Days after the Hong Kong government lifted its mask mandate, most Hong Kongers continue to wear the protective anti-COVID-19 coverings, a decision that for some people shows a continued concern about health and for others indicates distrust of the government.

Tam Mei Tak, a radio talk-show host and political commentator, told VOA Cantonese that many Hong Kongers have realized that “trusting the government is worse than relying on themselves” in the fight against the pandemic.

A poll of Hong Kong residents commissioned by the local South China Morning Post and released in April 2020 found seven in 10 were convinced they would have only themselves to thank rather than the government if the city won its battle against COVID-19.

The Hong Kong government officially lifted the mask mandate on Wednesday. It had been in effect for three years, making the former British territory the last “unmasked” city in the world. Since early December, just after China relaxed its stringent zero-COVID policy, Hong Kong has lifted most of its controls, including limiting public gatherings and requiring proof of vaccination for entering restaurants, bars and other venues.

Chief Executive John Lee told reporters on Tuesday that the mask order would be completely revoked the next day and citizens would no longer need to wear masks indoors, outdoors or on public transportation.

But during 2019 protests against a legislative bill that would have allowed people to be extradited to mainland China to face charges if it had not been withdrawn, the Hong Kong government enacted the Prohibition of Face Covering Regulation. It was seen as a law to prevent demonstrators from covering their faces, which made it harder for authorities to identify them.

When asked Tuesday whether the city government would abandon the regulation while lifting the mask mandate, Lee said the mask mandate was a public health concern and was different from the Prohibition of Face Covering Regulation.

Tam said that most citizens still wear masks because the Prohibition of Face Covering Regulation has not been revoked: “Since you ask me to do it, I would do the opposite. … This is a vote of no confidence in the government.”

Other Hong Kongers told VOA Cantonese they continued to wear masks to remain healthy.

One of them, Ah San, told VOA Cantonese she was wearing a no-longer-mandated mask “because I haven’t been sick while wearing a mask or had to go to the doctor. I haven’t had a cold in the past three years, so I think wearing a mask is better for protecting my own health.”

She added that “as the government doesn’t publish the data, we don’t know if there are infected people walking around on the street. So I think it’s more important to protect myself.”

Alice, a Hong Konger who runs a Japanese-style yakiniku restaurant and asked that her full name not be used to avoid attracting officials’ attention, told VOA Cantonese that the moment the “mask order” was lifted, she immediately posted photos of herself without a mask on social media. She said she felt very happy about going shopping without a mask that afternoon, thinking life had returned to what it was before COVID-19. But when she saw so many people wearing masks on the street, she said she felt a little guilty.

Simon Lee, a Hong Kong political commentator who now lives in Virginia, said that the reaction of Hong Kongers to the revocation of the mask mandate also reflected the public’s distrust of the Hong Kong government. He said many Hong Kongers believe that the city government’s pandemic prevention measures lacked scientific basis.

He said it was obvious over the past three years that “the public knew that the government had no real scientific basis for epidemic prevention, and instead everyone acted according to their own judgment.”

Simon Lee said, “Whether the government told you to wear a mask or not, it’s actually meaningless to Hong Kongers. You see that Hong Kongers themselves would wear masks when they were in ‘high-risk’ places, but sometimes they were feeling relaxed and having drinks at a bar, they didn’t wear a mask. It could actually be the same person. The point is that among [a person’s] many considerations, the government’s suggestion and position are the least relevant factors.”

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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The U.S. space agency NASA says two U.S. astronauts, another from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and a Russian cosmonaut are safely aboard the International Space Station (ISS) after their Space-X Dragon crew capsule docked Friday with the orbiting laboratory.

Video from NASA showed U.S. astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, UAE astronaut Sultan Alneyadi and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev being greeted warmly by ISS crew members as they entered the space station about two hours after the docking.

The 41-year-old Alneyadi is the second person from his country to fly to space and the first to launch from U.S. soil as part of a long-duration space station team.

Space-X says the new crew members will spend six months on the station, where they will conduct more than 200 science experiments and technology demonstrations,

NASA says the docking was delayed slightly as mission teams completed troubleshooting of a faulty docking hook sensor on the Dragon capsule. They verified all of the docking hooks were properly configured, and the docking process continued.

The new crew members temporally expand the ISS crew to 11. They join the Expedition 68 crew, NASA astronauts Frank Rubio, Nicole Mann, and Josh Cassada, Japanese space agency, JAXA, astronaut Koichi Wakata, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitri Petelin, and Anna Kikina. 

Some information for this report was provided by the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
…

One month after a freight train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, sending tons of toxic chemicals into the air and prompting a temporary evacuation of the town, the fallout from the accident continues, both on the ground where local residents complain of lingering effects, and in Washington, where the Biden administration is under assault from conservatives over the federal response.

There were no injuries reported as a result of the accident, but residents of the area nearby are complaining of a mix of symptoms that may be related to chemical exposure, including headaches, breathing difficulties and skin rashes. This is despite assertions by state and federal environmental officials who say they have tested air and water samples and have found no evidence of harmful levels of dangerous chemicals.

Contractors have removed millions of gallons of toxic liquids and hundreds of tons of contaminated solid waste from the crash site and affected areas. However, some experts have questioned the thoroughness of the testing being conducted, and have warned that a larger and more extensive effort is necessary.

In Washington, Republicans have used the accident to lash out at the Biden administration and its officials, calling the federal response to the disaster insufficient, despite Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, saying publicly that he has “no complaints” about the federal response, and that his state is “getting the help we need.”

In a more conspiratorial vein, members of conservative media organizations, including popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson, have worked to inject the issue of race into the response to the disaster. Carlson and others have insinuated that the Biden administration would have mounted a stronger response if the disaster had occurred in a community of color, rather than in the majority-white East Palestine.

Timeline of events

Shortly before 9 p.m. on Feb. 3, a 150-car freight train operated by railway firm Norfolk Southern was passing through East Palestine when about 50 cars derailed in a fiery crash that officials have speculated was caused by an overheated brake bearing on a single car.

Of the dozens of train cars that went off the rails, 11 contained hazardous materials, including five that were carrying vinyl chloride, a highly combustible gas. Others carried a variety of toxic chemicals, some of which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes for Health say may cause cancer in people exposed to them.

Officials from the federal Environmental Protection Agency were on the ground in East Palestine within hours of the crash, the agency has said, with some 17 workers in place and performing air and water safety tests within the first 24 hours.

On Feb. 5, with state and federal agencies working to control the burning wreck, Governor DeWine ordered a mandatory evacuation of everyone within one mile of the site, warning that temperatures had risen drastically in one of the affected cars, making a catastrophic explosion possible.

The following day, the radius of the evacuation was expanded to two miles, as safety officials initiated a “controlled burn” of the vinyl chloride, meant to prevent an explosion. The result was an hours-long conflagration that sent plumes of dark black smoke into the air.

On Feb. 7, federal officials sampled the air and water in East Palestine and deemed it safe for residents to return to their homes. The mandatory evacuation order was lifted Feb. 9.

Norfolk Southern blamed

The train that crashed was owned and operated by Norfolk Southern, as were the tracks on which it was traveling when the crash occurred. In the weeks since, federal authorities, including the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency, have blamed the company for the accident and said that it will be liable for cleanup and remediation costs.

“Let me be clear: Norfolk Southern will pay for cleaning up the mess they created and for the trauma they’ve inflicted on this community,” EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said in a news release issued Feb. 21.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg released a letter to the company, accusing it of resisting tougher safety regulations in the past and demanding reforms. “In this context, Norfolk Southern and your industry must demonstrate that you will not seek to supercharge profits by resisting higher standards that could benefit the safety of workers and the safety of American communities, like East Palestine,” he wrote.

For its part, the company has said that it is committed to cleaning up the town and compensating residents. In an open letter, Norfolk Southern President and CEO Alan Shaw, who visited the crash site, said that his company was aware of residents’ concerns and would work to address them.

“I hear you, we hear you,” Shaw said. “My simple answer is that we are here and will stay here for as long as it takes to ensure your safety and to help East Palestine recover and thrive.”

Residents frustrated

In the weeks since the crash, residents of East Palestine have expressed frustration with government agencies and Norfolk Southern. At one point, representatives of the railroad refused to appear at a public meeting, citing unspecified safety concerns.

Local officials have complained about what they see as insufficient attention being paid to their town. East Palestine’s mayor, Trent Conaway, took particular exception to the fact that President Joe Biden had visited Ukraine in February without coming to his town first.

“That was the biggest slap in the face,” Conaway said in an appearance on Fox News. “That tells you right now he doesn’t care about us. He can send every agency he wants to, but I found out this morning that he was in Ukraine giving millions of dollars away to people over there and not to us … so I’m furious.”

Biden on Thursday told reporters that he has been working closely with “every official” in Ohio to respond to the crash. He seemed to suggest that he would eventually visit, saying, “I will be out there at some point.”

Researchers concerned

Professor Andrew J. Whelton, a professor of civil engineering and environmental and ecological engineering at Purdue University, told VOA the residents have ample justification for their concerns about the health risks they face.

Whelton, who has consulted on numerous toxic spill cleanups, has personally traveled to East Palestine with a team to collect soil and water samples and said he experienced physical symptoms of toxic chemical exposure himself.

He said that in his view, federal and state officials have not communicated the severity of the danger facing the community there and appear not to have taken some basic preliminary analyses necessary to adequately clean things up.

“After you remove the acute health threats from the area, then the cleanup process will take years. But they haven’t removed the acute health threats from the area,” he said. “People are being exposed, still. That poses an immediate danger to life and safety.”

While officials have allowed people to return to their homes, saying that air and water tests show no harmful levels of dangerous chemicals, he said, “There are definitely areas in Palestine where it is unsafe to be, and officials have failed to notify people about those unsafe places.”

Political response

Republicans in Congress have used the disaster in East Palestine as fodder for attacks on the Biden administration, particularly Buttigieg.

Speaking on the Senate floor, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said, “Even amidst a catalog of crises on his watch, from this and other recent train derailments to the meltdown in air travel back during the holiday season, Secretary Buttigieg has seemed more interested in pursuing press coverage for woke initiatives and climate nonsense than in attending to the basic elements of his day job.”

However, the response of lawmakers has not been completely partisan. Democratic and Republican senators from Ohio and Pennsylvania, the two states most affected by the crash, came together with other lawmakers to jointly sponsor the Railway Safety Act of 2023. The bill would broaden safety requirements for rail transportation, particularly for trains carrying hazardous materials.

Next week, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hold a hearing at which Norfolk Southern CEO Shaw is expected to testify, as are officials from the EPA and the state of Ohio.

Conspiracy theories

The East Palestine disaster has provided material for commentators on the far right, who claim that there has been a conspiracy of silence from the mainstream media that has kept the disaster from receiving the level of attention it deserves. Many are focusing on the fact that East Palestine is a majority-white community, and attributing malevolent motives to the Biden administration.

Carlson, on his program, said, “East Palestine is overwhelmingly white, and it’s politically conservative … That shouldn’t be relevant but as you’re about to hear, it very much is.” He went on to suggest that the administration would have acted differently if the disaster had affected a community of color. “But it happened to the poor town of East Palestine, Ohio, whose people are forgotten, and in the view of the people who lead this country, forgettable.”

Charlie Kirk, leader of the conservative organization Turning Point USA, described what he characterized as insufficient media coverage of the disaster as part of a “war on white people.”

“If this train derailment happened in downtown Atlanta in the densely populated Black neighborhoods, this would be the No. 1 news story,” he said.

Prominent Ohio Democrat Tim Ryan, a former member of Congress who lost a run for the Senate last year, ridiculed the attempt to inject racial politics into the story. “You guys want to talk about a train accident as an attack on white people?” Ryan said of Republicans, in an interview with The Washington Post. “We want to talk about how we rebuild these communities.”
…

Communities around the world emitted more carbon dioxide in 2022 than in any other year on records dating to 1900, a result of air travel rebounding from the pandemic and more cities turning to coal as a low-cost source of power.

Emissions of the climate-warming gas that were caused by energy production grew 0.9% to reach 36.8 gigatons in 2022, the International Energy Agency reported Thursday. (The mass of one gigaton is equivalent to about 10,000 fully loaded aircraft carriers, according to NASA.)

Carbon dioxide is released when fossil fuels such as oil, coal or natural gas are burned to powers cars, planes, homes and factories. When the gas enters the atmosphere, it traps heat and contributes to the warming of the the climate.

Extreme weather events intensified last year’s carbon dioxide emissions: Droughts reduced the amount of water available for hydropower, which increased the need to burn fossil fuels. And heat waves drove up demand for electricity.

Thursday’s report was described as disconcerting by climate scientists, who warn that energy users around the world must cut emissions dramatically to slow the dire consequences of global warming.

“Any emissions growth — even 1% — is a failure,” said Rob Jackson, a professor of earth system science at Stanford University and chairman of the Global Carbon Project, an international group. “We can’t afford growth. We can’t afford stasis. It’s cuts or chaos for the planet. Any year with higher coal emissions is a bad year for our health and for the Earth.”

Carbon dioxide emissions from coal grew 1.6% last year. Many communities, primarily in Asia, switched from natural gas to coal to avoid high natural gas prices that were worsened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the IEA said.

And as global airline traffic increased, carbon dioxide emissions from burning oil grew 2.5%, with about half the surge resulting from the aviation sector.

Global emissions have grown in most years since 1900 and have accelerated over time, according to data from IEA. One exception was the pandemic year of 2020, when travel all but came to a standstill.

Last year’s level of emissions, though a record high, was nevertheless lower than experts had expected. Increased deployment of renewable energy, electric vehicles and heat pumps together helped prevent an additional 550 megatons of carbon dioxide emissions, the IEA said.

Strict pandemic measures and weak economic growth in China also curtailed production, helping to limit overall global emissions. And in Europe, the IEA said, electricity generation from wind and solar power exceeded that of gas or nuclear for the first time.

“Without clean energy, the growth in CO2 emissions would have been nearly three times as high,” Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director, said in a statement.

“However, we still see emissions growing from fossil fuels, hindering efforts to meet the world’s climate targets. International and national fossil fuel companies are making record revenues and need to take their share of responsibility, in line with their public pledges to meet climate goals.”

Though emissions continue to grow at worrisome levels, a reversal that would help achieve the climate goals that nations have committed to remains possible, said John Sterman, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan Sustainability Initiative.

Nations must subsidize renewables, improve energy efficiency, electrify industry and transportation, set a high price for carbon emissions, reduce deforestation, plant trees and rid the system of coal, Sterman argued.

“This is a massive, massive undertaking to do all these things, but that’s what’s needed,” he said.
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Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX launched a four-person crew on a trip to the International Space Station early Thursday, with a Russian cosmonaut and United Arab Emirates astronaut joining two NASA crewmates on the flight.

The SpaceX launch vehicle, consisting of a Falcon 9 rocket topped with an autonomously operated Crew Dragon capsule called Endeavour, lifted off at 12:34 a.m. EST (0534 GMT) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

A live NASA webcast showed the 25-story-tall spacecraft ascending from the launch tower as its nine Merlin engines roared to life in billowing clouds of vapor and a reddish fireball that lit up the predawn sky.

The launch was expected to accelerate the Crew Dragon to an orbital velocity of 28,164 kph, more than 22 times the speed of sound.

The flight came 72 hours after an initial launch attempt was scrubbed in the final minutes of countdown early on Monday due to a clog in the flow of engine-ignition fluid. NASA said the problem was fixed by replacing a clogged filter and purging the system.

The trip to the International Space Station (ISS), a laboratory orbiting some 420 kilometers above Earth, was expected to take nearly 25 hours, with rendezvous planned for about 1:15 a.m. EST (0615 GMT) Friday as the crew begins a six-month science mission in microgravity.

Designated Crew 6, the mission marks the sixth long-term ISS team that NASA has flown aboard SpaceX since the private rocket venture founded by Musk — billionaire CEO of electric car maker Tesla and social media platform Twitter — began sending American astronauts to orbit in May 2020.

The latest ISS crew was led by mission commander Stephen Bowen, 59, a onetime U.S. Navy submarine officer who has logged more than 40 days in orbit as a veteran of three space shuttle flights and seven spacewalks.

Fellow NASA astronaut Warren “Woody” Hoburg, 37, an engineer and commercial aviator designated as the Crew 6 pilot, was making his first spaceflight.

The Crew 6 mission also is notable for its inclusion of UAE astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, 41, only the second person from his country to fly to space and the first to launch from U.S. soil as part of a long-duration space station team. UAE’s first-ever astronaut launched to orbit in 2019 aboard a Russian spacecraft.

Rounding out the four-man Crew 6 was Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, 42, who like Alneyadi is an engineer and spaceflight rookie designated as a mission specialist for the team.

Fedyaev is the second cosmonaut to fly aboard an American spacecraft under a renewed ride-sharing deal signed in July by NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos, despite heightened tensions between Washington and Moscow over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Crew 6 team will be welcomed aboard the space station by seven current ISS occupants — three U.S. NASA crew members, including commander Nicole Aunapu Mann, the first Native American woman to fly to space, along with three Russians and a Japanese astronaut.

The ISS, about the length of a football field, has been continuously operated for more than two decades years by a U.S.-Russian-led consortium that includes Canada, Japan and 11 European countries.

The Crew 6 mission follows two recent mishaps in which Russian spacecraft docked to the orbiting laboratory sprang coolant leaks apparently caused micrometeoroids, tiny grains of space rock, streaking through space and striking the craft at high velocity.

One of the affected Russian vehicles was a Soyuz crew capsule that had carried two cosmonauts and an astronaut to the space station in September for a six-month mission now set to end in March. An empty replacement Soyuz to bring them home arrived at the space station Saturday.
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NASA’s DART spacecraft slammed into the asteroid Dimorphos at a spot between two boulders during last September’s first test of a planetary defense system, sending debris hurtling into space and changing the rocky, oblong-shaped object’s path a bit more than previously calculated. 

Those were among the findings released by scientists on Wednesday in the most detailed account of the U.S. space agency’s proof-of-principle mission on using a spacecraft to change a celestial object’s trajectory — employing sheer kinetic force to nudge it off course just enough to keep Earth safe. 

“The DART test was phenomenally successful. We now know that we have a viable technique for potentially preventing an asteroid impact if one day we had the need to,” said planetary scientist Terik Daly of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, lead author of one of the DART studies published in the journal Nature.  

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft collided on September 26, 2022, at 22,530 kilometers per hour with Dimorphos, an asteroid about 150 meters in diameter, roughly 11 million kilometers from Earth. Dimorphos is a moonlet of Didymos, which is defined as a near-Earth asteroid and has a shape like a top spinning in space with a diameter of about 780 meters. Neither object imperils Earth.  

“We were trying to change the amount of time that it took for Dimorphos to orbit around Didymos by colliding head-on with Dimorphos,” said Northern Arizona University planetary scientist Cristina Thomas, lead author of another of the studies published in Nature.  

“The momentum of the collision and the momentum of the ejected material both acted to decrease the amount of time it takes Dimorphos to orbit by 33 minutes. This also results in the object orbiting a little bit closer to Didymos,” Thomas said. 

Before the impact, the orbital period was 11 hours, 55 minutes. It now is 11 hours, 22 minutes. NASA’s previous estimate, announced in October, was an orbital change of 32 minutes. The benchmark for success had been set as a change of at least 1 minute, 13 seconds. 

The scientists gave a blow-by-blow account of how the collision unfolded. 

“First, one of the spacecraft’s solar panels directly hit a large boulder near the impact site. Next, the second solar panel grazed another large boulder. Finally, the spacecraft bus — the box between the solar panels — hit between these two boulders,” Daly said. 

“We suspect that these two boulders were destroyed. After impact, ejecta [debris blasted into space] was launched from the surface for a period of time,” Daly added, saying satellite and telescope images showed a large amount of such material. 

The research also clarified details such as the precise location of the impact and the angle of impact. 

“People may think of the DART mission as a fairly straightforward experiment that is similar to playing billiards in space — one solid spacecraft impacts into one solid asteroid,” Thomas said. “However, asteroids are far more complex than just a solid rock. In fact, most asteroids are what we think of as rubble piles.” 

The $330 million DART mission was seven years in development. 

“We don’t know of any asteroids at this time that pose a threat to Earth, but we want to be ready for such a scenario,” Daly said. “It’s analogous to testing a car’s airbags. You make sure they work during a crash test instead of waiting to get in a real car accident to find out if they work.”
…

Eli Lilly will cut prices for some older insulins later this year and immediately give more patients access to a cap on the costs they pay to fill prescriptions. 

The moves announced Wednesday promise critical relief to some people with diabetes who can face thousands of dollars in annual costs for insulin they need in order to live. Lilly’s changes also come as lawmakers and patient advocates pressure drugmakers to do something about soaring prices. 

Lilly said it will cut the list prices for its most commonly prescribed insulin, Humalog, and for another insulin, Humulin, by 70% or more in the fourth quarter, which starts in October. 

List prices are what a drugmaker initially sets for a product and what people who have no insurance or plans with high deductibles are sometimes stuck paying. 

A Lilly spokeswoman said the current list price for a 10-milliliter vial of the fast-acting, mealtime insulin Humalog is $274.70. That will fall to $66.40. 

Likewise, she said the same amount of Humulin currently lists at $148.70. That will change to $44.61. 

Lilly CEO David Ricks said Wednesday that his company was making the changes to address issues that affect the price patients ultimately pay for its insulins. 

He noted that discounts Lilly offers from its list prices often don’t reach patients through insurers or pharmacy benefit managers. High-deductible coverage can lead to big bills at the pharmacy counter, particularly at the start of the year when the deductibles renew. 

“We know the current U.S. health care system has gaps,” he said. “This makes a tough disease like diabetes even harder to manage.” 

Patient advocates have long called for insulin price cuts to help uninsured people who would not be affected by price caps tied to insurance coverage. 

Lilly’s planned cuts “could actually provide some substantial price relief,” said Stacie Dusetzina, a health policy professor at Vanderbilt University who studies drug costs. 

She noted that the moves likely won’t affect Lilly much financially because the insulins are older, and some already face competition. 

Lilly also said Wednesday that it will cut the price of its authorized generic version of Humalog to $25 a vial starting in May. 

Lilly also is launching in April a biosimilar insulin to compete with Sanofi’s Lantus. 

Ricks said that it will take time for insurers and the pharmacy system to implement its price cuts, so the drugmaker will immediately cap monthly out-of-pocket costs at $35 for people who are not covered by Medicare’s prescription drug program. 

The drugmaker said the cap applies to people with commercial coverage and at most retail pharmacies. 

Lilly said people without insurance can find savings cards to receive insulin for the same amount at its InsulinAffordability.com website. 

The federal government in January started applying that cap to patients with coverage through its Medicare program for people 65 and older or those who have certain disabilities or illnesses. 

President Joe Biden brought up that cost cap during his annual State of the Union address last month. He called for insulin costs for everyone to be capped at $35. 

Biden said in a statement Wednesday that Lilly responded to his call. 

“It’s a big deal, and it’s time for other manufacturers to follow,” Biden said. 

Aside from Eli Lilly and the French drugmaker Sanofi, other insulin makers include the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk. 

Representatives for both Sanofi and Novo Nordisk said their companies offer several programs that limit costs for people with and without coverage. 
…

The head of a U.S. government program to fight AIDS, Dr. John Nkengasong, says that in its 20 years of existence the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, has saved 25 million lives.

PEPFAR, set up in 2003 under the administration of former U.S. president George W. Bush, has transformed the trajectory of HIV/AIDS, Nkengasong told reporters Tuesday while visiting South Africa.

“Twenty-five million lives have been saved, 5.5 million children have been born free of HIV/AIDS, health systems have been strengthened in a remarkable way,” he said.

Nkengasong, who comes from Cameroon, said there was once a “sense of hopelessness” in Africa, the continent worst-hit by HIV/AIDS, but since then countries’ economies have increased and life expectancy has improved.

Some 95% of the total $110 billion spent through PEPFAR was spent on Africa as it bore the brunt of the disease, he said.

“Before PEPFAR only 50,000 people, 50,000 people on the continent of Africa who were infected, were on treatment, 50,000. Today over 20 million people are receiving life-saving anti-retroviral therapy.” he said.

Nkengasong said the infrastructure rolled out across Africa as part of the U.S. government program was also useful during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The AIDS official said he was also “very positive” about the tools in the pipeline to combat HIV, including the roll out of pre-exposure prophylactics for HIV negative people that can be injected every three months and will stop the spread of new infections.
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Two more people in Equatorial Guinea have died of Marburg hemorrhagic fever, a cousin of the Ebola virus, bringing the toll of fatalities to 11, the authorities say.

“Two days ago, the monitoring system recorded eight notifications, including the deaths of two people with symptoms of the disease,” Health Minister Mitoha Ondo’o Ayekaba said in a statement issued late Tuesday.

Work is underway “to strengthen assessment of the spread of the epidemic,” said the statement, read on national television.

“Forty-eight contact cases have been documented, four of whom have developed symptoms, and three who have been quarantined in hospital,” it added.

The Marburg virus is a rare but highly dangerous pathogen that causes severe fever, often accompanied by bleeding and organ failure.

It is part of the so-called filovirus family that also includes the Ebola virus, which has wreaked havoc in several previous outbreaks in Africa.

The central African state announced on February 13 that nine people had died from Marburg between January 7 and February 7.

The U.N.’s World Health Organization (WHO) held an emergency session the following day.

The national authorities have declared a health alert in the remote northeastern province of Kie-Ntem province and in the neighboring district of Mongomo, which are located on the border with Cameroon and Gabon.

Measures include a lockdown plan implemented in collaboration with the WHO.

In their statement of February 13, the authorities had reported only three cases of infection in addition to the fatalities — individuals who were being isolated with “mild symptoms” in hospital.

The natural host of the Marburg virus is the African fruit bat, which carries the virus but does not fall sick from it.

But the animals can pass the virus to primates in close proximity, including humans, and human-to-human transmission then occurs through contact with blood or other bodily fluids.

Fatality rates in confirmed cases have ranged from 24 percent to 88 percent in previous outbreaks, depending on the virus strain and case management, according to the WHO.

There are currently no approved vaccines or antiviral treatments.

Potential treatments, including blood products, immune therapies and drug therapies, as well as early candidate vaccines are being evaluated, the WHO says.
…

The U.S. ambassador to China says Beijing needs to be more forthcoming about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, a day after reports that the U.S. Energy Department concluded the outbreak likely began because of a Chinese laboratory leak.

Nicholas Burns told a U.S. Chamber of Commerce event by video link Monday that China needs to “be more honest about what happened three years ago in Wuhan with the origin of the COVID-19 crisis.” Wuhan is the Chinese city where the first cases of the novel coronavirus were reported in December 2019.

His comments come a day after U.S. media reported that the Energy Department determined the pandemic likely arose from a laboratory leak in Wuhan.

The department made its judgment in a classified intelligence report provided to the White House and key members of Congress, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the development, citing people who read the report.

The WSJ said the Energy Department intelligence agency was now the second U.S. intelligence agency after the FBI to conclude a Chinese lab leak was the probable cause of the pandemic, although U.S. spy agencies remain divided over the origins of the virus.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby echoed that sentiment.

“There has not been a definitive conclusion and consensus in the U.S. government on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Kirby told reporters Monday when asked about the WSJ report.

The Energy Department assessment was made with “low confidence,” while the FBI conclusion was determined with “moderate confidence,” according to the WSJ. Four other U.S. agencies have reportedly determined with “low confidence” that the virus was transmitted naturally through animals, while an additional two agencies remain undecided.

The reports again bring national attention to the question of what caused the COVID-19 outbreak.

The Energy Department’s conclusion marks a change from its earlier position that it was undecided on how the virus began. U.S. officials did not disclose what new intelligence brought about the change. The Energy Department’s analysis came from its network of national laboratories, giving it a perspective different from more traditional intelligence assessments.

On Sunday, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN that “there is a variety of views in the intelligence community.”

“Some elements of the intelligence community have reached conclusions on one side, some on the other,” he said.

Scientists have also been divided on the issue, with some pointing to the live animal market in Wuhan as the most probable place the virus emerged, noting that animal-to-human transmission has been the pathway for many previously unknown pathogens. Other scientists, however, have given credence to the lab leak theory, noting that no animal source has been found and that Wuhan is a major site of coronavirus research.

The question of how the virus began has also exacerbated political divisions in the U.S., with Republicans more likely to back the lab leak hypothesis.

Republican Senator Tom Cotton was one of the first high-profile politicians to voice the theory that the virus originated in a lab setting, commenting in February 2020, when the predominant view was the virus had been transmitted from bats and spread at a food market in Wuhan.

After a growing number of scientists urged for both hypotheses to be seriously considered, U.S. President Joe Biden ordered an intelligence review into the origins of COVID-19 in May 2021.

A declassified intelligence assessment in October 2021 stated that both hypotheses were plausible but that intelligence agencies remained divided over which theory was correct. The report said there was consensus among intelligence agencies that the pandemic was not the result of a Chinese biological weapons program.

China has repeatedly denied that a lab leak occurred in Wuhan. It has placed limits on World Health Organization investigations to determine the origin of the virus.

Some information in this report came from Reuters.
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The Ghana Health Service says a shortage of routine vaccines for children blamed for a measles outbreak that infected 120 will be resolved within weeks. Health officials said the shortage of vaccines against polio, hepatitis B, and measles was caused by the depreciation of Ghana’s currency, the cedi. The Pediatric Society of Ghana warned childhood diseases could quickly spread if the vaccines were not soon made available. 

For months, nursing mothers have been complaining of shortage of vaccines meant for babies from birth to at least 18 months.

The situation became worse in February after major health facilities in 10 out of the 16 administrative regions of Ghana kept turning nursing mothers away due to erratic supply.

Vivian Helemi said her baby girl missed one of the key vaccinations last month and the situation has not changed after combing three health centers on Monday. Like other mothers, Helemi is worried the shortage of the essential vaccines for infants will pose a threat to her child.

“It has been frustrating moving from one hospital to another,” she told VOA. “I don’t know what could happen to my baby because she is yet to receive her second vaccination. I am confused because no one is telling me when the vaccines will be ready.”

Timely vaccination of children, according to UNICEF, is a proven method for saving lives from vaccine-preventable diseases. It can also help attain some targets like the U.N. Sustainable Development Goal 3, which aims to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all.

UNICEF’s Ghana office says on its website that the country has seen a significant fall in deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases. For example, since 2003, there has been no death caused by measles, while in 2011, Ghana was certified as having attained elimination status for maternal and neonatal tetanus.

Dr. Agyeiwaa Bonuedie, a member of the Pediatric Society of Ghana, said the government must act now in order not to erode the gains made so far.

“It’s the first time I am hearing of such widespread shortages. We do have shortages from time to time, however, those are in very limited circumstances. The problem this time is that it has gone over for several months. This should actually be a thing of the past. The government should be encouraged to do what we call ring-fenced funding such that budgetary allocations for vaccines are actually protected, no matter what other dire or pressing needs the country has, the children should be secured in that light,” said Bonuedie.

The director-general of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, said the situation will change by the end of March.

“We have had some delays in procuring some of those vaccines for which polio, MR [Measles-Rubella], and BCG [bacille Calmette-Guerin] are in short supply. It was also because the ministry’s budget to procure them are in cedis, and at the time it was due for procurement, because of exchange differences it was very difficult to procure, so now we have done it… we hope that within the next three weeks we will address it,” he said.

Parliament has summoned the West African country’s health minister Kwaku Agyeman-Manu to discuss the vaccine shortage. The next few weeks are crucial for many children, especially those who live in inner cities and dense parts of urban areas and are exposed to vaccine-preventable diseases at an early age.
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Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX was set to launch early Monday the International Space Station’s next long-duration team into orbit, with an astronaut from the United Arab Emirates and a Russian cosmonaut joining two NASA crewmates for the flight.

The SpaceX launch vehicle, consisting of a Falcon 9 rocket topped with an autonomously operated Crew Dragon capsule called Endeavour, was set for liftoff at 1:45 a.m. EST (0645 GMT) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The four-member crew should reach the International Space Station (ISS) about 25 hours later, Tuesday morning, to begin a six-month mission in microgravity aboard the orbiting laboratory some 250 miles (420 km) above Earth.

Designated Crew 6, the mission marks the sixth long-term ISS team that NASA has flown aboard SpaceX since the private rocket venture founded by Musk – billionaire CEO of electric car maker Tesla and social media platform Twitter – began sending American astronauts to orbit in May 2020.

NASA said the mission’s launch readiness review was completed Saturday, and that the flight was given a “go” to proceed to liftoff as planned.

“All systems and weather are looking good for launch,” Musk wrote on Twitter Sunday.

The latest ISS crew is led by mission commander Stephen Bowen, 59, a onetime U.S. Navy submarine officer who has logged more than 40 days in orbit as a veteran of three space shuttle flights and seven spacewalks.

Fellow NASA astronaut Warren “Woody” Hoburg, 37, an engineer and commercial aviator designated as the Crew 6 pilot, will be making his first spaceflight.

The Crew 6 mission also is notable for its inclusion of UAE astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, 41, only the second person from his country to fly to space and the first to launch from U.S. soil as part of a long-duration space station team. UAE’s first-ever astronaut launched to orbit in 2019 aboard a Russian spacecraft.

Rounding out the four-man Crew 6 is Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, 41, who like Alneyadi is an engineer and spaceflight rookie designated as a mission specialist for the team.

Fedyaev is the latest cosmonaut to fly aboard an American spacecraft under a ride-sharing deal signed in July by NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos, despite heightened tensions between Washington and Moscow over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Crew 6 team will be welcomed aboard the space station by seven current ISS occupants – three U.S. NASA crew members, including commander Nicole Aunapu Mann, the first Native American woman to fly to space, along with three Russians and a Japanese astronaut.

The ISS, about the length of a football field and the largest artificial object in space, has been continuously operated by a U.S.-Russian-led consortium that includes Canada, Japan and 11 European countries.

The outpost was conceived in part as a venture to improve relations between Washington and Moscow following the Soviet Union’s collapse and the end of Cold War rivalries that gave rise to the original U.S.-Soviet space race in the 1950s and 1960s.

NASA-Roscosmos cooperation has been tested as never before since Russia invaded Ukraine a year ago, leading the United States to impose sweeping sanctions against Moscow while steadily increasing military aid to the Ukrainian government.

The Crew 6 mission also follows two recent mishaps in which Russian spacecraft docked to the orbiting laboratory sprang coolant leaks apparently caused micrometeoroids, tiny grains of space rock, streaking through space and striking the craft at high velocity.

One of the affected Russian vehicles was a Soyuz crew capsule that had carried two cosmonauts and an astronaut to the space station in September for a six-month mission now set to end in March. An empty replacement Soyuz to bring them home blasted off Friday and arrived at the space station Saturday.
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A man in Spain who was suspected of having the deadly Marburg disease tested negative Saturday and does not have the virus, the health ministry said.

Health authorities in Valencia earlier said they had detected the country’s first suspected case of the infectious disease that has led to the quarantining of more than 200 people in Equatorial Guinea.

The 34-year-old man, who had recently been in Equatorial Guinea, had been given the all-clear but would be tested again in the coming weeks, officials said.

He had been transferred from a private hospital to an isolation unit at the Hospital La Fe in Valencia while tests were being conducted, the Valencian regional health authorities said.

Three health staff who are treating the man were also isolated as a precautionary measure, authorities said.

Marburg virus can have a fatality rate of up to 88%, according to the World Health Organization. There are no vaccines or antiviral treatments approved to treat it.

Equatorial Guinea quarantined more than 200 people and restricted movement February 13 in its Kie-Ntem province, where the hemorrhagic fever was first detected.

The small central African country has so far reported nine deaths as well as 16 suspected cases of the disease, with symptoms including fever, fatigue, blood-stained vomit and diarrhea, according to the WHO.

Cameroonian authorities detected two suspected cases of Marburg disease February 13 in Olamze, a commune on the border with Equatorial Guinea, the public health delegate for the region, Robert Mathurin Bidjang, said February 14.

Cameroon had restricted movement along the border to try to avoid contagion.
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Spain has identified its first suspected case of Marburg disease. 

The Spanish patient is a 34-year-old man who had recently traveled to the Central African nation of Equatorial Guinea.  He was in a private hospital but has been transferred to an isolation unit at Hospital La Fe in Valencia for further tests, regional medical officials said.

Marburg virus disease, or MVD, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “is a rare but severe hemorrhagic fever which affects both people and non-human primates … Primates [including people] can become infected with Marburg virus, and may develop serious disease with high mortality.” 

Spanish health officials said Saturday that more than 200 people in Equatorial Guinea have recently been quarantined because of Marburg disease.  

Earlier this month, two suspected cases of Marburg were detected in Cameroon near its border with Equatorial Guinea.  

The World Health Organization says that the “highly virulent disease” can have “a fatality ratio of up to 88%” and “is in the same family as the virus that causes Ebola virus disease.” 

There are no vaccines or antiviral treatments for Marburg.
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Uber Technologies Inc. said on Friday plans by the local government in India’s Delhi city to only allow electric vehicles to function as bike taxis would risk “finishing off the sector” and impact the mobility needs of millions.

Delhi’s plans, part of a new policy to regulate vehicles used by ride-hailing companies like Uber and rival Ola, are being finalized and will be rolled out soon, the Economic Times reported earlier this week.

Reuters could not immediately confirm those plans.

If implemented, this would mark an aggressive step towards the country’s ambitions to ramp up the transition to vehicles that run on clean energy to reduce oil imports and curb pollution.

Uber, in a blogpost, said any such move would put at risk the livelihood of over 100,000 drivers in the city.

“Steep and infeasible EV mandates risk finishing off the sector as we know it. The impact of such a decision on the livelihoods and mobility needs of millions of Delhiites is clear,” San Francisco-headquartered Uber said, urging the government to initiate industry dialog.

Uber has set a 2040 target for 100% of its rides to be in zero-emission vehicles, public transport or with micro-mobility, including in India.

Earlier this month, Uber announced plans to introduce 25,000 EVs over three years in India. Electric cars will however still be a fraction of Uber’s current overall active fleet of 300,000 vehicles in India.

On Sunday, the Delhi government in newspaper ads said digital platforms offering two-wheeler bike taxi rides should not do so as it violates certain existing transport rules.

Uber, which offers bike rides in Delhi and many other states in India, did not respond to a Reuters request for a comment on the advertisement.
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The Biden administration is preparing for a worst-case scenario if a conservative federal judge rules in favor of a lawsuit seeking to restrict access to one of the two drugs typically used to induce a medicated abortion.

Two drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol, can be taken by women at home and are used for just over half of U.S. abortions. But that could be quickly changed by a lawsuit filed by an anti-abortion group in Texas that claims the Food and Drug Administration wrongly approved mifepristone for use more than 23 years ago.

The case is before a federal judge appointed by former President Donald Trump. A ruling in favor of the abortion opponents could immediately shut down the sale of the drug, but women would still have access to medicated abortions with a regimen of misoprostol.

Vice President Kamala Harris promised on Friday that the White House would push back on efforts to ban the drug, as she gathered a group of nearly a dozen doctors and abortion rights advocates to discuss a plan for responding to the looming threat to access to medical abortions.

“There are now partisan and political attacks attempting to question the legitimacy of a group of scientists and doctors who have studied the significance of this drug,” Harris said. “There is now an attempt by politicians to remove it from the ability of doctors to prescribe and the ability of people to receive.”

The lawsuit against mifepristone was filed by the Alliance for Defending Freedom, which was also involved in the Mississippi case that led to Roe v. Wade being overturned. It’s the latest fallout in the struggle over reproductive care that the Democratic administration must grapple with since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion last year.

Harris did not publicly lay out how the administration plans to respond if a ruling that halts the sale of the drug nationwide comes down on Friday.

‘Medication abortion is not going away’

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, meanwhile, was in California on Friday to meet leaders from Planned Parenthood to talk about access to the abortion drugs.

Dr. Kristyn Brandi said she told the vice president on Friday that the ruling could trigger widespread confusion over the accessibility of medicated abortion in the U.S. Brandi, who is chair of the Physicians for Reproductive Health, said she already fields calls at her New Jersey clinic from women asking if medicated abortion is legal in the state.

“It’s a really important thing to communicate with people: medication abortion is not going away,” Brandi said.

She added that Harris expressed support for immediately challenging the ruling if it shuts down access to mifepristone.

Clinics and telehealth providers have been preparing for a ruling that shuts down access to mifepristone, ordering more doses of misoprostol so they can offer medication abortions with just that one drug. They will have to change the way they counsel patients, telling them that misoprostol-only abortions are slightly less effective and sometimes more painful than abortions done with both drugs.

Abortions using both drugs “can be as effective as 98% or more,” while misoprostol-only abortions are up to about 95% effective, Melissa Grant, chief operating officer of the Carafem abortion clinic, told The Associated Press.

Mifepristone dilates the cervix and blocks the action of the hormone progesterone, which enables a pregnancy to continue. Misoprostol causes contractions that empty the uterus. Typically, mifepristone is taken by mouth first, followed by misoprostol a day or two later.

Studies show medication abortions are safe and effective, though with a slightly lower success rate than ones done by procedure in a clinic.

Another lawsuit filed

With the Texas decision pending, a dozen Democratic-controlled states filed their own lawsuit in federal court against the FDA on Thursday in Washington. The lawsuit seeks to make it easier for woman to access the drug and alleges that several FDA requirements for prescribing and dispensing it are “burdensome, harmful and unnecessary.”

When the FDA approved mifepristone in 2000 it placed several safety restrictions on its use, including limiting dispensing to specialty clinics and requiring women to pick up the drug in person. The Biden administration had sought to expand access to medicated abortions in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling, with an FDA announcement this year that broadened the pill’s access through retail and mail-order pharmacies.

But several limitations remain, such as one that doctors must be specially certified to prescribe the drug.

Several medical groups have long opposed those requirements, pointing to the low rate of side effects seen with mifepristone compared with other medications that don’t carry any certification requirements.
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The trickle-down effects of Russia’s war in Ukraine are still being felt on food prices in vulnerable places, nearly one year after Moscow invaded the neighboring country.
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Federal wildlife officials on Wednesday announced a proposal to classify one of two dwindling California spotted owl populations as endangered after a lawsuit by conservation groups required the government to reassess a Trump administration decision not to protect the brown and white birds.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed that California spotted owls that have their habitats in coastal and Southern California be protected under the Endangered Species Act.

That population “does not have a strong ability to withstand normal variations in environmental conditions, persist through catastrophic events, or adapt to new environmental conditions throughout its range,” which led the agency to propose listing it as endangered, wildlife officials said.

The other California spotted owl population, which lives in Sierra Nevada forests in California and western Nevada, would be classified as threatened, the agency said.

The habitat of the medium-sized brown owl with white spots on its head and chest and a barred tail is under serious threat from current logging practices and climate change, including increased drought, disease and more extreme wildfires.

Most California spotted owls live on land overseen by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service.

How much the population has declined since conservation groups started their effort to protect it more than 20 years ago is unclear.

The only available demographic data on spotted owls living in coastal and Southern California was collected in San Bernardino National Forest and shows a decline of 9%, the federal wildlife service said.

The Sierra Nevada population shows declines ranging from 50% to 31% percent in some areas, the agency said.

The federal agency’s decision follows an agreement reached in November between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and several conservation groups that sued the federal agency in 2020 over its decision not to protect the California spotted owl population.

Justin Augustine, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that sued, applauded the agency’s decision and said he was happy to see the California spotted owls could finally get the safeguards they need.

Augustine said he planned to use the 60-day public comment period to push for more protections for the California spotted population in the Sierra Nevada.

“One of the things I’ll be addressing is the issue of how to make sure that (Sierra Nevada) spotted owls are actually protected under their threatened status rather than potentially allowing some logging to occur that would be harmful,” he said.

The California spotted owl is one of three spotted owl subspecies and the last to be protected under the Endangered Species Act, Augustine said.

The other two subspecies are the northern spotted owl and the Mexican spotted owl.

The northern spotted owl habitat is in Oregon, Washington state and Northern California. The tiny owl was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1990, sparking an intense battle over logging in the region. In 2020, the Trump Administration refused to upgrade it to endangered status despite losing nearly 4% of its population annually.

The Mexican spotted owl was first listed as threatened in the U.S. in 1993. It is found in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, parts of West Texas and Mexico.

The species is in danger of extinction due to lose of habitat to logging, development, mining and wildfires.
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A new report by four leading United Nations agencies and the World Bank estimates every two minutes, one woman dies during pregnancy or childbirth, mostly from preventable causes.

The report, “Trends in maternal mortality 2000 to 2020,” was produced by WHO, UNICEF, and the UNFPA, along with the World Bank Group and UNDESA/Population Division.

Health officials say the data presented in the report should be a wakeup call for world leaders to take action to end maternal deaths by investing in health care systems and closing the widening social and economic inequities that contribute to these deaths.

“While pregnancy should be a time of immense hope and a positive experience for all women, it is tragically still a shockingly dangerous experience for millions around the world,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organization’s director-general.

“These new statistics reveal the urgent need to ensure every woman and girl has access to critical health services before, during and after childbirth,” he said, “And that they can fully exercise their reproductive rights.”

The report finds an estimated 287,000 women around the world died from a maternal cause in 2020.  That is equivalent to 800 deaths a day, or one death every two minutes.

“These numbers show persistent inequities between countries which are undermining women’s rights.,” said Anshu Banerjee, assistant director general for universal health coverage at WHO. 

“There is over a hundred-fold risk of dying depending on where a woman delivers her baby, particularly in low-income countries compared to high income countries,” he said.

The statistics bear this out. While some significant progress in reducing maternal deaths was made between 2000 and 2015, the report notes this progress has largely stalled, and in some cases been reversed.

For example, between 2016 and 2020, it says the maternal mortality rate increased in Europe, Northern America, Latin America and the Caribbean.

While the number of deaths has gone up, the report says the regions have among the lowest maternal mortality rates in the world.

During this same period, the report says two regions, Australia and New Zealand, and Central and Southern Asia, reduced maternal deaths significantly. The picture is quite different in sub-Saharan Africa, which has the highest rate of maternal mortality, accounting for 70 percent of maternal deaths worldwide.

Jenny Cresswell, an epidemiologist at WHO and author of the report, said the maternal mortality ratio per 100,000 live births in sub-Saharan Africa in 2020 is estimated to be 545 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births.

“This number is 136 times bigger than MMR (maternal mortality ratio) in Australia and New Zealand, the lowest region,” Cresswell said.

She adds, “A 15-year-old girl in Chad in 2020 has a one in 15 chance of dying from a maternal cause during her lifetime, and that is 4,000 times greater than the probability in Belarus.”

In 2020, Belarus had one MMR per 100,000 live births compared to Chad, which had 1,063 MMRs per 100,000 live births.

Leading causes

The leading causes of maternal deaths include severe bleeding, high blood pressure, pregnancy-related infections, complications from unsafe abortions, and underlying conditions such as HIV/AIDS and malaria.

Banerjee said nearly all these maternal deaths are preventable.

“Nearly half of all pregnancies are unintended, which is highlighting the lack of access of some 270 million women globally to modern family planning methods —meaning they are unable to choose how and when to plan their families,” he says.” Many lack access to safe abortion, which increases risk of complications, including deaths associated with unsafe procedures,” said Banerjee.

Natalia Kanem, executive director of the U.N. Population Fund, said it is unacceptable that so many women continue to die needlessly during pregnancy and childbirth.

She said, “We can and must do better by urgently investing in family planning and filling the global shortage of 900,000 midwives so that every woman can get the lifesaving care she needs. 

“We have the tools, knowledge, and resources to end preventable maternal deaths,” she said. “What we need now is the political will.”
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Zimbabweans living on the border with Zambia are increasingly taking advantage of their neighbor’s superior health care. But Zambian officials say they are also draining resources as nearly one-third of patients in some clinics and hospitals are Zimbabweans. Columbus Mavhunga reports from Lusaka, Zambia. VOA footage by Blessing Chigwenhembe.
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To address the relatively high cost of health care in Africa, a Kenyan mobile application lets users pay for medical services by selling their personal data through blockchain technology. Officials say Snark Health’s Hippocratic Coins have attracted more than 300 doctors and 4,000 users.  Victoria Amunga reports from Nairobi, Kenya. Camera: Jimmy Makhulo.
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An organization that trains young people for conservation jobs is recycling dead trees and replacing them with new ones, salvaging valuable lumber in the process. Mike O’Sullivan reports from Long Beach, California.
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A controversial Chinese biophysicist, who had been imprisoned after creating the world’s first gene-edited babies, had his Hong Kong work visa revoked after immigration officials suspected he lied on an application form for a talent scheme.

He Jiankui, who sparked an international scientific and ethical debate in 2018 when he revealed he had created the world’s first “gene-edited” babies resistant to HIV, said at the time at an international conference in Hong Kong that he had modified two embryos before they were placed in their mother’s womb.

The scientist said he used a technology known as CRISPR-Cas9 to alter the embryonic genes of twin girls before birth. He said he had targeted a gene known as CCR5 and edited it in a way he believed would protect the girls from infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. It later emerged that a third gene-edited baby had been born.

The former associate professor at the Southern University of Science and Technology — who has since been fired — was later accused of having forged approval documents from ethics boards. He was sentenced by a Chinese court to three years in prison in late 2019 for illegally carrying out human embryo gene-editing intended for reproduction. He was released in April 2022.

The scientist posted on the Chinese social media platform WeChat on Saturday that he had been granted the visa on February 11 under the talent scheme. It was aimed at attracting people with rich work experience and good academic qualifications from all over the world to explore opportunities in Hong Kong.

He said he would conduct gene-editing research using artificial intelligence and was “optimistic about [the future of] Hong Kong,” reported the South China Morning Post. His original post cannot be found.

“We plan to use artificial intelligence tools to evolve the adeno-associated virus (AAV) capsids to improve the efficiency of gene therapy and promote affordable gene therapy for rare diseases,” he was quoted by the paper as saying. AAV is a small virus that has emerged as the most promising platform for gene therapy.

Scientists engineer the outer protein shell of AAV, known as capsid, to improve targeting and efficacy.

In response to the furor, the Hong Kong government issued a late-night statement on Tuesday, saying the visa of an individual who “made false representation” has been rescinded and a criminal investigation launched. Officials did not name He but made reference to media reports regarding an applicant being granted a visa “despite having been imprisoned for illegal medical practice.”

“After reviewing the application, the Immigration Department suspected the visa/entry permit was obtained by false representation, and the Director of Immigration had declared the visa/entry permits invalid in accordance with the law, and would conduct a criminal investigation to follow up,” said the statement.

The statement also warned that applicants who give false information face a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison and a fine of $17,842 upon conviction. The government has also issued a new requirement that future applicants under the visa scheme must declare whether they have any criminal records.

Since his prison release 10 months ago, He has established a laboratory in Beijing dedicated to developing affordable drugs for rare genetic diseases. Although He insisted that his work was to help people, international medical experts have criticized his gene-editing procedure as risky, ethically contentious and medically unjustified with inadequate consent from the families involved.

In a study published in the journal Nature Medicine in June 2019, scientists found that people who have two copies of a so-called “Delta 32” mutation of CCR5 — which protects against HIV infection in some people — also have a significantly higher risk of premature death.

He told The Guardian newspaper early this month that he moved “too quickly” by pressing ahead with the gene-editing procedure but stopped short of apologizing. He declined to elaborate on what measures should have been taken but said he would give further details at a scheduled talk on the use of CRISPR gene-editing technology at the University of Oxford next month.

He then said in a Twitter message on February 10 that he was “not ready to talk about my experience in the past three years, so I decided that I will not visit Oxford in March.”
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Researchers in Kenya say they’ve detected an invasive mosquito that can transmit malaria in different climates, threatening progress to fight the parasitic disease. Kenya’s Medical Research Institute this week urged the public to use mosquito nets and clean up areas where mosquitos can breed.

Kenya has detected the presence of a new malaria carrier, which was first discovered in the region in Djibouti in 2012.

The new carrier, the Anopheles stephensi mosquito, transmits plasmodium vivax, the parasite the causes the deadliest type of malaria.

Bernhards Ogutu is a chief researcher at Kenya Medical Research Institute. He says it was only a matter of time before the mosquito was discovered in the country after it appeared in Ethiopia and South Sudan.

“We’ve not been able to pick plasmodium vivax which is found in Asia and Kenya. It’s there in Ethiopia and this vector can also transmit it,” said Ogutu. “So that will also look at whether we might have plasmodium vivax in coming up with this new vector showing in our place. Vivax is more difficult to treat in that you can get treated and real up because it keeps staying in the body and the liver.”

Malaria affects over 229 million people each year and kills over 400,000 people, according to the World Health Organization.

More than a quarter of a million children die in Africa each year as a result of the mosquito-borne disease, including over 10,000 in Kenya.

Ogutu expresses concern for urban residents, saying that the new carrier may feed on poor environmental management systems.

“So the fact that this can survive in urban areas where water is not clean and that can transmit, that’s the worry people are having. For the time being its to monitor and see to what extent we are going to have its spreading and what impact it will be having,” said Ogutu.

Redentho Dabelen is a public officer in the Marsabit County town of Laisamis, where the vector was discovered.

He says experts are going to communities to teach people how to protect themselves from the disease.

“To sensitize them and teach them how to prevent themselves from the vector bites. We are trying to spray the houses,” said Dabelen. “We are trying to tell them about the disease through the community health volunteers and if they get infected they go to the hospital.”

According to the researchers, the population should continue to use malaria control tools such as sleeping under mosquito nets and practicing good environmental management and sanitation.

In 2021, the WHO approved a malaria vaccine for children aged five months to two years that has been shown to reduce child deaths.
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