Turkey’s plastic recycling industry is strongly criticized in a Human Rights Watch report released Wednesday. The report highlights health problems for workers and residents and criticizes the European Union, for which Turkey is the main plastics recycler. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.
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Month: September 2022
Most Global Deaths Are From Preventable Noncommunicable Diseases
The World Health Organization warns noncommunicable diseases kill 41 million people each year, equivalent to 74 percent of all deaths globally.
A new global report by the World Health Organization finds noncommunicable diseases now outnumber infectious diseases as the top killers globally. Each year, it says 17 million people under age 70 die prematurely from noncommunicable diseases or NCD. The biggest killers are cardiovascular diseases, followed by cancers, chronic respiratory diseases, and diabetes.
WHO director of noncommunicable diseases, Bente Mikkelsen, says most of these deaths are preventable.
“Every two seconds, someone under the age of 70 is dying from an NCD,” said Mikkelsen. “And many people do not still realize that 86 percent of these premature deaths, namely dying too young are taking place in low-and-middle-income countries, making NCD an issue of equity and sustainable development as well as health.”
WHO blames most of these preventable deaths on four key risk factors. It cites high blood pressure as the biggest threat, noting 1.3 billion adults worldwide have this condition.
Mikkelsen says too many people are unaware they have this potentially deadly condition. Consequently, they are not getting the lifesaving treatment they need.
“If people had access to health services where they could get their blood pressure checked and get support to manage hypertension, nearly 10 million heart attacks and strokes could be averted by 2030,” said Mikkelsen. “Other major risk factors like unhealthy diet, tobacco use, and harmful use of alcohol are heavily influenced by industry, including the formulation, packaging design, marketing, and promotional product.”
WHO reports at least 39 million deaths could be averted by 2030 if every country were to adopt the interventions known to work.
The U.N. Health Agency urges people to embrace healthier lifestyles and modify risky behavior to reduce their chances of getting a deadly disease. It says those who stop smoking, exercise more, eat a healthier diet and drink only moderate amounts of alcohol will add years to their lives.
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India Develops Affordable Vaccine Against Cervical Cancer
For the first time in India, a domestically-made vaccine that provides protection against cervical cancer—the second-most common type of cancer afflicting women in the country—will be accessible to the majority of the population, including the poorest, according to leading healthcare professionals.
The vaccine, Cervavac, is produced by The Serum Institute of India (SII), the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer. The vaccine shot is expected to launch by December this year, SII chief executive Adar Poonawalla said in a statement Tuesday.
“Cervavac will make India self-sufficient in controlling female mortality caused by cervical cancer. The government of India will induct it in the national [vaccination] program in a few months,” Poonawalla said.
The vaccine protects against the Human Papilloma Virus, the main cause of cervical cancer and a potential cause of other cancers. SSI says it will be accessible to both men and women at a price range of 200 to 400 rupees—about $2.50 to $5.
Dr. Smita Joshi, leader of the SII’s HPV vaccine study, said “The vaccine will be chiefly beneficial for girls aged 9 to 15 or women who are not yet sexually active.
“If we vaccinate adolescent girls now, its effect on reducing the cancer burden in the country will be seen within three to four decades,” she said.
According to Joshi, the effectiveness of the vaccine is lower among adult women, who will require cervical cancer screenings—preferably with an HPV test—followed by appropriate management for those who test positive for sexually transmitted HPV.
Dr. Mayoukh Kumar Chakraborty, assistant professor of gynecology and obstetrics at Kolkata’s KPC Medical College & Hospital, said even though three highly effective foreign-manufactured HPV vaccines are already available in India, the cheapest of them is priced around $35 per dose.
“So, HPV vaccination was not included in the national immunization program following its introduction in 2008,” he said.
In a statement, SII said it is offering Cervavac at a lower price because of the company’s “philanthropic philosophy” and to protect under-privileged children all over the world.
According to India’s Science and Technology Ministry, cervical cancer kills about 75,000 Indian women per year.
Science and Technology Minister Dr. Jitendra Singh said that the COVID-19 pandemic has sparked awareness regarding preventative healthcare and India can now afford to start developing its own vaccines.
“Therefore, vaccination against HPV is the most promising initiative in the quest to prevent cervical cancer,” he said.
Joshi, who also leads the World Health Organization’s HPV vaccine study at Jehangir Clinical Development Center in the city of Pune, said: “The awareness about cervical cancer prevention in India, which includes vaccination and cervical cancer screening, is dismally low.”
There are many misconceptions regarding the disease, even among the educated population and healthcare providers, she said.
“It is advised that adolescent girls get HPV vaccinations, and that women between the ages of 30 to 49 get cervical cancer screenings, even if they have no symptoms,” she added.
Chakraborty, the gynecologist, said the upcoming Indian vaccine is expected to be effective.
“The country’s drug regulatory authority examined the data of Cervavac’s immunogenicity trials conducted at 13 centers across India and approved the vaccine in July. It is expected to generate a robust response in 100% of the vaccine recipients, according to the third phase of the trials,” he said.
Joshi added: “Through this initiative, the goal of eliminating cervical cancer from the country may be attainable.”
Bollywood actor Manisha Koirala, who has been an ovarian cancer survivor for ten years, thanked the Ministry of Science and Technology at the event announcing the impending launch of Cervavac.
“It is a great day for women in India and the world over, as there is life beyond cancer,” she said.
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Angelina Jolie Makes Surprise Visit to Flood-hit Pakistan
Hollywood actress and U.N. humanitarian Angelina Jolie made a surprise visit to one of the worst flood-hit areas in southern Pakistan on Tuesday, officials said, as the death toll from months-long deluges rose to 1,559.
TV footage showed Jolie arriving at an airport in Karachi, the capital of southern Sindh province, where floods since mid-June have killed 692 people, damaged hundreds of thousands of homes and left half a million people homeless.
Later, she visited some of the flood-affected areas, according to local media.
According to the IRC, a prominent international aid group, Jolie is visiting Pakistan to support communities affected by the devastating floods.
There was no comment from the government about Jolie’s visit to Dadu, one of the worst-hit districts where waterborne diseases have also caused nearly 300 deaths since July. Currently, doctors are trying to contain the outbreak of waterborne diseases among flood survivors.
The visit comes as Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif is in New York for the 77th session of the U.N. General Assembly. In his speech, Sharif will highlight the damages caused by climate-change induced floods in the impoverished country.
Pakistan says the floods have caused $30 billion in damages to the country’s economy.
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Uganda Confirms Ebola Outbreak After Man Dies From Virus
Officials in Uganda have confirmed an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus. The country’s Ministry of Health says a young man died of the virus in central Uganda Monday, and several of his relatives who died earlier this month are also suspected to have had Ebola. The government has sent a rapid response team to the area to investigate.
Uganda’s Ministry of Health officials say the suspected Ebola case was identified Saturday in a village in the central Mubende district.
The ministry’s permanent secretary, Dr. Diana Atwine, says a 24-year-old man was admitted to a hospital for pneumonia and diarrhea.
But his symptoms also included those of the deadly virus — a dry cough, high fever, convulsions, blood-stained vomit and bleeding in the eyes.
Speaking at a press conference Tuesday, Atwine said the clinical team and the Uganda Virus Research Institute conducted tests for Ebola.
“The results were released yesterday evening and they confirmed Ebola, the Sudan strain,” she said. “Unfortunately, that morning of 19th, the patient who had been confirmed with Ebola passed on.”
Atwine said six of the man’s relatives who died earlier this month — three adults and three children from the same family — also may have had Ebola.
The World Health Organization’s Uganda office says there are eight more people with suspected cases that are receiving care at a health facility.
Uganda’s health ministry has yet to identify the source of the infection but suspects wildlife to human contact.
A rapid response team was sent to Mubende to investigate, put in place control measures, and use rapid testing on contacts in the community.
But the World Health Organization says vaccinating those who were in contact with the infected or someone linked to them, known as ring vaccination, will not be possible.
WHO-Uganda’s head of disease prevention and control, Dr. Bayo Fatunmbi, told the briefing there is currently no effective vaccine available for the Sudan strain of Ebola.
“The ring vaccination that worked with [the] Zaire virus, will not be useful for this particular Sudan strain,” he said. “But there’s another type of vaccine, Johnson and Johnson, that is being tested currently [to see] whether it will be useful for this particular strain.”
The WHO says ring vaccination has been highly effective in controlling the spread of the Zaire strain in recent Ebola outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The WHO says Uganda’s last Ebola outbreak in 2019 was the Zaire strain. Uganda last reported the relatively rare Sudan strain outbreak in 2012.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is helping Uganda deal with this latest outbreak.
Amy Boore, the CDC’s Global Health Protection program director, told reporters they were prepared to assist the Uganda Virus Research Institute.
“CDC headquarters is already in communication with UVRI (Uganda Virus Research Institute) and is already helping them develop plans for how they will continue to test and expand testing and have all the support they need during this,” she said.
Ebola is spread through bodily fluids and causes a hemorrhagic fever that kills up to 90% of those infected. The WHO says case fatality rates of the Sudan virus have varied from 41% to 100% in past outbreaks.
The Sudan strain of Ebola, discovered in Sudan in 1976, is less common than the Zaire strain that was found that same year.
The Zaire strain of Ebola was named after the country and river where it was found, the Ebola River in the former Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The DRC’s name was changed to Zaire in 1971 then changed back to Democratic Republic of Congo in 1997.
Health authorities in the neighboring DRC in late August declared a resurgence of Ebola after confirming a case in the country’s eastern North Kivu province.
It was the fifteenth resurgent outbreak recorded in the DRC.
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New Atlas of Bird Migration Shows Extraordinary Journeys.
A bay-breasted warbler weighs about the same as four pennies, but twice a year makes an extraordinary journey. The tiny songbird flies nearly 4,000 miles (6,437 kilometers) between Canada’s spruce forests and its wintering grounds in northern South America.
“Migratory birds are these little globetrotters,” said Jill Deppe, the senior director of the migratory bird initiative at the National Audubon Society.
A new online atlas of bird migration, published on Thursday, draws from an unprecedented number of scientific and community data sources to illustrate the routes of about 450 bird species in the Americas, including the warblers.
The Bird Migration Explorer mapping tool, available free to the public, is an ongoing collaboration between 11 groups that collect and analyze data on bird movements, including the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, the U.S. Geological Survey, Georgetown University, Colorado State University, and the National Audubon Society.
For the first time, the site will bring together online data from hundreds of scientific studies that use GPS tags to track bird movements, as well as more than 100 years of bird-banding data collected by USGS, community science observations entered into Cornell’s eBird platform, genomic analysis of feathers to pinpoint bird origins, and other data.
“The past twenty years have seen a true renaissance in different technologies to track bird migrations around the world at scales that haven’t been possible before,” said Peter Marra, a bird migration expert at Georgetown University who collaborated on the project.
The site allows a user to enter a species — for instance, osprey — and watch movements over the course of a year. For example, data from 378 tracked ospreys show up as yellow dots that move between coastal North America and South America as a calendar bar scrolls through the months of the year.
Or users can enter the city where they live and click elsewhere on the map for a partial list of birds that migrate between the two locations. For example, ospreys, bobolinks and at least 12 other species migrate between Washington, D.C. and Fonte Boa, Brazil.
As new tracking data becomes available, the site will continue to expand. Melanie Smith, program director for the site, said the next phase of expansion will add more data about seabirds.
Washington, D.C. resident Michael Herrera started birdwatching about four months ago and was quickly hooked. “It’s almost like this hidden world that’s right in front of your eyes,” he said. “Once you start paying attention, all these details that were like background noise suddenly have meaning.”
Herrera said he’s eager to learn more about the migratory routes of waterbirds in the mid-Atlantic region, such as great blue herons and great egrets.
Georgetown’s Marra hopes that engaging the public will help spotlight some of the conservation challenges facing birds, including loss of habitat and climate change.
In the past 50 years, the population of birds in the U.S. and Canada has dropped nearly 30%, with migratory species facing some of the steepest declines.
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WHO Warns of Dangers From Medication Practices
Marking World Patient Safety Day, Saturday, the World Health Organization warns unsafe medication practices and errors are a leading cause of avoidable harm in world health care systems.
The WHO is calling for urgent action to stop the medication errors putting millions at risk of severe harm or even death.
The agency’s quality of care coordinator, Neelam Dhingra-Kumar, noted everyone will, at some point take medicine, expecting to benefit. However, she said they can be harmful with improper use.
“There is ample evidence around the world that unsafe medication practices and medication errors is actually avoidable,” she said. “Such as incorrect prescriptions, wrong dispensing, wrong use of medicines, lack of proper monitoring. Once the physicians prescribe medicines, they are not monitored and even use of substandard and falsified medicines are a leading cause of avoidable harm in health care systems.”
The WHO said half of all preventable harm in medical care is medication-related and that a quarter of these patients suffer clinically severe or life-threatening harm.
It said the elderly are most at risk, especially those taking multiple medications. It said high rates of medication-related harm also occur in surgical care, intensive care, and emergency medicine.
Dhingra-Kumar said the amount of harm related to medication is twice as prevalent in low- and middle-income countries as in rich countries.
“That is primarily because of weak medication systems, lack of resources, lack of human workforce, not a fully trained workforce,” she said. “And even the culture; it is very, very difficult to change cultures as seen as very deeply in the system of blame.”
She said medication errors often are caused by such human factors as fatigue, poor environmental conditions, and staff shortages.
The WHO says medication practices and medication errors are a main cause of injury and avoidable harm in health care systems. It estimates the global cost associated with medication errors at $42 billion a year.
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Australia Probes Industrial Threat to Ancient Indigenous Rock Art
Australia is investigating claims by First Nations groups that mining and manufacturing industries are threatening significant cultural sites.
Indigenous settlement of Australia dates back an estimated 65,000 years.
This vast history is documented in ancient songs, stories, dance and art, but development threatens part of the culture.
The federal government has appointed an independent investigator to gauge the threat of industrial expansion to 40,000-year-old Indigenous rock art in Western Australia.
It is a controversy that has been brewing for months.
In August, the government rejected Aboriginal groups’ application for a 60-day moratorium to stop Perdaman, the multinational operator of a fertilizer plant, from relocating sacred rock art. However, authorities in Canberra have now agreed to appoint an expert to assess whether the art is at risk, and whether it must be protected by a ministerial declaration.
The site at the remote Burrup Peninsula, 1,500 kilometers north of Perth, has been recommended for a United Nation’s World Heritage listing. It is considered to be one of the world’s most significant collections of ancient rock carvings.
The region has more than a million petroglyphs, or art carved, scratched or scoured from rock, spread over 37,000 hectares. First Nations elders have said the depictions are all connected, and that moving some of the carvings would damage their spiritual connection to the sites that tell stories of creation.
Indigenous leader Raelene Cooper told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that sacred sites need to be shielded from industrial development.
“It is appalling that at this day and age we are still, as First Nations people, being told to sit in the back sit and that ain’t [is not] me,” Cooper said. “If there is anything that I could, I guess, advise for all of my country mob all over this continent we have a right and we have a story and we have a history here and our government needs to start acknowledging it.”
The independent investigation could take months. However, Perdaman already has official permission to start work on its Burrup Peninsula project. The fertilizer manufacturer has consulted with local Indigenous communities about its plans to relocate some rock carvings. It has not yet commented publicly on its operations.
The Western Australian government supports the development, saying it has the appropriate environmental and heritage approvals.
The state government has also set up an extensive program to monitor the impact of emissions from local gas production on ancient petroglyphs in the area.
A parliamentary inquiry into the destruction of the Juukan Gorge rock shelters by resources giant Rio Tinto in 2020 recommended new laws to protect thousands of sacred sites across Australia.
However, some legal experts believe not enough has been done and that economic interests continue to be placed ahead of First Nations culture.
Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney said in July the new Labor government would implement new cultural heritage legislation, but a timeframe has yet to be set.
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Chinese Astronauts Go on Spacewalk From New Station
Two Chinese astronauts went on a spacewalk Saturday from a new space station that is due to be completed later this year.
Cai Xuzhe and Chen Dong’s installed pumps, a handle to open the hatch door from outside in an emergency, and a foot-stop to affix an astronaut’s feet to a robotic arm, state media said.
China is building its own space station after being excluded by the U.S. from the International Space Station because its military runs the country’s space program. American officials see a host of strategic challenges from China’s space ambitions, in an echo of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry that prompted the race to the moon in the 1960s.
The latest spacewalk was the second during a six-month mission that will oversee the completion of the space station. The first of two laboratories, a 23-ton module, was added to the station in July and the other is to be sent up later this year.
The third member of the crew, Liu Yang, supported the other two from inside during the spacewalk. Liu and Chen conducted the first spacewalk about two weeks ago.
They will be joined by three more astronauts near the end of their mission in what will be the first time the station has six people on board.
China became the third nation to send a person into space in 2003, following the former Soviet Union and the United States. It has sent rovers to the moon and Mars and brought lunar samples back to Earth.
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Experts Warn US Is Falling Behind China in Key Technologies
At a gathering of current and former U.S. officials and private-sector executives Friday in Washington, concern was rampant that the United States has fallen behind China in the development of several key technologies, and that it faces an uncertain future in which other countries could challenge its historic dominance in the development of cutting-edge communications and computing technology.
The gathering was convened by the Special Competitive Studies Project, an effort spearheaded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, the stated purpose of which is “to ensure that America is positioned and organized to win the techno-economic competition between now and 2030, the critical window for shaping the future.”
Among attendees, the prevailing sentiment was that the nation’s ability to actually win that competition was under threat.
Dire predictions
A few days before the summit, the SCSP issued a report predicting what would happen if China became the global technological leader.
“Understanding the stakes requires imagining a world in which an authoritarian state controls the digital infrastructure, enjoys the dominant position in the world’s technology platforms, controls the means of production for critical technologies, and harnesses a new wave of general purpose technologies, like biotech and new energy technologies, to transform its society, economy and military,” the report said.
The report envisions a future where China, not the U.S., captures the trillions of dollars of income generated by the new technological advances and uses its leverage to make the case that autocracy, not democracy, is the superior form of government.
In the report’s grim vision, China promotes the concept of a “sovereign” internet, where individual countries limit the flow of information to their people, and where China develops and possibly controls the key technology supporting critical infrastructure in countries around the world.
Finally, the report warns that under such a scenario, the U.S. military would lose its technological lead over China and other competitors, and China might be in a position to cut off the supply of “microelectronics and other critical technology inputs.”
‘Nothing is inevitable’
In an address to the summit, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan appeared to agree that the nation faces significant challenges in keeping pace with China in the development of new technology.
“We know that nothing is inevitable about maintaining America’s core strength and competitive advantage in the world,” Sullivan said. “And we know that it has to be renewed, revitalized and stewarded, and that is especially true when it comes to U.S. technological leadership.”
In China, he said, “we’re facing a competitor that is determined to overtake U.S. technology leadership and is willing to devote nearly limitless resources to do so.”
Sullivan also said, however, that President Joe Biden’s administration is aware of the threat and has been working to meet it. In particular, Sullivan noted the recent passage of the CHIPS Act, which directs more than $50 billion toward establishing advanced microchip fabrication facilities in the U.S.
“We’re making historically unprecedented investments, putting us back on track to lead the industries of the future,” Sullivan said. “We’re doubling down on our efforts to be a magnet for the world’s top technical talent. We’ve adapted our technology protection tools to new geopolitical realities. And most importantly, we’ve done this in a way that is inclusive, force multiplying and consistent with our values.”
Not ‘fast enough’
H.R. McMaster, a retired Army general who served as national security adviser during the Trump administration, appeared as a panelist at the conference. He said that while progress is being made, the pace needs to be quickened.
“It’s not going fast enough, because we’re so far behind, because there’s too many years of complacency based on flawed assumptions about the nature of the post-Cold War world,” McMaster said.
He called for a more active effort to block China’s technological advancement, saying, “We need export controls now, to prevent China from getting a differential advantage, [while] maintaining our competitive advantages.”
China has repeatedly criticized U.S. efforts to impede its technological advancement, an issue that Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning addressed this week when asked about U.S. export controls.
“What the U.S. is doing is purely ‘sci-tech hegemony,’ ” she said. “It seeks to use its technological prowess as an advantage to hobble and suppress the development of emerging markets and developing countries. While trumpeting a level playing field and a so-called ‘rules-based order,’ the U.S. cares only about ‘America first’ and believes might makes right. The U.S. probably hopes that China and the rest of the developing world will forever stay at the lower end of the industrial chain. This is not constructive.”
5G as a warning
A recurring theme at the event was the development of 5G wireless internet technology, a field in which Western countries, including the U.S., fell far behind China. With the benefit of favorable treatment from Beijing, Chinese firms, specifically Huawei, developed a dominant global position in the provision of 5G networking equipment.
Concerned that having Chinese-made equipment serve as the backbone of sensitive communications technology could create an espionage or security risk, the U.S. and some of its allies mounted a global campaign to block the installation of Huawei’s equipment, even if that meant significant delays in the rollout of 5G wireless service.
“The key message here is we need to make sure that what happened to us in 5G does not happen again,” said Schmidt. “I cannot say that more clearly. You do not want to work on platform technologies that you use every day that are dominated by nondemocratic, nonopen systems.”
Schmidt said that it would be difficult to stay ahead of China technologically, predicting that Beijing would “double down on competing in the areas that we care about,” including artificial intelligence, quantum computing, biotechnology and others.
Maintaining relations
Jon Huntsman, a former U.S. ambassador to China, said that Americans are generally uninformed about how far China is ahead of the United States in some technologies. Now the vice chairperson of Ford Motor Company, Huntsman said that in the development of electric vehicles, for example, China is at least five years ahead of the U.S.
He said that the U.S. must walk a fine line to catch up with China in some areas and to maintain its advantage in others. In particular, he stressed the need to retain person-to-person business and other relationships with the Chinese people.
“Decoupling our people is not a good thing,” he said. “We’ll wind up with China right where we are with Russia if we do that.” He added, “Decoupling is only going to create estrangement, misunderstandings and instability, globally, on the security side.”
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Biden Meets with Families of Whelan, Griner at White House
President Joe Biden met Friday with family members of WNBA star Brittney Griner and another American detained in Russia, Paul Whelan, the first face-to-face encounter that the president has had with the relatives.
In a statement after the meetings, which were held separately, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden stressed to the families his “continued commitment to working through all available avenues to bring Brittney and Paul home safely.”
“He asked after the well-being of Elizabeth and Cherelle and their respective families during this painful time,” Jean-Pierre said. “The president appreciated the opportunity to learn more about Brittney and Paul from those who love them most, and acknowledged that every minute they are being held is a minute too long.”
Still, administration officials have said the meetings were not an indication that negotiations with Russia for their release have reached a breakthrough.
Earlier Friday, John Kirby, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, said that Russia has not responded to what administration officials have called a substantial and serious offer to secure Griner and Whelan’s release.
“The president is not going to let up,” Kirby told reporters. “He’s confident that this is going to remain in the forefront of his mind and his team’s mind, and they’re going to continue to work as hard as they can.”
Griner has been held in Russia since February on drug-related charges. She was sentenced last month to nine years in prison after pleading guilty and has appealed the punishment. Whelan is serving a 16-year sentence on espionage-related charges that he and his family say are false. The U.S. government regards both as wrongfully detained, placing their cases with the office of its top hostage negotiator.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken took the unusual step of announcing two months ago that the administration had made a substantial proposal to Russia. Though he did not elaborate on the proposal, a person familiar with the matter has said the U.S. has offered to release convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.
The administration carried out a prisoner swap last April, with Moscow releasing Marine veteran Trevor Reed in exchange for the U.S. releasing a Russian pilot, Konstantin Yaroshenko, convicted in a drug trafficking conspiracy.
Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, participated in both meetings. Biden sat down with Elizabeth Whelan, the sister of Paul Whelan. Then the president met with Cherelle Griner, the wife of Brittney Griner, as well as the player’s agent, Lindsay Colas, according to the White House.
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Canadian Researchers Developing Oral Insulin
Research to develop a pill form of insulin is showing promise at the University of British Columbia in western Canada. The goal is to eliminate the need for diabetics to inject themselves with the lifesaving medication.
According to the World Health Organization, there are an estimated 422 million diabetics worldwide. The disease claims 1.5 million lives each year. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 30 million Americans have diabetes.
Although widely available in the developed world, current forms of insulin require refrigeration, which can be a stumbling block in developing nations.
An oral version of insulin, in the form of an everyday pill, could change everything, making it easier and cheaper to transport and distribute — even to remote regions of the planet.
Researchers at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver think they might have discovered a formula for a pill that effectively delivers a full dose of insulin to a patient’s liver — where it is needed to regulate blood sugar levels — without dissipating uselessly in the stomach.
The trick is to not swallow the pill, according to Anubhav Pratap-Singh, an assistant professor at the school’s Faculty of Land and Food Systems and the project’s lead researcher. He said the pill can be absorbed in the mouth by wedging it between the cheek and gums. In laboratory studies on rats, full doses of insulin reached the liver, he said.
“So we are getting quite a high amount of yield and so we hope that this will be more economical,” Pratap-Singh said.
Pratap-Singh started studying oral insulin in 2018, inspired to help his diabetic father, who has to inject insulin multiple times a day. He said a pill form would increase the quality of life for millions of patients who use insulin around the world.
“Instead of having to take insulin and having to travel with it in refrigerated boxes, one will simply have [a] normal capsule or tablet in a normal wrapper, which will be shelf stable, and very, very affordable,” Pratap-Singh said.
Dr. Daniel Drucker is professor of medicine at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute and the University of Toronto. He said previous attempts at oral insulin failed to efficiently deliver enough of the drug within the body. To compensate, huge pill doses were required that would have driven prices higher for the drug.
“We have to pay the manufacturing costs of a large amount of insulin in this case that never makes it into the body,” Drucker said.
Drucker said new insulin pumps, which act as an artificial pancreas, have become increasingly effective in treating diabetes. He also said the development of cell-based insulin replacement therapy, which would create beta cells that automatically release necessary insulin, look promising.
For Pratap-Singh and other researchers, the next steps involve years of further testing of what could be a revolutionary method of insulin delivery.
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Privacy Threatened as More Governments Use Spyware to Monitor Their People
A U.N. report warns the right to privacy is under siege as an increasing number of governments are using spyware to keep tabs on their people.
The U.N. human rights office said urgent steps are needed to address the spread of spyware. It noted many governments are using modern digital networked technologies to monitor, control and oppress their populations. U.N. officials say the technologies must be reined in and regulated in accord with international human rights laws and standards.
Human rights spokeswoman Liz Throssell said the report details how surveillance tools such as the Pegasus software can turn most smartphones into 24-hour surveillance devices. She said the encroachment into peoples’ privacy is very concerning.
“For example, the smartphones that people have, they can be made into devices that actually offer people insights into what we do, where we go, who we meet with, what we say,” she said. “And that is a very, very powerful tool indeed, which is precisely why we are making these very strong calls in this report today.”
Human rights organizations have accused countries like China of building a vast surveillance and security system to keep close watch on their populations.
The U.N. report does not name the countries that use digital surveillance technologies. However, Throssell notes more than 500 companies reportedly have developed, marketed and sold such spyware to governments. She said governmental authorities often falsify their reasons for acquiring such digital technology.
“While such spyware tools are purportedly deployed to combat terrorism and crime, they have often been used for illegitimate reasons,” Throssell said. “For example, to clamp down on critical or dissenting views and on those who express them including journalists, opposition political figures and human rights defenders.”
U.N. officials are calling for a moratorium on the use and sale of hacking tools until adequate safeguards to protect human rights are in place. They warn the right to privacy is more at risk now than ever and action is needed now to stop the abuse.
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Ghana Marburg Outbreak Declared Over
The World Health Organization has declared an end to Ghana’s outbreak of the deadly Marburg virus after more than six weeks without any new cases.
Three cases of the virus were recorded in the West African country in late June, killing two people.
Marburg is a highly infectious viral hemorrhagic fever in the same family as Ebola. The symptoms of Marburg include diarrhea, fever, nausea and vomiting.
Speaking at a press conference Friday in Accra, head of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, said having passed the mandatory 42-day period without a new case, the country is now free of the virus.
“I do hereby state that, the appropriate outbreak reasons to Marburg disease have been implemented during the 42 days, following the last negative PCR test result for the sole surviving patient with recommendation from WHO,” he said. “Ghana has, therefore, successfully interrupted the first Marburg virus disease outbreak and hereby declare that the outbreak is over.”
A total of 198 people were tested for the virus when it first broke in Ghana. They all tested negative.
It is the second time Marburg made a West African appearance. The first outbreak was in Guinea in September of last year.
Marburg has also appeared in Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda.
There are no vaccines or antiviral treatments for Marburg, but WHO says supportive care — rehydration with oral or intravenous fluids — and treatment of specific symptoms improves the rate of survival.
your ads here!Everest Base Camp Imperiled by Climate Change
Mount Everest base camp, a sprawling tent village that is home away from home during climbing season for hundreds of aspiring summiteers and support staff, may soon be on the move.
Nepalese officials say they are considering the move to a lower elevation because the Khumbu glacier on which the camp sits is being melted away by climate change, which is undermining its foundation and slowly releasing decades worth of frozen trash and human waste.
But some of the Sherpa climbing guides who make Everest ascents possible are not happy with the idea, arguing that the government should first consider less drastic measures such as limiting the ballooning number of climbing permits, which at around $11,000 apiece have become an important source of revenue for the country.
“I see glaciers vanishing on daily basis. Uncontrollable number of visitors is a problem and it doesn’t make any sense to shift the base camp down,” said Dawa Chhiri Sherpa, 57, who began his career as a cook for a trekking company 35 years ago.
“Consult experts and relevant stakeholders is what should be government doing and not rushing to any decision,” agreed 62-year-old Kay Sherpa, who was born in Scotland and has been living in Nepal since 2009.
He added that the government should try to reduce the influx of helicopters ferrying climbers and other visitors to landing pads at either end of the approximately 22-hectare site to minimize the damage to the ecologically fragile area.
Nepal’s Department of Tourism recommended earlier this summer that a seven-person research group be formed with National Mountaineering Association chairman Nima Nuru Sherpa as its chair. The committee’s mission would be to investigate the present base camp location and potential relocation options.
Taranath Adhikari, director general of the tourism department, said in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. that the idea was to move the camp entirely off the fast-receding glacier to a level some 330 meters lower on the mountain.
“It is basically about adapting to the changes we are seeing at the Base Camp, and it has become essential for the sustainability of the mountaineering business itself,” he told the BBC.
The Khumbu glacier has lost the equivalent of 2,000 years of ice in just 30 years, according to research by the 2019 National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Everest Expedition.
That problem is compounded by the sheer number of visitors to the camp, where more than 1,500 individuals stay for a minimum of two months during the climbing season. Wealthier mountaineers are able to enjoy relatively luxurious accommodations including hot showers, Wi-Fi and catered meals, while acclimatizing to the 5,364-meter altitude.
The proposed move makes sense to Shilshila Acharya, who has played a leading role in efforts to clean up the huge amount of trash that has built up around the base camp since Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa first reached the summit in 1953.
“Once the waste is accumulated there, mountain cleanup is very risky and expensive work,” said Acharya, the director of Avni Ventures Pvt Ltd., which is an official recycling partner of Mountain Clean Up Campaign 2021 and 22. Moving the camp would at least temporarily facilitate the clean-up and have safety benefits, she told VOA.
Based on current estimates that the government is spending $1.5 to $2 million a year on the clean-up, “it will take another 50 to 100 years to clean up the existing waste from all mountains,” she said. “So it is going to be costly in the long run if something is not done about it.”
Shafkat Masoodi, a veteran hiker from Kashmir who visited the base camp in 2018, argued that the government must act quickly to move the camp and limit the number of climbing permits issued each season.
“It will prove disastrous in the near future” if they don’t act, he said. “Just imagine the number of climbers per season supported by almost double the number of Sherpas and porters spending at least six months in a year in these glaciers. The garbage and human waste dumped by these is just turning the Khumbu glacier into a polluted river down the mountains.”
But Anja Bagale, operations director at Hotel Himalaya in Kathmandu, pointed out that the current base camp location was selected by experienced Sherpa guides because it is the safest and most practical place from which to launch a final three- to five-day assault on the summit. He argued that the solution is to limit the traffic to the site, not to move it.
Ramesh Bhushal, the Nepal editor of Third Pole and an environment journalist based in Kathmandu, also questioned whether the underlying problems troubling the base camp would be resolved by moving it.
“I don’t see any valid point to shift Everest base camp as it won’t solve any problem as stated and possibly increase problems in [the] future,” he said. “But it is also okay to mull about how to deal with problems that have forced the government to reach into that thought of changing the base camp.”
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YouTube, Meta Will Expand Policies, Research to Fight Online Extremism
Major tech companies on Thursday committed to taking fresh steps to combat online extremism by removing more violent content and promoting media literacy with young users, as part of a White House summit on fighting hate-fueled violence.
Platforms such as Alphabet’s YouTube and Meta’s Facebook have come under fire for years from critics who say the companies have allowed hate speech, lies and violent rhetoric to flourish on their services.
U.S. President Joe Biden earlier Thursday called on Americans to combat racism and extremism during a summit at the White House that gathered experts and survivors and included bipartisan local leaders.
YouTube said it will expand its policies on violent extremism to remove content that glorifies violent acts, even if the creators of the videos are not related to a terrorist organization.
The video streaming site already prohibits violent incitement, but in at least some cases has not applied existing policies to videos promoting militia groups involved with the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol.
A report by the Tech Transparency Project in May found 435 pro-militia videos on YouTube, including 85 posted since Jan. 6. Some of the videos gave training advice, like how to carry out guerilla-style ambushes.
YouTube spokesperson Jack Malon declined to say whether the service would change its approach to that content under the new policy but said the update enables it to go further with enforcement than it had previously.
YouTube also said it will launch a media literacy campaign to teach younger users how to spot the manipulation tactics that are used to spread misinformation.
Microsoft said it will make a basic and more affordable version of its artificial intelligence and machine learning tools available to schools and smaller organizations in order to help them detect and prevent violence.
Facebook owner Meta announced it will partner with researchers from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies’ Center on Terrorism, Extremism and Counterterrorism.
Last year, lawmakers grilled the chief executives of Alphabet and Facebook, as well as Twitter, on whether their companies bore some responsibility for the Jan. 6 attack.
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The Speech That Launched NASA to the Moon
The 60th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s “moonshot” speech, which rallied a nation behind NASA. Plus, President Biden calls for a moonshot of his own, and a private spaceflight company suffers its first failure. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.
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Kenyan-Made Device Helps Save Premature Babies Born Amid Ukraine War
Russia’s war on Ukraine has seen scores of hospitals and clinics bombed, and frequent power cuts that can turn off lifesaving machines. Medical aid groups are using a Kenyan-manufactured breathing device for premature babies that works without electricity, helping save vulnerable newborns in countries affected by conflict. Victoria Amunga reports from Nairobi, Kenya. Camera – Jimmy Makhulo.
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With $19.5 Billion Investment, India Joins Global Race to Make Semiconductors
India’s ambitions to create a domestic semiconductor manufacturing capability got a boost with this week’s announcement of a $ 19.5 billion investment by Taiwanese electronic company Foxconn and local conglomerate Vedanta.
The companies will set up manufacturing facilities for producing the chips in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state, Gujarat. The plants are expected to be operational by 2024.
Modi called the agreement an important step in “accelerating India’s semi-conductor manufacturing ambitions” in a tweet Tuesday following the announcement.
India has joined the global race to make the chips at the heart of modern electronic devices from smartphones to cars, but for which there have been global shortages since the COVID-19 pandemic caused supply chain constraints.
India announced a $10 billion economic package in December to attract semiconductor makers as it looks to become a production hub for the critical components. It has also promised to expand incentives.
So far manufacturers in a small number of East Asian countries, led by China, Taiwan and South Korea, have supplied most of the world’s semiconductors. Several countries now want to reduce their dependence on global supply chains in critical technologies after the pandemic as well as Russia’s war in Ukraine and growing tensions between Western countries and China highlighted the risks of relying on limited sources of production.
“There are growing concerns of economic wars in the future and overdependence on China, especially for crucial components. So, India is trying to emerge as a production hub for semiconductors,” Sreeram Chaulia, dean of the Jindal School of International Affairs.
“The government believes that India can fill a niche as some countries and companies look to alternatives to China,” he told VOA.
While India has forged ahead in the software technology sector, which does not require physical infrastructure, it has lagged behind in electronic manufacturing partly due to poor infrastructure. The most difficult issue facing manufacturers is the unavailability of large tracts of land.
India also offers some advantages, though, such as the the thousands of semiconductor design engineers working for global companies with research and development offices in the country.
“I can confidently say that within the next five to six years, we will become a great semiconductor design capital of the world. We will use that capability to feed into our semiconductor manufacturing also,” Ashwini Vaishnav, India’s information technology and electronics minister, told a business conference last month.
The Foxconn and Vedanta announcement is the biggest announced in the sector so far.
“India’s own Silicon Valley is a step closer now,” Vedanta group chairman Anil Agarwal tweeted Tuesday. The project is expected to create 100,000 jobs in India.
“The improving infrastructure and the government’s active and strong support increases confidence in setting up a semiconductor factory,” Foxconn Vice President Brian Ho said in a statement.
Singaporean group IGSS Ventures has also signed a memorandum of understanding for a semiconductor plant in Tamil Nadu state.
“Many countries will be a lot more comfortable relying on India, so that gives the government a sense that this could just be the beginning of a flow of foreign funds to promote chip manufacturing,” Chaulia said.
“There also have been discussions at the level of the Quad and other forums for finding reliable sources for some of these components,” he said, referring to the grouping of India, the United States, Japan and Australia.
The push to make semiconductors is also part of a “Make in India” campaign promoted by Modi since he took office eight years ago.
His aim to emulate China’s success in manufacturing had met with a tepid response according to business experts.
New Delhi hopes that will change as companies look at diversifying production bases especially in areas of critical technologies.
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R. Kelly Convicted on Many Counts, Acquitted of Trial Fixing
A federal jury on Wednesday convicted R. Kelly of several child pornography and sex abuse charges in his hometown of Chicago, delivering another legal blow to a singer who used to be one of the biggest R&B stars in the world.
Kelly, 55, was found guilty on three counts of child pornography and three counts of child enticement.
But the jury acquitted him on a fourth pornography count, as well as a conspiracy to obstruct justice charge accusing him of fixing his state child pornography trial in 2008. He was found not guilty on all three counts of conspiring to receive child pornography and for two further enticement charges.
His two co-defendants were found not guilty on all charges.
Jurors, who deliberated for 11 hours over two days, wrote several questions to the judge on Wednesday, at least one indicating the panelists were grappling with some of the case’s legal complexities.
One asked if they had to find Kelly both enticed and coerced minors, or that he either enticed or coerced them. Over objections from Kelly’s lawyer, the judge said they only need to find one.
At trial, prosecutors sought to paint a picture of Kelly as a master manipulator who used his fame and wealth to reel in star-stuck fans, some of them minors, to sexually abuse then discard them.
Kelly, born Robert Sylvester Kelly, was desperate to recover child pornographic videos he made and lugged around in a gym bag, witnesses said. They said he offered up to $1 million to recover missing videos before his 2008 trial, knowing they would land him in legal peril. The conspiracy to hide his abuse ran from 2000 to 2020, prosecutors said.
Kelly associates Derrel McDavid and Milton Brown were co-defendants at the Chicago trial. Jurors acquitted McDavid, a longtime Kelly business manager, who was accused of conspiring with Kelly to rig the 2008 trial. Brown, a Kelly associate for years, was acquitted of receiving child pornography.
Kelly has already been convicted of racketeering and sex trafficking in New York and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
In Chicago, a conviction of just one count of child pornography carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years, while receipt of child pornography carries a mandatory minimum of five years. Judges can order that defendants sentenced earlier in separate cases serve their new sentence simultaneously with or only after the first term is fully served. Federal inmates must serve at least 85% of their sentences.
During closing arguments Tuesday, Kelly attorney Jennifer Bonjean likened the government’s testimony and evidence to a cockroach and its case to a bowl of soup.
If a cockroach falls into soup, she said, “you don’t just pull out the cockroach and eat the rest of the soup. You throw out the whole soup,” said told jurors.
“There are just too many cockroaches,” she said of the prosecution’s case.
The three defendants called only a handful of witnesses over four days. McDavid, who was on the stand for three days, may have damaged Kelly’s hopes for acquittal by saying that he now doubts Kelly was truthful when he denied abusing anyone after hearing the superstar’s accusers testify.
In her closing rebuttal, prosecutor Jeannice Appenteng cited testimony that Kelly’s inner circle increasingly focused on doing what Kelly wanted as his fame boomed in the mid-1990s.
“And ladies and gentlemen, what R. Kelly wanted was to have sex with young girls,” she said.
Four Kelly accusers testified, all referred to by pseudonyms or their first names: Jane, Nia, Pauline and Tracy. Some cried when describing the abuse but otherwise spoke calmly and with confidence. A fifth accuser, Brittany, did not testify.
Sitting nearby in a suit and face mask, Kelly often averted his eyes and looked down as his accusers spoke.
Some dozen die-hard Kelly fans regularly attended the trial. On at least one occasion during a break, several made hand signs of a heart at Kelly. He smiled back.
Jane, 37, was the government’s star witness and pivotal to the fixing charge, which accused Kelly of using threats and payoffs to get her to lie to a grand jury before his 2008 trial and to ensure she and her parents wouldn’t testify.
A single video, which state prosecutors said was Kelly abusing a girl of around 14, was the focal point of that trial.
On the witness stand for two days at the end of August, Jane paused, tugged at a necklace and dabbed her eyes with a tissue when she said publicly for the first time that the girl in the video was her at 14 and that the man was Kelly, who would have been around 30.
Some jurors in the 2008 trial said they had to acquit Kelly because the girl in the video didn’t testify. At the federal trial in Chicago, Jane said she lied to a state grand jury in 2002 when she said it was not her in the video, saying part of her reason for lying was that she cared for Kelly and didn’t want to get him into trouble.
Jane told jurors she was 15 when they first had intercourse. Asked how many times they had sex before she turned 18, she answered quietly: “Uncountable times. … Hundreds.”
Jane, who belonged to a teenage singing group, first met Kelly in the late 1990s when she was in junior high school. She had visited Kelly’s Chicago recording studio with her aunt, a professional singer. Soon after that meeting, Jane told her parents Kelly was going to be her godfather.
Jane testified that when her parents confronted Kelly in the early 2000s, he dropped to his knees and begged them for forgiveness. She said she implored her parents not to take action against Kelly because she loved him.
Defense attorneys suggested a desire for money and fame drove some government witnesses to accuse Kelly, and they accused several people of trying to blackmail him. They also suggested that at least one of his accusers was 17 — the age of consent in Illinois — when Kelly began pursuing her for sex.
Bonjean implored jurors not to accept the prosecution’s portrayal of her client as “a monster,” saying Kelly was forced to rely on others because of intellectual challenges, and that he was sometimes led astray.
“Mr. Kelly can also be a victim,” she said in her opening statement.
Prosecutors played jurors excerpts from three videos that Jane said featured her. Court officials set up opaque screens around the jurors so journalists and spectators couldn’t see the videos or the jurors’ reactions.
But the sound was audible. In one video, the girl is heard repeatedly calling the man “daddy.” At one point she asks: “Daddy, do you still love me?” The man gives her sexually explicit instructions.
Prosecutors have said Kelly shot the video that was also evidence in the 2008 trial in a log cabin-themed room at his North Side Chicago home around 1998.
Another accuser, Pauline, said Jane introduced her to Kelly when they were 14-year-old middle school classmates in 1998. At Kelly’s Chicago home later that year, Pauline described her shock when she said she first walked in on Kelly and a naked Jane. She said Kelly told her that everyone has secrets. “This is our secret,” she testified he said.
Pauline told jurors she still cares for Kelly. But as a 37-year-old mom, she said she now has a different perspective.
“If somebody did something to my kids,” she said, “I’m killing ’em. Period.”
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As Monkeypox Drops in the West, Still No Vaccines for Africa
With monkeypox cases subsiding in Europe and parts of North America, many scientists say now is the time to prioritize stopping the virus in Africa.
In July, the U.N. health agency designated monkeypox as a global emergency and appealed to the world to support African countries so that the catastrophic vaccine inequity that plagued the outbreak of COVID-19 wouldn’t be repeated.
But the global spike of attention has had little impact on the continent. No rich countries have shared vaccines or treatments with Africa, and some experts fear interest may soon evaporate.
“Nothing has changed for us here. The focus is all on monkeypox in the West,” said Placide Mbala, a virologist who directs the global health research department at Congo’s Institute of Biomedical Research.
“The countries in Africa where monkeypox is endemic are still in the same situation we have always been, with weak resources for surveillance, diagnostics and even the care of patients,” he said.
Rich countries hoard vaccine
Monkeypox has sickened people in parts of West and Central Africa since the 1970s, but it wasn’t until the disease triggered unusual outbreaks in Europe and North America that public health officials even thought to use vaccines. As rich countries rushed to buy nearly all the world’s supply of the most advanced shot against monkeypox, the World Health Organization said in June that it would create a vaccine-sharing mechanism to help needy countries get doses.
So far, that hasn’t happened.
“Africa is still not benefiting from either monkeypox vaccines or the antiviral treatments,” said Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO’s Africa director, adding that only small amounts have been available for research purposes. Since 2000, Africa has reported about 1,000 to 2,000 suspected monkeypox cases every year. So far this year, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have identified about 3,000 suspected infections, including more than 100 deaths.
In recent weeks, monkeypox cases globally have fallen by more than a quarter, including by 55% in Europe, according to WHO.
Dr. Ifedayo Adetifa, head of the Nigeria Center for Disease Control, said the lack of help for Africa was reminiscent of the inequity seen during COVID-19.
“Everybody looked after their (own) problem and left everybody else,” he said. Adetifa lamented that monkeypox outbreaks in Africa never got the international attention that might have prevented the virus from spreading globally.
Rich countries have stretched their vaccine supplies by using a fifth of the regular dose, but none have expressed interest in helping Africa. WHO’s regional office for the Americas recently announced it had struck a deal to obtain 100,000 monkeypox doses that will start being delivered to countries in Latin America and the Caribbean within weeks. But no similar agreements have been reached for Africa.
“I would very much like to have vaccines to offer to my patients or anything that could just reduce their stay in the hospital,” said Dr. Dimie Ogoina, a professor of medicine at Niger Delta University in Nigeria and a member of WHO’s monkeypox emergency committee.
Since WHO declared monkeypox a global emergency, Nigeria has seen the disease continue to spread, with few significant interventions.
“We still do not have the funds to do all the studies that we need,” Ogoina said.
Research into the animals that carry monkeypox and spread it to humans in Africa is piecemeal and lacks coordination, said Mbala, of Congo’s Institute of Biomedical Research.
Last week, the White House said it was optimistic about a recent drop in monkeypox cases in the U.S., saying authorities had administered more than 460,000 doses of the vaccine made by Bavarian Nordic.
Cases drop in U.S.
The U.S. has about 35% of the world’s more than 56,000 monkeypox cases but nearly 80% of the world’s supply of the vaccine, according to a recent analysis by the advocacy group Public Citizen.
The U.S. hasn’t announced any monkeypox vaccine donations for Africa, but the White House did make a recent request to Congress for $600 million in global aid.
Even if rich countries start sharing monkeypox tools with Africa soon, they shouldn’t be applauded, other experts said.
“It should not be the case that countries only decide to share leftover vaccines when the epidemic is declining in their countries,” said Piero Olliaro, a professor of infectious diseases of poverty at Oxford University. “It is exactly the same scenario as COVID, and it is still completely unethical.”
Olliaro, who recently returned to the U.K. from a trip to Central African Republic to work on monkeypox, said WHO’s emergency declaration appeared to offer “no tangible benefits in Africa.”
In Nigeria’s Lagos state, which includes the country’s largest city and is hard hit by monkeypox, some people are calling for the government to urgently do more.
“You can’t tell me that the situation wouldn’t have improved without a vaccine,” said Temitayo Lawal, 29, an economist.
“If there is no need for vaccines, why are we now seeing the U.S. and all these countries using them?” he asked. “Our government needs to acquire doses as well.”
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Second US Monkeypox Death as Virus Linked to Brain Inflammation
A second U.S. death was linked to monkeypox on Tuesday as health authorities published a study describing how two previously healthy young men experienced inflammation of the brain and spinal cord as a result of the virus.
There have been nearly 22,000 U.S. cases in the current global outbreak, which began in May, but new infections have been falling since mid-August as authorities have distributed hundreds of thousands of vaccine doses.
The latest fatal case involved a severely immunocompromised resident of Los Angeles County who had been hospitalized, the local health department said without revealing further details.
“Persons severely immunocompromised who suspect they have monkeypox are encouraged to seek medical care and treatment early and remain under the care of a provider during their illness,” the department said.
The first U.S. death linked to the viral illness occurred in Texas and was announced on August 30, although authorities said that because the person was severely immunocompromised, they were investigating what role monkeypox had played.
The current global outbreak is primarily affecting men who have sex with men.
Historically, the virus has been spread via direct contact with lesions, body fluids and respiratory droplets, and sometimes through indirect contamination via surfaces such as shared bedding.
But in this outbreak, there is preliminary evidence that sexual transmission may also play a role.
Brain and spinal cord inflammation
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, meanwhile, published a report about two unvaccinated men in their 30s who experienced brain and spinal cord inflammation after testing positive for the virus.
The first, patient A, was a gay man in his 30s from Colorado whose symptoms began with fever chills and malaise and progressed to rashes on his face, scrotum and extremities, with swabs of lesions testing positive for the virus.
He also developed lower extremity weakness and numbness, was unable to empty his bladder, experienced a persistent and painful erection, and was hospitalized.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed brain and spinal cord inflammation. He was treated with the oral monkeypox antiviral tecovirimat as well as other drugs and began to improve at two weeks.
He was released but continued to have left leg weakness and required an assistive walking device at a one-month follow-up.
A second person, patient B, was a gay man in his 30s from Washington. His fever, rashes and muscle pain progressed to bowel and bladder incontinence and progressive flaccid weakness of both legs.
Brain and spinal cord inflammation was confirmed on MRI, and he was intubated in an intensive care unit, where he was treated with intravenous tecovirimat as well a drug to reduce inflammation and, finally, blood plasma exchange.
He remains in the hospital but can walk with the assistance of a device.
The report said the underlying mechanism behind the two cases was unclear — it might have been a direct invasion of the central nervous system or an autoimmune response triggered by monkeypox infection elsewhere in the body.
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