Month: September 2022

The World Health Organization is monitoring a cluster of 10 cases of pneumonia from an unknown cause in an outbreak in Argentina that so far has included three deaths.

The cases are linked to a single private clinic in the city of San Miguel de Tucumán, located in the northwest part of the country, according to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the regional office of the WHO.

An initial report Tuesday included five health care workers and a patient who was treated in the intensive care ward of the clinic, with symptoms emerging Aug. 18-22.

On Thursday, local health officials reported another three cases, bringing the total to nine, including three deaths. All three people who died had other health conditions.

On Friday, Argentina reported an additional case.

Symptoms have included fever, muscle and abdominal pain and shortness of breath. Several patients had pneumonia in both lungs.

Tests for known respiratory viruses and other viral, bacterial and fungal agents were all negative, PAHO said. Biological samples have been sent to Argentina’s National Administration of Laboratories and Health Institutes for additional testing, which will include an analysis for the presence of toxins.

Dr. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, said given that the lungs are heavily involved, the cause is likely something the patients inhaled.

He first suspected Legionnaires’ disease, which is caused by inhaling droplets of water containing Legionella bacteria, but tests have ruled that out.

PAHO and the WHO are monitoring the outbreak and assisting local health officials with the investigation.

Osterholm said “mystery illnesses” do sometimes happen, and most often they can be explained by some local outbreak that does not have pandemic implications.

Osterholm said he expects more definitive information from Argentine health officials in the next five to seven days.

Source: Voice of America

A pair of reports issued this week have combined to illustrate the deep and lasting impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the United States, documenting both declining educational outcomes for young students and a sharp decline in life expectancy for Americans in general.

A special assessment by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) focused on a nationally representative sample of 9-year-olds. It documented the sharpest ever drop in reading achievement between 2019, the year before the pandemic, and the early months of 2022. It also documented the first-ever decline in achievement in mathematics over the same time period.

A separate report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) documented a further decline in life expectancy in the U.S., first identified in 2021. According to the findings, the average American’s life expectancy fell by nearly a year from 2020 to 2021, and by 2.7 years between 2019 and 2021.

As the country heads toward its third winter of the pandemic, the two studies demonstrate that even as Americans have, to some degree or another, returned to normal life despite the pandemic, its effects will continue to play out over the months and years to come.

Students struggling

Educators have been concerned about the impact that the transition to virtual learning had on students, as many schools were closed to in-person classes for much of 2020 and 2021. This prompted the National Center for Education Statistics to undertake its special assessment of 9-year-olds.

“We have all been concerned about the short- and longer-term impacts of the pandemic on our children,” Peggy G. Carr, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, said in a statement accompanying the findings.

“There’s been much speculation about how shuttered schools and interrupted learning may have affected students’ opportunities to learn,” she said. “Our own data reveal the pandemic’s toll on education in other ways, including increases in students seeking mental health services, absenteeism, school violence and disruption, cyberbullying and nationwide teacher and staff shortages.”

The NAEP report looks at the change in academic proficiency overall, but also at the change within specific cohorts. It breaks the student population into those who score in the 90th percentile or above, as well as those at the 75th, 50th, 25th and 10th percentiles.

The study found declines in proficiency in both math and reading across all percentiles. However, they were greatest among those in the lowest percentiles. That means that the children in the 10th percentile not only showed lower proficiency than those in higher percentiles in 2022, but that they performed worse than other children in the 10th percentile in 2019.

“COVID-19 disruptions may have exacerbated many of the challenges we were already facing,” Carr said. “We know that students who struggle the most have fallen further behind their peers.”

Life expectancy drops

In 2019, the year prior to the pandemic, the life expectancy of the average American was 79 years. According to the data released by the CDC this week though, that had fallen to just a little more than 76 years by 2021, two years into the pandemic. It was a precipitous drop for the population in general, and was far worse for specific demographic groups.

The decline was most pronounced among Native Americans and Alaska Natives, whose already-low life expectancy of 71.8 years in 2019 had tumbled to 65.2 years by 2021. Black Americans’ average life expectancy fell by four years, from 74.8 in 2019 to 70.8 in 2021.

Over the same time period, the life expectancy for Hispanic Americans fell from 81.9 to 77.7 years, while that of Asian Americans fell from 85.6 to 83.5. White Americans’ life expectancy dropped from 78.8 years to 76.4 years.

Pandemic to blame

Noreen Goldman, the Hughes-Rogers professor of demography and public affairs at the Princeton University School of Public and International Affairs, told VOA that the “vast majority” of the decline is due to the pandemic.

She said that much of the blame lies with a disjointed and ineffective public health response to COVID-19, even after effective vaccines were available and successful mitigation techniques had been identified.

“That put the U.S. in this just horrific situation of inexcusable loss of life expectancy, which I think is embarrassing and disgraceful,” she said.

However, Goldman noted that other factors were at play as well.

“The U.S. has had worse life expectancy than its peer countries — other high-income countries — for a very long time,” she said. “Lower life expectancy comes along with higher rates of chronic disease, higher rates of heart disease, cancer and diabetes, the highest rate of obesity in the world.”

In a study published by the Lancet early this year, researchers looked at the decline in life expectancy across 29 different countries between 2019 and 2020. The countries included most of Europe as well as Chile and the U.S. The study found that the decline in life expectancy in the U.S. during that period was greater than in any other country.

Source: Voice of America

Over 80 maternal and child health experts from around the world have concluded a meeting in Freetown aimed at improving midwifery education. The body of experts included health authorities of Sierra Leone, Malawi, Bolivia, Pakistan and India, WHO and other global health partners. Their deliberations focused on finding workable strategies that will help strengthen the quality of midwifery education and training to improve standards that will help curb preventable death of mothers and newborn babies.

Preventable death of mothers and young children is still a big public health challenge in many low and middle-income countries including the participating countries.

In 2010, Sierra Leone introduced the Free Health Care Initiative to enhance universal access to quality health care for pregnant and lactating mothers and children under the age of 5 years. The Initiative and other national strategies have contributed in improving coverage of essential services for these categories of beneficiaries.

Meanwhile, the Sierra Leone Demographic and Health Survey (DHS 2019) showed that approximately 83% of all childbirth take place in health facilities, and about 87% of these are assisted by skilled healthcare providers.

However, statistics on the burden of the country’s maternal and child mortality rate is still grim and remains among the highest in the world. The rate of maternal mortality is estimated at 717 out of every 100,000 livebirths (2019), while neonatal mortality is estimated at 31 out of every 1000 live births.

“Sierra Leone has a lot of experiences to share on maternal and child mortality and at the same time has a lot to learn from experiences and lessons from other parts of the world to help curb the perennial and unacceptably high death of women in childbearing age and babies”, says Dr Steven Shongwe, WHO Representative in Sierra Leone.

“We can change this narrative now than later because we have the opportunity and tools to do so. We have evidence-based policies, strategies, guidelines, standards, and best practice. However, we now must be intentional and challenge ourselves to improve institutional capacities for midwifery education and training to transform health services delivery that will save the lives of women during childbirth and of children at the start of life”, Dr Shongwe added. He emphasized the need for strategic investment in human resources for health, equipment, medicines, and supplies.

Through the financial support of MSD for Mothers Foundation WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA and other partners are providing technical assistance to countries to implement programmes aimed at enhancing public-private sector partnership to bolster investment in strengthening human resources, and institutional capacities to enable health facilities provide optimal quality health care including obstetric care when and where they are needed to achieve universal health coverage.

In 2019, WHO launched the Framework for Action to Strengthening Quality of Midwifery Education for Universal Health Coverage 2030. The Framework sets out steps to be adapted by countries to develop and strengthen their national human resources for health strategies including strengthening quality midwifery capacities.

WHO works very closely with multiple partners including the UNFPA, UNICEF, other UN agencies, Donors and Development partners to support the Ministry of Health and Sanitation to advocate, mobilize resources and act jointly to reach the required number of trained and qualified midwifes and related health professionals that Sierra Leone needs.

Some of the major outcomes of this meeting will lead to improved midwifery coordination, regulation, capacities and functionality in Sierra Leone and the other participating countries.

Source: World Health Organization. Africa

A third round of polio vaccination for all children under five is underway in Tanzania. In this campaign Tanzania targets to vaccinate 12,386,854 under fives from 1—4 September in all 31 regions and 195 districts of Tanzania Mainland and Zanzibar.

The vaccination campaign in Tanzania aims at ensuring prevention of polio to all children after Malawi and Mozambique have respectively reported 1 and 4 Wild Polio virus (WPV1) this year. Detection of WPV1 outside the world’s two remaining endemic countries of Pakistan and Afghanistan is a serious concern and underscores the importance of prioritizing polio immunization activities in countries to prevent future instances of importation.

The response is being coordinated with the help of the partners in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative — the WHO, UNICEF (the UN Children’s Fund), the service club Rotary International, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Any form of poliovirus anywhere, is a threat to children everywhere. It is critical that the Global Polio eradication strategies are fully resourced and fully implemented everywhere, to ensure a world free of all forms of poliovirus can be achieved.

Following the outbreak in Malawi and subsequently in Mozambique, vaccination campaigns were necessary in neighboring countries. Tanzania vaccinated a total of 1,130,261 in the first round and the second round reached 12,131,049 children. Both rounds exceeded their targets. It is expected that through four rounds of supplemental vaccination, and other activities, such as routine vaccination Tanzania will prevent occurrence of an actual polio case. Tanzania was certified polio free in 2015.

Surveillance strengthening activities are also ongoing to ensure increased sensitivity of the surveillance system and facilitate early detection of any polioviruses that might be.

WHO is supporting MOH to step up the polio fight including carrying out large-scale, effective vaccination campaigns to halt the virus and protect children from its debilitating effects.

Until poliovirus transmission is interrupted in these countries, all countries remain at risk of importation of polio, especially vulnerable countries with weak public health and immunization services and travel or trade links to endemic countries.

The case in Malawi imported from Pakistan underscores the importance of that statement. it is critical that we ramp up our efforts to raise awareness for the importance of reaching all children with polio vaccines and continue raising the funds necessary to carry out critical eradication activities to protect vulnerable children and prevent further outbreaks.

Preventing the further spread of WPV into polio-free countries and the ensuing outbreaks is therefore a top priority in eradicating polio.

Source: World Health Organization. Africa

Twitter is internally testing a widely requested edit button, a feature that will be rolled out to paid subscribers in the coming weeks, the social media company said Thursday.

For years, Twitter users have demanded the ability to edit their tweets after publishing in order to fix errors like typos. Those requests have led to jokes online that Twitter would rather introduce any other product, such as newsletters, before giving users their top-requested feature.

Soon, those demands will be met. Users will be able to edit their tweets “a few times” within 30 minutes of publication, Twitter said in a blog post.

Edited tweets will have an icon and timestamp to display when the post was last edited. Users will be able to click on the label of an edited tweet to view the edit history and previous versions of the post.

Twitter has experimented with versions of an edit button. Subscribers of Twitter Blue, the company’s paid subscription product, currently have access to a feature that holds tweets for up to one minute, allowing users to review the tweet and “undo” it before the post is published.

Source: Voice of America