Blood banks in Cameroon are usually close to empty due to widely held taboos against blood donation. Officials in the central African country are trying to convince people to move past those beliefs amid an increased demand for blood and blood products in hospitals and on the front lines where soldiers are fighting separatists and … continue reading -> “Cameroon Officials Campaign Against Taboos to Encourage People to Donate Blood”

In the United States, women’s access to legal abortion depends on where they live. The Western U.S. state of Idaho has some of the toughest laws against abortion, and that may be having an impact on women who are trying to have babies. Deborah Bloom has our story.   …

Singapore was the first country in the world to greenlight the sale of lab-grown meat, but even after nearly 2½ years, the fledgling industry is still struggling with supply issues and hurdles such as public acceptance, experts say. Lab-grown or cultivated meat is meat grown in a lab by extracting cells from animals and growing … continue reading -> “Lab-Grown Meat Industry Makes Progress but Faces Supply, Public Acceptance Hurdles”

David Smith, a retired print technician from the north of England, was pursuing his hobby of looking for interesting shapes when he stumbled onto one unlike any other in November.   When Smith shared his shape with the world in March, excited fans printed it onto T-shirts, sewed it into quilts, crafted cookie cutters or … continue reading -> “UK Hobbyist Stuns Math World With ‘Amazing’ New Shapes”

Huge strides in life expectancy worldwide are bringing new challenges that come with increased longevity, the Dutch health minister told VOA this week. “If you look at it from a global perspective, we’ve seen that over the past 25 years, on average we added more than five years of global life expectancy,” Ernst Kuipers, Dutch … continue reading -> “Dutch Minister Discusses Health Care in an Age of Longevity”

El Nino has officially returned and is likely to yield extreme weather later this year, from tropical cyclones spinning toward vulnerable Pacific islands to heavy rainfall in South America to drought in Australia.  After three years of the La Nina climate pattern, which often lowers global temperatures slightly, the hotter El Nino is back in … continue reading -> “El Nino Climate Pattern Now Underway, NOAA Reports”

Schools across the U.S. East Coast canceled outdoor activities, airline traffic slowed, and millions of Americans were urged to stay indoors Wednesday as smoke from Canadian wildfires drifted south, blanketing cities in thick, yellow haze. The U.S. National Weather Service issued air quality alerts for virtually the entire Atlantic seaboard. Health officials from Vermont to … continue reading -> “U.S. East Coast Blanketed in Smoke From Canadian Wildfires”

Most transplanted hearts are from donors who are brain dead, but new research shows a different approach can be just as successful and boost the number of available organs. It’s called donation after circulatory death, a method long used to recover kidneys and other organs but not more fragile hearts. Duke Health researchers said Wednesday … continue reading -> “Newer Transplant Method Could Boost Number of Donor Hearts By 30%”

Kilauea, one of the most active volcanoes in the world, began erupting Wednesday after a three-month pause, displaying spectacular fountains of mesmerizing, glowing lava that’s a safe distance from people and structures in a national park on the Big Island. The U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said in a statement that a glow was … continue reading -> “Hawaii’s Kilauea Erupting Again After 3-Month Pause”

As communities in countries rich and poor face soaring costs from extreme weather and rising seas, governments are grappling with how to set up a new fund to tackle “loss and damage” driven by global warming. The topic was for years controversial at U.N. climate talks, as wealthy nations rejected demands for “compensation” for the … continue reading -> “Explainer: Will COP28 Deliver a New Fund for Climate Loss and Damage?”

Moving around metropolitan areas can present challenges for individuals who are obese or have height limitations, as many public spaces are not designed to accommodate their needs. However, a new law adds weight and height to the list of characteristics that are protected from discrimination in New York City. Aron Ranen has the story. …

China, where COVID-19 was first identified in humans more than three years ago, expects its current wave of infection to hit as many as 65 million cases per week by late June, according to official accounts of models presented at a medical conference. While that may be an exhausting number to a post-pandemic world wearied … continue reading -> “China’s Latest COVID Wave May Hit 65 Million a Week With Mild Symptoms”

New advances in the fight against a range of cancers have been revealed at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), which wraps up in Chicago on Tuesday. Here are some of the announcements that have most excited experts. Lung cancer One of the trial results that caused a stir in … continue reading -> “‘Ray of Hope’: New Advances in Fighting Range of Cancers”

Global leaders in the battle against global warming convened in Bonn, Germany, on Monday for the start of the final phase of a two-year long assessment of the progress being made to limit rising temperatures. The annual Bonn Climate Change Conference is part of the “global stocktake” — a process by which countries around the … continue reading -> “New Global Climate Assessment Aims to Gauge Progress”