Panic buttons, used by the elderly when they need help from the police or medical personnel, can be the difference between life and death. Now, a new bracelet fitted with a mobile phone and GPS tracking device could replace panic buttons — and not just for seniors. VOA’s Deborah Block tells us about this technological advance that can be a lifeline for anyone who needs help in a hurry.
…

The World Health Organization’s new director-general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, began his five-year term Saturday.

The former Ethiopian health and foreign minister is the first African chosen to head the organization.   

Tedros, who goes by his first name, won the office by a clear majority, defeating British and Pakistani candidates in May in the first WHO election decided by member countries.

He is facing a slew of challenges as he takes the helm of the sprawling organization with a funding shortfall of approximately $2.2 billion that is

responsible for improving health care around the world.

After his election, he said the concept of health as a human right would be at the heart of whatever he does at WHO.

“Half of our population does not have access to health care.” He said that could and should be remedied through universal health care coverage, which would address the issue of health as a human right and act as a spur to development.

“All roads should lead to universal health coverage and it should be the center of gravity of our movement,” he said.

Tedros has said one of his first orders of business would be to strengthen WHO’s ability to respond swiftly and effectively to emergencies because “epidemics can strike at any time” and the WHO must be prepared.

Tedros is taking over the reins of the organization from Margaret Chan of China who led WHO for nearly ten years.
…

Democratic Republic of Congo declared its two-month Ebola outbreak officially over Saturday after 42 days without recording a new case of the disease.

The outbreak in Congo’s remote northeastern forests, a record eighth for the country where the disease was first discovered in 1976, killed four out of the eight people infected, Health Minister Oly Ilunga said in a statement.

“I declare on this day, at midnight, the end of the outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever of the Ebola virus in DRC,” Ilunga said.

Congolese health authorities approved the use of a new experimental vaccine but ultimately declined to deploy it because of the small scale of the outbreak and logistical challenges.

The latest outbreak came a year after the end of the virus’ deadliest episode in West Africa, which killed more than 11,300 people and infected some 28,600 as it swept through Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia and caused alarm around the world.

Health officials say northeastern Congo’s remote geography combined with the country’s experience fighting the disease allowed them to gain the upper hand quickly.

“The government of DRC has been very transparent in declaring that there is the outbreak and that really facilitated … communication and information sharing and rapid action,” Ibrahima Soce Fall, a senior World Health Organization official in Africa, told Reuters last week.
…

Turkey has always prided itself on being a secular state.

The nation enshrined the separation of church and state in its constitution by constitutional amendment in 1928. But that was nearly a century ago, and about 99 percent of the nation’s citizens are now identified as Muslim.

Watch: Evolution vs. Erdogan: Turkey Struggles with Basic Science

The current government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has received some criticism for eroding the country’s historic commitment to secularism and moving the nation in a more fundamentalist direction.

Recently, in a decision that many saw as moving Turkey away from secularism and toward Islam, the government banned the teaching of evolution in high school.

That means Turkish students entering high school will no longer learn naturalist Charles Darwin’s theory that all living things share a common ancestor. It is a simple idea that is the foundation of the study of life on Earth and beyond.

In explaining its decision, the government said it is not about Islam. Instead, officials said that students, “Don’t have the necessary scientific background and information-based context needed to comprehend” the theory.

Alpaslan Durmus, head of the education ministry’s curriculum board, said members thought the theory should be taught to higher-level students.

“We tried to leave out some of the controversial issues from our students’ agenda,” Durmus added.

Unable to compete on world stage

Whatever their reason, critics say the practical outcome is that Turkish children will not get the education they need to compete on the world stage.

“The Turkish education system is very weak concerning the fundamental sciences,” secular scholar Alaattin Dincer told VOA. “Both in domestic and international exams; be it in math, physics, chemistry and biology, our students have very low passing grade percentages. It is actually terribly low.

“If you don’t tell our children, the next generation, about science and evolution and Darwin; if you raise them without them learning those subjects, how can you argue that we are a scientifically enlightened country that can producer the scientists of the future? How can you tell them this?” Dincer asked.

Other critics say it is part of a plan by President Erdogan to embed an official Islamic identity into Turkish society. But like Catholic scholars, many Islamic theologians say evolution and Islam can co-exist quite easily.

“If something has scientific truth, then you cannot stand against it,” Ihsan Eliacik, a Muslim theologian, told VOA. “If evolution is scientific truth that exists in nature, nobody can stand against it. Because it is true. Fiction cannot cover a lie. A religious faith cannot destroy truth. Besides, by my religious faith, scientific truth means religious truth. The two are not contradictory.”

VOA Turkish Service’s Tan Cetin contributed to this story.
…

The separation of church and state was enshrined in Turkey’s constitution by constitutional amendment in 1928. But the current government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has received some criticism for eroding the country’s historic commitment to secularism. The latest move by the government is to ban the teaching of evolution in high school. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…

Backyard cooks looking to grill this summer have another option: hot dogs without “added nitrites.”

Are they any healthier?

Oscar Mayer is touting its new hot dog recipe that uses nitrite derived from celery juice instead of artificial sodium nitrite, which is used to preserve the pinkish colors of processed meats and prevents botulism. Kraft Heinz, which owns Oscar Mayer, says sodium nitrite is among the artificial ingredients it has removed from the product to reflect changing consumer preferences.

The change comes amid a broader trend of big food makers purging ingredients that people may feel are not natural.

But nitrites are nitrites — and the change makes little difference — according to those who advise limiting processed meat and those who defend it.

Kana Wu, a research scientist at Harvard University’s school of public health, said in an email that it is best to think of processed meat made with natural ingredients as no different from meat made with artificial nitrites.

Wu was part of a group that helped draft the World Health Organization report in 2015 that said processed meats such as hot dogs and bacon were linked to an increased risk of colon cancer. She notes WHO did not pinpoint what exactly about processed meats might be to blame for the link.

Known carcinogens

One concern about processed meats is that nitrites can combine with compounds found in meat at high temperatures to fuel the formation of nitrosamines, which are known carcinogens in animals. It’s a chemical reaction that can happen regardless of the source of the nitrites, including celery juice.

But the U.S. Department of Agriculture caps the amount of artificial nitrites that can be added to meats to prevent excessive use, said Andrew Milkowski, a retired Oscar Mayer scientist who consults for the meat industry. Meat makers also add ingredients to processed meat like bacon that help block the formation of nitrosamines, he said.

Though the terms nitrates and nitrites are used interchangeably, the meat industry says it’s mainly sodium nitrite that companies currently use to cure meats such as hot dogs, cold cuts and bacon.

For Oscar Mayer hot dogs, the packages now list ingredients like celery juice that has been treated with bacterial culture. That turns the naturally occurring nitrates in celery juice into nitrites that serve a similar purpose.

While the nitrites derived from celery juice are no better, the switch may nevertheless help address negative consumer perceptions, said Milkowski, who also teaches at the University of Wisconsin’s department of animal sciences.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest agrees nitrites from natural sources aren’t that different from artificial nitrites in processed meats. But the group has cited the WHO report in calling for a cancer warning label on processed meats, regardless of how they’re made. It also says nitrite-preserved foods tend to be high in salt and should be limited or avoided anyway. The American Cancer Society also suggests limiting processed and red meat, citing a variety of reasons.

The meat industry has contested the WHO’s finding, saying it is based on studies that show a possible link but don’t prove a cause, and that single foods shouldn’t be blamed for cancer. Many health experts also say there’s no reason to worry about an occasional hot dog or bologna sandwich.

‘Right direction’

And while natural preservatives may not make hot dogs any healthier, they fit with the growing preference for ingredients like celery juice that people can easily recognize.

“I think it’s a step in the right direction,” said Kristin Kirkpatrick, a dietitian at the Cleveland Clinic.

An interesting wrinkle worth noting is that federal regulations require processed meats without added nitrites or nitrates to be labeled as “uncured” and to state that they have no nitrates or nitrites added — except those naturally occurring in the alternative ingredient. That’s the language you’ll now find on Oscar Mayer hot dog packages, though the products previously only had added nitrites.

The meat industry has contested the required language of meat being “uncured,” because it says the products are still cured, albeit with nitrites derived from other ingredients.
…

The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season has arrived. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says there’s a 45 percent chance that this year’s activity will be above normal, with up to four major hurricanes. VOA’s George Putic visited the wind tunnel at the nearby University of Maryland to experience the hurricane-strength wind and check out the latest in the science of predicting the stormy weather.
…

New government data show the health of pregnant women and babies in the U.S. is getting worse, and a report by the National Center for Health Statistics shows the number of babies born prematurely has been increasing since 2014.

Preterm American births increased in 2016 and 2015 after seven years of steady declines. Prematurity rose by 2 percent in 2016 and by 1.6 percent the year before.

Stacey Stewart, president of the March of Dimes, a nonprofit U.S. group that works to eliminate prematurity and birth defects, called the increase “an alarming indication that the health of pregnant women and babies in our country is heading in the wrong direction.”

Expand health care

Stewart called on Washington to expand access to quality prenatal care and promote proven ways to help reduce the risk of preterm birth. Noting that the U.S. Senate is considering a health care bill that many Americans believe would reduce health benefits for poor families and change coverage for maternity and newborn care, Stewart said now “is not the time to make it harder for women to get the care they need to have healthy pregnancies and healthy babies.”

In the U.S., about 400,000 babies born each year before the 37th week of pregnancy are considered preterm. No one knows all the causes of prematurity, but researchers have discovered that even late-term “preemies” face developmental challenges that full-term babies do not. Several studies show that health problems related to preterm births persist through adult life, problems such as chronic lung disease, developmental handicaps and vision and hearing losses.

African-American rates

Research also shows that African-American women are 48 percent more likely to bear a child prematurely than all other women. And African-American infants born with birth defects are much more likely to face severe outcomes, compared to other U.S. newborns.

African-American women in general are worse off than low-income white women, Stewart said.

“We want to make sure that all babies have access to opportunities to be delivered at full term,” she told VOA, “that mothers have the opportunity to have healthy pregnancies and deliver their babies full term, and we know we must do a much better job in African-American and Hispanic communities and in other communities of color,” to make sure that solutions are available.

The report from the National Center for Health Statistics, which is part of the government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, shows that preterm rates rose in 17 of the 50 U.S. states, and that none reported a decline.

The incidence of low birth weight, a risk factor for some serious health problems, also rose for a second straight year in 2016. Again, rates of low birth weight babies were higher for African-Americans than for other racial groups.
…

New research suggests that the ability of children in Africa to perform well in school could be dramatically improved through basic malaria education and treatment. While less fatal among older children, malaria infections often reduce a child’s ability to concentrate, as Henry Ridgwell reports.
…

Poor and southern U.S. counties will get hit hardest by global warming, according to a first-of-its-kind detailed projection of potential climate change effects at the local level.

The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, calculates probable economic harms and benefits for the more than 3,100 counties in the United States under different possible scenarios for worldwide emissions of heat-trapping gases. It looks at agriculture, energy costs, labor costs, coastal damage from rising seas, crime and deaths, then estimates the effect on average local income by the end of the century.

Researchers computed the possible effects of 15 types of impacts for each county across 29,000 simulations.

“The south gets hammered and the north can actually benefit,” said study lead author Solomon Hsiang, a University of California economist. “The south gets hammered primarily because it’s super-hot already. It just so happens that the south is also poorer.”

The southern part of the nation’s heartland — such as Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kentucky and southern Illinois — also feels the heat hard, he said. Michigan, Minnesota, the far northeast, the northwest and mountainous areas benefit the most.

Counties hit hardest

The county hit hardest if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated is tiny and impoverished Union County in Florida, where median income would take a 28 percent hit. And among counties with at least 500,000 people, Polk County in central Florida would suffer the most, with damages of more than 17 percent of income.

Seven of the 10 counties with the highest percentage of projected county income losses from climate change are in Florida, along with two in Texas and one in Georgia. Half of these are among the poorest counties in the country. 

Five of the 10 counties that would benefit the most from global warming are in Michigan. The others are in Alaska, Colorado, Nevada and the mountainous region of North Carolina. Mineral County in Nevada would see a 13 percent increase in income, while Tacoma, Washington’s Pierce County would benefit by about 2 percent, the most among counties with a population of more than 500,000.

“You’re going to see this transfer of wealth from the southeast to the parts of the country that are less exposed to risk,” said study co-author Robert Kopp, a Rutgers University climate scientist. “On average both in this country and on this planet just poorer people are in hotter areas.”

The whole nation’s gross domestic product would shrink by 0.7 percent for every degree Fahrenheit temperatures go up, the study calculates, but that masks just how uneven the damage could be. On average, the poorest counties would suffer a drop of 13.1 percent of income if carbon pollution continues unabated, while the richest counties would fall 1.1 percent.

Rise in fatalities

Economists and scientists who specialize in climate and disasters praised the study as groundbreaking.

“This is the most comprehensive, the most detailed information to date,” said University of Illinois finance professor Donald Fullerton, who wasn’t part of the study. “Nobody had ever done anything like this.”

The biggest economic damage comes from an increase in deaths. In the early stages of warming, overall deaths fall because the number of deaths from extreme cold falls fast. But as the world warms further, the increase in deaths from heat rises faster and results in more deaths overall by the end of the century.

Fullerton said the one place where he felt the study could overstate costs is in these deaths because it uses the same government-generated dollar value for each life — $7.9 million per person — when most of the people who die in temperature-related deaths are older and some economists prefer valuing deaths differently by age.

The study looks at production of four different crops — soy, wheat, corn and cotton. Much of the Midwest could be hit “with the type of productivity losses we saw during the Dust Bowl,” Hsiang said.

The study also examines two types of crime data: property and violent crime. Previous studies have found a direct and strong correlation between higher temperatures and higher rates of violent crime such as assault, rape and murder, Hsiang said.

Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann called it “a fascinating and ambitious study.” But because many extreme weather factors weren’t or can’t yet be calculated, he said the study “can at best only provide a very lower limit on the extent of damages likely to result from projected climate changes.”
…

Poor and southern U.S. counties will get hit hardest by global warming, according to a first-of-its-kind detailed projection of potential climate change effects at the local level.

The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, calculates probable economic harms and benefits for the more than 3,100 counties in the United States under different possible scenarios for worldwide emissions of heat-trapping gases. It looks at agriculture, energy costs, labor costs, coastal damage from rising seas, crime and deaths, then estimates the effect on average local income by the end of the century.

Researchers computed the possible effects of 15 types of impacts for each county across 29,000 simulations.

“The south gets hammered and the north can actually benefit,” said study lead author Solomon Hsiang, a University of California economist. “The south gets hammered primarily because it’s super-hot already. It just so happens that the south is also poorer.”

The southern part of the nation’s heartland — such as Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kentucky and southern Illinois — also feels the heat hard, he said. Michigan, Minnesota, the far northeast, the northwest and mountainous areas benefit the most.

Counties hit hardest

The county hit hardest if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated is tiny and impoverished Union County in Florida, where median income would take a 28 percent hit. And among counties with at least 500,000 people, Polk County in central Florida would suffer the most, with damages of more than 17 percent of income.

Seven of the 10 counties with the highest percentage of projected county income losses from climate change are in Florida, along with two in Texas and one in Georgia. Half of these are among the poorest counties in the country. 

Five of the 10 counties that would benefit the most from global warming are in Michigan. The others are in Alaska, Colorado, Nevada and the mountainous region of North Carolina. Mineral County in Nevada would see a 13 percent increase in income, while Tacoma, Washington’s Pierce County would benefit by about 2 percent, the most among counties with a population of more than 500,000.

“You’re going to see this transfer of wealth from the southeast to the parts of the country that are less exposed to risk,” said study co-author Robert Kopp, a Rutgers University climate scientist. “On average both in this country and on this planet just poorer people are in hotter areas.”

The whole nation’s gross domestic product would shrink by 0.7 percent for every degree Fahrenheit temperatures go up, the study calculates, but that masks just how uneven the damage could be. On average, the poorest counties would suffer a drop of 13.1 percent of income if carbon pollution continues unabated, while the richest counties would fall 1.1 percent.

Rise in fatalities

Economists and scientists who specialize in climate and disasters praised the study as groundbreaking.

“This is the most comprehensive, the most detailed information to date,” said University of Illinois finance professor Donald Fullerton, who wasn’t part of the study. “Nobody had ever done anything like this.”

The biggest economic damage comes from an increase in deaths. In the early stages of warming, overall deaths fall because the number of deaths from extreme cold falls fast. But as the world warms further, the increase in deaths from heat rises faster and results in more deaths overall by the end of the century.

Fullerton said the one place where he felt the study could overstate costs is in these deaths because it uses the same government-generated dollar value for each life — $7.9 million per person — when most of the people who die in temperature-related deaths are older and some economists prefer valuing deaths differently by age.

The study looks at production of four different crops — soy, wheat, corn and cotton. Much of the Midwest could be hit “with the type of productivity losses we saw during the Dust Bowl,” Hsiang said.

The study also examines two types of crime data: property and violent crime. Previous studies have found a direct and strong correlation between higher temperatures and higher rates of violent crime such as assault, rape and murder, Hsiang said.

Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann called it “a fascinating and ambitious study.” But because many extreme weather factors weren’t or can’t yet be calculated, he said the study “can at best only provide a very lower limit on the extent of damages likely to result from projected climate changes.”
…

Two major studies into how bees are affected by a group of pesticides banned in Europe gave mixed results on Thursday, fueling a row over whether the chemicals, called neonicotinoids, are safe.

The studies, one conducted across three European countries and another in Canada, found some negative effects after exposure to neonicotinoids in wild and honeybee populations, but also some positives, depending on the environmental context.

Scientists who conducted the European research – in Britain, Hungary and Germany – told reporters their overall findings suggested neonicotinoids are harmful to honeybee and wild bee populations and are “a cause for concern.”

But scientists representing companies who funded the work – Germany’s Bayer AG and Switerland’s Syngenta AG – said the results showed “no consistent effect.”

Several independent experts said the findings were mixed or inconclusive.

The European Union has since 2014 had a moratorium on use of neonicotinoids – made and sold by various companies including Bayer and Syngenta – after lab research pointed to potential risks for bees, crucial for pollinating crops.

But crop chemical companies say real-world evidence is not there to blame a global plunge in bee numbers in recent years on neonicotinoid pesticides alone. They argue it is a complex phenomenon due to multiple factors.

A spokesman for the EU’s food safety watchdog EFSA, said the agency is in the process of assessing all studies and data for a full re-evaluation of neonicotinoids, expected in November.

EFSA’s scientific assessment will be crucial to a European Commission decision in consultation with EU states on whether the moratorium on neonicotinoid use should remain in place.

The two studies published on Thursday, in the peer-reviewed journal Science, are important because they were field studies that sought to examine the real-world exposure of bees to pesticides in nature.

Researchers who led the Canadian study concluded that worker bees exposed to neonicotinoids – which they said often came from contaminated pollen from nearby plants, not from treated crops – had lower life expectancies and their colonies were more likely to suffer from a loss of queen bees.

On the findings of the European study, researchers told a briefing in London that exposure to neonicotinoid crops harmed honeybee colonies in two of the three countries and reduced the reproductive success of wild bees across all three.

They noted, however, that results from Germany showed a positive effect on bees exposed to neonicotinoids, although they said this was temporary and the reasons behind it were unclear.

“This represents the complexity of the real world,” said Richard Pywell, a professor at Britain’s Center of Ecology and Hydrology who co-led the work. “In certain circumstances, you may have a positive effect … and in other circumstances you may have a negative effect”

Overall, however, he said: “We are showing significant negative effects on [bees’] critical life-cycle stages, which is a cause for concern.”

Several specialists with no direct involvement in the study who were asked to assess its findings said they were mixed.

Rob Smith, a professor at Britain’s University of Huddersfield, said the results were “important in showing that there are detectable effects of neonicotinoid treatments on honeybees in the real world”, but added: “These effects are not consistent.”

Lynn Dicks at the University of East Anglia said the findings “illustrate the complexity of environmental science.”

“If there was a really big effect of neonicotinoids on bees, in whatever circumstances they were used, it would have shown up in both of these studies,” she said.

Norman Carreck, an insect expert at Britain’s Sussex University, said: “Whilst adding to our knowledge, the study throws up more questions than it answers.”
…

In the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes, indigenous farmers gather at the top of mountains the night after the winter solstice — not to enjoy the view, but to forecast the timing and quantity of rains.

If the Pleiades star cluster appears large and bright, then rains will be abundant. If it looks small and dim, then the rains will be poor — in which case, the farmers delay the planting of their crops.

“What could at first glance seem like a far-fetched ancestral tradition actually showcases indigenous peoples’ ability to make useful and constructive observations on climate forecasting,” said Douglas Nakashima, head of the small islands and indigenous knowledge section at the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

“While scientists know that El Niño reduces rainfall in the Andes, they were previously not aware of the link between El Niño and cloud cover,” he said.

Traditional skills and knowledge should be seen as a complement, not a barrier, to scientific knowledge and climate adaptation efforts, experts said at a conference on how communities adapt to climate change, held this week in the Ugandan capital Kampala.

Pool traditional knowledge

National policies to adapt to climate change not only often disregard traditional knowledge, they sometimes even undermine the resilience of indigenous populations, Nakashima said.

“Initiatives around the world to build large dams or boost green fuels to reduce emissions have displaced many communities,” he said.

Krystyna Swiderska, a researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development, said that governments also largely ignore indigenous innovation in farming.

“In Peru, for example, farmers already grow hundreds of potato varieties — as opposed to relying on just a few varieties as many countries do — so they have a better chance of surviving the negative impacts of climate change,” she said.

“But there is still a strong belief among the international community that science is the best solution for climate adaptation,” she said.

Herders — who have been adapting to erratic weather for decades — have much to teach about coping with climate change, said Elizabeth Carabine, a research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute, a London-based think tank.

Cities and slums

Conference participants stressed that cities, and slums in particular, could also be a significant source of inspiration for climate adaptation.

One participant highlighted that slum dwellers were highly innovative and entrepreneurial, for example by converting parts of their home into a school or a soup kitchen.

Using cities’ knowledge is all the more important as people living in cities are just as affected as others — and perhaps more so — by climate change, said Julie Arrighi from the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center.

“Cities are big consumers of energy and particularly exposed to threats like flooding as a result of rising sea levels,” she said. “That challenge is only going to get bigger as cities grow.”

Julie Greenwalt, an urban environment specialist at the Cities Alliance, guarded against governments ignoring the needs of cities to adapt to a changing climate, and instead focusing their resources on rural areas.

“Our definitions of urban and rural are largely driven by developed countries, but even in some cities — like in India — people keep cattle,” she said.

This, said Rebecca Carter from the World Resources Institute, means that “climate adaptation should become part of how a city works, not just an add-on.”

 
…

New research suggests that the ability of children in Africa to perform well in school could be dramatically improved through the provision of basic malaria education and treatment.

Most malaria prevention programs focus on children under 5. Infections are less fatal among older children, but many harbor malaria parasites without displaying any symptoms of the disease. If such a condition is left untreated, a young victim’s health often deteriorates, said lead researcher Dr. Sian Clarke of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

“The malaria parasites destroy the red blood cells, and as a consequence of that you get chronic anemia in children,” Clarke said. “Generally, children who are anemic feel weak, they’re tired, they’re generally lethargic, they are going to be less active and less fully engaged.”

The research involved nearly 2,000 schoolchildren in Mali, led by Save the Children and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, alongside the National Institute for Public Health Research in Mali.

About half the children were given a malaria control package delivered by their teachers, which included prevention education, insecticide-treated nets and anti-malarial treatment. Malaria infection rates fell from 80 percent to just 5 percent, and cases of anemia were almost halved compared with the control group.

“And the children’s capacity to pay attention for longer was increased,” Clarke said.

Save the Children has helped expand the program to 400 schools in Mali. It was the second African country to host the trial.

“The first study was done in Kenya, an area of year-round [malaria] transmission,” Clarke said. “This study was done in Mali, an area with malaria concentrated in just a few months.  And the fact that we saw similar results in both settings would suggest that where malaria is a significant problem and the levels of infection are high, then you might expect to see a similar impact in other settings.”

Aid workers say preventing anemia in Malian schoolgirls is particularly important because of high teenage marriage and pregnancy rates. Anemia during pregnancy can lead to a low birth weight and a higher risk of child mortality.
…

Climate change will have an impact, not just on the temperature, but on the economy, according to a new analysis. A group of researchers has just released a study focused on the future economic effects of climate change in the U.S. Using six different economic variables, the team is predicting, with county by county accuracy, how a warming climate will rapidly change American society over the next century. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…

This year’s World Food Prize has been awarded to African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina, for his work to improve the lives of millions of small farmers across the African continent —  especially in Nigeria, where he was once the agriculture minister.

Kenneth Quinn, president of the World Food Prize Foundation, based in Des Moines, Iowa, said the $250,000 award reflected Adesina’s “breakthrough achievements” in Nigeria and his leadership role in the development of AGRA — the nonprofit Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.

For example, Quinn said, “our laureate introduced the E-Wallet system, which broke the back of the corrupt elements that had controlled the fertilizer distribution system for 40 years. The reforms he implemented increased food production by 21 million metric tons and led to and attracted $5.6 billion in private-sector investments that earned him the reputation as the ‘farmers’ minister.'”

Adesina is the sixth African to win what some consider the Nobel Prize for food and agriculture. He will accept the prize in October in the Midwestern state of Iowa, where farming is a mainstay of the economy.

Challenges ahead

As president of the African Development Bank, the 57-year-old economist said he is honored by the recognition of decades of work, but he noted to VOA that the challenges ahead in Africa are quite immense.

“The big issue is how we’re going to make sure that 250 million people that still don’t have food in Africa get access to food,” Adesina said. “The other one is, we still have 58 million African children that are stunted today and, obviously, stunted children today are going to lead us to stunted economies tomorrow.”

Almost 30 percent of the 795 million people in the world who do not have enough to eat are in Africa, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

While Africa imports $35 billion worth of food every year, Adesina says the money spent on food imports should instead go into food production.

“Our task ahead is to make sure that Africa fully feeds itself,” the bank president said. “That Africa conserves that $35 billion and Africa transforms its rural economies and creates new hope and prosperity for a lot of the young people.”

Agriculture as ‘cool’ career

Adesina said he has worked to promote agriculture as a “cool” career for young people, so they can see their future in agriculture as a business, not just a way of life.

Gold lying in the ground in the rough can look like a clump of dirt, and won’t look like the extremely valuable metal it is unless it is cleaned and polished, Adesina said, and “that’s how it is with agriculture.”

“The size of the food and agribusiness market in Africa will rise to $1 trillion by 2030,” he added, “so this should be the sector where the millionaires and billionaires of Africa are coming out of.”

The African Development Bank launched an almost $800 million initiative last year called “Enable Youth.” The aim, Adesina said, “is to develop a new generation of young commercial farmers in both production, logistics, processing, marketing and all of that, all across the value chain.”
…

The Dead Sea, the lowest spot on earth, is getting lower. With less rainfall than average this year, experts say the water level could drop more than one and a third meters by October. But the lake’s shrinkage is not just a reflection of drier weather and increased water use. It’s a prediction of a future mega-drought. Faith Lapidus reports.
…

The number of cases of Zika virus is way down around the world this year. Instead of treating new cases, doctors, health workers and researchers are freer to track and help those children with microcephaly, a disease caused by Zika-carrying mosquitoes. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…

Solomon was just 7 years old when he woke up missing a leg.

And he was one of the lucky ones.

Weeks later, Solomon was back on two feet with the aid of an artificial leg, fitted at a hectic hospital, turned into a limb-making factory, in the South Sudanese capital of Juba.

The hospital is in horribly high demand in a country born of war that remains littered with mines and explosive devices, with civil war still raging all around.

Most of South Sudan’s estimated 60,000 amputees have suffered war-related injuries, be it gunshot or landmine wounds.

As civil war devastates the world’s youngest country — it celebrates its sixth anniversary next month — it has become increasingly difficult for amputees to gain good treatment.

Second chance

Solomon came to his first artificial limb after an open fracture turned into a life-threatening infection, which forced doctors to amputate.

When he woke from surgery in a remote hospital in South Sudan’s Bentiu, he was far away from the capital with little chance of rehabilitation or help adjusting to his new life.

“I was put on a flight to Juba, where I am receiving a new, artificial leg,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation from his current home at the Physical Rehabilitation Reference Center.

It is the country’s biggest hospital for prosthetic orthotic treatment, treating about 30 patients a day.

“Amputations have gone up since the beginning of the civil war in 2013, but even with increased need, access to some areas is impossible due to active fighting and many people who have lost limbs might never be able to get out and receive help,” said Emmanuel Lobari, who as head of technicians oversees the production of all the prosthetic limbs.

Both hospital and factory, the center produces an average of 50 prostheses each month — all hand-made and custom fit.

Durable, affordable

“We use polypropylene to make the limbs, a material that has proved to be both durable and affordable,” physiotherapist Daniel Odhiambo said.

A Kenyan, he is one of a handful of expatriate staff at the hospital, employed by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

“The prostheses last for an average of two years and it’s usually the foot, made out of a softer material, that wears out the fastest. The leg itself can last up to 10 years.”

Making a limb — from melting the plastic-like polypropylene to shaping it into a leg — is a quick process in the hospital’s small, modern factory and can be done within a day.

“It’s the fitting and the patient’s adaption that take up to 10 days,” Lobari said.

Lobari is South Sudanese, like most of the hospital’s 30 staff, all of whom received Red Cross training.

The organization first started treating amputations in 1979 during Ethiopia’s civil war, and developed the polypropylene technology that has since spread across all conflict zones.

Odhiambo has worked in many places, including Afghanistan, Yemen and Iraq. He recently took up his second mission in Juba.

“Here in South Sudan, I mainly see war wounds and they are very different from civilian wounds,” he said.

Nearly 250,000 mines and explosive devices were found and destroyed in South Sudan so far in 2017, according to the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS). South Sudan slipped into civil war in 2013, two years after becoming independent from Khartoum, and some 4 million people, one third of the population, have fled to neighboring countries in its wake.

For those left behind, risk is part of daily life. The worst case Odhiambo has seen is an 18-year-old boy, who was brought to the clinic with both legs blown off by a landmine, pieces of muscle hanging out of the wound and shrapnel fragments stuck deep in his flesh.

“He was in consistent pain and it took months to build the right prosthesis, but I stayed with him through the whole process. I told him not to give up. He had his whole life ahead of him still.”

A resilient nation

Simon has been coming to the hospital for several months and can still vividly recall the day he was attacked, when several bullets were shot through his leg.

“I thought I was going to die, but my family took me to a small hospital where my leg was amputated,” he said.

Simon is from the north of the country then moved to Juba to get better care.

Three in four patients at the center are male. The women and children at the hospital underwent amputations after suffering different traumas, such as war injuries, crocodile bites, road accidents or infections.

It helps patients such as Solomon, just starting a new life with his first prosthesis, to meet older patients like Simon.

“The boy is still young, but he can see that he’s not alone with his injury,” Odhiambo said.

“The one difference I’ve noted working in South Sudan is that people here accept their fate easier than any others. They are resilient and want to go on with their lives. I even see it in Solomon,” Odhiambo said. “People have suffered, but they don’t lose their drive and motivation.”
…

Cooks at a community kitchen in Kampala’s Nakasero Hill business district are preparing a traditional breakfast of green bananas in offal sauce using a very untraditional means of cooking – volcanic rocks.

It’s a method that some are hoping will take off across Africa, to help protect forests and improve the lives of women.

“Rocks for fuel is a reprieve to all women in Africa,” said Susan Bamugamire, one of the 55 cooks in the community kitchen set up by city authorities in the Wandegeya Market shopping mall to help feed local workers.

“Save for the high cost of purchasing and installing it, the special cookstove is something every woman will crave to have in her kitchen,” she said, saying it would largely free women from having to seek out firewood, charcoal or kerosene.

But cost is an issue in a country where a third of the population live on $1.90 or less a day and even small domestic stoves are priced at $100.

The stoves use heat-holding volcanic rocks broken down to the size of charcoal. The rocks are heated using starter briquettes and then remain hot for hours with the help a fan blowing a continuous flow of air over them.

According to Rose Twine, the director of Eco Group Limited – the Kampala-based company that produces the stoves – the main aim is to provide an efficient form of cooking energy that is user friendly and good for the environment.

“It pains me when I see people cut down trees, some of them indigenous and decades old, just for the sake of making charcoal or firewood,” said Twine.

“It is now good that we can talk of an alternative,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The volcanic rocks can be repeatedly heated for up to two years with the aid of the fan, which is solar-powered and needs very little energy. Any surplus solar power produced can be used to light the house, run a radio and charge mobile phones, Twine said.

Alternatively, the fan can be run off mains electricity if the owner’s home or business is connected to the power grid, she said.

It is the cost of the fan, battery and solar panel that push up the stove’s production cost, pushing it out of reach of most people in Uganda.

“We can only achieve the environmental benefits of these stoves if they are made affordable for poor Ugandans who desperately need them,” said David Illukol, a senior mechanical research engineer at the government-run Uganda Industrial Research Institute.

“All we need is further research on how to reduce the costs of production, and perhaps [on] maintaining them,” the engineer said in an interview.

Despite the cost, more than 4,500 individuals and institutions in Uganda – including schools – are now using the stoves, according to Eco Group Limited.

The Kampala city authority has installed 230 of the stoves at Wandegeya Market where Bamugamire and her colleagues rent the premises from the government.

Protecting Trees

There are plans for the stoves to be used in other parts of the continent too.

Twine’s company began exporting them to Rwanda this year, and plans to take them to Kenya and Somalia as well.

An umbrella group of more than 1,000 climate organizations and networks – the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance – wants to spread the cooking method across Africa, according to its secretary general Mithika Mwenda.

Volcanic rocks have the potential to become a key cooking method for East Africa and perhaps the entire continent, engineer Illukol said.

They are a largely environmentally friendly form of cooking because – unlike charcoal, kerosene, gas and firewood – they do not emit climate-changing gases and produce no smoke at all, he said.

About 94 percent of Ugandan households use firewood or charcoal for cooking, according to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics.

Only 20 percent of households had access to electricity in 2014, and most of those connected to the grid rarely use electricity for cooking because of the high costs involved, the statics bureau said.

Demand for wood for fuel has put pressure on Uganda’s shrinking forests.

The country had some 3 million hectares of tropical forests under government control at the beginning of the 20th century.

But by 1999, tropical forest cover had fallen to about 730,000 hectares or 3.6 percent of Uganda’s land area, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

“If we can stop using firewood and charcoal completely, then we will have saved a huge volume of wood that is used for fuel every year, and that is good for our environment,” said Illukol.
…

Scientists have developed a skin patch that may soon take the “ouch” out of being vaccinated.

Every year, in the United States, less than half of the adults who should get a flu vaccine actually get the shot.  That’s a problem because while most people tend to think of influenza as a mild disease, the infection can be deadly, especially in the elderly, young children and people with compromised immune systems.

To help raise that percentage researchers have developed a self-administered skin patch to protect against seasonal influenza as well as a shot.   Researchers who developed the vaccine patch said it has a lot of advantages over an injection.

Nadine Rouphael was principal investigator of the patch at Emory University School of Medicine in Georgia where she’s a professor of infectious diseases.  “The patch looks more like a Band Aid, like a nicotine patch, and then it has multiple very small needles that contain, in this case, influenza vaccine.  Those microneedles completely dissolve into the skin and there will be no sharp waste afterwards,” said Rouphael.

The flu vaccine is currently administered by an injection into the muscle of the upper arm.  It is painful and can leave some redness and swelling, which is why an estimated 60 percent of adults do not get immunized against seasonal flu. 

In the first human clinical trial of the patch at Emory’s Hope Clinic, 100 participants aged 18-49, tested the effectiveness of the vaccine patch.

The trial, reported in the journal The Lancet, took place in June 2015.  None of the participants had received a flu vaccine during the previous influenza season.  The participants were divided into four groups.  In one group the patch was administered by a health care provider, in the second it was self-administered by each participant, a third group received the vaccine via injection and a fourth group got a placebo.

Rouphael said the patch, whether it was put on the skin by a health care provider or by the participants, was as safe and effective as the intramuscular injection.  Side effects were limited to mild redness and swelling that lasted for a few days.  More importantly, the researchers found the immune responses were present in both the patch group and those who received the injection six months later, meaning they offered comparable protection.

Rouphael added the participants who used the patch liked it.  “We do have a lot of people who are typically scared of needles and they were more prone or more excited as being part of this clinical trial so they could try the microneedle instead.” 

The patch would only have to be put on the skin for a few minutes and then thrown away.  Rouphael said 70 percent of those who received the patch in the trial indicated they would prefer it over an injection. 

Because it does not need refrigeration, Rouphael said the patch could be bought off a store shelf or mailed to patients.  The fact that it is painless, said Rouphael, means more people are likely to get vaccinated against the seasonal flu virus.  The patch’s manufacturer, Global Center for Medical Innovation in Atlanta, is investigating using the device for other vaccines, including for measles, mumps and rubella.
…

A quarter-century-old project to repopulate the steppes of Mongolia with wild horses was kept alive as four animals made the long trip back to their ancestral home from the Prague Zoo.

Driven to extinction in their homeland in the 1960s, the Przewalski’s horses survived in captivity before efforts began to re-introduce them to the arid desert and mountains along Mongolia’s border with China.

Zoos organized the first transport to Mongolia of the strong, stocky beasts in 1992.

For the past decade, Prague Zoo has been the only one continuing that tradition and it holds the studbook of a species whose ancestors – unlike other free-roaming horses such as the wild mustangs of the United States – were never domesticated.

The zoo completed its seventh transport last week, releasing four mares born in captivity in the Czech Republic, Germany and Denmark in the Gobi desert. They will spend the next year in an enclosed area to acclimatize before being freed.

“All the mares are looking very well, they are not hobbling, they are calm, eating hay and trying to test the taste of the new grass,” Prague Zoo veterinarian Roman Vodicka said after making observations a few days after the release.

Prague has released 27 horses in total and officials estimate around 190 are now back in the wild in the Gobi B park, where the most recent arrivals were sent.
…

Professional football players are still not getting properly checked for concussions, despite a pledge by the sport’s governing body. That was obvious from a review of footage from the games in FIFA’s 2014 World Cup, the international men’s football championship held every four years.

The review, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association,  found that out of 81 head collisions there were only 12 assessments that fit the minimum requirements.

Co-author Michael Cusimano, a neurosurgeon at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, told VOA, “There were only two collisions [where] I could be happy and confident that a proper assessment was actually done.”

According to the 2012 Consensus Statement on Concussion in Sport, of which FIFA was a signatory, players showing any sign of concussion should immediately be withdrawn from play and assessed by a health care professional on the sideline. But players in the World Cup only received that full assessment 15 percent of the time.

More than half of the time, an assessment was done on the field or by a referee or another player. And 26 percent of the time, they received no assessment at all, despite showing as many as three signs of concussion. Those symptoms include being slow to get up, disorientation, obvious disequilibrium, unconsciousness, seizure-like movements, and head clutching.

The impact of concussions can accumulate over years and may lead to trouble with memory, attention, depression, anxiety, and early onset dementia. In rare cases, repeated blows to the head over a short period of time, even mild ones, can lead to death.

A concussion ignored

There was obviously something wrong with Christoph Kramer during the final game of the World Cup. The German player was struck on the side of his head by a shoulder and thrown to the ground. Following a brief assessment on the pitch, he was returned to play, despite showing at least three signs of concussion. After 13 minutes of strange, confused behavior, he was removed from the game.

A referee later told the Gazzetta dello Sport, “Shortly after the blow, Kramer came to me asking: ‘Ref, is this the final?’” The referee told teammates, but Kramer continued to play.

“Had he been injured to his knee and couldn’t walk there would be no doubt that he would have been taken off,” Cusimano said, “so why are we treating people with brain injuries any different than people who have, say, a leg injury?”

In response, FIFA soon created a policy to allow referees to stop play for as long as three minutes, so that players can receive an on-pitch assessment by health care personnel. But it is only at the discretion of the referee. This is not enough for Cusimano. He points out it was an on-pitch assessment that failed to catch Kramer’s apparent concussion, and it takes at least seven minutes to properly diagnose the condition. So he wants to see mandatory assessments on the sidelines, just as the 2012 Consensus advises.

‘Whole world is watching’

FIFA declined a request to speak with VOA, but shared a written statement highlighting their recent rule change, and their participation in the most recent International Consensus Conference on Concussion.

“Protecting the health of football players is and will remain a top priority in developing the game,” it said.

Researchers decided to analyze the World Cup because of the size of the audience. Over a billion people tuned in. That means that the World Cup provides an opportunity to set an example for how to handle concussions. They hope that better policy at the premier sporting event might not just protect those playing in the World Cup, but those playing in little leagues too.

“The whole world is watching,” said Dr. Cusimano. “FIFA has all the ability to do this properly.”
…

Imagine going to the doctor and getting a cooking lesson! That’s what happens at a doctor’s practice near Washington D.C. Dr. Yum Pediatrics is half doctor’s office, with waiting area and exam rooms, half kitchen.  Food is an important part of her approach to treatment.  

In the exam rooms, she explains to her patients and their parents the crucial importance of eating nutritious meals. In the kitchen, she shows them how to prepare those meals.

Dr. Fernando’s goal is to help children establish good eating habits and inspire families to prepare nutritious meals with the ingredients they have in hand.

Food for good health

Fernando has seen first-hand the connection between what kids eat and their well-being.

“In the first glance, you think of diet-related illnesses, mainly just pediatric obesity, and it’s true that 30 percent of kids in our community and nationwide are obese. And that’s a pretty staggering number,” she says, adding, “but as I paid more attention to a lot of the symptomology that I was seeing in kids who even weren’t obese or overweight, I was seeing that those symptoms often traced back some way to the diet.”

To help change that, the pediatrician co-authored a book, Raising a Healthy, Happy Eater: A Parent’s Handbook.  She also started a blog and a website.

“I simply posted recipes on that website and when I would see patients in the office and felt like I didn’t have enough time to go over the nutrition topics with them I would point them to that website.”

In 2012, she went a step further, co-founding the Dr. Yum Project.  She developed a curriculum that preschool teachers can use to introduce nutrition lessons in their classrooms.  Inside her practice, Fernando leads cooking classes.

Cooking with your doctor

Young patients, their parents and members of the community are invited to cook with Dr. Fernando and her team.  They try different recipes and use different tools that make cooking an easy, fun everyday experience.

“Maybe it’s using our menu planners to see how they can make meal planning easy for them,” Fernando explains. “Maybe it’s using budget-friendly recipes to figure out how to eat really healthy on a budget.  Maybe it’s our baby food options so that they can see how they can feed their babies the same food they’re eating.”

Yara Esquivel, a working mother of two, has been taking cooking classes with Dr. Yum for more than three years.  “Even my husband and I are eating better because we’re making sure the kids are eating better,” she says.

Almost all of the ingredients used in the cooking classes come from the clinic’s garden.

“As part of our classes, we really want to create a playful experience around feeding and eating,” Fernando says.  “We also want to create a rich sensory experience.  So taking kids out to the garden where they can grow food, plant food and harvest it and bring it to the kitchen, then cook it with their own hands, it really inspires them and makes it easier for them to accept new foods because they’re invested in it.”

Delicious, Healthy Meals Made Easy

Dr. Yum co-founder, Heidi DiEugenio, says all the recipes are taste-tested and posted online.  “Every single recipe is tasted by our families and we have the real feedback from some families, parents and kids about the food.  We tagged all those recipes, making it very easy for them to find.”

The ultimate goal of this project is to change the culture around kids’ food.

“There is a lot going in the media, kinds of advertising and things going around that say kids food, like ‘lunchables,’ kids like processed food, kids wouldn’t eat fresh carrots, they would eat Doritos,” DiEugenio says.  “You have to remember that these messages are out there because those companies are trying to make money.  But it’s not necessarily the case.  It’s a matter of being able to be patient with your kids, you have to learn how to try new foods all the time.”

The Dr. Yum team hopes to inspire pediatricians around the country to start cooking lessons to help families enjoy real, nutritious meals.
…