NEWS

WHO Says Time to Stop Ignoring Adolescent Health

The World Health Organization has delivered dramatic news about the causes of death for young people the world over. Governments and health agencies have made great strides in reducing deaths of young children through immunization and programs that address maternal and infant care. But adolescents have somehow fallen through the cracks.

Dr. Anthony Costello, director of WHO’s Department of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health told VOA, “We’re finding 1.2 million (adolescents) die each year. That’s 3,000 deaths a day. That’s 10 jumbo jets.” What’s more, Costello says these deaths are largely preventable.

The study shows traffic injuries are the top cause of death among adolescents, those between 10 and 19. In most cases, the adolescent is struck by a car while walking or riding a bicycle.

Other leading causes of death include lower respiratory infections and suicide, the report found. The causes differ by gender, age and region. Boys between 15 and 19 years old are more likely to die from traffic injuries than girls or than younger boys. In sub-Saharan Africa, children are more likely to contract HIV.   

Girls between 10 and 14 are at risk for getting respiratory infections from indoor air pollution and from breathing in fumes from cooking fuels. Older girls, between 15 and 19, had a greater risk of death from pregnancy complications, childbirth or unsafe abortions. Teenage girls generally have small pelvises which lead to difficult labor.  

Costello said pregnant adolescent girls are also “more likely to get high blood pressure; they may be more vulnerable to bleeding, they may be more anemic. They may be in situations more vulnerable to malaria, to HIV.”  

The point of the study that was conducted by the WHO and partners at other U.N. agencies and the World Bank.

Looking forward

While the study focuses on the causes of death, Costello said the point was to help develop a framework and a plan to improve the health of adolescents. If adolescents had access to good health services, education and social support, fewer young people would die. In the case of traffic related deaths, he said better traffic laws, speed limits, the use of seatbelts could save lives in countries that don’t have strict driving safety laws. Costello pointed out that “In India, for example, there are 90,000 deaths on the road each year; many of those are adolescents and children.”

Dr. Flatvia Bistro, the assistant director-general at WHO, said, “Adolescents have been entirely absent from national health plans for decades.” The report proposes changing these plans and trying to help adolescents develop healthy lifestyle habits.

Costello said, “The roots of diabetes, of heart attacks, of strokes, of lung cancer, the root of that lies in the adolescent years, how the adolescents approach nutrition, and diet and exercise, whether they start to smoke or not, or abuse other substances.

Concept shift

Costello said countries need to create more adolescent friendly cities so adolescents have places to play, gather together safely and avoid gang violence.  

“Governments have got to invest in young people,” Costello said, because “they’re the future. We mustn’t be afraid to involve children in designing their own environments, in coming up with creative ideas, in working with peer groups, and investing in things that will give them an exciting life without exposing them to long term risks that could be avoidable.”

A study published in The Lancet in April shows that improving the physical, mental and sexual health of adolescents could result in significant economic returns. The study contends that an investment of about $4.60 per person per year would yield more than 10 times as much in benefits to society. This study was conducted by researchers from Victoria University and the University of Melbourne along with the United Nations Populations Fund.
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Japan, China Pull Combustible Ice From Seafloor

Commercial development of the globe’s huge reserves of a frozen fossil fuel known as “combustible ice” has moved closer to reality after Japan and China successfully extracted the material from the seafloor off their coastlines.

But experts said Friday that large-scale production remains many years away, and if not done properly could flood the atmosphere with climate-changing greenhouse gases. 

Frozen mix of water, gas

Combustible ice is a frozen mixture of water and concentrated natural gas. Technically known as methane hydrate, it can be lit on fire in its frozen state and is believed to comprise one of the world’s most abundant fossil fuels. 

The official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported that the fuel was successfully mined from beneath the South China Sea on Thursday. Chinese Minister of Land and Resources Jiang Daming declared the event a breakthrough moment heralding a potential “global energy revolution.” 

A drilling crew in Japan reported a similar successful operation two weeks earlier, on May 4 along the Shima Peninsula. 

For Japan, methane hydrate offers the chance to reduce its heavy reliance on imported fuels. In China, it could serve as a cleaner substitute for coal-burning power plants and steel factories that have polluted much of the country with lung-damaging smog.

Estimated reserves are large

Methane hydrate has been found beneath seafloors and buried inside Arctic permafrost and beneath Antarctic ice. 

Estimates of worldwide reserves range from 280 trillion cubic meters (10,000 trillion cubic feet) up to 2,800 trillion cubic meters (100,000 trillion cubic feet), according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. By comparison, total worldwide production of natural gas was 3.5 billion cubic meters (124 billion cubic feet) in 2015, the most recent year available.

That means methane hydrate reserves could meet global gas demands for 80 to 800 years at current consumption rates.

Yet efforts to successfully extract the fuel at a profit have eluded private and state-owned energy companies for decades. That’s in part because of the cost of extraction techniques, which involve large amounts of water and power to flood methane hydrate reserves so the fuel can be released and brought to the surface.

There are also environmental concerns, said David Sandalow, a former senior official with the U.S. State Department now at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.

If methane hydrate leaks during the extraction process, it can increase greenhouse gas emissions. If it can be used without leaking, it has the potential to replace dirtier coal in the power sector.

“The climate implications of producing natural gas hydrates are complicated.There are potential benefits, but substantial risks,” Sandalow said.
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Floating Barge on New York River Grows Crops

In New York, where buildings outnumber green spaces, some people have small gardens to grow some of their own food. Now, another garden is growing in New York in a very unusual location. On a barge, floating on a river, a variety of crops are being nurtured. VOA’s Deborah Block tells us more about this unique, self-sustaining garden project.
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Scientists Discover Human Antibodies to Fight Ebola Virus

Scientists have discovered a possible cure for all five known Ebola viruses, one of which ravaged West Africa in recent years.

The so-called broadly neutralizing antibodies were discovered in the blood of a survivor of the West African epidemic, which ran from late 2013 to mid-2016. The deadly virus killed more than 11,000 people of the nearly 29,000 who became infected in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.

Ebola got its name from the first documented outbreak, which occurred along the Ebola River in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire, in 1976. Since then, there have been two dozen outbreaks of Ebola in Africa, including a current one that has infected nine people in the DRC. Three people have died.

Kartik Chandran, a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, New York, helped identify the antibodies, which were described online in the journal Cell. He is optimistic that the antibodies can be used as a single therapy to treat all Ebola viruses.

“Based on the nonhuman primate studies that are ongoing, and given the fact that they are pretty predictive, I would be optimistic that they could be used to protect people and reverse disease,” Chandran said.

350 antibodies isolated

Researchers isolated about 350 antibodies from the human blood sample, two of which showed promise in neutralizing three viruses in tissue culture. The antibodies work by interfering with a process that the pathogen uses to infect and multiply inside cells.

The drug company Mapp Pharmaceutical Inc. is now testing the antibodies in monkeys to make sure they are safe and effective.

A forerunner of the experimental drug, called Zmapp, was in the experimental stages when it was pressed into service during the last epidemic. Zmapp is a combination of cloned antibodies discovered in mice that enlist the body’s natural immune system to fight infection. If given up to five days after symptoms appear, it can cure the disease.

The problem, Chandran said, is Zmapp is not terribly specific and works to neutralize only Ebola Zaire, one of the five known viruses. He said the broadly neutralizing human antibodies attack and destroy all of the viruses.   

It took scientists just six months to discover the antibodies, according to Chandran, “so this is really incredibly fast and incredibly gratifying.  And we are hoping that things will continue at this pace and that in very short order we will be in a position to be able to test these things in people.”

While the broadly neutralizing antibodies are being developed as a treatment, Chandran envisions using them in a vaccine that can be given ahead of an Ebola outbreak to guard against infection.
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Heavy Rain May Have Once Fallen on Mars

Heavy rain shaped the Martian landscape billions of years ago, according to a new study.

According to researchers at the Smithsonian Institution and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, rain on Mars once carved river beds and created valleys much like rain on Earth has, and does. It no longer rains on the Red Planet, and the water that remains is mostly in the form of ice.

The rain appears to have slowly changed over time, researchers said, noting that changes in the Martian atmosphere influenced how heavy the rain was, particularly the size of the raindrops.

When Mars formed 4.5 billion years ago, it had a much thicker atmosphere and higher atmospheric pressure. Pressure, researchers say, influences the size of raindrops.

They say that early in the planet’s history, the rain would have actually been more like fog, so it would unlikely have made much of an impact on the terrain. But as the atmosphere thinned over time, larger raindrops could form and were heavy enough to “cut into the soil” changing the shape of craters and leading to running water that could have carved valleys.

Specifically, researcher say the atmospheric pressure on the Red Planet was about four bars, compared to one bar on Earth today. This means the raindrops could not have been bigger than three millimeters across. Over time the pressure dropped to 1.5 bars allowing for larger drops measuring about 7.3 millimeters across.

“By using basic physical principles to understand the relationship between the atmosphere, raindrop size and rainfall intensity, we have shown that Mars would have seen some pretty big raindrops that would have been able to make more drastic changes to the surface than the earlier fog-like droplets,” said Ralph Lorenz of John Hopkins APL.
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Risk of Colon Cancer Death Reduced in Patients with Healthy Lifestyle

Colon cancer patients who adopt a healthy lifestyle after treatment could potentially reduce their risk of death from a recurrence by more than 40 percent, according to new research.

The findings were released ahead of a conference of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the world’s largest organization of clinical cancer professionals.

Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco analyzed data gathered in a prospective study of 1,000 advanced, stage III colon cancer patients from across the United States who were enrolled from 1999-2001. The volunteers, from 13 institutions, were evaluated over a period of seven years.

At two points during the trial, participants filled out a questionnaire asking whether their lifestyle following treatment matched prevention guidelines recommended by the American Cancer Society.

Body weight

The guidelines include maintaining a healthy body weight, eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, limiting consumption of red and processed meats, and engaging in regular physical activity.

Nine percent of patients in the study adhered to the guidelines. Of those, there was a reduction in death by 42 percent and a 31 percent lower risk of cancer recurrence compared to patients who did not follow the guidelines. In the study, colon cancer returned in 355 patients, 256 of whom died.

The federally-funded study was the first to look at colon cancer survivorship. Other studies have focused on cancer prevention through adoption of a healthy lifestyle.

There are a reported one million colon cancer survivors in the United States; the disease is the second-leading cause of cancer death. 

UCSF lead author Erin Van Blarigan said treated colon cancer patients are living longer than ever before, but there needs to be more emphasis on survivorship care. She called for an increase in resources to help more people adopt a healthy lifestyle in the aftermath of a diagnosis and treatment.

“There is a pressing need for improved survivorship care and resources to help people adopt and maintain a healthy lifestyle after cancer diagnosis,” Blarigan said.

Harvard University in Massachusetts administered the lifestyle questionnaire. The results were analyzed by researchers at the University of California.
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Somali Community in Minnesota Fights Measles, Misinformation

An ongoing measles outbreak in Minnesota has shined a light on the fact many Somali immigrants choose not to vaccinate their children.   

According to the Minnesota Department of Health, 63 measles cases have been reported statewide as of May 16, and 53 of those cases were Minnesotans of Somali origin.  Sixty of the reported cases involve individuals confirmed to not be vaccinated.

Public health officials blame false rumors that vaccines are linked to autism and other health problems for the high rate of unvaccinated children in Minnesota’s Somali-American community.  

The department’s disease director, Kris Ehresmann, said anti-vaccination groups have targeted the community with events and have even translated the anti-vaccine documentary “Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe” into Somali.

“They have been very aggressive and are continuing in their efforts to reach out to the community with misinformation throughout the duration of this outbreak,” Ehresmann said.

Anti-vaccine views

In interviews with Somali mothers, VOA’s Somali Service found that anti-vaccine views are widespread.

“I have a baby boy who was well before the vaccine, but eventually he became autistic because of the vaccine.  After him, I have never vaccinated my children,” said Safia Sheikh Mohamed, a mother of four children.

Mohamed listed a number of problems she believes are associated with vaccines, including food allergies, ear infections and eczema, a treatable condition in which the skin becomes inflamed or irritated.

Another mother said she vaccinated her child, but did so later in life.  “I never gave vaccines to my last born child before he turned six, during his first year of school.”  

Community leaders reach out

The Minnesota Department of Health is working hard to dispel such beliefs through outreach campaigns.  The department has a Somali staff member and a group of Somali health advisers who meet one-on-one with people and attend various community meetings.

“Our challenge at this point is really scalability,” Ehresmann said. “If we could multiply our efforts by 10-fold or more, that would be great, but obviously there are resource challenges.”

Multiple large-scale studies have found there is no connection between autism and the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, despite rumors to the contrary.

Ahmed Roble, a Somali-American physician who owns a clinic in Minnesota, said he and his colleagues try to dispel misinformation.

“As health professionals, our aim is not only to cure the patient but also to give them counseling,” he said.  “That is what we do for the worrying mothers and fathers who are skeptical about MMR vaccination.”

Perhaps the best argument for vaccinating children is the current outbreak, which may be frightening parents into action.  Prior to the outbreak, about 30 Somali children per week received the MMR vaccine in Minnesota, but, since the outbreak, that number has grown to 500 children per week.

“We know that as a result of the outbreak and perhaps as a result of seeing measles in real life there, that combined with other messaging has made an impact on a number of the parents,” Ehresmann said.

Additionally, parents are beginning to see the consequences of not vaccinating children.  Children who are not vaccinated are forced to stay out of daycare for 21 days if a measles case is reported and could be forced to stay out indefinitely if multiple cases occur.

State Representative Ilhan Omar, the first Somali-American elected to serve in a state legislature, invited parents, doctors, owners of clinics and community leaders to share their thoughts at a meeting on Wednesday.  She called for parents who do not vaccinate their children to take responsibility.

“It will be the parents’ responsibility if they don’t want to vaccinate.  They should go and discuss with doctors, and then, if they insist, it’s their responsibility.  It will be documented,” she said.

However, the state is bracing for an uptick in cases as the month of Ramadan approaches in late May and June and families gather for the celebration.  The final celebration of Eid al-Fitr has the greatest potential for spreading the disease.

“It would represent the biggest risk for potential transmission,” said Ehresmann.  “The fact that it’s bringing together kids and adults and everybody, and it’s not just the population of a single mosque, it’s multiple mosques coming together.  That factor means that could have the potential for transmission.”

Reporter Steve Baragona contributed to this report.
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Cuba Says Zika Tally Rises to Nearly 1,900 Cases

Cuba said on Thursday 1,847 residents had so far contracted the mosquito-borne Zika virus, warning that certain provinces on the Caribbean island still had high rates of infestation despite a series of measures to stave off the epidemic.

At the start of the global Zika outbreak, Cuba managed for months to fend off the virus that can cause microcephaly in babies as well as Guillain-Barre syndrome, even as neighboring territories like Puerto Rico were hard hit.

The Communist-run country called out the military to help fumigate, activated neighborhood watch groups to check for places with standing water where mosquitoes breed, and instituted health checks at airports and other entry points to the island.

“Even though we have managed to reduce the cases of infestation … there are still provinces like Havana, Guantanamo, Cienfuegos and Camaguey, with big risks and rates of infestation,” the head of the Civil Defense’s Department of Disaster Reduction, Gloria Gely, was quoted as saying by state-run media.

Although generally a mild disease, the virus is a particular risk to pregnant women as it can cause microcephaly – a severe birth defect in which babies are born with abnormally small heads and underdeveloped brains.

Gely did not detail how many of the cases were contracted locally nor whether there had been any instances of babies born with microcephaly on the island of 11.2 million inhabitants.

There is no preventive treatment against Zika, but drug companies are rushing to develop a vaccine. The virus has spread to more than 60 countries and territories since the current outbreak was identified in Brazil during 2015.
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Google Unveils Latest Tech Tricks As Computers Get Smarter

Google’s computer programs are gaining a better understanding of the world, and now it wants them to handle more of the decision-making for the billions of people who use its services.

CEO Sundar Pichai and other top executives brought Google’s audacious ambition into sharper focus Wednesday at an annual conference attended by more than 7,000 developers who design apps to work with its wide array of digital services.

Among other things, Google unveiled new ways for its massive network of computers to identify images, as well as recommend, share, and organize photos. It also is launching an attempt to make its voice-controlled digital assistant more proactive and visual while expanding its audience to Apple’s iPhone, where it will try to outwit an older peer, Siri.

The push marks another step toward infusing nearly all of Google’s products with some semblance of artificial intelligence – the concept of writing software that enables computers to gradually learn to think more like humans.

Google punctuated the theme near the end of the conference’s keynote address by projecting the phrase, “Computing that works like we do.”

Pichai has made AI the foundation of his strategy since becoming Google’s CEO in late 2015, emphasizing that technology is rapidly evolving from a “mobile-first” world, where smartphones steer the services that companies are building, to an “AI-first” world, where the computers supplement the users’ brains.

AI unnerves many people because it conjures images of computers eventually becoming smarter than humans and eventually running the world. That may sound like science fiction, but the threat is real enough to prompt warnings from respected technology leaders and scientists, including Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking.

But Pichai and Google co-founder Larry Page, now CEO of Google corporate parent Alphabet Inc., see it differently. They believe computers can take over more of the tedious, grunt work so humans have more time to think about deeper things and enjoy their lives with friends and family.

Other big tech companies, including Amazon.com, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook, also are making AI a top priority as they work on similar services to help users stay informed and manage their lives.

Google believes it can lead the way in AI largely because it has built a gigantic network of data centers with billions of computers scattered around the world. This while people using its dominant internet search engine and leading email service have been feeding the machines valuable pieces of personal information for nearly 20 years.

Now, Google is drawing upon that treasure trove to teach new tricks to its digital assistant, which debuted last year on its Pixel phone and an internet-connected speaker called Home that is trying to mount a challenge to Amazon’s Echo. Google Assistant is on more than 100 million devices after being on the market for slightly more than six months and now is trying to invade new territory with a free app released Wednesday that works on the operating system powering Apple’s iPhone. Previously, the assistant worked only on Google’s Android software.

Google’s assistant will be at a disadvantage on the iPhone, though, because Siri – a concierge that Apple introduced in 2011 – is built into that device.

A new service called Google Lens will give Assistant a new power. Lens uses AI to identify images viewed through a phone. For instance, point the phone at a flower and Assistant will call upon Lens to identify the type of flower. Or point the camera at the exterior of a restaurant and it will pull up reviews of the place.

Pinterest has a similar tool. Also called Lens, it lets people point their cameras at real-world items and find out where to buy them, or find similar things online.

Google Photos is adding a new tool that will prompt you to share photos you take of people you know. For instance, Photos will notice when you take a shot of a friend and nudge you to send it to her, so you don’t forget. Google will also let you share whole photo libraries with others. Facebook has its own version of this feature in its Moments app.

One potentially unsettling new feature in Photos will let you automatically share some or all of your photos with other people. Google maintains the feature will be smart enough so that you would auto-share only specific photos – say, of your kids – to your partner or a friend.

Google is also adding a feature to Photos to create soft-cover and hard-cover albums of pictures at prices beginning at $9.99. The app will draw upon its AI powers to automatically pick out the best pictures to put in the album.
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