Among the people socializing in a tavern in Alexandra township in Johannesburg is Karabo Sathekge, who asked that VOA not give her real name. She is a slight, attractive 19-year-old in a veil of an orange dress, defying the winter chill.

Sathekge often meets one of her partners here. He is more than twice her age.

Sathekge explains that sex with older men is sometimes “rough,” and always without a condom.

South Africa has almost 7 million people living with HIV and manages the globe’s largest antiretroviral program, keeping about 4 million people alive with the drugs. At the South African National AIDS Conference in Johannesburg this week, specialists voiced their concern about the spiking rates of infections among young women, a trend reflected throughout the continent.

“What does it tell you about the lack of knowledge about HIV, 20, 30 years into the HIV epidemic?” said Mark Heywood, the director of the Section 27 social justice movement. “We have seen, shockingly, a decline in knowledge of HIV amongst young people. It is like we have taken our foot off the accelerator, in certain respects.”

Heywood says more than 200 young women, ages 15 to 24, are infected with HIV each day in South Africa.

In 2015, that demographic accounted for the largest segment of new HIV infections in South Africa and a disproportionate number of new cases in the region. Adolescent and young women made up a quarter of the new cases in sub-Saharan Africa, according to UNAIDS most recent global report.

UNAIDS says adolescent and young women in Africa are at “particularly high risk” for a variety of reasons, such as poverty, lack of education and violence.

Like Sathekge, many poor young women in South Africa have “transactional” sexual relationships with older men who have jobs and money. The men buy them food, clothes and gifts.

Health care workers in South Africa say transactional sex is a key driver of the new infections among young women in the country.

Heywood is at the forefront of protests to demand the government make a new weapon against HIV infection available to young women. That weapon is a combination of antiretroviral drugs called “pre-exposure prophylaxis,” or Prep. Taken correctly, the pill can prevent people from getting HIV.

Heywood says the state could afford to give the drugs to young women for free.

“If you have literally tens of billions of rand being stolen every year out of different government departments, that is money that could be generating programs that reduce the vulnerability of young women,” he said. “But there has to be a [political] will.”

South Africa’s health minister, Aaron Motsoaledi, says he plans to provide Prep to young women in about two to three years, after educating them about the pill. It must be taken at about the same time every day, and ideally is used with condoms.

However, Heywood says Motsoaledi’s “innovative” policies to prevent new HIV infections are likely to stall, as Motsoaledi has been politically isolated after publicly opposing President Jacob Zuma over Zuma’s alleged corruption.
…

Photosynthetic bacteria and light may offer hope to heart disease patients, a new study suggests.

Researchers at Stanford University say that after injecting the bacteria into the hearts of rats with cardiac disease and using light to start photosynthesis, they were able to increase the flow of oxygen, improving heart function.

“The beauty of it is that it’s a recycling system,” said Joseph Woo, senior author of the study. “You deliver the bacteria, they take up carbon dioxide, and with energy from the light, they form oxygen.”

The findings could help many who have a condition called cardiac ischemia, which restricts blood flow and the delivery of oxygen to the heart muscles.

“We thought there is an interesting relationship in nature,” Woo said. “In nature, humans exhale carbon dioxide and plants convert it back to oxygen. During a heart attack, the muscle is still trying to pump. There’s carbon dioxide but no oxygen. We wondered if there were any way to use plant cells and put them next to heart cells to produce oxygen from the carbon dioxide.”

At first, the researchers tried to use spinach and kale cells, but the chloroplasts, the structures where photosynthesis occurs, were not stable enough to live outside the plant.

“So we kept looking around,” Woo said, saying the next option was photosynthetic bacteria called cyanobacteria because it is “more rugged” and could survive with heart cells in a petri dish.

After that, Woo and his team injected cyanobacteria into the beating hearts of anesthetized rats, comparing the oxygen levels among rats with their hearts exposed to light and rats that did not have light shined on their hearts.

“The group that received the bacteria plus light had more oxygen and the heart worked better,” Woo said, adding that the bacteria “dissipated” in about 24 hours. Improved cardiac function lasted at least four weeks, he said.

“This is still very preliminary,” Woo said.

The study was published in the journal Science Advances.
…

…

A U.N. humanitarian aid adviser for Syria says trucks are being prepared to ship polio vaccine into Islamic State group-held areas of Deir Ezzor governorate following confirmation of a “very dangerous” outbreak of the virus.

 

Jan Egeland made the comment to reporters Thursday in the wake of the confirmation announced last week by the World Health Organization of two cases in Deir Ezzor of a polio strain derived from vaccines that mutated under weakening health and immunization conditions.

 

He said 58 acute flaccid paralysis cases, a possible symptom of polio, had been reported in Deir Ezzor this year through June 6.

 

Egeland said “it’s one of the remarkable things” of Syria’s war that people have been reached with vaccines, even in the Deir Ezzor and Raqqa governorates held by IS.

 
…

A new report by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) finds child poverty and hunger are widespread in 41 of the world’s richest countries. The report says one in five children in rich countries lives in poverty, while one in eight often do not have enough to eat.

The report finds high income does not necessarily lead to a good outcome for children and often serves to widen the gap between rich and poor. UN Children’s Fund Chief of Social Policy and Economic Analysis, Jose Cuesta says all 41 countries surveyed, in one way or another, are failing to protect the well-being of their children.

“If I were to grade all countries, no one will get an A,” he said. “There is good news, of course, in quite a number of targets and areas. For instance, childhood learning or reductions in neonatal mortality rates. But, there are also substantive gaps in some targets. For instance, poverty reduction of children, increasing inequality, increasing obesity and worsening mental health.”

The seven top ranked countries in UNICEF’s League Table of 41 countries includes all the Nordic countries — Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Iceland, as well as Germany and Switzerland. The seven countries holding up the bottom are Chili, Mexico, the United States, Bulgaria, Romania, Israel and Turkey.

Cuesta tells VOA the United States, which ranks 37th does not perform well in areas such as poverty, hunger, good health and well-being, and quality education.

“Actually, it is a surprise and it is not a surprise at the same time because consistently the U.S. is doing poorly across these key indicators. So, it is not really one indicator driving the results here,” he said.

The report notes wealth and economic growth alone are not enough to ensure the well-being of children. UNICEF is urging rich countries to put children’s needs at the heart of their policy agenda.

 
…

Thailand’s industrial development faces fresh calls for greater local community participation in addressing the challenges of environmental pollution, especially as reports point to an escalation in the production of hazardous industrial pollution.

Industrialization has been a core of Thailand’s economic progress over the past three decades as the country progressed from agricultural to industrial and manufacturing development.

Investments in major chemical and manufacturing industries have been marked by industrial estates, especially in the Eastern Seaboard some 150 kilometers from Bangkok.

The military government is now looking to expand industrial development to boost the economy through 10 special economic zones throughout the country and further investment near Bangkok by way of an Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC).

But Thailand’s push for growth has raised concerns by local communities about increasing pollution, despite controls and legislation.

Thailand’s Pollution Control Department (PCD), in its latest report, estimates some 37.4 million metric tons of industrial waste was generated nationwide in 2015, of which 2.8 million tons — or 7.5 percent of the total, were hazardous industrial waste.

Hazardous waste

At the same time, hazardous waste — covering all waste from communities, industrial activities and infectious waste — stood at 3.45 million tons, an increase of 28 percent from the previous year.

“The production and use of hazardous substances in the country has caused pollution as hazardous substances were released into the environment and may cause contamination or remain in the environment,” the PCD said.

A European Union funded report with the Thai-based Ecological Alert and Recovery Thailand (EARTH) and Prague-based University of Chemistry and Technology covered eight provinces and the impact on local communities from dangerous heavy metal pollution.

The heavy metals examined in the study included arsenic, mercury, zinc, cadmium, chromium, and lead along with organic contaminants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and petroleum products, which medical authorities warn can be potential dangers to health.

Key areas of concern were the eastern seaboard industrial areas of Map Ta Phut and the provinces of Samut Sakorn Saraburi and Praeksa — which was affected by leakages from industrial landfills into the local environment.

Heavy metal pollution

Marek Sir, a chemistry researcher from the University of Chemistry and Technology in the Czech Republic, said the studies indicated concerns over heavy metal pollution in areas near industrial plants.

“In some areas there are real problems with the mixture of heavy metals or with the mixture of pollution. I was surprised mainly by the levels of heavy metals around recycling plants and smelting plants,” Sir told VOA.

“That’s a problem — still there are toxic fumes released into the environment and the easiest way to spread the pollution of heavy metals, which are absorbed on solid particles and they can diffuse into the air and can be transported. So that’s the problem — one of the problems,” he said.

EARTH director Penchom Saetang said there is a need for local communities to participate in the studies or projects in the future, as well as taking part in any process to rehabilitate affected polluted areas or studies.

Thailand has more than 139,000 large and medium-sized industrial plants, both inside and outside industrial estates and parks which number some 87 throughout the country.

The EARTH/ARNIKA report accused factory owners responsible for pollution of “uncaring management,” with the result of water pollution, toxic air pollution and hazardous industrial waste — especially those mismanaged and illegally dumped.

Contaminated areas are often not restored with local people increasingly lacking trust in officials and the state, and leading to opposition to further industrial development.

Cost of rehabilitation

EARTH director Penchom said access to funding for land rehabilitation remains a major stopping block.

“The big problem is rehabilitation and remediation will consume lots or money. I think the private corporations and the polluters are not willing to pay and this is the fundamental cost in Thailand. It’s very difficult to enforce the law for the polluters to pay,” she said.

Greenpeace Thailand country director Tara Buakameri said too often environmental policy depends on “top down” decision making, failing to address the pollution at the source.

Tara said policy often compromises the environment to the benefit to industry and development.

“It is a compromise situation – the compromise that benefits the polluter, benefits irresponsible companies that pollute the environment. When we can see that the result from the toxic contamination in different regions in Thailand — also affects the community,” Tara told VOA.

He said communities have a “right to know” when pollution has occurred and the amount and toxicity to be able to respond and to seek solutions and treatments.

The Pollution Control Department set out a strategic plan covering 2012-2021 calling for “rules and regulation amendments to facilitate effective waste management as well as strict enforcement of the laws. Additionally, compensation schemes for local administrations and residents should be developed.”
…

Imagine that you could not see. Or hear. And that you were just a child.

What would your world be like? How would you communicate? Who would teach you to speak, to sign or to read Braille? To play?

For more than 6 million children around the world, many in developing countries, this is their reality.

Experts say the overwhelming majority of children with multiple disabilities are falling through the education system.

“These children for the most part don’t get an education — something on the order of 90 percent,” said Dave Power, president and chief executive officer of Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Massachusetts, the United States’ oldest academic institution serving blind, deaf-blind and low-vision students.

Children with these disabilities have tremendous potential, he and other educators say, but they need the right education to realize it.

Challenges

“The stigma and discrimination that exists around disabilities — it is the attitudinal barrier — it has a wide-ranging impact,” said Gopal Mitra, senior adviser on disabilities at UNICEF, the U.N. Children’s Fund.

Another hurdle is the availability of resources from governments and within families, which often means educating a disabled child becomes a lower priority. “Within the family, often parents do not see the value of educating the child who cannot see or cannot hear,” Mitra said.

There also is a general lack of programs to provide teachers with the specialized training required for teaching children with visual or hearing impairments.

“I think that the greatest challenge across the world is to get the government involved in the need for teacher training,” said educator Roseanne Silberman. “Even talking about being hungry, being thirsty, wanting to go to the bathroom, if you are in pain or in discomfort — our kids have no way of expressing it without having teachers who are expert in teaching communications skills.”

Depriving an entire part of the population of vital life skills ultimately has a negative impact on society, advocates say.

“Human capital is the most precious, most important resource any community has,” said Juan José Gómez Camacho, Mexico’s U.N. ambassador and an advocate for persons with disabilities. “What we are doing by not investing and educating young children with any kind of disability or visual impairment or blindness, we are not only depriving them of means to live meaningful lives, but countries and communities are depriving themselves from thriving members of society that can contribute enormously.”

Training teachers

This week at the United Nations on the sidelines of meetings for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Perkins School for the Blind announced that it is launching an initiative to close this gap by training 1 million teachers worldwide by 2030 to educate children with multiple disabilities.

“We want to do that in a way that supports teachers who are in public schools and teachers that are in special schools, so all children will have a quality education,” said Michael Delaney, executive director of Perkins International. He said the program, which will have three different course levels ranging from two days to nine months, would train teachers to an international standard.

“We feel that we can get more people out there — better educators, better policymakers, better programmers — that are going to be able to make a change in their societies,” he added.

The Perkins school has a history of training teachers from other countries so they can go home and work with blind, deaf-blind and low-vision children. Now, Power said, they want to standardize that approach so they can have a wider reach.

“Because we already have the knowledge and know-how and have done it, we can do it very efficiently,” Power said.

The school expects to fund the program through a combination of government and philanthropic support.

Success story

Maricar Marquez was born deaf and at age 7 was diagnosed with Usher syndrome, an inherited condition that causes progressive vision loss. Today she is deaf-blind. She also has an older sister with the same condition.

Born in the Philippines, Marquez moved with her family to Canada, where both girls received specialized education. Marquez has defied stigmas that people with disabilities cannot learn. She earned a master’s degree, is married, works at a national center for deaf-blind youth and is a marathon runner, triathlete and skydiver.

“I am a very different person than anyone thought when I was younger,” she said through a sign language interpreter. “And had I not gotten the services that I did, I would not be where I am.”
…

There’s not much middle ground on broccoli — people either love it or hate it.

U.S. President George H.W. Bush, for instance, was not a fan.

“I do not like broccoli,” he famously said. “And I have not liked it since I was a little kid.  And my mother made me eat it.  And I am president of the United States.  And I am not going to eat any more broccoli.”

But there’s no denying that it’s a superfood.

And today, there’s one more reason to love it: A compound found in broccoli appears to be at least as effective as a widely used drug to treat diabetes, according to Swedish researchers who think the ingredient could be a safe alternative for lowering blood sugar.

It turns out the green vegetable contains a chemical, called sulforaphane, that appears in clinical trials to work as well as metformin at reducing blood sugar levels in diabetics.

That could be good news for a significant percentage of the 300 million Type 2 diabetics around the world who cannot take metformin, a first-line therapy, because of potential kidney damage and stomach upset.

Dr. Anders Rosengren of the Lund University Diabetes Center in Sweden helped discover the potential of sulforaphane in lowering HA1c, a blood biomarker of long-term glucose control.

He led a team of researchers who used a computer model to sort through a public database of more than 3,800 promising compounds to find sulforaphane.

‘Very exciting’

“We think this is very exciting. because there have been so many claims over the years of different food, dietary components having different health effects. We have really scientifically based proof that it has an effect on Type 2 diabetes,” Rosengren said.

In a 12-week study of 97 patients with Type 2 diabetes, sulforaphane lowered HA1c levels by a relative reduction of 10 percent compared with levels in the control group.

In absolute terms, the metformin-only group saw a 23 percent lowering of their HA1c while the sulforaphane group had a 24 percent reduction.  While that doesn’t seem like much, it’s enough to encourage researchers to keep pressing ahead with their studies, because it suggests that sulforaphane could work as well as metformin in reducing HA1c.

Even if that turns out not to be the case, Rosengren said, a combination of metformin and sulforaphane could work “synergistically” to drive blood sugar levels down better than metformin alone.

Because it would be unethical not to treat patients with a drug known to lower blood sugar, Rosengren said all of the participants in the study were on metformin, including the ones who got sulforaphane.

The findings were published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Rosengren said he looked forward to conducting another human clinical trial with pre-diabetic patients.

“If you were to have people without metformin at all, it might be that the sulforaphane might be even stronger,” he said.

Quick approval seen

Both sulforaphane and metformin reduce glucose production by the liver, through a mechanism the body uses to ensure it has enough fuel during periods of fasting, like overnight. In diabetics who are also overweight, Rosengren said, the liver’s glucose production function is not sensitive to the body’s needs, and the liver dumps too much glucose into the bloodstream, causing unhealthy spikes in blood sugar levels.

Rosengren said that because sulforaphane is natural, known to be safe and has no known side effects, he thinks it could be approved as a blood sugar-lowering agent by U.S. and European regulators in the next year or two.

Those who are ready to start eating broccoli with an eye toward reducing blood sugar should know this: Rosengren said average portions of the cruciferous vegetable would not be enough. In the study, researchers gave subjects up to five kilograms of sulforaphane extracted from broccoli sprouts, an amount that would be difficult to consume in a day, except in pill form.

For diabetics who hate broccoli, that could be an answer to their dilemma.
…

Researchers have identified an “Achilles heel” in the malaria parasite — a weakness that could stop the mosquito-borne infection in its tracks. The discovery offers the possibility of a cure, as well as a way to halt transmission. 

The malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, uses a protein to infect red blood cells. By blocking the protein, called PfAP2-I, the malaria parasite can’t enter the cells where it replicates billions of times before bursting forth into the bloodstream, according to researchers. 

The hallmark symptoms of malaria, including high fever and chills, come in waves every 48 hours — which is every time the parasite reproduces. 

Halting the so-called invasion phase, according to lead researcher Manuel Llinas, could potentially stop the infection.

“Invasion has for a long time been considered … one of the key parasite-specific processes that, if inhibited, would then prevent the full-blown, massive infections that one normally gets,” Llinas said.

Llinas and his colleagues at Pennsylvania State University have identified and characterized PfAP2-I, finding that it regulates more than 150 parasitic genes — nearly 20 percent of which are known to be involved in red cell invasion.

The protein appears to hold the key to activating those parasitic genes, allowing them to gain a foothold during a critical stage of infection.

“It’s like we’re taking a step back and looking at what actually establishes that program in the first place, preventing any of those molecules from being made in the first place,” said Llinas.  “And that’s really I think the Achilles heel to getting at preventing invasion and stopping the disease altogether.”

The findings are reported in the journal Cell Host and Microbe.

For the past 50 years, Llinas said, researchers have been trying to find a way to attack the invasion phase, typically with vaccines aimed at harnessing the immune system.  

Because the parasite has dozens of mechanisms to pull itself into red cells after attaching to their surface, it is hard raise an immune response to block them all, according to Llinas.

P. falciparum has also shown resistance to virtually all malaria drugs.

Llinas said the next step is to develop a drug that targets the parasitic protein.

In addition to a possible cure, an agent that targets PfAP2-I has the potential to break the transmission cycle, since there would few, if any, daughter parasites in the bloodstream to infect biting mosquitoes. 

There are an estimated 212 million cases of malaria each year, and the disease kills 429,000 people, most of them young children in sub-Saharan Africa.
…

Nearly one third of all humans are now classified as overweight or obese. That’s the conclusion from a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that dropped this week. When it comes to childhood weight problems, the U.S. tops the list. 13 percent of U.S. kids are now classified as obese. To combat the problem, the city of Seattle in Washington state is taking what some consider a drastic measure. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…

California Gov. Jerry Brown was named Tuesday as a special envoy to states at the next United Nations Climate Change Conference, further elevating his international profile as a leader on the issue as President Donald Trump backs away from a key international agreement.

Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, incoming president of the conference, named Brown as a special adviser for states and regions during a visit to Sacramento. The announcement of Brown’s role at the November conference in Bonn, Germany, comes on the heels of his meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping and German Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks to discuss climate change.

“I will lean on Gov. Brown to continue to bring the leadership he has demonstrated time and time again, and to mobilize a strong contingent of like-minded leaders from around the world, to show the world that we mean business,” Bainimarama said during a news conference at the historic governor’s mansion.

Commitment praised

 

The four-term governor has made reducing greenhouse gas emissions and boosting green technology a key tenet of his administration. He’s launched non-binding climate change pacts, including the newly formed U.S. Climate Alliance of states committed to upholding the carbon reductions goals in the Paris climate agreement, from which Trump plans to withdraw.

Bainimarama on Tuesday joined Fiji in the Under2 Coalition, a pact among cities, states and countries that Brown helped launch in 2015 aimed at keeping the rise of global temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius.

 

Bainimarama praised U.S. states’ commitment to upholding the Paris agreements. He noted Trump’s choice to withdraw could bring fireworks to the U.N. conference, known as “COP 23.”

“I think the withdrawal of the White House is going to make COP 23 very exciting,” he said.

Other governors will be involved

 

Brown won’t be the only governor potentially playing an outsize role at the conference. Fellow West Coast Govs. Kate Brown of Oregon and Jay Inslee of Washington, who also traveled to Sacramento on Tuesday, both plan to attend with other governors in the state’s Climate Alliance.

 

“We’re going to play a very important role,” Brown said.

 

The state agreement is a non-binding commitment to uphold the Paris goals, which include reducing the country’s emissions by 26 to 28 percent from 2005 levels. Many of the 13 states involved already have their own targets in place, and the goal of the coalition is to collaborate and share ideas on using green technology and other means to meet the goal.

“When the president decided to run up the white flag of surrender to the challenge of climate change, we jumped right into the barricades,” Inslee said.
…

People who are aged 75 or older and take aspirin daily to ward off heart attacks face a significantly elevated risk of serious or even fatal bleeding and should be given heartburn drugs to minimize the danger, a 10-year study has found.

Between 40 percent and 60 percent of people over the age of 75 in Europe and the United States take aspirin every day, previous studies have estimated, but the implications of long-term use in older people have remained unclear until now because most clinical trials involve patients younger than 75.

The study published on Wednesday, however, was split equally between over-75s and younger patients, examining a total of 3,166 Britons who had suffered a heart attack or stroke and were taking blood-thinning medication to prevent a recurrence.

Researchers emphasized that the findings did not mean that older patients should stop taking aspirin. Instead, they recommend broad use of proton pump inhibitor heartburn drugs such as omeprazole, which can cut the risk of upper gastrointestinal bleeding by 70 to 90 percent.

While aspirin — invented by Bayer in 1897 and now widely available over the counter — is generally viewed as harmless, bleeding has long been a recognized hazard.

Peter Rothwell, one of the study authors, said that taking anti-platelet drugs such as aspirin prevented a fifth of recurrent heart attacks and strokes but also led to about 3,000 excess-bleeding deaths annually in Britain alone.

The majority of these were in people older than 75.

“In people under 75, the benefits of taking aspirin for secondary prevention after a heart attack or stroke clearly outweigh the relatively small risk of bleeding. These people needn’t worry,” Rothwell said.

“In the over-75s the risk of a serious bleed is higher, but the key point is that this risk is substantially preventable by taking proton pump inhibitors alongside aspirin.”

Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine President Alan Boyd, who was not involved in the study, said it had been considered that the benefits of aspirin outweighed the risks of bleeding in all patients and that the new research would force a reappraisal.

Rothwell, director of the Center for Prevention of Stroke and Dementia at Oxford University, and his colleagues found that the annual rate of life-threatening or fatal bleeds was less than 0.5 percent in under-65s, rising to 1.5 percent for those aged 75 to 84, and nearly 2.5 percent for over-85s.

Because the majority of patients studied were taking low-dose aspirin, rather than more modern anti-platelet drugs such as clopidogrel or AstraZeneca’s Brilinta, the study could not draw conclusions about combined drug use.

However, a commentary in The Lancet medical journal, where the study was published, noted that patients on dual anti-platelet therapy were known to have a higher risk of bleeding than those on monotherapy and that the research showed the need for regular evaluation of older patients.
…

It sounds futuristic: drones carrying heart defibrillators swooping in to help bystanders revive people stricken by cardiac arrest.

Researchers tested the idea and found drones arrived at the scene of 18 cardiac arrests within about five minutes of launch. That was almost 17 minutes faster on average than ambulances — a big deal for a condition where minutes mean life or death.

Drone-delivered devices weren’t used on patients in the preliminary study, but the results are “pretty remarkable” and proof that the idea is worth exploring, said Dr. Clyde Yancy, a former American Heart Association president who was not involved in the study.

Cardiac arrest is a leading cause of death worldwide, killing more than 6 million people each year. Most incidents happen at home or in other nonmedical settings, and most patients don’t survive.

“Ninety percent of people who collapse outside a hospital don’t make it. This is a crisis and it’s time we do something different to address it,” said Yancy, cardiology chief at Northwestern University’s medical school in Chicago.

The researchers reached the same conclusion after analyzing cardiac arrest data in Sweden, focusing on towns near Stockholm that don’t have enough emergency medical resources to serve summer vacationers. The analysis found an emergency response time of almost 30 minutes and a survival rate of zero, said lead author Andreas Claesson, a researcher at the Center for Resuscitation Science at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

To see whether care could be improved, Claesson’s team turned to drones.

Drones are increasingly being tested or used in a variety of settings, including to deliver retail goods to consumers in remote areas, search for lost hikers and help police monitor traffic or crowds. Using them to speed medical care seemed like a logical next step, Claesson said.

The study was done last October and was published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Not heart attacks

More than 350,000 Americans suffered cardiac arrest in a nonmedical setting last year, the American Heart Association says. The condition is often confused with heart attacks, but they’re different.

Heart attacks occur when a clot or other blockage stops blood flow to the heart. Cardiac arrest occurs when electrical impulses controlling the heart’s rhythmic pumping action suddenly malfunction. The heartbeat becomes very irregular or stops, preventing blood from reaching vital organs. Death can occur within minutes without treatment to restore a normal heartbeat, ideally CPR and use of a defibrillator.

The researchers used a small heart defibrillator weighing less than two pounds, featuring an electronic voice that gives instructions on how to use the device. It was attached to a small drone equipped with four small propeller-like rotors, a Global Positioning System device and camera.

They launched the drone from a fire station within about six miles (10 kilometers) of homes where people had previous cardiac arrests.

In the study’s video footage simulating a rescue, a drone soars over residential rooftops and then lands gently in a backyard. A man dashes out of the house, grabs the defibrillator and carries it inside.

There were no crashes or other mishaps during the study, Claesson said. He plans a follow-up study to test drone-delivered defibrillators for bystanders to use in real-life cardiac arrests.

The test results show “a great potential for saving lives,” he said.
…

Bhutan and the Maldives have eliminated measles, becoming the first countries in their region to eliminate the highly infectious disease that is a major child killer globally, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.

The milestone was reached after no measles cases originating in the Maldives had been recorded since 2009 and none in Bhutan since 2012, the WHO said.

Both countries launched immunization programs about 40 years ago, with mass vaccination of people at high risk.

“The strongest political commitment, alongside concerted efforts of health workers, officials and partners at all levels, has helped achieve this landmark success,” Poonam Khetrapal Singh, regional director of WHO Southeast Asia, said in a statement.

The WHO has set a 2020 deadline for the elimination of measles in the 11 countries it categorizes as the Southeast Asia region.

The region has averted an estimated 620,000 measles deaths in 2016 after carrying out vaccinations in the 11 countries, the WHO said.

Nearly 107 million children were reached with an additional dose of measles vaccine in the region between 2013 and 2016, according to the WHO.

Globally, measles remains a leading cause of death among young children in the developing world. The viral disease is spread through coughing and sneezing and can lead to pneumonia, brain inflammation or death.

Last year, the Americas became the first region in the world to be free of measles, but last month an outbreak was reported in the U.S. state of Minnesota.

Gaps in vaccination coverage against measles also have led to several outbreaks of the disease in Europe in the past year, with both children and young adults affected, according to health officials.

The U.N. children’s agency said in April that cases of measles had surged in famine-threatened Somalia.
…

People who survive a stroke often struggle with a range of devastating consequences. It can take months of physical therapy for them to be able to use their limbs or start to feel sensations. That’s why a prototype of an artificial hand has been developed to help survivors experience sensations like cold or hot, and distinguish between different materials like glass or cardboard. As Faiza Elmasry tells us, this innovation was recently revealed at a technology show. VOA’s Faith Lapidus narrates.
…

In the farm fields of Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, the start of a harvest that not even war could stop offers hope for farmers facing a time of crisis.

Driven from their headquarters in Syria’s Aleppo province, the work continues of a group of scientists and farmers who store and grow crops with a view to helping feed nations.

The work of experts at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) is global, but many harbor the personal hope their efforts will help rebuild the country they left behind.

Fond memories

In ICARDA’s Lebanon base, Ali Shehadeh fondly scrolls through pictures on his laptop of the old HQ, from the seed bank where samples of crops such as wheat, barley and chickpeas were preserved to the fields in which they were grown.

Spread out across 1,000 hectares, the site represented a vast archive of the country’s agricultural past and present, as well as a treasure trove for farmers worldwide. 

This includes 150,000 seed samples stored and ready to be grown or distributed across the globe, with each sample potentially holding genetic traits that could help develop crops better suited to survival in an age of rapidly changing conditions.

“We try to figure out how to produce crops better adapted to climate change,” explained Shehadeh, originally from Idlib.

Before the war, their work had played a role in helping Syria reach the point of producing enough to feed itself, but the same war that destroyed that self-sufficiency also drove them out.

Shehadeh scrolls onto the most recent pictures they have — images of damaged buildings now inaccessible because of militias operating in the region.

The worsening of conditions — including the kidnapping of two staff members, who were released a few weeks later — lead to the ICARDA shifting its operations out of the country.

“It was sad, of course,” said Shehadeh. “We left behind a lot of memories and valuable resources.”

A global challenge

All, however, was not lost.

With troubles brewing in 2012, the ICARDA team was prompted to copy most of the samples and send them to Svalbard, an ultra-secure “doomsday” global seed vault dug into a snow-steeped mountain on Norway’s Arctic archipelago.

Then, in 2015, they withdrew seeds from Svalbard to help rebuild the collection — this time in Lebanon, as well as Morocco.

This is the fifth harvest collected at Terbol, a small town in the Bekaa Valley and new home for ICARDA.

With climate change beginning to be more keenly felt, the work of those like Mariana Yazbeck will be increasingly vital.

Yazbeck is seed bank manager at the new site, and highlighted the role of the region in the birth of farming.

“What we have here is the base for some of the most important crops responsible for feeding a large population in the heart of the fertile crescent, which is the cradle of agriculture,” Yazbeck said. “Now, 10,000 years later, we’ve many problems facing our agricultural practice, whether diseases or environmental challenges, and the need to feed an ever-growing population.”

The dream of returning

Though it may not be a direct result of climate change, the agricultural sector in Syria is in as dire need of assistance as any.

According to a U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization assessment last year on the impact of the war, damage to the sector totaled $16 billion.

Whether due to damage to infrastructure or displacement of farmers, there has been a “huge” decrease in production, said FAO representative Adam Yao.

“To rebuild the agricultural sector, there will need to be a major rethink of Syria’s whole agricultural policy,” he added, stating that ICARDA’s expertise could have a “key role” in this.

Though largely abandoned, the ICARDA center in Aleppo is not entirely out of action — it is thought the seed bank freezer continues to work unattended.

And for many at ICARDA’s Bekaa facilities, when peace comes and brings with it the opportunity for the organization to return to Syria, the desire to assist will not just be professional — it will be personal.

The farm of Muhammed Amer Jnedan’s family, located in a small village outside Aleppo, is currently occupied by a man from a local militia.

But in his work with ICARDA, Jnedan is determined that he will put his knowledge to use, starting with home. 

“Maybe it is kind of dreaming,” he said, “but I am still thinking to get back to my village. I want to put [to use] this experience I gathered or I obtained in the last 10 years.”
…

A study following more than 1.3 million premature babies born in Florida found that two-thirds of those born at only 23 or 24 weeks were ready for kindergarten on time, and almost 2 percent of those infants later achieved gifted status in school.

Such very prematurely born babies did score lower on standardized tests than full-term infants, but as the length of pregnancy increased, the differences in test scores became negligible, according to the study, conducted by Northwestern University and published on Monday in JAMA Pediatrics medical journal.

“What excites me about this study is that it changes the focus for the clinician and families at the bedside from just focusing on the medical outcomes of the child to what the future educational outcomes might be for a child born early,” Craig Garfield, the first author of the study and an associate professor of pediatrics and medial social sciences at Northwestern Medicine, said in a statement.

Researchers analyzed the school performance of 1.3 million infants born in Florida from 1992 to 2002 who had a fetal development term of 23 to 41 weeks and who later entered the state’s public schools between 1995 and 2012.

They found that babies born at between 23 and 24 weeks tended to have normal cognitive functions later in life, with 1.8 percent of them even achieving gifted status in school.

During the time period the study covered, 9.5 percent of children statewide were considered gifted.

Premature birth happens when a baby is born before at least 37 weeks of pregnancy, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

A normal pregnancy term is around 40 weeks, and a preterm birth can lead to serious medical problems, underdevelopment in early childhood or death for the infant.

The study does not account for why these extremely premature infants later performed well in school, Garfield said in the statement, and did not look at whether their success could be related to extra support from family or schools, or the children’s biological make-up.
…

Researchers tried a big serving of food psychology and a dollop of trickery to get diners to eat their vegetables. And it worked.

Veggies given names like “zesty ginger-turmeric sweet potatoes” and “twisted citrus-glazed carrots” were more popular than those prepared exactly the same way but with plainer, more healthful-sounding labels. Diners more often said “no thanks” when the food had labels like “low-fat,” “reduced-sodium” or “sugar-free.”

More diners chose the fancy-named items, and selected larger portions of them, too, in the experiment last fall at a Stanford University cafeteria.

“While it may seem like a good idea to emphasize the healthiness of vegetables, doing so may actually backfire,” said lead author Bradley Turnwald, a graduate student in psychology.

Other research has shown that people tend to think of healthful sounding food as less tasty, so the aim was to make it sound as good as more indulgent, fattening fare.

Researchers from Stanford’s psychology department tested the idea as a way to improve eating habits and make a dent in the growing obesity epidemic.

“This novel, low-cost intervention could easily be implemented in cafeterias, restaurants, and consumer products to increase selection of healthier options,” they said.

Study’s details

The results were published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine.

The study was done over 46 days last fall. Lunchtime vegetable offerings were given different labels on different days. For example, on one day diners could choose “dynamite chili and tangy lime-seasoned beets.” On other days, the same item was labeled “lighter-choice beets with no added sugar,” “high antioxidant beets,” or simply “beets.”

Almost one-third of the nearly 28,000 diners chose a vegetable offering during the study. The tasty-sounding offering was the most popular, selected by about 220 diners on average on days it was offered, compared with about 175 diners who chose the simple-label vegetable. The healthy-sounding labels were the least popular.

Diners also served themselves bigger portions of the tasty-sounding vegetables than of the other choices.

Turnwald emphasized that “there was no deception” — all labels accurately described the vegetables, although diners weren’t told that the different-sounding choices were the exact same item.

The results illustrate “the interesting advantage to indulgent labeling,” he said.

Dr. Stephen Cook, a University of Rochester childhood obesity researcher, called the study encouraging and said some high school cafeterias have also tried different labels to influence healthy eating.

“It shouldn’t be a surprise to us because marketing people have been doing this for years,” Cook said.
…

Ken Shefveland’s body was swollen with cancer, treatment after treatment failing until doctors gambled on a radical approach: They removed some of his immune cells, engineered them into cancer assassins and unleashed them into his bloodstream.

 

Immune therapy is the hottest trend in cancer care and this is its next frontier – creating “living drugs” that grow inside the body into an army that seeks and destroys tumors.

 

Looking in the mirror, Shefveland saw “the cancer was just melting away.” A month later doctors at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center couldn’t find any signs of lymphoma in the Vancouver, Washington, man’s body.

“Today I find out I’m in full remission – how wonderful is that?” said Shefveland with a wide grin, giving his physician a quick embrace.

 

This experimental therapy marks an entirely new way to treat cancer – if scientists can make it work, safely. Early-stage studies are stirring hope as one-time infusions of supercharged immune cells help a remarkable number of patients with intractable leukemia or lymphoma.

 

“It shows the unbelievable power of your immune system,” said Dr. David Maloney, Fred Hutch’s medical director for cellular immunotherapy who treated Shefveland with a type called CAR-T cells.

 

“We’re talking, really, patients who have no other options, and we’re seeing tumors and leukemias disappear over weeks,” added immunotherapy scientific director Dr. Stanley Riddell. But, “there’s still lots to learn.”

 

T cells are key immune system soldiers. But cancer can be hard for them to spot, and can put the brakes on an immune attack. Today’s popular immunotherapy drugs called “checkpoint inhibitors” release one brake so nearby T cells can strike. The new cellular immunotherapy approach aims to be more potent: Give patients stronger T cells to begin with.

 

Currently available only in studies at major cancer centers, the first CAR-T cell therapies for a few blood cancers could hit the market later this year. The Food and Drug Administration is evaluating one version developed by the University of Pennsylvania and licensed to Novartis, and another created by the National Cancer Institute and licensed to Kite Pharma.

 

CAR-T therapy “feels very much like it’s ready for prime time” for advanced blood cancers, said Dr. Nick Haining of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, who isn’t involved in the development.

 

‘There’s a desperate need’

Now scientists are tackling a tougher next step, what Haining calls “the acid test:” Making T cells target far more common cancers – solid tumors like lung, breast or brain cancer. Cancer kills about 600,000 Americans a year, including nearly 45,000 from leukemia and lymphoma.

 

“There’s a desperate need,” said NCI immunotherapy pioneer Dr. Steven Rosenberg, pointing to queries from hundreds of patients for studies that accept only a few.

 

For all the excitement, there are formidable challenges.

 

Scientists still are unraveling why these living cancer drugs work for some people and not others.

 

Doctors must learn to manage potentially life-threatening side effects from an overstimulated immune system. Also concerning is a small number of deaths from brain swelling, an unexplained complication that forced another company, Juno Therapeutics, to halt development of one CAR-T in its pipeline; Kite recently reported a death, too.

 

And, made from scratch for every patient using their own blood, this is one of the most customized therapies ever and could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“It’s a Model A Ford and we need a Lamborghini,” said CAR-T researcher Dr. Renier Brentjens of New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, which, like Hutch, has a partnership with Juno.

 

In Seattle, Fred Hutch offered a behind-the-scenes peek at research underway to tackle those challenges. At a recently opened immunotherapy clinic, scientists are taking newly designed T cells from the lab to the patient and back again to tease out what works best.

 

“We can essentially make a cell do things it wasn’t programmed to do naturally,” explained immunology chief Dr. Philip Greenberg. “Your imagination can run wild with how you can engineer cells to function better.”

 

Two long weeks to brew a dose

 

The first step is much like donating blood. When leukemia patient Claude Bannick entered a Hutch CAR-T study in 2014, nurses hooked him to a machine that filtered out his white blood cells, including the T cells.

 

Technicians raced his bag of cells to a factory-like facility that’s kept so sterile they must pull on germ-deflecting suits, booties and masks just to enter. Then came 14 days of wait and worry, as his cells were reprogrammed.

 

Bannick, 67, says he “was almost dead.” Chemotherapy, experimental drugs, even a bone marrow transplant had failed, and “I was willing to try anything.”

 

Genetically engineering cells

 

The goal: Arm T cells with an artificial receptor, a tracking system that can zero in on identifying markers of cancer cells, known as antigens. For many leukemias and lymphomas, that’s an antigen named CD19.

 

Every research group has its own recipe but generally, scientists infect T cells with an inactive virus carrying genetic instructions to grow the desired “chimeric antigen receptor.” That CAR will bind to its target cancer cells and rev up for attack.

 

Millions of copies of engineered cells are grown in incubators, Hutch technicians pulling out precious batches to monitor if they’re ready for waiting patients.

 

If they work, those cells will keep multiplying in the body. If they don’t, the doctors send blood and other samples back to researchers like Riddell to figure out why.

 

What’s the data?

 

Small, early studies in the U.S. made headlines as 60 percent to 90 percent of patients trying CAR-Ts as a last resort for leukemia or lymphoma saw their cancer rapidly decrease or even become undetectable. Last week, Chinese researchers reported similar early findings as 33 of 35 patients with another blood cancer, multiple myeloma, reached some degree of remission within two months.

 

Too few people have been studied so far to know how long such responses will last. A recent review reported up to half of leukemia and lymphoma patients may relapse.

There are long-term survivors. Doug Olson in 2010 received the University of Pennsylvania’s CAR-T version for leukemia. The researchers were frank – it had worked in mice but they didn’t know what would happen to him.

 

“Sitting here almost seven years later, I can tell you it works,” Olson, now 70, told a recent meeting of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

 

Bannick, the Hutch patient treated in 2014, recalls Maloney calling him “the miracle man.” He had some lingering side effects that required blood-boosting infusions but says CAR-T is “giving me a second life.”

 

Scary side effects

 

“The more side effects you have, that sort of tells everybody it’s working,” said Shefveland, who was hospitalized soon after his treatment at Hutch when his blood pressure collapsed. His last clear memory for days: “I was having a conversation with a nurse and all of a sudden it was gibberish.”

 

As CAR-T cells swarm the cancer, an immune overreaction called “cytokine release syndrome” can trigger high fevers and plummeting blood pressure and in severe cases organ damage. Some patients also experience confusion, hallucinations or other neurologic symptoms.

 

Treatment is a balancing act to control those symptoms without shutting down the cancer attack.

 

Experienced cancer centers have learned to expect and watch for these problems. “And, most importantly, we’ve learned how to treat them,” said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld of the American Cancer Society, who is watching CAR-T’s development.

 

Fighting solid tumors will be harder

 

CAR-Ts cause collateral damage, killing some healthy white blood cells, called B cells, along with cancerous ones because both harbor the same marker. Finding the right target to kill solid tumors but not healthy organ tissue will be even more complicated.

 

“You can live without some normal B cells. You can’t live without your lungs,” Riddell explained.

 

Early studies against solid tumors are beginning, targeting different antigens. Time-lapse photos taken through a microscope in Riddell’s lab show those new CAR-T cells crawling over aggressive breast cancer, releasing toxic chemicals until tumor cells shrivel and die.

 

CARs aren’t the only approach. Researchers also are trying to target markers inside tumor cells rather than on the surface, or even gene mutations that don’t form in healthy tissue.

 

“It’s ironic that the very mutations that cause the cancer are very likely to be the Achilles heel,” NCI’s Rosenberg said.

 

And studies are beginning to test CAR-Ts in combination with older immunotherapy drugs, in hopes of overcoming tumor defenses.

 

How will patients get the first CAR-T therapies?

 

If the FDA approves Novartis’ or Kite’s versions, eligible leukemia and lymphoma patients would be treated at cancer centers experienced with this tricky therapy. Their T cells would be shipped to company factories, engineered, and shipped back. Gradually, more hospitals could offer it.

 

Because only certain patients would qualify for the first drugs, others would have to search for CAR-T studies to try the treatment. A drug industry report lists 21 CAR-T therapies in development by a dozen companies.

 

“This is the hope of any cancer patient, that if you stay in the game long enough, the next treatment’s going to be just around the corner,” said Shefveland, the Hutch patient.
…

Nearly a third of the world’s population is obese or overweight and an increasing number of people are dying of related health problems in a “disturbing global public health crisis,” a study said on Monday.

Some 4 million people died of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and other ailments linked to excess weight in 2015, bringing death rates related to being overweight up 28 percent on 1990, according to the research.

“People who shrug off weight gain do so at their own risk,” said Christopher Murray, one of the authors of the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

In 2015, excess weight affected 2.2 billion people equal to 30 percent of the world’s population, according to the study.

Almost 108 million children and more than 600 million adults weighed in as obese, having a body mass index (BMI) above 30, said the research that covered 195 countries.

More than 60 percent of fatalities occurred among this group, the study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington found.

BMI is calculated by dividing a person’s weight in kilograms by their height in meters squared, and is an indication of whether a person has a healthy weight.

A BMI score over 25 is overweight, over 30 is obese and over 40 is morbidly obese.

According to the World Health Organization, obesity has more than doubled since 1980, reaching epidemic proportions.

Obesity rates among children were increasing faster than among adults in many countries, including Algeria, Turkey, and Jordan, the study said.

Meanwhile, almost 800 million people, including 300 million children, go to bed hungry each night, according to the United Nations.

Poor diets and sedentary lifestyles were mainly to blame for increasing numbers of overweight people, experts said. Urbanization and economic development have led to increasing obesity rates also in poor countries where part of the population doesn’t have enough to eat, as people ditch traditional, vegetable-rich diets for processed foods.

“People are consuming more and more processed foods that are high in sugar and fat and exercising less,” said Boitshepo Bibi Giyose, senior nutrition officer at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

Research in Mexico, Brazil, China, South Korea and Britain by London-based Overseas Development Institute has shown that the cost of processed foods like ice cream, hamburgers, chips and chocolate has fallen since 1990, while the cost of fresh fruit and vegetables has gone up.
…

Katy Perry opened up about having suicidal thoughts during a marathon weekend livestream event.

 

“I feel ashamed that I would have those thoughts, feel that low, and that depressed,” she said Saturday on YouTube during a tearful session with Siri Singh from the Viceland series “The Therapist.”

 

The pop star has been livestreaming herself since Friday, filming her life for anyone with an internet connection to see. She’s been doing yoga, hosting dinner parties, sleeping, applying makeup and singing, of course.

 

By Sunday, the most revealing 60 minutes of the four-day “Katy Perry – Witness World Wide” event was her time with Singh.

 

Perry told Singh she struggles with her public persona. In the past, she said, she has had suicidal thoughts. She talked about the challenge of being her authentic self while promoting her public image as she lives “under this crazy microscope.”

 

“I so badly want to be Katheryn Hudson (her birth name) that I don’t even want to look like Katy Perry anymore sometimes – and, like, that is a little bit of why I cut my hair, because I really want to be my authentic self,” she said.

 

Perry is sporting a new short, blond hairstyle.

 

The YouTube event is a promotion for her new album “Witness.” The livestream will culminate in a free concert Monday in Los Angeles for 1,000 fans.
…

World Ocean Day, earlier this month, is an annual focus on the threats to our watery planet. It’s a long list: overfishing, climate change, algae blooms and plastic. Plastic is everywhere, on the surface, in the deep and along the shorelines. But, in India, a dedicated group of fishermen turned conservationists is doing its part to help solve that problem. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…

The United States supported a global call to action at the United Nations on Friday to conserve and sustainably use oceans, seas and marine resources, even as it noted President Donald Trump’s plan to withdraw from a pact to fight climate change.

The first U.N. Ocean Conference ended on Friday with the adoption of a Call to Action, which said: “We are particularly alarmed by the adverse impacts of climate change on the ocean.”

“We recognize, in this regard, the particular importance of the Paris Agreement, adopted under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change,” it read.

After the consensus adoption, David Balton, deputy U.S. assistant secretary for oceans and fisheries, reminded the summit “that on June 1 our president announced that the United States will withdraw from or renegotiate U.S. participation in the Paris agreement or another international climate deal.”

Trump’s decision to pull the United States from the landmark 2015 Paris agreement drew anger and condemnation from world leaders and heads of industry.

Speaking after the United States, French Ambassador for the Oceans Serge Segura received applause from delegates in the U.N. General Assembly after stating climate change was real.

“France is committed to upholding all of our obligations under the Paris agreement both for our welfare, but also for the welfare of the international community as a whole,” he said.

The week-long ocean summit promoted partnerships, such as between governments and businesses, to address issues such as marine pollution, ocean acidification, and marine research. More than 1,300 voluntary commitments to save the ocean were made.

UNGA Chief: ‘Climate Change, Ocean Acidification: Two Sides of the Same Coin’

Safeguarding the ocean was one of 17 goals adopted in 2015 by the 193 U.N. member states as part of an agenda for the world’s sustainable development up to 2030. Another goal calls for “urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.”
…

The World Health Organization hopes to get a polio immunization campaign under way in the next week or two in the IS-controlled area of Deir Ezzor, Syria, where two new cases of the crippling disease were discovered this week.

The WHO reports two children in Deir Ezzor have been paralyzed by a vaccine-derived polio virus. Unlike the wild polio virus, vaccine-derived polio viruses are very rare; but, they can emerge in populations that have low immunity against the disease.

WHO spokesman Oliver Rosenbauer said the polio virus is circulating and must be stopped. He says a mass polio immunization campaign is being planned, targeting some 90,000 children under age 5 in the district of Mayadin in Deir Ezzor.

“We have the global supply,” Rosenbauer said. “It can be released, but, the big question, as you rightly pointed out — how is it going to be delivered, who is going to deliver it. That is always the challenge.”  

Security and access to the area are dangerous and difficult because it is controlled by Islamic State militants. In 2013 and 2014, an outbreak of the wild polio virus occurred in this same region. Thirty-six cases were reported at that time.

Rosenbauer told VOA that security is not the only concern. He said it is possible that children could become infected with polio from the vaccine-derived strain during the immunization campaign. That is why, he said, the vaccine must be used with complete discretion.

“Really only use it when the … benefits of it are greater,” Rosenbauer said. “What we have is an outbreak. So, we need to consider that and do an outbreak response that outweighs the risk of a possible future outbreak.”
…