Harare, Zimbabwe — The U.N.’s Children’s Fund expressed alarm this week about a cholera outbreak in Africa that has spread to at least 10 countries, with the situation in Zambia and Zimbabwe “very serious.” Dr. Paul Ngwakum, the regional health adviser for UNICEF in East and Southern Africa, said about 200,000 cases have been reported and more than 3,000 lives taken by the disease. Of the 10 countries he named as having an active outbreak, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Somalia, Zambia and Zimbabwe are in “acute cholera crisis.” “The key drivers are long-term poor water sanitation and hygiene conditions, exacerbated by changing weather patterns, climate change leading to floods and droughts, end-of-year festivities, inadequate community sensitization [and] late care-seeking behavior for those that are affected,” Ngwakum said. “Children, unfortunately, carry the lion’s share of the affected,” he said. “For example, over 52% of the cases in Zambia are children less than 15 …

nairobi, kenya — Kenya has embarked on its biggest rhino relocation project and began the difficult work Tuesday of tracking, darting and moving 21 of the critically endangered beasts, which can each weigh over a ton, to a new home. A previous attempt at moving rhinos in the East African nation was a disaster in 2018, as all 11 of the animals died. The latest project experienced early troubles. A rhino targeted for moving was successfully hit with a tranquilizer dart shot from a helicopter but ended up in a creek. Veterinarians and rangers held the rhino’s head above water with a rope to save it while a tranquilizer reversal drug took effect, and the rhino was released. Wildlife officials have stressed that the challenging project will take time, likely weeks. The black rhinos are a mix of males and females and are being moved from three conservation parks to the …

geneva — While new data show that smoking globally is on the decline, the World Health Organization warns that this good news is being undercut by an alarming rise in the use of e-cigarette and vaping devices, especially among children. “It is an alarming increase in the last four to five years. That is why we are ringing the alarm bell here,” said Ruediger Krech, director of health promotion at WHO. “In a couple of countries, we see huge increases in the use of e-cigarettes and vaping devices. We see a 150% increase in the U.K. and in the U.S. We also see an uptick in double-digit numbers of vaping among children,” he said. Krech accuses the tobacco industry of employing devious tactics to get a future generation of young people hooked on tobacco by introducing them to novel products “where they actually try to get our children as young as …

NEW YORK — Sixty years ago, the U.S. surgeon general released a report that settled a longstanding public debate about the dangers of cigarettes and led to huge changes in smoking in America.   Today, some public health experts say a similar report could help clear the air about vaping.   Many U.S. adults believe nicotine vaping is as harmful as — or more dangerous than — cigarette smoking. That’s wrong. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and most scientists agree that, based on available evidence, electronic cigarettes are far less dangerous than traditional cigarettes.   But that doesn’t mean e-cigarettes are harmless either. And public health experts disagree about exactly how harmful, or helpful, the devices are. Clarifying information is urgently needed, said Lawrence Gostin, a public health law expert at Georgetown University.   “There have been so many confusing messages about vaping,” Gostin said. “A surgeon general’s report could …

TOKYO — Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited Sunday the country’s north-central region of Noto for the first time since the deadly Jan. 1 earthquakes to alleviate growing concern about slow relief work and the spread of diseases in evacuation centers. The magnitude 7.6 earthquake left 220 dead and 26 others still missing while injuring hundreds. More than 20,000 people, many of whom had their homes damaged or destroyed, are taking refuge at about 400 school gymnasiums, community centers and other makeshift facilities, according to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency report. Road damage has hampered rescue efforts, and though relief supplies have reached most regions affected by the quake, hundreds of people in isolated areas are getting little support. Additionally, in the hard-hit towns of Noto, Wajima and Suzu, elderly residents account for half their population, and many are facing growing risks of deteriorating health, officials and experts say. Kishida, …

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico — The Tyrannosaurus rex seemingly came out of nowhere tens of millions of years ago, with its monstrous teeth and powerful jaws dominating the end of the age of the dinosaurs.  How it came to be is among the many mysteries that paleontologists have long tried to solve. Researchers from several universities and the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science say they now have one more piece of the puzzle.  On Thursday, they unveiled fossil evidence and published their findings in the journal Scientific Reports. Their study identifies a new subspecies of tyrannosaur thought to be an older and more primitive relative of the well-known T. rex.  There were oohs and ahs as the massive jaw bone and pointy teeth were revealed to a group of schoolchildren. Pieces of the fragile specimen were first found in the 1980s by boaters on the shore of New Mexico’s …

geneva — The head of the U.N. health agency said Wednesday holiday gatherings and the spread of the most prominent variant globally led to increased transmission of COVID-19 last month. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said nearly 10,000 deaths were reported in December, while hospital admissions during the month jumped 42% in nearly 50 countries — mostly in Europe and the Americas — that shared such trend information. “Although 10,000 deaths a month is far less than the peak of the pandemic, this level of preventable deaths is not acceptable,” the World Health Organization director-general told reporters from its headquarters in Geneva. He said it was “certain” that cases were on the rise in other places that haven’t been reporting, calling on governments to keep up surveillance and provide continued access to treatments and vaccines. Tedros said the JN.1 variant was now the most prominent in the world. It is an omicron variant, …

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Geneva — The World Health Organization is warning that millions of people caught in conflict-driven health emergencies risk dying from traumatic wounds and infectious diseases because life-saving humanitarian aid is not reaching those in need. In one of his most forceful statements to date, the WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, accused the Israeli government of blocking essential aid to Gaza. In a briefing to journalists Wednesday, Tedros said a humanitarian mission to northern Gaza planned for that day, the sixth since December 26, had to be canceled because “our requests were rejected and assurances of safe passage were not provided.” “Delivering humanitarian aid in Gaza continues to face nearly insurmountable challenges. Intense bombardment, restrictions on movement, fuel shortages, and interrupted communications make it impossible for WHO and our partners to reach those in need,” he said. “We call on Israel to approve requests by WHO and other partners to deliver humanitarian …

sydney — Australian researchers have found that record heat profoundly affected the global water cycle in 2023, contributing to severe storms, floods and droughts. An Australian National University study published Thursday asserts that rising sea and air temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels have intensified monsoons, cyclones and other storm systems. The world’s climate is increasingly lurching between extreme events, according to the study. It results in severe storms and cyclones dumping more water than they used to and droughts developing much faster. The burning of fossil fuels is identified by the report’s authors as “by far the biggest contributor to global warming.” They say that some of the worst disasters of 2023 were linked to unusually strong cyclones that brought massive rainfall to Libya, Mozambique, Myanmar, New Zealand and Australia. A lack of rainfall and high temperatures exacerbated long-standing droughts in South America, parts of Africa and the …

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washington — An ancient species of great ape was likely driven to extinction when climate change put their favorite fruits out of reach during dry seasons, scientists reported Wednesday.  The species Gigantopithecus blacki, which once lived in southern China, represents the largest great ape known to scientists — standing 10 feet tall and weighing up to 650 pounds.  But its size may also have been a weakness.  “It’s just a massive animal – just really, really big,” said Renaud Joannes-Boyau, a researcher at Australia’s Southern Cross University and co-author of the study published in the journal Nature. “When food starts to be scarce, it’s so big it can’t climb trees to explore new food sources.”  The giant apes, which likely resembled modern orangutans, survived for around 2 million years on the forested plains of China’s Guangxi region. They ate vegetarian diets, munching on fruits and flowers in tropical forests, until the …

Washington — Ancient DNA helps explain why northern Europeans have a higher risk of multiple sclerosis than other ancestries: It’s a genetic legacy of horseback-riding cattle herders who swept into the region about 5,000 years ago. The findings come from a huge project to compare modern DNA with that culled from ancient humans’ teeth and bones — allowing scientists to trace both prehistoric migration and disease-linked genes that tagged along. When a Bronze Age people called the Yamnaya moved from the steppes of what are now Ukraine and Russia into northwestern Europe, they carried gene variants that today are known to increase people’s risk of multiple sclerosis, researchers reported Wednesday. Yet the Yamnaya flourished, widely spreading those variants. Those genes probably also protected the nomadic herders from infections carried by their cattle and sheep, concluded the research published in the journal Nature.  “What we found surprised everyone,” said study co-author William …

Geneva — The head of the U.N. health agency said Wednesday holiday gatherings and the spread of the most prominent variant globally led to increased transmission of COVID-19 last month.  Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said nearly 10,000 deaths were reported in December, while hospital admissions during the month jumped 42% in nearly 50 countries — mostly in Europe and the Americas — that shared such trend information.  “Although 10,000 deaths a month is far less than the peak of the pandemic, this level of preventable deaths is not acceptable,” the World Health Organization director-general told reporters from its headquarters in Geneva.  He said it was “certain” that cases were on the rise in other places that haven’t been reporting, calling on governments to keep up surveillance and provide continued access to treatments and vaccines.  Tedros said the JN.1 variant was now the most prominent in the world. It is an omicron variant, …

Islamabad — A senior representative of Afghanistan’s Taliban government told a Pakistan-hosted international health conference Wednesday that his country had recorded an increase in mosquito-borne malaria and dengue fever cases, but infections caused by highly contagious poliovirus declined significantly. Only 12 children around the world were paralyzed by wild poliovirus in 2023, all of them in Afghanistan and Pakistan — with six reported in each. The two countries, sharing a nearly 2,600-kilometer border, have not detected a polio infection this year. “Polio is still a great challenge for both Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Qalandar Ebad, the Taliban health minister, said in his English-language speech at the first global health security summit in Islamabad. Delegates from 70 countries worldwide, including those from the United States and the United Nations, are attending the summit in the Pakistani capital. “We are trying our best to eradicate the polio virus from the country and fortunately we …