In advance of World TB day (March 24), the World Health Organization is warning the battle to wipe out the global tuberculosis epidemic will not be won unless stigma, discrimination and marginalization of TB patients is brought to an end. VOA was in Geneva at the launch of new WHO ethics guidance for the treatment of people with tuberculosis. Progress is being made toward achieving the U.N. Sustainable Development Goal of ending the global TB epidemic by 2030.  The World Health Organization reports 49 million lives have been saved since 2000. But, much remains to be done.  Data from 2015 show more than 10.4 million people fell ill and 1.8 million died of tuberculosis, with most cases and fatalities occurring in developing countries. The World Health Organization says stigma and discrimination against TB patients hamper efforts to wipe out this deadly disease.  WHO Global TB Program medical officer Ernesto Jaramillo …

Curious toddlers find the drugs in a mother’s purse or accidentally dropped on the floor. Sometimes a parent fails to secure the child-resistant cap on a bottle of painkillers.   No matter how it happens, if a 35-pound toddler grabs just one opioid pill, chews it and releases the full concentration of a time-released adult drug into their small bodies, death can come swiftly.   These are some of the youngest victims of the nation’s opioid epidemic — children under age 5 who die after swallowing opioids. The number of children’s deaths is still small relative to the overall toll from opioids, but toddler fatalities have climbed steadily over the last 10 years.   In 2000, 14 children in the U.S. under age 5 died after ingesting opioids. By 2015, that number climbed to 51, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, alone, four children …

A photo published on social media reveals Elon Musk’s SpaceX Corporation is close to fielding a rocket robot. According to Florida Today newspaper, Stephen Marr got a good view of the bot sitting on top of a SpaceX drone ship at Port Canaveral, Florida. “I knew there was something different there,” Marr, 34, told the paper. Marr posted the photo on Reddit where it was widely agreed to be a robot, and users on the site nicknamed it “Optimus Prime,” after a character from the movie Transformers. The robot is expected to work on the drone ships, securing the first stage of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets, which will land on the drone ships, Florida Today reports. The robot is expected to save the company money and increase safety. Ricky Lim, of SpaceX, told Florida Today that the robot is in a “testing phase” as a “future capability.” “I don’t think …

Amputees with prosthetic limbs may soon have much a better sense of touch, temperature and texture, thanks to the energy-saving power of the sun, British researchers said on Thursday. While prosthetics are usually fully powered using batteries, a new prototype from University of Glasgow researchers opens up the possibility for so-called “solar-powered skin,” which would include better sense capabilities than current technology. “If an entity is going out in a sunny day, then they won’t need any battery” to activate their senses, said Ravinder Dahiya, a research fellow at the university and a leader of the study. “They can feel, without worrying about battery.” The technology involves installing a thin layer of pure carbon around a prosthetic arm, hand or leg. This allows light to pass through it and be easily used as solar energy, the researchers said in a research paper. The sun can provide up to 15 times …

Neda Saiyyada was among a handful of women in India whose company gave her six months of maternity leave last year instead of the mandatory three months. The extended leave helped the young mother enormously. “When I was pregnant, my biggest worry was that I will not be able to leave my child,” she said. “In three months the child is nothing, can’t even hold the neck straight, and my child was eating and sitting up straight when I joined back, so it was a blessing in disguise.” About 1.8 million women working in India’s formal sector will soon be legally entitled to get the extended maternity leave that Saiyyada was so grateful for after parliament passed a landmark bill earlier this month doubling maternity leave from 12 weeks to 26 weeks. WATCH: India maternity leave India is joining a handful of countries, such as Canada and Norway, that give …

Rising rates of superbug tuberculosis (TB) are threatening to derail decades of progress against the contagious disease, experts said Thursday, and new drugs powerful enough to treat them are few and far between. TB kills more people each year than any other infectious disease, including HIV and AIDS. In 2015 alone, it is estimated to have killed 1.8 million people, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). While some new antibiotics with the potential to treat some drug-resistant strains are becoming available for the first time, experts who conducted a global study said that without accurate diagnostics, better case tracking and clear treatment guidelines, their effectiveness could rapidly be lost. “Resistance to anti-tuberculosis drugs is a global problem that threatens to derail efforts to eradicate the disease,” said Keertan Dheda, a University of Cape Town professor who co-led research published in the Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal. “Cure rates for drug-resistant …

Tyrannosaurus rex and his buddies could be on the move as a new study proposes a massive shake-up of the dinosaur family tree. Scientists who took a deeper look at dinosaur fossils suggest a different evolutionary history for dinosaurs, moving theropods such as T. rex to a new branch of the family tree and hinting at an earlier and more northern origin for dinosaurs. The revised dinosaur tree makes more sense than the old one, initially designed more than a century ago based on hip shape, said Matt Baron, a paleontology doctoral student at the University of Cambridge in England. He is the lead author of the study in Wednesday’s journal Nature. “If the authors are correct, this really turns our longstanding understanding of dinosaur evolution upside down!” Kristi Curry Rogers, a paleontologist at Macalaster College in Minnesota who wasn’t part of the study, wrote in an email. Dinosaurs are …

The extent of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean has set a new record low for the wintertime in a region strongly affected by long-term trends of global warming, U.S. and European scientists said Wednesday. Sea ice around the North Pole expands to its biggest extent of the year in February or March after a deep freeze in the winter polar darkness and shrinks to the smallest of the year in September, at the end of the brief Arctic summer. Arctic sea ice appeared to reach its annual maximum extent March 7, the lowest maximum in the 38-year satellite record, according to the Colorado-based U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center. On that date, the ice covered 14.42 million square kilometers (5.57 million square miles), 97,000 square kilometers less than the previous lowest maximum that occurred February 25, 2015. The trend of shrinking ice around the North Pole in recent …

A discovery involving a rare California frog has researchers hopping for joy. Nine egg masses from the California red-legged frog were discovered on March 14 in a creek in the Santa Monica Mountains, which stretch from Los Angeles westward along the Malibu coast into Ventura County. The threatened species hasn’t been seen naturally in the mountains since the 1970s and the National Park Service has been trying to rebuild the population by transplanting eggs from a population in the nearby Simi Hills. The discovery of new egg masses suggests that after four years of effort, the population is showing signs of sustaining itself without human help, although transplants will continue, the park service indicated. “I was literally crying when the stream team showed me the photos of egg masses,” Katy Delaney, a National Park Service ecologist with Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, said in a statement. “The years of …

Feel down about getting older? Wish your life was better? Worried about all the problems that come with age? A new survey suggests you need only wait: Many pessimistic feelings held by people earlier in life take an optimistic turn as they move toward old age. Even hallmark concerns of old age — about declining health, lack of independence and memory loss — lessen as Americans age. “The younger generation is less optimistic,” said Dr. Zia Agha, chief medical officer at West Health, a nonprofit focused on aging issues whose related research institute released the poll Wednesday with the independent research organization NORC at the University of Chicago. “Perhaps as they age they will build resilience and they build the capacity that will help them cope better.” Generally speaking, optimism about growing older increased steadily with age, the poll found. Among people in their 30s, 46 percent described themselves as …

Scientists have developed a quick test —using a smartphone app — that a man can use in the privacy of his home to determine whether he is fertile. The sperm test could help millions of couples around the world that have tried unsuccessfully to conceive a child. The new rapid, automated test can show within a matter of seconds whether the man’s sperm count is too low to conceive or if there are problems with motility of the sperm so the reproductive cells have trouble fertilizing a female egg. The fertility test is an inexpensive smartphone attachment that the scientists said is made of materials which cost around $4.50. It was developed by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in the U.S. state of Utah and at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.         95 percent accurate John Petrozza is director of Massachusetts General’s fertility center, which used …

Thailand’s military government is cracking down on traffic carnage, invoking special executive powers accorded by an interim constitution to force automobile drivers and all their passengers to wear seat belts. The move by Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha came ahead of next month’s celebration of the traditional Songkran New Year’s holiday, which sees many of the country’s urban residents travel to their rural home villages for revelry, often fueled by alcohol. In last year’s weeklong holiday, dubbed the “Seven Days of Death, ” 442 people died in road accidents. A U.N. agency estimated that Thailand has the second-highest rate of traffic fatalities in the world. Seat belts are already required for drivers and front-seat passengers. Prayuth has been criticized for frequent use of the constitution’s Article 44, which is supposed to be used to address situations endangering public order. Use of Article 44 bypasses the interim legislature that was established after …

One in four children — 600 million in total — may live in areas with severely limited water resources by 2040, putting them at risk of deadly diseases like cholera and diarrhea, the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF said on Wednesday. Already some 500 million children live in areas with limited water supplies, and the demand for water today far exceeds available resources in 36 countries, UNICEF said. Supplies are expected to shrink further due to droughts, rising temperatures, flooding, population growth and urbanization, the U.N. agency said in a report. If no action is taken to clean up and conserve water supplies, more children will be forced to drink potentially unsafe water as a result, UNICEF said. Climate change plays a part “Around the world, millions of children lack access to safe water — endangering their lives, undermining their health, and jeopardizing their futures,” said UNICEF executive director Anthony Lake. …

Brazil is developing technology to send domestically-made satellites into space with its own rockets by the end of the decade, aerospace executives and officials said ahead of the launch of the nation’s first defense and communications satellite. The launch of the French-made satellite, the first project of its kind led by Brazil’s private sector, was originally set for Tuesday but rescheduled for Thursday evening due to protests around the lift-off site in French Guyana. The 5.8-tonne geostationary satellite will beam broadband internet from an altitude of 36,000 kilometers (22,000 miles) to remote parts of the South American nation and provide secure communication channels for military and government personnel. The mission took on new urgency after revelations in 2013 that the U.S. National Security Administration had eavesdropped on Brazil’s president at the time. “We cannot guarantee Brazil’s sovereignty as long as our defense communications are being carried by other countries’ satellites,” …