Tran Dinh Thanh Lam – Newsmekong*
HO CHI MINH CITY, Jun 3 2008 (IPS) – Vietnamese researchers have announced significant progress in their effort to develop a prototype vaccine for the H5N1 avian influenza, despite criticism from some scientists that their methods are unorthodox .
Vietnam is hoping to develop a vaccine that could prevent humans from contracting bird flu and have it available on the local market at a reasonable price by late 2009.
Researchers from the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology (NIHE) began a trial of the H5N1 influenza vaccine on 10 volunteers in March this year.
Encouraged by good results, researchers from the Vaccine and Bio-Technology Products Company (Vabiotech), affiliated to the NIHE, obtained permission in early Apri…
Analysis by Steven Lang
GRAHAMSTOWN, Jun 30 2008 (IPS) – Earlier this month, a private pilot reported to a Johannesburg radio station that while flying over the Kruger National Park, in the far eastern reaches of the country, he had spotted the carcasses of several large crocodiles floating in the Olifants River. This was unusual because the crocodiles within the country s largest game reserve are protected from hunting.
Game rangers soon confirmed that at least 30 fully grown crocodiles had died in the river apparently from a disease known as pansteatitis. This condition causes an inflammation of body fats which then harden resulting in a drawn out death for the animal.
Pansteatitis is usually associated with the consumption of rotten or rancid fish. However, there h…
Claudia Ciobanu
BUCHAREST, Jul 31 2008 (IPS) – Poverty and social displacement, increased availability of drugs, and chaos in the healthcare systems that accompanied transition from state socialism to the market economy have contributed to the spread of HIV in Eastern Europe.
Russia and the Central Asian countries that were once a part of the Soviet Union are today the worst hit by large numbers of new HIV infections. According to UNAIDS (the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS), between 2001-2007 the number of people living with HIV in Eastern Europe and Central Asia increased by 150 percent, from 630,000 to 1.6 million. More than half of the new cases were diagnosed in Russia, and over 20 percent in Ukraine.
In most other countries in Eastern Europe, the HIV …
Ida Karlsson
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 16 2008 (IPS) – What if HIV/AIDS was just another chronic disease instead of a widespread epidemic? This could be the case if the world community takes serious action, according to Human Rights Watch and other activists. But today, the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on HIV/AIDS is nowhere near being realised.
Halfway to the target date of 2015, it is clear that we are not on track to meet the goals, especially in Africa, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stressed when a MDG review was launched here last week.
The U.N. Millennium Development Goals are eight targets to be achieved by 2015. The goals adopted by 189 nations have set worldwide objectives for reducing extreme poverty and deprivation, empowering women and ensuring enviro…
Stephanie Nieuwoudt interviews South African health minister BARBARA HOGAN
CAPE TOWN, Nov 12 2008 (IPS) – When Barbara Hogan replaced South African health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang in September, her appointment was praised from all quarters. Hogan, who previously chaired Parliament s finance portfolio committee, is known as an intellectual who stands up for what she believes in and finding hands-on approaches to solving difficult political issues.
IPS: You have acknowledged HIV/Aids as one of the most pressing health problems on the continent. You also expressed concern about its nasty twin, tuberculosis (TB), an opportunistic infection to which HIV-positive persons are particularly vulnerable. How will you tackle this problem? Barbara Hogan: South Africa has always h…
Milagros Salazar
CERRO DE PASCO, Peru, Jan 5 2009 (IPS) – An immense open-pit mine located 4380 metres above sea level is swallowing up the centre of the city of Cerro de Pasco in Peru s central highlands, while the damages, in the form of toxic waste, spread to nearby villages.
Naún and his friends dream of living elsewhere. Credit: Milagros Salazar/IPS.
The government just signed a new law to relocate part of the local population, who for decades have suffered from the lead dust, dynamite explos…
Stephen Leahy
CHICAGO, U.S., Feb 19 2009 (IPS) – Climate change is bringing malaria to regions of Africa where the disease was previously unknown, researchers report from the conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago this week.
Interestingly, the Arctic, where climate change is happening fastest, is the best place to study how warming temperatures are affecting infectious disease transmission.
Insect-transmitted diseases, primarily malaria, kill 3,000 people in Africa each day, said Andy Dobson of Princeton University in the United States.
Understanding how global warming is altering temperatures and the ecology and ranges of the malaria-transmitting Anopheles mosquito is crucial to understanding the dynamics of how insec…
Busani Bafana and Zahira Kharsany
BULAWAYO, Mar 24 2009 (IPS) – Scientists at Bulawayo s National University of Science and Technology (NUST) have embarked on research to develop simple and affordable water purification methods, as more than a billion people live without safe drinking water in developing countries.
Moringa flowers – the seeds of this versatile tree can be used to sterilise drinking water. Credit: J.M.…
Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Apr 28 2009 (IPS) – When the World Health Organisation (WHO) raised the influenza pandemic alert from phase three to an ominous phase four warning this week, it went beyond the alarm associated with the killer avian influenza virus in Asia.
The global health body s warning came as the outbreak of a lethal strain of swine flu has killed more than 150 people in Mexico the epicentre of the virus and has also been detected in parts of the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
The WHO warning for a possible global pandemic emerging from avian influenza always remained a phase three alert, says Peter Cordingley, spokesman for the WHO s Western Pacific division. The difference now is that we have raised the pandemic alert to p…
NEW YORK, May 27 2009 (IPS) – On Mar. 28, one month before news of the swine flu outbreak headlined worldwide, a nine- year-old girl in Imperial County, California ran a fever of 104.3 degrees F.
She had not rolled up her sleeve for this year s flu vaccine, but that day she opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue for a cotton swab that scooped up mucus samples from her throat. Her mucus arrived at the Naval Health Research Centre in San Diego where technicians tested it and classified the virus in it as unsubtypable influenza A it was something new.
She recovered.
The lab forwarded her mucus to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, where it arrived on Apr. 17, four days after Mexico confirmed its first case of swine flu. Embedded in t…