Month: August 2022

A group of HIV-positive people has been protesting for more than a month at the central office of India’s National AIDS Control Organization, or NACO, in New Delhi, demanding a regular supply of life-saving antiretroviral therapy — also known as ART — drugs across the country.

NACO is the nodal organization of the government of India that manages programs for the prevention and control of HIV and AIDS in the country. ART drugs work by stopping the virus from replicating in HIV-infected people, helping them live longer and reducing or stopping the infection of the virus to others.

Centers that supply ART drugs across India have been out of stock on several antiretroviral drugs for months, threatening the lives and well-being of hundreds of thousands of HIV patients, according to leaders of the group that has been protesting in Delhi since July 21.

“I have been getting distress calls from hundreds of HIV-infected persons from different states of the country reporting the shortage in supply of the ART drugs from the ART centers across the country,” Hari Shankar, a leader of the ongoing Delhi protest, told VOA.

“The crisis has been acute since April. Most of them cannot afford to buy the drugs from the market privately,” Shankar added. “We will not withdraw from this protest until they, all across the country, start receiving the ART drugs supply regularly.”

According to a government estimate, India has 2.3 million people living with HIV. In 2004, the government began providing free ART to the people living with HIV in the country. Now around 1.5 million HIV patients are dependent on the ART provided by the government.

NACO procures ART drugs and distributes them through more than 675 ART centers spread across the country. People undergoing ART visit the centers every one, two or three months to collect their drugs. But since April, the supply of the drugs has been irregular in many parts of the country, many people said.

“Earlier, we regularly used to get the stock of the drugs for one to three months. Now we get the drugs just for one week or 10 days. The ART centers even in some big hospitals in New Delhi are turning us away because of the shortage of the drugs,” said Shankar, a member of the Delhi Network of Positive People or DNP Plus, which works to facilitate better medical treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS in New Delhi.

The Delhi protest demanding a regular supply of ART drugs across the country is organized by DNP Plus.

Nisha Jha, another DNP Plus member, said that many people across the country are reporting a shortage of Dolutegravir (DTG) 50 mg, a key ART drug, from the ART centers.

“Those HIV patients who have been on the first line, second line, or third line ART for years, and are also infected with tuberculosis, need to take DTG 50 separately,” Jha told VOA.

“Because of the crisis of DTG, lives of thousands of our PLHIV brothers and sisters are in jeopardy now.”

There is a crisis of drugs like Nevirapine, Ritonavir, Lopinavir, Abacavir, and Zidovudine — which are used in different ART regimens for HIV ­patients — at ART centers across the country, Jha added.

The ART centers are asking patients to change their drug regimens because of the shortages of some drugs, many people said.

Surmick Waribam, a leader of HIV patients group Manipur Network of Positive People, or MNP Plus, in the northeastern state of Manipur, said the normal protocol calls for HIV patients to undergo certain medical tests before their ART regimens are changed.

“The ART centers are asking HIV patients to change the regimens without conducting any such medical tests. The patients are scared to change the regimen, fearing adverse impacts on their health. Being very poor, most of them cannot afford to buy the drugs from the market. So, they are left with no option but to change the regimen,” Waribam told VOA.

In response to a query from VOA, Dr. Manisha Verma, a spokesperson for the Indian health ministry, said in an emailed statement that there is “adequate stock for around 95% [of HIV patients] in India.”

“There is no stock-out of drugs and there are no instances of disruptions or non-availability of treatment services or ARV medicines at the national and state levels,” Verma said.

Dr. Mothi SN, an HIV and AIDS specialist, said that since the global roll-out of ARV medicines began in 2004, the HIV/AIDS scenario changed from being a “rapidly progressing fatal illness” to that of “a chronic manageable illness like diabetes or hypertension with a near-normal life expectancy.”

“Regular intake of ARV medicines and prompt adherence to treatment are resulting in added years of life. People with HIV may survive the infection and finally die of other age-related diseases like stroke, heart disease, cancer, etc.,” Mysore-based Mothi told VOA.

“To achieve the optimum outcome, prompt adherence to uninterrupted ARV therapy becomes the cornerstone of management of people living with AIDS.”

Waribam from Manipur said the shortage in supply of his regular ARV drugs forced him to switch to a new regimen of drugs.

“For my ARV drugs, I am dependent solely on the ART center. So, in June, like most of around 14,000 [people living with HIV] in Manipur, I agreed to switch to the new drugs the ART center offered. Even then, the ART centers are giving us drugs for three, five or 10 days,” Waribam said.

“Like thousands of others, I am also anxious and in doubt, if the new drugs would succeed to keep my viral load under check and not cause any damage to my health. …The authorities are playing with the lives of the PLHIV.”
…

An Ebola vaccination campaign will start in the Congolose city of Beni on Thursday after a new case of the virus was confirmed this week, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

More than 200 vaccine doses have been arrived in Beni, in the east of Democratic Republic of Congo, it said.

The latest confirmed case has been genetically linked to a 2018-2020 outbreak in North Kivu and Ituri provinces, which claimed nearly 2,300 lives.

Six people were killed in another flare-up from that same outbreak last year.

A WHO spokesman told Reuters the shots were provided by the organization and that inoculations would start on Thursday.

Congo’s dense tropical forests are a natural reservoir for the Ebola virus, which causes fever, body aches, and diarrhea, and can linger in the body of survivors only to resurface years later.

The vast central African country has recorded 14 outbreaks since 1976. The 2018-2020 outbreak in the east was Congo’s largest and the second largest ever recorded, with nearly 3,500 total cases.

Congo’s most recent outbreak was in northwest Equateur province. Itwas declared over in July after five deaths.
…

Scorching temperatures across the globe this year have people wondering if climate change is making some places too hot to live in.
…

Unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, are playing a huge part in the war in Ukraine. But keeping them in the air can be challenging. One Ukrainian company is doing just that and more. Kateryna Markova has the story. Camera – Viktor Petrovych.
…

Switzerland’s 1,400 glaciers have lost more than half their total volume since the early 1930s, a new study has found, and researchers say the ice retreat is accelerating at a time of growing concerns about climate change.

ETH Zurich, a respected federal polytechnic university, and the Swiss Federal Institute on Forest, Snow and Landscape Research on Monday announced the findings from a first-ever reconstruction of ice loss in Switzerland in the 20th century, based in part on an analysis of changes to the topography of glaciers since 1931.

The researchers estimated that ice volumes on the glaciers had shrunk by half over the subsequent 85 years — until 2016. Since then, the glaciers have lost an additional 12%, over just six years.

“Glacier retreat is accelerating. Closely observing this phenomenon and quantifying its historical dimensions is important because it allows us to infer the glaciers’ responses to a changing climate,” said Daniel Farinotti, a co-author of the study, which was published in scientific journal The Cryosphere.

By area, Switzerland’s glaciers amount to about half of all the total glaciers in the European Alps.

The teams drew on a combination of long-term observations of glaciers. That included measurements in the field and aerial and mountaintop photographs — including 22,000 taken from peaks between the two world wars. By using multiple sources, the researchers could fill in gaps. Only a few of Switzerland’s glaciers have been studied regularly over the years.

The research involved using decades-old techniques to allow for comparisons of the shape and position of images of terrain, and the use of cameras and instruments to measure angles of land areas. The teams compared surface topography of glaciers at different moments, allowing for calculations about the evolution in ice volumes.

Not all Swiss glaciers have been losing ice at the same rates, the researchers said. Altitude, amounts of debris on the glaciers, and the flatness of a glacier’s “snout” — its lowest part, which is the most vulnerable to melting — all affect the speeds of ice retreat.

The researchers also found that two periods — in the 1920s and the 1980s — actually experienced sporadic growth in glacier mass, but that was overshadowed by the broader trend of decline.

The findings could have broad implications for Switzerland’s long-term energy sources, since hydropower produces nearly 60% of the country’s electricity, according to government data.
…

British health authorities will begin offering eligible people just a fraction of the normal monkeypox vaccine dose to stretch supplies by about five times, in line with similar decisions to extend available doses in Europe and the U.S.

In a statement Monday, Britain’s Health Security Agency said patients at clinics in Manchester and London would soon get just one fifth the regular monkeypox vaccine dose as part of ongoing research, citing earlier work suggesting the smaller dose provided as effective an immune response as a full dose.

Last week, the European Medicines Agency authorized the move for its 27 members across the continent, echoing the decision made by U.S. regulators earlier this month.

“Adopting this tried and tested technique will help to maximize the reach of our remaining stock,” said Dr. Mary Ramsay, head of immunization at Britain’s Health Security Agency. She said the lowered doses would enable health workers to vaccinate “many more thousands of people.”

Last week, British officials said there were early signs the monkeypox outbreak is slowing and that case numbers are declining. Nearly 3,200 cases have been reported in the U.K. since May, with 99% of infections among men who are gay, bisexual or have sex with other men. About 70% of cases are in London.

As of last week, U.K. authorities said more than 35,000 vaccines had been administered primarily to men who have sex with men, their close contacts, and health workers.

Globally, the supply of monkeypox vaccines is extremely limited. There is only one supplier — Denmark’s Bavarian Nordic —and most doses have already been bought by the U.S., Canada, Europe and other rich countries.

Bavarian Nordic estimated its production capacity for this year was about 30 million doses. No monkeypox vaccines have so far been allotted to Africa, which has reported more than 70 suspected deaths, the highest number anywhere.

To date, more than 41,000 cases of monkeypox have appeared worldwide in 94 countries. The World Health Organization and other health agencies do not recommend mass vaccination, but have advised countries to improve their monkeypox surveillance, testing and encouraged other measures to slow the disease’s spread.

WHO has recommended that men at high risk of the disease temporarily consider reducing their number of sex partners or refrain from group or anonymous sex.
…

For years, global health officials have used billions of drops of an oral vaccine in a remarkably effective campaign aimed at wiping out polio in its last remaining strongholds — typically, poor, politically unstable corners of the world.

Now, in a surprising twist in the decades-long effort to eradicate the virus, authorities in London, New York and elsewhere have discovered evidence that polio is spreading there.

The original source of the virus? The oral vaccine itself.

Scientists have long known about this extremely rare phenomenon. That is why some countries have switched to other polio vaccines. But these incidental infections from the oral formula are becoming more glaring as the world inches closer to eradication of the disease and the number of polio cases caused by the wild, or naturally circulating, virus plummets.

Since 2017, there have been 396 cases of polio caused by the wild virus, versus more than 2,600 linked to the oral vaccine, according to figures from the World Health Organization and its partners.

“We are basically replacing the wild virus with the virus in the vaccine, which is now leading to new outbreaks,” said Scott Barrett, a Columbia University professor who has studied polio eradication. “I would assume that countries like the U.K. and the U.S. will be able to stop transmission quite quickly, but we also thought that about monkeypox.”

The latest incidents represent the first time in several years that vaccine-connected polio virus has turned up in rich countries.

Earlier this year, officials in Israel detected polio in an unvaccinated 3-year-old, who suffered paralysis. Several other children, nearly all of them unvaccinated, were found to have the virus but no symptoms.

In June, British authorities reported finding evidence in sewage that the virus was spreading, though no infections in people were identified. Last week, the government said all children in London ages 1 to 9 would be offered a booster shot.

In the U.S., an unvaccinated young adult suffered paralysis in his legs after being infected with polio, New York officials revealed last month. The virus has also shown up in New York sewers, suggesting it is spreading. Officials, however, said they are not planning a booster campaign because they believe the state’s high vaccination rate should offer enough protection.

Genetic analyses showed that the viruses in the three countries were all “vaccine-derived,” meaning that they were mutated versions of a virus that originated in the oral vaccine.

The oral vaccine at issue has been used since 1988 because it is cheap, easy to administer — two drops are put directly into children’s mouths — and better at protecting entire populations where polio is spreading. It contains a weakened form of the live virus.

But it can also cause polio in about two to four children per 2 million doses. (Four doses are required to be fully immunized.) In extremely rare cases, the weakened virus can also sometimes mutate into a more dangerous form and spark outbreaks, especially in places with poor sanitation and low vaccination levels.

These outbreaks typically begin when people who are vaccinated shed live virus from the vaccine in their feces. From there, the virus can spread within the community and, over time, turn into a form that can paralyze people and start new epidemics.

Many countries that eliminated polio switched to injectable vaccines containing a killed virus decades ago to avoid such risks; the Nordic countries and the Netherlands never used the oral vaccine. The ultimate goal is to move the entire world to the shots once wild polio is eradicated, but some scientists argue that the switch should happen sooner.

“We probably could never have gotten on top of polio in the developing world without the (oral polio vaccine), but this is the price we’re now paying,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “The only way we are going to eliminate polio is to eliminate the use of the oral vaccine.”

Aidan O’Leary, director of WHO’s polio department, described the discovery of polio spreading in London and New York as “a major surprise,” saying that officials have been focused on eradicating the disease in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where health workers have been killed for immunizing children and where conflict has made access to some areas impossible.

Still, O’Leary said he is confident Israel, Britain and the U.S. will shut down their newly identified outbreaks quickly.

The oral vaccine is credited with dramatically reducing the number of children paralyzed by polio. When the global eradication effort began in 1988, there were about 350,000 cases of wild polio a year. So far this year, there have been 19 cases of wild polio, all in Afghanistan, Mozambique and Pakistan.

In 2020, the number of polio cases linked to the vaccine hit a peak of more than 1,100 spread out across dozens of countries. It has since declined to around 200 this year so far.

Last year, WHO and partners also began using a newer oral polio vaccine, which contains a live but weakened virus that scientists believe is less likely to mutate into a dangerous form, but supplies are limited.

To stop polio in Britain, Israel and the U.S., what is needed is more vaccination, experts say. That is something Columbia University’s Barrett worries could be challenging in the COVID-19 era.

“What’s different now is a reduction in trust of authorities and the political polarization in countries like the U.S. and the U.K.,” Barrett said. “The presumption that we can quickly get vaccination numbers up quickly may be more challenging now.”

Oyewale Tomori, a virologist who helped direct Nigeria’s effort to eliminate polio, said that in the past, he and colleagues balked at describing outbreaks as “vaccine-derived,” wary it would make people fearful of the vaccine.

“All we can do is explain how the vaccine works and hope that people understand that immunization is the best protection, but it’s complicated,” Tomori said. “In hindsight, maybe it would have been better not to use this vaccine, but at that time, nobody knew it would turn out like this.”
…

Echoing down the corridors of eastern Ukraine’s Pokrovsk Perinatal Hospital are the loud cries of tiny Veronika.

Born nearly two months prematurely weighing 1.5 kilograms (3 pounds, 4 ounces), the infant receives oxygen through a nasal tube to help her breathe while ultraviolet lamps inside an incubator treat her jaundice.

Dr. Tetiana Myroshnychenko carefully connects the tubes that allow Veronika to feed on her mother’s stored breast milk and ease her hunger.

Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February, three hospitals in government-controlled areas of the country’s war-torn Donetsk region had facilities to care for premature babies. One was hit by a Russian airstrike and the other had to close as a result of the fighting  — leaving only the maternity hospital in the coal mining town of Pokrovsk still operating.

Myroshnychenko, the site’s only remaining neonatologist, now lives at the hospital. Her 3-year-old son divides the week between staying at the facility and with his father, a coal miner, at home.

The doctor explains why it’s now impossible to leave: Even when the air-raid sirens sound, the babies in the hospital’s above-ground incubation ward cannot be disconnected from their lifesaving machines.

“If I carry Veronika to the shelter, that would take five minutes. But for her, those five minutes could be critical,” Myroshnychenko says.

Hospital officials say the proportion of births occurring prematurely or with complications has roughly doubled this year compared to previous times, blaming stress and rapidly worsening living standards for taking a toll on the pregnant women still left in the area.

Russia and Moscow-backed separatists now occupy just over half the Donetsk region, which is similar in size to Sicily or Massachusetts. Pokrovsk is still in a Ukrainian government-controlled area 60 kilometers (40 miles) west of the front lines.

Inside the hospital’s maternity wards, talk of the war is discouraged.

“Everything that happens outside this building of course concerns us, but we don’t talk about it,” Myroshnychenko said. “Their main concern right now is the baby.”

Although fighting in the Dontesk region started back in 2014, when Russia-backed separatists began battling the government and taking over parts of the region, new mothers are only now being kept in the hospital for longer periods because there’s little opportunity for them to receive care once they have been discharged.

Among them is 23-year-old Inna Kyslychenko, from Pokrovsk. Rocking her 2-day-old daughter Yesenia, she was considering joining the region’s massive evacuation westward to safer areas in Ukraine when she leaves the hospital. Many essential services in government-held areas of Donetsk — heat, electricity, water supplies — have been damaged by Russian bombardment, leaving living conditions that are only expected to worsen as the winter grows near.

“I fear for the little lives, not only for ours, but for all the children, for all of Ukraine,” Kyslychenko said.

More than 12 million people in Ukraine have fled their homes due to the war, according to U.N. relief agencies. About half have been displaced within Ukraine and the rest have moved to other European countries.

Moving the maternity hospital out of Pokrovsk, however, is not an option.

“If the hospital was relocated, the patients would still have to remain here,” said chief physician Dr. Ivan Tsyganok, who kept working even when the town was being hit by Russian rocket fire.

“Delivering babies is not something that can be stopped or rescheduled,” he noted.

The nearest existing maternity facility is in Ukraine’s neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region, a 3 1/2 hour drive along secondary roads, a journey considered too risky for women in late-term pregnancy.

Last week, 24-year-old Andrii Dobrelia and his wife Maryna, 27, reached the hospital from a nearby village. Looking anxious, they talked little as doctors carried out a series of tests and then led Maryna to the operating room for a C-section. Tsyganok and his colleagues hurriedly changed their clothes and prepared for the procedure.

Twenty minutes later, the cries of a newborn baby boy, Timur, could be heard. After an examination, Timur was taken to meet his father in an adjoining room.

Almost afraid to breathe, Andrii Dobrelia tenderly kissed Timur’s head and whispered to him. As the newborn calmed down on his father’s chest, tears came to Andrii’s eyes.

As the war reaches the six-month mark, Tsyganok and his colleagues says they have a more hopeful reason to stay.

“These children we are bringing into the world will be the future of Ukraine,” says Tsyganok. “I think their lives will be different to ours. They will live outside war.”
…

While vacationers might enjoy the Mediterranean Sea’s summer warmth, climate scientists are warning of dire consequences for its marine life as it burns up in a series of severe heat waves.

From Barcelona to Tel Aviv, scientists say they are witnessing exceptional temperature hikes ranging from 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) to 5 degrees Celsius (9 Fahrenheit) above the norm for this time of year. Water temperatures have regularly exceeded 30 C (86 F) on some days.

Extreme heat in Europe and other countries around the Mediterranean has grabbed headlines this summer, but the rising sea temperature is largely out of sight and out of mind.

Marine heat waves are caused by ocean currents building up areas of warm water. Weather systems and heat in the atmosphere can also pile on degrees to the water’s temperature. And just like their on-land counterparts, marine heat waves are longer, more frequent and more intense because of human-induced climate change.

The situation is “very worrying,” says Joaquim Garrabou, a researcher at the Institute of Marine Sciences in Barcelona. “We are pushing the system too far. We have to take action on the climate issues as soon as possible.”

Garrabou is part of a team that recently published the report on heat waves in the Mediterranean Sea between 2015 and 2019. The report says these phenomena have led to “massive mortality” of marine species.

About 50 species, including corals, sponges and seaweed, were affected along thousands of kilometers of Mediterranean coasts, according to the study, which was published in the Global Change Biology journal.

The situation in the eastern Mediterranean basin is particularly dire.

The waters off Israel, Cyprus, Lebanon and Syria are “the hottest hot spot in the Mediterranean, for sure,” said Gil Rilov, a marine biologist at Israel’s Oceanographic and Limnological Research institute, and one of the paper’s co-authors. Average sea temperatures in the summer are now consistently over 31 C (88 F).

These warming seas are driving many native species to the brink, “because every summer their optimum temperature is being exceeded,” he said.

What he and his colleagues are witnessing in terms of biodiversity loss is what is projected to happen further west in the Mediterranean toward Greece, Italy and Spain in the coming years.

Garrabou points out that seas have been serving the planet by absorbing 90% of the earth’s excess heat and 30% of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere by coal, oil and gas production. This carbon-sink effect shields the planet from even harsher climate effects.

This was possible because oceans and seas were in a healthy condition, Garrabou said.

“But now we have driven the ocean to an unhealthy and dysfunctional state,” he said.

While the earth’s greenhouse gas emissions will have to be drastically reduced if sea warming is to be curtailed, ocean scientists are specifically looking for authorities to guarantee that 30% of sea areas are protected from human activities such as fishing, which would give species a chance to recover and thrive.

About 8% of the Mediterranean Sea area is currently protected.

Garrabou and Rilov said that policymakers are largely unaware of the warming Mediterranean and its impact.

“It’s our job as scientists to bring this to their attention so they can think about it,” Rilov said.

Heat waves occur when especially hot weather continues over a set number of days, with no rain or little wind. Land heat waves help cause marine heat waves and the two tend to feed each other in a vicious, warming circle.

Land heat waves have become commonplace in many countries around the Mediterranean, with dramatic side effects like wildfires, droughts, crop losses and excruciatingly high temperatures.

But marine heat waves could also have serious consequences for the countries bordering the Mediterranean and the more than 500 million people who live there if it’s not dealt with soon, scientists say. Fish stocks will be depleted and tourism will be adversely affected, as destructive storms could become more common on land.

Despite representing less than 1% of the global ocean surface area, the Mediterranean is one of the main reservoirs of marine biodiversity, containing between 4% and 18% of the world’s known marine species.

Some of the most affected species are key to maintaining the functioning and diversity of the sea’s habitats. Species like the Posidonia oceanica seagrass meadows, which can absorb vast amounts of carbon dioxide and shelters marine life, or coral reefs, which are also home to wildlife, would be at risk.

Garrabou says the mortality impacts on species were observed between the surface and 45 meters (around 150 feet) deep, where the recorded marine heat waves were exceptional. Heat waves affected more than 90% of the Mediterranean Sea’s surface.

According to the most recent scientific papers, the sea surface temperature in the Mediterranean has increased by 0.4 C (0.72 F) each decade between 1982 and 2018. On a yearly basis, it has been rising by some 0.05 C (0.09 F) over the past decade without any sign of letting up.

Even fractions of degrees can have disastrous effects on ocean health, experts say.

The affected areas have also grown since the 1980s and now covers most of the Mediterranean, the study suggests.

“The question is not about the survival of nature, because biodiversity will find way to a survive on the planet,” Garrabou said. “The question is if we keep going in this direction maybe our society, humans, will not have a place to live.”

 
…

Today’s sharks have nothing on their ancient cousins. A giant shark that roamed the oceans millions of years ago could have devoured a creature the size of a killer whale in just five bites, new research suggests.

For their study published Wednesday, researchers used fossil evidence to create a 3D model of the megalodon — one of the biggest predatory fish of all time — and find clues about its life.

At around 50 feet (16 meters) from nose to tail, the megalodon was bigger than a school bus, according to the study in the journal Science Advances. That’s about two to three times the size of today’s great white shark. The megalodon’s gaping jaw allowed it to feed on other big creatures. Once it filled its massive stomach, it could roam the oceans for months at a time, the researchers suggest.

The megalodon was a strong swimmer, too: Its average cruising speed was faster than sharks today and it could have migrated across multiple oceans with ease, they calculated.

“It would be a superpredator just dominating its ecosystem,” said co-author John Hutchinson, who studies the evolution of animal movement at England’s Royal Veterinary College. “There is nothing really matching it.”

It’s been tough for scientists to get a clear picture of the megalodon, said study author Catalina Pimiento, a paleobiologist with the University of Zurich and Swansea University in Wales.

The skeleton is made of soft cartilage that doesn’t fossilize well, Pimiento said. So the scientists used what few fossils are available, including a rare collection of vertebrae that’s been at a Belgium museum since the 1860s.

Researchers also brought in a jaw’s worth of megalodon teeth, each as big as a human fist, Hutchinson said. Scans of modern great white sharks helped flesh out the rest.

Based on their digital creation, researchers calculated that the megalodon would have weighed around 70 tons, or as much as 10 elephants.

Even other high-level predators may have been lunch meat for the megalodon, which could open its jaw to almost 6 feet (2 meters) wide, Pimiento said.

Megalodons lived an estimated 23 million to 2.6 million years ago.

Since megalodon fossils are rare, these kinds of models require a “leap of imagination,” said Michael Gottfried, a paleontologist at Michigan State University who was not involved in the study. But he said the study’s findings are reasonable based on what is known about the giant shark.

 
…

Africa’s migratory birds are threatened by changing weather patterns in the center and east of the continent that have depleted natural water systems and caused a devastating drought.

Hotter and drier conditions due to climate change make it difficult for traveling species who are losing their water sources and breeding grounds, with many now endangered or forced to alter their migration patterns entirely by settling in cooler northern areas.

Roughly 10% of Africa’s more than 2,000 bird species, including dozens of migratory birds, are threatened, with 28 species — such as the Madagascar fish eagle, the Taita falcon and hooded vultures — classed as “critically endangered.” Over one-third of them are especially vulnerable to climate change and extreme weather, an analysis by the environmental group BirdLife International said.

“Birds are being affected by climate change just like any other species,” BirdLife policy coordinator Ken Mwathe said. “Migratory birds are affected more than other groups of birds because they must keep on moving,” which makes it more likely that a site they rely on during their journey has degraded in some way.

The African-Eurasian flyway, the flight corridor for birds that travel south through the Mediterranean Sea and Sahara Desert for the winter, harbors over 2,600 sites for migrating birds. An estimated 87% of African sites are at risk from climate change, a greater proportion than in Europe or Asia, a study by the United Nations environment agency and conservation group Wetlands International found.

Africa is more vulnerable to climate change because it is less able to adapt, said Evans Mukolwe, a retired meteorologist and science director at the World Meteorological Organization.

“Poverty, biodiversity degradation, extreme weather events, lack of capital and access to new technologies” make it more difficult for the continent to protect habitats for wild species, Mukolwe said.

Hotter temperatures due to human-caused climate change and less rainfall shrink key wetland areas and water sources, which birds rely on during migratory journeys.

“Lake Chad is an example,” Mwathe said. “Before birds cross the Sahara, they stop by Lake Chad, and then move to the Northern or Southern Hemisphere. But Lake Chad has been shrinking over the years,” which compromises its ability to support birds, he said.

Parched birds mean tougher journeys, which has an impact on their ability to breed, said Paul Matiku, executive director of Nature Kenya.

Flamingoes, for example, which normally breed in Lake Natron in Tanzania are unlikely to be able to “if the migration journey is too rough,” Matiku said.

He added that “not having water in those wetlands means breeding will not take place” since flamingoes need water to create mud nests that keep their eggs away from the intense heat of dry ground.

Non-migratory birds are also struggling with the changing climate. African fish eagles, found throughout sub-Saharan Africa, are now forced to travel farther in search of food. The number of South African Cape Rockjumpers and Protea canaries is severely declining.

Bird species living in the hottest and driest areas, like in the Kalahari Desert that spans Botswana, Namibia and South Africa, are approaching their “physiological limits,” the most recent assessment by the U.N.’s expert climate panel said. It added that birds are less able to find food and are losing body mass, causing large-scale deaths for those living in extreme heat.

“Forest habitats get hotter with climate change and … dryland habitats get drier and savannah birds lack food because grass never seeds, flowers never fruit, and insects never emerge as they do when it rains,” Matiku said.

Other threats, such as the illegal wildlife trade, agriculture, the growth of urban areas and pollution are also stunting bird populations like African fish eagles and vultures, he said.

Better land management projects that help restore degraded wetlands and forests and protect areas from infrastructure, poaching or logging will help preserve the most vulnerable species, the U.N. environmental agency said.

Birds and other species would benefit from concerted efforts to improve water access and food security, especially as sea levels rise and extreme weather events are set to continue, said Amos Makarau, the Africa regional director of the U.N. weather agency.

Scientists say that curbing emissions of planet-warming gases, especially in high-emitting nations, could also limit future weather-related catastrophes.
…

Indonesia has confirmed its first monkeypox infection, detected in a person who had returned from an unidentified country with documented cases, a health ministry spokesman said Saturday.

The 27-year-old male tested positive in the capital Jakarta late Friday, Mohammad Syahril told a news conference.  

The Indonesian national, who is doing “well” and showing only mild symptoms, is self-isolating at home, said Syahril, who did not say where the patient had come from.

“We have followed up with tracing of close contacts and will check up on them,” he said, adding the government is in the process of procuring around 10,000 vaccines for monkeypox.

The health ministry is urging calm and has reassured the public that monkeypox is treatable. It has so far tested 22 suspected cases from across the country, all of which were negative.

Neighboring Singapore reported its first local case of monkeypox last month and had 15 confirmed cases as of August 5.

Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, the Philippines and Thailand also have confirmed cases.

The World Health Organization has declared a global health emergency, with more than 40,000 confirmed cases of monkeypox, including a handful of deaths, in more than 80 countries where the virus is not endemic.
…

When Stephen Nixon recently noticed a “beautiful” spotted lanternfly by his bag as he skateboarded in Brooklyn, he heeded the request of city officials. 

He stomped on it. 

“I don’t like killing things. Not many people do. I’ll catch and release cockroaches if I find them in my apartment,” Nixon said. But he said it “seems like something worse” if the insect’s population explodes. 

Kill-on-sight requests in New York City and elsewhere are a part of public campaigns to fight an invasive insect now massing and feeding on plants around much of the eastern United States. Pretty with red wing markings, the spotted lanternfly is nonetheless a nuisance and a threat — the sort of insect that inspires people to post about squishing and stomping them on social media. 

In cities, they swarm outside buildings and land on pedestrians. They excrete a sticky substance called honeydew that can collect on outdoor furniture. The sap-sucking insects also pose a danger to grapes and other agricultural crops, which is raising alarms this summer in New York state wine country. 

Across mid-Atlantic states, officials are asking people to help them track and slow the insect’s spread, even if they have to put their foot down. 

“Be vigilant,” said Chris Logue of New York’s Department of Agriculture. 

Entered country in 2014

A native of Asia, the spotted lanternfly was first identified in the United States in 2014, northwest of Philadelphia. It’s likely that insect eggs came over with a load of landscaping stones. Eight years later, there are reported infestations in 13 states, mostly on the East Coast, according to the New York State Integrated Pest Management program at Cornell University. Individual insects have been spotted in more states, with two turning up in Iowa this summer. 

The insect has been able to spread so far, so fast because it is a stealthy hitchhiker. Drivers this time of year unwittingly give lifts to adults, which look like moths, perched inside trunks, on wheel wells or on bumpers. 

“Check your vehicle,” Logue said. “What you’re really after is anything that maybe is alive, that is kind of hunkered down in there and is not going to get blown off the vehicle during the trip. Really, really important.” 

People also unknowingly transport spotted lanternfly eggs, which are laid later in the season. Females leave masses of 30 or more eggs on all sorts of surfaces, from tree trunks to patio furniture. Eggs laid on portable surfaces, like camping trailers and train cars, can hatch in the spring many miles away. 

Spotted lanternfly fighters are doing everything from applying pesticides to cutting down trees of heaven — another invasive species that is a favored host of the spotted lanternfly. But public involvement is front and center. 

In Pennsylvania, residents in quarantined counties are asked to check for the pests on dozens of items — from their vehicles to camping gear to lumber and shrubs — before heading to nonquarantined destinations. 

Be merciless

Around the East, people are being asked to report sightings to help track the spread. 

And if you see one? Show no mercy. 

“Kill it! Squash it, smash it … just get rid of it,” reads a post by Pennsylvania agricultural officials. 

New York City parks officials agree, advising: “Please squish and dispose.” 

“Join Jersey’s Stomp Team” read billboards in New Jersey showing a shoe about to stamp out an insect. 

Heide Estes did just that after seeing a spotted lanternfly on a Sunday walk in Long Branch, New Jersey, this month. 

“I came back, and I said to my partner, ‘You know, I saw a spotted lanternfly,’ ” Estes said, “and she was like, ‘Oh, I’m sure there’s more. Let’s go look.’ ” 

There were more. 

Her partner, an entomologist, put four in a plastic bottle to show co-workers on campus what they look like. They killed at least a dozen more. Many were massed on trees of heaven. 

“Clearly, the whole spot was infested,” she said. 

Nearing vineyards

Infestations in New York state had been concentrated in the metropolitan area but have spread close to the state’s wine-growing vineyards. Agricultural officials are concerned about the fate of vineyards in the Finger Lakes, the Hudson Valley and Long Island if infestations spread. U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer said Sunday that the insect could cost the state millions. 

“The spotted lanternfly sucks the sap out of the vines,” said Brian Eshenaur, an expert with the Cornell pest program. “And it makes them less hardy for the winter, so vines can be lost over the growing season.” 

Eshenaur said they’re more likely to spread into vineyards later in the season, when trees of heaven enter dormancy.

At Sheldrake Point Winery in the Finger Lakes, vineyard manager David Wiemann said workers in the rows already know to be on guard. 

“We’ve talked about how detrimental it would be to the vineyards,” Wiemann said. “So if they see one, they would let me know.”
…

A smaller dose of the monkeypox vaccine appears to still be effective and can be used to stretch the current supply by five times, the European Medicines Agency said Friday, echoing a recommendation made earlier this month by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The EU drug regulator said in a statement that injecting people with one-fifth of the regular dose of the smallpox vaccine made by Bavarian Nordic appeared to produce similar levels of antibodies against monkeypox as a full dose.

The approach calls for administering Bavarian Nordic’s vaccine with an injection just under the skin rather than into deeper tissue, a practice that may stimulate a better immune response. People still need to get two doses, about four weeks apart.

The EMA said national authorities could decide, “as a temporary measure” to use smaller doses of the vaccine to protect vulnerable people during the ongoing monkeypox outbreak.

EU health commissioner Stella Kyriakides said the decision would allow the vaccination of five times as many people with the continent’s current supply.

“This ensures greater access to vaccination for citizens at risk and health care workers,” she said in a statement.

Earlier this month, the U.S. FDA authorized a similar plan to extend the country’s monkeypox vaccine stocks. The technique has previously been used to stretch supplies of vaccines during other outbreaks, including yellow fever and polio.

The unusual recommendations from both regulators acknowledge the extremely limited global supplies of the Jynneos vaccine, originally developed against smallpox. Bavarian Nordic is the only company that makes it, and it expects to have about 16 million doses available this year. On Thursday, the U.S. also announced a new agreement with a Michigan manufacturer to help speed production of 5.5 million vaccine vials recently ordered by the government.

The EMA authorized the vaccine in July based on experimental data that suggested it would work; the World Health Organization has estimated the shot is about 85% effective at preventing monkeypox.

Globally, there are more than 40,000 cases of monkeypox, of which about half are in Europe. Earlier this week, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said there has been a 20% increase in cases reported in the last two weeks and that nearly all infections have been reported in men who are gay, bisexual or have sex with other men.

Tedros said WHO was in talks with vaccine manufacturers and countries to see if any might be willing to share doses. Africa has reported the highest number of suspected monkeypox deaths and although the disease has been endemic in parts of central and west Africa for decades, it has only a small supply of vaccines being used as part of a research study.

About 98% of monkeypox cases beyond Africa have been reported in men who are gay, bisexual or have sex with other men. WHO said there is no sign of sustained transmission beyond men who have sex with men, although a small number of women and children have also been sickened by the disease.

Monkeypox spreads when people have close, physical contact with an infected person’s lesions, their clothing or bed sheets. Most people recover without needing treatment, but the lesions can be extremely painful and more severe cases can result in complications including brain inflammation and death.

In the U.K., which at one point had the biggest outbreak outside Africa, officials said earlier this week they have seen signs the outbreak is slowing down.
…

The World Health Organization says clinical evidence shows two monoclonal antibody treatments are effective at saving the lives of many people stricken with the deadly Ebola virus.

The action follows a systematic review and analysis of randomized clinical trials of therapeutics for the disease.

WHO Team Lead for Clinical Care Janet Diaz says the evidence underpinning the recommendations comes from two clinical trials. The largest was done in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2018 and 2019.

She says the trials were conducted during Ebola outbreaks, demonstrating quality control trials can be done even under the most difficult circumstances.

“The evidence synthesis that informs this guideline shows that mAb114 and Regeneron-EB3 reduced mortality. The relative risk reduction was about 60 percent…Between 230 to 400 lives saved per 1,000 patients. Translate that into the number needed to treat, you treat two to four patients, and you save one life.”

Ebola hemorrhagic fever is spread through blood or body fluids of a person who is sick with or has died of the disease. The worst Ebola outbreak occurred in West Africa between 2014 and 2016. Of the nearly 29,000 reported cases, more than 11,300 people died.

Diaz calls the development of monoclonal antibody therapeutics a very important advancement. However, she notes the drug itself is not the only solution. She says it must be given in a comprehensive, clinical setting along with other treatments.

“That includes early diagnosis so that treatments can be given as soon as possible and also the implementation of appropriate infection prevention and control to stop transmission…and treatment of co-infections and access to nutrition, psycho-social support, and, of course, access to care after discharge.”

Diaz says the two recommended therapeutics have shown clear benefits for people of all ages. She says they can be used on all patients confirmed positive for Ebola virus disease. That, she says, includes older people, pregnant and breastfeeding women, children, and babies born to mothers with confirmed Ebola within the first seven days after birth.
…