A cyberattack disrupted hospital computer systems in several states, forcing some emergency rooms to close and ambulances to be diverted. Many primary care services remained closed Friday as security experts worked to determine the extent of the problem and resolve it.

The “data security incident” began Thursday at facilities operated by Prospect Medical Holdings, which is based in California and has hospitals and clinics there and in Texas, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania.

“Upon learning of this, we took our systems offline to protect them and launched an investigation with the help of third-party cybersecurity specialists,” the company said in a statement Friday. “While our investigation continues, we are focused on addressing the pressing needs of our patients as we work diligently to return to normal operations as quickly as possible.”

In Connecticut, the emergency departments at Manchester Memorial and Rockville General hospitals were closed for much of Thursday. Patients were diverted to other nearby medical centers.

“We have a national Prospect team working and evaluating the impact of the attack on all of the organizations,” Jillian Menzel, chief operating officer for the Eastern Connecticut Health Network, said in a statement.

The FBI in Connecticut issued a statement saying it is working with “law enforcement partners and the victim entities” but could not comment further on an ongoing investigation.

Elective surgeries, outpatient appointments, blood drives and other services were suspended, and while the emergency departments reopened late Thursday, many primary care services were closed on Friday, according to the Eastern Connecticut Health Network, which runs the facilities. Patients were being contacted individually, according to the network’s website.

Similar disruptions were reported at other facilities systemwide.

“Waterbury Hospital is following downtime procedures, including the use of paper records, until the situation is resolved,” spokeswoman Lauresha Xhihani said in a statement. “We are working closely with IT security experts to resolve it as quickly as possible.”

In Pennsylvania, the attack affected services at facilities including the Crozer-Chester Medical Center in Upland, Taylor Hospital in Ridley Park, Delaware County Memorial Hospital in Drexel Hill and Springfield Hospital in Springfield, according the Philadelphia Inquirer.

In California, the company has seven hospitals in Los Angeles and Orange counties, including two behavioral health facilities and a 130-bed acute care hospital in Los Angeles, according to Prospect’s website. Messages sent to representatives for these hospitals were not immediately returned.
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Biologist Ashley Wilson carefully disentangled a bat from netting above a tree-lined river and examined the wriggling, furry mammal in her headlamp’s glow. “Another big brown,” she said with a sigh.

It was a common type, one of many Wilson and colleagues had snagged on summer nights in the southern Michigan countryside. They were looking for increasingly scarce Indiana and northern long-eared bats, which historically migrated there for birthing season, sheltering behind peeling bark of dead trees.

The scientists had yet to spot either species this year as they embarked on a netting mission.

“It’s a bad suggestion if we do not catch one. It doesn’t look good,” said Allen Kurta, an Eastern Michigan University professor who has studied bats for more than 40 years.

The two bat varieties are designated as imperiled under the Endangered Species Act, the bedrock U.S. law intended to keep animal and plant types from dying out. Enacted in 1973 amid fear for iconic creatures such as the bald eagle, grizzly bear and gray wolf, it extends legal protection to 1,683 domestic species.

More than 99% of those listed as “endangered” — on the verge of extinction — or the less severe “threatened” have survived.

“The Endangered Species Act has been very successful,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in an Associated Press interview. “And I believe very strongly that we’re in a better place for it.”

Fifty years after the law took effect, environmental advocates and scientists say it’s as essential as ever. Habitat loss, pollution, climate change and disease are putting an estimated 1 million species worldwide at risk.

Yet the law has become so controversial that Congress hasn’t updated it since 1992 — and some worry it won’t last another half-century.

Conservative administrations and lawmakers have stepped up efforts to weaken it, backed by landowner and industry groups that contend the act stifles property rights and economic growth. Members of Congress try increasingly to overrule government experts on protecting individual species.

The act is “well-intentioned but entirely outdated … twisted and morphed by radical litigants into a political firefight rather than an important piece of conservation law,” said Bruce Westerman, an Arkansas Republican and chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, who in July announced a group of GOP lawmakers would propose changes.

Environmentalists accuse regulators of slow-walking new listings to appease critics and say Congress provides too little funding to fulfill the act’s mission.

“Its biggest challenge is it’s starving,” said Jamie Rappaport Clark, president of the advocacy group Defenders of Wildlife.

Some experts say the law’s survival depends on rebuilding bipartisan support, no easy task in polarized times.

“The Endangered Species Act is our best tool to address biodiversity loss in the United States,” Senate Environment and Public Works chairman Tom Carper said during a May floor debate over whether the northern long-eared bat should keep its protection status granted in 2022.

“And we know that biodiversity is worth preserving for many reasons, whether it be to protect human health or because of a moral imperative to be good stewards of our one and only planet.”

Despite the Delaware Democrat’s plea, the Senate voted to nullify the bat’s endangered designation after opponents said disease, not economic development, was primarily responsible for the population decline.

That’s an ominous sign, said Kurta the Michigan scientist, donning waders to slosh across the mucky river bottom for the bat netting project in mid-June.

“Its population has dropped 90% in a very short period of time,” he said. “If that doesn’t make you go on the endangered species list, what’s going to?”

Turbulent history

It’s “nothing short of astounding” how attitudes toward the law have changed, largely because few realized at first how far it would reach, said Holly Doremus, a University of California, Berkeley law professor.

Attention 50 years ago was riveted on iconic animals like the American alligator, Florida panther and California condor. Some had been pushed to the brink by habitat destruction or pollutants such as the pesticide DDT. People over-harvested other species or targeted them as nuisances.

The 1973 measure made it illegal to “harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture or collect” listed animals and plants or ruin their habitats.

It ordered federal agencies not to authorize or fund actions likely to jeopardize their existence, although amendments later allowed permits for limited “take” — incidental killing — resulting from otherwise legal projects.

The act cleared Congress with what in hindsight appears stunning ease: unanimous Senate approval and a 390-12 House vote. President Richard Nixon, a Republican, signed it into law.

“It was not created by a bunch of hippies,” said Rebecca Hardin, a University of Michigan environmental anthropologist. “We had a sense as a country that we had done damage and we needed to heal.”

But backlash emerged as the statute spurred regulation of oil and gas development, logging, ranching and other industries. The endangered list grew to include little-known creatures — from the frosted flatwoods salamander to the tooth cave spider — and nearly 1,000 plants.

“It’s easy to get everybody to sign on with protecting whales and grizzly bears,” Doremus said. “But people didn’t anticipate that things they wouldn’t notice, or wouldn’t think beautiful, would need protection in ways that would block some economic activity.”

An early battle involved the snail darter, a tiny Southeastern fish that delayed construction of a Tennessee dam on a river then considered its only remaining home.

The northern spotted owl’s listing as threatened in 1990 sparked years of feuding between conservationists and the timber industry over management of Pacific Northwest forestland.

Rappaport Clark, who headed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under President Bill Clinton, said there were still enough GOP moderates to help Democrats fend off sweeping changes sought by hardline congressional Republicans.

“Fast-forward to today, and support has declined pretty dramatically,” she said. “The atmosphere is incredibly partisan. A slim Democratic majority in the Senate is the difference between keeping the law on life support and blowing it up.”

The Trump administration ended blanket protection for animals newly deemed threatened. It let federal authorities consider economic costs of protecting species and disregard habitat impacts from climate change.

A federal judge blocked some of Trump’s moves. The Biden administration repealed or announced plans to rewrite others.

But with a couple of Democratic defections, the Senate voted narrowly this spring to undo protections for a rare grouse known as the lesser prairie chicken as well as the northern long-eared bat. The House did likewise in July.

President Joe Biden threatened vetoes. But to wildlife advocates, the votes illustrate the act’s vulnerability — if not to repeal, then to sapping its strength through legislative, agency or court actions.

One pending bill would prohibit additional listings expected to cause “significant” economic harm. Another would remove most gray wolves and grizzly bears — subjects of decades-old legal and political struggles — from the protected list and bar courts from returning them.

“Science is supposed to be the fundamental principle of managing endangered species,” said Mike Leahy, a senior director of the National Wildlife Federation. “It’s getting increasingly overruled by politics. This is every wildlife conservationist’s worst nightmare.”

Elusive middle ground

Federal regulators are caught in a crossfire over how many species the act should protect and for how long — and how to balance that with interests of property owners and industry.

Since the law took effect, 64 of roughly 1,780 listed U.S. species have rebounded enough to be removed, while 64 have improved from endangered to threatened. Eleven have been declared extinct, a label proposed for 23 others, including the ivory-billed woodpecker.

That’s a poor showing, said Jonathan Wood, vice president of law and policy with the Property and Environment Research Center, which represents landowners.

The act was supposed to function like a hospital emergency room, providing lifesaving but short-term treatment, Wood said. Instead, it resembles perpetual hospice care for too many species.

But species typically need at least a half-century to recover and most haven’t been listed that long, said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director with the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group.

And they often languish a decade or more awaiting listing decisions, worsening their condition and prolonging their recovery, he said. The Fish and Wildlife Service has more than 300 under consideration.

The service “is not getting the job done,” Greenwald said. “Part is lack of funding but it’s mixed with timidity, fear of the backlash.”

Agency officials acknowledge struggling to keep up with listing proposals and strategies for restoring species. The work is complex; budgets are tight. Petitions and lawsuits abound. Congress provides millions to rescue popular animals such as Pacific salmon and steelhead trout while many species get a few thousand dollars annually.

To address the problem and mollify federal government critics, supporters of the act propose steering more conservation money to state and tribal programs. A bill to provide $1.4 billion annually cleared the House with bipartisan backing in 2022 but fell short in the Senate. Sponsors are trying again.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is using funds from Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act to improve strategies for getting species off the list sooner, Director Martha Williams told a House subcommittee in July.

It’s also seeking accommodation on another thorny issue: providing enough space where imperiled species can feed, shelter and reproduce.

The act empowers the government to identify “critical habitat” where economic development can be limited. Many early supporters believed public lands and waters — state and national parks and wildlife refuges — would meet the need, said Doremus, the California-Berkeley professor.

But now about two-thirds of listed species occupy private property. And many require permanent care. For example, removing the Kirtland’s warbler from the endangered list in 2019 was contingent on continued harvesting and replanting of Michigan jack pines where the tiny songbird nests.

Meeting the rising demand will require more deals with property owners instead of critical habitat designations, which lower property values and breed resentment, said Wood of the landowners group. Incentives could include paying owners or easing restrictions on timber cutting and other development as troubled species improve.

“You can’t police your way” to cooperation, he said.

The Fish and Wildlife Service proposed regulatory changes this year to encourage voluntary efforts, hoping they’ll keep more species healthy enough to reduce listings. But environmentalists insist voluntary action is no substitute for legally enforceable protections.

“Did the makers of DDT voluntarily stop making it? No,” said Greenwald, arguing few landowners or businesses will sacrifice profits to help the environment. “We have to have strong laws and regulations if we want to address the climate and extinction crises and leave a livable planet for future generations.”

Grim prospects

Stars and fireflies provided the only natural light on the June night after Michigan biologists Kurta and Wilson extended fine nylon mesh over smoothly flowing River Raisin, 90 minutes west of Detroit. Frogs croaked; crickets chirped. Mayflies — tasty morsels for bats — swarmed in the humid air.

Long feared by people, bats increasingly are valued for gobbling crop-destroying insects and pollinating fruit, giving U.S. agriculture a yearly $3 billion boost.

“The next time you have some tequila, thank the bat that pollinated the agave plant from which that tequila was made,” Kurta said, tinkering with an electronic device that detects bats as they swoop overhead.

Hour after hour crept by. Eight bats fluttered into the nets. The scientists took measurements, then freed them. None were the endangered species they sought.

A month later, Kurta reported that 16 nights of netting at eight sites had yielded 177 bats — but just one Indiana and no northern long-eared specimens.

“Disappointing,” he said, “but expected.”
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MEXICO CITY — An ancient flamingo fossil egg between 8,000 and 12,000 years old was uncovered at a busy construction site for a new airport in Mexico, officials from the Latin American country said Wednesday.

The remarkably preserved egg from the Pleistocene period is incredibly rare. It is the first discovery of its kind from the Phoenicopteridae flamingo family in the Americas and only the second in the world, according to Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, or INAH.

The Pleistocene geological epoch, the most recent Ice Age, began 2.6 million years ago and ended around 11,700 years ago.

The flamingo egg fossil was found at a depth of 31 centimeters (12.2 inches) amid clay and shale during construction at the new Felipe Angeles airport in the state of Mexico, INAH said.

The fossil egg implies the area was the site of a shallow lake between 8,000 and 33,000 years ago, according to Mexican scientists, and that flamingos once thrived in central Mexico.

Today’s American flamingo species, known for its bright pink feathers, is mainly found in South America, the Caribbean, the Yucatan peninsula and the southeast coast of the United States.
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Mexican officials met Tuesday with U.S. and Canadian officials in Mexico to talk about combating the trafficking of the synthetic opioid fentanyl. To get a better understanding of the problem, VOA visited addicts and a counselor from a harm reduction center in Washington. Júlia Riera has the story.
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At least 108 people were treated for heat-related illnesses at the World Scout Jamboree being held in South Korea, which is having one of its hottest summers in years.

Most of them have recovered but at least two remain in treatment at an on-site hospital as of Thursday morning, said Choi Chang-haeng, secretary-general of the Jamboree’s organizing committee.

The committee, which plans to proceed with the event while adding dozens more medical staff to prepare for further emergencies, did not confirm the ages and other personal details of those who were injured.

Wednesday night’s opening ceremony of the Jamboree brought more than 40,000 scouts, mostly teens, to a campsite built on land reclaimed from the sea in the southwestern town of Buan. The temperature there reached 35 degrees Celsius Wednesday.

Lee Sang-min, South Korea’s Minister of the Interior and Safety, during an emergency meeting instructed officials to explore “all possible measures” to protect the participants, including adjusting the event’s outdoor activities, adding more emergency vehicles and medical posts, and also adding more shade structures and air-conditioning. He said the goal is to prevent “even one serious illness or death,” according to comments shared by the ministry.

There had been concerns about holding the Jamboree in a vast, treeless area lacking refuge from the heat.

Choi insisted that the event was safe enough to continue and similar situations could have occurred if the Jamboree was held elsewhere.

“The participants came from afar and hadn’t yet adjusted (to the weather),” Choi said in a news briefing. He said the large number patients could be linked to a K-pop performance during the opening ceremony, which he said left many of the teens “exhausted after actively releasing their energy.”

South Korea this week raised its hot weather warning to the highest “serious” level for the first time in four years as temperatures nationwide hovered between 33 and 38 degrees Celsius.

The Safety Ministry said at least 16 people have died because of heat-related illnesses since May 20, including two on Tuesday. 
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There could be a new contender for heaviest animal to ever live. While today’s blue whale has long held the title, scientists have dug up fossils from an ancient giant that could tip the scales.

Researchers described the new species — named Perucetus colossus, or “the colossal whale from Peru” — in the journal Nature on Wednesday. Each vertebra weighs more than 100 kilograms, and its ribs measure nearly 1.4 meters long.

“It’s just exciting to see such a giant animal that’s so different from anything we know,” said Hans Thewissen, a paleontologist at Northeast Ohio Medical University who had no role in the research.

The bones were first discovered more than a decade ago by Mario Urbina from the University of San Marcos’ Natural History Museum in Lima. An international team spent years digging them out from the side of a steep, rocky slope in the Ica desert, a region in Peru that was once underwater and is known for its rich marine fossils. The results: 13 vertebrae from the whale’s backbone, four ribs and a hip bone.

The massive fossils, which are 39 million years old, “are unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” said study author Alberto Collareta, a paleontologist at Italy’s University of Pisa.

After the excavations, the researchers used 3D scanners to study the surface of the bones and drilled into them to peek inside. They used the huge — but incomplete — skeleton to estimate the whale’s size and weight, using modern marine mammals for comparison, said study author Eli Amson, a paleontologist at the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany.

They calculated that the ancient giant weighed somewhere between 85 and 340 metric tons. The biggest blue whales found have been within that range — at around 180 metric tons.

Its body stretched to around 20 meters long. Blue whales can be longer — with some growing to more than 30 meters in length.

This means the newly discovered whale was “possibly the heaviest animal ever,” Collareta said, but “it was most likely not the longest animal ever.”

It weighs more in part because its bones are much denser and heavier than a blue whale’s, Amson explained.

Those super-dense bones suggest that the whale may have spent its time in shallow, coastal waters, the authors said. Other coastal dwellers, like manatees, have heavy bones to help them stay close to the seafloor.

Without the skull, it’s hard to know what the whale was eating to sustain such a huge body, Amson said.

It’s possible that P. colossus was scavenging for food along the seafloor, researchers said, or eating up tons of krill and other tiny sea creatures in the water.

But “I wouldn’t be surprised if this thing actually fed in a totally different way that we would never imagine,” Thewissen added. 
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The State Department launched a new bureau Tuesday aimed at making the battle against global outbreaks a lasting priority of U.S. foreign policy, even as one of its key elements – a widely acclaimed HIV program – has become caught up in the political battle over abortion.

The bureau is to include the 20-year-old initiative known as the President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR. The program is relatively unknown to Americans but has succeeded beyond most early expectations in addressing the AIDS crisis and is credited with saving up to 25 million lives worldwide.

The bureau will be led by a public health official integral to PEPFAR, John Nkengasong. Born in Cameroon, Nkengasong was a founder of U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention operations in Africa. He helped set up some of the sub-Saharan’s first sophisticated labs for work with HIV and AIDS.

President George W. Bush started PEPFAR in Africa in 2003. The program retains bipartisan support. But anti-abortion groups and some House Republicans, including Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, are pushing to attach abortion-related limits on U.S. health support overseas to the reauthorizing legislation They are also seeking yearly votes on PEPFAR’s continuance.

While the Democratic-controlled Senate is expected to try to squash any such GOP conditions on the HIV program, the skirmish signals the PEPFAR program is now likely a captive of U.S. abortion politics going forward.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a ceremony for the new Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy, made only a passing reference to the abortion fight threatening PEPFAR’s normally assured support from lawmakers, saying he hoped Congress approved the program for another five years, without amendments.

The $100 billion in U.S. support for the PEPFAR program over 20 years is credited with lasting improvements in health care systems globally.

Nkengasong helped establish one of the first local government-run HIV drug programs, in Ivory Coast at a time that HIV and AIDS medications were too scarce and too costly for most people in the sub-Saharan

The lessons learned from the U.S. HIV program “are applied daily” in dealing with other threats, he said Tuesday.

The success of the PEPFAR program as it grew across Africa and around the world over decades made it “the single greatest health achievement in history,” said Samantha Power, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Power cited the economic and human toll of the COVID-19 pandemic, and pointed to estimates that the warming climate and other changing conditions make for a 40% increase in the chances that another pandemic on the same scale as COVID will happen in our lifetimes.

Creation of the new bureau is meant to raise health security as a global priority, build up the capacity of U.S. diplomats and local health systems globally to better curb outbreaks, and get the most out of U.S. assistance to health systems globally, Blinken said.
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A customer goes into a store in the United States that is popular for trendy and cheap clothes — known as “fast fashion” — for an impulsive wardrobe addition.

The person buying those clothes may be planning to keep them for only a short time, and then throwing them out when a new fashion trend arrives.

Fast fashion refers to the mass-produced and low-cost clothing items that manufacturers churn out by the millions each day, especially in China, but also in countries such as India, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and Turkey.

But what most people don’t realize is that most of the clothes are made from materials that are bad for the environment and end up in landfills.

“Fast fashion has huge implications for the environment,” said Eliot Metzger, director of sustainable business and innovation at the World Resources Institute in Washington. “Not many people realize how much water and energy it takes to create a T-shirt. And if that T-shirt is going to the landfill, replaced by another T-shirt, that is going to multiply what is already an unsustainable pattern.”

Global issue

Fast fashion is not only a problem in the United States but in poorer countries where donated clothes arrive and are then resold by vendors.

“Kenya and Ghana import quite a lot of fast fashion clothing that is causing a huge amount of pollution,” explained Erica Cirino, communications manager for the Plastic Pollution Coalition in Washington. “The landfills are so overwhelmed by textile waste that they begin flowing into the surrounding waterways.

 

From stylish to disastrous

When retailers first introduced fast fashion apparel in the 1990s, the inexpensive and trendy clothing appealed to consumers. Today, its omnipresence in stores and on the internet in the U.S. and other wealthy countries, has made the fast fashion industry a disaster for the environment.

The clothes are often made from synthetic plastic fabrics, such as polyester, nylon and acrylic, which are produced from petroleum-based products — fossil fuels that are causing global warming.

“The heavy reliance by brands on polyester, nylon, acrylic is only increasing,” said Cirino, “so a great majority of clothing today is made out of plastic that is much less expensive than natural materials.”

Researchers have found microfibers from clothing in a wide range of land and aquatic ecosystems — from mountains to ocean floors.

“We call this a global microplastic cycle, where tiny microfibers and other microplastics can move thousands of miles from urban areas, where there are tons of people wearing synthetic clothing, to the most remote corners of the planet, including the top of Mount Everest,” said Britta Baechler, associate director of oceans plastics research with the Ocean Conservancy in Portland, Oregon.

Each year, approximately 6.5 million metric tons of microfibers are released into the environment worldwide, according to the Journal of Hazardous Materials. That’s equivalent to more than 32 billion T-shirts.

“As you’re walking, the material is rubbing together and that that causes fibers to break loose that shed directly into the air and make their way into the waterways,” Baechler told VOA.

Microfibers in washing machines

However, experts say, the biggest source of environmental microfiber is washing machines in the U.S. that do not have filters to catch the tiny fibers.

Wastewater treatment plants filter out the majority of microfibers, but because they are so small, some still get into the waterways. They harm small aquatic organisms that ingest them by creating blockages that hinder their absorption of nutrients from food.

 

It is not yet clear what the effect of microfibers is on humans.

“When we wear this clothing, we’re inhaling and potentially absorbing these plastic particles and their toxic chemical additives through our skin, so we’re exposed at all times,” said Cirino.

Unlike some materials, there is currently no widespread system for recycling textiles.

There are facilities to recycle paper, glass and some plastics, there isn’t an easy way to recycle textiles by shredding them and making them into new textiles, explained Swarupa Ganguli, lead environmental protection specialist in the office of land and emergency management for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Fashionable options

Instead of buying fast fashions, environmental groups say people should think about purchasing clothes at second-hand shops or on the internet and rent outfits for special occasions.

The Patagonia outdoor clothing and gear company in Ventura, California, has a program called Worn Wear to try to keep its clothes out of landfills. The company rebuys some of its used clothing, which is cleaned and resold.

“Worn Wear is based on the premise that reducing the environmental impact of our products must be a shared responsibility between Patagonia and our customers,” said Corey Simpson, the communications manager for product and sport community. “We want to help you with responsible product care while you’re using your gear, and we want to buy it back from you when you no longer need it, whether it can be passed on to someone new or recycled into something new.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency favors what is being called a circular economy approach. This includes redesigning clothes and encouraging the reuse and recycling of clothing.

“The idea is to shift the consumer mindset from using clothing quickly and then throwing it away, and instead to reuse, reduce and recirculate it back into the economy,” Ganguli told VOA.

While “the circular economy for textiles has huge potential,” said Metzger with the World Resources Institute, “I don’t think you can say it is working until the circular economy for textiles is slowing and reversing the consumption.”
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As World Breastfeeding Week got underway Tuesday, child advocates called for the promotion of mothers’ milk as the best way to get babies off to a healthy start in life and save lives.

The World Health Organization and UNICEF said exclusive breastfeeding could save the lives of more than 820,000 children under 5 years of age every year.

The U.N. health agencies said they are making inroads in getting across their message about the benefits of breastfeeding, noting, “The prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding rates has increased by a remarkable 10 percentage points to 48% globally” over the last decade.

They acknowledge, however, that the rate falls short of the 2030 breastfeeding target of 70% and are calling for greater family, communal and workplace support for nursing mothers.

“Breastfeeding is as important as breathing fresh air and eating nutritious food,” said Nina Chad, infant and young child feeding consultant for the WHO.

Protection from infectious diseases

Speaking on Skype from Sydney, Australia, she told VOA that the way babies start eating in life is important for keeping them healthy throughout their lives.

“Breastfeeding is important because it protects babies from infectious diseases in infancy, such as diarrhea and pneumonia, that can be life-threatening, and it protects mothers from noncommunicable diseases throughout their life course,” adding, “Women who breastfeed are less likely to get breast and ovarian cancers.”

To achieve maximum benefit, the World Health Organization advises mothers to breastfeed babies exclusively for the first six months, then introduce nutritious solid foods and continue to breastfeed up to 2 years of age or beyond.

Research shows such children are less likely to be overweight or obese, do better on intelligence tests and earn a higher income in adult life.

The WHO said millions of children who miss out on the benefits of breastfeeding are at risk of stunting and wasting. It warned that undernutrition was associated “with 2.7 million or 45% child deaths annually.”

Emergency situations

Fatmata Fatima Sesay, a UNICEF specialist in infant feeding, said, “In emergency situations and difficult circumstances, breastfeeding can make the difference between life and death for babies.”

She told VOA that “mothers face increased obstacles in feeding their babies” in situations of armed conflict such as in Sudan and in climate-driven droughts like in the Horn of Africa that have forced millions of families from their homes.

Sesay, however, also said, “Even in the face of difficult circumstances like this, babies who are breastfed have much more food security than those who are formula fed.”

She said babies in emergency situations who are formula fed “not only lose the advantages of breastfeeding, but they are also at risk of contamination from inadequate clean water” to make the formula and clean the utensils.

Beyond those difficult situations, she said, many women have a whole host of other common challenges to overcome and need practical support to help them with the care and feeding of their infants.

Criticism of formula industry

She expressed anger at the exploitative marketing practices of the $55 billion infant formula industry “that discourage mothers from breastfeeding. We know from research that these companies are using manipulative tactics to exploit mothers and parents, as well as exploiting their anxieties and aspirations.”

Sesay said governments can protect mothers and caregivers from aggressive, underhanded tactics by implementing the International Code of Marketing of Breast-Milk Substitutes.

“There is strong evidence that shows that countries that are fully aligned with the code are able to reach the 70% breastfeeding goal by 2030,” she said.

In marking World Breastfeeding Week, the WHO and UNICEF agreed that greater breastfeeding support in workplaces would boost global breastfeeding rates. They urged governments to ensure that all mothers, even those who work in the informal sector, have access to at least 18 weeks of paid maternity leave.

The agencies called for new mothers to be given regular breaks in the workplace, so the moms can continue to breastfeed their children once they return to work.
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There are now more golden lion tamarins bounding between branches in the Brazilian rainforest than at any time since efforts to save the species started in the 1970s, a new survey reveals.

Once on the brink of extinction, with only about 200 animals in the wild, the population has rebounded to around 4,800, according to a study released Tuesday by the Brazilian science and conservation nonprofit Golden Lion Tamarin Association.

“We are celebrating, but always keeping one eye on other threats, because life’s not easy,” said the nonprofit’s president, Luís Paulo Ferraz.

Golden lion tamarins are small monkeys with long tails and copper-colored fur that live in family groups led by a mated pair. Usually, they give birth annually to twins, which all family members help to raise by bringing them food and carrying them on their backs.

The monkeys, which live only in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, are still considered endangered.

The population survey was conducted over roughly a year. Researchers went to specific locations and checked whether monkeys responded to recordings of the tamarins’ long call, which basically means “I’m here. Are you there?” said James Dietz, a biologist and president of the U.S.-based nonprofit Save the Golden Lion Tamarin.

The new population figures are notable because the species had experienced a sharp decline from a yellow fever outbreak. In 2019, there were 2,500 monkeys, down from 3,700 in a 2014 survey.

Scientists intervened by vaccinating more than 370 monkeys against yellow fever, using shots adapted from a formula for humans — a fairly novel approach for conservation.

Scientists “cannot pinpoint a single exact cause for the recovery,” but believe several factors may be at play, said Carlos R. Ruiz-Miranda, a State University of Northern Rio de Janeiro biologist who advised on the population study.

Firstly, the yellow fever outbreak has subsided, perhaps due to a combination of the virus’ natural cycle and the vaccination campaign.

The animals may also be benefiting from an increase in forest habitat, said Dietz, who is also a research associate at the Smithsonian Institution’s Conservation Biology Institute. Between 2014 and 2022, the amount of connected forest habitat increased 16%, mostly through forests regrown on converted cattle pasture, he said.

Currently about three dozen farmers and ranchers in the Atlantic Forest region participate in such reforestation programs.

“It makes me so happy to see the tamarins playing free on my farm. They don’t only live in protected areas,” said Ayrton Violento, a farmer and entrepreneur in the small city of Silva Jardim. His family’s Fazenda dos Cordeiros has planted native fruit trees and also manages a tree nursery for native Atlantic Forest seedlings to plant on other farms.

“Recently, every year I see more tamarin families, more frequently,” he said.

Ferraz, of the nonprofit Golden Lion Tamarin Association, said that despite the good news, he was still concerned about a renewed risk of trafficking for the illegal pet trade. The problem was rampant in the 1960s, but had almost disappeared in recent decades due to enforcement.

In July, the anti-poaching nonprofit Freeland Brazil reported that Suriname’s forest service had seized seven golden lion tamarins and 29 endangered Lear’s macaws believed to have been trafficked from Brazil for sale in Europe.

“We have seen the resilience of the species, but also know they are still vulnerable,” said Ferraz.
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Unknown gunmen killed two police officers in southwestern Pakistan in an attack Tuesday on polio vaccinators.

The deadly shooting occurred during a national immunization campaign in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province.

Area police officer Asif Marwat said that health workers were administering polio doses to children in the Nawa Killi area when two men riding a motorcycle opened fire on them and fled the scene.

The shooting left two police guards dead, but the polio vaccinators escaped unhurt, Marwat said. He added that the polio campaign in the area had been suspended.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the deadly shooting, but militant attacks against polio teams are not uncommon in Pakistan. The violence has killed scores of health workers and security forces escorting them.

Pakistan launched the latest polio vaccination drive Tuesday to eradicate the highly contagious virus in the country.

A polio program spokesperson told VOA the weeklong campaign aims to immunize nearly 8 million children under five across 61 districts, including those in Baluchistan. He said the government had deployed around 65,000 “front-line workers” to administer polio drops to the targeted population.

In conservative Pakistani rural areas, hardline religious groups have long opposed and viewed polio inoculation campaigns as a ploy to leave Muslim children infertile. Anti-state militants operating in Baluchistan and elsewhere in the country view polio vaccinators as government spies.

The propaganda against the vaccine and the deadly militant attacks have set back Pakistan’s efforts to eradicate the crippling disease.

The South Asian country of about 230 million people has detected only one case of polio paralysis in a child so far in 2023 compared to 20 victims last year.

The highly contagious virus used to paralyze thousands of children annually in Pakistan until the 1990s when authorities launched internationally supported nationwide vaccination campaigns.
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