YCLOAK

The U.N. children’s fund reports the vast majority of children living in Ebola-affected areas of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have returned to school where they are taught ways to avoid infection.

School began one month ago in Democratic Republic of Congo. The U.N. children’s fund says efforts to get children to return to school in Ebola-affected areas in conflict-ridden eastern DRC have been hugely successful.  

It says 80 percent are attending schools in Beni and Mabalako health zones.  They are the epicenters of the current Ebola outbreak, which was declared August 1 in North Kivu and Ituri Provinces. The latest World Health Organization report finds 207 cases of Ebola, including 130 deaths.

UNICEF spokesman, Christophe Boulierac, said the return of so many children to the classroom is encouraging.  He said school provides the children who are living in an area of epidemic and conflict with a sense of normalcy.  He said school offers them a protective environment.

Boulierac said children in school learn how to prevent getting Ebola and when they go home, they promote regular hand washing with their families.  He says this helps avoid further spread of the disease in the community.

UNICEF has identified more than 1,500 schools in the areas affected by the Ebola epidemic. Among them are 365 schools located in the high-risk epicenters of the outbreak. The agency has equipped these schools with hygiene and health equipment.

Boulierac said more than 3,500 teachers and school principals have received training on preventive measures for Ebola. He said more than 69,300 school children have received these Ebola prevention messages.
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For 30 years, the Ocean Conservancy has conducted an ocean cleanup campaign on the world’s beaches. They’ve collected 300 million pounds of garbage, a lot of it plastic. But slowly and surely some entrepreneurs are working to reduce the amount of plastic filling up oceans and landfills. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Climate change is usually thought to bring hotter weather, but scientists say it can also make some places colder. Temperature changes mean some plants and animals struggle to survive, while others seek new territory. That may be the case for one species of barracuda that is living in colder waters than it normally would. A school of them have settled near an island off the coast of Croatia in the Adriatic Sea. VOA’s Deborah Block has the story.
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A runaway hearse carrying an Ebola victim has become the latest example of sometimes violent community resistance complicating efforts to contain a Congo outbreak — and causing a worrying new rise in cases.

The deadly virus’ appearance for the first time in the far northeast has sparked fear. Suspected contacts of infected people have tried to slip away. Residents have assaulted health teams. The rate of new Ebola cases has more than doubled since the start of this month, experts say.

Safe burials are particularly sensitive as some outraged family members reject the intervention of health workers in the deeply personal moment, even as they put their own lives at risk. 

On Wednesday, a wary peace was negotiated over the body of an Ebola victim, one of 95 deaths among 172 confirmed cases so far, Congo’s health ministry said. Her family demanded that an acquaintance drive the hearse, while they agreed to wear protective gear to carry the casket. A police vehicle would follow.

On the way to the cemetery, however, the hearse peeled away “at full speed,” the ministry said. A violent confrontation followed with local youth once the hearse was found at the family’s own burial plot elsewhere. The procession eventually reached the cemetery by day’s end.

The next day, with a better understanding of what was at stake, several family members appeared voluntarily at a hospital for Ebola vaccinations, the ministry said.

“They swore no one had manipulated the corpse,” it added. Ebola spreads via bodily fluids of those infected, including the dead.

The Beni community where the confrontation occurred is at the center of Ebola containment efforts. To the alarm of the World Health Organization and others, it is also where community resistance has been the most persistent — and where many of the new cases are found.

Chronic mistrust after years of rebel attacks is part of the “toxic mix” in Beni, WHO’s emergencies chief Peter Salama said in a Twitter post.

So far, the Ebola work in Beni has been suspended twice since the outbreak was declared on Aug. 1. A “dead city” of mourning in response to a rebel attack caused the first. Wednesday’s violence caused the second. With each pause, crucial efforts to track thousands of possible Ebola contacts can slide, risking further infections.

Defending themselves, Beni residents have pointed out the shock of having one of the world’s most notorious diseases appear along with strangers in biohazard suits who tell them how to say goodbye to loved ones killed by the virus.

“Until now we didn’t know enough about Ebola and we felt marginalized when Red Cross agents came in and took the corpse and buried it without family members playing a role,” Beni resident Patrick Kyana, who said a friend lost his father to the virus, told The Associated Press. “It’s very difficult. Imagine that your son dies and someone refuses to let you assist in his burial. In Africa we respect death greatly.”

Until recently many people in Beni didn’t believe that Ebola existed, thinking it was a government plot to further delay presidential elections, Kizito Hangi, president of Beni’s civil society, told the AP.

Now the population has started to catch on and cooperate, Hangi said. “The problem was that the health workers all came from outside, but local specialists have been included to persuade and inform people in local languages.”

Jamie LeSueur, the head of emergency Ebola operations with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, acknowledged the problem. In early October, two Red Cross volunteers were severely injured in an attack during safe burials in the community of Butemo. Another volunteer was injured in September by people throwing stones.

“It raised a lot of questions for all of us. Where is the violence coming from?” he said. They have stepped up efforts to collaborate with communities and be clearer about messaging while working within cultural norms as best as possible.

“Of course there are limitations,” LeSueur said. “Some people like to view the corpse as it is buried, but with Ebola it is difficult to open up the body bag.” In the emotionally charged environment where families have lost loved ones, a misstep could quickly raise tensions.

While Congo’s government is acting to give more protection to its own safe burial teams in Beni, LeSueur noted that the “militarization” of similar efforts in the far deadlier Ebola outbreak in West Africa a few years ago led some residents to hide or not report deaths from the virus.

“I don’t think that will be the case in this event,” but everyone remembers that lesson, he said.

With its position of neutrality, the Red Cross doesn’t use armed guards in any case, LeSueur added. “Community acceptance — that’s our security.”
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The World Food Program warns climate change will have a devastating impact on agriculture and the ability of people to feed themselves.  The WFP forecasts a huge increase in worldwide hunger unless action is taken to slow global warming.  

The WFP warns progress in reducing global hunger is under threat by conflict and the increase in climate disasters. For the first time in several decades, the WFP reports the number of people suffering from chronic food shortages has risen.

This year, it says, 821 million people went to bed hungry, 11 million more than the previous year.  

Gernot Laganda, WFP’s chief of Climate and Disaster Risk Reduction, notes the number of climate disasters has more than doubled since the early 1990s.  He says extreme weather events are driving more people to flee their homes, leading to more hunger.

He told VOA the situation will get much worse as global temperatures rise.

“We are projecting that with a two-degree warmer world, we will have around 189 million people in a status of food insecurity more than today.  And, if it is a four-degrees warmer world, which is possible if no action is taken, we are looking beyond one billion more.  So, there is a very, very strong argument for early and decisive climate action,” said Laganda.

Data from this year’s State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report by six leading U.N. agencies show the bulk of losses and damages in food systems are due to drought and most of these disastrous events occur in Africa.

Laganda says the number of people suffering from hunger because of climate change-induced drought is rising particularly in Africa and Latin America. He notes that until recently progress in Asia had led to a reduction in world hunger, but that trend has slowed markedly.  

 
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One of the joys of computer algorithms and machine learning is their ability to extract new data from old technologies. Doctors at the University of London in Oxford for instance have figured out a way to take regular CT heart scans and predict heart problems years in advance. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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The United States and dozens of other countries have pledged to work together to tackle the illegal wildlife trade and treat it as a “serious and organized crime” following a two-day conference in London that ended Friday.

Trade in endangered wildlife, such as elephant tusks, rhino horns and tiger bones, is worth an estimated $17 billion a year and is pushing hundreds of species to the brink of extinction.

Speaking to heads of state from across the world, Britain’s Prince William, a passionate conservationist, said he recognized that law enforcement resources are already stretched in many countries.

“But I am asking you to see the connections, to acknowledge that the steps you take to tackle illegal wildlife crime could make it easier to halt the shipments of guns and drugs passing through your borders,” the prince told delegates.

Worldwide, the illegal wildlife trade is booming.

Illegal ivory trade activity has more than doubled since 2007, while over 1,300 rhino were killed in 2015. Asian tigers have seen a 95 percent decline in population, as their body parts are in demand for Chinese medicines and wine. In the last year, more than 100 wildlife rangers have died trying to tackle poachers.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions told the conference the U.S. will give $90 million to programs that fight illegal wildlife traffickers.

“Their criminal acts harm communities, degrade institutions, destabilize our environment and funnel billions of dollars to those who perpetuate evil in the world. These criminals must be and they can be stopped,” Sessions said.

It is not only big mammals at risk.

For example, a critically endangered water frog from the remote Lake Titicaca in Peru has seen its numbers plummet in recent years, as thousands have been trapped and taken to make a juice that some believe has medicinal properties, despite no scientific evidence.

Delegates at the conference applauded progress made, including China’s decision at the beginning of this year to close its domestic ivory market, hailed as a major step in safeguarding the world elephant population. 

 

WATCH: US Pledges $90 Million to Fight Illegal Wildlife Trade

Aron White of the Britain-based Environmental Investigation Agency says other animals need similar protection.

“This market was both stimulating demand for ivory and also enabling illegal ivory to be laundered through this legal trade,” White told VOA. “But that same issue still exists for big cats. You know, there’s a trade in leopard bone products [for example], large-scale commercial trade.”

Campaigners say existing United Nations Conventions on transnational organized crime offer firepower for tackling the illegal wildlife trade, but they are not being used effectively.

In the closing declaration, conference attendees pledged to work together to tackle the illegal wildlife trade and recognize it as a serious and organized crime.

The real test is how quickly they will act on those words.
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Scientists say climate change is becoming more pressing with news of melting permafrost and rising sea levels. Scientists have been urging people around the globe to reduce emissions of climate warming carbon, but the Salk Institute in San Diego is taking a different approach. There, scientists are working on developing plants that would capture more carbon than plants do now and store it away for centuries, preventing it from being released back into the atmosphere. Genia Dulot has the story.
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A U.N. employee in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo has tested positive for Ebola, the first such incident during the current outbreak, according to the head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission.

“I am writing today to inform you that my leadership team and I have regretfully just received news that a U.N. colleague based in Beni has tested positive for Ebola and is now receiving the necessary medical treatment,” Leila Zerrougui wrote in the letter obtained by the Reuters news agency.

Zerrougui said the employee had not been to work for several weeks and that officials were tracing the person’s contacts.

The news came after health officials warned that the rate of new Ebola cases had more than doubled since September.

Rise in cases a concern

The sharp rise has health officials concerned that the situation in eastern DRC Is at a crossroads.

Either the outbreak is getting worse, or local residents are finally responding to education campaigns and government edicts and are no longer resisting health workers.

The death toll stood at 125 as of Friday, out of 201 reported Ebola cases (166 confirmed and 35 probable), according to the DRC’s health ministry. 

This outbreak, the country’s 10th, initially was reported Aug. 1.  

“The fact that we see more cases could also be a positive sign,” said Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesman for the World Health Organization, speaking by phone from Geneva on Thursday. “… We have seen in the past that sometimes people would hide sick ones or would actively run away” from aid workers charged with tracing the contacts of infected patients — a step essential to curbing the deadly disease’s spread. 

Attack keeps workers inside

But insecurity is complicating the health community’s response in the outbreak’s epicenter in the North Kivu region, where more than 100 armed opposition groups operate, and more than 1 million people have been displaced. 

The jump in reported cases follows a Sept. 22 armed attack in Beni, a town near the border with Uganda and the center for aid efforts. Eighteen people died, including 14 civilians, according to the army. 

Jasarevic said WHO health workers were forced to stay indoors for two full days following the attack. 

“Operations were hampered by the insecurity,” Jasarevic said. “… And not only because of the [health] teams not being able to go out, but also because of the reaction of the population.”

Red Cross volunteers attacked

Other violence has impeded aid work in the region. Last week, three Red Cross volunteers on an Ebola burial team were attacked and injured while conducting their duties in the northeast city of Butembo, according to the DRC Red Cross. It said, in a statement, that two of the volunteers were being treated for serious wounds.

The Red Cross statement reminded people that the body of an Ebola victim is highly infectious and requires careful handling. The Ebola virus spreads through contact with bodily fluids. 

In addition, some families have refused to allow aid workers to check on and treat potential patients, and other victims have fled, raising the possibility that the virus could spread to neighboring Uganda, Rwanda and South Sudan.

Jasarevic said local people’s “reaction to the Ebola response is sort of linked to their reaction to the general insecurity, basically thinking that if all these authorities, including international actors, are not able to provide security, how it would be then possible for them to try to control the outbreak?”

The WHO initially had predicted the disease possibly could be brought under control within three months, thanks in part to a vaccine that has proven effective for people who have been exposed but haven’t shown symptoms, and new treatment drugs for people who have contracted Ebola.

But Peter Salama, WHO’s executive director of the health emergencies program, said Thursday that the response timetable needed revision.

“We anticipate that now we’ll be looking at least another three or four months in order to really stem this outbreak, with a strong focus again on Beni and surrounding areas,” Salama said at a Geneva news conference.

This report originated in VOA’s English to Africa service. VOA’s Carol Guensburg contributed.
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Artists are putting the finishing touches on an 82-foot-long (24-meter-long) blue whale made from discarded plastic that will be on display near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge to raise awareness about ocean pollution.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium said Friday a blue whale can weigh 300,000 pounds (136,000 kilograms) — about the amount of plastic scientists say enters the ocean every nine minutes.

A 2015 study by Jenna Jambeck, an environmental engineer at the University of Georgia, found 9 million tons (8 million metric tons) of plastic waste enter the ocean annually.

The sculpture created from plastic water bottles, lids and bags by artists Joel Deal Stockdill and Yustina Salnikova will be publicly unveiled Saturday.

It is located in Crissy Field, the heart of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

It is sponsored by the aquarium in partnership with the National Park Service and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy.
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Worldwide cesarean section use has nearly doubled in two decades and has reached “epidemic” proportions in some countries, doctors warned Friday, highlighting a huge gap in childbirth care between rich and poor mothers.

They said millions of women each year may be putting themselves and their babies at unnecessary risk by undergoing C-sections at rates “that have virtually nothing to do with evidence-based medicine.”

In 2015, the most recent year for which complete data is available, doctors performed 29.7 million C-sections worldwide, or 21 percent of all births. This was up from 16 million in 2000, or 12 percent of all births, according to research published in The Lancet.

It is estimated that the operation, a vital surgical procedure when complications occur during birth, is necessary 10-15 percent of the time.

Varying country rates

But the research found wildly varying country rates of C-section use, often according to economic status: In at least 15 countries, more than 40 percent births are performed using the practice, often on wealthier women in private facilities.

In Brazil, Egypt and Turkey, more than half of all births are done via C-section.

The Dominican Republic has the highest rate of any nation, with 58.1 percent of all babies delivered using the procedure.

But in close to a quarter of nations surveyed, C-section use is significantly lower than average.

Reasons to opt for surgery

Authors pointed out that while the procedure is generally overused in many middle- and high-income settings, women in low-income situations often lack necessary access to what can be a life-saving procedure.

“We would not expect such differences between countries, between women by socioeconomic status or between provinces/states within countries based on obstetric need,” Ties Boerma, professor of public health at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, and a lead author on the study, told AFP.

Jane Sandall, professor of social science and women’s health at King’s College London and a study author, told AFP that there were a variety of reasons women were increasingly opting for surgery.

These include “a lack of midwives to prevent and detect problems, loss of medical skills to confidently and competently attend a vaginal delivery, as well as medico-legal issues.”

Doctors are often tempted to organize C-sections to ease the flow of patients through a maternity clinic, and medical professionals are generally less vulnerable to legal action if they choose an operation over a natural birth.

Sandall also said there were often “financial incentives for both doctor and hospital” to perform the procedure.

The study warned that in many settings young doctors were becoming “experts” in C-section while losing confidence in their abilities when it comes to natural birth.

Income a factor

It also identified an emerging gap between wealthy and poorer regions within the same country. In China, C-section rates diverged from 4 percent to 62 percent; in India the range was 7-49 percent.

While the U.S. saw more than a quarter of all births performed by C-section, some states used the procedure more than twice as often as others.

“It is clear that poor countries have low C-section use because access to services is a problem,” Sandall said. “In many of those countries, however, richer women who live in urban areas, have access to private facilities have much higher C-section use.”

Risks to mother, child

C-sections may be marketed by clinics as the “easy” way to give birth, but they are not without risks.

Maternal death and disability rates are higher after C-section than vaginal birth. The procedure scars the womb, which can lead to bleeding, ectopic pregnancies (where the embryo is stuck in the ovaries), as well as still- and premature future births.

The authors suggested better education, more midwifery-led care and improved labor planning as ways of ensuring C-sections are only performed when medically necessary, as well as ensuring women properly understand the risks involved with the procedure.

“C-section is a type of major surgery, which carries risks that require careful consideration,” Sandall said.

In a comment accompanying the study, Gerard Visser of the University Medical Centre in the Netherlands, called the rise in C-sections “alarming.”

“The medical profession on its own cannot reverse this trend,” he said. “Joint actions are urgently needed to stop unnecessary C-sections and enable women and families to be confident of receiving the most appropriate care for their circumstances.”
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Parties to a new global treaty to combat the illicit sale of tobacco products have taken the first steps toward cracking down on this multi-billion dollar trade.  At a three-day meeting at the headquarters of the World Health Organization in Geneva they have outlined a plan to shut down the lucrative black market trade in tobacco.

A global tobacco treaty (Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products) entered into force on September 25, with 48 countries joining the new protocol, which is part of the WHO Framework Convention for Tobacco Control (FCTC).  Two-thirds of the parties have enacted or strengthened national legislation aimed at tackling illicit trade in tobacco products.

Parties attending the meeting have set up a working group to create a monitoring system to track and trace the movement of tobacco products. They hope this global information sharing system will be up and running by 2023.  

Head of the FCTC Secretariat, Vera da Costa e Silva, says illicit trade accounts for one in 10 cigarettes consumed.  She says these cigarettes are low-priced and more affordable for young people and vulnerable populations.  She says this results in increased consumption of the toxic product by these groups.

She told VOA the black market in tobacco thrives in both rich and poor countries, but it is a much bigger problem in developing countries.

“In the streets of developing countries, you can see all over the world sales of illicit trade of tobacco products.  They are openly in their markets…. When it comes to the distribution, this is linked to street sales, to bootlegging as well through borders and even to sales to and by minors.  That is a real problem of illicit trade in tobacco products,” she said.

Da Costa e Silva said this flourishing illegal trade undermines tobacco control policies and public health.  She said it also fuels organized crime and increases tobacco profits through tax evasion, resulting in substantial losses in governments’ revenues.   

She said studies show governments lose $31 billion in taxes annually from the illegal trafficking in tobacco products.  

The World Health Organization reports seven million people die prematurely every year from tobacco-related causes.

 
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Health officials say the rate of new Ebola cases has more than doubled since September after rebel violence in northeastern Congo caused response efforts to be briefly suspended.

 

In a statement on Thursday, the International Rescue Committee says it is “alarmed” that there were 33 new cases between October 1 and Tuesday, versus 41 cases during all of September.

 

Officials say most of the new cases have been in Beni, where experts had to suspend Ebola containment efforts for days after a deadly rebel attack.

 

Earlier this week, the World Health Organization noted that all of the health workers who have caught Ebola in this epidemic have been infected outside of hospitals or clinics, meaning that the virus is spreading in the community.

 
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A U.S. astronaut and Russian cosmonaut are safe following an emergency return to Earth minutes after launching on what was supposed to be a mission to the International Space Station.

The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said a booster on the Soyuz spacecraft failed after it took off Thursday from the Soviet-era cosmodrome in Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

“At that point, per the standard procedure, an abort was initiated,” International Space Station Operations Integration Manager Kenny Todd told reporters.

“My heart was beating hard,” astronaut Reid Weisman said of the moment he heard the booster had malfunctioned during his colleagues’ launch.

It was the latest in a string of recent failures for the Russian space program, which also takes American astronauts to the station.

Russian officials said they are investigating the incident, adding that all manned space flight missions would be suspended until investigators figure out what went wrong.

Officials said U.S. astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos’ Alexei Ovchinin experienced 6 to 7 times Earth’s gravity, followed by a brief moment of weightlessness, as they separated from the booster before falling to Earth.

Rescuers reached the crew after they landed in Kazakhstan, and both were in good condition. They are now reunited with their families.

Thursday was supposed to be Hague’s first time in space.

Hague, who is an Air Force colonel, was the first member of his class to be assigned to a mission. Todd said there was “no doubt” Hague would be selected for another mission, but it was “yet to be determined” when that would occur.

In an interview with VOA prior to the launch, Hague said he was excited and ready, but also nervous.

“Sitting on top of a rocket for the first time and being shot into space, you know, how can you not be nervous?” he said.

Hague spent the last five years preparing for his mission. When he gets the chance, he will serve as a flight engineer on the International Space Station, doing everything from maintenance of the aircraft to scientific research to study the effects of weightlessness.

The International Space Station is the largest space collaboration ever. Fifteen countries built and operate the live-in satellite, an “unprecedented” feat, according to John Logsdon, a professor emeritus at George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute.

“One of the real payoffs with benefits is to demonstrate peaceful collaboration, not only between allies, but between the United States and Russia, even in spite of all the current political tensions between the two countries,” Logsdon said.

Hague told VOA he enjoys working with space explorers from all over the country and world.

Typically, five to seven astronauts man the ISS at one time. Only about 250 people have ever lived on the International Space Station, which celebrates its 20th year in orbit next month.
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NASA says that two astronauts from the U.S. and Russia are in good condition after an emergency landing following booster rocket failure minutes after the launch.

U.S. astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos’ Alexei Ovchinin lifted off as scheduled at 2:40 p.m. (0840 GMT; 4:40 a.m. EDT) Thursday from the Russia-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan atop a Soyuz booster rocket.

They were to dock at the orbiting outpost six hours later, but the booster suffered a failure minutes after the launch.

The two made an emergency landing in Kazakhstan at an unspecified time. Search and rescue crews scrambled to reach the expected landing site.

It’s the first space mission for Hague, who joined NASA’s astronaut corps in 2013. Ovchinin spent six months on the station in 2016.

Relations between Moscow and Washington have sunk to post-Cold War lows over the crisis in Ukraine, the war in Syria and allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential vote, but Russia and the U.S. have maintained cooperation in space.

 
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