordinator in Yemen, Jamie McGoldrick, most of the $1.1 billion in aid promised to Yemen has not been delivered yet, causing food security to become even more of a problem.

“Humanitarian Organizations have had to reprogram their resources away from malnutrition and reuse them to control the cholera outbreak,” he said in Sana’a last week. “We’re trying to do our best, but its very much beyond what we can cope with.”
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Sealed behind the steel doors of two bunkers in a Beijing suburb, university students are trying to find out how it feels to live in a space station on another planet, recycling everything from plant cuttings to urine.

They are part of a project aimed at creating a self-sustaining ecosystem that provides everything humans need to survive.

Four students from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics entered the Lunar Palace-1 on Sunday with the aim of living self-sufficiently for 200 days.

They say they are happy to act as human guinea-pigs if it means getting closer to their dream of becoming astronauts.

“I’ll get so much out of this,” Liu Guanghui, a PhD student, who entered the bunker on Sunday, said. “It’s truly a different life experience.”

President Xi Jinping wants China to become a global power in space exploration, with plans to send the first probe to the dark side of the moon by 2018 and to put astronauts on the moon by 2036. The Lunar Palace 365 experiment may allow them to stay there for extended periods.

For Liu Hong, a professor at Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the project’s principal architect, said everything needed for human survival had been carefully calculated.

“We’ve designed it so the oxygen [produced by plants at the station] is exactly enough to satisfy the humans, the animals, and the organisms that break down the waste materials,” she said.

But satisfying physical needs is only one part of the experiment, Liu said. Charting the mental impact of confinement in a small space for such a long time is equally crucial.

“They can become a bit depressed,” Liu said. “If you spend a long time in this type of environment it can create some psychological problems.”

Liu Hui, a student leader who participated an initial 60-day experiment at Lunar Palace-1 that finished on Sunday, said that she sometimes “felt a bit low” after a day’s work.

The project’s support team has found mapping out a specific set of daily tasks for the students is one way that helps them to remain happy.

But the 200-day group will also be tested to see how they react to living a for period of time without sunlight. The project’s team declined to elaborate.

“We did this experiment with animals… so we want to see how much impact it will have on people,” Liu, the professor, said.
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Invasive species are wreaking havoc in waters around the world — from Burmese pythons in the Florida Everglades, to Asian carp in the Mississippi River, to turtles native to the US on every continent except Antarctica. Faith Lapidus reports on efforts to control the reptile in Poland.
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