Prime minister’s announcement of an end to open defecation in India marred by claims of coercion and violence
Narendra Modi is to declare that his flagship sanitation programme has ended open defecation in India, amid accusations that the scheme has sparked violence and abuse.
India’s prime minister will make the announcement on Wednesday at an event in his home state of Gujarat, attended by 20,000 village chiefs and international dignitaries, according to the government.
Continue reading...World Health Organization frustrated by lack of clinical data sharing, while Tanzania insists its tests show disease is not Ebola
Several unexplained cases of a disease with Ebola-like symptoms in Tanzania have prompted an extraordinary statement from the World Health Organization questioning the response of the country’s health authorities.
WHO warned that lack of information over the cases, including clinical data, possible contacts and potential laboratory tests performed for differential diagnosis of the patients had not been communicated, leaving it unable to assess the potential risk.
Continue reading...Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene fears medical impact of failure to prepare for global heating over next 25 years
The climate crisis represents the biggest threat to the future of global health over the next quarter of a century, according to a survey of top medical professionals.
The vast majority of members of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, some of whom are responsible for significant discoveries in tropical diseases that plague poorer countries, believe governments and health bodies are failing to prepare adequately for the medical impacts of global heating.
Continue reading...Dire risk is compounded by climate crisis, urbanisation and lack of sanitation, says global monitoring board
It sounds like an improbable fiction: a virulent flu pandemic, source unknown, spreads across the world in 36 hours, killing up to 80 million people, sparking panic, destabilising national security and slicing chunks off the world’s economy.
But a group of prominent international experts has issued a stark warning: such a scenario is entirely plausible and efforts by governments to prepare for it are “grossly insufficient”.
Continue reading...Claims have hurt efforts to help people around world in acute pain, say palliative care experts
An attack on the World Health Organization (WHO) by US politicians accusing it of being corrupted by drug companies is making it even more difficult to get morphine to millions of people dying in acute pain in poor countries, say experts in the field.
Representatives of the hospice and palliative care community said they were stunned by the Congress members’ report, which they said made false accusations and would affect people suffering in countries where almost no opioids were available.
Continue reading...Oly Ilunga detained in connection with $4.3m allocated for fighting the deadly virus
The former health minister for the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been arrested over the alleged mismanagement of $4.3m (£3.4m) dedicated to the Ebola response.
Oly Ilunga, who resigned as health minister in July having been removed from leading the Ebola response by President Félix Tshisekedi, has denied any wrongdoing.
Continue reading...National agencies granted greater power to enforce existing laws banning practices such as shackling
Indonesia is stepping up efforts to protect people with mental health conditions by affording national agencies new powers to monitor and close down institutions found to be abusing patients.
The country’s human rights commission and its witness and victim protection unit are among the agencies empowered to monitor facilities to check they don’t contravene a 1977 government ban on “pasung” – shackling or detaining patients in confined spaces.
Continue reading...Health ministry calls for greater efforts to deal with mosquito-borne disease at village level as death toll reaches four figures
The Philippine health ministry has urged local officials to ramp up efforts to combat dengue fever after the death toll from the epidemic reached 1,021.
The young have born the brunt of the outbreak, with children under the age of 10 accounting for more than a third of the deaths recorded in the eight months up to August, when a national epidemic of the mosquito-borne disease was declared.
Continue reading...Hopes of eradicating the disease by 2050 will fail unless we tackle the poverty and weak governance that allow it to thrive
The Lancet Commission on malaria eradication received widespread attention this week with its claim that the disease could be eradicated by 2050. This would be a very welcome achievement, as malaria currently kills about 435,000 people – predominantly children – each year.
The report argues that the key to eradicating malaria is the application of existing and new technology, coupled with £1.6bn extra annual funding. Unfortunately, this solution is unlikely to be successful because it fails to address the underlying causes of malaria: grinding poverty and state incapacity.
Continue reading...Dr Vatwani has spent three decades reuniting patients with mental health problems with their families
To the horror of the watching doctors, a young man on a Mumbai street picked up a broken coconut shell, scooped up dirty gutter water with it, and drank.
“I still recall the scene vividly,” says 61-year-old Mumbai psychiatrist Dr Bharat Vatwani. “My wife, Smitha – also a psychiatrist – and I, watched from across the street.”
Continue reading...Drugs derived from Ivermectin, which makes human blood deadly to mosquitoes, could be available within two years
Human trials of new antimalarial drugs are in the pipeline after Kenyan scientists successfully used bacteria to kill the parasite that causes the disease.
The Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri) and global health partners say the breakthrough could potentially lead to the development of a new class of drugs in less than two years.
Continue reading...Volunteers in Salvador’s favelas are collecting data on deadly infections and inequality to help campaign for better sanitation
Wearing crisp, white T-shirts and carrying tablets, the students fan out through Marechal Rondon – a bustling favela spread over hillsides and a valley in Brazil’s north-eastern city of Salvador. As they walk, they map blocked drains and piles of rubbish on their tablets. These are the “infection points” that attract the rats and mosquitoes which, in turn, spread diseases like leptospirosis and the Zika virus, both prevalent here.
Student Alexandre Santos, 20, stops before a weigh-high tangle of wild plants overlooking a housing block. “We look at sewers, rubble, garbage. Now there is high vegetation,” Santos says, tapping in the data. “It goes straight into the data bank.”
Continue reading...Doctors are battling to contain the virus and stop the epidemic spreading from the DRC to Uganda and Rwanda
A nine-year-old Congolese girl who tested positive for Ebola in neighbouring Uganda has died of the disease, as the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned that the current outbreak was approaching the grim milestone of 3,000 cases and 2,000 deaths.
Her death makes her the fourth case to cross into Uganda amid the continuing struggle to contain the deadly outbreak.
Continue reading...Will Swanson has been photographing displaced people in southern Yemen and at the conflict frontline in Ad Dhale for two years, and describes some of the terrible conditions they endure
All photographs: Will Swanson/International Rescue Committee
Punjab joins regions where polythene bags are illegal and stiff fines take effect in Islamabad amid demands for alternatives
Punjab has become the latest region in Pakistan to ban plastic bags, as the country battles to reduce single-use plastics that are damaging the environment.
So far there is no date for implementation in Pakistan’s most populous state. The south-eastern province of Sindh has announced it will ban polythene bags from October, and last week a ban took effect in Islamabad.
Continue reading...Nigeria marks three years without a wild polio case, meaning Africa could be declared free of the disease in 2020
Africa is on the verge of being declared polio free, after three years without any recorded cases of the disease, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Nigeria marked three years without a wild polio case on Wednesday, a “major milestone”. If no more incidences emerge in the next few months, Africa could officially be declared polio free in 2020. The last case was recorded in Borno state in August 2016.
Continue reading...One woman dead after two cases are confirmed in South Kivu’s Lwindi district, near DRC’s border with Rwanda
The year-long Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has spread to a new province, with two cases – one of them fatal – confirmed in South Kivu.
The confirmed cases were reported in the Mwenga area, some way south of the city of Bukavu, which sits on the country’s eastern border with Rwanda.
Continue reading...World Health Organization records 1,800 malaria deaths since start of year, almost equalling number of lives claimed by Ebola in DRC
A serious outbreak of malaria in Burundi has reached epidemic proportions, killing almost as many people as the Ebola crisis in the nearby Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The outbreak in the tiny Great Lakes country has infected almost half the total population, killing about 1,800 people since the beginning of the year.
Continue reading...Cases have gone up 98% after the government banned a vaccine widely blamed for causing the deaths of children
An outbreak of dengue fever in the Philippines has been declared a national epidemic after causing hundreds of deaths this year in the wake of a government ban on the vaccine.
The country has recorded 146,062 cases of dengue from January through to 20 July this year, 98% more than the same period in 2018, the department of health said. The outbreak has already claimed the lives of 622 people. The group worst affected have been children below the age of 10.
Continue reading...Regular patrols are helping to ensure villagers in Kano state are practising good hygiene, to improve sanitation and cut disease
When Nasiru Ibrahim goes on patrol around his village, he’s not looking out for criminal activities, or the usual community problems. Instead, Ibrahim is making sure people in Yammawar Kafawa, in northern Nigeria’s Kano state, are using toilets.
Last October, the villagers agreed to stop defecating in fields, bushes and streets, and instead use the newly-built toilets, as part of the Nigerian government’s drive to end open defecation by 2025.
Continue reading...