Asia
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia – Though Indonesia has been devastated by the recent tsunami, its woes are only beginning to surface. Health experts believe malaria could kill up to another 150,000 people in the coming months in communities throughout the Indian Ocean region. If authorities do not move quickly to kill spawning mosquitoes, up to three quarters of the disaster’s total deaths could ultimately come from malaria. The combination of torrential rains and the tsunami has created the largest mosquito breeding sites in Indonesian history. Health agencies are launching massive spraying campaigns in coastal Indonesia to preempt the rapidly approaching malaria season.
BEIJING, China – In a bid to narrow the gap in number between its boys and girls, the Chinese government has recently announced a plan to make selective abortion of female fetuses illegal. Recent government statistics show 119 boys in China for every 100 girls, a difference in part caused by parents who react to China’s strict one-child policy by aborting female fetuses in the hope of a later son. Young men who can’t find a wife have been blamed for rising crime and social instability, and China hopes to even out the imbalance by 2010. The legal change is one of several attempts to address the problem, including a recent program to exempt girls from paying school fees.
Americas
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – A surprising government study released last month points to a growing obesity epidemic in Brazil. The report, conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, concludes that over 40 percent of Brazil’s adult population is overweight. More than 10 million Brazilians are obese, as defined by international standards, compared to fewer than 4 million who are undernourished. The study surprised some who had thought Brazil’s heavily body-conscious society might prevent obesity. However, sedentary lifestyles and unbalanced diets – particularly over-consumption of sugar – have caused Brazil to join the growing ranks of nations with a severe obesity problem.
DETROIT, USA – A US company has taken a novel step to reduce one of industry’s biggest costs, health care expenditure. Weyco Inc., a medical-benefits administration company, will no longer employ smokers, even if they only smoke off the job. The company now frequently tests its 200 employees who have survived an initial purge, fining workers who refuse to attend smoking cessation classes. Michigan appears to offer no legal protection against firing smokers.
OTTAWA, Canada – The Bush Administration has recently opened top-level talks with the Canadian federal government over recent cases of mad-cow disease in Alberta. President Bush is pushing for longer import restrictions on Canadian beef and closure of the US-Canadian border to livestock. The most recent cases of mad-cow, the popular name for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), are particularly significant because the animals involved were born after the introduction of new feeding rules intended to stamp out BSE.
Africa
KAMPALA, Uganda – A government whistleblower recently came forward to accuse a US-based pharmaceutical company of endangering hundreds of AIDS patients with reckless and negligent research. The drug in question, nevirapine, is hoped to protect babies from mother-to-child HIV infection during birth. Concerns are surfacing, however, that nevirapine may cause long-term resistance to AIDS therapy later in life. One doctor has claimed that the study suffered from serious errors in data collection, recordkeeping, and quality control. Documents state that the US National Institute of Health knew of the problems early in 2002, but failed to notify the White house before President Bush set in motion a $500 million plan to advocate the use of nevirapine throughout Africa.
LAGOS, Nigeria – With nearly three quarters of all polio cases worldwide, Nigeria has recently pledged to immunize all children and halt the spread of the crippling disease. The northern state of Kano banned polio vaccines in 2003 after Muslim leaders publicly attacked polio vaccine as part of a Western plot to spread HIV and infertility among young girls. Immunizations only resumed last July, by which time the virus had spread throughout Nigeria and into a dozen neighboring countries that had previously eradicated it. Nigerian Health Minister Eyitayo Lambo recently announced that the number of states with polio had fallen from a peak of 30 to 16.
DARFUR, Sudan – The Sudan Trachoma Control Program has announced that it will continue to deliver antibiotic treatments to those at risk for trachoma, despite ongoing instability and violence in the region. During the past year, two NGOs were forced to abandon their trachoma control activities due to mounting insecurity in Malakal, Sudan. But other organizations, including the WHO, are firmly holding to their goal of eliminating trachoma by 2020. Trachoma, a blinding infection of the eye, has become prevalent in the Sudan because of problems with hygiene, sanitation, and health services. The disease is easily preventable by administering a single oral dose of the drug azithromycin, which has been donated by its maker Pfizer in large quantities. In 2004 alone, the Sudan Trachoma Control Program delivered more than 680,000 antibiotic treatments to infected individuals.
HARARE, Zimbabwe – Zimbabwe once again faces a devastating grain deficit as a result of poor planning by government officials and a severe lack of output by newly resettled farmers. So far, 340,000 tons of maize have been delivered to the government, falling far short of the 2.3 million tons needed for annual national consumption. Insistent on ridding Zimbabwe of Western interference, President Robert Mugabe continues to tell donor agencies to take their assistance to “hungrier people elsewhere.” The famine has been exacerbated by Mugabe’s decision to force white commercial farmers from their productive land and divide the spoils into smaller, inefficient plots for subsistence farming.
Europe
HELSINKI, Finland – Representatives from the 52 states in the World Health Organization’s European Region met in Helsinki to address issues of mental health in Europe. The conference sought a new strategy for dealing with the 58,000 annual suicides in Europe, a number greater than the count of traffic accident fatalities and murders combined. The European Region includes nine of the ten countries in the world with the highest suicide levels. Conference participants hoped that a campaign to normalize the idea of depression and remove the stigma from mental health issues would bring more people to seek treatment.
BUCHAREST, Romania – A retired university professor has become the oldest new mother on record. Adriana Iliescu, 66, used nearly ten years of hormone therapy to delay menopause, eventually undergoing in vitro fertilization. A daughter was delivered by Caesarian operation and appears healthy. The birth has renewed debate about the use of new medical technologies that help older women become pregnant, with doctors, psychologists, and others questioning not only the long-term health of such children, but also the ability of older mothers to care for them adequately.
Compiled from msnbc.com,
yahoonews.com, allafrica.com,
London Times, Deutsche Welle,
globeandmail.com, news.yahoo.com/news,
associatedpress.com, newyorktimes.com,
detnews.com
Compiled by IAN BISHOP