Mexican authorities said Thursday that they were trying to locate several hundred people, including U.S. nationals, potentially at risk of developing fungal meningitis after medical treatment near the border.

The announcement came a day after the United States warned that suspected fungal infections had led to severe illness and even death among U.S. residents returning from the Mexican city of Matamoros.

Around 400 people were being traced, including roughly 80 from the United States, according to the health minister of Tamaulipas state, home to Matamoros, which sits across the border from Brownsville, Texas.

“They’re going to be located to rule out that they are infected,” Vicente Joel Hernandez told AFP.

Two clinics, River Side Surgical Center and Clinica K-3, have been closed following the death of an American and the infection of seven other people, he said.

According to the U.S. government, the affected travelers had medical or surgical procedures, including liposuction, that involved injecting anesthetic into the area around the spinal column.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised canceling any procedure that involves an epidural injection in Matamoros until the problem is resolved.

It urged anyone experiencing symptoms of fungal meningitis after having such an injection in the city to go to a hospital emergency department immediately.

The symptoms include fever, headache, stiff neck, nausea, vomiting, confusion and sensitivity to light, it said, adding that fungal meningitis infections are not contagious or transmitted person-to-person.

Mexico is one of the world’s top medical tourism destinations, largely due to U.S. residents crossing the border for everything from dental work to cosmetic surgery and cancer treatment.
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Shipwreck enthusiasts have cause for celebration because the Titanic ocean liner’s infamous wreck can now be visualized like never before.

Deep-sea researchers have completed the first full-size digital scan of the Titanic, showing the entire wreck in clarity and detail. Researchers say it is the “largest underwater scanning project in history.”

Unveiled on Wednesday, the 3D scan was the result of a six-week expedition to the North Atlantic wreck site in summer 2022, during which researchers used two remotely operated submersibles — named Romeo and Juliet — to map the entire shipwreck and the surrounding 3-mile debris field.

The researchers took more than 700,000 images from every angle to create a virtual, exact 3D reconstruction.

“It’s an absolutely one-to-one digital copy, a ‘twin,’ of the Titanic in every detail,” Anthony Geffen, head of documentary maker Atlantic Productions, told The Associated Press. Atlantic Productions is making a documentary about the project.

The scan, which enables the ship to be seen as if the water has been drained away, may also reveal more details about the ship’s ill-fated trip across the Atlantic in 1912.

An estimated 1,500 people died when the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912, after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage from England to New York.

Richard Parkinson, founder of the deep-sea exploration firm Magellan, believes that the data amount to 10 times more than any underwater 3D model ever tried before.

Magellan carried out the scan project in partnership with Atlantic Productions.

“The depth of it, almost 4,000 meters, represents a challenge, and you have currents at the site, too — and we’re not allowed to touch anything so as not to damage the wreck,” Magellan’s Gerhard Seiffert, who led the planning for the expedition, told the BBC.

“And the other challenge is that you have to map every square centimeter — even uninteresting parts. Like on the debris field, you have to map mud, but you need this to fill in between all these interesting objects,” Seiffert said.

After the expedition in the North Atlantic, researchers spent seven months rendering the large amount of data they collected. A documentary about the project is set to come out next year.

Geffen said he hopes the scan will help researchers better understand what happened to the Titanic.

“All our assumptions about how it sank, and a lot of the details of the Titanic, come from speculation, because there is no model that you can reconstruct or work exact distances,” he told The Associated Press. “I’m excited because this quality of the scan will allow people in the future to walk through the Titanic themselves.”

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and the BBC.
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Drug overdose deaths in the U.S. went up slightly last year after two big leaps during the pandemic. 

Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say the numbers plateaued for most of last year. Experts aren’t sure whether that means the deadliest drug overdose epidemic in U.S. history is finally reaching a peak, or whether it’ll look like previous plateaus that were followed by new surges in deaths. 

“The fact that it does seem to be flattening out, at least at a national level, is encouraging,” said Katherine Keyes, a Columbia University epidemiology professor whose research focuses on drug use. “But these numbers are still extraordinarily high. We shouldn’t suggest the crisis is in any way over.” 

An estimated 109,680 overdose deaths occurred last year, according to numbers posted Wednesday by the CDC. That’s about 2% more than the 107,622 U.S. overdose deaths in 2021, but nothing like the 30% increase seen in 2020, and 15% increase in 2021. 

While the overall national number was relatively static between 2021 and 2022, there were dramatic changes in a number of states: 23 reported fewer overdose deaths, one — Iowa — saw no change, and the rest continued to increase. 

Eight states — Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia — reported sizable overdose death decreases of about 100 or more compared with the previous calendar year. 

Some of these states had some of the highest overdose death rates during the epidemic, which Keyes said might be a sign that years of concentrated work to address the problem is paying off. State officials cited various factors for the decline, like social media and health education campaigns to warn the public about the dangers of drug use; expanded addiction treatment — including telehealth — and wider distribution of the overdose-reversing medication naloxone. 

Plus, the stigma that kept drug users from seeking help — and some doctors and police officers from helping them — is waning, said Dr. Joseph Kanter, the state health officer for Louisiana, where overdose deaths fell 4% last year. 

“We’re catching up and the tide’s turning — slowly,” said Kanter, whose state has one of the nation’s highest overdose death rates. 

Beginning in the mid-1990s, abuse of prescription opioid painkillers was to blame for deaths before a gradual turn to heroin, which in 2015 caused more deaths than prescription painkillers or other drugs. A year later, the more lethal fentanyl and its close cousins became the biggest drug killer. 

Last year, most overdose deaths continued to be linked to fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. About 75,000, up 4% from the year before. There also was an 11% increase in deaths involving cocaine and a 3% increase in deaths involving meth and other stimulants. 

Overdose deaths are often attributed to more than one drug; some people take multiple drugs and officials say inexpensive fentanyl is increasingly cut into other drugs, often without the buyers’ knowledge. 

Research from Dr. Daniel Ciccarone, a drug policy expert at the University of California, San Francisco, suggests “there appears to be some substitution going on,” with a number of people who use illicit drugs turning to methamphetamines or other options to try to stay away from fentanyl and fentanyl-tainted drugs. 

Ciccarone said he believes overdose deaths finally will trend down. He cited improvements in innovations in counseling and addiction treatment, better availability of naloxone and legal actions that led to more than $50 billion in proposed and finalized settlements — money that should be available to bolster overdose prevention. 

“We’ve thrown a lot at this 20-year opioid overdose problem,” he said. “We should be bending the curve downward.” 

But he also voiced some caution, saying “we have been here before.” 

Consider 2018, when overdose deaths dropped 4% from the previous year, to about 67,000. After those numbers came out, then-President Donald Trump declared “we are curbing the opioid epidemic.” 

But overdose deaths then rose to a record 71,000 in 2019, then soared during the COVID-19 pandemic to 92,000 in 2020 and 107,000 in 2021. 

Lockdowns and other pandemic-era restrictions isolated people with drug addictions and made treatment harder to get, experts said. 

Keyes believes that 2022’s numbers didn’t get any worse partly because isolation eased as the pandemic ebbed. But there may be issues ahead, others say, like increased detection of veterinary tranquilizer xylazine in the illicit drug supply and proposals to scale back things like prescribing addiction medications through telehealth. 

“What the past 20 years of this overdose crisis has taught us is that this really is a moving target,” Keyes said. “And when you think you’ve got a handle on it, sometimes the problem can shift in new and different ways.” 
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“I remember my wife, Dora, coming home one day and telling me she had a problem while driving,” said Bill Collier, a marketing professional living near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. “She said she stopped at an intersection and suddenly couldn’t remember where she was going.” 

That was in August of 2015. Then things got worse. Within months, Collier said Dora began experiencing nervous breakdowns and hallucinations on a nightly basis. 

“She freaked out at me, at the world, at God — you name it,” he told VOA. “Most nights we both ended up in tears because we didn’t know what was going on or why it was happening.” 

It wasn’t until nearly six years later, in February 2021, that Dora, now 57, was finally diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, a progressive mental deterioration most commonly suffered by the elderly, but which can also strike middle-aged people. The disease, the sixth leading cause of death in the United States and the only one in the top 10 without a cure or potentially reversible treatment, causes brain cell connections and the cells themselves to degenerate and die.

The eventual result is the destruction of memory and other important mental functions. 

“The day we got the diagnosis felt like getting a death sentence,” Collier said. “Dora is still alive, but it’s been the eight toughest years of my life. Alzheimer’s is like a slow motion, everyday horror movie with a senseless plot that haunts my thoughts each hour I’m awake.” 

Diagnosing the disease

“Alzheimer’s disease is a public health crisis, and it’s growing at a rapid rate,” explained Ruby Dehkharghani, director of public policy at the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America (AFA).

According to the Alzheimer’s Association, 6.5 million Americans live with the disease, including roughly one in nine senior citizens. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) projects that number to more than double to 13.8 million people by 2060.

Family members of those with Alzheimer’s say one major problem is how long it can take to diagnose the issue and begin treatment.

“On one hand, it’s hard to get doctors and health care systems to take family members seriously during the early, undiagnosed stages of Alzheimer’s,” Collier said. “On the other hand, you have patients themselves avoiding getting tested and lying to the doctor because they don’t want to admit what amounts to a horrible truth.” 

This is what Krista Patrick-Brown, a school principal in New Orleans, Louisiana, experienced with her father.

“My dad was diagnosed in the fall of 2020, when it was obvious to the rest of us that something was going on and he needed to be tested,” Patrick-Brown told VOA. 

It was only when the family gained access to his medical records at the time of diagnosis that they learned he had expressed concern to his doctor three years earlier because he was struggling to perform his job. 

“I think he was scared to tell anyone, or maybe the realization that it could be something serious made him avoid learning more,” she continued. “Either way, he didn’t follow up until it was unavoidable, and I can’t help but imagine how starting his medicine years earlier might have slowed his deterioration.” 

Drugs have recently been developed that can slow but not stop the progression of Alzheimer’s, if administered in the early stages of the disease. Such treatments are expensive and can have side effects. While drugmakers race to develop and test what is hoped will be more effective treatments, there is no indication that a cure is on the horizon. 

“The current medications for Alzheimer’s have very, very modest benefits,” said Colleen Kenny, a nurse who works with dementia patients at a hospital outside of Chicago. “Families should temper their expectations for how well they should work.” 

A nightmare 

Patrick-Brown said her father’s loss of independence has been one of the more difficult aspects of the disease for him.

She said they tried to encourage him to stop driving on his own, for example, but he resisted. Once her father’s doctor reported his diagnosis to the state, he had to either pass a driver’s test or forfeit his license. 

“It was awful. He spent weeks trying to study for the test, but he couldn’t process the information,” Patrick-Brown remembered. “His anxiety increased and he didn’t seem to even completely grasp why he was being asked to take the test in the first place.” 

“I think that’s when our roles flipped indefinitely,” she said. “From then on, my father would always be child-like to me and my brother, and we are now his parents.” 

It’s common for patients with dementia — of which Alzheimer’s is the most common type — to exhibit behaviors found in younger children, such as mood swings, tantrums, irrationality, forgetfulness, vocabulary problems, fear, and extreme dependence on family members.

“They get angry, sensitive, and irrational,” said Margarita Hernandez, an aide for Alzheimer’s patients in Commack, New York, “but of course it’s not their fault. They didn’t choose this. They are innocent and we need to respond by giving them love, attention, and help.”

Life of a caregiver

Dehkharghani of the AFA notes that Alzheimer’s patients aren’t the only ones severely impacted by the disease.

“Many of the things that make it challenging for the person living with Alzheimer’s are what also make it challenging for family members providing care,” she said. “Caregivers will be expected to provide greater assistance to their loved ones as the disease progresses, and they’ll carry the emotional impact of watching their personalities change. It’s not something someone should be expected to do alone.”

Alexandra Magiera, who works in education in Chicago, Illinois, and is a volunteer for the Alzheimer’s Association, said she was just 15 years old when her mother, Lizzie, was diagnosed with the disease.

For Lizzie, it started with what appeared to be small things such as confusion about where she was supposed to be, but Magiera said it quickly got worse. 

“A year later she had trouble remembering my name, and a few years after that she no longer knew who I was,” she said. “That, plus there were times she was getting angry and combative. It was all heartbreaking.”

When Magiera left for college, the responsibility of caregiver for her mother fell even more squarely on her father’s shoulders.

“She was the love of my dad’s life and he cared for her as best as he could,” she said, “but the physical and emotional demand was too much and eventually he had to place her in a nursing home. I know it was one of the hardest decisions he ever had to make.”

During the last two years of Lizzie’s life, Magiera’s dad couldn’t stand it anymore.

“He told a friend, ‘I’m bringing Lizzie home; I miss her too much,’ and that’s what he did,” Magiera said. “I think he relished every moment he was able to spend with her.”

Moving forward

According to the CDC, more than 11 million Americans care for a loved one with Alzheimer’s. For many, it’s not possible to be the sole caregiver.

“I hate to say it, but unfortunately money is key,” explained Kenny. “In-home health aides aren’t often covered by insurance, and a decent nursing home for my father, who had dementia, cost $7,000 per month. There aren’t easy solutions.”

Magiera said her father had been retired for 20 years, but after her mother died in 2011, he had to go back to work to help pay for his wife’s medical bills.

“I can’t even imagine what would have happened if he hadn’t been on such solid financial footing to start,” Magiera said. 

The heartbreak this disease has caused so many Americans and their families has stirred Washington to action.

When the National Plan to Address Alzheimer’s Disease was released in 2011, initial funding totaled approximately $500 million a year, far below the $2 billion goal that leading scientists had estimated was necessary to find a treatment or cure by 2025. More recently, however, politicians have worked together to increase federal research investment to more than $3.4 billion last year.

“It’s encouraging to see such a bipartisan effort, but we’re not across the finish line yet,” said Dehkharghani. “There are still so many unanswered scientific questions when it comes to Alzheimer’s, but researchers are working very hard to discover answers and to hopefully find the breakthrough that will lead to the treatment and cure we’re all hoping for.”

In the meantime, things have been learned to stave off the effects of Alzheimer’s, including cardiovascular exercise, maintaining a healthy blood pressure, continuing a consistent level of socialization and, of course, early diagnosis.

“I sometimes wonder what we’d be doing right now if my wife had early treatment,” Collier told VOA. “Would we be traveling the world? Would we be checking items off her bucket list?”

“Instead, I go to her senior living facility every day,” he continued, “because I want the nurses to know this woman who has been reduced to shuffling and mumbling is still my Dora — she’s a Navy veteran and a very accomplished woman, and I want them to know her story.” 
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Countries can reduce plastic pollution by 80% by 2040 using existing technologies and by making major policy changes, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said in a new report on Monday.

The Kenya-based U.N. body released its analysis of policy options to tackle the plastic waste crisis two weeks before countries convene in Paris for a second round of negotiations to craft a global treaty aimed at eliminating plastic waste.

The report focuses on three main market shifts needed to create a “circular” economy that keeps produced items in circulation as long as possible: reuse, recycling and reorientation of packaging from plastic to alternative materials.

“If we follow this road map, including in negotiations on the plastic pollution deal, we can deliver major economic, social and environmental wins,” said Inger Andersen, UNEP executive director.

The treaty negotiations, known as INC2, will be May 29 to June 2 and are expected to result in key inputs for the first treaty draft, which needs to be done before the third round of negotiations in Kenya in November.

UNEP estimates that government promotion of reuse options such as refillable bottle systems or deposit return schemes could reduce 30% of plastic waste by 2040.

It also says that recycling could achieve an additional 20% by that year if “it becomes a more stable and profitable venture” and fossil fuel subsidies are removed, and that the replacement of products such as plastics wraps and bags with compostable materials could yield an additional 17% reduction.

Countries have different approaches to tackling plastic waste. Some major plastic-producing countries such as the United States and Saudi Arabia prefer a system of national strategies.

A “High Ambition Coalition,” comprising Norway, Rwanda, New Zealand, the European Union and others, have called for top-down approach where global targets are set to reduce virgin plastic production and eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, among other measures.

Some campaigners said the UNEP blueprint fell short of tackling the root of the pollution problem.

“A treaty that does not cap and reduce plastic production will fail to deliver what the people need, justice demands and the planet requires,” said Angel Pago, director of Greenpeace’s plastics campaign.
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Edna Adan Ismail, a nurse-midwife, hospital founder, and health care advocate who for decades has combated female genital mutilation and strived to improve women’s health care in East Africa, was named Tuesday as winner of the 2023 Templeton Prize, one of the world’s largest annual individual awards.

“Rooted in her Muslim faith, she receives this year’s award in recognition of her extraordinary efforts to harness the power of the sciences to affirm the dignity of women and help them to flourish physically and spiritually,” said the announcement.

Among her achievements: the founding of a hospital and university which have significantly reduced maternal mortality in Somaliland.

The Templeton Prize, valued at nearly $1.4 million, was established in 1973 by philanthropist Sir John Templeton. It honors those “who harness the power of the sciences to explore the deepest questions of the universe and humankind’s place and purpose within it.”

Ismail, the first African woman to win the prize, “has used the teachings of her faith, family, and scientific education to improve the health and opportunities of some of the world’s most vulnerable women and girls,” said Heather Templeton Dill, president of the John Templeton Foundation.

Ismail, 85, said she would donate some of her prize money to the U.S.-based Friends of Edna Maternity Hospital, for use in purchasing new equipment, hiring educators and “training the next generation of health care workers that East Africa so desperately needs.”

Ismail was born in 1937 in Hargeisa, the capital of what was then British Somaliland. Her father was a doctor; thanks to his influence, she was covertly tutored alongside her brothers until she was 15. A scholarship exam, normally reserved for boys, qualified her to study in Britain, where she received an education in nursing and midwifery.

She returned to her homeland as its first medically trained nurse-midwife. According to the prize announcement, she was the first woman to drive a car in her country and the first appointed to a position of political authority as director of the Ministry of Health.

She later joined the World Health Organization, serving as regional technical officer for maternal and child health from 1987-91 and WHO representative to Djibouti from 1991-97.

She left her international career to return home with a dream of building a hospital. After newly re-formed Somaliland declared its independence in 1991 — though it remains unrecognized by foreign powers — its government offered her a tract of land previously used as a garbage dump.

She sold her assets to build the hospital and raised more funds worldwide after a profile of her appeared in The New York Times. The Edna Adan Maternity Hospital opened in 2002.

While Somaliland’s health care system was in disarray, the hospital made great strides, dramatically reducing the maternal mortality. Its education program became Edna Adan University in 2010; it has trained more than 4,000 students to become doctors, nurses and other types of health professionals. More than 30,000 babies have been delivered at the hospital, where 80% of the staff and 70% of the students are women.

Despite its lack of international recognition, Somaliland remains self-governing in its territory in northern Somalia.

Ismail is an outspoken critic of female genital mutilation, a painful and sometimes life-threatening practice performed in some Muslim and non-Muslim societies. When she was 8, her mother subjected her to FGM without the knowledge of her father, who was outraged.

As a practicing midwife early in her career, she was confronted with grievous complications during childbirth from the FGM scarring. After attending a 1976 conference in Sudan at which participants from Muslim countries that practiced FGM spoke about its effects, she was inspired to raise the issue at home.

As a director in Somalia’s health ministry, Ismail began to speak out on FGM — initially shocking her audience and attracting threats, but also building widespread interest. She encouraged women to come forward and men to stand up for them.

“Islam forbids female circumcision,” Ismail said in a video filmed for the Templeton Prize. “Every day I’m reliving and remembering, I’m recalling that pain that happened to me when I was 7 or 8 years old. The wounds may heal but the pain never leaves you.”

While progress has been made, FGM is still practiced in several countries; cases have come to light in Britain, the United States and elsewhere. Ismail’s fight to end FGM continues through her international advocacy and at her hospital.
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Climate change does not make cyclones, such as the one battering Bangladesh, more frequent, but it does render them more intense and destructive, according to climatologists and weather experts.

These immensely powerful natural phenomena have different labels according to the region they hit, but cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons are all violent tropical storms that can generate 10 times as much energy as the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

They are divided into different categories according to their maximum sustained wind strength and the scale of damage they can potentially inflict.

Cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons

“A cyclone is a low-pressure system that forms in the tropics in an area hot enough for it to develop,” Emmanuel Cloppet, from French weather office Meteo France, told AFP.

“It is characterized by rain/storm clouds that start rotating and generate intense rains and winds, and a storm surge created by the wind,” he added.

These huge weather phenomena — several hundreds of kilometers across — are made more dangerous by their ability to travel huge distances.

Tropical cyclones are categorized according to wind intensity, rising from tropical depression (under 63 kilometers per hour), through tropical storm (63-117 kph) to major hurricane (above that).

They are termed cyclones in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific, hurricanes in the North Atlantic and Northeast Pacific and typhoons in the Northwest Pacific.

Meteorological agencies monitoring these storms use different scales to categorize them, depending on the oceanic basin in which they occur.

The most well-known scale for measuring their intensity and destructive potential is the five-level Saffir-Simpson wind scale.

More powerful cyclones

“The overall number of tropical cyclones per year has not changed globally but climate change has increased the occurrence of the most intense and destructive storms,” according to the World Weather Attribution (WWA), a group of climate scientists and climate impact specialists whose goal is to demonstrate reliable links between global heating and certain weather phenomena.

The most violent cyclones — categories three to five on the Saffir-Simpson scale — that cause the most destruction have become more frequent, the WWA said.

Climate change caused by human activity influences tropical cyclones in three major ways — by warming the air and oceans and by triggering a rise in sea levels.

“Tropical cyclones are the most extreme rainfall events on the planet,” the WWA said in its publication Reporting Extreme Weather and Climate Change.

In addition, since the atmosphere is warmer, it can hold more water, so when it rains it pours.

“A rise in air temperature of three degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) can potentially produce a 20% increase in the quantity of rain generated by a cyclonic event,” said Cloppet.

It is these intense torrential downpours that lead to sometimes fatal floods and mudslides, as was the case of Cyclone Freddy, which killed hundreds of people in Malawi and Mozambique earlier this year.

Climate change is also warming the oceans. This warm water fuels cyclones and gives them their strength.

“Climate change therefore creates the conditions in which more powerful storms can form, intensify rapidly and persist to reach land, while carrying more water,” the WWA said.

Shifting north

The fierce winds produced by cyclones generate storm surges that can cause coastal flooding.

These storm waves are higher now than in previous decades because of the sea level rise triggered by climate change.

Scientists also expect to see cyclones in places they have not happened before because global heating is expanding the regions where tropical sea water conditions occur.

“It’s as if the tropics were spreading,” Cloppet said. “Areas that aren’t really affected now could be hit much harder in future.”

The WWA agreed: “As ocean waters warm, it is reasonable to speculate that [tropical] storms will shift further away from the Equator.”

“A northward shift in cyclones in the western North Pacific, striking East and Southeast Asia, [is] a direct consequence of climate change,” it said.

As a result, cyclones could strike in relatively unprepared locations that have not, in the past, had reason to expect them.
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Pacific Island leaders criticized rich countries Monday for not doing enough to control climate change despite being responsible for much of the problem, and for making money off loans provided to vulnerable nations to mitigate the effects.

Leaders and representatives from Pacific Island nations demanded at a U.N. climate change conference in Bangkok that the world make more effort to put aside differences in combating the environmental impact, especially as their countries emerge from the economic devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prime Minister Mark Brown of the Cook Islands said the finance model for combatting climate change — giving out loans to reduce the impact — is “not the way to go” for countries in his region with such small populations that produce “inconsequential amounts of carbon emissions” but suffer the most from the effects.

He encouraged a shift toward grants or interest-free loans to help ease the financial burden on poorer countries.

“All we’re doing is adding debt to countries that have come out of COVID with increased debt, and to me it is actually quite offensive that we would be required to borrow money to build resilience, and to borrow from the very countries that are causing climate change,” he told The Associated Press.

Brown said his country lost an estimated 41% of its GDP because of the pandemic, “a loss of a decade’s worth of prosperity.”

He said he will give this message to leaders when he represents his tiny South Pacific nation with a population of about 17,000 at a summit later this week of the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations in Japan, where he hopes to be able to speak on a more equal footing to the leaders than as “a grateful recipient” to “benevolent donors.”

Palau President Surangel S. Whipps Jr. agreed that financing opportunities are “few and difficult,” and criticized wealthy countries for failing to commit to provide the financial help they had promised, which he said represents only a tiny portion of their prioritized expenditures such as the military.

“We didn’t cause the problem, but now they’re going to make money off of us by giving us a loan so we can pay back with interest,” he told The Associated Press. “So now you have to adapt, but we’ll give you money and make money off of you by giving you that money to adapt. That doesn’t make sense.”

Whipps said Palau’s economy relies heavily on tourism, which is greatly threatened by the impact of climate change. The country’s economic security is also a major issue in Palau’s negotiations with the U.S. on the “Compacts of Free Association,” a broader agreement that will govern its relations with Washington for the next two decades. Those ties grant the U.S. unique military and other security rights in the islands in return for substantial aid.

Whipps said the administration of President Joe Biden has promised approximately $900 million over the 20-year period. While the amount is “definitely less” than what his country would have wanted, Whipps said he is largely satisfied with the terms, renegotiated from what was achieved during the administration of former President Donald Trump.

While there are some concerns that the U.S. Congress will cut foreign aid and in turn affect this funding, Whipps said he expects Washington will honor the agreement, which he hopes can be signed by both sides in Papua New Guinea next week.

Brown said efforts to tackle climate change and build resilience to its impact, such as better infrastructure and greater water and food security, require lots of money, especially for island nations with small populations. He said $1.2 billion a year for the region to spend on climate adaptation and mitigation measures would be “a starter.”

“The fact remains that the underlying solution to assist countries that are facing the impacts of climate change is to build resilience, and building resilience takes money,” he said.
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In South Africa, women make up only 13% of graduates with degrees in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. In an effort to interest more young women in those fields, a retired US astronaut is visiting schools in South Africa. Zaheer Cassim reports from Johannesburg.
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In the southern Chilean city of Santa Juana, hit hard by wildfires earlier this year, locals have a special taskforce helping fight blazes: a herd of goats.

The goats have already saved the native forest of the Bosques de Chacay once in February, preventing the park from being consumed by forest fires – fueled by heatwaves and a punishing drought – that left dozens dead, thousands injured and almost 440,000 hectares destroyed in south-central Chile.

“The park was surrounded by fires, but it ended up being the only green spot left,” said Rocio Cruces, cofounder of the 16-hectare (40-acre) park, and “Buena Cabra,” a project that uses goats to build firebreaks.

The technique, also used in Portugal and Spain, relies on grazing goats to control dry pastures and other vegetation that fuel forest fires in the summer. Goat droppings also help enrich the soil and prevent further erosion.

“The fire reached our forest but only the first line of trees was really affected, less than 10% of the park,” Cruces said, adding that small fires broke out but did not advance due to minimal brush.

Cruces started the project after deadly wildfires in 2017. Her flock has since grown from 16 goats to 150 and she hopes to inspire others to follow suit.

“In Chile we are failing in fire prevention,” said Francisco Di Napoli, a forestry engineer from the University of Concepcion in Chile who is familiar with the technique, known as “strategic grazing.”

“These animals can help us a lot,” Di Napoli said, adding that other organizations should “evaluate where it can be applied, find where there’s fuel and have the goats eat it.”
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Footage of a plump snapping turtle relaxing along a Chicago waterway has gone viral after the man who filmed the well-fed reptile marveled at its size and nicknamed it “Chonkosaurus.”

Joey Santore was kayaking with a friend along the Chicago River last weekend when they spotted the large snapping turtle sitting atop a large chain draped over what appear to be rotting logs.

He posted a jumpy video of the turtle on Twitter, labeling it the “Chicago River Snapper aka Chonkosaurus.”

In the video, Santore can be heard sounding stunned by the size of the turtle, which was displaying folds of flesh extending well beyond its shell.

“Look at this guy. We got a picture of this most beautiful sight. Look at the size of that … thing,” he says, using an expletive. “Look at that beast. Hey, how ya doing guy? You look good. You’re healthy.”

Chris Anchor, the chief wildlife biologist with Forest Preserves of Cook County, said the snapping turtle Santore filmed is quite rare, considering its apparent size. He said it’s also unusual for the reptiles to be seen basking along rivers, but it probably recently emerged from hibernation.

“So my guess is that this animal had crawled out of the river to try and gather as much heat as it could in the sunshine,” Anchor told WMAQ-TV.

While it’s difficult to determine exactly how large the turtle is from the video alone, Anchor called it “a very large individual.” And he noted that snapping turtles are not picky eaters.

“Turtles this big will consume anything they can get their mouth around,” he said, adding that anyone encountering a snapping turtle should not disturb it or try to catch it.

“Enjoy it. Leave it alone,” Anchor said.
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The platypus, a species unique to Australia, was reintroduced into the country’s oldest national park just south of Sydney on Friday in a landmark conservation project after disappearing from the area more than half a century ago.

Known for its bill, webbed feet, and venomous spurs, the platypus is one of only two egg-laying mammals globally and spends most of its time in the water at night.

Because of its reclusive nature and highly specific habitat needs, most Australians have never seen one in the wild.

The relocation is a collaborative effort between the University of New South Wales, Taronga Conservation Society Australia, World Wild Fund for Nature Australia and the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service.

Four females were released on Friday into the Royal National Park, which was established in 1879 and is the second oldest national park in the world.

No confirmed platypus sightings have been reported in the park, about 35 kilometers or one hour’s drive south of Sydney, since the 1970s.

The relocation comes at a time when the platypus is increasingly threatened by habitat destruction, river degradation, feral predators, and extreme weather events such as droughts and bushfires.

Estimates on the current population vary widely, from 30,000 to some 300,000.

“(It is) very exciting for us to see platypuses come back into the park, for a thriving population here to establish themselves and for Sydneysiders to come and enjoy this amazing animal,” said Gilad Bino, a researcher from UNSW’S Center for Ecosystem Science.

The platypuses, which live along Australia’s east coast and in Tasmania, were collected from various locations across south-eastern New South Wales state and subjected to various tests before relocation.

Each platypus will be tracked for the next two years to better understand how to intervene and relocate the species in the event of drought, bushfire, or flood, researchers said.
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The Group of Seven (G-7) rich nations is set to agree on establishing a new program to distribute vaccines to developing countries at next week’s summit of leaders, Japan’s Yomiuri newspaper said Saturday.

In addition to the G-7, G-20 nations such as India and international groups such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank will participate, it added, citing Japanese government sources.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the COVAX facility, backed by WHO and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), delivered nearly 2 billion doses of coronavirus vaccine to 146 countries.

However, COVAX faced setbacks in ensuring equitable access, as wealthy nations prioritized shots for their citizens while insufficient storage facilities in poorer nations caused supply delays and disposal of millions of close-to-expiry doses.

The new program aims to pool rainy-day funds for vaccine production and purchases, as well as investment in low-temperature storages and training of health workers to prepare for the next global pandemic, the Yomiuri said.

Japan, this year’s chair of the G-7 meetings, looks to build support from emerging nations on wide-ranging issues such as supply chains, food security and climate change to counter the growing influence of China and Russia.

Saturday’s meeting of G-7 finance ministers agreed to offer aid to low- and middle-income countries to help increase their role in supply chains for energy-related products.

At a meeting Saturday, G-7 finance and health ministers called for a new global financing framework to “deploy necessary funds quickly and efficiently in response to outbreaks without accumulating idle cash,” they said in a statement.

The G-7 will collaborate with the WHO and the World Bank, which manages an international pandemic fund, to explore the new funding scheme ahead of an August meeting of G-20 finance and health ministers in India, they said.

The G-7 grouping of Britain, Canada, the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States, is considering whether to issue a statement on a global pandemic response at the May 19-21 summit in Japan’s city of Hiroshima, the Yomiuri said.  
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Malawi has launched a nationwide rollout of the newest typhoid vaccine for children under 15.

A two-year study of the vaccine, the first in Africa, found it safe to use and effective in more than 80% of recipients. Health authorities say the vaccine is expected to reduce the threat from a disease that kills close to 20,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa each year.

Typhoid fever is a contagious bacterial infection caused by consuming contaminated foods or drinks. Its symptoms include nausea, fever and abdominal pain, and if left untreated it can be fatal.

Malawi health authorities said the typhoid conjugate vaccine (TCV) rollout would be part of a nationwide program expected to start Monday when children will be vaccinated against three other diseases: measles, rubella and polio.

However, some fear the campaign will encounter hesitancy and resistance from people, as was the case with COVID-19 vaccines, which led to the burning of about 20,000 expired doses in Malawi in 2021.

George Jobe, chairperson of the Universal Health Coverage Coalition in Malawi, told VOA that efforts were made to educate people on the importance of the campaign.

“There was training for community health care workers as well as teachers, so that they take messages to community leaders, who would also take messages to their subjects,” Jobe said.

Terrible toll

Typhoid has long been a health threat in Malawi and across sub-Saharan Africa, with an estimated 1.2 million cases and 19,000 deaths each year.

In 2018, Malawi became the first country to use TCV to fight typhoid infections in children under clinical trials.

Over 20,000 children from 9 months to 12 years of age took part in a clinical trial in Malawi led by professor Melita Gordon of the University of Liverpool. The trial found the vaccine was safe and was more than 80% effective.

Priyanka Patel, an understudy doctor at the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome program, told VOA that this vaccine can offer protection for at least four years, making it a highly effective and efficient tool for preventing the spread of typhoid.

“Secondly,” Patel said, “the typhoid conjugate vaccine can be given to children as young as 6 months old, making it easier to reach vulnerable populations. This is in contrast to older vaccines, which were not approved for use in young children.”

In Malawi, TCV was expected to be rolled out in 2021, but the effort was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gianfranco Rotigliano, country representative for the U.N. children’s agency in Malawi, urged the government to prioritize its immunization campaign in hard-to-reach areas where most of the children are unvaccinated.

“Vaccination is a right, health is a right,” he said. “So we should definitely look for children who are not vaccinated, because in urban areas most of the children are vaccinated, but there are those who never got even one dose of vaccine.”

Government authorities hope the campaign will be a success, following the efforts they have put in place to educate people on the importance of vaccinating children.
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Astronomers have created a stunning mosaic of baby star clusters hiding in our galactic backyard.

The montage, published Thursday, reveals five vast stellar nurseries less than 1,500 light-years away. A light-year is nearly 9.7 trillion kilometers.

To come up with their atlas, scientists pieced together more than 1 million images taken over five years by the European Southern Observatory in Chile. The observatory’s infrared survey telescope was able to peer through clouds of dust and discern infant stars.

“We can detect even the faintest sources of light, like stars far less massive than the sun, revealing objects that no one has ever seen before,” University of Vienna’s Stefan Meingast, the lead author, said in a statement.

The observations, conducted from 2017 to 2022, will help researchers better understand how stars evolve from dust, Meingast said.

The findings, appearing in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, complement observations by the European Space Agency’s star-mapping Gaia spacecraft, orbiting nearly 1.5 million kilometers away.

Gaia focuses on optical light, missing most of the objects obscured by cosmic dust, the researchers said.
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The World Health Organization on Thursday declared mpox — formerly known as monkeypox — no longer poses a global public health emergency.

At a briefing at agency headquarters in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the organization’s emergency committee on mpox met and recommended the multi-country outbreak no longer represents a public health emergency of international concern, and that he accepted that recommendation.

One major factor in the decision Tedros cited was a nearly 90% drop in cases of the disease during the last three months compared to the previous three months.

The WHO chief credited the sharp drop in cases to the work of community organizations and public health authorities around the world. The United Nations-linked health body noted that organizational efforts to inform the public of the risks of mpox, encouraging and supporting behavior change, and advocating for access to tests, vaccines and treatments, were critical.

But Tedros warned mpox continues to pose significant public health challenges that require “a robust, proactive and sustainable response.” In fact, Wednesday the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced a new cluster of cases were reported in Chicago.

Symptoms of mpox often include a rash that may be located on hands, feet, chest, face, or mouth or near the genitals, as well as fever, chills, and fatigue.

The WHO reported 98% of cases are among men who have sex with other men and can be spread from person to person through sexual contact, kissing, hugging and through contaminated clothing, towels and bed sheets.

In his briefing, Tedros said the misinformed stigma that mpox is a “gay disease” had been a driving concern in managing the epidemic, adding that it continues to hamper access to care for the disease. A feared much larger backlash against the most affected communities with mpox has largely not materialized.

As the outbreak expanded late last year, a trend of racist and stigmatizing language online and in some communities toward the term “monkeypox” was reported to the WHO. After consultations with international experts, the agency adopted mpox as a new, preferred term for the disease.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France Presse.
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A new wing of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City officially opened to the public in in early May. The futuristic space features new galleries including an insectarium, butterfly vivarium, floor-to-ceiling collections displays and more. Evgeny Maslov has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Vladimir Badikov 
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Health agencies warn that viral hepatitis could kill more people by 2040 than HIV, tuberculosis and malaria combined if it remains a neglected disease and efforts to fight it remain underfunded.  

 

The World Health Organization reports every year that viral hepatitis, a potentially life-threatening liver infection, affects more than 350 million people globally and kills more than a million. Ninety percent of these infections and deaths are in low- and middle-income countries. 

 

Despite a cure for hepatitis C and a vaccine for hepatitis B, campaigners for a world free of this dangerous and debilitating disease remain far off that mark. 

 

“Over the last 10 years, we have seen really remarkable progress in this journey to eliminate viral hepatitis,” said Oriel Fernandez, senior director of the Viral Hepatitis Global Program at the Clinton Health Access Initiative, or CHAI.

“We have the tools to prevent, diagnose and treat viral hepatitis,” she said. “Secondly, the price of hepatitis drugs and diagnostics has significantly fallen over the years.” 

 

For example, Fernandez noted that in 2018, CHAI supported the government of Rwanda to set the lowest price for WHO-approved hepatitis B treatment. 

“The total cost to cure a patient dropped by 96%, from over $2,500 per person to less than $80 per person cured. And this made the idea of elimination affordable for Rwanda and really established a benchmark price for all countries to aim for,” she said. 

Pledging conference

 

But funding to help poor countries pay for the treatments and vaccines to cure and eliminate this debilitating disease remains elusive. To address this issue, the Hepatitis Fund and CHAI will hold the first-ever pledging conference in Geneva next week.  

 

The conference hopes to raise $150 million to support countries that are committed to the elimination of viral hepatitis and have taken action to implement programs toward this end. Organizers cite Egypt, Rwanda, Georgia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and Vietnam among other countries that have begun this process. 

 

Kenneth Kabagambe, who has been living in Uganda with hepatitis B since 2012, is the founding executive director of the National Organization for People Living with Hepatitis B. He said he started the organization to raise awareness of the disease and to shatter the myths that stigmatize people and discourage them from seeking help. 

 

“For example, there are issues to do with the myths and misconceptions, which actually are drawn from the lack of clear information about the transmission of hepatitis B and hepatitis C in the communities,” he said. “These actually have led to domestic violence in some families because people think that hepatitis B is just casually transmitted, which is not correct.”

Hepatitis B is spread through sexual transmission and through contact with the blood, open sores or body fluids from a person infected with the disease. The main mode of transmission, however, is from mother to child during birth and delivery.   

 

WHO reports that about 70% of hepatitis B infections worldwide occur in Africa, and 70% of those infected with the disease are children younger than 5.   

Birth doses

While vaccination is the best way to prevent hepatitis B, Fernandez noted that the first birth dose of this vaccine has very low coverage in Africa. 

 

“In 2021, only 17% of newborn babies in the WHO Africa region received a timely hepatitis B birth dose,” she said. “And only 14 of the countries in the region have policies for routine HB-dose vaccinations.”   

 

Fernandez said effective and affordable treatments are available for both hepatitis B and hepatitis C, which is largely spread through unsafe drug injections and is a particularly huge problem in countries in the Eastern Mediterranean and Central and Southeast Asian regions, as well as some countries in the Western Pacific. 

 

“I think the bottom line is we do have effective tools for prevention in the case of hepatitis C and B, and treatment in the case of a cure for hepatitis C,” she said. “They just have not been implemented effectively, and to do this, we need a surge in financing. It is not an insurmountable goal. Countries have shown that we can do this.” 

 

Conference organizers say that investing $6 billion annually to end hepatitis in 67 low- and middle-income countries would prevent the deaths of 4.5 million people by 2030.  

They add, “For every dollar spent on HBV [hepatitis B virus] elimination activities, there is a two to four times return on investment.”
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For two decades, scientists have been comparing every person’s full set of DNA they study to a template that relies mostly on genetic material from one man affectionately known as “the guy from Buffalo.”

But they’ve long known that this template for comparison, or “reference genome,” has serious limits because it doesn’t reflect the spectrum of human diversity.

“We need a really good understanding of the variations, the differences between human beings,” said genomics expert Benedict Paten of the University of California, Santa Cruz. “We’re missing out.”

Now, scientists are building a much more diverse reference that they call a “pangenome,” which so far includes the genetic material of 47 people from various places around the world. It’s the subject of four studies published Wednesday in the journals Nature and Nature Biotechnology. Scientists say it’s already teaching them new things about health and disease and should help patients down the road.

Paten said the new reference should help scientists understand more about what’s normal and what’s not. “It is only by understanding what common variation looks like that we’ll be able to say, ‘Oh, this big structural variation that affects this gene? Don’t worry about it,'” he said.

A human genome is the set of instructions to build and sustain a human being, and experts define a pangenome as a collection of whole genome sequences from many people that is designed to represent the genetic diversity of the human species. The pangenome is not a composite but a collection; scientists depict it as a rainbow of stacked genomes, compared with one line representing the older, single reference genome.

The Human Pangenome Project builds upon the first sequencing of a complete human genome, which was nearly completed more than two decades ago and finally finished last year. Paten, a pangenome study author and project leader, said 70% of that first reference genome came from an African American man with mixed African and European ancestry who answered an ad for volunteers in a Buffalo newspaper in 1997. About 30% came from a mix of around 20 people.

The pangenome contains material from 24 people of African ancestry, 16 from the Americas and the Caribbean, six from Asia and one from Europe.

Although any two people’s genomes are more than 99% identical, Paten said “it’s those differences that are the things that genetics and genomics is concerned with studying and understanding.”

It may take a while for patients to see concrete benefits from the research. But scientists said new insights should eventually make genetic testing more accurate, improve drug discovery and bolster personalized medicine, which uses someone’s unique genetic profile to guide decisions for preventing, diagnosing and treating disease.

“The Pangenome Project gives a more accurate representation of the genome of people from around the world,” and should help doctors better diagnose genetic conditions, said clinical genetics expert Dr. Wendy Chung at Columbia University, who was not involved in the research.

If someone has a variation in a certain gene, it could be compared to the rainbow of references.

Study author Evan Eichler of the University of Washington said researchers will also learn more about genes already linked to problems, such as one tied to cardiovascular disease in African Americans.

“Now that we can actually sequence that gene in its entirety and we can understand the variation in that gene, we can start to go back to unexplained cases of patients with coronary heart disease” and look at them in light of the new knowledge, he said.

University of Minnesota plant genetics expert Candice Hirsch, who wasn’t involved in the research but has closely followed the effort, said she expects many discoveries to flow from it. Until now, “we really have only been able to scratch the surface of understanding the genetics that underlies disease,” she said.

The consortium leading the research is part of the Human Genome Reference Program, which is funded by an arm of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

The team is in the process of adding to the collection of reference genomes, with the goal of having sequences from 350 people by the middle of next year. Scientists are also hoping to work more with international partners, including those focusing on Indigenous populations.

“We’re in it for the long game,” Paten said.
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An unmarried Chinese woman on Tuesday began her final appeal of a hospital’s denial of access to freeze her eggs five years ago in a landmark case of female reproductive rights in the country. 

Teresa Xu’s case has drawn broad coverage in China, including by some state media outlets, since she first brought her case to court in 2019. She lost her legal challenge last year at another Beijing court, which ruled the hospital did not violate her rights in its decision. 

The upcoming judgment will have strong implications for the lives of many unmarried women in China and the country’s demographic changes, especially after the world’s second-largest economy recorded its first population decline in decades. 

In China, the law does not explicitly ban unmarried people from services such as fertility treatments and simply states that a “husband and wife” can have up to three children. But hospitals and other institutions, in practice, implement the regulations in a way that requires people to present a marriage license. 

Xu, who wanted to preserve her eggs so she could have the option to bear children later, is one of those facing difficulties in accessing fertility treatment. 

In 2018, Xu, then 30 years old, had gone to a public hospital in Beijing to ask about freezing her eggs. But after an initial check-up, she was told she could not proceed without a marriage certificate. 

According to the judgment she received last year, the hospital argued that egg freezing poses certain health risks. It said that egg-freezing services were only available to women who could not get pregnant in the natural way, and not for healthy patients. 

But it also stated that delaying pregnancy could bring risks to the mother during pregnancy and “psychological and societal problems” if there is a large age gap between parents and their child. 

After Tuesday’s hearing, Xu told reporters that the denial constituted a violation of her right to bodily autonomy, and she chose to fight on because this matter is very important to single women. 

“I also have grown up a lot as the case evolves, I don’t want to give up easily,” she said. 

It is unclear when the court will hand down the judgment, she said. 
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A report by leading United Nations agencies says global progress in reducing maternal and newborn deaths has stalled for nearly a decade largely due to underinvestment in providing the health care.

The report shows more than 4.5 million women and babies die every year in pregnancy, childbirth or the first weeks after birth — equivalent to one death every seven seconds — “mostly from preventable or treatable causes if proper care was available.”

Allisyn Moran, unit head for maternal health at the World Health Organization, said all the deaths have similar risk factors and causes.

While the trends pre-date the coronavirus pandemic, she said “COVID-19-related service disruptions and funding diversions, rising poverty and worsening humanitarian crises are intensifying pressures on already overstretched maternity and newborn health services.”

Since 2018, the report finds, more than three-quarters of all conflict-affected and sub-Saharan African countries report funding for maternal and newborn health has declined and that only one in 10 of more than 100 countries surveyed reported they had the money needed to implement their current plans.

Speaking in Cape Town, South Africa, the site of a major global conference on maternal health, Moran said that a lack of investment in primary health care risked lowering survival prospects.

“For instance, while prematurity is now the leading cause of all under-5 deaths globally, less than a third of countries report having sufficient newborn care units to treat small and sick babies,” she said. “Two-thirds of emergency childbirth facilities in sub-Saharan Africa lack essential resources like medicines and supplies, water, electricity or staffing for 24-hour care.”

Steven Lauwerier, UNICEF director of health, agreed with that assessment. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, he said “babies, children, and women who were already exposed to threats to their well-being, especially those living in fragile countries and emergencies, are facing the heaviest consequences of decreased spending and efforts on providing quality and accessible healthcare.”

The report, “Improving Maternal and Newborn Health and Survival and Reducing Stillbirth,” found that in sub-Saharan Africa and central and southern Asia, the regions with the greatest number of newborn and maternal deaths, fewer than 60 percent of women receive even four of the WHO’s recommended eight prenatal checks.

“The death of any woman or young girl during pregnancy or childbirth is a serious violation of their human rights,” said Julitta Onabanjo, director of the technical division at the U.N. Population Fund.  “It also reflects the urgent need to scale-up access to quality sexual and reproductive health services as part of universal health coverage and primary health care, especially in communities where maternal mortality rates have stagnated or even risen during recent years.”

The authors of the report agree that women and babies must have quality, affordable health care before, during and after childbirth, as well as access to family planning services to increase survival rates.

They add that “more skilled and motivated health workers, especially midwives, are needed, alongside essential medicine and supplies, safe water, and reliable electricity.”

The stated aim of health leaders from over 30 countries attending the week-long conference is to develop plans that accelerate progress where it is most needed.

Anshu Banerjee, the WHO director of maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health and aging, is in no doubt as to where that is. “Pregnant women and newborns continue to die at unacceptably high rates worldwide,” he said, “and the COVID-19 pandemic has created further setbacks to providing them with the healthcare they need.”

“If we wish to see different results, we must do things differently,” he said. “More and smarter investments in primary health care are needed now so that every woman and baby — no matter where they live — has the best chance of health and survival.”
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Providing simple and cheap healthcare measures to pregnant women — such as offering aspirin — could prevent more than a million babies from being stillborn or dying as newborns in developing countries every year, new research said on Tuesday.   

An international team of researchers also estimated that one quarter of the world’s babies are born either premature or underweight, adding that almost no progress is being made in this area.    

The researchers called for governments and organizations to ramp up the care women and babies receive during pregnancy and birth in 81 low- and middle-income countries.   

SEE ALSO: A related video by VOA’s Timothy Obiezu

Eight proven and easily implementable measures could prevent more than 565,000 stillbirths in these countries, according to a series of papers published in the Lancet journal.    

The measures included providing micronutrient, protein and energy supplements, low-dose aspirin, the hormone progesterone, education on the harms of smoking, and treatments for malaria, syphilis and bacteria in urine.   

If steroids were made available to pregnant women and doctors did not immediately clamp the umbilical cord, the deaths of more than 475,000 newborn babies could also be prevented, the research found.    

Implementing these changes would cost an estimated $1.1 billion, the researchers said.   

This is “a fraction of what other health programs receive”, said Per Ashorn, a lead study author and professor at Finland’s Tampere University.    

‘Shockingly’ common 

Another study author, Joy Lawn of the London School for Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told AFP that the researchers used a new definition for babies born premature or underweight.   

She said the traditional way to determine a baby had a low birthweight — if it was born weighing under 2.5 kilograms — was “a bit randomly selected” by a Finnish doctor in 1919.   

 This “very blunt measure” has remained the benchmark for more than a century, despite plentiful evidence that “those babies are not all the same”, Lawn said.   

The researchers analyzed a database that included 160 million live births from 2000 to 2020 to work out how often babies are born “too soon and too small”, she said.   

“Quite shockingly, we found that this is much more common once you start to think about it in a more nuanced way.”   

The researchers estimated that 35.3 million — or one in four — of the babies born worldwide in 2020 were either premature or too small, classifying them under the new term “small vulnerable newborns.”   

While most of the babies were born in southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, Lawn emphasized that every country was affected.    

One reason progress has flatlined is that these problems tend “to be something that happens to families and women with less of a voice”, Lawn said.   

For example, pregnant African American women in the United States received a lower level of care than other groups, she added. 
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