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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 ...

Jan242022 by GHealth NewsNo Comments

Do not assume COVID pandemic reaching ‘end game’, warns WHO

COVID19

Conditions are ripe for Covid-19 to mutate into more new variants, and it is dangerous to assume the pandemic is approaching its endgame, the WHO’s top official warned on Monday. Addressing the WHO’s executive board, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said since the omicron variant was identified just nine weeks ago, more than 80 million Covid cases had been reported to the WHO — more than were reported in the whole of 2020. Last week, an average 100 cases were reported to the WHO every three seconds, Tedros added, and someone lost their life to the virus every 12 seconds. While cases have been surging, Tedros noted that the “explosion” in cases had not been matched by a surge in deaths, although fatalities were rising in all regions, particularly in Africa where cou...

Jan212022 by GHealth NewsNo Comments

Indonesia to push for new global health agency, president says

Global Health

Jakarta (AFP) – Indonesia will push for the creation of a new global health agency while the country holds the presidency of the G20, President Joko Widodo said Thursday at the virtual Davos forum. Widodo said the agency would strengthen the world's "health resilience" and help make the global health system more inclusive and more responsive to crises. "The Indonesian presidency will fight to strengthen the world's health resilience architecture, which will be run by a global agency," he said in a speech to the World Economic Forum's online meeting. "(Its) task is to mobilise world health resources, including for financing health emergencies, purchasing vaccines, medicines and medical devices." The Indonesian leader said the World Health Organization had showed limited cap...

Jan182022 by GHealth NewsNo Comments

Omicron won’t be the last Covid variant

COVID19

Maria Van Kerkhove, Technical Lead of the World Health Organization (WHO) Health Emergencies Programme attends a news conference on the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Geneva, Switzerland, March 16, 2020.Christopher Black | WHO | Reuters The World Health Organization on Tuesday said the pandemic will not end as the omicron variant subsides in some countries, warning the high levels of infection around the world will likely lead to new variants as the virus mutates. “We’re hearing a lot of people suggest that omicron is the last variant, that it’s over after this. And that is not the case because this virus is circulating at a very intense level around the world,” Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s Covid-19 technical lead, said during a coronavirus update in Geneva. Ne...

Jan92022 by GHealth NewsNo Comments

10 key global health moments from 2021

Global Health

It has been a year of colossal efforts in global health. Countries battled COVID-19, which claimed more lives in 2021 than in 2020, while struggling to keep other health services running. Health and care workers have borne the lion’s share of these efforts but often received little recognition or reward. Life-saving COVID-19 vaccines, tests and treatments were rolled out, but overwhelmingly in the richest countries, leaving many populations unprotected, especially in lower-income countries. Across other health areas, from diabetes to dementia, there have been both setbacks and hard-won successes. Here are 10 global highlights from 2021, including a few issues you might have missed: Innovati...

Jan52022 by GHealth NewsNo Comments

Covid will not be our last global health crisis – we need a long-term plan

Global Health

By: Jeff Sparrow Nurse in a Moscow hospital It’s nearly inevitable that we will face another pandemic. If we don’t plan to counter it, tomorrow will be like today, except much, much worse. For decades, scientists warned that urban encroachment on pristine habitats would unleash dangerous new viruses. Covid-19 should not have been a surprise – and, since viruses always mutate, neither should Omicron have been. Just as Omicron replaced Delta, something else will replace Omicron. It might be a fresh variant of Covid; it might be something completely new. “[A]nother pandemic is coming,” says Debora MacKenzie in her book Covid-19: The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened, “and no one can predict which pathogen will cause the next one.” That does...

Jan12022 by GHealth NewsNo Comments

Harvard Researcher Talks Global Health Resilience Amid COVID-19

Global Health

Catherine Arsenault, Epidemiologist and Global Health Researcher and Research Scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health - VIVIANNE CONROY By: Karl Moore From a management point of view, executives agree on the importance of leadership that adapts to the local culture. Similarly, the COVID-19 pandemic has further underlined the implication of acting accordingly to country contexts when it comes to global health systems. The coronavirus responses across the globe are precisely the subject of Catherine Arsenault’s current multi-country research project as a postdoctoral research scientist at Harvard’s Department of Global Health and Population. “I'm working on looking at the resilience of health systems during the COVID-19 pandemic by looking at the effect of the ...

Dec252021 by GHealth NewsNo Comments

FDA Authorizes First Oral Antiviral for Treatment of COVID-19

COVID19

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for Pfizer’s Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir tablets and ritonavir tablets, co-packaged for oral use) for the treatment of mild-to-moderate coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in adults and pediatric patients (12 years of age and older weighing at least 40 kilograms or about 88 pounds) with positive results of direct SARS-CoV-2 testing, and who are at high risk for progression to severe COVID-19, including hospitalization or death. Paxlovid is available by prescription only and should be initiated as soon as possible after diagnosis of COVID-19 and within five days of symptom onset. “Today’s authorization introduces the first treatment for COVID-19 that is in the form of a pill that is taken orally — a major step forwa...