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By Shafiqul ALAM DHAKA, Oct 5, 2023 (AFP) – In the crowded fever ward in Bangladesh’s Mugda hospital, every bed is taken, as the country struggles in the grip of its deadliest dengue outbreak. More than 1,000 people have died this year in the nation’s worst recorded spate of the mosquito-borne disease, which scientists say is increasing in frequency due to climate change. In the worst cases, intense viral fevers trigger bleeding, internally or from […]
By Sami ACEF with David COURBET in Marseille PARIS, Oct 3, 2023 (AFP) – The French government said Tuesday it would host emergency meetings this week to examine surging numbers of reported bedbug cases, which are being increasingly seen as a major potential public health problem. Bedbugs have in recent weeks gone from being a subject of potential derision to a contentious political issue in France, with aghast citizens reporting seeing the creatures in locations […]
GENEVA, Oct 3, 2023 (AFP) – No new cases of Nipah virus have been detected in India since September 15, the World Health Organization said Tuesday, following an outbreak earlier in the month that caused two deaths. Nipah has no vaccine and a fatality rate ranging from 40 to 75 percent, according to the WHO. From September 12 to 15, India’s health ministry reported six laboratory-confirmed Nipah virus cases, including two deaths, in Kozhikode district […]
LONDON, Sept 25, 2023 (AFP) – The UK’s inflation-fuelled cost-of-living crisis is set to “cut lives short” and “significantly widen the wealth-health gap”, according to a study published by open access journal BMJ Public Health on Monday. Modelling conducted for the study predicted that the proportion of people “dying before their time” (under the age of 75) will rise by nearly 6.5 percent due to the sustained period of high prices. The most deprived […]
JOHANNESBURG, Sept 22, 2023 (AFP) – South African poultry farmers have warned of possible chicken and egg shortages as they battle what the industry says is the worst bird flu outbreak ever to hit the country. Producer Quantum Foods said on Friday that this year it had lost almost two million chickens — worth a total of more than 100 million rand ($5.3 million) — because of the disease. “The bird flu outbreak is the […]
GENEVA, Sept 17, 2023 (AFP) – The head of the World Health Organization told the Financial Times he was ready to send a new mission of experts to China to investigate the origins of Covid-19. “We’re pressing China to give full access, and we are asking countries to raise it during their bilateral meetings — (to urge Beijing) to co-operate,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the FT. He said the WHO had already written to China […]
NEW DELHI, Sept 15, 2023 (AFP) – Authorities in India are scrambling to contain a rare outbreak of Nipah, a virus spread from animals to humans that causes deadly fever with a high mortality rate. Here is a look at what we know so far: – What is the Nipah virus? – The first Nipah outbreak was recorded in 1998 after the virus spread among pig farmers in Malaysia. The virus is named after the […]
WASHINGTON, Sept 5, 2023 (AFP) – US First Lady Jill Biden on Monday tested positive for Covid-19, the White House said. President Joe Biden tested negative. The 72-year-old first lady is experiencing “only mild symptoms,” her office said, and will remain in the couple’s home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Jill Biden last tested positive for Covid a year ago. President Biden, 80, was administered a Covid test Monday evening and tested negative, the White House […]
© Agence France-Presse Health authorities in Paris fumigated areas of the French capital for the first time on Thursday to kill disease-carrying tiger mosquitoes whose rapid advance through northern Europe is thought to have been accelerated by climate change. Roads were closed and people asked to stay in their homes in southeast Paris during the early hours of Thursday as pest control contractors sprayed insecticide in trees, green spaces and other mosquito-breeding areas. Such scenes […]
THE HAGUE, Aug 30, 2023 (AFP) – The EU’s drug watchdog on Wednesday approved an updated version of Pfizer and BioNTech’s anti-Covid jab to counter an infectious subvariant of the virus as winter approaches. The World Health Organisation in May said it no longer considered Covid-19 a global health emergency, but the virus is still circulating — and new variants are being tracked. The European Medicines Agency said it “has recommended authorising an adapted Comirnaty […]
SYDNEY, Aug 29, 2023 (AFP) – A parasitic roundworm typically found in snakes was pulled “alive and wriggling” from a woman’s brain in a stomach-churning medical first, Australian doctors said Tuesday. Baffled doctors performed an MRI scan on the 64-year-old Australian woman after she began suffering memory lapses, noticing an “atypical lesion” at the front of her brain. It was an eight-centimetre (three-inch) roundworm, called Ophidascaris robertsi, which researchers said was a common parasite in […]
HELSINKI, Aug 23, 2023 (AFP) – Finland, Europe’s largest producer of fox fur, is culling 120,000 farmed foxes and minks in response to bird flu outbreaks in the country’s fur farms, officials said Wednesday. “A culling order has been issued for 13 farms,” Tuija Gadd, head of the virology unit at the Finnish Food Authority, told AFP. “Culling has already been completed on 10 farms.” H5N1 bird flu outbreaks in seagulls were reported in […]
