Magazine

GENEVA — Scientific evidence documented in a series of articles presented by the World Health Organization this week highlights the harmful impact of climate change at key stages of the human life cycle.

“These provide important scientific evidence on how the health of pregnant women, newborns, children, adolescents and older people is affected by air pollution and different climate hazards, including wildfires, flooding and extreme heat,” Anayda Portela, director of the WHO’s department of maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health and aging, said at a briefing Friday for journalists in Geneva.

“This evidence is critically important, because it shows the leading health risks for each of these groups for these different climate events,” Portela said.

She noted that the collection of articles published in the Journal of Global Health shows that climate-related health risks “have been crucially underestimated” for younger and older people and during pregnancy, “with serious, often life-threatening implications.”

The studies find that climate-related natural hazards have some “serious mental and physical health impacts” in pregnancy, and for younger and older people.

For example, the authors note that preterm births, which now are the leading cause of childhood deaths, “increase during heatwaves, while older people are more likely to suffer heart attacks or respiratory distress.”

They report that heatwaves also “affect cognitive function and therefore learning for children and adolescents.”

The World Meteorological Organization’s State of Global Climate report confirms 2023 as the hottest year on record and predicts that global temperatures over “the entire five-year 2024-2028 period will exceed 1.5 degrees centigrade above the pre-industrial era,” which scientists warn could lead to rapid and irreversible changes in the climate.

According to the World Health Organization, between 2030 and 2050, climate change is projected to cause approximately “250,000 additional deaths per year from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat stress alone.”

Portela also warned that air pollution increases the likelihood of high blood pressure during pregnancy, low birth weight, preterm birth and negative impacts on fetal brain and lung development.

“It raises risk of respiratory illness among children and older people,” she said, adding that they also face greater risks of “cancer, cardiovascular disease and pneumonia.”

The studies detail the many noxious effects on mental and physical well-being from climate-related natural disasters, including flooding and drought, as well as wildfires, which have been shown to increase respiratory disorders and cardiovascular mortality rates for older people.

“There is an urgent need to mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and to build climate resilience, to take specific actions that protect health at these various life stages,” Portela said.

Authors of the reports note that “few climate adaptation measures are tailored for the specific needs of women, infants, children and adolescents,” as well as older people who may have mobility and cognitive constraints.

Nevertheless, the WHO urges governments to prioritize climate change as a health issue, pointing out several specific actions they can take to promote and protect health at different life stages.

For example, this could include flexibility around work hours, preparing childcare and educational systems for extreme weather events and rising temperatures, and informing people and communities about various measures that can protect vulnerable people during heatwaves and periods of worsening air pollution.
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MONTGOMERY, Alabama — Parts of the north side of Montgomery are defined by what it has lost: restaurants, grocery stores and a convenient pharmacy, the latter of which closed five years ago.

People who still live in the historically Black neighborhood of Newtown, like Sharon Harris, are frustrated. She goes to a different location of the same pharmacy chain, which is four miles from her home.

“You have to come back sometimes,” she said, “and then they wait so long to fill the prescription.”

In cities across the U.S., major retail pharmacies have closed hundreds of stores over the past few years and independents can’t always afford to stay open. That can leave residents of color without easy access to a business that provides not only prescriptions but also fundamental public health services like vaccinations, over-the-counter medicines and even food.

Closures create “a situation where there’s not just (a lack of) investment in terms of pharmacy development and expansion, but there’s no incentive to stay in those neighborhoods,” said Dima Qato, a professor of clinical pharmacy at the University of Southern California who has studied pharmacy access.

And an Associated Press analysis of licensing data from 44 states, data from the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs and the American Community Survey shows residents of neighborhoods that are majority Black and Hispanic have fewer pharmacies per capita than people who live in mostly white neighborhoods.

MAC Pharmacy is the only one serving about 20,000 people in a majority Black ZIP code in Cleveland. George Tadross, the part-owner and pharmacy manager, said he is adamant about making things as as easy as possible for his mostly older customers — sometimes by organizing their medications by day for them.

“You have to have a pharmacist to talk to,” he said. “My philosophy in the pharmacy business is you know your doctor, he knows everything about you. You need to know your pharmacist as well (because) the pharmacist is the only one that sees the whole medical treatment plan you have.”

Pharmacists play a role in managing chronic diseases like diabetes and heart-related issues, which Black and Hispanic people are more likely to be diagnosed with.

And when pharmacists or pharmacy technicians reflect their customer base — by speaking the same language or understanding the community — it can be easier to build a strong rapport and trust, said Jasmine Gonzalvo, who teaches at Purdue University’s College of Pharmacy and has researched the needs of Spanish-speaking patients at pharmacies.

She noted that if people don’t feel comfortable asking questions about the medication, then it might mean they don’t take it or don’t take it correctly.

“You don’t get a refill,” Gonzalvo said, “simply because there were barriers in the way of your communicating and feeling safe in that relationship with your pharmacist.”

That’s why Bert’s Pharmacy in Elizabeth, New Jersey, has “Spanish- and English-speaking staff all the time,” said owner and pharmacist Prakash Patel said. His business is located in an ZIP code where nearly 70% of the residents are Hispanic.

“We want to make sure, too, they understood everything,” Patel said. “We have Spanish-language labels for them, we print all the instructions in Spanish for them.”

In Montgomery, where Harris lives, the city is working on a development plan for the north side. A retail analysis in the plan shows a small pharmacy could generate $1.5 million in sales a year.

“There’s an opportunity there because you have what I call a captive market,” said Bob Gibbs, the director of Gibbs Planning Group, which did the analysis. “People that live in a lot of these neighborhoods have limited access to transportation … and they’re very loyal to local businesses that will treat them with respect.

“They will go out of their way just to go there. And they just don’t like having to drive … two miles to go to a drugstore. That’s unfair.”

Harris, though, doesn’t have much hope a new pharmacy will open.

“I don’t see it,” she said. “As long as they have (that CVS) they think it’s OK. … Everybody is waiting for them to do something on this side.”
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LUSAKA, Zambia — A Zambian court on Friday sentenced 22 Chinese nationals to long prison terms for cybercrimes that included internet fraud and online scams targeting Zambians and other people from Singapore, Peru and the United Arab Emirates.

The Magistrates Court in the capital, Lusaka, sentenced them for terms ranging from seven to 11 years. The court also fined them between $1,500 and $3,000 after they pleaded guilty to charges of computer-related misrepresentation, identity fraud and illegally operating a network or service on Wednesday. A man from Cameroon also was sentenced and fined on the same changes.

They were part of a group of 77 people, the majority of them Zambians, arrested in April over what police described as a “sophisticated internet fraud syndicate.”

Director-general of the drug enforcement commission, Nason Banda, said investigations began after authorities noticed a spike in the number of cyber-related fraud cases and many people complained about inexplicably losing money from their mobile phones or bank accounts.

Officers from the commission, police, the immigration department and the anti-terrorism unit in April swooped on a Chinese-run business in an upmarket suburb of Lusaka, arresting the 77, including those sentenced Friday. Authorities recovered over 13,000 local and foreign mobile phone SIM cards, two firearms and 78 rounds of ammunition during the raid.

The business, named Golden Top Support Services, had employed “unsuspecting” Zambians aged between 20 and 25 to use the SIM cards to engage “in deceptive conversations with unsuspecting mobile users across various platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram, chat rooms and others, using scripted dialogues,” Banda said in April after the raid. The locals were freed on bail.
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NEW YORK — The mysterious death of a man in Mexico who had one kind of bird flu is unrelated to outbreaks of a different type at U.S. dairy farms, experts say.

Here’s a look at the case and the different types of bird flu.

What happened in the Mexico bird flu case? A 59-year-old man in Mexico who had been bedridden because of chronic health problems developed a fever, shortness of breath and diarrhea in April. He died a week later, and the World Health Organization this week reported it.

The WHO said it was the first time that version of bird flu — H5N2 — had been seen in a person.

What’s been happening in the U.S. with bird flu? A different version of bird flu — H5N1 — has been infecting poultry flocks over the last several years, leading to millions of birds being culled. It also has been spreading among all different kinds of animals around the world.

This year, that flu was detected in U.S. dairy farms. Dozens of herds have seen infections, most recently in Iowa and Minnesota.

The cow outbreak has been tied to three reported illnesses in farmworkers, one in Texas and two in Michigan. Each had only mild symptoms.

What do the letters and numbers mean in bird flu names? So-called influenza A viruses are the only viruses tied to human flu pandemics, so their appearance in animals and people is a concern. These viruses are divided into subtypes based on what kinds of proteins they have on their surface — hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N).

Scientists say there are 18 different “H” subtypes and 11 different “N” subtypes, and they appear in scores of combinations. H1N1 and H3N2 are common causes of seasonal flu among humans. There are many versions seen in animals as well.

H5N1, the version that has worried some U.S. scientists lately, historically has been seen mainly in birds, but has in recent years has spread to a wide variety of mammals.

What is H5N2? H5N2 has long been seen in Mexican poultry, and farms vaccinate against it.

It’s also no stranger to the United States. An H5N2 outbreak hit a flock of 7,000 chickens in south-central Texas in 2004, the first time in two decades a dangerous-to-poultry avian flu appeared in the U.S.

H5N2 also was mainly responsible for a wave outbreaks at U.S. commercial poultry farms in 2014 and 2015.

How dangerous is H5N2? Over the years, H5N2 has teetered between being considered a mild threat to birds and a severe threat, but it hasn’t been considered much of a human threat at all.

A decade ago, researchers used mice and ferrets to study the strain afflicting U.S. poultry at the time, and concluded it was less likely to spread and less lethal than H5N1. Officials also said there was no evidence it was spreading among people.

Rare cases of animal infections are reported each year, so it’s not unexpected that a person was diagnosed with H5N2.

“If you’re a glass half full kind of person, you’d say, ‘This is the system doing exactly what it’s supposed to do: detecting and documenting these rare human infections, where years ago we were stumbling in the dark,'” said Matthew Ferrari, director of Penn State’s Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics.

Indeed, Mexico Health Secretary Jorge Alcocer said kidney and respiratory failure — not the virus — actually caused the man’s death.

Some experts said it is noteworthy that it’s not known how he caught the man caught H5N2.

“The fact there was no reported contact (with an infected bird) does raise the possibility that he was infected by someone else who visited him, but it’s premature to jump to those conclusions,” said Richard Webby, a flu researcher at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis.

What about other types of bird flu? At this point, H5N2 is still considered a minor threat compared to some of the other kinds of bird flu out there. Most human illnesses have been attributed to H7N9, H5N6 and H5N1 bird flu viruses.

From early 2013 through October 2017, five outbreaks of H7N9 were blamed for killing more than 600 people in China. And at least 18 people in China died during an outbreak of H5N6 in 2021, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

H5N1 was first identified in 1959, but didn’t really began to worry health officials until a Hong Kong outbreak in 1997 that involved severe human illnesses and deaths.

H5N1 cases have continued since then, the vast majority of them involving direct contact between people and infected animals. Globally, more than 460 human deaths have been identified since 2003, according to WHO statistics that suggest it can kill as many as half of the people reported to be infected.

Like other viruses, H5N1 as evolved over time, spawning newer versions of itself. In the last few years, the predominant version of the virus has spread quickly among a wide range of animals, but counts of human fatalities have slowed.
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Zimbabwe is facing long hours of power cuts due to its dilapidated infrastructure and the impact of recurring droughts on hydropower. To help, the United Nations Development Program is installing solar panels on government-owned health facilities. Columbus Mavhunga reports from Bulawayo.
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Boca Chica, Texas — SpaceX’s mega Starship rocket completed its first full test flight Thursday, returning to Earth without exploding after blasting off from Texas. 

The previous three test flights ended in explosions of the rocket and the spacecraft. This time, both managed to splash down in a controlled fashion. 

The world’s largest and most powerful rocket — almost 121 meters tall — was empty as it soared above the Gulf of Mexico and headed east on a flight to the Indian Ocean. 

Minutes after Thursday morning’s liftoff, the first-stage booster separated from the spacecraft and splashed into the gulf precisely as planned, after firing its engines. 

An hour later, live views showed parts of the spacecraft breaking away during the intense heat of reentry, but it remained intact enough to transmit data all the way to its targeted splashdown site in the Indian Ocean. 

“And we have splashdown!” SpaceX launch commentator Kate Tice announced from Mission Control at company headquarters in California. 

It was a critical milestone in the company’s plan to eventually return Starship’s Super Heavy booster to its launch site for reuse. 

SpaceX came close to avoiding explosion in March, but lost contact with the spacecraft as it careened out of space and blew up short of its goal. The booster also ruptured in flight, a quarter-mile above the gulf. 

Last year’s two test flights ended in explosions shortly after blasting off from the southern tip of Texas near the Mexican border. The first one cratered the pad at Boca Chica Beach and hurled debris for thousands of feet (meters). 

SpaceX upgraded the software and made some rocket-flyback changes to improve the odds. The Federal Aviation Administration signed off Tuesday on this fourth demo, saying all safety requirements had been met. 

Starship is designed to be fully reusable. That’s why SpaceX wants to control the booster’s entry into the gulf and the spacecraft’s descent into the Indian Ocean — it’s intended as practice for planned future landings. Nothing is being recovered from Thursday’s flight. 

NASA has ordered a pair of Starships for two moon-landing missions by astronauts, on tap for later this decade. Each moon crew will rely on NASA’s own rocket and capsule to leave Earth, but meet up with Starship in lunar orbit for the ride down to the surface. 

SpaceX already is selling tourist trips around the moon. The first private lunar customer, a Japanese tycoon, pulled out of the trip with his entourage last week, citing the oft-delayed schedule. 

SpaceX’s founder and CEO has grander plans: Musk envisions fleets of Starships launching people and the infrastructure necessary to build a city on Mars. 
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BRUSSELS/GENEVA — Each of the past 12 months ranked as the warmest on record in year-on-year comparisons, the EU’s climate change monitoring service said on Wednesday, as U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called for urgent action to avert “climate hell.”

The average global temperature for the 12-month period to the end of May was 1.63 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average – making it the warmest such period since record-keeping began in 1940, the Copernicus Climate Change Service said.

This 12-month average does not mean that the world has yet surpassed the 1.5 degrees C global warming threshold, which describes a temperature average over decades, beyond which scientists warn of more extreme and irreversible impacts.

In a separate report, the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said there is now an 80% chance that at least one of the next five years will mark the first calendar year with an average temperature that temporarily exceeds 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels — up from a 66% chance last year.

Speaking about the findings, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres emphasized how quickly the world was heading in the wrong direction and away from stabilizing its climate system.

“In 2015, the chance of such a breach was near zero,” Guterres said in a speech marking World Environment Day.

With time running out to reverse course, Guterres urged a 30% cut in global fossil fuel production and use by 2030.

“We need an exit ramp off the highway to climate hell,” he said, adding: “The battle for 1.5 degrees will be won or lost in the 2020s.”

‘Way off track’

Carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels – the main cause of climate change – hit a record high last year despite global agreements designed to curb their release and a rapid expansion in renewable energy.

Coal, oil and gas still provide more than three quarters of the world’s energy, with global oil demand remaining strong.

The latest climate data show that the world is “way off track” from its goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C – the key target of the world’s 2015 Paris Accord, WMO Deputy Secretary-General Ko Barrett said.

“We must urgently do more to cut greenhouse gas emissions, or we will pay an increasingly heavy price in terms of trillions of dollars in economic costs, millions of lives affected by more extreme weather, and extensive damage to the environment and biodiversity,” Barrett said.

Barrett described the cooling effect of La Nina weather conditions, which are expected to take hold later this year, as “a mere blip in the upward curve” in the heat felt across the globe.

“We all need to know that we need to reverse this curve and we need to do it urgently,” she said.

While last year registered as the warmest calendar year on record at 1.45 degrees C  above pre-industrial temperatures, at least one of the next five years is likely to be even warmer than 2023, the WMO data show.

Scientists at Copernicus said there were some surprising developments – such as the steep loss of Antarctic sea ice in recent months – but that the overall climate data were in line with projections of how rising greenhouse gas emissions would heat the planet.

“We have not seen anything like this in the last several thousand years,” said Copernicus Director Carlo Buontempo.

Guterres took aim at fossil fuel companies.

“The godfathers of climate chaos – the fossil fuel industry – rake in record profits and feast off trillions in taxpayer-funded subsidies,” he said.

Drawing a comparison with many governments’ restrictions on advertising for harmful substances like tobacco, he said, “I urge every country to ban advertising from fossil fuel companies, and I urge news media and tech companies to stop taking fossil fuel advertising.” 
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Many Israeli and Palestinian children are suffering from trauma because of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing eight months of war between the two sides. Therapists in both communities say the emotional scars could linger for years. Linda Gradstein reports from Jerusalem.
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Geneva — The World Health Organization said Wednesday a person in Mexico had died in the first confirmed human case globally of infection with the H5N2 variant of bird flu.

The patient, who died on April 24 after developing fever, shortness of breath, diarrhea and nausea, had “no history of exposure to poultry or other animals” and “multiple underlying medical conditions,” the WHO said.

Mexican health authorities reported the confirmed case of human infection with the virus to the U.N. health body on May 23, after a 59-year-old was taken to a hospital in Mexico City.

The WHO said the case was the “first laboratory-confirmed human case of infection with an influenza A(H5N2) virus reported globally”.

The source of exposure to the virus was unknown, the WHO said, although cases of H5N2 have been reported in poultry in the country.

According to the U.N. health body, H5N2 cases affected poultry in the state of Michoacan in March, with other outbreaks identified in the state of Mexico.

But it said establishing a link between the human case and the poultry infections was so far impossible, estimating the risk to people as “low.”

A different variant of bird flu, H5N1, has been spreading for weeks among dairy cow herds in the United States, with a small number of cases reported among humans.

But none of the cases are human-to-human infections, with the disease instead jumping from cattle to people, authorities have said.
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