When world leaders gather in Dubai beginning Thursday for COP28, this year’s U.N. climate summit, the heads of the world’s two largest economies will be notably absent.

U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping have no plans to attend the two-week event, which is aimed at marshaling governments around the world behind the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 2015 Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Both countries will send high-level representatives. Former Secretary of State John Kerry, the Biden administration’s special envoy for climate change, will attend. China’s climate envoy, Xie Zhenhua, is also expected.

Among the main issues addressed at the conference will be the structure of a “loss and damage” fund meant to compensate low-income countries that are suffering disproportionately from climate change despite having contributed little to its causes.

Another important topic of discussion will be the adoption of an agreement to phase out the use of fossil fuels, the single largest contributor to carbon emissions.

The fossil fuel discussion may be complicated by the fact that the host country, the United Arab Emirates, is one of the world’s largest producers of oil and gas.

UAE oil deals

In a development that may further snarl the talks in Dubai, the news organization Centre for Climate Reporting, in conjunction with the British Broadcasting Corp., on Monday revealed leaked documents suggesting that the COP28 organizing authority in the UAE has scheduled talks about oil and gas development projects during the conference.

The decision to allow the UAE to host the conference was already controversial, especially after Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber, group CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., was named president of COP28.

The reports published Monday contained internal talking points apparently prepared for Al-Jaber ahead of meetings with representatives from various countries, including China, Colombia and Egypt. They appear to declare the UAE’s willingness to develop new fossil fuel projects.

According to the BBC, conference organizers did not deny the accusation and refused to comment further than saying that ”private meetings are private.”

Activists optimistic

While some activists remain troubled by the decision to allow the UAE to host the event, others say the revelations about the oil and gas development talks could actually boost the chances of fossil fuel phase-out language being adopted.

“We’re all very clear on where the battle lines are drawn, and with this new article that came out, we’re clear on what’s really going on behind the scenes, which we all suspected but no one would say outright,” Cherelle Blazer, director of international climate and policy at the Sierra Club, told VOA. “Given all of those factors, if there’s more clarity going into this than usual, I’m going to say there’s a good chance.”

Blazer also said she was not concerned about the absence of Biden and Xi.

“The Senate delegation is going to be there. The full U.S. negotiating team will be there. Kerry will be there. So, everyone that needs to be in place for something actionable to happen will be there,” she said.

Global Stocktake

This year’s conference will mark the completion of the most recent Global Stocktake, a two-year process that is conducted every five years to assess progress toward emissions reductions and other goals related to the effort to halt global warming.

While the final results of the process are yet to be announced, an interim report released earlier this year found that progress on various climate initiatives has been “significant yet inadequate” over recent years.

The meeting takes place at a time when the manufacture and installation of green energy development sources is on the rise globally, with costs falling rapidly for many key elements, including the photovoltaic panels used to capture solar energy.

However, experts told VOA that while some regions, like Europe, have greatly accelerated their transition to green energy in recent years, progress has been slower elsewhere. To some degree, that difference was expected, because the emission-reductions goals set following the Paris Agreement were “nationally determined” — meaning that individual countries set their own goals.

Trade complications

Michael Mehling, deputy director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told VOA that the interactions between countries further along in the transition to green energy and those in the early stages of the process are getting increasingly complicated, particularly around trade.

Mehling said the attitude of some countries that have accelerated their energy transition is, “Well, if we cannot force, say, Turkey, or we cannot force China to decarbonize through the UNFCCC-Paris Agreement, because it’s nationally driven, we can at least make sure that anything we import from them will have to live up to the same high standards.”

He said some countries find having manufacturing emissions reduction standards imposed on them by restrictive trade requirements understandably frustrating.

“Some of these countries say, ‘Well, wait. We thought we understood the Paris Agreement to say that we can decide how fast we decarbonize our manufacturing. It’s not for you to force that on us,’” he said.

The issue is further complicated by the fact that many of the countries that have been decarbonizing at a slower pace are in the Global South and contributed very little to the crisis of global warming but feel they are now being asked to forgo economic development opportunities with little compensation from wealthy countries like the U.S. and China that contributed most to climate change.
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National and regional authorities in Spain signed an agreement Monday to invest 1.4 billion euros ($1.5 billion) in areas around the treasured national park of Donana in a bid to stop the park from drying up.

Ecological Transition Minister Teresa Ribera said the plan was aimed at encouraging farmers to stop cultivating crops that rely heavily on water from underground aquifers that have been overexploited in recent years, damaging one of Europe’s largest wetlands.

“This is an agreement with which we put an end to pressure on a natural treasure the likes of which there are few in the world,” Ribera said.

Andalusia regional President Juan Moreno said farmers will receive financial incentives to stop cultivating and to reforest land in and around some 14 towns close to Donana. He said farmers who wish to continue cultivating will receive less money but must switch to farming dry crops ecologically.

As part of the agreement, Andalusia will cancel previously announced plans to expand irrigation near Donana, a decision that UNESCO, the central government and ecologists criticized for putting more pressure on the aquifer.

A UNESCO World Heritage Site and Biosphere Reserve, Donana is a wintering site for half a million waterfowl and a stopover spot for millions more birds that migrate from Africa to northern Europe.

Ecologists working in and near the park have long warned that its ecosystem of marshes and lagoons is under severe strain because of agriculture and tourism. The situation has been made worse by climate change and a long drought, along with record high temperatures.

Andalusia recently announced a plan to allow the Donana park to annex some 7,500 hectares (18,500 acres) by purchasing land from a private owner for 70 million euros.

Donana currently covers 74,000 hectares (182,000 acres) on an estuary where the Guadalquivir River meets the Atlantic Ocean on Spain’s southern coast. 
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Pakistan launched a week-long nationwide polio vaccination campaign Monday, as the country remains one of only two around the world where the paralyzing virus still exists.

This year, so far, Pakistan has reported five cases of the highly infectious disease. The latest polio eradication campaign will target more than 4.4 million children across much of the country, as well as in Pakistani-administered Kashmir.  

The South Asian nation came close to eradicating polio in 2021 when it reported only one case of paralysis from the virus. However, last year the country saw a spike with 20 cases on the record. The virus generally spreads through the fecal matter of a carrier that has contaminated the water supply. 

Two of this year’s five cases were detected in the country’s most populous city Karachi in the southern province of Sindh. This came after the city recorded zero cases in the last two years.  

A spokesperson of the provincial Emergency Operation Center, Syed Nofil Naqvi, told VOA both cases are children from Afghan families settled in Pakistan for years.  

Naqvi blamed cross-border movement between Pakistan and Afghanistan for the disease. Afghanistan, the only other country fighting to eliminate the virus has reported six cases so far in 2023.  

“The environmental samples found across Pakistan are genetically linked to Afghanistan,” Naqvi said.  

To counter the spread of the virus through travelers, Naqvi said, polio teams vaccinate children at bus stops and other transit points.   

All of Pakistan’s remaining polio cases this year came from Bannu, a town in the northern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Muhammad Zeeshan Khan, deputy coordinator for the provincial Emergency Operation Center, told VOA all three families had refused to vaccinate their children.   

“We tried a lot to convince them. One child’s family agreed to giving polio drops but the child had not received an [initial] injection [to build immunity]. This [refusal] is the reason that all three children succumbed to paralysis.” Khan said the families worried the vaccine might harm their children.  

Parents’ refusal to give the oral polio vaccine to their children is one of the primary reasons polio virus still exists in Pakistan.   

Polio workers and the security personnel protecting them frequently come under lethal attacks from parents and militants who see the vaccination drive as part of a foreign conspiracy to render Pakistani children impotent or to give them ingredients not permissible for Muslims to consume.

Provincial officials in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa recorded more than 16,000 refusals in October. According to Khan, Peshawar, the provincial capital, recorded nearly 8000 refusals followed by Bannu, and North Waziristan where most of Pakistan’s polio cases were recorded last year.  

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa recorded 14 incidents of violence against polio teams this year.   

To counter such misconceptions, authorities have been engaging local clerics and influencers, and running expensive TV and radio campaigns to convince parents to vaccinate their children.   

Still, other parents refuse and bargain for unmet civic needs. The National Emergency Operation Center’s plans for the latest campaign show several communities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have refused to vaccinate their children until gas, roads or teachers are provided.  

“For us, the biggest concern is the child whose family has refused [to vaccinate],” said Khan.  

In any campaign cycle thousands of children are also “missed” because they are not home, or the family is unwilling to allow the vaccination team inside if a male member of the household is not present.  

Data shows over 13 percent of children in Quetta, Baluchistan’s provincial capital, missed getting the vaccine last time. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, nearly 1.2 percent of children or more than 90,000 were missed as well.  

However, Khan said many of the missed children get vaccinated as guests in whichever community they are temporarily present.   

In Quetta too, nearly half the children who were missed at one point were eventually covered, according to data.  

Still, in parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan that border Afghanistan the vaccination campaign will either be conducted later or postponed indefinitely, primarily due to security reasons.

As hundreds of thousands of polio workers and security personnel go door to door this week in areas facing a high risk of polio, Naqvi is hopeful Pakistan will get closer to eliminating the crippling disease.   

“We are using a positive way of giving the message,” Naqvi said. From posting signs that said “Caution! Your area has polio,” he said, we now say, “we can eliminate polio.”
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A surge in respiratory illnesses across China that has drawn the attention of the World Health Organization is caused by the flu and other known pathogens and not by a novel virus, the country’s health ministry said Sunday.

Recent clusters of respiratory infections are caused by an overlap of common viruses such as the influenza virus, rhinoviruses, the respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, the adenovirus as well as bacteria such as mycoplasma pneumoniae, which is a common culprit for respiratory tract infections, a National Health Commission spokesperson said.

The ministry called on local authorities to open more fever clinics and promote vaccinations among children and the elderly as the country grapples with a wave of respiratory illnesses in its first full winter since the removal of COVID-19 restrictions.

“Efforts should be made to increase the opening of relevant clinics and treatment areas, extend service hours and increase the supply of medicines,” said ministry spokesman Mi Feng.

He advised people to wear masks and called on local authorities to focus on preventing the spread of illnesses in crowded places such as schools and nursing homes.

The WHO earlier this week formally requested that China provide information about a potentially worrying spike in respiratory illnesses and clusters of pneumonia in children, as mentioned by several media reports and a global infectious disease monitoring service.

The emergence of new flu strains or other viruses capable of triggering pandemics typically starts with undiagnosed clusters of respiratory illness. Both SARS and COVID-19 were first reported as unusual types of pneumonia.

Chinese authorities earlier this month blamed the increase in respiratory diseases on the lifting of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions. Other countries also saw a jump in respiratory diseases such as RSV when pandemic restrictions ended.

The WHO said Chinese health officials on Thursday provided the data it requested during a teleconference. Those showed an increase in hospital admissions of children due to diseases including bacterial infection, RSV, influenza and common cold viruses since October.

Chinese officials maintained the spike in patients had not overloaded the country’s hospitals, according to the WHO.

It is rare for the U.N. health agency to publicly ask for more detailed information from countries, as such requests are typically made internally. WHO said it requested further data from China via an international legal mechanism.

According to internal accounts in China, the outbreaks have swamped some hospitals in northern China, including in Beijing, and health authorities have asked the public to take children with less severe symptoms to clinics and other facilities.

WHO said that there was too little information at the moment to properly assess the risk of these reported cases of respiratory illness in children.

Both Chinese authorities and WHO have been accused of a lack of transparency in their initial reports on the COVID-19 pandemic, which started in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019.
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Growing calls for the world to come to grips with the many ways that global warming affects human health have prompted the first day dedicated to the issue at crunch UN climate talks starting next week.

Extreme heat, air pollution and the increasing spread of deadly infectious diseases are just some of the reasons why the World Health Organization has called climate change the single biggest health threat facing humanity.

Global warming must be limited to the Paris Agreement target of 1.5 degrees Celsius “to avert catastrophic health impacts and prevent millions of climate change-related deaths,” according to the WHO.

However, under current national carbon-cutting plans, the world is on track to warm up to 2.9C this century, the U.N. said this week.

While no one will be completely safe from the effects of climate change, experts expect that most at risk will be children, women, the elderly, migrants and people in less developed countries which have emitted the least planet-warming greenhouse gases.

On December 3, the COP28 negotiations in Dubai will host the first “health day” ever held at the climate negotiations.

Extreme heat

This year is widely expected to be the hottest on record. And as the world continues to warm, even more frequent and intense heatwaves are expected to follow.

Heat is believed to have caused more than 70,000 deaths in Europe during summer last year, researchers said this week, revising the previous number up from 62,000.

Worldwide, people were exposed to an average of 86 days of life-threatening temperatures last year, according to the Lancet Countdown report earlier this week.

The number of people over 65 who died from heat rose by 85 percent from 1991-2000 to 2013-2022, it added.

And by 2050, more than five times more people will die from the heat each year under a 2C warming scenario, the Lancet Countdown projected.

More droughts will also drive rising hunger. Under the scenario of 2C warming by the end of the century, 520 million more people will experience moderate or severe food insecurity by 2050.

Meanwhile, other extreme weather events such as storms, floods and fires will continue to threaten the health of people across the world.

Air pollution

Almost 99% of the world’s population breathes air that exceeds the WHO’s guidelines for air pollution.

Outdoor air pollution driven by fossil fuel emissions kills more than four million people every year, according to the WHO.

It increases the risk of respiratory diseases, strokes, heart disease, lung cancer, diabetes and other health problems, posing a threat that has been compared to tobacco.

The damage is caused partly by PM2.5 microparticles, which are mostly from fossil fuels. People breathe these tiny particles into their lungs, where they can then enter the bloodstream.

While spikes in air pollution, such as extremes seen in India’s capital New Delhi earlier this month, trigger respiratory problems and allergies, long-term exposure is believed to be even more harmful.

However it is not all bad news.

The Lancet Countdown report found that deaths from air pollution due to fossil fuels have fallen 16% since 2005, mostly due to efforts to reduce the impact of coal burning.

Infectious diseases

The changing climate means that mosquitoes, birds and mammals will roam beyond their previous habitats, raising the threat that they could spread infectious diseases with them.

Mosquito-borne diseases that pose a greater risk of spreading due to climate change include dengue, chikungunya, Zika, West Nile virus and malaria.

The transmission potential for dengue alone will increase by 36 percent with 2C warming, the Lancet Countdown report warned.

Storms and floods create stagnant water that are breeding grounds for mosquitoes, and also increase the risk of water-borne diseases such as cholera, typhoid and diarrhea.

Scientists also fear that mammals straying into new areas could share diseases with each other, potentially creating new viruses that could then jump over to humans.

Mental health

Worrying about the present and future of our warming planet has also provoked rising anxiety, depression and even post-traumatic stress — particularly for people already struggling with these disorders, psychologists have warned.

In the first 10 months of the year, people searched online for the term “climate anxiety” 27 times more than during the same period in 2017, according to data from Google Trends cited by the BBC this week.
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In the Pacific Northwest, one U.S. state is trying a novel approach to combatting opioid abuse — decriminalizing small amounts of hard drugs. From Oregon, Deborah Bloom has our story.
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On the cusp of the COP28 climate talks, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres visited frozen but rapidly melting Antarctica and said that intense action must be taken at the conference where countries will address their commitments to lowering emissions of planet-warming gases.

“We are witnessing an acceleration that is absolutely devastating,” Guterres said Thursday about the rate of ice melt in Antarctica, which is considered to be a “sleeping giant.”

“The Antarctic is waking up, and the world must wake up,” he added.

Guterres was on a three-day official visit to Antarctica. Chilean President Gabriel Boric joined him for an official visit to Chile’s Eduardo Frei Air Force Base on King George Island.

Guterres also was scheduled to visit the Collins and Nelson glaciers by boat.

He described the U.N. climate change conference that begins in Dubai next week as an opportunity for nations to “decide the phase-out of fossil fuels in an adequate time frame” to prevent the world from warming 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial temperatures.

Guterres said the COP28 conference also gives nations the chance to commit to more renewable energy projects and to improve energy efficiency of existing grids and technologies.

The U.N. chief also said he thinks that Sultan al-Jaber, the president of the upcoming climate talks and head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, has a “bigger responsibility” to encourage the fossil fuel industry to make more clean energy investments because of his ties to the sector.

“He needs to be able to explain to all those that are responsible in the fossil fuel industry, and especially to the oil and gas industry that is making obscene profits all over the world, that this is the moment to use those profits instead of doubling down on fossil fuels,” Guterres said.

Warming air and ocean temperatures are causing Antarctic ice to melt. The frozen continent plays a significant role in regulating Earth’s climate because it reflects sunlight away and drives major ocean currents.

For years, scientists and environmentalists have kept an eye on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet as an important indicator of global warming. A study published in Nature Climate Change last month said warming has increased to the point that the ice sheet will now experience “unavoidable” melting regardless of how much the world reduces emissions of planet-warming gases like carbon dioxide.

The study’s lead author, Kaitlin Naughten, estimated that melting ice in Antarctica’s most at-risk areas could raise global sea levels by about 1.8 meters (5.9 feet) over the next few centuries.

Another study published in Science Advances, also last month, reported that nearly 50 Antarctic ice shelves have shrunk by at least 30% since 1997 and 28 of those have lost more than half their ice in that short period of time.
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Japan detected the first case of highly pathogenic H5-type bird flu this season at a poultry farm in the south of the country, public broadcaster NHK reported Saturday.

The local government in Saga prefecture will cull about 40,000 birds on the farm, NHK said, citing agriculture ministry officials it did not name.

Ministry officials were not immediately available for comment outside of business hours.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will convene relevant Cabinet ministers to discuss measures to prevent spreading of the virus, NHK said.

The virus was detected as a result of genetic testing conducted after some poultry birds were found dead at the farm on Friday, the report said.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza has spread around the globe in recent years, leading to the culling of hundreds of millions of birds.

In Japan a record 17.7 million poultry birds were culled last season, prompting the authorities to stay on high alert.
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On the eve of international climate talks, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres visited globally important Antarctica, where ice that’s been frozen for millions of years is melting because of human-caused climate change, to send the message that “we absolutely need to act immediately.” 

“What happens in Antarctica doesn’t stay in Antarctica,” Guterres said. In addition to reflecting lots of sunlight away from the Earth, Antarctica regulates the planet’s climate because its ice and cold waters drive major ocean currents. When massive amounts of ice melt, it raises sea levels and changes things like salinity and the habitats of ocean animals. 

At the annual Conference of the Parties known as COP, nations are supposed to gather to make and strengthen commitments to addressing climate change, but so far these have not been nearly enough to slow the emissions causing the warming. 

Guterres is on a three-day official visit to the southern continent. Chilean President Gabriel Boric joined him for an official visit to Chile’s Eduardo Frei Air Force Base on King George Island. Scientists and members of the Chilean military gathered with Guterres aboard a ship where they viewed glaciers and sea birds, including penguins. 

Guterres described COP28, which begins next week in Dubai, as an opportunity for nations to “decide the phase-out of fossil fuels in an adequate time frame” to prevent the world from warming 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial temperatures. Scientists have considered that an important demarcation that could have avoided devastating climate change for millions of people. But such a phase-out has not found its way into the agreements that emerge from these conferences so far, and the influence of fossil fuel companies and countries has been strong. 

Guterres said the COP28 conference also gives nations the chance to commit to more renewable energy projects and improve the energy efficiency of existing electrical grids and technologies. 

Sultan al-Jaber, the head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., is president of this year’s talks, and the U.N. chief said his ties to the sector give him a “bigger responsibility” to encourage the fossil fuel industry to make more clean energy investments. 

“He needs to be able to explain to all those that are responsible in the fossil fuel industry, and especially to the oil and gas industry that is making obscene profits all over the world, that this is the moment to use those profits instead of doubling down on fossil fuels,” Guterres said. 

Pope Francis will also be the first pontiff to attend the U.N. climate conference, and Guterres said he was “very hopeful” that the pope’s presence would convey to political leaders that “it is a moral imperative to put climate action as an absolute priority and to do everything that is necessary to move from the suicidal trajectory that we are having today.”
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The World Health Organization said it has confirmed sexual transmission of mpox in the Democratic Republic of Congo for the first time as the country experiences its biggest outbreak, a worrying development that African scientists warn could make it more difficult to stop the disease.

In a statement issued late Thursday, the U.N. health agency said a resident of Belgium traveled to Congo in March and tested positive for mpox, or monkeypox, shortly afterward. The WHO said the individual “identified himself as a man who has sexual relations with other men” and that he had gone to several underground clubs for gay and bisexual men.

Among his sexual contacts, five later tested positive for mpox, the WHO said.

“This is the first definitive proof of sexual transmission of monkeypox in Africa,” said Oyewale Tomori, a Nigerian virologist who sits on several WHO advisory groups. “The idea that this kind of transmission could not be happening here has now been debunked.”

Mpox has been endemic in parts of central and west Africa for decades, where it mostly jumped into humans from infected rodents and caused limited outbreaks. Last year, epidemics triggered mainly by sex among gay and bisexual men in Europe hit more than 100 countries. The WHO declared the outbreak as a global emergency, and it has caused about 91,000 cases to date.

The WHO noted there were dozens of discrete clubs in Congo where men have sex with other men, including members who travel to other parts of Africa and Europe. The agency described the recent mpox outbreak as unusual and said it highlighted the risk the disease could spread widely among sexual networks.

The WHO added that the mpox outbreak this year in Congo, which has infected more than 12,500 people and killed about 580, also marked the first time the disease has been identified in the capital, Kinshasa, and in the conflict-ridden province of South Kivu. Those figures are roughly double the mpox toll in 2020, making it Congo’s biggest outbreak, the WHO said.

Virologist Tomori said that even those figures were likely an underestimate and had implications for the rest of Africa, given the continent’s often patchy disease surveillance.

“What’s happening in Congo is probably happening in other parts of Africa,” he said. “Sexual transmission of monkeypox is likely established here, but [gay] communities are hiding it because of the draconian [anti-LGBTQ+] laws in several countries.”

He warned that driving people at risk for the virus underground would make the disease harder to curb.

The mpox virus causes fever, chills, rash and lesions on the face or genitals. Most people recover within several weeks without requiring hospitalization.

The WHO said the risk of mpox spreading to other countries in Africa and globally “appears to be significant,” adding that there could be “potentially more severe consequences” than the worldwide epidemic last year.

Tomori lamented that while the mpox outbreaks in Europe and North America prompted mass immunization campaigns among affected populations, no such plans were being proposed for Africa.

“Despite the thousands of cases in Congo, no vaccines have arrived,” he said. Even after mpox epidemics subsided in the West, few shots or treatments were made available for Africa.

“We have been saying for years in Africa that monkeypox is a problem,” he said. “Now that sexual transmission has been confirmed here, this should be a signal to everyone to take it much more seriously.”
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South Africa, Colombia and other countries that lost out in the global race for coronavirus vaccines are taking a more combative approach toward drugmakers and pushing back on policies that deny cheap treatment to millions of people with tuberculosis and HIV.

Experts see it as a shift in how such countries deal with pharmaceutical behemoths and say it could trigger more efforts to make lifesaving medicines more widely available.

In the COVID-19 pandemic, rich countries bought most of the world’s vaccines early, leaving few shots for poor countries and creating a disparity the World Health Organization called “a catastrophic moral failure.”

Now, poorer countries are trying to become more self-reliant “because they’ve realized after COVID they can’t count on anyone else,” said Brook Baker, who studies treatment-access issues at Northeastern University.

One of the targets is a drug, bedaquiline, that is used for treating people with drug-resistant versions of tuberculosis. The pills are especially important for South Africa, where TB killed more than 50,000 people in 2021, making it the country’s leading cause of death.

In recent months, activists have protested efforts by Johnson & Johnson to protect its patent on the drug. In March, TB patients petitioned the Indian government, calling for cheaper generics; the government ultimately agreed Johnson & Johnson’s patent could be broken. Belarus and Ukraine then wrote to the company, also asking it to drop its patents, but with little response.

In July, Johnson & Johnson’s patent on the drug expired in South Africa, but the company had it extended until 2027, enraging activists who accused it of profiteering.

The South African government then began investigating the company’s pricing policies.

It had been paying about 5,400 rand ($282) per treatment course, more than twice as much as poor countries that got the drug via a global effort called the Stop TB partnership.

In September, about a week after South Africa’s probe began, Johnson & Johnson announced that it would drop its patent in more than 130 countries, allowing generic-makers to copy the drug.

“This addresses any misconception that access to our medicines is limited,” the company said.

Christophe Perrin, a tuberculosis expert at Doctors Without Borders, called Johnson & Johnson’s reversal “a big surprise” because aggressive patent protection was typically a “cornerstone” of pharmaceutical companies’ strategy.

Meanwhile, in Colombia, the government declared last month that it would issue a compulsory license for the HIV drug dolutegravir without permission from the drug’s patent-holder, Viiv Health care. The decision came after more than 120 groups asked the Colombian government to expand access to the World Health Organization-recommended drug.

“This is Colombia taking the reins after the extreme inequity of COVID and challenging a major pharmaceutical to ensure affordable AIDS treatment for its people,” said Peter Maybarduk of the Washington advocacy group Public Citizen. He noted that Brazilian activists are pushing their government to make a similar move.

Still, some experts said much more needs to change before poorer countries can produce their own medicines and vaccines.

When the coronavirus pandemic hit, Africa produced fewer than 1% of all vaccines made globally but used more than half of the world’s supply, according to Petro Terblanche, managing director of Afrigen Biologics. The company is part of a WHO-backed effort to produce a COVID vaccine using the same mRNA technology as those made by Pfizer and Moderna.

Terblanche estimated about 14 million people died of AIDS in Africa from the late 1990s into the 2000s, when countries couldn’t get the necessary medicines.

Back then, President Nelson Mandela’s government in South Africa eventually suspended patents to allow wider access to AIDS drugs. That prompted more than 30 drugmakers to take it to court in 1998, in a case dubbed “Mandela vs. Big Pharma.”

Doctors Without Borders described the episode as “a public relations disaster” for the drug companies, which dropped the lawsuit in 2001.

Terblanche said that Africa’s experience during the HIV epidemic has proven instructive.

“It’s not acceptable for a listed company to hold intellectual property that stands in the way of saving lives and, so, we will see more countries fighting back,” she said.

Challenging pharmaceutical companies is just one piece to ensuring Africa has equal access to treatments and vaccines, Terblanche said. More-robust health systems are critical.

“If we can’t get [vaccines and medicines] to the people who need them, they aren’t useful,” she said.

Yet some experts pointed out that South Africa’s own intellectual property laws still haven’t been changed sufficiently and make it too easy for pharmaceutical companies to acquire patents and extend their monopolies.

While many other developing countries allow legal challenges to a patent or a patent extension, South Africa has no clear law that allows it to do that, said Lynette Keneilwe Mabote-Eyde, a health care activist who consults for the nonprofit Treatment Action Group.

The South African department of health didn’t respond to a request for comment regarding drug procurement and patents.

In its annual report on tuberculosis released earlier this month, the World Health Organization said there were more than 10 million people sickened by the disease last year and 1.3 million deaths. After COVID-19, tuberculosis is the world’s deadliest infectious disease, and it is now the top killer of people with HIV.
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Chinese officials say they did not detect any “unusual or novel diseases” in the country, the World Health Organization said Thursday, following an official request by the U.N. health agency for information about a potentially worrying spike in respiratory illnesses and clusters of pneumonia in children. 

WHO cited unspecified media reports and a global infectious-disease monitoring service as reporting clusters of undiagnosed pneumonia in children in northern China and formally requested more details from China earlier this week. 

Outside scientists said the situation warranted close monitoring, but they were not convinced that the recent spike in respiratory illnesses in China signaled the start of a new global outbreak. 

The emergence of new flu strains or other viruses capable of triggering pandemics typically starts with undiagnosed clusters of respiratory illness. Both SARS and COVID-19 were first reported as unusual types of pneumonia. 

WHO noted that authorities at China’s National Health Commission on November 13 reported an increase in respiratory diseases, which they said was the result of the lifting of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions. Other countries also saw a jump in respiratory diseases such as respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, when pandemic restrictions ended. 

WHO said that about a week later, media reported clusters of undiagnosed pneumonia in children in northern China. 

The U.N. agency said it held a teleconference with Chinese health officials on Thursday, during which the data it requested were provided. Those showed an increase in hospital admissions of children due to diseases including bacterial infection, RSV, influenza and common cold viruses since October. 

“No changes in the disease presentation were reported by the Chinese health authorities,” WHO said. It added that Chinese officials said the spike in patients had not overloaded the country’s hospitals. 

New disease doubted

Dr. Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at Britain’s University of East Anglia, doubted the wave of infections was sparked by a new disease. 

“If it was [a new disease], I would expect to see many more infections in adults,” he said in a statement. “The few infections reported in adults suggest existing immunity from a prior exposure.” 

Francois Balloux of University College London said China was probably experiencing a significant wave of childhood infections since this was the first winter since lockdown restrictions were lifted, which likely reduced children’s immunity to common bugs. 

WHO said that northern China has reported a jump in influenzalike illnesses since mid-October compared with the previous three years. It is rare for the U.N. health agency to publicly ask for more detailed information from countries, as such requests are typically made internally. WHO said it requested further data from China via an international legal mechanism. 

According to internal accounts in China, the outbreaks have swamped some hospitals in northern China, including in Beijing, and health authorities have asked the public to take children with less severe symptoms to clinics and other facilities. 

The average number of patients in the internal medicine department at Beijing Children’s Hospital topped 7,000 per day, exceeding the hospital’s capacity, state-owned China National Radio said in an online article earlier this week. 

China’s National Health Commission, in a written Q&A posted online by the official Xinhua News Agency, suggested Thursday that children with mild symptoms “first visit primary health care institutions or pediatrics departments of general hospitals” because large hospitals are crowded and have long waiting times. 

WHO said that there was too little information at the moment to properly assess the risk of these reported cases of respiratory illness in children. The agency has previously been stymied by a lack of cooperation from countries when new viruses have emerged, particularly in China. 

After SARS broke out in southern China in 2002, Beijing officials told doctors to hide patients, with some being driven around in ambulances while WHO scientists were visiting the country. That prompted WHO to threaten to close its office in China. 

Nearly two decades later, China stalled on sharing critical details about the coronavirus with the U.N. health agency after the new virus emerged in late 2019. WHO publicly applauded China’s commitment to stopping the virus — weeks before it started causing explosive epidemics worldwide. 

“While WHO seeks this additional information, we recommend that people in China follow measures to reduce the risk of respiratory illness,” the agency said, advising people to get vaccinated, isolate if they are feeling ill, wear masks if necessary and get medical care as needed. 
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Authorities in several West African countries are trying to manage their huge diphtheria outbreaks, including in Nigeria where a top health official said Thursday that millions are being vaccinated to cover wide gaps in immunity against the disease.

At least 573 people out of the 11,640 diagnosed with the disease in Nigeria have died since the current outbreak started in December 2022, though officials estimate the toll — now on the decline because of treatment efforts — could be much higher across states unable to detect many cases.

In Niger, 37 people had died out of the 865 cases as of October, while Guinea has reported 58 deaths out of 497 since its outbreak started in June.

“As far as the history that I am aware of, this is the largest outbreak that we have had,” Ifedayo Adetifa, head of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, told The Associated Press.

The highly contagious bacterial infection has been reported in 20 of Nigeria’s 36 states so far.

A major driver of the high rate of infection in the region has been a historically wide vaccination gap, the French medical organization Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, said in a statement on Tuesday.

In Nigeria, only 42% of children under 15 years old are fully protected from diphtheria, according to a government survey, while Guinea has a 47% immunization rate — both far below the 80-85% rate recommended by the World Health Organization to maintain community protection.

The fate of the affected countries is worsened by the global shortages of the diphtheria vaccine as demand has increased to respond to outbreaks, MSF said.

“We’re not seeing vaccination happen, not at the scale that is needed,” said Dr. Dagemlidet Tesfaye Worku, emergency medical program manager for MSF in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. “What is needed is a truly massive scale-up of vaccination, as soon as possible.”

The Nigerian government is ramping up vaccination for targeted populations while assisting states to boost their capacity to detect and manage cases, said Adetifa, the Nigeria CDC head.

But several states continue to struggle, including Kano, which accounts for more than 75% of cases in Nigeria but has only two diphtheria treatment centers, according to Abubakar Labaran Yusuf, the state’s top health official.

“Once people have to travel or move significant distances to access treatment, that becomes a challenge,” Adetifa said.
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A 14-year-old Ethiopian-born American in the U.S. state of Virginia has won the 3M Young Scientist Challenge, an annual science competition for U.S. students in grades five through eight. VOA’s Eden Geremew recently spoke with the winner in Fairfax County, Virginia, in this report narrated by Salem Solomon. Camera: Karina Choudhury
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For most of her life, Claudia Stearns dreaded Thanksgiving. As a person who struggled with obesity since childhood, Stearns hated the annual turmoil of obsessing about what she ate — and the guilt of overindulging on a holiday built around food. 

Now, after losing nearly 100 pounds using medications including Wegovy, a powerful new anti-obesity drug, Stearns says the “food noise” in her head has gone very, very quiet. 

“Last year, it felt so lovely to just be able to enjoy my meal, to focus on being with friends and family, to focus on the joy of the day,” says Stearns, 65, of Somerville, Massachusetts. “That was a whole new experience.” 

As millions of Americans struggling with obesity gain access to a new generation of weight-loss drugs, Stearns’ experience is becoming more common — and more noticeable at the times of year when cooking, eating and a sense of abundance can define and heighten gatherings of loved ones and friends. Medical experts and consumers say the drugs are shifting not only what users eat, but also the way they view food.

For some, it means greater mental control over their meals. Others say it saps the enjoyment from social situations, including traditionally food-centric holidays like Thanksgiving, Passover and Christmas.

“It’s something that really changes a lot of things in their life,” says Dr. Daniel Bessesen, chief of endocrinology at Denver Health, who treats patients with obesity. “They go from food being a central focus to it’s just not.”

Undermining the festivities?

The new obesity drugs, originally designed to treat diabetes, include semaglutide, used in Ozempic and Wegovy, and tirzepatide, used in Mounjaro and recently approved as Zepbound. Now aimed at weight loss, too, the drugs delivered as weekly injections work far differently than any diet. They mimic powerful hormones that kick in after people eat to regulate appetite and the feeling of fullness communicated between the gut and the brain. Users can lose as much as 15% to 25% of their body weight, studies show. 

“That’s how it works — it reduces the rewarding aspects of food,” explains Dr. Michael Schwartz, an expert in metabolism, diabetes and obesity at the University of Washington in Seattle. 

For Stearns, who started treatment in 2020, using the weight-loss medications means she can take a few bites of her favorite Thanksgiving pies — and then stop. “I would not feel full,” she says, “but I would feel satisfied.” 

Yet such a shift can have broader implications, both religious and cultural, because it alters the experience of festive and religious holidays that are often built around interactions with food — and lots of it.

“I’m Italian. For us, it’s like going to church, going to a table,” says Joe Sapone, 64, a retiree from Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, who lost about 100 pounds with dieting and Mounjaro. He no longer needs what he called “the food orgy” of a holiday, but he acknowledges it was an adjustment.

“Part of succeeding at this is disconnecting a good time with what you eat,” he says.

Changes in enjoyment

Many users welcome what they say is greater control over what they eat, even during the emotionally charged holiday season. 

“I may be more selective of the items I put on my plate,” says Tara Rothenhoefer, 48, of Trinity, Florida. She lost more than 200 pounds after joining a clinical trial testing Mounjaro for weight loss in 2020. “I don’t care about the bread as much. I still eat what I enjoy.” 

But others on the drugs lose their appetites entirely or suffer side effects — nausea, vomiting, diarrhea — that undermine the pleasure of any food. 

“I’ve had a handful of patients over the years who were really miserable because they didn’t enjoy food in the same way,” says Dr. Katherine Saunders, an obesity expert at Weill Cornell Medicine and co-founder of Intellihealth, a clinical and software company that focuses on obesity treatment. 

But, she added, most people who have turned to weight-loss medications have spent years struggling with the physical and mental burdens of chronic obesity and are relieved to discover a decreased desire for food — and grateful to shed pounds. 

When people stop taking the drugs, their appetites return and they regain weight, often faster than they lost it, studies show. One early analysis found that two-thirds of patients who started taking weight-loss drugs were no longer using them a year later. 

Part of that may be due to the high cost and ongoing supply shortages. But the larger question of what it means to alter a basic human drive like appetite needs to be considered as well, says Dr. Jens Juul Holst of the University of Copenhagen. He is one of the researchers who first identified the gut hormone GLP-1, or glucagon-like peptide 1, which eventually led to the new class of obesity drugs. 

Speaking at an international diabetes conference this fall, Holst offered a philosophical critique of the new medications’ real-world impact. 

“Why is it that you’ve lost weight? That’s because you’ve lost your appetite. That’s because you’ve lost the pleasure of eating and the reward of having a beautiful meal,” Holst told his colleagues. “And how long can you stand that? That is the real, real question.” 
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Millions of Indians celebrated Diwali on Sunday with a new Guinness World Record number of bright earthen oil lamps as concerns about air pollution soared in the South Asian country.

Across the country, dazzling multicolored lights decked homes and streets as devotees celebrated the annual Hindu festival of light symbolizing the victory of light over darkness.

But the spectacular and much-awaited massive lighting of the oil lamps took place — as usual —at Saryu River, in Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh state, the birthplace of their most revered deity, the god Ram.

At dusk on Saturday, devotees lit over 2.22 million lamps and kept them burning for 45 minutes as Hindu religious hymns filled the air at the banks of the river, setting a new world Record. Last year, over 1.5 million earthen lamps were lit.

After counting the lamps, Guinness Book of World Records representatives presented a record certificate to the state’s top elected official Yogi Adityanath.

Over 24,000 volunteers, mostly college students, helped prepare for the new record, said Pratibha Goyal, vice chancellor of Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Avadh University, in Ayodhya.

Diwali, a national holiday across India, is celebrated by socializing and exchanging gifts with family and friends. Many light earthen oil lamps or candles, and fireworks are set off as part of the celebrations. In the evening, a special prayer is dedicated to the Hindu goddess Lakshmi, who is believed to bring luck and prosperity.

Over the weekend, authorities ran extra trains to accommodate the huge numbers trying to reach their hometowns to join family celebrations. The festival came as worries about air quality in India rose. A “hazardous” 400-500 level was recorded on the air quality index last week, more than 10 times the global safety threshold, which can cause acute and chronic bronchitis and asthma attacks.

But on Saturday, unexpected rain and a strong wind improved the levels to 220, according to the government-run Central Pollution Control Board.

Air pollution levels are expected to soar again after the celebrations end Sunday night because of the fireworks used.

Last week, officials in New Delhi shut down primary schools and banned polluting vehicles and construction work in an attempt to reduce the worst haze and smog of the season, which has posed respiratory problems for people and enveloped monuments and high-rise buildings in and around India’s capital.

Authorities deployed water sprinklers and anti-smog guns to control the haze and many people used masks to escape the air pollution.

New Delhi tops the list almost every year among the many Indian cities with poor air quality, particularly in the winter, when the burning of crop residues in neighboring states coincides with cooler temperatures that trap deadly smoke.

Some Indian states have banned the sale of fireworks and imposed other restrictions to stem the pollution. Authorities have also urged residents to light “green crackers” that emit less pollutants than normal firecrackers. But similar bans have often been disregarded in the past.

The Diwali celebrations this year were marked as authorities prepared to inaugurate in January an under-construction and long-awaited temple of the Hindu god Ram at the site of a demolished 16th-century Babri mosque in Ayodhya city in Uttar Pradesh state.

The Babri Masjid mosque was destroyed by a Hindu mob with pickaxes and crowbars in December 1992, sparking massive Hindu-Muslim violence that left some 2,000 people dead, most of them Muslims. The Supreme Court’s verdict in 2019 allowed a temple to be built in place of the demolished mosque. 
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The human species has topped 8 billion, with longer lifespans offsetting fewer births, but world population growth continues a long-term trend of slowing down, the U.S. Census Bureau said Thursday.

The bureau estimates the global population exceeded the threshold Sept. 26, a precise date the agency said to take with a grain of salt.

The United Nations estimated the number was passed 10 months earlier, having declared Nov. 22, 2022, the “Day of 8 Billion,” the Census Bureau pointed out in a statement.

The discrepancy is due to countries counting people differently — or not at all. Many lack systems to record births and deaths. Some of the most populous countries, such as India and Nigeria, haven’t conducted censuses in over a decade, according to the bureau.

While world population growth remains brisk, growing from 6 billion to 8 billion since the turn of the millennium, the rate has slowed since doubling between 1960 and 2000.

People living to older ages account for much of the recent increase. The global median age, now 32, has been rising in a trend expected to continue toward 39 in 2060.

Countries such as Canada have been aging with declining older-age mortality, while countries such as Nigeria have seen dramatic declines in deaths of children under 5.

Fertility rates, or the rate of births per woman of childbearing age, are meanwhile declining, falling below replacement level in much of the world and contributing to a more than 50-year trend, on average, of slimmer increases in population growth.

The minimum number of such births necessary to replace both the father and mother for neutral world population is 2.1, demographers say. Almost three-quarters of people now live in countries with fertility rates around or below that level.

Countries with fertility rates around replacement level include India, Tunisia and Argentina.

About 15% of people live in places with fertility rates below replacement level. Countries with low fertility rates include Brazil, Mexico, the U.S. and Sweden, while those with very low fertility rates include China, South Korea and Spain.

Israel, Ethiopia and Papua New Guinea rank among countries with higher-than-replacement fertility rates of up to 5. Such countries have almost one-quarter of the world’s population.

Only about 4% of the world’s population lives in countries with fertility rates above 5. All are in Africa.

Global fertility rates are projected to decline at least through 2060, with no country projected to have a rate higher than 4 by then, according to the bureau.
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Residents of a fishing town in southwestern Iceland left their homes Saturday after increasing concern about a potential volcanic eruption caused civil defense authorities to declare a state of emergency in the region.

Police decided to evacuate Grindavik after recent seismic activity in the area moved south toward the town and monitoring indicated that a corridor of magma, or semi-molten rock, now extends under the community, Iceland’s Meteorological Office said. The town of 3,400 is on the Reykjanes Peninsula, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) southwest of the capital, Reykjavik.

“At this stage, it is not possible to determine exactly whether and where magma might reach the surface,” the Meteorological Office said.

Authorities also raised their aviation alert to orange, indicating an increased risk of a volcanic eruption. Volcanic eruptions pose a serious hazard to aviation because they can spew highly abrasive ash high into the atmosphere, where it can cause jet engines to fail, damage flight control systems and reduce visibility.

A major eruption in Iceland in 2010 caused widespread disruption to air travel between Europe and North America, costing airlines an estimated $3 billion as they canceled more than 100,000 flights.

The evacuation comes after the region was shaken by hundreds of small earthquakes every day for more than two weeks as scientists monitor a buildup of magma some 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) underground.

Concern about a possible eruption increased in the early hours Thursday when a magnitude 4.8 earthquake hit the area, forcing the internationally known Blue Lagoon geothermal resort to close temporarily.

The seismic activity started in an area north of Grindavik where there is a network of 2,000-year-old craters, geology professor Pall Einarrson, told Iceland’s RUV. The magma corridor is about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) long and spreading, he said.

“The biggest earthquakes originated there, under this old series of craters, but since then it [the magma corridor] has been getting longer, went under the urban area in Grindavík and is heading even further and towards the sea,” he said. 
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Hundreds of environmental activists marched in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, Saturday demanding drastic curbs on plastic production, ahead of a meeting to negotiate a global plastics treaty.

Representatives of more than 170 nations will meet in Nairobi Monday to negotiate what concrete measures should be included in a binding worldwide treaty to end plastic pollution.

Marchers waved placards reading “Plastic crisis = climate crisis” and “End multigenerational toxic exposure.”

They chanted “let polluters pay the price” as they walked slowly behind a ceremonial band from central Nairobi to a park in the west of the capital.

Nations agreed last year to finalize by 2024 a world-first U.N. treaty to address the scourge of plastics found everywhere from mountain tops to ocean depths and within human blood and breast milk.

Negotiators have met twice already but Nairobi is the first opportunity to debate a draft treaty published in September that outlines the many pathways to tackling the plastic problem.

The Nov. 13-19 meeting is the third of five sessions in a fast-tracked process aiming to conclude negotiations next year so the treaty can be adopted by mid-2025.

At the last talks in Paris, campaigners accused large plastic-producing nations of deliberately stalling after two days were lost debating procedural points.

This time around, the sessions have been extended by two days but there are still concerns a weaker treaty could emerge if time for detailed discussion is swallowed up going in circles.

Global plastic production has more than doubled since the start of the century to reach 460 million tons and it could triple by 2060 if nothing is done. Only nine percent is currently recycled.

Microplastics have been found everywhere from clouds to the deepest sea trenches, as well as throughout the human body.

The effects of plastics on human health remain poorly understood but there is growing concern among scientists.

Plastic also contributes to global warming, accounting for 3.4% of global emissions in 2019, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
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The proportion of U.S. kindergartners exempted from school vaccination requirements has hit its highest level ever, 3%, U.S. health officials said Thursday.

More parents are questioning routine childhood vaccinations that they used to automatically accept, an effect of the political schism that emerged during the pandemic around COVID-19 vaccines, experts say.

Even though more kids were given exemptions, the national vaccination rate held steady: 93% of kindergartners got their required shots for the 2022-23 school year, the same as the year before, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report Thursday. The rate was 95% in the years before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The bad news is that it’s gone down since the pandemic and still hasn’t rebounded,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, a University of Colorado pediatric infectious diseases specialist. “The good news is that the vast majority of parents are still vaccinating their kids according to the recommended schedule.”

All U.S. states and territories require that children attending child care centers and schools be vaccinated against a number of diseases, including, measles, mumps, polio, tetanus, whooping cough and chickenpox.

All states allow exemptions for children with medical conditions that prevents them from receiving certain vaccines. And most also permit exemptions for religious or other nonmedical reasons.

In the last decade, the percentage of kindergartners with medical exemptions has held steady, at about 0.2%. But the percentage with nonmedical exemptions has inched up, lifting the overall exemption rate from 1.6% in the 2011-12 school year to 3% last year.

Last year, more than 115,000 kindergartners were exempt from at least one vaccine, the CDC estimated.

The rates vary across the country.

Ten states — all in the West or Midwest — reported that more than 5% of kindergartners were exempted from at least one kind of required vaccine. Idaho had the highest percentage, with 12% of kindergartners receiving at least one exemption. In contrast, 0.1% had exemptions in New York.

The rates can be influenced by state laws or policies can make it harder or easier to obtain exemptions, and by local attitudes among families and doctors about the need to get children vaccinated.

“Sometimes these jumps in exemptions can be very local, and it may not reflect a whole state,” said O’Leary, who chairs an American Academy of Pediatrics committee on infectious diseases.

Hawaii saw the largest jump, with the exemption rate rising to 6.4%, nearly double the year before.

Officials there said it’s not due to any law or policy change. Rather, “we have observed that there has been misinformation/disinformation impacting people’s decision to vaccinate or not via social media platforms,” officials at the state’s health department said in a statement.

Connecticut and Maine saw significant declines, which CDC officials attributed to recent policy changes that made it harder to get exemptions.

Health officials say attaining 95% vaccination coverage is important to prevent outbreaks of preventable diseases, especially of measles, which is extremely contagious.

The U.S. has seen measles outbreaks begin when travelers infected elsewhere came to communities with low vaccination rates. That happened in 2019 when about 1,300 measles cases were reported — the most in the U.S. in nearly 30 years. Most of the cases were in were in Orthodox Jewish communities with low vaccination rates.

One apparent paradox in the report: The national vaccination rate held steady even as exemptions increased. How could that be?

CDC officials say it’s because there are actually three groups of children in the vaccination statistics. One is those who get all the shots. A second is those who get exemptions. The third are children who didn’t seek exemptions but also didn’t get all their shots and paperwork completed at the time the data was collected.

“Last year, those kids in that third group probably decreased,” offsetting the increase in the exemption group, the CDC’s Shannon Stokley said.
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Global cases of tuberculosis continued to rise last year, as disruption to health services caused by the COVID-19 pandemic set back efforts to fight the disease, according to the latest annual report from the World Health Organization. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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