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By Isabelle TOURNÉ When Herve found out he had glioblastoma — the most aggressive form of brain cancer — at the age of 40, he made a deal with himself. “I said to myself: it is serious, but you are at war — and you’re going to win,” the French teacher, who did not want to give his surname, told AFP. “For my wife and children, I forbade myself to die.” Eight years later, following […]
By Issam AHMED WASHINGTON, March 18, 2024 (AFP) – Their stories are divided into before and after. First, those long years of pain which flooded every moment — school, relationships, work. And then — after agonizing treatments — what felt like the miracle of life after sickle cell disease (SCD). Two Americans whose lives were turned around by newly approved treatments tell AFP they want others to benefit too. But the eye-watering cost — up […]
Conditions affecting the nervous system — such as strokes, migraines and dementia — have surged past heart disease to become the leading cause of ill health worldwide, a major new analysis said on Friday. More than 3.4 billion people — 43 percent of the global population — experienced a neurological condition in 2021, far more than had previously been thought, the analysis found. The study was carried out by hundreds of researchers led by […]
A polio survivor known as the “man in the iron lung” has died aged 78, according to his family and a fundraising website. Paul Alexander of Dallas, Texas contracted polio at the age of six, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down and reliant on a mechanical respirator to breathe for much of the time. Though often confined to his submarine-like cylinder, he excelled in his studies, earned a law degree, worked in the legal […]
By Daniel Lawler Why do humans experience menopause? It’s a question that some women going through the symptoms might have asked themselves more than once. Scientists are also baffled. From an evolutionary perspective, animals generally take every chance they can get to have as many offspring as possible to boost their odds of survival. So why have some species evolved to have menopause, in which females live many years after they stop being able to […]
Dozens of mourners gathered to clear graves at Liberia’s largest Ebola burial site on Wednesday, as the country approached 10 years since the virus first swept through the population. The West African nation was badly hit by the region’s Ebola pandemic, which raged from 2014 to 2016 and killed 4,810 people in Liberia alone. The country’s first cases were confirmed on March 30, 2014, according to the World Health Organization. “It is very hard for […]
By Daniel Lawler PARIS, March 11, 2024 (AFP) – Covid-19 caused the average life expectancy of people worldwide to fall by 1.6 years during the first two years of the pandemic, a more dramatic decline than previously thought, a major study said Tuesday. This marked a sharp reversal during a decades-long rise in global life expectancy, according to hundreds of researchers sifting through data for the US-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). “For […]
By Kang Jin-kyu SEOUL, March 11, 2024 (AFP) – South Korea said Monday it had started procedures to suspend the medical licences of 4,900 junior doctors who have resigned and stopped working to protest government medical training reforms, causing healthcare chaos. The walkout, which started February 20, is over government plans to sharply increase the number of doctors, which it says is essential to combat shortages and serve South Korea’s rapidly ageing population. Medics argue […]
Just one in five women in Europe are aware that alcohol is a risk factor for developing breast cancer, a “major” health concern in the region, the World Health Organization warned Friday. “Only 21 percent of women across 14 European countries were aware of the connection between alcohol consumption and the risk of developing breast cancer,” the European branch of the WHO said in a statement, noting that awareness was even lower among men. “Just […]
From the outside, Seoul’s main hospitals seem unchanged: ambulances pull up, patients walk in, staff in white coats walk around purposefully. But for weeks, South Korean healthcare has been struggling. Surgeries have been cancelled, crucial chemotherapy sessions delayed, and it is nearly impossible to get a walk-in appointment since thousands of junior doctors walked off the job on February 20 in a standoff with the government over medical training reforms. AFP spoke with those involved: […]
KANO, Nigeria, Feb 28, 2024 (AFP) – A meningitis outbreak in Nigeria has killed at least 20 boarding school students and infected hundreds more, the education commissioner in northeastern Yobe state said on Wednesday. “We have recorded an outbreak of meningitis in six secondary schools in the state which led to the death of 20 students out of the 473 infected,” Mohammed Sani Idriss said. The epicentre of the outbreak is the city of Potiskum […]
Singapore will pay nurses a bonus of up to SGD$100,000 to encourage them to stay in the public health system as the city-state deals with a staff shortage and a rapidly ageing society. About 29,000 nurses will be eligible for the payout, including foreign nurses who have worked in the country for four years, Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said Tuesday. “We want to support our nurses to do a good job,” Ong said. Ong […]
