The World Health Organisation says two young children have been paralysed in the first polio outbreak in Europe for five years.

Both cases are in south-western Ukraine, near the border with Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland.

Experts say the outbreak must be contained, as the risk of spreading is high.

"For each child with paralysis, there are about 198-199 children that get infected by the virus but who don't get paralysed.
These children play with others who also have their own network of contacts." said Dorit Nitzan from the World Health Organisation.

Ukraine was particularly at risk due to inadequate uptake of vaccination.

Only 50% of the country's children were fully immunised in 2014..

"We need to do an immediate campaign in the affected area next week. Then we will be ready to immunise all children in Ukraine." said Dragoslav Popovic, the UNICEF representative in Ukraine.

Experts say outbreak like this are rare but do emerge in areas of inadequate immunisation.

They recommend everyone visiting the region should be fully vaccinated.

Residents and those staying for more than a month should get an extra dose of vaccine.

source: http://www.euronews.com/

People around the world are living longer, but many are also living sicker lives for longer, according to a study of all major diseases and injuries in 188 countries.

General health has improved worldwide, thanks to significant progress against infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria in the past decade and gains in fighting maternal and child illnesses.

But healthy life expectancy has not increased as much, so people are living more years with illness and disability, according to the analysis, published in The Lancet journal.

"The world has made great progress in health, but now the challenge is to invest in finding more effective ways of preventing or treating the major causes of illness and disability," said Theo Vos, a professor at the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington who led the analysis.

The study's main findings were that global life expectancy at birth for both sexes rose by 6.2 years — from 65.3 in 1990 to 71.5 in 2013. Healthy life expectancy at birth rose by 5.4 years — from 56.9 in 1990 to 62.3 in 2013.

Healthy life expectancy takes into account both mortality and the impact of non-fatal conditions and chronic illnesses like heart and lung diseases, diabetes and serious injuries. Those detract from quality of life and impose heavy cost and resources burdens.

For most of the 188 countries studied, changes in healthy life expectancy between 1990 and 2013 were "significant and positive", the researchers said. But in many - among them Belize, Botswana and Syria - healthy life expectancy in 2013 was not much higher than in 1990.

And in some, including South Africa, Paraguay, and Belarus, healthy life expectancy has dropped. In Lesotho and Swaziland, people born in 2013 could expect to live some 10 fewer healthy years than people born there 20 years earlier.

The study also found stark differences between countries with the highest and lowest healthy life expectancies, and in the rates and direction of change.

Nicaraguans and Cambodians have seen dramatic increases since 1990, of 14.7 and 13.9 years respectively. People in Botswana and Belize, however, saw declines of two and 1.3 years respectively.

Canada was tenth on the list of 10 countries with highest healthy life expectancy, at 70.1 years. Japan had the highest, at 73.4 years.

In 2013, Lesotho had the world's lowest healthy life expectancy, at 42 years.

source: http://www.cbc.ca/

The UN agency, World Health Organization (WHO), has launched a campaign as a part of World Humanitarian Day (WHD, August 19) to draw attention of world community to the threats faced by health workers and the need for intensifying action to protect health workers in conflict zones.
According to WHO, in the year 2014, as many as 372 attacks in 32 countries on health workers were reported in which 603 of them got killed and 958 injured while doing humanitarian work in various conflict zones.

Launching the campaign, Dr Margaret Chan, WHO Director-General said, "WHO is committed to saving lives and reducing suffering in times of crisis. Attacks against health care workers and facilities are flagrant violations of international humanitarian law. Health workers have an obligation to treat the sick and injured without discrimination. All parties to conflict must respect that obligation," reported the WHO website.
According to WHO, in 2015, hundreds of health workers have died in conflict zones and fighting disease outbreaks such as Ebola that inflicted 875 health workers of which 509 have died so far.

Similarly in Iraq, more than 180 front line health services in 10 governorates have been withdrawn due unwanted attacks on health workers leaving millions of refugees, internally displaced persons and host communities without access to health care.

In the light of the foregoing, WHO has made a call to world community for honouring and protecting health workers during all kinds of crises.

source: http://www.merinews.com/

Africa has achieved a huge milestone in global health by going a full year since reporting a case of polio, a disease the continent has been battling for years.

The poliomyelitis virus attacks the nervous system and can cause irreversible paralysis within hours of infection. Africa's goal of eradicating the disease has been in the offing for a while now, but cases of polio continued to be reported from somewhere across the continent, especially Nigeria, the one country where the virus had never been eradicated, even temporarily.

The last African case of polio was detected in Somalia on Aug. 11 of last year, but the last case in Nigeria was recorded on July 24, 2014, a situation which has given health workers a reason to cheer.

"This is a big success, but it's still fragile. There's always a worry that there could be an undetected case in a population you're not reaching," said Dr. Hamid Jafari, the initiative's World Health Organization (WHO) director, according to Today Online.

Nigeria celebrated its polio-free year on July 25 with a modest tree-planting ceremony in which Muhammadu Buhari, the country's new president, was photographed putting vaccine drops into the mouth of his infant granddaughter. The campaign was subdued because it "did not want to send out the wrong message to political officeholders and donors that polio has been eradicated," said Dr. Faisal Shuaib, a Health Ministry official, The New York Times reported.

Apart from battling polio, many nations of the continent have been fighting Islamist militant groups al-Shabaab and Boko Haram. Experts are worried that vaccines will not reach children displaced by conflict, according to The Guardian.

"I just hope Boko Haram will not be the achilles heel of our work. Unless we get rid of the insurgency, we cannot be sure we will eradicate polio," said Oyewale Tomori, professor of virology at the Nigerian Academy of Science, who has dedicated four decades of his life to polio research.

source: http://www.hngn.com/

Thousands of West Africans who were infected with the Ebola virus but survived it are suffering chronic conditions such as serious joint pain and eye inflammation that can lead to blindness, global health experts said on Friday.

Ebola survivors who fought off the most severe bouts of infection are the most likely to suffer ongoing medical problems, World Health Organization experts said, and their health is becoming "an emergency within an emergency".

"The world has never seen such a large number of survivors from an Ebola outbreak," said Anders Nordstrom, a WHO representative in Sierra Leone who took part in a five-day conference this week about Ebola survivors.

"We have 13,000 survivors in the three countries (Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone). This is new - both from a medical and from a societal point of view," he told reporters on a telebriefing.

Daniel Bausch of the WHO's clinical care team on Ebola survivors said about half of all those who fought off the virus now report joint pain, with some suffering such severe effects that they can't work.

Eye problems including inflammation, impaired vision and - in severe but rare cases - blindness, have been reported by about 25 percent of survivors, Bausch said.

Less measurable but equally serious long-term problems, such as increasing rates of depression, post traumatic stress disorder and social exclusion, are also affecting survivors.

Since West Africa's devastating Ebola epidemic was by far the largest ever seen - infecting more than 27,000 people and killing almost 11,300 of them - scientists are not able to say whether survivors' chronic health problems are unusual.

The Ebola virus is thought to be able to survive no more than 21 days in most body fluids, such as blood and vomit, which are the primary means of transmission.

But it is also known to be able to lurk in semen and in the soft tissues of the eye for up to several months after recovery.

Scientists believe the vision impairments reported by survivors of the current outbreak are probably linked to the virus persisting in the eyes.

Bausch said sight problems, joint pain and headaches have been reported in a few survivors of previous outbreaks since the disease was first detected in 1976. But past epidemics were much smaller, meaning survivor numbers were too small to study or draw any meaningful scientific conclusions.

Specialists say, however, that it is not surprising that a virus as dangerous as Ebola could have long-term impacts, and the unprecedented outbreak in West Africa offers a unique opportunity to learn more about how to help survivors.

source: http://www.medicaldaily.com/

Too often, the conventional wisdom in diplomatic or scientific circles is that the general public doesn't know what's good for them when it comes to foreign policy or tackling global threats. It's too complicated, the experts say; the public wouldn't understand. Yet new polling suggests that many in the public understand very well how global infectious disease outbreaks pose a serious threat to their lives and economic security - and they know what should be done about it.

An opinion research survey commissioned by the World Bank Group with 4,000 respondents across five industrialized countries - France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States - found that most people are not convinced the world, or their own country, is prepared for the next global epidemic. Twice as many respondents think the world will experience another global epidemic in the next decade as will not, and fewer than half are convinced that their own country is prepared. They rank "global health and epidemics" as one of their top global concerns, after terrorism and climate change.

These findings come nearly a year since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Ebola epidemic a "public health emergency of international concern," its highest level of alert. This triggered a massive global response, but only eight months after the first identified case in West Africa. Yet after more than 11,000 deaths, millions of lives disrupted and billions of dollars in lost income, the threat is not over; new Ebola cases continue to emerge. We've also seen the recent spread of the highly infectious MERS virus to the Republic of Korea, which has contributed to a decline in the country's GDP growth to a six-year low.

Both the Ebola and MERS viruses have been largely confined to a few countries because they are transmitted through close contact. But what would happen if the world faced a fast-moving, airborne disease such as the Spanish flu outbreak of 1918-19? Modelling suggests a Spanish flu-like outbreak today would kill more than 33 million people in 250 days. And the cost of such a severe outbreak has been estimated at 4.8% of global GDP - or more than $3.6 trillion.

The public is right: The world is not prepared for the next epidemic. We're no better equipped to respond quickly to an outbreak than we were a year ago. But we can be - and at a fraction of what it would cost if we don't act urgently. Here are three things we need to do:

First, let's ensure that all countries invest in better preparedness. This starts with a strong health system that can deliver essential, quality care; disease surveillance; and diagnostic capabilities. We should expand successful efforts such as those by Ethiopia and Rwanda to train cadres of community health workers, who can expand access to care and serve as the frontline response to future disease outbreaks. The goal must be universal health coverage - both to ensure everyone can get the care they need, and also because those areas without adequate coverage put everyone at risk.

The public gets this: Strong majorities believe that investing in doctors, nurses, and clinics in developing countries helps prevent epidemics from breaking out in their own countries and saves lives and money. But Korea's experience shows that even the most advanced health systems need to step up their epidemic preparedness.

Second, we need a smarter, better coordinated global epidemic preparedness and response system that draws upon the expertise of many more players - including a better-resourced WHO. The early months of responding to the Ebola epidemic fell disproportionately upon the heroic Médecins Sans Frontières. Outbreaks will happen, but they can be contained before they turn into much more deadly and costly global epidemics. This requires pre-set arrangements and close coordination between national and local governments, international bodies, the private sector, and non-governmental organizations, with a supply chain that can be up and running in no time. The private sector, which was largely shut out of the initial response to Ebola, can bring market discipline, innovation, and additional resources to the fight.

Third, we must be able to get emergency funding out the door and deploy rapid response teams at the first sign of a crisis. If a fast-moving epidemic hits, the traditional approach of issuing fundraising appeals just isn't good enough. The World Bank Group is working with the WHO and other institutions on one part of the solution - something we call a pandemic emergency financing facility. Endorsed by the leaders of the Group of 7 in Germany in June, the facility aims to make sure adequate and timely financing is available to countries and international responders to effectively contain a pandemic threat. The facility is developing innovative financing arrangements such as private sector insurance and public sector contingency pools that can disburse rapidly to support a surge in health workers or the setting up of emergency response operations centers. Governments have already used this model to successfully manage climate and natural disaster risks.

Two years ago, a survey of 30,000 insurance executives showed that a global epidemic was their greatest worry. But the executives' alarm was ignored - as were the previous warnings from SARS and avian flu. Today, with the painful reminder of the latest epidemic and public support strongly in favor, it's time to tackle epidemic prevention and response. We must break the cycle of talk and no action.

source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

European regulators have given the green light to the world's first malaria vaccine. The breakthrough comes after 28 years of development, and the European Medicines Agency's decision could clear the way for a World Health Organization recommendation and the vaccine's eventual adoption in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond.

From Al-Jazeera:

The shot, called RTS,S or Mosquirix, would be the first licensed human vaccine against a parasitic disease and could help prevent millions of cases of malaria in countries that use it.

The vaccine was developed by British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in partnership with the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative.

Recommendations for a drug licence made by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) are normally endorsed by the European Commission within a couple of months.

Mosquirix, also part-funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will also now be assessed by the World Health Organisation, which has promised to give its guidance on when and where it should be used before the end of this year.

Malaria killed an estimated 584,000 people in 2013, the vast majority of them in sub-Saharan Africa.

More than 80 percent of malaria deaths are in children under the age of five.

Read more here.

source: http://www.truthdig.com/

Global health experts called on Wednesday for the creation of a $2 billion vaccine development fund to feed a pipeline of potential new shots against priority killer diseases like Ebola, MERS and the West Nile virus.

The fund would help bridge the gap between early stage drug discovery work carried out at universities and small biotech firms, and the late stage development and large-scale clinical trials needed to get a new vaccine to market.

"We can no longer sit back and ignore the chronic lack of progress in developing new vaccines, and improving existing ones," said Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust global health charity, who co-wrote a paper calling for the creation of such a fund.

The money for the global vaccine fund should come from governments, foundations and the pharmaceutical industry, as well as from non-traditional sources such as the travel and insurance industries, the experts said in the paper, published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Such a fund would pay for things like manufacturing vaccines to internationally accepted standards, and early and mid-stage clinical trials designed to test safety and proof-of-concept that a vaccine can generate an immune response.

Farrar praised the enormous global effort made to get clinical trials up and running to try to test experimental vaccines during West Africa's Ebola outbreak, but he added:

"If just one of those promising vaccines had been through (early stage) phase I trials before the outbreak started, public health workers could have begun vaccinating people at the start...potentially saving thousands of lives."

At least $2 billion would be needed at the outset, Farrar said, an amount that should be achievable even at a time when resources are scarce.

"Witness the cost of addressing the Ebola emergency --estimated at $8 billion to date with the final figure likely to be far higher," he and his colleagues wrote.

"The lesson we take from the Ebola crisis is that disease prevention should not be held back by lack of money at a critical juncture when a relatively modest, strategic investment could save thousands of lives and billions of dollars further down the line."

The proposed fund would invite competitive proposals from scientists, institutions and biotech firms, with an independent panel of scientists and funders required to review applications for financial support, the experts said.

sourec; http://uk.reuters.com/