Health experts are dispatching an experimental vaccine in areas of The Democratic Republic of the Congo that are considered ground zero in the fight against Ebola. Their hope is to try to combat the outbreak from the onset. The crucial test is providing hope, in times of uncertainty. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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From: MeNeedIt

Judging by the size of the crowd and the number of exhibitors at the fourth annual Consumer Electronics Show Asia, which opened Wednesday in Shanghai, China is well on its way toward catching up with the United States in consumer technology. A mirror image of the older and bigger sister show in Las Vegas, CES Asia 2018 presents the latest hardware and software for everyone. VOA’s George Putic has more.
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From: MeNeedIt

Vietnamese lawmakers have approved a new cybersecurity law that human rights activists say will stifle freedom of speech.

The law will require online content providers such as Google and Facebook to remove content deemed offensive by authorities within 24 hours, and store the personal data of its customers on servers based in Vietnam, and to open offices in the Communist-run country.

Clare Agar, Amnesty International’s director of global operations, issued a statement denouncing Tuesday’s passage of the law. Agar said “the online space was a relative refuge” within Vietnam’s “deeply repressive climate” where people could go to share ideas and opinions “with less fear of censure by the authorities.”

The new law now means “there is no safe place left,” Agar said.

The United States and Canada urged Vietnam to delay passage of the bill, citing concerns it could pose “obstacles to Vietnam’s cybersecurity and digital innovation future.” 

The Vietnam Digital Communication Association says the law could reduce the country’s gross domestic product by 1.7 percent, and wipe out 3.1 percent of foreign investment.

Vo Trong Viet, the head of the government’s defense and security committee, acknowledged that requiring content providers to open data centers inside Vietnam would increase their costs, but said it was necessary ensure the country’s cybersecurity.
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From: MeNeedIt

The separatist campaign in Indian-administered Kashmir broke out into major violence in 1989. More than 60,000 people are estimated to have died and 10,000 to have disappeared in the disputed Himalayan region. That has pushed their families into poverty. For the region’s youth, earning a living has been a challenge, especially educated young women. However, one group of young entrepreneurs is taking matters into their own hands. Yusuf Jameel has more, in this report narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.
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From: MeNeedIt

The new generation of global entrepreneurs is going into business motivated by purpose rather than just profit, according to research by the HSBC banking group released on Tuesday.

One in four entrepreneurs aged under 35 said they were more motivated by social impact than by moneymaking, compared to just over one in 10 of those aged over 55, according the results of the HSBC survey.

“Our research suggests this is a generational shift,” Stuart Parkinson, global chief investment officer of HSBC, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “Younger entrepreneurs are focused on environmental and social concerns and that’s because they see these values as being their own.”

The bank surveyed 3,700 entrepreneurs in 11 countries. One in five said their priority as a business owner was to deliver solutions to environmental and social challenges.

Parkinson said social media had brought greater scrutiny of businesses, while awareness of the social and environmental impacts of business practices had also increased.

“Social enterprise has taken off as this new formula for success, which is this combination of capitalism and doing good, and younger entrepreneurs are clearly leading this,” he said.

Social enterprises are businesses with a mission to benefit society or the environment as well as turn a profit and Britain is seen as a global leader in the innovative sector.

Last year it had about 70,000 employing nearly 1 million people last year, according to membership organization Social Enterprise UK, up from 55,000 businesses in 2007.

Zakia Moulaoui runs the social enterprise Invisible Cities, which employs homeless people as city guides in Edinburgh, and plans to expand the business to Manchester and Glasgow by the end of the year.

The 31-year-old said there was a greater awareness amongst her generation that being able to address social issues and earn an income was possible.

“People who thought they couldn’t do that because they needed to make a living for themselves might have just worked in a regular business and volunteered at the weekend, but now people know they can reconcile the two,” Moulaoui said.

Britain’s Confederation of British Industry (CBI), an employers’ group, has found that two thirds of 18- to 34-year-olds think companies should put society’s interest first.

“This is a view shared by employees, customers and communities. CEOs of firms of all sizes are clearer than ever before — purpose and profit go hand in hand,” said Josh Hardie, deputy director-general of the CBI.
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From: MeNeedIt

Indonesia is rich in commodities such as oil, gas, gold and tin, but a handful of government officials think its most powerful resources are cultural. 

They belong to a dynamic young body called the Creative Economy Agency, or BEKRAF (an acronym derived from its Indonesian name) that was created in 2015 by President Joko Widodo to promote Indonesia’s cultural output both at home and abroad.

“Oil and gas are finite resources. The only thing that lasts forever is creativity,” said Boni Pudjianto, BEKRAF’s director for international markets. 

BEKRAF’s staff was appointed meritocratically through an open call to government officers, regardless of background. Boni, for instance, has a doctorate in engineering and was posted at the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology before he joined BEKRAF. 

“It’s an experimental agency,” he said. “It’s a new model for a governmental body.” 

BEKRAF wants to promote the arts of the world’s fourth largest country more effectively to a global audience.

The agency was behind Indonesia’s acclaimed pavilion at this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale, called “Sunyata: The Poetics of Emptiness.” It was Indonesia’s second time at the biennale, following a debut effort in 2014. This entry was overseen from start to finish by BEKRAF, from the selection of six curators to the opening ceremony on May 25. 

“Indonesia is trying to put our architecture at the same level as [that of] other countries,” said Boni, in Venice last month. “And we want to leverage this exposure on the international stage to promote the field back home.”

Key industries

BEKRAF is a “quasi-governmental institution,” according to Boni, that combines representatives of the private sector with competitively chosen government officials. 

It supports Indonesian exhibits at international fairs like Venice’s art and architecture biennales, as well as sundry fashion weeks, expos and film festivals. BEKRAF also backs small businesses and enterprises in creative sectors, like the upstart batik (traditional wax-resist dyed cloth) brand called Rajasamas Batik. 

“Any major festival in the world, we want to participate in it and show the best contemporary art in Indonesia,” said Triawan Munuf, BEKRAF’s chairman. So far, he said, what people know of Indonesian culture, if anything, is Bali (the Hindu-majority island that is popular with tourists) and traditional arts like wayang kulit, or shadow-puppet drama. “But we also have to show our state of the art projects, although it’s not something we can change overnight.”

For example, the late Nelson Mandela famously wore batik, said Triawan. “But we weren’t able to catalyze that into more interest in the batik industry.”

It’s a cautionary tale about relying on any silver bullet to raise an industry’s profile. His vision runs on a longer time frame of years and decades, and on backing many horses across all the creative industries: food, fashion, architecture, art, film, video games and so on.

BEKRAF’s current slate of supported programs includes startup funding workshops in seven cities, a performance by the Jakarta City Philharmonic, an installation of an “Indonesia Music Market” in Cannes, and a booth at the world’s largest technology exhibition in Taiwan.

One early success that Triawan cites is that BEKRAF has helped increase the number of Indonesian films that are seen by Indonesians themselves.

“We went from about 5 percent [of films shown in Indonesian theaters that are made in Indonesia] three years ago to 20 percent today,” he said. BEKRAF deployed incentives like removing films from the “negative investments” list in 2016, and opening the movie industry for foreign investment. “By next year, I hope that number is 50 percent,” Triawan said.

Plans to expand

Arts and culture once fell under the purview of Indonesia’s tourism ministry, but Widodo created BEKRAF as a stand-alone body to further his greater goal of economic growth. 

Indonesia’s creative industries contributed 990.4 trillion Indonesian rupiah, or $71 billion, to the country’s GDP in 2017, about 7.6 percent of the total, and provided jobs for 16.2 million people.

But almost 98 percent of creative industry businesses only market their products locally, according to BEKRAF, due in part to funding and intellectual property constraints. Dealing with those issues on a granular level is BEKRAF’s next big task, beyond big-ticket events like the biennale. 

BEKRAF reportedly got off to a rough start in 2015, taking six months to fill its senior leadership and facing a budget that barely covered its daily operations. But within three years, it has grown into its identity as a unique body within Indonesia’s governing apparatus. 

In Venice, Triawan concluded the inauguration of the Indonesia pavilion, which took the form of an expansive, white, Tvyek-paper parabola, by strolling through some of the neighboring exhibits. He passed the Italian pavilion, which unfolded through several chambers of a warehouse in the Arsenale complex and included dioramas, screens, hanging mobiles, rolling film clips and oblong tables of sculptural objects. Its cerebral and eclectic approach contrasted with Indonesia’s, which primed simplicity and striking visuals. 

Triawan was impressed.

“In 10 years,” he said, gesturing around the warehouse, “We must be like this, too.” Boni agreed.

“We love Italy,” he said. “They are not the most industralized country in Europe. But their products have a special touch of craftsmanship, just like in Indonesia. Everyone knows what ‘Made in Italy’ means. We want them to know what ‘Made in Indonesia’ means, too.”
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From: MeNeedIt

Financial disclosure forms released late Monday show that White House special adviser — and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law — Jared Kushner’s wealth and debt both appear to have risen over the year, an indication of the complex state of his finances and the potential conflicts that confront some of his investments.

Disclosures issued by the White House for Kushner and his wife, Trump’s daughter Ivanka, showed that Kushner held assets totaling at least $181 million. His previous 2017 disclosure had showed assets in at least the $140 million range. Kushner and Ivanka Trump, jointly held at least $240 million in assets last year.

The financial disclosures released by the White House and filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics routinely show both assets and debts compiled in broad ranges between low and high estimates, making it difficult to precisely chart the rise and fall of the financial portfolios of federal government officials.

The White House released the disclosures for Kushner and Ivanka Trump on a heavy news day, while the world’s media lavished attention on President Trump’s preparations to meet with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un for talks over nuclear weapons. The White House had released the president’s own financial report last month.

A spokesman for the couple said Monday that the couple’s disclosure portrayed both assets and debts that have not changed much over the past year — and stressed that Kushner and Ivanka Trump have both complied with all federal ethics rules.

“Since joining the administration, Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump have complied with the rules and restrictions as set out by the Office of Government Ethics,” said Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for the couple’s ethics lawyer, Abbe Lowell. “As to the current filing which OGE also reviews, their net worth remains largely the same, with changes reflecting more the way the form requires disclosure than any substantial difference in assets or liabilities.”

One of Kushner’s biggest holdings, a real estate tech startup called Cadre that he co-founded with his brother, Joshua, rose sharply in value. The latest disclosure shows it was worth at least $25 million at the end of last year, up from a minimum value of $5 million in his previous disclosure.

The bulk of Ivanka Trump’s assets — more than $50 million worth — was contained in a trust that holds her business and corporations. That trust generated over $5 million in revenue last year.

She reported a stake in the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., worth between $5 million and $25 million. The hotel has been a focus of lawsuits against the president and ethics watchdogs who say Trump is violating the Constitution by profiting from his office as diplomats spend big money there.

The disclosure also showed that Kushner has assumed growing debt over the past year, both expanding his use of revolving lines of credit and taking on additional debt of between $5 million and $25 million as part of his family company’s purchase last year of a New Jersey apartment complex.

A series of interim financial reports last year showed that Kushner had increased lines of credit with Bank of America, New York Community Bank and Signature Bank, each from at least $1 million to $5 million. Such moves do not mean that Kushner has yet accumulated that debt, but has the ability to do so.

The new disclosure shows that Kushner did take on a new debt last year with Bank of America worth between $5 million and $25 million — but jointly with other investors in Quail Ridge LLC, a company used for his family firm’s purchase of Quail Ridge, a 1,032-unit apartment community in Plainsboro, N.J., near Princeton. The disclosures also showed that Ivanka Trump owns an interest in that purchase through a family trust.

The disclosure showed that Kushner reported making at least $5 million in income from the development since Kushner Companies bought the complex in September. The family business has made a splash with high-profile deals for buildings in New York City in the past decade, but lately has been returning to its roots by buying garden apartments in the suburbs.

Under an ethics agreement he signed when he joined the administration in early 2017, Kushner withdrew from his position as CEO of Kushner Companies. But even as a passive investor, he retains many lucrative investments — which ethics critics have warned could raise conflicts of interest.
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From: MeNeedIt

Irene Mboyo Mola spent 11 days caring for her husband as he died of Ebola in a hospital where she said nurses were too scared to get close. She helped him to the bathroom, picked up his feverish body when he lost his balance, and reinserted an IV that fell out of his bleeding arm.

“He told me all he could see was death,” recalls Mola, a 30-year-old mother of six, as she sat slumped on the floor in her small hut.

That close contact put Mola at high risk of getting a disease that has no cure and kills about half of those infected. But now, as Congo battles the most serious Ebola outbreak since the devastating 2014 epidemic in West Africa, health workers have something new to offer: a vaccine.

​Promising vaccine

With thousands of doses dispatched to front-line health workers, the world is watching to see if a promising but still experimental vaccine might help stop this terrifying disease faster than traditional measures doctors have tried since Ebola was identified 40 years ago.

Even if the vaccine helps, there are serious hurdles. The shots must be transported deep into forests with few paved roads without it spoiling in the heat. Health workers have to identify and track down anyone who’s had contact with a sick person. Hardest of all, they must persuade a scared and wary population that shots pushed by foreigners could save their lives.

“Communities themselves must be at the center of the response if the activities are going to be effective,” said Jonathan Polonsky of the World Health Organization, a surveillance coordinator in Mbandaka, a city of more than 1 million in northwestern Congo.

Mola’s six children have all been vaccinated. But she refused, telling government social workers and WHO workers that she didn’t believe her husband died from Ebola. She said the hospital never showed her records confirming he’d tested positive for the virus.

​Fear and opportunity

There’s no guarantee the long-sought vaccine will help stop the outbreak. But Congo’s health ministry and the WHO rushed in 7,500 doses, created by the Public Health Agency of Canada and owned by Merck.

It was deemed the best option because the vaccine was found highly promising in testing a few years ago, when the epidemic in West Africa, which killed more than 11,000 people between 2014 and 2016, was starting to wane.

The plan is called “ring vaccination,” to find and vaccinate everyone who’s had direct contact with a sick person — the first “ring” — and then the contacts of those people, too, to break the chain of infection.

Last month, 11-year-old German Umba and her 6-year-old brother lost their father to Ebola. Both were vaccinated. But a shot alone doesn’t end the worry. U.N. workers monitor the children several times a day for fevers, an early symptom, until the incubation period passes.

Standing in the yard outside her classroom at school the young girl suddenly bursts into tears. Surrounded by aid workers, classmates and teachers who are unable to touch and console her, she buries her face in her shirt. 

“I just miss my father,” she said.

​Crucial window

Success with the vaccination strategy hinges on the speed at which health workers can identify people at risk.

“If you detect cases late, you’re missing the opportunity to protect people,” said Dr. Iza Ciglenecki, who is working on the vaccination campaign with Doctors Without Borders.

Congo’s current outbreak has killed 14 people so far, according to the country’s Ministry of Health. There have been 38 confirmed infections.

Friday, WHO emergency response chief Peter Salama said many people vaccinated in Mbandaka received the shots more than 10 days ago, meaning they’re now protected — the vaccine has had time to kick in.

Finding people who need vaccination is much harder in the remote area of Iboko, where a new case was just reported. Shoddy infrastructure adds to the challenge.

“The roads are so bad that even if a person gets vaccinated it can be too late and they can still die,” said Rosy Boyekwa Yamba, a regional representative for the Ministry of Health in Mbandaka.

It can take days to travel just 100 miles (160 kilometers) to reach remote areas where Ebola still is spreading. The vaccine must be kept at a temperature of minus 76 to minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 60 to minus 80 degrees Celsius), and can only be kept in mobile freezers for up to seven days.

Yamba also worries that potentially infected people aren’t being found. Five such people came forward last week in Mbandaka after he pleaded with community members to “be honest with him” about whether they’d been in contact with someone who had the disease.

So far more than 2,000 people, including front-line health workers, have been vaccinated in Mbandaka and the rural villages of Bikoro and Iboko where confirmed cases have been found, says the Congo’s Ministry of Health.

​Distrust in the community

Mola’s refusal to believe that Ebola killed her husband is a common reaction in the region. While many in Mbandaka have taken to washing hands and avoiding physical contact amid the outbreak, many also remain skeptical. They often don’t trust a government they say is corrupt. Of the dozens of people The Associated Press spoke to on a recent visit, nearly all said they don’t believe Ebola exists and referred to it as witchcraft.

This is Congo’s ninth outbreak, but illnesses are usually in remote areas, not cities.

“Ebola is not here,” said local resident Aziza Monzu. “It’s a disease created by organizations to get money.”

Dr. Pierre Rollin, an Ebola expert with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, understands. 

“People die every day and everywhere but nobody’s interested. Suddenly because of Ebola people are interested and that makes you suspicious,” he said. “Why would they trust us?”

Mola seems to have escaped infection. The incubation period for Ebola is up to 21 days and her husband died three weeks ago. 

“I’m still here,” she said.

Still, WHO officials say three-quarters of those who have been approached have agreed to a shot since the campaign started two weeks ago. 

Once you’ve got people on board “you’ve tackled 90 percent of the problem,” said Dr. Alhassane Touré, the WHO coordinator for ring vaccination in Congo and Guinea.

Does the vaccine work?

Health experts say the next two weeks will be critical in determining whether the outbreak will be brought under control. The WHO is now shifting efforts to more remote areas to contain the outbreak. The organization has predicted there could be up to 300 cases of Ebola in the coming months.

“We could see is another introduction of someone that comes from Itipo (a village in Iboko) or somewhere else to see family (in Mbandaka),” said CDC’s Rollin. In the last few days there’s been a big push in Itipo, the epicenter of the outbreak with 24 confirmed cases, to retrace people and vaccinate contacts as well as health workers, he said.

No matter how the outbreak unfolds, Rollin says it will be nearly impossible to say whether the vaccine worked to stop the disease’s spread.

“We can say the vaccine plus all the other measures work, but you can’t say the vaccine by itself works,” he said. In order to do that a controlled test would have to be run where in one place only the vaccine is being used and in another it’s not being used at all.

Next year, Merck plans to seek approval of the vaccine from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, based on previous studies of the shots. While the vaccine isn’t being formally studied in the current Congo outbreak, regulatory authorities would want to know if unforeseen side effects crop up.

“If it’s fully approved, then in each outbreak it’ll be the first measure and could be used all over the region,” Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe, director general of the National Institute for Biomedical Research in Kinshasa told the AP.

In West Africa, a large study is underway that compares the Merck shot and a second vaccine candidate made by Janssen Pharmaceuticals to determine the best vaccination strategies and track how long protection lasts.

In the meantime, some recipients say the shot provided peace of mind.

Seated in a yard in the center of town, Mbandaka resident Marie Louise proudly slaps her vaccination papers on the table. She had cradled her grandson in her arms as he vomited blood on the hospital floor, and he later died. His case wasn’t officially confirmed as Ebola, but she knew she needed to get vaccinated. Tapping her arm where she was given the needle, the 68-year-old beams. 

“Give me the vaccine,” she said. “I get life with the vaccine.”
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From: MeNeedIt

Keeping healthy could become more costly as climate change and water scarcity cause a huge drop in the global production of vegetables and legumes, scientists said Monday.

The amount of vegetables produced could fall by more than a third, especially in hot regions like southern Europe and swaths of Africa and South Asia, said researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

By analyzing studies across 40 countries, with some dating as far back as 1975, they found that hikes in greenhouses gases, water scarcity and global temperatures lowered the amount of vegetables and legumes produced.

Such drastic changes could drive up the prices of vegetables, which would affect poorer communities the most, according to the study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“If we take a ‘business as usual’ approach, environmental changes will substantially reduce the global availability of these important foods,” said Alan Dangour, a co-author of the paper, in a statement.

Scientists have warned that world temperatures are likely to rise by 2 degrees to 4.9 degrees Celsius this century compared with pre-industrial times.

This could lead to dangerous weather patterns — including more frequent and powerful droughts, floods and storms — increasing the pressure on agriculture.

Food production itself is a major contributor to climate change.

Agriculture, forestry and changes in land use together produce nearly a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, making them the second-largest emitter after the energy sector, said the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

The volume of food transported around the world also is exacerbating global warming.

The global demand for food is expected to soar as the world’s population is projected to grow to 9.8 billion people by 2050, up from 7.6 billion today, according to the U.N.

Crops now take up 11 percent of the world’s land surface, and livestock grazing covers 26 percent of ice-free land, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Farming accounts for about 70 percent of all water used globally, said the OECD.

Water scarcity already affects more than 40 percent of the world’s population, according to the U.N.

That number is expected to rise due to global warming, with one in four people projected to face chronic or recurring shortages by 2050, the U.N. said.

“Urgent action needs to be taken, including working to support the agriculture sector to increase its resilience to environmental changes,” said Dangour. “And this must be a priority for governments across the world.”
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From: MeNeedIt

The Federal Communications Commission’s repeal of the United States’ net neutrality rules — which mandated internet service providers to not discriminate in their handling of internet traffic — took effect Monday, reigniting fears from internet freedom advocates of potential manipulation of consumers’ internet access.

The FCC voted in December to overturn its net neutrality rule, first put in place by the Obama administration in 2015. With its repeal, the door is now open for internet service providers to block content, slow data transmission, and create “fast lanes” for consumers who pay premiums.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, a staunch critic of net neutrality, wrote Sunday that while he “support[s] a free an open internet,” the overturning of the Obama-era rule will allow the FTC [Federal Trade Commission] to “once again be able to protect Americans consistently across the internet economy.”

In 2004, then-FCC Chairman Michael Powell announced the commission’s support of what he called the “four internet freedoms,” including the freedom of consumers to access content. Since 2005, the FCC had enforced net neutrality rules in some regard, with the support of both Republican and Democratic chairmen. In 2015, the regulations were codified into law. 

“We’re actually in a brave new world where no protections for a free internet currently exist, whereas they have for the majority of the history of the internet,” Tim Karr, senior director of strategy and communications of media watchdog Free Press, told VOA on Monday. 

Karr said based on the prior actions of internet service providers, he feared we could see restrictions placed on such free internet access.

In 2007, the Associated Press reported that telecommunications giant Comcast was stifling connection to file-sharing websites such as BitTorrent. In 2011, fellow communication company Verizon blocked the download of Google Wallet, a payment app, on its mobile devices.

Verizon spokesman Rich Young told VOA that the company “strongly supports open internet rules,” and the recent FCC decision does not change the company’s support of full internet access.

Since the December FCC decision, two states — Washington and Oregon — have passed their own net neutrality laws, whereas governors of five other states — Hawaii, New Jersey, New York, Montana and Vermont — have issued executive orders mandating that internet service providers for government agencies abide by net neutrality regulations.

In May, the U.S. Senate voted 52-47 to reinstate the FCC’s 2015 net neutrality rules. Every Democratic senator voted for the proposal, as did three Republicans: John Kennedy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

The bill is now in the House of Representatives, where outgoing Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, has not yet announced any plans to bring the bill to the floor for a vote.

Congressman Mike Doyle, a Pennsylvania Democrat, filed a petition in May to force a vote on the matter. Doyle spokesperson Matt Dinkel said of the 218 signees for the petition needed to force a vote, the petition currently has 170.

“If enough representatives sign the discharge petition to bring the bill to the floor, odds are that it will pass,” Dinkel told VOA.
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From: MeNeedIt

A vaccine against bacterial pneumonia and another against meningitis have saved 1.45 million children’s lives this century, according to a new study.

The diseases the vaccines prevent are now concentrated in a handful of countries where the medications are not yet widely available or were only recently introduced, the research says.

Pneumonia is the leading cause of death among children worldwide. The bacteria targeted by the shots, Haemophilus influenzae type b (known as Hib) and Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumococcus), are major causes of pneumonia and also cause meningitis. Together, the two bacteria claimed nearly 1.1 million lives in 2000, before the vaccines were widely available, according to the World Health Organization.

Vaccines against the bacteria are not new, but funding to provide them in low-income countries only became available recently.

To estimate their impact, the researchers started with country-by-country data from the WHO on pneumonia and meningitis cases and deaths, as well as vaccine coverage estimates. They factored in data from dozens of clinical studies on infections caused by the two bacteria to create estimates of illness and death from the diseases in 2000 and 2015.

They found deaths from Hib fell by 90 percent in 2015, saving an estimated 1.2 million lives since 2000. Pneumococcus deaths fell by just over half, accounting for approximately 250,000 lives saved.

The research appears in the journal The Lancet Global Health. 

“What was interesting was to see the rate at which some of these deaths have been prevented in the last several years,” said lead author Brian Wahl at Johns Hopkins University, “largely due to the availability of funding for these vaccines in countries with some of the highest burdens [of disease].”

The study estimates that 95 percent of the reduction in pneumococcal deaths occurred after 2010, when 52 low- and middle-income countries began receiving funding from Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, to introduce the vaccine into their national immunization programs.

“The good news is that the numbers are moving in the right direction,” wrote Cynthia Whitney at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in an accompanying editorial.

However, Whitney added, “far too many deaths — about 900 every day — are still being caused by these two infections.”

She notes that more than 40 percent of the world’s children live in countries where pneumococcal vaccine is not a routine childhood immunization.

Many of the countries with the largest number of deaths from these two bacteria have recently introduced the vaccines, but coverage is uneven.

India, Nigeria, China and South Sudan had the highest rates of death from Hib, the study says. All but China have introduced the vaccine in the past few years.

Half of the world’s pneumococcal deaths occurred in just four countries: India, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Pakistan. All have recently introduced the vaccine, though in India it is a routine immunization in only three states.

Lowering the global burden of these diseases will depend on improving coverage in these countries, the study says.
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From: MeNeedIt

Paraguay is officially free of malaria, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday, making it the first country in the Americas in 45 years to have wiped out the deadly disease which is back on the rise globally.

Nearly half a million people — most of them babies and children in Africa —  died in 2016 from mosquito-borne malaria, while at least 216 million were infected, an increase of five percent over 2015, WHO said.

With no recorded cases of malaria in five years, Paraguay became the first country in the region to have eliminated malaria since Cuba in 1973, the WHO said. It was the first country to be declared malaria free since Sri Lanka in 2016.

“It gives me great pleasure today to certify that Paraguay is officially free of malaria,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of WHO, said in a statement.

“Success stories like Paraguay’s show what is possible. If malaria can be eliminated in one country, it can be eliminated in all countries.”

While significant progress has been made over the past 20 years in reducing malaria cases and deaths, in 2016, for the first time in a decade, the number of malaria cases rose and in some areas there was a resurgence, the WHO said.

Health experts say this was partly to blame on a growing resistance to the sprays and drugs used to attack the mosquito that transmits the disease and the parasite that causes it.

They also say it is partly due to stagnant global funding for malaria since 2010. Climate change and conflict can also exacerbate malaria outbreaks.

“This is a powerful reminder for the region of what can be achieved when countries are focused on an important goal,” said Carissa Etienne, director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the WHO’s regional office.

“We are hopeful that other countries will soon join Paraguay in eliminating malaria,” she said in a statement.

In 2016 the WHO identified Paraguay as one of 21 countries with the potential to eliminate malaria by 2020.

The WHO said Algeria, Argentina and Uzbekistan are on track to be declared free from malaria later this year.
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From: MeNeedIt