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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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. …

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 …

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 …

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. …