Snakebites are classified as a neglected tropical disease by the World Health Organization. In South Africa and other countries in the region, there are numerous barriers to getting the antivenom necessary to save limbs and lives. But scientists are working to make antivenom cheaper, safer and easier to produce. Kate Bartlett reports from Johannesburg. Camera: Zaheer Cassim
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Author: Uponsci
The naturally occurring form of polio remains active in only two countries in the world: Pakistan and Afghanistan. Over 50 cases of so-called wild polio have been confirmed in the region this year despite continuing efforts to eradicate the disease. This report comes from both sides of the border, narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.
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One person died and dozens fell ill from E. coli infections linked to McDonald’s Quarter Pounder hamburgers in 10 states, led by Colorado, where 26 people were sickened, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control said on Tuesday.
The E. coli outbreak, linked to one of McDonald’s most popular menu items, has sickened 49 people and sent 10 to the hospital, officials say.
The strain involved, E. coli O157:H7, can cause serious illness and was the source of a 1993 outbreak that killed four children who ate undercooked hamburgers at Jack in the Box restaurants.
Shares of the world’s largest fast-food chain were down about 6% in extended trading. A livestock trader said the outbreak also could pressure U.S. cattle futures on Wednesday by threatening demand for beef.
Everyone interviewed as part of an investigation into the outbreak has reported eating at McDonald’s before their illness started, and most mentioned eating a Quarter Pounder hamburger, according to the CDC.
The specific ingredient linked to the illness has not been identified but investigators are focused on fresh, slivered onions and fresh beef patties, the CDC said.
Most of the illnesses were reported in Colorado and Nebraska.
“The initial findings from the investigation indicate that a subset of illnesses may be linked to slivered onions used in the Quarter Pounder and sourced by a single supplier that serves three distribution centers,” McDonald’s North America Chief Supply Chain Officer Cesar Piña said in a statement.
McDonald’s has proactively removed the slivered onions and beef patties used for the Quarter Pounder hamburgers from stores in the affected states while the investigation continues, the company informed the CDC.
U.S. food safety attorney Bill Marler, who represented a victim in the Jack in the Box outbreak, said more cases of illness could surface. Onions have been linked to prior E. coli O157:H7 outbreaks, he said.
According to Marler, a founder of Marler Clark in Seattle, beef contamination is less common due to food safety measures. “You’d have to have multiple restaurants under-cooking the meat,” he said.
McDonald’s is temporarily removing the Quarter Pounder from restaurants in the impacted areas, including Colorado, Kansas, Utah and Wyoming, it said in a statement, adding it was working with suppliers to replenish supply in the coming week.
Symptoms for E. coli include severe stomach cramps, diarrhea and vomiting. Most people who suffer an infection will start feeling sick three to four days after eating or drinking something that contains the bacteria, Colorado’s public health department said. However, illnesses can start anywhere from one to 10 days after exposure, the department added.
In 2015, burrito chain Chipotle saw its sales battered and reputation hit due to E.coli outbreaks in several states. That outbreak was linked to a different strain of E. coli that typically causes less severe illness than E. coli O157:H7.
In addition to Colorado, the CDC said small clusters of a few people fell ill after eating a Quarter Pounder in Nebraska, Utah and Wyoming. Kansas, Missouri, Oregon, Iowa, Wisconsin and Montana had one illness apiece.
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Health officials say there have been six cases of polio reported in Ivory Coast in 2023, and one so far this year. It doesn’t seem like many, but any polio cases are cause for concern among health officials trying to completely eradicate the disease. VOA’s Yassin Ciyow reports from Abidjan, in this story narrated by Anthony LaBruto. (Camera: Yassin Ciyow )
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Berlin — An infection with the new mpox variant clade 1b has been detected in Germany for the first time, the Robert Koch Institute health authority said on Tuesday.
The infection occurred abroad and was detected last Friday, the institute said, adding that it did not see an increased risk for Germany but was “monitoring the situation very closely.”
Mpox, a viral disease related to smallpox that causes fever, body aches, swollen lymph nodes and a rash that forms into blisters, has two main subtypes — clade 1 and clade 2.
From May 2022, clade 2 spread around the world, mostly affecting gay and bisexual men in Europe and the United States. In July 2022, the WHO declared an international public health emergency, its highest level of alarm over the spread.
Vaccination and awareness drives in many countries helped stem the number of worldwide cases and the WHO lifted the emergency in May 2023 after reporting 140 deaths out of roughly 87,400 cases.
But this year, a new epidemic has broken out in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
As well as clade 1, which mainly affects children, a new strain emerged in the DRC, called clade 1b.
Clade 1b cases have also been recorded in nearby Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda — none of which had previously detected mpox. The WHO declared another international emergency in August.
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HONG KONG — China’s National Health Commission (NHC) published its first set of guidelines to standardize the diagnosis and treatment of obesity, with more than half of China’s adults already overweight and obese, and the rate expected to keep rising.
The guidelines, made public on October 17, come as China experiences an upward morbidity trend of its overweight and obese population. The rate of overweight or obese people could reach 65.3% by 2030, the NHC said.
“Obesity has become a major public health issue in China, ranking as the sixth leading risk factor for death and disability in the country,” the guidelines said.
China is facing a twin challenge that feeds its weight problem: In a modernizing economy underpinned by technological innovation, more jobs have become static or desk-bound, while a prolonged slowdown in growth is forcing people to adopt cheaper, unhealthy diets.
Job stress, long work hours and poor diets are growing high-risk factors in the cities, while in rural areas, agriculture work is becoming less physically demanding and inadequate healthcare is leading to poor screening and treatment of weight problems, doctors and academics say.
The guidelines provide guidance and regulations including in clinical nutrition, surgical treatment, behavioral and psychological intervention, and exercise intervention for obesity, Zhang Zhongtao, director of the guideline drafting committee and deputy head of Beijing Friendship Hospital, told the official Xinhua news agency.
China’s NHC and 15 other government departments in July launched public awareness efforts to fight obesity. The campaign, set to last for three years, is built around eight slogans: “lifelong commitment, active monitoring, a balanced diet, physical activity, good sleep, reasonable targets and family action.”
Health guidelines were distributed to primary and secondary schools in July urging regular screening, daily exercise, hiring nutritionists and implementing healthy eating habits – including lowering salt, oil and sugar.
Obesity in China is an “unintended consequence of improving living standards in the country,” Xinhua said, after China struggled for centuries to feed its population and under-nourishment was a genuine concern for many families before the reform and opening-up in the late 1970s.
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Paris — French drugmaker Sanofi’s confirmation that it will sell a controlling stake in its consumer health unit to a U.S. investment fund sparked a new political backlash Monday, stoked by fears the deal marks a loss of sovereignty over key medications.
Paris “must block the sale” using powers to protect strategic sectors, Manuel Bompard, a senior lawmaker in the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party, told the TF1 broadcaster.
Politicians and unions have torn into Sanofi’s proposed 16-billion-euro ($17.4 billion) deal with U.S. investment fund CD&R for a controlling stake in Opella.
The subsidiary makes household-name drugs including Doliprane branded paracetamol whose yellow boxes dominate the French market.
Under pressure, Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s minority government said it had secured a two-percent stake in Opella for public investment bank Bpifrance and “extremely strong” guarantees against job cuts and offshoring.
Opella employs over 11,000 workers and operates in 100 countries.
Sanofi said it is the third-largest business worldwide in the market for over-the-counter medicines, vitamins and supplements.
CD&R — which has a battery of investments in France — would help build Opella into a “French-headquartered, global consumer healthcare champion,” the pharma giant said in a statement.
‘Just words’
But with memories of drug shortages during and since the Covid-19 pandemic still raw for many, critics say the defenses are too weak.
A small stake “won’t give the French state a say in strategic decisions” at Opella, said Bompard, whose LFI dominates a left alliance that is the largest opposition group against Barnier and President Emmanuel Macron.
Thomas Portes, also of the LFI, posted on X that the government had offered “no guarantees, just words.”
Economy Minister Antoine Armand said a contract between CD&R, Sanofi and the government included maintaining production sites, research and development and Opella’s official headquarters in France, as well as investing at least 70 million euros over five years.
It covers “keeping up a minimum production volume for Opella’s sensitive products in France,” Armand added, including Doliprane, digestive medication Lanzor and Aspegic branded aspirin.
There would be financial penalties for closing French production sites, laying off workers or failing to buy from French suppliers.
That includes Seqens, a company re-establishing production in France of Doliprane’s active ingredient paracetamol.
“Workers are not at all reassured by the latest developments,” said Johann Nicolas, a CGT union representative at Opella’s Doliprane plant in Lisieux, northern France.
He added that a picket had throttled production there from around 1.3 million boxes of the drug per day to around 265,000.
The proposed protections in the deal have also failed to win over even some in the government camp.
Monday’s guarantees “do not at all indicate a commitment for the long term, whether on investment, supply or jobs,” Charles Rodwell, a lawmaker in Macron’s EPR party who has closely followed the case, told AFP.
He vowed “painstaking” parliamentary surveillance of government action over the deal including measures to “block” the sale if ministers fall short.
Brand loyalty
Macron said last week that “the government has the instruments needed to protect France” from any unwanted “capital ownership.”
Emotion over the Opella sales is closely linked to Doliprane.
Boxes of the non-opioid analgesic against mild to moderate pain and fever often line entire pharmacy walls.
The drug comes in many doses — from 100 mg for babies to 1,000 mg for adults — and in tablet, capsule, suppository and liquid forms.
It is so ubiquitous that French people call any paracetamol product Doliprane, even when made by a different manufacturer.
Sanofi, among the world’s top 12 health care companies, says the planned spinoff is part of a strategy to focus less on over-the-counter medication and more on innovative medicines and vaccines, including for polio, influenza and meningitis.
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Bogota, Colombia — Global environmental leaders gather Monday in Cali, Colombia to assess the world’s plummeting biodiversity levels and commitments by countries to protect plants, animals and critical habitats.
The two-week United Nations Biodiversity Conference, or COP16, is a follow-up to the 2022 Montreal meetings where 196 countries signed a historic global treaty to protect biodiversity.
The accord includes 23 measures to halt and reverse nature loss, including putting 30% of the planet and 30% of degraded ecosystems under protection by 2030.
In opening remarks on Sunday, Colombia’s environment minister and COP16 president Susana Muhamad said the conference is an opportunity “to collect the experience that has passed through this planet from all civilizations, from all cultures, from all knowledge … to generate livable, relatively stable conditions for a new society that will be forged in the light of the crisis.”
A real threat to biodiversity loss
All evidence shows a dramatic decline in species abundance and distribution, said Linda Krueger, director of biodiversity at The Nature Conservancy.
“A lot of wild species have less room to live, and they’re declining in numbers,” Krueger said. “And we also see rising extinction rates. Things that we haven’t even discovered yet are blinking out.”
The world is experiencing its largest loss of life since the dinosaurs, with around 1 million plant and animal species now threatened with extinction, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.
In the Amazon rainforest, threats to biodiversity include the expansion of the agricultural frontier and road networks, deforestation, forest fires and drought, says Andrew Miller, advocacy director at Amazon Watch, an organization that protects the rainforest.
“You put all of that together and it’s a real threat to biodiversity,” Miller said.
Global wildlife populations have plunged on average by 73% in 50 years, according to the WWF and the Zoological Society of London biennial Living Planet report this month.
The report said Latin America and the Caribbean saw 95% average declines in recorded wildlife populations.
Indigenous communities key to biodiversity protection
Indigenous people are on the front lines of protecting biodiversity and fighting against climate change, putting their lives at great risk, said Miller of Amazon Watch.
“A lot of discourse has been given about the voices of local communities … Indigenous peoples really playing a key role,” he said. “So that’s one of the things that we’ll be looking for at COP16.”
Indigenous peoples hold the solutions to combat the climate change and biodiversity crises, said Laura Rico, campaign director at Avaaz, a global activism nonprofit.
“They’re who have been taking care of the land, healing the land through their governance systems, their care systems and their ways of life,” she said. “So … it’s fundamental that the COP recognizes, promotes and encourages the legalization of their territories.”
In Colombia’s capital, Bogota, the head of an Amazon Indigenous organization said the region’s Indigenous people have been preparing for months for COP16.
“This is a great opportunity to make the impact that we need to demonstrate to all the actors that come from other countries the importance of Indigenous peoples for the world,” said José Mendez, secretary of the National Organization of the Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon.
“It’s no secret to anyone that we … are at risk right now,” he said. “The effects that we are currently experiencing due to climate change, the droughts that the country is experiencing, the Amazon River has never gone through a drought like the current one. … This is causing many species to become extinct.”
Nature can recover
Environment minister Muhamad told local media this month that one of the conference’s main objectives is to deliver the message that “biodiversity is as important, complementary and indispensable as the energy transition and decarbonization.”
Part of Colombia’s first ever leftist government, Muhamad cautioned last year’s World Economic Forum about the risks of continuing an extractive economy that ignores the social and environmental consequences of natural resource exploitation.
Since the 2022 Montreal conference, “progress has been too slow”, says Eva Zabey, executive director of the coalition Business for Nature.
“There’s been some progress,” she said. “But the headline message is the implementation of the global biodiversity framework is too slow and we need to scale and speed up.”
“COP16 comes at an absolutely critical moment for us to move from targets setting to real actions on the ground,” Zabey said.
Although biodiversity declines are grim, some environmentalists believe a reversal is possible. “We’ve had some very successful species reintroductions and we’ve saved species when we really focus on what is causing their decline,” said The Nature Conservancy’s Krueger.
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Geneva — The WHO chief on Sunday urged Rwanda to keep up its fightback against Marburg, as the country battles an outbreak of one of the world’s deadliest viruses.
There have been 62 confirmed cases and 15 deaths in the outbreak, which was first announced in late September.
No new cases have been detected in the last six days and 44 people have recovered from infection.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization, visited Rwanda to see the outbreak response for himself and hailed the country’s handling of the situation.
“We’re pleased to see that there have been no new cases in the past six days, and we hope that remains the case,” he told a press conference in the capital Kigali.
“But we are dealing with one of the world’s most dangerous viruses, and continued vigilance is essential.
“Enhanced surveillance, contact tracing and infection prevention and control measures must continue at scale until the outbreak is declared over.”
Such a declaration can only be made after 42 days — two consecutive incubation periods — without a new confirmed case.
Marburg is transmitted to humans from fruit bats, and is part of the filovirus family that includes Ebola.
With a fatality rate of up to 88 percent, Marburg’s highly infectious hemorrhagic fever is often accompanied by bleeding and organ failure.
However, the case fatality rate in this outbreak has been held down at 24 percent.
On Saturday, Tedros visited the treatment center where the remaining patients are being looked after.
“Two of the patients we met had experienced all of the symptoms of Marburg, including multiple organ failure, but they were put on life support, they were successfully intubated and extubated, and are now recovering,” he said.
“We believe this is the first time patients with Marburg virus have been extubated in Africa. These patients would have died in previous outbreaks.”
There are currently no officially approved vaccines nor approved antiviral treatments, but potential treatments, including blood products, immune and drug therapies are being evaluated.
A vaccination program using a trial vaccine was launched in Rwanda earlier this month.
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MILWAUKEE — Whooping cough is at its highest level in a decade for this time of year, U.S. health officials reported Thursday.
There have been 18,506 cases of whooping cough reported so far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. That’s the most at this point in the year since 2014, when cases topped 21,800.
The increase is not unexpected — whooping cough peaks every three to five years, health experts said. And the numbers indicate a return to levels before the coronavirus pandemic, when whooping cough and other contagious illnesses plummeted.
Still, the tally has some state health officials concerned, including those in Wisconsin, where there have been about 1,000 cases so far this year, compared to a total of 51 last year.
Nationwide, CDC has reported that kindergarten vaccination rates dipped last year and vaccine exemptions are at an all-time high. Thursday, it released state figures, showing that about 86% of kindergartners in Wisconsin got the whooping cough vaccine, compared to more than 92% nationally.
Whooping cough, also called pertussis, usually starts out like a cold, with a runny nose and other common symptoms, before turning into a prolonged cough. It is treated with antibiotics. Whooping cough used to be very common until a vaccine was introduced in the 1950s, which is now part of routine childhood vaccinations. It is in a shot along with tetanus and diphtheria vaccines. The combo shot is recommended for adults every 10 years.
“They used to call it the 100-day cough because it literally lasts for 100 days,” said Joyce Knestrick, a family nurse practitioner in Wheeling, West Virginia.
Whooping cough is usually seen mostly in infants and young children, who can develop serious complications. That’s why the vaccine is recommended during pregnancy, to pass along protection to the newborn, and for those who spend a lot of time with infants.
But public health workers say outbreaks this year are hitting older kids and teens. In Pennsylvania, most outbreaks have been in middle school, high school and college settings, an official said. Nearly all the cases in Douglas County, Nebraska, are schoolkids and teens, said Justin Frederick, deputy director of the health department.
That includes his own teenage daughter.
“It’s a horrible disease. She still wakes up — after being treated with her antibiotics — in a panic because she’s coughing so much she can’t breathe,” he said.
It’s important to get tested and treated with antibiotics early, said Dr. Kris Bryant, who specializes in pediatric infectious diseases at Norton Children’s in Louisville, Kentucky. People exposed to the bacteria can also take antibiotics to stop the spread.
“Pertussis is worth preventing,” Bryant said. “The good news is that we have safe and effective vaccines.”
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People with HIV can safely receive donated kidneys from deceased donors with the virus, according to a large study that comes as the U.S. government moves to expand the practice. That could shorten the wait for organs for all, regardless of HIV status.
The new study, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, looked at 198 kidney transplants performed across the U.S. Researchers found similar results whether the donated organ came from a person with or without the AIDS virus.
Last month, the Department of Health and Human Services proposed a rule change that would allow these types of kidney and liver transplants outside research studies. A final rule would apply to both living and deceased donors. If approved, it could take effect in the coming year.
Participants in the study were HIV positive, had kidney failure and agreed to receive an organ from either an HIV-positive deceased donor or an HIV-negative deceased donor, whichever kidney became available first.
Similar survival rates
Researchers followed the organ recipients for up to four years. They compared the half who received kidneys from HIV-positive donors to those whose kidneys came from donors without HIV.
Both groups had similarly high rates of overall survival and low rates of organ rejection. Virus levels rose for 13 patients in the HIV donor group and for four in the other group, mostly tied to patients failing to take HIV medications consistently, and in all cases returned to very low or undetectable levels.
“This demonstrates the safety and the fantastic outcomes that we’re seeing from these transplants,” said study co-author Dr. Dorry Segev of NYU Langone Health.
In 2010, surgeons in South Africa provided the first evidence that using HIV-positive donor organs was safe in people with HIV. But the practice wasn’t allowed in the United States until 2013 when the government lifted a ban and allowed research studies, at the urging of Segev. At first, the studies were with deceased donors. Then in 2019, Segev and others at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore performed the world’s first kidney transplant from a living donor with HIV to an HIV-positive recipient.
All told, 500 transplants of kidneys and livers from HIV-positive donors have been done in the U.S.
‘A win-win’
People with HIV have been actively discouraged from signing up to be organ donors by stigma and outdated state laws and policies criminalizing organ donation for people with HIV, said Carrie Foote, a sociology professor at Indiana University in Indianapolis.
“Not only can we help those of us living with this disease, but we free up more organs in the entire organ pool so that those who don’t have HIV can get an organ faster,” said Foote, who is HIV positive and a registered organ donor. “It’s a win-win for everyone.”
More than 90,000 people are on the waiting list for kidney transplants, according to the U.S. Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. In 2022, more than 4,000 people died waiting for kidneys.
In an editorial in the journal, Dr. Elmi Muller of Stellenbosch University in South Africa predicted the new study will have “far-reaching effects in many countries that do not perform transplantations with these organs.”
“Above all, we have taken yet another step toward fairness and equality for persons living with HIV,” wrote Muller, who pioneered the practice.
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ISLAMABAD — Pakistan said Saturday that two children in its southern Sindh province had been paralyzed by poliovirus, bringing the total number of cases nationwide to 39 for the year since March, when officials confirmed the first case.
The South Asian nation of around 240 million people reported six cases of paralytic poliovirus infections in 2023, following a period of more than a year without any documented cases, only to see the numbers rise again.
“Genetic sequencing of the cases is under way,” said a Pakistan polio eradication program statement Saturday while reporting the two new infections in Sindh. “The intense virus transmission and increase in polio cases are indicative of the harm that children suffer when they miss opportunities for vaccination.”
Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan, with at least 20 cases this year, are the only two countries where the crippling disease is still endemic.
Pakistani officials are preparing to launch a nationwide vaccination campaign on October 28 to immunize more than 45 million children under 5 against the paralytic disease.
“It is critical for parents to open their doors to vaccinators during this drive and ensure that all children in their care receive two drops of the crucial oral polio vaccine to keep them protected from the devastating effects of polio,” the program emphasized in its Saturday statement.
Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province, which sits on the Afghan border, has reported 20 polio cases in 2024, while Sindh has detected 12 cases.
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan has documented five paralytic poliovirus cases. Pakistan’s most populous Punjab province and the national capital, Islamabad, reported one case each.
The resurgence of poliovirus in Pakistan is blamed on boycotts of vaccination drives by parents in rural areas who allege the initiatives are a Western plot to sterilize Muslim children.
Anti-state militants in violence-hit districts bordering Afghanistan occasionally attack vaccinators and their police escorts, suspecting them of spying for the government. The violence has claimed the lives of dozens of security forces and vaccinators.
An independent monitoring board of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative noted in a report last month that more than 420,000 Pakistani children could not be inoculated in anti-polio campaigns in 2024.
The board reported more than 200 boycotts of the polio vaccination campaign in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa last year. “It is disturbing to realize that violence, insecurity, and boycotts are still as prevalent in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as they were in 2023,” the report said.
It highlighted that residents in several impoverished districts of Pakistan also demanded electricity, gas supply, and road construction in return for getting their children vaccinated.
A representative for Pakistan’s Ministry of Health told a World Health Organization meeting in Doha, Qatar, earlier this week that polio eradication is the country’s “top priority,” and efforts have been intensified to halt virus transmission.
“Despite recent resurgence, a unified plan with provinces aims to stop polio transmission by 2025,” Safi Malik stated. “We’re focusing on quality campaigns, digital tracking of missed areas, and a strong Pakistan-Afghanistan collaboration for cross-border vaccinations,” he said.
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ABUJA, NIGERIA — Nigeria officially launched its malaria vaccination campaign this week to protect millions of children from the deadly disease, focusing heavily on high-risk states.
The first 846,000 doses of the R21 malaria vaccine arrived in Abuja, Nigeria, on Thursday, marking a milestone in efforts to eliminate malaria. According to the World Health Organization, the country accounts for about 27% of global malaria cases. In 2022, it recorded nearly 67 million infections and nearly 200,000 deaths, about 80% of the deaths occurring in children under age 5.
Dr. Muyi Aina, head of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, said the initial rollout prioritizes high-risk regions.
“We expect another 140,000 or so to make a million doses in this first batch,” Aina said. “Every child, every person that is vaccinated, needs to get two doses. So, we know that that’s a limited number of people. So, we have prioritized the highest-burden locations in the country, Kebbi and Bayelsa.”
The government is covering part of the vaccine costs, with global vaccine group Gavi and international partners funding the rest.
Health Minister Muhammad Pate stressed that the vaccine will be administered to recipients at no charge.
“These vaccines are free for [the] population, but they cost resources,” he said.
Not everyone would be able to afford the vaccines, Pate said.
“The children of the poor in rural areas are the ones that may not be able to access them,” he said. “That’s why we’ve prioritized public financing in that regard, and we thank our partners for contributing toward it.”
Nigeria has improved vaccine logistics for hard-to-reach regions.
UNICEF’s chief of health in Nigeria, Dr. Eduardo Celades, expressed confidence in the country’s distribution capacity.
“Transportation and storage [are] a key issue,” he said. “How [can you] ensure that the cold chain has the integrity needed to keep safe the vaccines and to keep them effective? But we are confident that we know that we have the capacities.”
Malaria remains a complex challenge, requiring a mix of strategies such as mosquito control, better health care access and vaccine monitoring.
Malaria elimination strategic adviser Olugbenga Mokuolu said the vaccine complements traditional tools such as bed nets and treatments, offering children added protection.
“We know that no single tool offers 100% of the solution,” Mokuolu said. “That’s why we still talk about the combination of tools. But having the vaccine layering on it is very significant. … With the deployment of this vaccine, we will be conducting … an effectiveness study in order to note the rate of reoccurrence while on the vaccine.”
The WHO approved the RTS,S and R21 vaccines, with R21 showing 77% efficacy in trials. Other African countries, including Uganda and Burkina Faso, have begun vaccine distribution, reflecting the continent’s push to combat malaria.
Experts say the success of the malaria rollout depends on sustained engagement with local leaders and caregivers to ensure children complete their doses.
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KAMIMOMI, Japan — In the remote village of Kamimomi in Japan’s western Okayama prefecture, a small group of rice farmers began their most recent harvest in sweltering heat, two weeks sooner than usual.
The prefecture is called “the Land of Sunshine” because of its pleasant climate, but farmers working among the paddy fields and ancient rice terraces say that climate change is hurting the harvest of rice, long a cornerstone of Japan’s diet.
“Last year, an exceptional heat wave took the water out of the rice, which became small and thin,” rice farmer Joji Terasaka said. “So I am worried about that this year because it will be just as hot.”
This year Japan experienced its hottest July on record, with temperatures reaching 2.16 Celsius higher than average, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency. The globe has seen a 1.2 C rise in average temperature since preindustrial times, and scientists agree that warming needs to be capped at 1.5 C to stave off the worst effects of climate change. That includes even more powerful heat, storms and irreversible ice melt.
Last year, Japan recorded a poor rice harvest nationwide because of exceptionally hot weather. Ministry data showed the country’s private-sector rice inventory fell to 1.56 million tons in June, the lowest level since records began in 1999. Last year was the hottest on record globally, though it’s feared that this year may top it.
The drop in harvest in Japan was partly to blame for this year’s widespread summer rice shortage, according to officials. There were empty shelves in supermarkets, and some retailers are still enforcing purchase limits of one rice bag per customer.
“Perhaps people think that an increase of one degree Celsius in average temperature isn’t much. But it’s quite a big change for plants and crops,” says Yuji Masutomi, a researcher at the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Tsukuba, north of Tokyo.
Masutomi said the rising temperatures not only influence the growth cycle and yield of rice, but also hurt the quality of the grain.
When temperatures rise above 27 C, the buildup of starch inside rice grains is reduced. That causes the crop to take on a chalky appearance, and its value is reduced.
At least a fifth of rice farms have reported a drop in quality from rising temperatures, according to a farming ministry report last year.
“Not only is the appearance not good; people say the taste drops too,” Masutomi said.
For farmers in Kamimomi, there’s another problem with working under exceptional heat. The average age of agricultural workers in Japan is nearly 69, among the oldest in the world, and older people are especially vulnerable to heatstroke.
Toshimi Kaiami led a community project in Kamimomi that involved reviving some of the paddy fields abandoned because of the aging population.
“There are no longer any successors,” says Kaiami. “We are heading toward extinction.”
The community project divides labor among Kamimomi’s farmers. But preparations for the harvest coincided with the hottest months of the year — April to September.
“It takes a half year to produce rice. The heat and the work that we have to endure during that time is really tough,” said rice farmer Mitsumasa Sugimoto, 77.
To deal with climate change, the government is promoting the adoption of heat-resistant rice variants, including Sai no Kizuna, which was developed by a research center in Saitama prefecture, near Tokyo.
Research organizations around the world have worked to produce more resilient strains of essential food like rice while introducing more heat and drought resistant grains like sorghum or millet.
“Last year and this year have been extremely hot, but even in those conditions, Sai no Kizuna maintained a certain level of quality,” said Naoto Ohoka, who manages rice breeding at Saitama’s Agricultural Technology Research Center.
“Its other characteristic is that it is very delicious.”
The center cultivates more than a thousand types of rice strains, and through cross-pollination officials assess and select the best performers to develop new varieties.
Sai no Kizuna was developed in 2012 to better withstand heat, a trait that has become more widely recognized recently as Japan sees hotter summers. The strain also stands up well against typhoon wind and certain pests and diseases.
Researchers want to develop more resilient strains against heat as temperatures are projected to continue rising. Masutomi recommends that variants tolerant of temperatures up to 3 degrees Celsius higher should be introduced across Japan by the 2040s.
But it’s a long process. It can take up to 10 years to develop a new variant. Once it’s approved for the market, farmers must then be convinced to switch to the new strain.
The most widely grown variety is Koshihikari, which is less heat resistant. Even so, older farmers have shown a reluctance to switch to other varieties. Farming ministry data show that only around 15% of Japanese paddy fields have adopted heat resistance variants.
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Two years after reaching a historic biodiversity agreement, countries will gather next week to determine whether they are making progress on efforts to save Earth’s plant and animal life.
The agreement signed by 196 countries at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference calls for protecting 30% of land and water by 2030, known as 30 by 30. When the agreement was signed, 17% of terrestrial and 10% of marine areas were protected — which hasn’t changed significantly.
At the conference known as COP16, countries next will report on progress made toward the goals, and governments are expected to agree on mechanisms to assure the implementation of them, according to a European Parliament report.
The two-week meeting in Cali, Colombia, will also focus on efforts to raise hundreds of billions of dollars to protect nature by 2030 — with the payment of $20 billion for developing countries due next year. Twenty-three targets will be discussed including cutting food waste and preventing the introduction of invasive species.
Signs of progress hard to find
The nearly 200 countries are supposed to submit national plans ahead of the conference showing actions they are taking to meet the 30 by 30 goals. But as of this week, around 46% of countries have submitted targets and less than 15% submitted plans for reaching them. Australia has yet to submit its targets while India has not submitted a national plan. Brazil, which includes much of the Amazon rainforest, hasn’t submitted targets or a plan.
The United States, which is not party to the biodiversity convention, is not required to submit any plans. But the Biden administration has committed to protecting a third of American land and waters by 2030.
Some countries are expected to use the conference to unveil plans for creating or expanding protected areas and for how they’ll spend biodiversity funding. Canada, for example, has committed to spending $800 million on four Indigenous-led projects.
Conservation groups are concerned that more countries have not yet detailed their biodiversity goals and how to achieve them.
Bernadette Fischler Hooper, head of global advocacy for WWF International, called the commitments so far “disappointing.” WWF, which is tracking the progress, also found some plans lack actions to halt biodiversity loss, funding to support efforts and sufficient buy-in from across government.
“This is really, really getting close,” Hooper said. “There are some countries who can easily afford to update (their plans). There’s no reason why they didn’t do it … and there are countries that didn’t get the support they needed.”
Of the 91 countries that submitted targets, the convention’s secretariat found more than half had targets of protecting and conserving at least 30% of their terrestrial area and about a quarter had targets for 5% to 30%. For marine and coastal areas, more than one-third had a national target of 30% or more, and another third had targets between 5% and 30%.
But Astrid Schomaker, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, said the small number of countries submitting plans isn’t surprising since governments first had to come up with targets and then develop action plans.
“These are complex processes that are meant to be a whole of government,” she said of the plans that require coordination and buy-in from ministries, business leaders and community stakeholders, as well as raising money. “That’s not happening overnight.”
Achieving these targets is especially critical to migratory species, more than 40% which a U.N. report found are declining.
“Birds do not recognize boundaries of a protected area and move according to their feeding and roosting needs,” said Jennifer George, who leads the Seoul-based East Asian-Australasian Flyway Partnership, a nonprofit focused on birds migrating between East Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
Funding crunch
Much like the U.N. climate talks, a big topic of debate at the biodiversity conference will be financing.
Poor countries pushed to include language requiring that $200 billion a year be raised by 2030 for biodiversity from a range of sources to fund the target-specific projects. Rich countries committed to providing developing countries $20 billion starting next year and gradually scaling that up to $30 billion by 2030.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reported in September that development finance for biodiversity more than doubled from 2015 to 2022. But when it comes to funding for this agreement, the world was still 23% short of the $20 billion goal.
Advocates said money will be critical since much of the biodiversity that needs protecting is in developing countries like those in Africa.
“There has been progress. Is there enough progress? No,” said Susan Lieberman, the vice president of international policy at Wildlife Conservation Society. “Some countries are taking it seriously and other countries are saying, ‘Oh we want to do this, but where’s the money?'”
More than 30 by 30
In addition to top-tier biodiversity targets, the conference will discuss a goal in the agreement to halt human-induced extinction of threatened species and, by 2050, to reduce extinction rates tenfold. The goal also calls for increasing the “abundance of native wild species” to healthy levels.
But conservationists say the goals lack specifics and hope details can be agreed upon at the meeting.
“Many of these other targets need to be nailed down and quantified, like stopping species extinctions,” said Duke University ecologist Stuart Pimm. “At the moment, they are terribly vague.”
Countries plan to showcase the role biodiversity plays in achieving climate mitigation goals and in health, especially preventing future pandemics.
The meeting will also consider adoption of a global mechanism for sharing of benefits from digital data from genetic material derived from plants, animals, bacteria and viruses. The materials are often used to developed commercial products like drugs — and the hope is that an agreement will ensure profits are shared equitably.
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WINDHOEK, NAMIBIA — Namibians who are part of the LGBTQ+ community often find it difficult to get decent health care and many report discriminatory practices within the health care system.
For example, when 20-year-old Immanuel Uirab sought contraception at a health facility, the nurse on duty would not assist him.
“I don’t know if it’s the shorts I was wearing or you can generally just tell by looking at me that I am gay,” he said, “but then this particular nurse … came out and she was, like, ‘No, we don’t offer contraceptives for people who practice sodomy. We can’t do that for you. … You can go buy them if you want to use them in your private space, but we … won’t give them to you because our government does not support homosexuality.’”
A recent two-day training workshop facilitated by the group Our Equity Advocacy was aimed at encouraging health care practitioners in Namibia to not discriminate against sexual minorities.
Discrimination in health care services violates the right to health care and the human rights principles of equity, privacy and dignity, said the United Nation’s special rapporteur on the right to health, Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng.
Mofokeng held a workshop last weekend in Windhoek where she trained health care practitioners and young people about the role of health care in human rights.
There are many opportunities in which health care workers “can take a seat at the table,” she said. “Not just in policymaking, but importantly in advocacy … also in understanding human rights.”
The executive director of Namibia’s Ministry of Health, Ben Nangombe, said that discrimination in health care based on sexual orientation is against the law and that practitioners who refuse health care to patients for any reason can lose their jobs.
“The official position [of the] government on this matter is that the Namibian government provides health care services to all Namibians who need it without any discrimination whatsoever,” he said.
One theme from last weekend’s workshop was the need for nurses to become agents of change and advocates for their patients.
Letlhogonolo Mokgoroane, a legal practitioner and health rights activist from South Africa who co-facilitated the workshop, said members of sexual minority groups in Africa often face intrusive questioning when they seek medical care.
“Let’s say you are going to a hospital or a clinic for a broken arm or a headache, some tummy ache, whatever,” Mokgoroane said. “What often happens is when you are trans or when you are gender nonconforming or when you are a member of the LGBTI community, immediately what happens is that the questions veer away from why you are actually there to really invasive and discriminatory questions, right? ‘I have a headache, why are you asking me about my sex life? … I have a headache, why are you asking me about my genitalia?’”
Mokgoroane said the issue can be addressed by training health care workers to affirm the gender of their patients when they treat them.
However, Mokgoroane expressed worry that the rise of anti-LGBTQ+ laws in Africa will further drive discriminatory practices in the health care system and undermine public health altogether.
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washington — The Orionids — one of two annual meteor showers from Halley’s comet — peak early Monday. A bright waning moon may make them difficult to spot.
The Orionid meteor shower can be unpredictable. It shines like a fireworks display in some years but is fairly slow in other years.
This highly variable shower may result in anywhere from 20 to 60 visible meteors per hour under ideal viewing conditions, said NASA’s Bill Cooke.
This year’s peak activity happens on a night when a waning moon is 83% full. The shower lasts through November 22.
Here’s what to know about the Orionids and other meteor showers.
What is a meteor shower?
Multiple meteor showers occur annually and don’t require special equipment to see them.
Most meteor showers originate from the debris of comets. The source of the Orionids is Halley’s comet.
When rocks from space enter Earth’s atmosphere, the resistance from the air makes them very hot. This causes the air to glow around them and briefly leaves a fiery tail behind them — the end of a “shooting star.”
The glowing pockets of air around fast-moving space rocks, ranging from the size of a dust particle to a boulder, may be visible in the night sky.
“Halley’s comet does not leave the same numbers of particles behind each year,” making it hard to predict what kind of show viewers will see, said Cooke.
How to view a meteor shower
Meteor showers are usually most visible between midnight and predawn hours.
It’s easier to see shooting stars under dark skies, away from city lights. Meteor showers also appear brightest on cloudless nights when the moon wanes smallest.
And your eyes will better adapt to seeing meteors if you aren’t checking your phone.
“It ruins your night vision,” said Cooke.
When is the next meteor shower?
October has been an active time for celestial sightings including the latest supermoon and the comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas.
The meteor society keeps an updated list of upcoming large meteor showers, including the peak viewing days and moonlight conditions.
The next big one is the Southern Taurid meteor shower, which peaks in early November.
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Scientists say beef production takes a heavy toll on the environment. Cattle produce methane, a powerful planet-warming gas, and forests get cut down for pastures. But one farm in northern Colombia hopes to show ranching can have a lighter footprint on the planet. Austin Landis travelled to Montería in northern Colombia for a closer look at what could be a revolution in sustainable cattle ranching.
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