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Georgia’s health commissioner was named Friday to lead the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal government’s top public health agency.

Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald is an OB-GYN and has been head of the Georgia Department of Public Health since 2011. She succeeds Dr. Tom Frieden, who resigned as CDC director in January at the end of the Obama administration.

Fitzgerald was appointed by Dr. Tom Price, who was a congressman from Georgia before he was named head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services by President Donald Trump.

“Having known Dr. Fitzgerald for many years, I know that she has a deep appreciation and understanding of medicine, public health, policy and leadership — all qualities that will prove vital as she leads the CDC in its work to protect America’s health 24/7,” Price said in a statement.

Fitzgerald, 70, has had strong ties to the Republican Party. She was a GOP candidate for Congress twice in the 1990s. She was also a health care policy adviser to Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker, and the late Sen. Paul Coverdell.

Fitzgerald is respected in the public health community, and her choice drew praise from Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.

“From her work as a practicing obstetrician-gynecologist to her recent service as the commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Health, Dr. Fitzgerald is more than prepared to face the health challenges of our time, including climate change, Zika, Ebola, and our growing burden of chronic disease,” Benjamin said in a statement.

The CDC investigates disease outbreaks, researches the cause and frequency of health problems and promotes prevention efforts. It is the only federal agency headquartered outside of Washington, D.C. It has nearly 12,000 employees and 10,000 contractors worldwide.

Her first day at CDC was Friday. A CDC spokeswoman said Fitzgerald would not be available for interviews.
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The state of Minnesota is battling the biggest outbreak of measles since 1990, and state health officials are hoping it is tapering off. Seventy-eight people caught the disease, mostly Somali-Americans, and nearly a third were hospitalized.

The Somali-American community in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is tight-knit. At one time, they had the highest rates of vaccinations against measles than any other group in the state until they heard this:

“Autism is caused by vaccines administered (to those) under 3 years of life.”

Anti-vaccination groups believe that vaccines expose children to health risks and can cause harm, and they convinced Somali-Americans in Minneapolis that the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR), caused autism. So while they continued getting their children vaccinated for everything else, the rates for this particular vaccine dropped dramatically.

Patsy Stinchfield is a nurse in Minnesota. She blames the state’s measles outbreak on anti-vaccination groups.

“I would say almost exclusively the whole responsibility lands on the anti-vaccine movement,” she said, “and the reason is misinformation and myths spread about a link between MMR and autism, of which there is none, and science has proven that not to be true,” she added. She spoke to VOA via Skype. 

Since March, Stinchfield has been at the forefront of Minnesota’s measles outbreak. She says the Somali-Americans came together fast to hold community meetings where doctors could talk about the safety and effectiveness of the measles vaccine. 

Since then, they have been getting to clinics to get their children vaccinated.

“Since the outbreak, the message has gotten out that measles, mumps, rubella vaccine is safe,” Stinchfield said. “It’s effective, and typically in a week in Hennepin County, which is the Minneapolis county, there would be 500 MMRs given, and for three weeks in a row, there were 3,000 MMRs given for three weeks in a row, so that is a tremendous response.”

Stinchfield said measles took the Somali-Americas by surprise.

“They did not think that measles would be in the United States,” she said, “and so the level of fear was greater for autism. This has now shifted, because the level of fear and the level of fear for measles is great because these families know measles. They’ve had loved ones die of measles in Somalia.”

Measles was wiped out in the U.S. 17 years ago, but outbreaks still happen when someone carries the virus back from a country where measles still circulates. 

Fortunately, no one who caught measles in Minnesota had any serious complications, and state officials are hoping to declare the outbreak over by the end of July.
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Measles was officially wiped out in the United States 17 years ago. But outbreaks still happen when someone carries the virus back from a country where measles exists. The state of Minnesota is battling the biggest outbreak of measles since 1990, and state health officials are hoping it is now tapering off. Seventy-eight people caught the disease and nearly a third were hospitalized. VOA’s Carol Pearson has more.
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After a mild winter, the northeastern United States is in for a banner year when it comes to ticks. That would be little more than a nuisance if it were not for the fact that the tiny bloodsuckers carry some potentially deadly diseases. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Not every police officer patrols on two legs. Some have four legs, and fur. Faith Lapidus reports on some new recruits and some veterans leaving police work behind.
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At least three people worldwide are infected with totally untreatable “superbug” strains of gonorrhea, which they are likely to be spreading to others through sex, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Friday.

Giving details of studies showing a “very serious situation” with regard to highly drug-resistant forms of the sexually transmitted disease (STD), WHO experts said it was “only a matter of time” before last-resort gonorrhea antibiotics would be of no use.

“Gonorrhea is a very smart bug,” said Teodora Wi, a human reproduction specialist at the Geneva-based U.N. health agency. “Every time you introduce a new type of antibiotic to treat it, this bug develops resistance to it.”

78 million infected a year

The WHO estimates 78 million people a year get gonorrhea, an STD that can infect the genitals, rectum and throat.

The infection, which in many cases has no symptoms on its own, can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy and infertility, as well as increasing the risk of getting HIV.

Wi, who gave details in a telephone briefing of two studies on gonorrhea published in the journal PLOS Medicine, said one had documented three specific cases, one each in Japan, France and Spain, of patients with strains of gonorrhea against which no known antibiotic is effective.

“These are cases that can infect others. It can be transmitted,” she told reporters. “And these cases may just be the tip of the iceberg, since systems to diagnose and report untreatable infections are lacking in lower-income countries where gonorrhea is actually more common.”

Drug resistance

The WHO’s program for monitoring trends in drug-resistant gonorrhea found in a study that from 2009 to 2014 there was widespread resistance to the first-line medicine ciprofloxacin, increasing resistance to another antibiotic drugs called azithromycin, and the emergence of resistance to last-resort treatments known as extended-spectrum cephalosporins (ESCs).

In most countries, it said, ESCs are now the only single antibiotics that remain effective for treating gonorrhea. Yet resistance to them has been reported in 50 countries.

Manica Balasegaram, director of the Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership, said the situation was grim and there was a “pressing need” for new medicines.

Few new drugs coming

The pipeline, however, is very thin, with only three potential new gonorrhea drugs in development and no guarantee any will prove effective in final-stage trials, he said.

“We urgently need to seize the opportunities we have with existing drugs and candidates in the pipeline,” he told reporters. “Any new treatment developed should be accessible to everyone who needs it, while ensuring it is used appropriately, so that drug resistance is slowed as much as possible.”
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Scientists have found an extra charming new subatomic particle that they hope will help further explain a key force that binds matter together.

Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe announced Thursday the fleeting discovery of a long theorized but never-before-seen type of baryon.

Baryons are subatomic particles made up of quarks. Protons and neutrons are the most common baryons. Quarks are even smaller particles that come in six types, two common types that are light and four heavier types.

The high-speed collisions at the world’s biggest atom smasher created for a fraction of a second a baryon particle called Xi cc, said Oxford physicist Guy Wilkinson, who is part of the experiment.

The particle has two heavy quarks – both of a type that are called “charm”- and a light one. In the natural world, baryons have at most one heavy quark.

It may have been brief, but in particle physics it lived for “an appreciably long time,” he said.

The two heavy quarks are in a dance that’s just like the interaction of a star system with two suns and the third lighter quark circles the dancing pair, Wilkinson said.

“People have looked for it for a long time,” Wilkinson said. He said this opens up a whole new “family” of baryons for physicists to find and study.

“It gives us a very unique and interesting laboratory to give us an interesting new angle on the behavior of the strong interaction (between particles), which is one of the key forces in nature,” Wilkinson said.

Chris Quigg, a theoretical physicist at the Fermilab near Chicago, who wasn’t part of the discovery team, praised the discovery and said “it gives us a lot to think about.”

The team has submitted a paper to the journal Physical Review Letters.

The Large Hadron Collider, located in a 27-kilometer (16.8-mile) tunnel beneath the Swiss-French border, was instrumental in the discovery of the Higgs boson. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French acronym CERN.
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Canada is attacking its expanding opioid crisis with an unusual measure: It’s giving addicts a safe place to shoot up.

 

The government has allowed seven “safe injection sites” to open and a score of others are being considered across the country.

 

The storefront sites give addicts clean syringes, medical supervision and freedom from arrest. They don’t get help in kicking their problem unless they ask for it, but the program dramatically reduces the chance of a fatal overdose or the transmission of blood-borne diseases such as hepatitis or HIV. 

 

The effort, inspired by some in Europe, is being closely watched in the U.S., where officials are struggling to cope with a surge in overdose deaths from opioid use. Several cities say they are considering similar measures despite fears that they may encourage drug use.

First center in Vancouver

 

Dozens of people a day have been coming to three new centers in Montreal, where users are given a small kit to safely inject drugs they bring with them and then an opportunity to relax for a half hour on couches listening to music, according to a 30-year-old addict who would only give his first name, Francois. The center operators denied access to the media once the center opened.

 

“They give you everything you need,” Francois said as he left a center in the gentrifying downtown neighborhood around Sainte-Catherine Street after injecting heroin. “Everyone is pretty relaxed.”

 

A single injection site opened in 2003, run by a Vancouver nonprofit organization under authorization by Health Canada. It received 214,898 visits by 8,040 individuals last year, with nurses intervening in 1,781 overdoses. It said it’s never had an overdose death.

 

Another center also has opened in that West Coast city, and in recent weeks, two more have opened in British Columbia and three in Montreal. Another is scheduled to open in Montreal soon and three in Toronto. More than a dozen other potential sites are being considered across Canada federal officials say. 

More overdoses prompt more centers

 

Health Minister Jane Philpott said the government felt compelled to add sites because of the escalating number of overdose deaths, which topped 2,400 last year. 

 

“They are absolutely known to save lives and reduce infections,” Philpott said. “We have a very significant public health issue in our country.”

 

She acknowledged they are not a complete answer to the drug problem: “This is only one in a very broad range of tools. A comprehensive approach is necessary.”

Seattle to open centers

U.S. drug overdose deaths have tripled in 15 years, reaching at least 52,000 in 2015, making it the leading cause of death for people under 50. Seattle and King County in Washington are moving forward with plans for safe injection centers and a city task force in Philadelphia has proposed some, though such measures have faced opposition.

 

John Walters, who directed the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy under President George W. Bush, said safe-injection sites merely prolong addiction and eventually lead to deaths.

 

He noted that overdose deaths have risen sharply in British Columbia despite the presence of the first safe-injection site in North America. The province had 136 deaths in April, a 97 percent increase over the same month a year earlier. There were 967 overdose deaths in British Columbia in 2016, up from 517 in 2015. And there have been 640 this year through May. 

 

“Government-sanctioned injection sites are now said by advocates to prevent overdose deaths. That clearly has not happened in British Columbia,” Walters said. 

 

Jonathan Caulkins, a drug policy expert at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, isn’t convinced they work either but said he understands their appeal. 

“The opioid crisis is so horrible that you are desperate and willing to try anything,” he said. “There’s a part of me that says, ‘Sure, give it a shot.”’ 

​Neighbors not pleased

 

Gilles Beauregard, executive director of a Montreal safe injection site opening in September, argued that the service will help neighborhoods.

 

“At street level, we’re going to see a decrease in the number of needles lying around, and less people shooting up in parks and alleys and public toilets,” he said.

 

Not everybody living nearby agrees. Angry residents met Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre and other officials when they inaugurated the Sainte-Catherine Ease facility in late June. Chantal Beauregard, who lives in the area, said it has attracted junkies at all hours and needles now litter the ground. 

 

“It’s been one week and we’re already fed up,” she said. 

 

A new safe injection facility scheduled to open a mile east in Montreal in September is also drawing criticism 

 

“Having a supervised injection site in a school zone doesn’t make sense,” says Christelle Perrine, who has two children in a school about 200 yards (meters) from the facility.

 

A tall, broad-shouldered and extensively tattooed man who gave his name only as Benjamin was among about a dozen drug users who made their way to the Sainte-Catherine East injection site over an hour one midweek day.

 

“I’ve been waiting for something like this for years. It’s great. You don’t have junkies shooting up everywhere, leaving their needles all over the place,” the 46-year-old said after injecting cocaine. “It’s clean, the staff is great.”

 

“I understand why people who live around here aren’t happy. I have a heart and I have a brain,” he said. “My life’s ambition wasn’t to do this, but at least with this, we’re safe.” 
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Using only baker’s yeast, researchers at Columbia University have designed an inexpensive, on-the-spot test to detect major fungal pathogens. Faith Lapidus has details of the new biosensor, described in the journal Science Advances.
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One of Africa’s driest regions — the Sahel — could turn greener if the planet warms more than 2 degrees Celsius and triggers more frequent heavy rainfall, scientists said on Wednesday.

The Sahel stretches coast to coast from Mauritania and Mali in the west to Sudan and Eritrea in the east, and skirts the southern edge of the Sahara desert. It is home to more than 100 million people.

The region has seen worsening extreme weather — including more frequent droughts — in recent years.

But if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated, the resulting global warming — of more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — could change major weather patterns in the Sahel, and in many different parts of the world, scientists say.

Rainfall models vary

Some weather models predict a small increase in rainfall for the Sahel, but there is a risk that the entire weather pattern will change by the end of the century, researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) said.

“The sheer size of the possible change is mindboggling — this is one of the very few elements in the Earth system that we might witness tipping soon,” said co-author Anders Levermann from PIK and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of New York’s Columbia University.

If the Sahel becomes much rainier, it will mean more water for agriculture, industry and domestic use. But in the first few years of the transition, people are likely to experience very erratic weather — extreme droughts followed by destructive floods, the researchers said.

​Hard for people to plan

​This level of unpredictability makes it very hard for people to plan for coming changes, they said.

“The enormous change that we might see would clearly pose a huge adaptation challenge to the Sahel,” said Levermann.

“More than 100 million people are potentially affected that already now are confronted with a (multitude) of instabilities, including war,” he said.

The region faces a range of conflicts, including some driven by groups such as Boko Haram and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

The researchers studied rainfall patterns in the months of July, August and September when the region receives most of its annual rain.

‘A range of possible outcomes’

“There’s a range of possible outcomes for societies in the Sahel which depend on the climate that eventually (develops) … and whether they are prepared for fluctuations,” lead author Jacob Schewe, from PIK, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Climate change from burning fossil fuels “really has the power to shake things up,” he said.

“It is driving risks for crop yields in many regions and generally increases dangerous weather extremes around the globe,” he added.

The study was published on Wednesday in Earth System Dynamics, a journal of the European Geosciences Union
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A novel class of personalized cancer vaccines, tailored to the tumors of individual patients, kept disease in check in two early-stage clinical trials, pointing to a new way to help the immune system fight back.

Although so-called immunotherapy drugs from the likes of Merck & Co, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Roche are starting to revolutionize cancer care, they still only work for a limited number of patients.

By adding a personalized cancer vaccine, scientists believe it should be possible to improve substantially the effectiveness of such immune-boosting medicines.

Twelve skin cancer patients, out of a total of 19 across both the trials, avoided relapses for two years after receiving different vaccines developed by German and U.S. teams, researchers reported in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

Larger studies are next

The small Phase I trials now need to be followed by larger studies, but the impressive early results suggest the new shots work far better than first-generation cancer vaccines that typically targeted a single cancer characteristic.

The new treatments contain between 10 and 20 different mutated proteins, or “neoantigens,” that are specific to an individual’s tumour. These proteins are not found on healthy cells and they look foreign to the immune system, prompting specialist T-cells to step up their attack on cancer cells.

One vaccine was developed at the U.S.-based Dana-Farber Institute and Broad Institute and the other by privately-owned German biotech firm BioNTech, which uses so-called messenger RNA to carry the code for making its therapeutic proteins.

Roche, the world’s largest cancer drugmaker, is already betting on BioNTech’s technology after signing a $310 million deal last September allowing it to test the German vaccine with its immunotherapy drug Tecentriq.

BioNTech’s co-founder and CEO Ugur Sahin told Reuters that combination trials using Roche’s drug were due to start later this year against a number of different cancers.

Rival biotech firm Neon Therapeutics, which was formed to exploit the U.S. research, initiated tests of its personalized neoantigen vaccine in combination with Bristol-Myer’s Opdivo drug last year.

Expensive treatment

New drugs like Opdivo and Tecentriq that enlist the body’s immune system are improving the odds of survival, but their typical price tag of more than $150,000 a year is controversial and adding a personalized vaccine will jack costs up further.

Sahin acknowledged such vaccines would be expensive at first but said costs could be brought down by economies of scale and automation.

“In the mid to long term the cost will fall dramatically … it is an individual treatment but it is a universal process,” he said. “We are at a very early stage at the moment but in the long-run this approach could change everything.”

Potential confirmed

Cornelius Melief of Leiden University Medical Center, who was not involved in either study, said the research confirmed the potential of neoantigen vaccines.

“Controlled, randomized Phase II clinical trials with more participants are now needed to establish the efficacy of these vaccines in patients with any type of cancer that has enough mutations to provide sufficient neoantigen targets for this type of approach,” he said.

Mainz-based BioNTech is one of Europe’s largest private biotech companies, with more than 500 employees and deals with Sanofi and Eli Lilly, as well as Roche. It is majority-owned by twin brothers Andreas and Thomas Struengmann, who sold generic drugmaker Hexal to Novartis in 2005.

Sahin said BioNTech would probably stay private for another two to four years before deciding on an initial public offering.

 
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Stem cell tourism involving patients who travel to developing countries for treatment with unproven and potentially risky therapies should be more tightly regulated, international health experts said Wednesday.

With hundreds of medical centers around the world claiming to be able to repair damaged tissue in conditions such as multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease, tackling unscrupulous advertising of such procedures is crucial, the experts said.

These therapies are advertised directly to patients with the promise of a cure, but there is often little or no evidence to show they will help, or that they will not cause harm, the 15 experts wrote in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Some types of stem cell transplant — mainly using blood and skin stem cells — have been approved by regulators after full clinical trials found they could treat certain types of cancer and grow skin grafts for burns patients.

But many other potential therapies are only in the earliest stages of development and have not been approved by international regulators.

“Stem cell therapies hold a lot of promise, but we need rigorous clinical trials and regulatory processes to determine whether a proposed treatment is safe, effective and better than existing treatments,” said one of the 15, Sarah Chan of Britain’s University of Edinburgh.

The experts called for global action, led by the World Health Organization, to introduce controls on advertising and agree on international standards for the manufacture and testing of cell- and tissue-based therapies.

“The globalization of health markets and the specific tensions surrounding stem cell research and its applications have made this a difficult challenge,” they wrote. “However, the stakes are too high not to take a united stance.”
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