At least 15 children died in South Sudan after health workers failed to sterilize syringes between uses while vaccinating around 300 kids in early May. The country’s health minister said another 32 children fell ill with symptoms including fever, vomiting and diarrhea.
“The team that vaccinated the children in this tragic event were neither qualified nor trained for the immunization campaign,” Health Minister Riek Gai Kok said in a news conference Friday.
The clinic took place on May 2-5 in Nacholdokopele village in Eastern Equatoria state, Reuters reported. Reports indicate that children as young as 12 were administering vaccines, and that the vaccines were stored without proper refrigeration throughout the clinic period.
A report prepared by specialists said the children, all reportedly under the age of five, died from severe sepsis toxicity as a result of the vaccine’s contamination, caused by repeated use of an unsterilized syringe.
The World Health Organization said it continued with the campaign after learning about the deaths because of its “lifesaving” effects on others, Sky News reported. WHO provides some training to South Sudan’s health officials, while the UN provides the vaccines.
Mosquitoes in Illinois tested positive for the West Nile virus, the first group of infected insects found in the state this year, health officials said.
The mosquitoes that tested positive for the virus were discovered last week in Godfrey, located north of St. Louis, Missouri, Illinois Department of Public Health reported on Tuesday.
"Although we see West Nile virus in Illinois every year, it’s still important to take precautions to protect yourself by wearing insect repellent and getting rid of standing water around your home," IDPH Director Nirav D. Shah said.
Humans typically contract West Nile virus through house mosquitoes bites. Common symptoms include fever, nausea, headache and muscle aches. Most people infected with the virus do not develop any of the symptoms.
More than 150 people were reported to contract West Nile virus last year, Illinois health officials said. Five people died. There have been no cases reported so far this year.
Illinois health officials also said they were testing the mosquitoes for Zika virus, which posed as a major concern to pregnant women last year.
Seven canines in Florida have been diagnosed with potentially deadly dog flu, a highly contagious virus that popped up in 10 states and infected nearly 1,000 dogs in Chicago in 2015.
In a news release Tuesday the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services confirmed the animals had the H3N2 canine influenza virus, which cannot infect humans. The canines are being treated at the University of Florida (UF) College of Veterinary Medicine, and health officials suspect six additional cases.
Dr. Michael Short, the state’s chief vet, told the Miami Herald that all of the dogs are in stable condition but several had to be hospitalized.
Despite not being spreadable to humans, the dog flu can infect cats, the Herald reported. Most cases are not fatal, but, if left untreated, the virus can progress to pneumonia.
The Herald reported that vets recommend infected dogs be quarantined for at least four weeks and that the live virus can live for 24 hours. When sick dogs cough or sneeze, their germs may spread up to 20 feet. Risky areas of transmission include grooming parlors and dog parks, the newspaper noted.
Because the virus is so contagious, vets advise pet owners who suspect their dog has the virus not to take their animal to the waiting room but rather through a separate entrance to avoid infecting other animals, USA Today reported.
“It’s very contagious, so you have to be careful,” Dr. Marta Lista of Trail Animal Hospital in Miami, told the Herald. “Most dogs don’t have immunity and they don’t have vaccines.”
In an interview with the Herald, UF officials declined to disclose where the Florida cases occurred.
Officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have approved the use of an experimental Ebola vaccine in the hopes of stemming the spread of a recent outbreak of the deadly virus in the African nation.
While DRC officials approved the use of rVSV-ZEBOV, Congolese authorities and the World Health Organization (WHO) are still deciding whether the small number of confirmed Ebola cases in the country warrants the time and logistical complexity of deploying the vaccine to the remote region of the country, formerly called Zaire.
Public health officials in the DRC have reported at least 43 cases of suspected Ebola and four deaths. Only two of the cases have been positively confirmed in a laboratory to be Ebola. As of Monday there have been no new cases of the virus reported. The last confirmed case of Ebola was reported on May 11.
Despite the slow spread of the virus, experts at WHO are closely monitoring the situation, and teams are already in the isolated Bas-Uélé province in an attempt to contain the outbreak. Officials have also spent the last two weeks preparing the vaccine for transport in the event that they are given the green light to deploy it.
The outbreak, more than 300 miles from the DRC capital of Kinshasa, has very few passable roads and bridges open during this time of the year, so helicopters are required to bring teams and equipment to the town of Likati, where motorcycles take over. Health workers have already built two mobile labs, but a generator in one failed and had to be replaced.
The vaccine was developed during the last major outbreak of the Ebola virus, which began in 2014 in West Africa and caused a global panic. A WHO working group recommended the use of rVSV-ZEBOV in 2015 after a clinical trial in Guinea showed promising results.
There are currently 300,000 doses of the vaccine available after an agreement was reached between international vaccine organization Gavi and Merck, the pharmaceutical company that manufactures rVSV-ZEBOV.
If the vaccine is deployed in the DRC, staff from Doctors Without Borders will first vaccinate health-care workers in the hot zone and then the initial group of people who had contact with those infected as part of a so-called ring strategy used during the 2014 outbreak.
Deploying the vaccine — along with the laboratories, equipment and personnel needed to administer it — is estimated to cost around $14 million. That is a hefty price tag for the second poorest nation in the world. The nation also struggles to contain an ongoing ethnic conflict between the DRC’s Tutsi-controlled government under President Joseph Kabila, who refused to leave office at the end of his term last year, and a Hutu rebel group, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda.
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(AP Photo/Ladyrene Perez)
Amid militia clashes and numerous violent protests – one in December left more than 50 people dead – the DRC saw more people leave their homes in 2016 than anywhere else in the world. According to the most recent report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 992,000 people fled the violence in 2016, compared to 824,000 in Syria, 659,000 in Iraq and 653,000 in Afghanistan.
The United Nations estimated in April that it will cost at least $11 million to meet the immediate nutritional, health and educational needs of those displaced by the conflict.
The DRC was one of the first countries to experience an outbreak of Ebola when the virus appeared in 1976. The current epidemic is the eighth of its kind in the African nation, coming just three years after the outbreak in West Africa killed over 11,000 people. It is still unclear how Ebola outbreaks begin, but researchers theorize that it could come from people eating infected pieces of “bush meat,” the meat of primates and other wild animals sold in local markets – or from bats carrying the carrying the virus.
As you read this, take a whiff. What smells do you detect? How do these smells affect how you feel?
It’s rare that people consciously take in the smells around them, but a new review argues that the human sense of smell is more powerful than it’s usually given credit for, and that it plays a bigger role in human health and behavior than many medical experts realize.
"The fact is the sense of smell is just as good in humans as in other mammals, like rodents and dogs," John McGann, a neuroscientist at Rutgers University-New Brunswick in New Jersey and the author of the new review, said in a statement .
People often think of dogs and rats as the superior sniffers in the animal kingdom, but humans also have an extremely keen sense of smell, McGann argued in the review, which was published today (May 11) in the journal Science . In fact, humans can discriminate among 1 trillion different odors , McGann wrote, far more than a commonly cited claim that people can detect only about 10,000 different smells.
Smoking in both indoor and outdoor public spaces has been banned in the Philippines, with those who disobey the law facing a maximum penalty of four months in prison and a fine of $100. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who was once a heavy smoker but quit after a health scare, signed the executive order on Tuesday.
The ban is one of the region’s strictest anti-tobacco laws and mimics the 2012 ordinance Duterte created in his hometown of Davao City, Reuters reported. Under the law there will be designated smoking areas set up for adults and the creation of police-led anti-smoking task forces in towns and cities.
The ban also includes vaping and e-cigarettes and is expected to impact an estimated 17 million Filipino smokers, Reuters reported.
Health advocates have long-battled tobacco lobbyists and the eight firms currently making cigarettes in the country. The executive order also prohibits anyone from selling, distributing and purchasing tobacco products to minors in the country.
Nearly half of all Filipino men and 9 percent of women smoke. Experts estimate the habit costs the economy nearly $4 billion in annual health care and productivity losses.
The Philippine Tobacco Institute was not available for comment, Reuters reported.
Duterte’s campaign promises had centered on eradicating drug pushers, tough punishment for criminals and hitting hard on smoking and illegal gambling.
Human rights groups said 7,000 to 9,000 suspected drug dealers and addicts have been murdered during Duterte’s "war on drugs." The government refuted the statement, releasing data on May 2 that showed nearly 4,600 people have been killed in police anti-drug operations and homicides found to be drug-related.
Duterte’s actions caused a rift between him and the European Union. He has repeatedly lashed out at the EU for raising human rights concerns over his deadly crackdown.
"If you think it is high time for you to withdraw your assistance, go ahead, we will not beg for it," Duterte said in a speech in October, referring to aid from the U.S., EU and other critics.
The Philippine government informed the EU delegation on Wednesday that it will no longer accept new grants from the EU. The country is forgoing possibly more than $287.7 million in funds for development projects.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
Stone Cofini may not be allowed to date until he turns 16 next January, but his mother is already losing sleep over the prospect.
Dawn Cofini, a hairdresser from Nanuet, NY, is terrified that kissing another teen could prove deadly for her son. Stone, 15, is so allergic to peanuts, just inhaling dust from one could send him into anaphylactic shock — a life-threatening state in which airways narrow and oxygen is cut off.
“If a girl had previously eaten something fried in peanut oil [and then kissed Stone],” Dawn said, “it would really be dangerous.”
While her worry seems extreme, four years ago, 20-year-old Myriam Ducré-Lemay, of Quebec, died after accidentally receiving a peanut-laced kiss from her boyfriend.
Peanut allergies are up — patient numbers rose among children in the United States from 0.4 percent in 1997 to 1.4 percent in 2010, according to a study at Mount Sinai Hospital. And horror stories abound. According to a 2014 report in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, some 2,458 people died in the US between 1999 and 2010 due to anaphylaxis.
It’s scary enough to send some parents into vigilance hyperdrive, sometimes against doctors’ advice.
“You wave goodbye to your child in the morning wondering whether it’s the last time you’ll see them,” said Dawn, 53, who, like the other mothers in The Post’s article, takes sensible precautions to reduce risk.
Global health officials are monitoring a possible resurgence of the Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo amid reports of an outbreak of the feared contagion near the country’s northern border.
Public health officials in the DRC have reported at least 43 cases of suspected Ebola and four deaths. While only two of the cases have been positively confirmed in a laboratory to be Ebola, experts at the World Health Organization and the United States’ Center for Disease Control and Prevention are closely monitoring the situation and teams are already in the isolated region in an attempt to contain the outbreak.
‘‘The Likati health district is in a remote area, but contact tracing is essential to contain the outbreak in its focus; the DRC can rely on very experienced health workers for this purpose,” Yokouidé Allarangar, WHO representative in the DRC, said in a statement earlier this month.
This is the eighth epidemic of Ebola in the DRC since the discovery of the virus in 1976 and comes just three years after an outbreak in West Africa killed over 11,000 people and created a global panic. It is still unclear how Ebola outbreaks begin, but researchers theorize that it could come from people eating infected pieces of “bush meat” – the meat of primates and other wild animals sold in local markets – or from bats carrying the carrying the virus.
The DRC may have past experience dealing with Ebola outbreaks, but experts contend that the remoteness of the outbreaks’ hot zone – the northeastern Bas-Uélé province – and the country’s ongoing civil conflict make efforts to contain the virus’ spread difficult.
“The logistics are difficult,” Jesse Goodman, director of Georgetown University’s Center on Medical Product Access, Safety and Stewardship, told Fox News. “It’s a real challenge, but they have identified the area and are tracking a large number of contacts.”
The area – located over 300 miles from the DRC capital of Kinshasa – has very few passable roads and bridges open during this time of the year, so helicopters are required to bring teams and equipment to the town of Likati, where motorcycles take over. Health workers have already built two mobile labs, but a generator in one failed and had to be replaced.
What the 2014 outbreak taught us is two things: Ebola is not going away and we can’t let our guard down.
– Dr. Jesse Goodman of Georgetown University
The DRC’s government, along with the research arm of Paris-based Doctors Without Borders, submitted to an ethical review board on Wednesday a formal trial protocol for an unlicensed vaccine. If approved, the vaccine – developed by Merck and stored in the U.S. – could make it to at-risk people within two weeks. To speed the process, WHO recently issued a “donor alert,” requesting a six-month budget of $10.5 million to support the vaccine study and to fund surveillance, infection prevention, social mobilization and decontamination efforts.
Adding to the difficulty in accessing the region is the ongoing ethnic conflict between the Tutsi-controlled government under President Joseph Kabila, who refused to leave office at the end of his term last year, and the Hutu rebel group, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda.
“The political problems they are struggling with are frequently situations that make it difficult to fight any type of viral breakout,” Goodman said. “The unrest creates rich soil for an outbreak.”
Amid militia clashes and numerous violent protests – one in December left more than 50 people dead – the DRC saw more people leave their homes in 2016 than anywhere else in the world. According to the most recent report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 992,000 people fled the violence in 2016, compared to 824,000 in Syria, 659,000 in Iraq and 653,000 in Afghanistan.
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FILE – In this undated colorized transmission electron micrograph file image made available by the CDC shows an Ebola virus virion. Health authorities are investigating nine suspected cases of Ebola in a remote corner of northern Congo, including two deaths, the country’s health minister said Friday May 12, 2017. (Frederick Murphy/CDC via AP, File)
“DRC’s crisis is often overlooked by media and an international community focused on the latest disaster or conflict to capture their attention,” the IDMC report stated. “This will have dire consequences for several million people in desperate need of assistance. The country has been in conflict for the best part of 20 years, but evidence shows that the situation for the most vulnerable has deteriorated severely in recent years.”
While the remoteness of the region experiencing the outbreak may pose challenges in treating and identifying those infected with Ebola, experts contend that the isolation could also play to their advantage by slowing the spread of infection. Still, they warn, even though the current outbreak is small and isolated, it needs to be carefully monitored to the neighboring war-torn nations of South Sudan and the Central African Republic.
“What the 2014 outbreak taught us is two things,” Goodman said. “Ebola is not going away and we can’t let our guard down.”
A botulism outbreak has killed one man and sickened nine other people who ate nacho cheese sauce contaminated with the toxic bacterial protein. Heath officials traced the outbreak to a gas station in California’s Sacramento County.
But how did this deadly protein, known as botulinum toxin, get into the cheese sauce? And how can people protect themselves from botulism?
"Botulism is the illness associated with eating a toxin called botulinum toxin," said Benjamin Chapman, an associate professor and food safety specialist at North Carolina State University. "It is one of scariest foodborne illnesses that we have."
The toxin blocks nerve messages, which, in turn, causes people to lose control of their muscles, Chapman told Live Science. For instance, people who have consumed the toxin may have trouble swallowing, droopy eyelids and difficulty breathing, he said.
Germany is set to pass a law next week that will require kindergartens to inform authorities if parents have failed to consult a doctor about vaccinating their children, with those who refuse advice subject to fines worth up to $2,800.
The law, expected to take effect on June 1, comes as leaders across Europe move to tighten vaccination laws amid a spike in measles, chicken pox and mumps. By mid-April, German health officials had counted 410 measles cases compared with 325 total in 2016, BBC reported.
“Nobody can be indifferent to the fact that people are still dying of measles,” German Health Minister Hermann Groehe told Bild newspaper, according to Reuters. “That’s why we are tightening up regulations on vaccination.”
Lack of public trust in vaccines has caused a spike in many preventable diseases, Reuters reported. Experts said negative attitudes may be due to fears over suspected side-effects and hesitancy among some doctors.
Last week, Italy ruled that children must be vaccinated against common illnesses in order to be eligible for enrollment in kindergarten. In doing so, officials criticized wide-spread “anti-scientific” theories and accused the 5-Star movement of creating fear about vaccine safety.
“The lack of appropriate measures over the years and the spread of anti-scientific theories, especially in recent months, has brough about a reduction in protection,” Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni had said at a news conference, according to Reuters.
The thinking is that the smoking damages the eggs developing in a smoker’s female fetus.
(iStock)
If you’re looking for another reason to just say no to cigarettes, researchers are offering up more evidence that the habit has negative repercussions—not just for the smoker, and not just for the smoker’s children, but for the smoker’s grandchildren, too.
Coming on the heels of several years of research into how smoking changes the genes of a smoker’s offspring, researchers at the University of Bristol reviewed 14,500 participants of a large study from the 1990s and write in the journal Scientific Reports that girls whose maternal grandmothers smoked during pregnancy are 67 percent more likely to display certain autism-like traits, and 53 percent more likely to be diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder.
The thinking is that the smoking damages the eggs developing in a smoker’s female fetus. "We know smoking can damage the DNA of mitochondria," one researcher says.
Mitochondrial DNA are present in every cell and power our bodies, and they’re only passed down from mothers, via the egg. While the initial mutations don’t appear to impact the smoker’s own health, their impact can swell when passed down to her children.
Reuters Health) – Exposing babies to puppies and other furry pets might help them accumulate two types of bacteria in their gut that are associated with a lower risk of allergies and obesity, a Canadian study suggests.
When researchers analyzed fecal samples from 746 babies, they found having dogs and cats in the home during pregnancy and early infancy was associated with higher levels of two gut microbes: Ruminococcus and Oscillospira, which have been linked with lower odds of allergies and obesity, respectively.
"The concept of a `dog intervention’ during pregnancy as a preventive measure for allergies and obesity is not too far-fetched but definitive studies are required to provide evidence for this health benefit," said senior study author Anita Kozyrskyj, a pediatrics researcher at the University of Alberta.
While the study doesn’t prove pets directly prevent allergies or obesity or demonstrate how cats and dogs cause changes in gut bacteria, it’s possible that pet exposure during pregnancy may influence the composition of gut microbes in the infant by affecting the mother’s vaginal or skin microbes, Kozyrskyj said by email.
Changes in the mother’s microbes might be passed on during birth, even with a surgical delivery, Kozyrskyj added. After that, pets might directly transfer beneficial microbes when they touch babies, and infants may also pick up pet microbes that are left on household surfaces or in dust.
About 45 percent of the households in the study didn’t have any pets, and another 8 percent only had animals during pregnancy, researchers report in the journal Microbiome.
Among the homes with pets both during pregnancy and afterwards, 44 percent had only dogs, 34 percent had just cats and 20 percent had at least one of each.
Regardless of the way babies were delivered, they were more than twice as likely to have high levels of Ruminococcus and Oscillospira when they were exposed to furry creatures while in the womb or during infancy.
Among vaginally delivered babies whose mothers got antibiotics to prevent group B Streptococcus transmission during birth, infants exposed to pets in utero or after delivery had lower levels of Streptococcaceae bacteria in their feces. This family of bacteria can cause pneumonia in infants.
Pet exposure was also linked to lower fecal levels of Enterobacteria even among babies born by emergency cesarean who normally have high levels of these microbes at three months of age. These bacteria are associated with Salmonella and other infections.
The study isn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove that pets prevent diseases, the authors note.
Still, the findings add to growing evidence linking exposure to household pets and farm animals with a lower risk of health problems like asthma and allergies, said Tove Fall, a researcher at Uppsala University in Sweden who wasn’t involved in the study.
"This study shows that some bacteria are more common in the gut flora of children born in homes with pets – these findings need to be replicated in other studies," Fall said by email. "It is not known how these bacteria affect the child health, but in general a higher diversity and richness of the gut flora is thought to help to protect the child from diseases linked to the immune system."
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2pqBoEQ Microbiome, online April 6, 2017.
