May 13, 2013

A second person in France is confirmed to have the novel coronavirus and the WHO says it believes it is passed from close person to person contact. From the BBC:

Two more people in Saudi Arabia are also reported to have died from the virus, according to health officials.

NCoV is known to cause pneumonia and sometimes kidney failure.

World Health Organization (WHO) officials have expressed concern over the clusters of cases of the new coronavirus strain and the potential for it to spread.

Since 2012, there have been 33 confirmed cases across Europe and the Middle East, with 18 deaths, according to a recent WHO update.

Cases have been detected in Saudi Arabia and Jordan and have spread to Germany, the UK and France.

“Of most concern… is the fact that the different clusters seen in multiple countries increasingly support the hypothesis that when there is close contact this novel coronavirus can transmit from person to person,” the World Health Organization said on Sunday.

“This pattern of person-to-person transmission has remained limited to some small clusters and so far, there is no evidence to suggest the virus has the capacity to sustain generalised transmission in communities,” the statement adds.

France’s second confirmed case was a 50-year-old man who had shared a hospital room in Valenciennes, northern France, with a 65-year-old who fell ill with the virus after returning from Dubai.

“Positive results [for the virus] have been confirmed for both patients,” the French health ministry said, adding that both men were being treated in isolation wards.

Meanwhile, the Saudi deputy minister of health said on Sunday that two more people had died from the coronavirus, bringing the number of fatalities to nine in the most recent outbreak in al-Ahsa governorate in the east of Saudi Arabia, Reuters news agency reports.

May 10, 2013

Millions of girls will have access to the lifesaving HPV vaccine thanks to a partnership between GAVI and Merck that will reduce the vaccine cost to below $5. From the New York Times:

Thanks to Pap tests, fatal cervical cancers are almost unknown today in rich countries. But the disease kills an estimated 275,000 women a year in poor countries where Pap tests are impractical and the vaccine is far too expensive for the average woman to afford, so the price cut could lead to a significant advance in women’s health.

The World Health Organization, which has been pressing for faster progress in maternal health, greeted the news as “a great step forward for women and girls.”

When the new price was described, Dr. Paul D. Blumenthal, a professor of gynecology at the Stanford University School of Medicine who has pioneered cervical cancer prevention techniques in poor countries, said, “Mazel tov!” As long as there is enough affordable vaccine for the ever-growing populations of poor countries, he said, “this is good news for girls, women and their families.”

The lower prices — $4.50 for Merck’s Gardasil vaccine and $4.60 for GlaxoSmithKline’s Cervarix — were negotiated through the GAVI Alliance, which was created in 1999 with a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to deliver more vaccines to the world’s poor.

The low price will initially apply to a few million doses for demonstration projects in Kenya, Ghana, Laos, Madagascar and elsewhere, but Dr. Seth Berkley, the alliance’s chief executive officer, said he hoped that by 2020, 30 million girls in 40 countries would get the vaccine at that price or less.

The vaccines must be kept refrigerated, and the three doses are normally given over six months — requirements that add to the difficulty of deploying them in poor countries.

The vaccines cost about $130 a dose in the United States, and each girl needs three doses. The lowest price that any other agency or government has negotiated, Dr. Berkley said, is the $13 paid by the Pan American Health Organization, which negotiates a bulk price for Latin American countries.

Since Latin America includes a mix of poor and middle-income countries, the manufacturers do not offer rock-bottom prices there, he said. The alliance subsidizes vaccine costs for the poorest countries in Africa, Asia and elsewhere, with the subsidies shrinking as the countries get richer.

The vaccines protect against the strains of human papillomavirus, or HPV, that cause 70 percent of cervical cancers. The Merck one also prevents genital warts, which are caused by related viral strains.

Gardasil and Cervarix, given to girls as young as 9, have caused controversy in the United States, where many parents fear side effects and worry that girls will see the vaccines as condoning sex at a young age. The vast majority of girls in the United States have not been inoculated.

In Australia, where the vaccines have been readily accepted, a recent study found a striking drop in cervical abnormalities, which are cancer precursors, among young women. In the five years after the vaccine was introduced there, cases of warts dropped by 93 percent among women and girls under age 21.

Despite the excitement among global health agencies, the charity Doctors Without Borders called the news “disappointing,” arguing that the prices should be even lower.

“Why are the pharmaceutical companies still making profits off the backs of the poorest countries?” asked Kate Elder, a vaccines policy specialist at the charity.

May 9, 2013

A group of Haitians who were affected by the cholera outbreak say they will sue the UN if they are not compensated in 60 days. From the BBC:

Victims of Haiti’s cholera epidemic have given the United Nations a 60-day deadline to start talks about billions of dollars worth of compensation or face legal action.

The UN is accused of negligently allowing peacekeeping soldiers to pollute Haiti’s water with cholera.

A UN cholera expert agrees that this is “most likely” to be true.

The UN rejected an earlier call for compensation and continues to insist it is immune from legal proceedings.

The cholera epidemic began in Haiti near a camp for UN soldiers, where there were leaking sewage pipes. Some human waste was also dumped near a river outside the camp.

The camp housed UN soldiers from Nepal, where cholera is endemic. The UN’s own cholera expert, Danielle Lantagne, has said that Haiti’s outbreak is likely to have come from UN soldiers.

The victims include relatives of the 8,000 people who have died and hundreds of thousands of people who have fallen sick.

Lawyers for the victims say the UN is breaking international law.

They say they will open legal proceedings in New York with claims totalling many billions of dollars if the UN does not start talks within 60 days.

The lawyers say they will file claims for $100,000 (£64,000) for the families of those who have died and $50,000 (£32,000) for every one of the hundreds of thousands who have fallen sick.

The UN’s relative silence on the matter so far may be because it simply does not know what to do in the face of what could be a series of catastrophic and deadly errors, says the BBC’s Mark Doyle in Haiti.

May 8, 2013

The NGO released its ranking of best and worst places to be a mom in the world. Sub Saharan African countries fare poorly in the index which also included a new section on the challenges to newborn mortality. From the BBC:

The charity compared factors such as maternal health, child mortality, education and income in 176 countries.

In India, over 300,000 babies die within 24 hours of being born, accounting for 29% of all newborn deaths worldwide, the report says.

The 10 bottom-ranked countries were all from sub-Saharan Africa, with one woman in 30 dying from pregnancy-related causes on average and one child in seven dying before his or her fifth birthday.

In DR Congo, war and poverty have left mothers malnourished and unsupported at the most vulnerable time of their lives.

The next worst countries listed were Somalia, Sierra Leone, Mali, Niger, Central African Republic, The Gambia, Nigeria, Chad and Ivory Coast.

The charity says that lack of nutrition is key to high mother and infant mortality rates in sub-Saharan Africa, with 10-20% of mothers underweight.

In contrast, the results show that Finland is the best place to be a mother, with the risk of death through pregnancy one in 12,200 and Finnish children getting almost 17 years of formal education.

Sweden, Norway, Iceland and The Netherlands were also in the top 10, with the US trailing at 30.

Surprisingly, the report found that the US has the highest death rate in newborns in the industrialised world, with 11,300 babies dying on the day they are born each year.

The charity says this is due in part to the US’s large population, as well as the high number of babies born too early. The US has one of the highest preterm birth rates in the world at a rate of one in eight.

The report also found that mothers and babies die in greater numbers in South Asia than in any other region with an estimated 423,000 babies dying on the day they are born each year.

India also has more maternal deaths than in any other country with 56,000 per year.