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Mar132022 by GHealth NewsNo Comments

WHO advised Ukraine to destroy pathogens in health labs to prevent disease spread

Global Health

GHealth News - The World Health Organization advised Ukraine to destroy high-threat pathogens housed in the country's public health laboratories to prevent "any potential spills" that would spread disease among the population, the agency told Reuters. Like many other countries, Ukraine has public health laboratories researching how to mitigate the threats of dangerous diseases affecting both animals and humans including, most recently, COVID-19. Its labs have received support from the United States, the European Union and the WHO. Biosecurity experts say Russia's movement of troops into Ukraine and bombardment of its cities have raised the risk of an escape of disease-causing pathogens, should any of those facilities be damaged. In response to questions from Reuters about its work...

Mar112022 by GHealth NewsNo Comments

Cameroon launches year-long anti-malaria campaign

Communicable Diseases

GHealth News - Cameroon launched a year-long anti-malaria campaign dubbed "Stop Malaria" on Thursday amidst rising numbers of infections. The campaign will take place nationwide targeting all communities and especially business leaders, local elected officials, traditional rulers, religious rulers and associations, Manaouda Malachie, the country's Minister of Public Health said while launching the campaign in the capital, Yaounde. "This is one of our biggest anti-malaria campaigns which aims to step up official efforts to reduce the infection and death rate from malaria and to alleviate its heavy social and economic burden on the population," Malachie told reporters. "We have seen an increase in infection rate but the Cameroonian government will spare no efforts in reversing the t...

Mar62022 by GHealth NewsNo Comments

Climate change: IPCC report warns of ‘irreversible’ impacts of global warming

Climate Change

By Matt McGrath Many of the impacts of global warming are now simply "irreversible" according to the UN's latest assessment. But the authors of a new report say that there is still a brief window of time to avoid the very worst. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that humans and nature are being pushed beyond their abilities to adapt. Over 40% of the world's population are "highly vulnerable" to climate, the sombre study finds. But there's hope that if the rise in temperatures is kept below 1.5C, it would reduce projected losses. Just four months on from COP26, where world leaders committed themselves to rapid action on climate change, this new UN study shows the scale of their task. "Our report clearly indicates that places where people live and wo...

Mar52022 by GHealth NewsNo Comments

War in Ukraine could lead to ‘devastating’ tuberculosis problem, warns Anthony Fauci

Global Health

By Harriet Barber Dr Anthony Fauci spoke exclusively to The Telegraph about TB in Ukraine CREDIT: J. Scott Applewhite /AP Pool The Russian invasion of Ukraine could be “devastating” for tuberculosis control in eastern Europe, and will cause a “terrible public health tragedy”, Dr Anthony Fauci has warned. Ukraine reports roughly 30,000 new TB cases annually and has one of the highest rates of multidrug-resistant TB in the world. According to the World Health Organization estimates, Ukraine has the fourth highest TB incidence rate among the 53 countries of the WHO European Region. “[The war] could be devastating, quite frankly,” Dr Fauci, the chief medical officer of the United States, told The Telegraph in an exclusive interview. “As a public health official, as a scien...

Feb262022 by GHealth NewsNo Comments

4 lessons from the life of global health visionary Paul Farmer

Global Health

By: Keren Landman The death of global health visionary Paul Farmer on February 21 came at a bleak moment for the world. In the wake of a badly botched pandemic response, the world’s most vulnerable face threats from a changing climate, rising regional violence, and the specter of the ripple effects of armed conflict in Europe. It can feel like a particularly hard time to find hope. And yet a recurring theme across the deluge of obituaries and remembrances from colleagues and admirers of Farmer is his unrelenting optimism about delivering sophisticated medical care to the world’s poorest people. Farmer’s rejection of cynicism and sense of moral clarity were foundational to his immense contributions to global heal...

Feb182022 by GHealth NewsNo Comments

Woman cured of HIV after stem cell transplant

Communicable Diseases

Students of Yangzhou University in East China's Jiangsu Province, put red ribbon on their hands as an appeal to eliminate social discrimination against HIV patients on World AIDs Day. Photo: cnsphoto GHealth News - A patient with leukaemia in the United States has become the first woman and the third person to date to be cured of HIV after receiving a stem cell transplant, researchers say. The case, presented on Tuesday at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunisitic Infections in the US city of Denver, was the first involving umbilical cord blood to treat acute myeloid leukaemia, which starts in blood-forming cells in the bone marrow. Since receiving the cord blood, the middle-aged woman of mixed race has been in remission and free of HIV for 14 months, without the need for ...

Feb152022 by GHealth NewsNo Comments

COVID Pushed Global Health Institutions to Their Limits

COVID19

By: Lawrence O. Gostin Italian army nurse helps a COVID patient at a camp hospital in Perugia that was opened to relieve the burden on nearby Santa Maria della Misericordia hospital. In December of 2020, the world continued to struggle with the pandemic's successive waves. Credit: Tommaso Ausili/Contrasto/Redux Pictures Moments of existential crisis can turn into opportunities for bold reform. World War II led to the creation of transformative institutions—the United Nations in 1945 and the World Health Organization in 1948. The birth of the WHO came the same year that the U.N. adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The COVID pandemic marks just such a moment of crisis. But instead of ushering in significant change, it has fractured global solidarity. That, in turn, ha...

Feb82022 by GHealth NewsNo Comments

Study: Vitamin D Deficiency Linked to Severe COVID-19

COVID19

GHealth News - People with a vitamin D deficiency are more likely to have a severe or critical case of COVID-19, according to a new study published in the journal PLOS ONE. The study is based on data from Israel’s first two coronavirus waves before vaccines were widely available. The scientists stressed that vitamin supplements aren’t a substitute for vaccines but that they can help immunity levels. “We found it remarkable, and striking, to see the difference in the chances of becoming a severe patient when you are lacking in vitamin D compared to when you’re not,” Amiel Dror, MD, the lead study author and a doctor at Galilee Medical Center, told The Times of Israel. Although the study was conducted before the Omicron var...

Jan312022 by GHealth NewsNo Comments

WHO recommends two new drugs to treat COVID-19

COVID19

WHO has recommended two new drugs for COVID-19, providing yet more options for treating the disease. The extent to which these medicines will save lives depends on how widely available and affordable they will be. The first drug, baricitinib, is strongly recommended for patients with severe or critical COVID-19. It is part of a class of drugs called Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitors that suppress the overstimulation of the immune system. WHO recommends that it is given with corticosteroids. Baricitinib is an oral drug, used in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. It provides an alternative to other arthritis drugs called Interleukin-6 receptor blockers, recommended by WHO in July 2021. WHO has also conditionally recommended the use of a monoclonal antibody drug, sotrov...

Jan242022 by GHealth NewsNo Comments

MIT is Developing an All-In-One Means of Diabetes Treatment

NCDs

MIT engineers are working on a new kind of device that could streamline the process of blood glucose measurement and insulin injection. Before consuming a meal, many people with diabetes need to inject themselves with insulin. This is a time-consuming process that often requires estimating the carbohydrate content of the meal, drawing blood to measure blood glucose levels, and then calculating and delivering the correct insulin dose. Those steps, which typically must be repeated for every meal, make it difficult for many patients with diabetes to stick with their treatment regimen. A team of MIT researchers has now come up with a new approach to streamline the process and help patients maintain healthy glucose levels. “Any intervention that makes it easier for patients to receive ...