The World Health Organization is trying to ease concerns about spreading Zika as a result of this summer's Olympics in Rio de Janiero.

"Based on current assessment, cancelling or changing the location of the 2016 Olympics will not significantly alter the international spread of Zika virus," a statement released Saturday reads.

This comes a day after more than 150 scientists released an open letter to the head of WHO calling for the games to be moved or postponed, citing new research. "We make this call despite the widespread fatalism that the Rio 2016 Games are inevitable or 'too big to fail,'" the letter says. Here's more:

"An unnecessary risk is posed when 500,000 foreign tourists from all countries attend the Games, potentially acquire the strain, and return home to places where it can become endemic. Should that happen to poor, as-yet unaffected places (e.g., most of South Asia and Africa) the suffering can be great. It is unethical to run the risk, just for Games that could proceed anyway, if postponed and/or moved."

It called on WHO to conduct a new assessment of its recommendations regarding Zika and the games, citing concerns about the medical consequences of the strain of the virus found in Brazil.

The Olympics are set to start in just 69 days and as The Guardian noted, the Olympic torch is already touring Brazil on its way to the opening ceremonies.

"The fire is already burning, but that is not a rationale not to do anything about the Olympics," said Amir Attaran, a University of Ottawa professor and one of the letter's four co-authors, told The Guardian. "It is not the time now to throw more gasoline on to the fire."

Attaran recently published a commentary for the Harvard Public Health Review and spoke with All Things Considered about his controversial position. "[T]he odds are extremely high that somebody will take the disease elsewhere and seed a new outbreak," he said.

As the WHO states, "based on the current assessment of Zika virus circulating in almost 60 countries globally and 39 countries in the Americas, there is no public health justification for postponing or cancelling the games." It advises people coming for the games to follow public health advice, like guarding against mosquito bites and practicing safe sex.

The new letter from the scientists "will cause a fresh headache for Brazilian government officials and Olympic organisers, who have repeatedly insisted the Games can go ahead safely as long as athletes and visitors smother themselves in insect repellent to minimise the risks from the mosquito-borne disease," as The Guardian reports.

Brazil's president is facing impeachment proceedings and the country is in the middle of an economic recession.

According to Reuters, the International Olympic Committee says it was not consulted on the WHO's response. The wire service adds that the IOC "has repeatedly said the virus would not pose a threat to the Games."

http://www.npr.org/

WHO Member States today agreed to one of the most profound transformations in the Organization's history, establishing a new Health Emergencies Programme. The programme adds operational capabilities for outbreaks and humanitarian emergencies to complement its traditional technical and normative roles.

The new programme is designed to deliver rapid, predictable, and comprehensive support to countries and communities as they prepare for, face or recover from emergencies caused by any type of hazard to human health, whether disease outbreaks, natural or man-made disasters or conflicts.

WHO will provide leadership within the context of the International Health Regulations and health, in relation to the broader humanitarian and disaster-management system. As health cluster lead, it will draw on the respective strengths and expertise of a wide range of partners and Member States.

In order to fulfil these new responsibilities, delegates agreed a budget of US$ 494 million for the Programme for 2016−2017. This is an increase of US$160 million to the existing Programme Budget for WHO's work in emergencies.

Delegates welcomed the progress WHO has made in developing the new Health Emergencies Programme, noting the new implementation plan and timeline, and the establishment of an Independent Oversight and Advisory Committee for the new programme.

They encouraged the ongoing collaboration with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs to align the management of disease outbreaks and other biological emergencies with the mechanisms and capacities of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee.

They requested the WHO Director-General to report to the Seventieth World Health Assembly on progress made in establishing and operationalizing the programme.

http://www.who.int/

Health Minister Nila F Moeloek urged private hospitals to improve the quality and competence of their human resources to compete with other countries in the implementation of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) provisions.

"It is a good moment, private hospitals are quite large, so we remind them to improve the quality and competence of their human resources," Nila F Moeloek said after opening a seminar here Wednesday.

Private hospitals must be willing to participate in the National Health Insurance (JKN) program, the minister remarked.

"We have evaluated the program, and the medical expenses and others are not different. We understand that the operational costs of a private hospital are much greater than that of a state hospital," she stated.

Therefore, the Ministry of Health, The Healthcare and Social Security Agency (BPJS Kesehatan), and private hospitals, have agreed that there are differences in rates compared to government hospitals.

"The difference is around five percent. We will continue to evaluate it," the minister remarked.

There were some constraints on the implementation of JKN program in private hospitals ranging from differences in the services and the low rates of the INA-CBG system, Chairman of the Indonesian Association of Private Hospitals (ARSSI) Susi Setiawati said, meanwhile.

The INA-CBG (Indonesia Case-Based Group) system, issued by the health ministry, is a rate mechanism under which the payment system of the current Social Security Management Agency (BPJS) program is based.

"Now, there are 57 percent of private hospitals that participate in JKN program," she said.

The number of hospitals in the country reached 2,600, of which 1,600 are privately run.

In addition to asking the difference in rates between private and public hospitals, the ARSSI wanted to directly procure the drug.

Private hospitals are having trouble accessing the e-catalog. As a result, they prescribe non-generic medicines.

"Based on the regulations, a private hospital should prescribe low-cost generic drugs to patients," Susi stated.

Susi hoped that the government would look into the demands of private hospitals.(*)

http://www.antaranews.com/

Herbal remedies are a "global health hazard" - and could be putting millions at risk of cancer and other diseases, suggests new research.

They have been used for thousands of years making many people believe they are safe but long-term use is no guarantee, according to the study.

Almost all carcinogens and many toxins require a long period of time before symptoms appear. This makes it very difficult for a layman or a professional to identify a particular compound as the cause of an illness when it was taken months or years earlier.

Prof Donald Marcus and Prof Arthur Grollman looked at the banned substance Aristolochic acid from Aristolochia plants and still found in some Chinese herbal remedies.

Sold illegally in the UK and US, it has been blamed for the high rate of urinary tract cancers in Taiwan and is also known to trigger kidney failure.

The researchers said in Taiwan, according to the national prescription database, between 1997 and 2003, eight million people were exposed to herbals containing Aristolochia.

Studies of patients with renal failure and cancer in Taiwan and China show that tens of millions of people in those countries are at risk of cancer and kidney failure.

In genetically susceptible people consuming Aristolochia can lead to mutations in a tumour suppressor - leading to kidney cancer.

Additional studies have shown this process could also lead to the development of cancer in the liver and the bladder.

Prof Marcus, of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, and Prof Grollman, of Stony Brook University in New York, said other herbs and traditional medicines are responsible for severe adverse events in Africa and Asia - but epidemiological data is lacking.

They said Aristolochia has been used as a herbal remedy for over two thousand years.

But "the intrinsic toxicities were not recognized, owing, in large part, to the latency period between exposure and the onset of symptomatic disease, and, in part, to genetic determinants that confer susceptibility to only approximately five per cent of those exposed to this herb."

Prof Marcus said: "The history of Aristolachia indicates other herbs that have been used for a long time may also have toxic and/or carcinogenic compounds.

"It's prudent to assume many herbs may contain toxic or carcinogenic substances that can cause subsequent health problems for humans."

They disagree with the World Health Organisation's endorsement of the use of traditional herbal remedies on the premise traditional medicine is of proven quality, without mentioning the lack of scientific evidence supporting the efficacy of herbal remedies or their demonstrated hazards, as in the case of Aristolochia.

They emphasise their primary concern is "the prevention of toxicities associated with herbal medicine and not a categorical rejection of traditional healing practices."

Prof Marcus added: "Herbal remedies pose a global hazard.

"We encourage the global health community to take actions that will evaluate both long and short-term safety, as well as the efficacy of botanical products in widespread use."

http://www.westerndailypress.co.uk/

The United States remains by far the most important source of funds for medical research and development for scores of diseases well-known to the developing world.

According to the latest available data from the independent research group Policy Cures, global donors contributed over $2 billion in public funding for research into what the medical community calls neglected diseases. The U.S. government accounted for over 70 percent of the amount.

But a new report from the Global Health Technologies Coalition, a group of nonprofits that promotes creation of vaccines and other tools to improve global health, says that over the past five years, funding has largely been flat. This is in contrast to the first decade of the 21st century, which saw a doubling of financial support.

Budget sequestration

"We have seen a decline or stagnation in funding since 2009, and I think one of the biggest reasons for that is the budget sequestration in the U.S. government in 2013," said Erin Will Morton, GHTC executive director. "It really was detrimental for agency funding across the board and certainly made global health R&D take a hit in terms of funding levels."

Usually, U.S. administrations make yearly budgetary requests to Congress for funds for global health programs. In other cases, emergency requests are made. Critics say the amounts granted often fall short of what's needed to ensure the development of drugs and other health products, especially for fast-breaking pandemics.

Recently, the White House announced it might divert funding for controlling Ebola to fighting the spread of the Zika virus. Morton said that's a bad idea.

"We are not in the clear with Ebola," she said. "We still don't have the tools we need to fight [it], and so we risk a lot by moving that money to fight the next public health crisis. Zika happened very shortly after Ebola and we weren't necessarily finished with that, and we don't know what's coming next. Moving funds around from one public health crisis to the next is an unsustainable way to address global health issues."

R&D incentives

The GHTC report asks the U.S. government to encourage private sector involvement in R&D with prizes, small-business innovation awards, tax credits and other incentives. It also recommends improved cooperation among the seven U.S. agencies involved in global health.

"Getting those agencies to work closely together is an effective strategy for better using the dollars that we do have," Morton said. "So it doesn't always have to be about new money, but better using the money we have. We saw this in the response to Ebola ... where there was great coordination" by federal agencies to solicit new innovations to help stop the outbreak.

Morton said the government could work with middle-income countries like Brazil, India and South Africa to enhance their own R&D efforts. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration could provide scientific guidance to regulatory authorities as they review health products. Morton said the FDA could also help boost the regulatory capacity needed by lower- and middle-income countries seeking to adopt new medical technologies.

"The regulatory authorities that oversee new products and drugs in any country are crucial in protecting citizens from adverse effects from tools or technologies that are not safe," she said. "Those guidelines or restrictions can be different from country to country," so it's a matter of "making sure the regulatory authorities are able to understand the populations within the country and then the tools, drugs, diagnostics that will be used by those populations and communities."

New medications

The GHTC report says U.S. investment has helped develop a pipeline of 500 tools that could be effective in treating neglected diseases. They include new medications for malaria, tuberculosis and Ebola, a microbicide ring for preventing the transmission of HIV/AIDS, and a new class of antibiotics for drug-resistant diseases.

The cost of developing new global health products will most likely increase as they go from laboratory testing to clinical trials. Now is not the time, Morton said, to pull back U.S. investments and put that arc of progress at risk.

http://www.voanews.com/

Geneva, 2 May 2016. More women in Mexico than previously thought are dying of indirect causes of maternal mortality - such as type 2 diabetes and hypertension - conditions that often predate their pregnancies, according to a study published today.

The study, by authors in Mexico and the United States of America, appears in a special issue of the Bulletin of the World Health Organization.

Fewer women in low and middle-income countries die due to conditions related to pregnancy and childbirth than 10 years ago (1). The study highlights the risk that noncommunicable diseases could undermine recent progress in improving maternal survival.

"We are winning the battle against the traditional causes of maternal death - such as post-partum haemmorhage, but not against the indirect causes of maternal death," said co-author Dr Rafael Lozano, from the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico.

Lozano and his colleagues' findings add to mounting evidence on the causes of deaths during pregnancy in Mexico and are consistent with the latest global analyses that more than a quarter of maternal deaths worldwide are due to indirect causes (2).

Maternal death - when a woman dies during pregnancy, childbirth or in the 42 days after she gives birth - is an important measure of a country's level of development and of how well its health system is performing.

Direct maternal deaths result from obstetric complications during pregnancy and childbirth. Indirect maternal deaths result from an often pre-existing disease made worse by pregnancy and include noncommunicable conditions, such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disorders, as well as infectious and parasitic diseases such as HIV infection, tuberculosis, hepatitis, influenza or malaria.

The authors identified and re-classified 1214 deaths as maternal deaths, revealing that such deaths in Mexico had been underestimated by about 13%. As a result, Mexico's maternal mortality figures for the study period were corrected from 7829 to 9043.

The additional maternal deaths were identified using a new method of intentional search and review of maternal deaths and their reclassification, called Búsqueda Intencionada y Reclasificación de Muertes Maternas or BIRMM (5).

Applying the new method to data from the eight-year study period, the authors found that maternal deaths from direct obstetric causes declined from 46.4 to 32.1 per 100?000 live births during the study period and that maternal deaths from indirect causes had remained steady with 12.2 deaths per 100?000 live births in 2006 compared with 13.3 deaths per 100?000 live births in 2013.

"The direct maternal deaths concern women living in the poorest municipalities, but the women who died of indirect causes had fewer pregnancies, were better educated and tended to live in wealthier municipalities," Lozano said.

Like many middle-income countries Mexico has seen a rapid increase in high levels of cholesterol and obesity in recent years. This puts women of reproductive age at higher risk for pre-existing hypertensive disorders and type 2 diabetes (2).

Seven out 10 Mexicans are overweight, while three of those seven are obese (3). A person with a body mass index (BMI) of 25 or more is considered overweight, and with a BMI of 30 or more is considered obese.

In addition, the age-adjusted prevalence of diabetes in adult Mexicans increased from 10.2% to 10.7% between 2010 and 2014, according to the World Health Organization's (WHO) Global status report on NCDs. In 2014, Mexico had the highest prevalence of diabetes among the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's 34 countries.

The study adds to increasing evidence of the "obstetric transition", a term recently coined to describe the shift in the causes of maternal deaths from direct to indirect.

"Maternal health programmes tend to focus on making skilled birth attendants and emergency obstetric care available, and on what happens at the time of the delivery," said Dr Flavia Bustreo, Assistant Director-General for Family, Women's and Children's Health at the World Health Organization (WHO).

"There has been a huge improvement in the provision of these interventions in low and middle-income countries and this has reduced maternal mortality globally. But the vast majority of maternal deaths from indirect deaths cannot be averted through these delivery-focused interventions," Bustreo said.

"In the absence of the intense review process by the study authors these deaths would not have been counted and the true magnitude of maternal mortality in Mexico would have been underestimated," Bustreo said.

She said it was vital that governments and the international community continue to invest in civil registration systems to ensure that every maternal death is counted and that the correct cause of death is registered in each case. Specialized systems, such as maternal death surveillance and response and confidential enquiries, can provide critical information on the events that led up to a maternal death and identify the improvements that urgently need to be made to prevent future deaths.

The new Global Strategy for Women's, Children's and Adolescents' Health (2016-2030) proposes key actions governments can take to end all kinds of preventable maternal mortality, Bustreo said.

These include: strengthening the health workforce and scaling up efforts to ensure universal coverage of essential health services, including pre-pregnancy detection and management of noncommunicable diseases and their risk factors (e.g. obesity).

The study by Lozano and his colleagues is one of a special collection of articles published in the May issue of the Bulletin of the World Health Organization that is devoted to new evidence and key lessons from efforts over the past 15 years to reduce maternal, child and adolescent deaths.

The collection of articles is timely because many countries are just starting to implement the global strategy, which aims to prevent deaths and improve overall health and well-being.

The Mexican study highlights the need for maternal, newborn and child health services to be designed to meet new challenges, such as the emerging threat of noncommunicable diseases to maternal health.

"To reduce indirect maternal deaths, obstetricians and other health-care personnel attending to women during pregnancy and the postpartum period need to be trained to care for women's health holistically and not just her pregnancy," Bustreo said.

"This special issue presents important new findings on actions that countries can take to ensure that women, children and adolescents not only survive, but thrive," she said.

http://www.eurekalert.org

By 2040, people in developing countries will continue to spend a greater proportion of their own money on healthcare than those in the developed world as national health spending is failing to keep up with demand, a Lancet study warns.

The researchers say that low-income countries only spend around 3 US cents on health for each dollar that rich countries spend. This is unlikely to change in the next 25 years despite growing wealth, according to the paper.

This means people living in these countries will have to spend a larger share of their own income on private healthcare than those in rich countries - or forego important health treatments, the authors say.

In 2040, the proportion of health spending coming from government is expected to be lowest in South Asia, where it will meet just 33 per cent of demand. Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are forecast to pay for 36 per cent of health costs, while governments in all other regions are likely to meet at least half the costs of their citizen's healthcare, according to lead author Joseph Dieleman.

By comparison, Western European countries are expected to pay for close to 90 per cent of healthcare costs by that time, according to the 13 April study.

The research also found that donor money for health services in developing countries is levelling off after tripling between 2000 and 2010. Funding for maternal and child health is growing, but money to care for people with health problems such as HIV/AIDS tuberculosis and malaria is decreasing, the study says.

"We have seen an overall stagnation in donor funding for global health," says Dieleman, a researcher at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in the United States. "The slowdown comes just after the global financial crisis that impacted many donor countries."

But to address the situation, countries need more detail on local disparities in healthcare access and spending, which the study's use of national spending per person does not provide, says Divya Parmar, a public health researcher at City University London, United Kingdom.

Parmar also notes that countries may start taxing unhealthy food and substances, such as tobacco and sugar, using the money to improve healthcare. Better infrastructure could further reduce the health burden in the poorest countries, she says.

"[These countries] need to improve the cost-effectiveness of healthcare services by expanding access to primary healthcare, safe water and sanitation," she explains.

http://allafrica.com/

Marie Line Songuet of the Central African Red Cross was part of an IFRC-supported long-lasting insecticidal net distribution team that was carjacked and held hostage for several hours while on mission.

So in this malaria conundrum, what do we do?

In 2015 there was no indigenous case of malaria in all countries in the World Health Organisation European Region, a new WHO report has said. Most of the diagnoses came from areas bordering Swaziland, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Overall, such countries where eliminating malaria is within reach are expected to face a one-third drop in worldwide funding, the research said.

Visiting a clinic is not always easy. According to the SANBS in a recent press statement, malaria is also transmitted from infected individuals through blood transfusions and infected needles.

The disease, it has also been discovered, accounts for "considerable lost days of productivity among the adult population" in the country.

Right now, the mosquito-borne disease is largely prevented using insecticides that are sprayed and used in netting, as well as antimalarial medications (there is no malaria vaccine). But local media accuse hospital staff of selling the nets in Chad and Nigeria where people have to pay for them.

On 20 April 2016, the WHO released the World Malaria Report 2015, which showed major decline in global malaria cases and deaths since 2000.

Another instance of public health deteriorating while conflict rages is South Sudan.

The day has also coincided with persistent shortages of anti malaria drug in some hospitals including Mzimba and Bwaila in Lilongwe blamed mainly on pilferages.

"Through our Malaria Free India initiative we aim to achieve zero malaria incidences in more than 1,200 villages of Mandla district of Madhya Pradesh by FY21", Sun Pharma Managing Director Dilip Shanghvi said here at the launch of the partnership. The most deadly malaria parasite and the most prevalent in Africa is Plasmodium falciparum.

Symptoms vary from flu-like effects - such as severe headaches, fever, joint pains, shivering episodes, nausea and vomiting - to more serious symptoms like severe breathing difficulties, low blood sugar, severe anaemia, renal failure, repeated vomiting, shock, hypoglycaemia, black urine, abnormal bleeding or even a coma. Without prompt treatment, Plasmodium falciparum malaria can progress to sever illness and death, the World Health Organization says on its website.

http://inewstoday.net/