Day: May 21, 2018

The government of Rwandan President Paul Kagame — accused by some of imposing authoritarian rule on the country — received almost unanimous praise for its strides in health care. Kagame had a chance to tout his health care policy as an example to other African nations at the opening of the World Health Assembly in Geneva Monday.

According to Rwandan officials, the country’s universal health care system has brought coverage to more than 90 percent of its population.

Kagame, an advocate for the adoption of universal health coverage in Africa,  leads a country that has a successful, widely-admired system. As chairman of the African Union, he has promoted universal coverage as the continent’s top strategic objective.

The effort is receiving full support from the World Health Organization, which aims to achieve coverage for one billion more people by 2023 as part of a five-year strategic plan.

Touting his own efforts as an example, Kagame says achieving universal health coverage is feasible for countries at every income.These systems, he says, avoid catastrophic out-of-pocket health expenditures, which are an increasing source of impoverishment in Africa.

He says community-based, primary health systems all around Africa have shown good results.

“In Rwanda,” he said, “a combination of community-based health insurance, community health workers, and good external partnerships led to the steepest reductions in child and maternal mortality ever recorded.”

Kagame says more than 90 percent of Rwandans are enrolled in health insurance today. He says two-thirds of the costs are borne by the beneficiaries, with the government subsidizing the remaining one-third.

He says it acts as a boon for entrepreneurship, helps families invest in their children’s education, and allows for the economic empowerment of women.

Kagame’s account of his success is largely uncontested by the WHO, western aid agencies, and the media. Virtually all of the publicity surrounding Rwanda’s health care achievements in the West has been overwhelmingly positive.

But to international human rights organizations and his political opponents at home, Kagame is using the success of his health care policy to shadow a more sinister aspect of his rule. Amnesty International says this is characterized by widespread human rights abuses including unlawful killings and unresolved disappearances.

Rwanda’s clampdown on freedom of expression is so severe, the group Reporters Without Borders calls Kagame a “predator of press freedom.”
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A southern white rhino at the San Diego Zoo in California has become pregnant as a result of artificial insemination with sperm from a male southern white rhino. The development increases hopes that a nearly extinct close relative, the northern white rhino, can be saved.

News that the female southern white rhino named Victoria is pregnant is seen as a breakthrough, and a step toward saving the northern white rhino species. The pregnancy was confirmed last week. If Victoria is able to carry the calf to term, it will be born in about a year.

The San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research issued a statement that said confirmation of this pregnancy through artificial insemination represented a “historic event” for the organization and was a critical step in the effort to save the northern white rhino.

The world’s last male northern white rhino, Sudan, died after age-related complications in March at Kenya’s Ol Pejeta Conservancy, his home for 10 years after being transferred from a zoo in the Czech Republic. Sudan was 45 years old and had been in ailing health.

Sudan’s death was seen as a tragedy, as it marked the possible end of a species.

Researchers optimistic

Reproductive options for producing a northern white rhino include artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer, with the southern white rhinos possibly serving as surrogates for northern white rhino embryos. 

The statement from the institute said researchers were optimistic that a northern white rhino calf could be born from these procedures within 10 to 15 years. 

Kenya is home to the last remaining northern white rhinos, Sudan’s daughter Najin, and granddaughter, Fatu.

The second-to-last male northern white rhino, Suni, died in 2014. Suni had also been brought back to Africa from the Czech Republic.

Sudan and Suni were too old to mate by the time they left Europe.

A team at Ol Pejeta is also working on a different project that seeks to save the northern white rhino from extinction.

Serve as surrogate

The plan is to harvest eggs from the two remaining northern white females. The animals cannot be artificially inseminated because they are infertile. Scientists intend to use an Ol Pejeta southern white rhino as a surrogate for northern white rhino eggs.

“Ol Pejeta is working on invitro fertilization,” said Richard Vigne, CEO of Ol Pejeta Conservancy.

“There are two northern white rhino females left. Both are infertile — they cannot get pregnant. So, what we want to do is remove eggs from their ovaries. We want to take the eggs, and we want to fertilize them in a test tube with northern white rhino sperm to create an embryo which can then be implanted into southern white rhino females acting as surrogate mothers, to eventually produce a pure bred northern white rhino calf exactly as it happens in humans.”

Paul Gathitu,  a Kenya Wildlife Service spokesman, said any news toward wildlife conservation is good news.

“Any indication that technology, science, will be able to propagate this creates hope, and particularly for animals that are on the extinction path,” Gathitu said. “For humanity, it’s a good sign. It means that there is a possibility we could turn to science and technology and see contributions toward conservation.”

Human big part of problem

Vigne said people have a responsibility to help save endangered species because humans are the top reason for endangerment.

“I think there is a bit of hope for the northern white rhino, but I think the important point that people need to understand is that it is not only the northern white rhino that is threatened by extinction,” Vigne said.

“There are thousands of other species across the planet that are currently facing extinction as a result of human activity. While we may be able to save the northern white rhino by spending a lot of money on it, the truth of the matter is, all of the other species that are threatened by extinction will go extinct unless the way that humans interact with our environment changes.”

Poaching has escalated in recent years and is being driven by the demand for Ivory. Rhino populations worldwide, in the meantime, continue to dwindle due to poaching. 
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In homes and pubs, on leaflets and lampposts, debate is raging in Ireland over whether to lift the country’s decades-old ban on abortion. Pro-repeal banners declare: “Her choice: vote yes.” Anti-abortion placards warn against a “license to kill.”

Online, the argument is just as charged — and more shadowy, as unregulated ads of uncertain origin battle to sway voters before Friday’s referendum, which could give Irish women the right to end their pregnancies for the first time.

The emotive campaign took a twist this month when Facebook and Google moved to restrict or remove ads relating to the abortion vote. It is the latest response to global concern about social media’s role in influencing political campaigns, from the U.S. presidential race to Brexit.

“We shouldn’t be naive in thinking Ireland would be immune from all these worldwide trends,” said lawmaker James Lawless, technology spokesman for the opposition Fianna Fail party.

“Because of the complete lack of any regulation on social media campaigning in Ireland, somebody at the moment can throw any amount of money, from anywhere in the world, with any message — and there’s nothing anybody can do about it.”

The role of online ads in elections is under scrutiny following revelations that Russian groups bought ads on platforms such as Google and Facebook to try to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential race. Many of the ads were designed to sow confusion, anger and discord among Americans through messages on hot-button topics.

Few subjects are more emotive than abortion, especially in largely Roman Catholic Ireland. Despite the country’s growing diversity and liberalism — voters legalized gay marriage in a 2015 referendum — the vote is expected to be close. The campaign is being watched, and sometimes influenced, by anti-abortion groups in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Voters are being asked whether they want to keep or repeal the eighth amendment to Ireland’s constitution, added in 1983, which commits authorities to defend equally the right to life of a mother and an unborn child. Abortion is legal only in rare cases when the woman’s life is in danger, and several thousand Irish women travel each year to terminate pregnancies in neighboring Britain.

Prime Minister Leo Varadkar’s center-right government backs lifting the ban and allowing abortion on request up to 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Ireland is no stranger to referendums — this is its fifth in five years — and the country’s electoral laws regulate traditional forms of campaigning. Radio and television ads are banned completely, and foreign political donations are outlawed. But the 20-year-old electoral rules don’t cover social-media advertising, and there is no limit on campaign spending.

“It’s a complete Wild, Wild west,” said Craig Dwyer of the Transparent Referendum Initiative, a volunteer group set up to collect information on the ads being used to target Irish Facebook users. “When we started collecting this information there was absolutely zero regulation.”

The group has compiled and analyzed almost 900 Facebook ads connected to the referendum. Many were placed by registered lobby groups, and most came from inside Ireland. But several dozen were either untraceable or from overseas, including some that have been linked to U.S.-based anti-abortion organizations.

Several pages, with names like “Just the Facts About the 8th Amendment” and “Undecided on the 8th,” claimed to give neutral information but had a clear anti-abortion agenda.

Such pages can be used to identify undecided voters, who can then be targeted with tailored ads — a practice that has been under scrutiny since revelations that political consultancy Cambridge Analytica harvested Facebook users’ data to micro-target select groups during the U.S. presidential race.

Concern about the impact of online ads led Facebook to announce May 8 that it would no longer accept referendum-relayed advertisements from outside Ireland in order to “ensure a free, fair and transparent vote.”

A day later, Google went even further, halting all referendum advertising as part of efforts to protect “election integrity.” The company said it was aware of “concerns” around the issue but declined to say what prompted the decision.

Research by the Transparent Referendum Initiative and University College Dublin found “some indications of large-scale spending on unregulated Google and YouTube ads” before Google’s ban.

Google’s decision infuriated anti-abortion campaign Save the Eighth, which was about to launch a series of YouTube ads when Google, which owns the video-sharing site, pulled the plug.

Spokesman John McGuirk accused the Mountain View, California-based search giant of “direct foreign interference in a referendum campaign.”

“You have a multinational corporation essentially saying that this country’s democracy is compromised, and they have provided no evidence for that whatsoever,” he said.

McGuirk dismisses the role of overseas ads in the referendum, saying most were “small, amateurish ads basically made by John and Mary in New Jersey telling Irish people to pray the rosary for a `no’ vote. They weren’t helping us in the first place.”

McGuirk sees allegations of shady social-media advertising as an attempt to undermine the “no” campaign because it was winning the online war. As with the Trump and pro-Brexit campaigns, Save the Eighth paints itself as an underdog, battling what it sees as pro-repeal bias among mainstream media and politicians.

The pro-repeal campaign insists it was equally disadvantaged by the Google ban.

“We had a Google strategy that was in place, we were spending money,” said Peter Tanham, head of digital for Together For Yes. “We had to spend a day readjusting our plans.”

Both sides agree that tech firms should not be the ones making important decisions about Ireland’s democracy. Lawless has introduced a bill to parliament that would require all online advertisers to disclose the publishers and sponsors behind ads.

“We should not be looking to boardrooms in Silicon Valley to see how our elections should be governed,” he said.

The lawmaker’s bill may become law later this year, too late to influence Friday’s vote. Polls suggest the “yes” side has a lead, but it may be narrowing — and almost one in five voters say they are undecided.

While both sides say online ads are an important part of their strategy, many feel the argument will be won the old-fashioned way: through personal contact, one voter at a time.

“It was a blow when Google said they weren’t going to play more ads,” said Siobhan McAteer, a 25-year-old “no” campaigner distributing leaflets on a Dublin street. “It was a bit upsetting, but the momentum is in the streets. It’s our campaigners talking to people on the streets.”

 
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 In an energetic presentation, World Health Organization director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has kicked off the agency’s annual conference in Geneva by vowing to use his position to keep the world safe and to serve the vulnerable by promoting health for all.

The overflow audience at the Assembly enthusiastically marked the World Health Organization’s 70th Birthday. WHO Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus agreed there was much to celebrate. But noted there was little joy in the Democratic Republic of Congo where health workers were risking their lives to stop the Ebola outbreak in that country.

“It is concerning that we now have cases of Ebola in an urban center, but we are much better placed to deal with this outbreak than we were in 2014. I am pleased to say that vaccination is starting as we speak today,” he said.

Tedros said this was only the latest of 50 emergencies in 47 countries and territories to which WHO has responded in the past year. He noted the best way to prevent future disease outbreaks and emergencies was to strengthen health systems everywhere.

“That is why we established a High-Level Commission on Noncommunicable Diseases, to stop the premature and preventable deaths of millions of people,” he said. “It is why we established an initiative on climate change and health in small island developing states … It is why we are working on an aggressive new initiative to jumpstart progress against malaria, an entirely treatable disease that still kills half a million people every single year.”

WHO has rolled out an ambitious new five-year strategic plan, which aims to make a big impact on health. Tedros said the goal is to achieve the highest attainable standard of health for all peoples in the world, poor and rich alike.
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A deadly virus has killed at least three people in southern India, officials said Monday, with medical teams dispatched to the area amid reports that up to six other people could have died from the virus and others are ill.

The three fatalities from the Nipah virus were all from the same family, said Kerala state health minister K.K. Shailaja.

There is no vaccine for Nipah, which can cause raging fevers, convulsions and vomiting. The only treatment is supportive care to control complications and keep patients comfortable. It has a mortality rate of up to 75 percent.

Media reports say five more people have died from high fevers in recent days, as well as a nurse who had treated people infected with the virus. But medical workers have not yet confirmed what killed those people. At least eight others sick with Nipah symptoms are being monitored.

People who had been in contact with Nipah victims have been put into isolation, Shailaja said.

Nipah, which was first identified during a late 1990s outbreak in Malaysia, can be spread by fruit bats, pigs and through human-to-human contact.

A team from India’s National Center for Disease Control has been sent to the coastal region of Kerala, where the outbreak occurred.

“We are closely monitoring the situation,” India’s health minister, J.P. Nadda, said in a statement.

 
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