Author: Uponsci

Uganda began a vaccine trial Monday against the Sudan strain of Ebola that has killed one person in the outbreak declared last week.

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Monday in a post on the X social media platform that the trial was “initiated with record speed, only three days since the outbreak was declared, while ensuring full compliance with international and national regulatory and ethical requirements.”

Officials have not identified the vaccine manufacturer that is providing the East African country with access to more than 2,000 doses of the candidate vaccine.

WHO is supporting Uganda’s response to the outbreak with a $1 million allocation from its Contingency Fund for Emergencies.

So far, there has been only one death attributed to the virus — a nurse who worked at the Mulago National Referral Hospital in Kampala, Uganda’s capital. Two more cases were confirmed on Monday. The Associated Press reported they were members of the nurse’s family.

The nurse sought treatment at several hospitals and had also consulted with a traditional healer before tests confirmed an Ebola diagnosis, according to authorities.

Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director for Africa said in a statement after the outbreak was confirmed, “We welcome the prompt declaration of this outbreak, and as a comprehensive response is being established, we are supporting the government and partners to scale up measures to quicky identify cases, isolate and provide care, curb the spread of the virus and protect the population.”

Uganda’s Health Ministry has identified at least 234 of the nurse’s contacts, according to the AP. Containing the virus could prove challenging in Kampala with its population of 4 million people.

The symptoms of Ebola, an often-fatal disease, include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, health care workers and family members caring for someone with Ebola are at high risk for contracting the disease.

WHO said Ebola “is transmitted to people from wild animals (such as fruit bats, porcupines and non-human primates) and then spreads in the human population through direct contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people, and with surfaces and materials (e.g., bedding, clothing) contaminated with these fluids.”

Ebola’s fatality rate is around 50%, WHO said on its website, but it also said that fatality rates have varied from 25% to 90% in some outbreaks.

The outbreak in Uganda is the first Ebola outbreak since U.S. President Donald Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization.

Some information was provided by The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse.
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The recent outbreak of the H5N1 avian influenza virus in the U.S. and the potential for it to mutate has raised concerns among the scientific community that it could result in human-to-human transmission and a new pandemic. Farmers are also concerned about the potential impacts on their livelihood. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports.
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Arlington, Virginia — A baby food maker is recalling edible sticks meant to ease teething pain over a possible choking hazard. 

Gerber announced Friday that it was recalling and discontinuing its brand of “Sooth N Chew” teething sticks after receiving customer complaints about choking. The company said one emergency room visit had been reported. 

The teething sticks are edible teethers marketed to parents and guardians of children six months and older. They come in strawberry-apple and banana flavors. 

Gerber said it was working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on the recall. 

Customers who bought the teething sticks should return them to stores where they were purchased for a refund, the company said. 

Anyone concerned about an injury or illness should contact a health care provider. For any additional support needed, Gerber is available 24/7 at 1-800-4-GERBER (1-800-443-7237). 

The company says it is working with the U.S. FDA on this recall and will cooperate with them fully. 
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Kampala, Uganda — Ugandan officials are preparing to deploy a trial vaccine as part of efforts to stem an outbreak of Ebola in the capital, Kampala, a top health official said Sunday.

A range of scientists are developing research protocols relating to the planned deployment of more than 2,000 doses of a candidate vaccine against the Sudan strain of Ebola, said Pontiano Kaleebu, executive director of Uganda Virus Research Institute.

“Protocol is being accelerated” to get all the necessary regulatory approvals, he said. “This vaccine is not yet licensed.”

The World Health Organization said in a statement that its support to Uganda’s response to the outbreak includes access to 2,160 doses of trial vaccine.

“Research teams have been deployed to the field to work along with the surveillance teams as approvals are awaited,” the WHO statement said.

The candidate vaccine as well as candidate treatments are being made available through clinical trial protocols to further test for efficacy and safety, it said.

The vaccine maker wasn’t immediately known. There are no approved vaccines for the Sudan strain of Ebola that killed a nurse employed at Kampala’s main referral hospital. The man died on Wednesday and authorities declared an outbreak the next day.

 Officials are still investigating the source of the outbreak, and there has been no other confirmed case.

Uganda has had access to candidate vaccine doses since the end of an Ebola outbreak in September 2022 that killed at least 55 people. Ugandan officials ran out of time to begin a vaccine study when that outbreak, in central Uganda, was declared over about four months later, Kaleebu said.

A trial vaccine known as rVSV-ZEBOV, used to vaccinate 3,000 people at risk of infection during an outbreak of the Zaire strain of Ebola in eastern Congo between 2018 and 2020, proved effective in containing the spread of the disease there.

Uganda has had multiple Ebola outbreaks, including one in 2000 that killed hundreds. The 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa killed more than 11,000 people, the disease’s largest death toll.

Tracing contacts is also key to stemming the spread of Ebola, which manifests as a viral hemorrhagic fever.

At least 44 contacts of the victim in the current outbreak have been identified, including 30 health workers and patients, according to Uganda’s Ministry of Health.

Confirmation of Ebola in Uganda is the latest in a series of outbreaks of viral hemorrhagic fevers in the east African region. Tanzania declared an outbreak of the Ebola-like Marburg disease earlier this month, while in December Rwanda announced that its own outbreak of Marburg was over. The ongoing Marburg outbreak in northern Tanzania’s Kagera region has killed at least two people, according to local health authorities.

Kampala’s outbreak could prove difficult to respond to, because the city has a highly mobile population of about 4 million. The nurse who died had sought treatment at a hospital just outside Kampala and later traveled to Mbale, in the country’s east, where he was admitted to a public hospital. Health authorities said the man also sought the services of a traditional healer.

Ebola is spread by contact with bodily fluids of an infected person or contaminated materials. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding.

Scientists don’t know the natural reservoir of Ebola, but they suspect the first person infected in an outbreak acquired the virus through contact with an infected animal or eating its raw meat.

Ebola was discovered in 1976 in two simultaneous outbreaks in South Sudan and Congo, where it occurred in a village near the Ebola River, after which the disease is named.
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TOKYO — Japan’s space agency said Sunday it successfully launched a navigation satellite on its new flagship H3 rocket as the country seeks to have a more precise location positioning system of its own. 

The H3 rocket carrying the Michibiki 6 satellite lifted off from the Tanegashima Space Center on a southwestern Japanese island. 

Everything went smoothly and the satellite successfully separated from the rocket as planned about 29 minutes after the liftoff, said Makoto Arita, H3 project manager for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA. 

Officials said it is expected to reach its targeted geospatial orbit in about two weeks. 

Japan currently has the quasi-zenith satellite system, or QZSS, with four satellites for a regional navigation system that first went into operation in 2018. The Michibiki 6 will be the fifth of its network. 

Michibiki’s signals are used to supplement American GPS and will further improve positioning data for smartphones, car and maritime navigation and drones. 

Japan plans to launch two more navigation satellites to have a seven-satellite system by March 2026 to have a more precise global positioning capability without relying on foreign services, including the U.S., according to the Japan Science and Technology Agency. By the late 2030s, Japan plans to have an 11-satellite network. 

Sunday’s launch, delayed by a day due to the weather, was the fourth consecutive successful flight for the H3 system after a shocking failed debut attempt last year when the rocket had to be destroyed with its payload. 

Japan sees a stable, commercially competitive space transport capability as key to its space program and national security and has been developing two new flagship rockets as successors to the mainstay H2A series — the larger H3 and a much smaller Epsilon system. It hopes to cater to diverse customer needs and improve its position in the growing satellite launch market. 

 
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WASHINGTON — The U.S. State Department said Saturday that the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) — the world’s leading HIV initiative — was covered by a waiver for life-saving humanitarian assistance during a 90-day pause in foreign aid.

Just hours after taking office on Jan. 20, President Donald Trump ordered the pause so foreign aid contributions could be reviewed to see if they align with his “America First” foreign policy. The U.S. is the world’s largest aid donor.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio initially issued a waiver for emergency food aid and then Tuesday for life-saving medicine, medical services, food, shelter and subsistence help. However, the lack of detail in Trump’s order and the ensuing waivers has left aid groups confused as to whether their work can continue.

So, Saturday the State Department’s Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy issued a memo, seen by Reuters, clarifying that PEPFAR was covered by the Jan. 28 memo and spelling out what activities were allowed.

These include life-saving HIV care and treatment services, including testing and counseling, prevention and treatment of infections including tuberculosis (TB), laboratory services, and procurement and supply chain for commodities/medicines. It also allows prevention of mother-to-child transmission services.

“Any other activities not specifically mentioned in this guidance may not be resumed without express approval,” it said.

More than 20 million people living with HIV, who represent two-thirds of all people living with the disease receiving treatment globally, are directly supported by PEPFAR.

Under Trump’s foreign aid pause, all payments by U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) stopped Tuesday — for the first time since the fiscal year began on Oct. 1 — and have not resumed, according to U.S. Treasury data. On Monday USAID paid out $8 million and last week a total of $545 million.

The Trump administration is also moving to strip a slimmed-down USAID of its independence and put it under State Department control, two sources familiar with the discussions said Friday, in what would be a significant overhaul of how Washington allocates U.S. foreign aid. 
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ANCHORAGE, ALASKA — The Alaska Gold Rush town of Nome faced a bleak winter. It was hundreds of miles from anywhere, cut off by the frozen sea and unrelenting blizzards, and under siege from a contagious disease known as the “strangling angel” for the way it suffocated children. 

Now, 100 years later, Nome is remembering its saviors — the sled dogs and mushers who raced for more than five days through hypothermia, frostbite, gale-force winds and blinding whiteouts to deliver lifesaving serum and free the community from the grip of diphtheria. 

Among the events celebrating the centennial of the 1925 “Great Race of Mercy” are lectures, a dog-food drive and a reenactment of the final leg of the relay, all organized by the Nome Kennel Club. 

Alaskans honor ‘heroic effort’ 

“There’s a lot of fluff around celebrations like this, but we wanted to remember the mushers and their dogs who have been at the center of this heroic effort and … spotlight mushing as a still-viable thing for the state of Alaska,” said Diana Haecker, a kennel club board member and co-owner of Alaska’s oldest newspaper, The Nome Nugget. 

“People just dropped whatever they were doing,” she said. “These mushers got their teams ready and went, even though it was really cold and challenging conditions on the trail.” 

Other communities are also marking the anniversary — including the village of Nenana, where the relay began, and Cleveland, Ohio, where the serum run’s most famous participant, a husky mix named Balto, is stuffed and displayed at a museum. 

Jonathan Hayes, a Maine resident who has been working to preserve the genetic line of sled dogs driven on the run by famed musher Leonhard Seppala, is recreating the trip. Hayes left Nenana on Monday with 16 Seppala Siberian sled dogs, registered descendants of Seppala’s team. 

A race to save lives

Diphtheria is an airborne disease that causes a thick, suffocating film on the back of the throat; it was once a leading cause of death for children. The antitoxin used to treat it was developed in 1890, and a vaccine in 1923; it is now exceedingly rare in the U.S. 

Nome, western Alaska’s largest community, had about 1,400 residents a century ago. Its most recent supply ship had arrived the previous fall, before the Bering Sea froze, without any doses of the antitoxin. Those the local doctor, Curtis Welch, had were outdated, but he wasn’t worried. He hadn’t seen a case of diphtheria in the 18 years he had practiced in the area. 

Within months, that changed. In a telegram, Welch pleaded with the U.S. Public Health Service to send serum: “An epidemic of diphtheria is almost inevitable here.” 

The first death was a 3-year-old boy on January 20, 1925, followed the next day by a 7-year-old girl. By the end of the month, there were more than 20 confirmed cases. The city was placed under quarantine. 

West Coast hospitals had antitoxin doses, but it would take time to get them to Seattle, Washington, and then onto a ship for Seward, Alaska, an ice-free port south of Anchorage, Alaska. In the meantime, enough for 30 people was found at an Anchorage hospital. 

It still had to get to Nome. Airplanes with open-air cockpits were ruled out as unsuited for the weather. There were no roads or trains that reached Nome. 

Instead, officials shipped the serum by rail to Nenana in interior Alaska, some 1,086 kilometers (675 miles) from Nome via the frozen Yukon River and mail trails. 

Thanks to Alaska’s new telegraph lines and the spread of radio, the nation followed along, captivated, as 20 mushers — many of them Alaska Natives — with more than 150 dogs relayed the serum to Nome. They battled deep snow, whiteouts so severe they couldn’t see the dogs in front of them, and life-threatening temperatures that plunged at times to minus minus 51 degrees Celsius (60 degrees Fahrenheit).

The antitoxin was transported in glass vials covered with padded quilts. Not a single vial broke. 

Seppala, a Norwegian settler, left from Nome to meet the supply near the halfway point and begin the journey back. His team, led by his dog Togo, traveled more than 320 kilometers (250 miles) of the relay, including a treacherous stretch across frozen Norton Sound. 

After about 5 1/2 days, the serum reached its destination on February 2, 1925. A banner front-page headline in the San Francisco Chronicle proclaimed “Dogs victors over blizzard in battle to succor stricken Nome.” 

The official record listed five deaths and 29 illnesses. It’s likely the toll was higher; Alaska Natives were not accurately tracked. 

Balto gains fame 

Seppala and Togo missed the limelight that went to his assistant, Gunnar Kaasen, who drove the dog team led by Balto into Nome. Balto was another of Seppala’s dogs, but was used to only haul freight after he was deemed too slow to be on a competitive team.

Balto was immortalized in movies and with statues in New York’s Central Park and one in Anchorage intended as a tribute to all sled dogs. He received a bone-shaped key to the city of Los Angeles, where legendary movie actress Mary Pickford placed a wreath around his neck. 

But he and several team members were eventually sold and kept in squalid conditions at a dime museum in Los Angeles. After learning of their plight, an Ohio businessman spearheaded an effort to raise money to bring them to Cleveland, a city in Ohio. After dying in 1933, Balto was mounted and placed on display at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. 

Iditarod pays homage to run 

Today, the most famous mushing event in the world is the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, which is not based on the serum run but on the Iditarod Trail, a supply route from Seward to Nome. Iditarod organizers are nevertheless marking the serum run’s centennial with a series of articles on its website and by selling replicas of the medallions each serum run musher received a century ago, race spokesperson Shannon Noonan said in an email. This year’s Iditarod starts March 1. 

“The Serum Run demonstrated the critical role sled dogs played in the survival and communication of remote Alaskan communities, while the Iditarod has evolved into a celebration of that tradition and Alaska’s pioneering spirit,” Noonan said. 
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WASHINGTON — Facing intense scrutiny from U.S. senators over his potential profit from vaccine lawsuits while serving as the nation’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that if he is confirmed he will not collect fees from litigation against the drugmakers of a cervical cancer vaccine.

Kennedy, who’s President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. Health and Human Services agency, told the Senate finance committee that he would amend his ethics disclosure after several senators, including Democrat Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and his cousin Caroline Kennedy raised concerns about his financial arrangement with the law firm representing patients who are claiming injuries from the vaccines.

“An amendment to my Ethics Agreement is in process, and it provides that I will divest my interest in this litigation,” Kennedy said in a written response to the committee.

Initially, Kennedy had told the committee that he would continue to accept referral fees in legal cases that don’t involve the U.S. government. That included an arrangement with a law firm that’s sued Merck over Gardasil, its human papillomavirus vaccine that prevents cervical cancer. The deal earned Kennedy $850,000 last year, and he told senators he had referred hundreds of clients to the firm.

During Wednesday’s hearing, Warren outlined several ways in which Kennedy could make it easier to sue vaccine manufacturers.

“Kennedy can kill off access to vaccines and make millions of dollars while he does it,” Warren said. “Kids might die, but Robert Kennedy can keep cashing in.”

The issue also may have been a concern for Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who is also a physician and is conflicted over his vote on Kennedy’s confirmation because of Kennedy’s anti-vaccine views.

The Republican president’s nominee is “financially vested in finding fault with vaccines,” Cassidy, the chair of the health committee, noted as he ended Thursday’s confirmation hearing.

Kennedy also stopped short of making other commitments, refusing to promise that he would not engage in lobbying Health and Human Services after his term ends.

Kennedy and his supporters have railed against that sort of activity, saying the “revolving door” of Washington — where federal officials trade public service jobs to influence government agencies while in the private sector — has undermined the U.S. public health system. He has criticized the practice at least a half-dozen times in social media posts over recent years.

Kennedy, who ran for president last year before dropping his bid and endorsing Trump, vowed in one post on social media platform X to “rein in lobbyists and slam shut the revolving door,” if elected president.

He first challenged President Joe Biden for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination but then ran as an independent before striking a deal to endorse Trump in exchange for a promise to serve in a health policy role during a second Trump administration.

Now, after two days of hearings, his shot at that job is on the line with concerns about his anti-vaccine advocacy prompting nearly all Democrats to reject his nomination and a handful of Republicans who are at least considering doing the same.

If Democrats unanimously oppose Kennedy, he’ll need support from all but three Republicans. The Senate finance committee is expected to decide if he makes it to the Senate floor for a vote next week.

Kennedy’s response to the Senate committee was first reported by The New York Times.
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KAMPALA, UGANDA — A day after Uganda’s Ministry of Health announced a new Ebola outbreak in the capital, Kampala, most Ugandans appeared unaware or unconcerned about the outbreak and went about their business normally. But health authorities are warning Ugandans not to take Ebola lightly.

For weeks, Uganda has battled an outbreak of mpox, also known as monkeypox, that has affected more than 2,000 people and caused 13 deaths, according to the World Health Organization.

But Dr. Julius Lutwama, deputy director of the Uganda Virus Research Institute, said Ugandans need to worry more about Ebola than mpox.

“Ebola is more highly infectious even than monkeypox,” Lutwama said. “And it is even a more severe infection than monkeypox. The percentage of people that end up dead from Ebola is up to 80% while for monkeypox it is below 5%.”

Ebola killed more than 50 people in Uganda during the 2022 outbreak.

Nurse dies of Ebola

On Thursday, Dr. Diana Atwine, Uganda’s permanent secretary in the Ministry of Health, announced the new outbreak after a 32-year-old nurse died from the disease.

Atwine said the nurse sought treatment at multiple health facilities including Mulago National Referral Hospital and from a traditional healer. The patient suffered with high fever, chest pain and difficulty breathing since Jan. 20, then unexplained bleeding and multiple organ failure before dying Wednesday.

Atwine said the nurse died from the Sudan strain of Ebola.

‘We will leave it to God’

While the Ministry of Health is cautioning the public with reminders of the symptoms of Ebola, several Kampala residents who spoke to VOA said they had not heard about or were not worried about the outbreak.

Kampala resident Ntale Steven said he is not going to shut down his business.

“We will leave it to God, so the disease doesn’t spread,” he said. “And if there’s an outbreak, we should get treatment and be helped. Health workers should also care for whoever gets infected. Because we have nothing to do, we must move.”

Health authorities have moved to quarantine those who had contact with the deceased Ebola victim. Out of the 44 people in isolation, 30 are health workers from the National Referral Hospital. The rest are family members and health workers from other private facilities.

Lutwama said because it takes days before symptoms start to show, this is when most infected persons transmit the disease to others, placing health workers at a higher risk.

“Many people then can transmit it during that period, before they come to that stage of bleeding,” said Lutwama. “But still the health workers are supposed to be on the lookout. And they are also supposed to be protected, but as you know, sometimes our hospitals are missing a few things like gloves, they don’t have hypochlorite like Jik [bleach] to be able to wash their hands thoroughly and things like that.”

Even with warnings from Lutwama and the Ministry of Health, Ogwang John, a security guard, said he will take precautions only if he gets an order from his boss.

“Me, I’m not worried,” he said. “I always go with the decision of my boss. When he says that we do this, the disease is there, yes, we can take. But if he has not talked with me, I’m also a carefree man.”

The Ministry of Health said it will continue tracing contacts and monitoring those under isolation as they await more support from the World Health Organization’s contingency fund for emergencies.
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WASHINGTON — Federal officials on Thursday approved a new type of pain pill designed to eliminate the risks of addiction and overdose associated with opioid medications like Vicodin and OxyContin.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it approved Vertex Pharmaceuticals’ Journavx for short-term pain that often follows surgery or injuries.

It’s the first new pharmaceutical approach to treating pain in more than 20 years, offering an alternative to both opioids and over-the-counter medications like ibuprofen and acetaminophen. But the medication’s modest effectiveness and lengthy development process underscore the challenges of finding new ways to manage pain.

Studies in more than 870 patients with acute pain because of foot and abdominal surgeries showed Vertex’s drug provided more relief than a dummy pill but didn’t outperform a common opioid-acetaminophen combination pill.

“It’s not a slam dunk on effectiveness,” said Michael Schuh of the Mayo Clinic, a pharmacist and pain medicine expert who was not involved in the research. “But it is a slam dunk in that it’s a very different pathway and mechanism of action. So, I think that shows a lot of promise.”

The new drug will carry a list price of $15.50 per pill, making it many times more expensive than comparable opioids, which are often available as generics for $1 or less.

Vertex began researching the drug in the 2000s, when overdoses were rocketing upward, principally driven by mass prescribing of opioid painkillers for common ailments like arthritis and back pain. Prescriptions have fallen sharply in the last decade and the current wave of the opioid epidemic is mainly due to illicit fentanyl, not pharmaceutical medicines.

Opioids reduce pain by binding to receptors in the brain that receive nerve signals from different parts of the body. Those chemical interactions also give rise to opioids’ addictive effects.

Vertex’s drug works differently, blocking proteins that trigger pain signals that are later sent to the brain.

“In trying to develop medicines that don’t have the addictive risks of opioid medicines, a key factor is working to block pain signaling before it gets to the brain,” Vertex’s Dr. David Altshuler, told The Associated Press last year.

Commonly reported side effects with the drug were nausea, constipation, itching, rash and headache.

“The new medication has side effect profiles that are inherently, not only different, but don’t involve the risk of substance abuse and other key side effects associated with opioids,” said Dr. Charles Argoff of the Albany Medical Center, who consulted for Vertex on the drug’s development.

The initial concept to focus on pain-signaling proteins came out of research involving people with a rare hereditary condition that causes insensitivity to pain.
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A male nurse in Uganda has died of Ebola, the first recorded death by the disease in the East African country since an outbreak ended in 2023, health officials said.

The 32-year-old nurse worked at Mulago National Specialised Hospital in Kampala, Diana Atwine, permanent secretary of Uganda’s health ministry, said Thursday.

The nurse died Wednesday of the Sudan strain of Ebola, Atwine said.

He sought treatment at several hospitals and had also consulted with a traditional healer before tests confirmed an Ebola diagnosis, health officials said.

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted on X that his organization was supporting Uganda’s efforts to contain an Ebola outbreak in Uganda with a $1 million allocation from WHO’s Contingency Fund for Emergencies.

Atwine said on her X social media account that “rapid response teams are fully deployed, contact tracing is underway, and all necessary measures are in place to contain the situation. We assure the public that we are in full control.”

Contact tracing, however, could be challenging in Kampala, with its population of 4 million people.

The health ministry, however, reported that it had identified 44 contacts of the late nurse, which included 30 other health care workers.

The symptoms of Ebola, an often fatal disease, include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain, and at times internal and external bleeding.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, health care workers and family members caring for someone with Ebola are at high risk for contracting the disease.

WHO said Ebola “is transmitted to people from wild animals (such as fruit bats, porcupines and non-human primates) and then spreads in the human population through direct contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people, and with surfaces and materials (e.g., bedding, clothing) contaminated with these fluids.”

Ebola’s fatality rate is around 50%, WHO said on its website, but it also said that fatality rates have varied from 25% to 90% in some outbreaks.
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WASHINGTON — A key Republican senator on Thursday said he was struggling with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination by President Donald Trump to run the top U.S. health agency, saying he had reservations about the nominee’s “misleading arguments” on vaccines.   

“Your past of undermining confidence in vaccines with unfounded or misleading arguments concerns me,” Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, a physician from Louisiana, told Kennedy. 

“I have been struggling with the nomination,” he said at the end of Thursday’s Senate health committee hearing to consider Kennedy to run the massive Department of Health and Human Services. 

“Does a 70-year-old man … who spent decades criticizing vaccines and who’s financially vested in finding fault with vaccines, can he change his attitudes and approach now that he’ll have the most important position influencing vaccine policy in the United States?” Cassidy said. 

The hearing was the second in two days for Kennedy during which he squared off with Democrats and some Republicans over his past comments on vaccines, abortion and COVID-19 among other topics. 

The Finance Committee, which Kennedy appeared before on Wednesday, has not yet said if it will send Kennedy’s nomination to the full Republican-controlled Senate, which has not rejected any of Trump’s nominees so far. 

A spokesperson for the Finance Committee said a vote could potentially take place next week, but that one had not yet been scheduled.   

Cassidy, who sits on both committees, told Kennedy at the end of Thursday’s hearing that Kennedy would be hearing from him over the weekend, presumably regarding questions he has over the nomination.   

Kennedy’s nomination could fail to move to the Senate for consideration if all Democrats on the Finance Committee voted against him and were joined by Cassidy.   

During wide-ranging questioning on Thursday, Kennedy spoke more confidently than the day prior, adjusting the characterization of previous statements, and saying he would support the U.S. children’s vaccination schedule, research and development for bird flu, and scientific data on vaccine safety. 

Kennedy also said he would address rapidly increasing rates of chronic disease. 

“Our country is not going to be destroyed because we get the marginal tax rate wrong. It is going to be destroyed if we get this issue wrong,” he said of chronic diseases. “And I am in a unique position to be able to stop this epidemic.” 

He was asked about comments he has made over decades, including that it was “highly likely” that Lyme disease was a military bioweapon. He said he never said that it was definitively created in a biolab.   

He would not answer a question from Senator Bernie Sanders about whether he agreed that vaccines do not cause autism. He also said he did not know if the coronavirus vaccine saved millions of lives. 

“If you come out unequivocally, ‘vaccines are safe, it does not cause autism’ that would have an incredible impact,” Cassidy said.   

Kennedy has said vaccines are linked to autism, and he opposed state and federal restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The causes of autism are unclear, though theories that childhood vaccines cause autism have been widely debunked and are contrary to scientific evidence.   

Kennedy, who founded the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, argued during both hearings that he was not against vaccines. The group has sued in state and federal courts over vaccines. 

“News reports and many in the hearing yesterday have claimed that I’m anti-vaccine and anti-industry. Well, I’m neither,” Kennedy said, repeating that his children are vaccinated.   

Thursday’s hearing in front of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions is a courtesy hearing with no vote involved. However, Republican Senators Cassidy, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins sit on the committee, all of whom are seen as potential swing votes against Kennedy. 

Supporters of Kennedy wearing “Make America Healthy Again” hats crowded around the committee hearing room on Thursday, while some opposing his confirmation wore “Reject RFK Jr” stickers on their shirts. 

‘Catastrophic’ impacts   

If confirmed, Kennedy would run HHS, which oversees more than $3 trillion in healthcare spending, including at the Food and Drug Administration and the agency in charge of the Medicare and Medicaid health insurance programs covering nearly half of all Americans.   

He said he would follow Trump’s direction on abortion and would hire for his department those who are against abortion rights.   

Kennedy also said gender-affirming care for children has “catastrophic” impacts and that children are not equipped to make judgments about receiving such care. He said he would rescind a Biden-era rule that requires medical providers who receive federal funding to offer gender-affirming care.   

Kennedy said farmers should be offered an off-ramp from chemically intensive agriculture, and that illness in farm communities is “undoubtedly” related to the use of pesticides. Some farm and food groups have expressed concern about Kennedy’s positions on pesticides and food additives.   

Opposition groups have ramped up their efforts to persuade Republican senators to vote against Kennedy. Caroline Kennedy, another member of the storied American political family, on Tuesday urged senators to vote against her cousin’s nomination, calling him a predator with dangerous views on health care. 

Kennedy has also faced scrutiny over his ties to Wisner Baum, a law firm specializing in pharmaceutical drug injury cases. He has an arrangement to earn 10% of fees awarded in contingency cases he refers to the firm, according to a letter Kennedy wrote to an HHS ethics official released last week. 

If confirmed, Kennedy would retain that financial interest in cases that do not directly impact the U.S. government, the letter said.   

If his nomination goes to the full Senate, Kennedy would need the support of at least 50 senators, which would allow Vice President JD Vance to cast another tie-breaking vote to confirm his nomination. 
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Kampala, Uganda — Uganda has confirmed an outbreak of Ebola virus disease in the capital Kampala, with the first confirmed patient dying from the disease on Wednesday, the health ministry said on Thursday.

The patient, a nurse at the Mulago referral hospital in the capital, had initially sought treatment at various facilities, including Mulago after developing fever-like symptoms.

“The patient experienced multi-organ failure and succumbed to the illness at Mulago National Referral Hospital on Jan 29. Post-mortem samples confirmed Sudan Ebola Virus Disease (strain),” the ministry said.

The highly infectious hemorrhagic fever is transmitted through contact with infected bodily fluids and tissue. Symptoms include headache, vomiting blood, muscle pains and bleeding.

Uganda last suffered an outbreak in late 2022 and that outbreak was declared over on Jan. 11, 2023, after nearly four months in which it struggled to contain the viral infection.

The last outbreak killed 55 of the 143 people infected and the dead included six health workers.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as the nation’s top health official, faced tough questions from senators Wednesday about his views on vaccinations, COVID-19 and the nation’s health care system. A member of one of America’s most famous political families, Kennedy could face a tough road to confirmation. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has more.
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WASHINGTON — In a contentious confirmation hearing on his nomination to become the nation’s top health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. struggled to answer questions about how he would reform Medicaid or Medicare, the government health care programs used by millions of disabled, poor and older Americans.

Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a physician and key vote Kennedy needs to win, repeatedly pressed the nominee on Wednesday to share ways he plans to reform Medicaid, a multibillion-dollar taxpayer-funded program that covers health care for about 80 million people, including children. Republicans have said they might need to make deep cuts to Medicaid to fund President Donald Trump’s proposals.

“I don’t have a broad proposal for dismantling the program,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy also inaccurately claimed that Medicaid is fully paid for by the federal government. It’s not; states and federal taxpayers fund it. He also said most Americans have purchased a Medicare Advantage plan, when only about 1 in 10 Americans have.

His misstatements about the program were peppered in between suggestions that he would seek to push privatization of the programs, repeatedly saying that most Americans like private insurance and that they dislike the government-run versions of the programs.

Kennedy is seeking to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, an agency with a $1.7 trillion budget that oversees, among other things, vaccine recommendations, food inspections, hospital oversight, and funding for hundreds of community health clinics.

In sometimes heated exchanges Wednesday, Kennedy denied that he is anti-vaccine. But Kennedy, who pointed out that his children are vaccinated, acknowledged he has asked “uncomfortable questions” about vaccinations. 

“I believe that vaccines play a critical role in health care,” Kennedy told the Senate Finance Committee.

Republicans did not ask Kennedy about his vaccine views during the first hour of the hearing.

But Democrats did, with Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon pointing out that Kennedy has previously claimed there’s “no safe” vaccine, initiating a back-and-forth between him and Kennedy. Wyden also quoted from Kennedy’s books, which say that parents have been “misled” on the measles vaccine.

“You have spent years pushing conflicting stories about vaccines,” Wyden said. 

Over many years, Kennedy has expressed his beliefs about vaccines in dozens of interviews, podcasts and social media posts.

He’s led a nonprofit that has sued the government over its authorizations of vaccines. He has said there is “no vaccine that is safe and effective” and repeatedly has called for further study of routine childhood vaccinations, despite decades of research and real-world use that prove they’ve safely prevented disease.

Republicans focused on questions about agriculture, food and the abortion pill, which many women access via telemedicine systems.

Kennedy tried to assure senators that he would not seek widespread bans on vaccines or food, saying he wants to provide more information to people.

“I don’t want to take food away from anybody,” he said. “If you like a cheeseburger – a McDonald’s cheeseburger and a Diet Coke, like my boss — you should be able to get them.” 

Kennedy hails from one of the nation’s most storied political families and is the son of the late Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of President John F. Kennedy.  

He first challenged President Joe Biden for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination. He then ran as an independent but abandoned his bid over the summer after striking a deal to endorse Trump, a Republican, in exchange for a promise to serve in a health policy role during a second Trump administration.

Trump selected Kennedy in November, shortly after he won the presidential election, saying Kennedy would “end the Chronic Disease epidemic” and “Make America Great and Healthy Again!” With Kennedy being one of the most prominent anti-vaccine activists in the world, his nomination immediately alarmed some public health officials.
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ISLAMABAD — A senior World Health Organization official cautioned Wednesday that the eradication of polio in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the only countries where the paralytic virus persists, is threatened by the suspension of funding from the United States.

In an online news conference, Hanan Balkhy, regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean, emphasized the crucial role of U.S. financial contribution to the organization’s surveillance efforts for polio and all other communicable diseases, particularly within her region.

Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered an unprecedented 90-day suspension of almost all foreign aid to give his administration the time to evaluate whether to continue funding the numerous humanitarian, development and security programs that receive U.S. assistance.

On his first day back in the White House, Trump announced he was withdrawing the United States from WHO.

His executive order accused the United Nations agency of mishandling the COVID-19 pandemic and other global health crises, as well as failing “to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states.”

Balkhy referred to Trump’s announcement to withdraw from WHO as “very unfortunate” and highlighted that the U.S. has been a “major” supporter of her organization’s work in the Eastern Mediterranean region for decades.

“The U.S. funding was indeed decisive in fighting polio, eradicating polio. Currently, we are in the last round of eradicating polio in the last two countries in the world: Afghanistan and Pakistan,” the Saudi physician said through an interpreter.

“We hope that our collaboration with our partners will enable us to achieve our goal of fully eradicating polio in these countries during this final stage,” she added.

Balkhy emphasized WHO’s dedication to safeguarding the world against the resurgence of polio.

In 2024, Pakistan reported 73 cases of the paralytic poliovirus, while Afghanistan reported 25 cases. Although there have been no additional polio cases in Afghanistan so far, Pakistani officials confirmed the first poliovirus infection of 2025 last week.

Balkhy attributed efforts led by WHO to contain what she described as the “inevitable” spread of polio in Gaza due to the destruction of its sewage and sanitation services.

She stated they are prepared to discuss the reforms the United States plans to propose and carry out necessary internal assessments to help advance the organization’s work.

“Funding shortfalls in 2024 have already led to devastating cuts to lifesaving health operations. We ask for your support in amplifying our message — help us save lives, restore health systems and bring hope to millions,” Balkhy said.
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Russian disinformation narratives about illicit organ harvesting and biological experiments in Ukraine have no basis in fact. Russia intentionally distorts Ukrainian law intended to support vital medical procedures.   
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WASHINGTON — The CIA now believes the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic most likely originated from a laboratory, according to an assessment released Saturday that points the finger at China even while acknowledging that the spy agency has “low confidence” in its own conclusion.

The finding is not the result of any new intelligence, and the report was completed at the behest of the Biden administration and former CIA Director William Burns. It was declassified and released Saturday on the orders of President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the agency, John Ratcliffe, who was sworn in Thursday as director.

The nuanced finding suggests the agency believes the totality of evidence makes a lab origin more likely than a natural origin. But the agency’s assessment assigns a low degree of confidence to this conclusion, suggesting the evidence is deficient, inconclusive or contradictory.

Earlier reports on the origins of COVID-19 have split over whether the coronavirus emerged from a Chinese lab, potentially by mistake, or whether it arose naturally. The new assessment is not likely to settle the debate. In fact, intelligence officials say it may never be resolved, due to a lack of cooperation from Chinese authorities.

The CIA “continues to assess that both research-related and natural origin scenarios of the COVID-19 pandemic remain plausible,” the agency wrote in a statement about its new assessment.

Instead of new evidence, the conclusion was based on fresh analyses of intelligence about the spread of the virus, its scientific properties and the work and conditions of China’s virology labs.

Lawmakers have pressured America’s spy agencies for more information about the origins of the virus, which led to lockdowns, economic upheaval and millions of deaths. It’s a question with significant domestic and geopolitical implications as the world continues to grapple with the pandemic’s legacy.

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Saturday he was “pleased the CIA concluded in the final days of the Biden administration that the lab-leak theory is the most plausible explanation,” and he commended Ratcliffe for declassifying the assessment.

“Now, the most important thing is to make China pay for unleashing a plague on the world,” Cotton said in a statement.

China’s embassy in Washington did not immediately return messages seeking comment. Chinese authorities have in the past dismissed speculation about COVID’s origins as unhelpful and motivated by politics.

While the origin of the virus remains unknown, scientists think the most likely hypothesis is that it circulated in bats, like many coronaviruses, before infecting another species, probably racoon dogs, civet cats or bamboo rats. In turn, the infection spread to humans handling or butchering those animals at a market in Wuhan, where the first human cases appeared in late November 2019.

Some official investigations, however, have raised the question of whether the virus escaped from a lab in Wuhan. Two years ago, a report by the Energy Department concluded a lab leak was the most likely origin, though that report also expressed low confidence in the finding.

The same year then-FBI Director Christopher Wray said his agency believed the virus “most likely” spread after escaping from a lab.

Ratcliffe, who served as director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term, has said he favors the lab leak scenario, too.

“The lab leak is the only theory supported by science, intelligence, and common sense,” Ratcliffe said in 2023.

The CIA said it will continue to evaluate any new information that could change its assessment.
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