Health

WHO eyes end to Covid emergency in 2023

GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) – The World Health Organization said Wednesday it hoped that Covid-19 would no longer be a public health emergency in 2023, as it urged China to share information that could pinpoint how the pandemic started. As the third anniversary of the original outbreak rolls around, the WHO said the virus was here to stay but would need managing alongside other respiratory illnesses. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the weekly Covid death toll […]

Striking UK nurses say walkouts over pay ‘last resort’

by Helen ROWE Agence France-Presse LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — UK nurses are set to walk out on strike for the first time in their union’s 106-year history this week, insisting they are taking action as a “last resort”. Up to 100,000 members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will hold a one-day stoppage on Thursday after rejecting a government pay offer. Chemotherapy, dialysis, intensive care and high-dependency […]

Indonesia families sue government over cough syrup deaths, injuries

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AFP) – A dozen Indonesian families whose relatives died or were injured after consuming tainted cough syrups have sued the government and companies accused of supplying the products, according to a lawsuit. The Southeast Asian country has seen a spike in cases of acute kidney injury since August, with the deaths of at least 199 people, mostly children, prompting a probe and ban on some liquid medicine sales. The class action lawsuit targets the […]

Alzheimer’s drug data shows results but also risks

TOKYO, Japan (AFP) – Experts hailed full data Wednesday showing a new drug can slow cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s patients, but warned improvements were comparatively small and the treatment can have serious side effects. Preliminary data from a trial of lecanemab was released in September and found it slowed cognitive decline by 27 percent across an 18-month period. The complete trial data, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, fleshes out those findings but also […]

Record number of children miss measles vaccine: global report

Washington, United States (AFP) A record high of nearly 40 million children around the world missed a measles vaccine dose in 2021, according to a new report Wednesday that found immunization levels had failed to rebound from disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The research, which was jointly published by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the decline was a major setback in eliminating […]

Bacterial infections the ‘second leading cause of death worldwide’

PARIS, France (AFP) – Bacterial infections are the second leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for one in eight of all deaths in 2019, the first global estimate of their lethality revealed on Tuesday. The massive new study, published in the Lancet journal, looked at deaths from 33 common bacterial pathogens and 11 types of infection across 204 countries and territories. The pathogens were associated with 7.7 million deaths — 13.6 percent of the global total […]

Ebola trial vaccines heading to Uganda: WHO

GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) – Three candidate vaccines against the strain of Ebola wreaking havoc in Uganda will be shipped to the East African country next week for trials, the World Health Organization said Wednesday. Since Uganda declared an Ebola outbreak on September 20, cases have spread across the country, including to the capital Kampala, and have claimed 55 lives, with 22 more believed to have died. Uganda has been struggling to rein in the outbreak caused […]

Billion youth risk hearing loss from headphones, venues: study

PARIS, France (AFP) – Around one billion young people worldwide could be at risk of hearing loss from listening to headphones or attending loud music venues, a large review of the available research estimated on Wednesday. The World Health Organization-led study called on young people to be more careful about their listening habits, and urged governments and manufacturers to do more to protect future hearing. The analysis published in the journal BMJ Global Health looked at data […]

Trump acolyte Kari Lake loses Arizona governor race

  Los Angeles, United States | AFP | by Huw GRIFFITH Donald Trump loyalist and prominent election denier Kari Lake has lost her bid to be governor of Arizona, US networks projected Monday, rounding out a difficult week for the former president as he readies a new run for the White House. Lake, a former TV anchor, had been seen as one of Trump’s most reliable picks heading into the midterm elections, but her defeat […]

‘Threat multiplier’: How climate change affects health

by Daniel Lawler Agence France Presse Paris, France (AFP) — Deadlier than Covid, or even rivalling cancer? Researchers have been increasingly attempting to calculate the effect climate change will have on health if the world does not act quickly to reduce carbon emissions. The World Health Organization, which says climate change is the single biggest health threat facing humanity, has called for the issue to be “front and centre” in negotiations at the COP27 summit […]

Rare canine rabies case discovered near Paris

Paris, France | AFP | A rare case of rabies has been detected in a dog in the Paris region which had bitten several people, the French agriculture ministry announced Thursday. “The Pasteur Institute confirmed a case of rabies in a Husky-cross dog held in a shelter in Evry-Courcouronnes in Essonne,” south of the French capital, the statement said. Before being isolated, the infected dog had “bitten several people who were quickly taken care of […]

EU drug watchdog expects new Covid-19 wave ‘in coming week’

The European Medicines Agency says it expects a new wave of Covid-19 infections “within a week”, adding the virus is evolving faster than the ability to supply adaptive vaccines. It said that introducing pan-Covid vaccines was important for the future but admitted these vaccines were still in “early phases” of development. EMA VIA EBS / © Agence France-Presse