Japanese scientists will begin the country’s first human trial for a new vaccine against the deadly Ebola virus this month, they said Friday.

The vaccine, which has previously been tested in monkeys, uses an inactivated form of the virus that can only effectively replicate in artificial cells.

Scientists hope that will make it safer than other treatments, the Institute of Medical Science at the University of Tokyo said in a press release.

“We think there’s high hope for a new, safe vaccine which can be produced effectively,” Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a professor of infectious diseases at the university who helped developed the vaccine, said in the release.

The university will begin the clinical study later in December, injecting 30 healthy adult men with two doses of the vaccine, four weeks apart.

They will be monitored for side effects and whether they have developed immunity to Ebola.

The Ebola virus is passed on by contact with the blood, body fluids, secretions or organs of an infected or recently deceased person.

The death rate is typically high, ranging up to 90 percent in some outbreaks, according to the WHO.

Several Ebola vaccines exist, including rVSV-ZEBOV and a new formula produced by a Belgian subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson that went into use last month in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The country is in the grip of an Ebola epidemic that has killed more than 2,000 people in 15 months.

It is the second most deadly to date after a 2014-2016 outbreak which left some 11,000 people dead and underscored the urgency to bring a vaccine to market.

The current outbreak is the tenth in the country since its first in 1976.

Source: AFP

The non-profit group Doctors without Borders (MSF) pulled its foreign staff out of an eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo after an armed group tried to enter its compound.

The group is the latest aid agency to withdraw its staff from the Biakato region, after three health workers treating Ebola were killed in an unclaimed attack last week at an accommodation camp in Biakato Mines in Ituri Province.

That attack prompted the World Health Organization to withdraw its staff from the area.

MSF said that on Tuesday night, a group wielding machetes and sticks broke into the Biakato Health Center, where it operates an Ebola Treatment Center. There were no casualties and the group did not enter the Ebola facility, it said.

A separate group with the same weapons then tried but failed to enter the MSF facility in Biakato Mines. The NGO said they threw stones but did not do any damage.

“Due to a deterioration in the security situation, MSF made the difficult decision to withdraw all non-local staff from the Biakato region,” MSF said in a statement.

According to local authorities, the attackers from last week’s incident are likely to be members of the Mayi-Mayi armed militia group, which is fighting for a share of the country’s wealth.

The DRC is undergoing its 10th Ebola epidemic, which is the second-deadliest on record.

The death toll from an Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has risen to more than 200.

An outbreak of the much-feared hemorrhagic virus has killed 2,206 people mainly in North Kivu and neighboring Ituri, according to the latest official figures.

Insecurity has complicated the epidemic from the outset, compounding resistance within communities to preventive measures, care facilities, and safe burials.

On November 4, the authorities said more than 300 attacks on Ebola health workers had been recorded since the start of the year, leaving six dead and 70 wounded, some of them patients.

(Source: AFP)

Cameroonian health and emergency personnel are working to stem a cholera outbreak that has killed at least a dozen people and sickened at least 100 others in the Bakassi Peninsula that shares a maritime boundary with Nigeria.

It is feared the outbreak will claim more lives in the coastal area, which lacks health infrastructure.

Emergency medical workers, together with some civilians, are working to improve hygiene and sanitation by clearing dirt and debris from water beneath houses on the shores in the area. Among them is 31-year-old Cameroonian fisherman Lucas Emimo, who says he lost his younger sister to cholera. Emimo says he has joined the humanitarian workers because he fears many more people may die from the infectious disease that causes severe watery diarrhea, leading to dehydration and even death if untreated.

“We lack toilets, potable water,” Emimo said. “There is no hospital. People defecate beside the sea, under the houses, everywhere and so it makes the place not good to stay.”

Dr. Ebongo Zakius Nandji, the area’s top health official, says humanitarian workers were deployed when news broke that people were dying and some were being rushed to hospitals. He says there is no doubt cholera is to blame.

“Upon the reception of a distress signal from our team in the Bakassi health district, we came down to [the city of] Idabato, myself and my entire emergency response team,” Nandji said. “The situation on the ground really sends a pointer to the fact that we are in an outbreak of cholera.”

Nandji said six people had been reported dead and hundreds of suspected cholera sufferers were still in villages around Idabato. Civilians said they had buried six others before the medical team’s arrival. The actual death toll could be higher, because many live in remote locations, complicating efforts to get accurate health data.

Nandji urged people to be vigilant and report any cholera symptoms.

Hospitals underused

But the government says only 20 percent of the population visits hospitals. Most of them prefer traditional African medicine. Some complain that the only government hospital in Idabato is understaffed and lacks medication.

Roland Ewane, a top Cameroonian official in Idabato, says Nigerians living in the region prefer to return to their country for health care. However, making the journey reduces chances of survival for cholera patients.

“We have a population of about 40,000,” Ewane said. “They are mostly Nigerians. We have been carrying out sensitization campaigns [educating the population] on the necessity of using or the importance of using government services. One of them is the hospital. They do not come to the hospital. It is a big cry [to use hospitals].”

The Bakassi Peninsula is by the sea, but potable water is hard to find. Few have toilets and the local hospital struggles to handle epidemics.

Nigeria ceded full control of the Bakassi Peninsula to Cameroon in 2013, in keeping with a 2002 International Court of Justice ruling. Some 300,000 Nigerians live on the peninsula — approximately 90 percent of its population. The territory is rich in hydrocarbons and fisheries, but lacks basic social services.

Most health workers trained by Nigeria to serve in the area returned to their country when Cameroon did not continue paying their salaries. Some also fled attacks by separatists fighting for the independence of Cameroon’s English-speaking regions from the French-speaking majority. Cameroon has faced difficulties replacing departed medical staff.

Source: VOA

Cholera has killed two and left seven others hospitalized in Bakassi Peninsula, Cameroon’s local health officials said on Tuesday.

All measures have been taken to avoid further spread of the disease, according to officials who estimated the disease has been caused by failure to abide by hygienic regulations.

It is the first time cases of cholera have been reported in the oil-rich area that is inhabited by over 200,000 people.

Cholera spreads through contaminated food and drinking water, causing diarrhea, nausea and vomiting. There is high risk of cholera mainly in Cameroon’s Far North region, but cases have also been reported in commercial capital, Douala.

Source: Xinhuanet

As Boris Johnson and his Labour opponent Jeremy Corbyn prepare to face off Tuesday evening in the first TV debate ahead of December’s general election, the condition of the NHS has emerged as a key issue in the campaign, with the head of the British doctors’ association warning that the UK’s beloved state-run National Health Service faces an “unprecedented crisis”.

British prime minister and Conservative leader Boris Johnson called the December 12 election in an attempt to secure a majority in the House of Commons, hoping thereby to “Get Brexit Done” – to quote the Tory campaign’s omnipresent slogan. But as medical staff decry insufficient funding and statistics show deteriorating performance figures, Johnson is taking emergency action in a bid to head off an NHS crisis while striving to present the Tories as the best party to manage the health service in England.

The head of the British Medical Association (BMA), Chaand Nagpaul, made an extraordinary public statement on November 2, saying that the NHS is “hurtling towards an unprecedented crisis this winter”, which tends to be the most difficult season for the service. In what appears to be a pointed comment directed at Johnson’s Conservative Party, which has been in power since 2010, Nagpaul added that “it should not take an election to take stock of just how bad the situation has become”.

Despite the pressures of an ageing population and the development of increasingly complex – and expensive – medical treatments, spending on the NHS has increased by just 1.5 percent a year over the past decade, compared to a historic average of 3.7 percent since its foundation in 1948. “Over the last 10 years or so, the NHS has been quite significantly under-resourced,” said Jonathan Holmes, a policy adviser at the King’s Institute, a British think-tank specialising in healthcare.ADVERTISING

Four-hour emergency room waits

In a sign of the party’s concern, the Conservative Home website, the bible of the Tories’ most tribal activists, published a piece on November 9 titled: “Is the Conservative campaign about to run headlong into an NHS winter crisis?”

Statistics lend credence to fears of a crisis. NHS data published on November 14 showed that waiting times in hospitals’ all-important accident and emergency (A&E) departments in October were the worst on record in England.

“Over 80,000 of the very sickest patients had to wait over four hours for a hospital bed last month, and that’s before we’ve even seen very cold temperature in England, or experienced many flu or norovirus outbreaks,” said Patricia Marquis, the Royal College of Nursing’s director for England. “Many nurses I speak to say they are very worried they won’t be able to provide the care they would like to once winter sets in,” she continued.

Soon after the BMA’s statement in early November, The Observer newspaper reported that Johnson was attempting to fend off a crisis by setting up an “operations unit” inside 10 Downing Street to take direct oversight of the NHS – the first time a prime minister has done so.

A statement on the Conservatives’ website says that, “because of the Brexit deadlock”, the health service “recently hasn’t had the attention it deserves”. To give it such attention, the party proposes to increase the NHS’s annual budget by £20.5 billion (€24 billion). Labour has proposed spending another £5.5 billion (€6.4 billion) per year on top of that.

Labour’s ‘competence problem’

Considering that they have historically been distrusted for their stance on the NHS, “the Tories are doing everything they can to reassure voters that they’ve got the message that more now needs to be spent on it”, noted Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London.

The two parties’ funding promises reflect the public’s priorities: polls suggest that the NHS is a bigger issue for voters than Brexit, which has dominated British political discourse for three years. A survey by Panelbase published at the end of October found that healthcare was the most cited issue when voters were asked to name the most important issues facing the country – mentioned by 66 percent of respondents compared to 54 percent for Brexit. Similarly, pollsters Opinium found in a November 1 survey that 59 percent listed healthcare as a top concern, putting it well ahead of Brexit at 52 percent.

Yet it remains to be seen whether Labour can instrumentalise the state of the NHS for its electoral purposes. “It has always been a Labour issue but the Conservatives are picking up the zeitgeist,” said Sir John Curtice, a professor of politics at Strathclyde University. Given the Tories’ proposals to raise spending, “all we’re arguing about is: how much of an increase do you want?”

At the same time, Labour suffers from a “broader problem about voters’ perception of its competence, which feeds into voters’ ideas about how they will run the health service”, Curtice continued.

That said, the most (in)famous – and perhaps most successful – campaign line in the UK over recent years related to the NHS. It was the Vote Leave campaign’s vow, ahead of the 2016 Brexit referendum, to spend £350 million per week on the NHS that would supposedly be liberated from Brussels after Britain leaves the EU. In the current election campaign, Corbyn has produced an attack line that plays both on voters’ fondness for the NHS and their views about Brexit. He has accused Johnson of wanting to “sell out” the health service to President Donald Trump (who is unpopular in the UK) in a post-Brexit trade deal with the US.

The Conservatives have repeatedly stated that the NHS will be off the table in any future trade talks with Washington, while the British health service has long outsourced some contracts to US companies – to little public complaint. “Labour is stretching the argument when they say a US-UK trade deal would be a threat to the NHS,” noted Michael Keating, a professor of politics at Edinburgh University.

But that makes the argument no less potent, Keating continued: “The Conservatives are very vulnerable on this notion; and if Labour combine it with a winter crisis, creating a series of issues to give a sense of a threat to the NHS, it could be a factor” in the election’s outcome.

Source: France 24

A museum dedicated to vaginas and vulvas opened it doors in the north of London on Saturday. It is a world’s first.

The museum hopes to help destigmatize this part of the female body and debunk myths around it.

“The vagina and the vulva are a hugely stigmatized part of the body, and they have lots of embarrassment. Cervical cancers are not being picked up quick enough So, in an effort to destigmatize this part of the body, that’s why we’ve made the vagina museum”, said Florence Schechter, Founder and Director of the vagina museum.

Founder and Director of the vagina museum said the challenge is not only to educate and improve self-image, but it is also a question about public health.

“I think the worst myth for me is that they are dirty and they need to be cleaned, and I think this is just going to be shampooed for having normal natural bodies. The vagina and the vulva are not dirty parts of the body, they are self cleaning and the idea that they are dirty is just another way of the patriarchy reasserting itself”, Schechter said.

Curators hope more people will be interested in what the museum has on offer.

“I hope everyone could come in. Anyone who wants to learn about the vagina, learn about the vulva, we’ve interacted men, women, people of all genders, people of all sexualities, people of all races and ethnicities, we’ve had a hugely varied audience and I hope to continue that’‘, she added.

Curators say the museum is only opened for educational purposes. It has not yet been opened to the public, but events have already being organized, attracting people from 2 to 98 years.

AFP

One-year-old Cameroonian conjoined twins were successfully separated in a 5-hour operation in France on Wednesday, the hospital said.

Sisters Bissie and Eyenga Merveille—their family name is the French word for “marvel”—were born in Cameroon on Nov. 6, 2018, joined front-to-front and partly sharing a liver, the hospital said in a statement.

After the marathon separation in southeastern French city Lyon, which involved some 20 surgeons, doctors and other medical experts, the girls were put into emergency care and said to be in a stable condition.

They were brought to France for the life-changing procedure by the charity organization La Chaine de l’Espoir.

One of the girls has been diagnosed with a heart condition, which will be operated on later, the charity said on its website.

Rejected by the girls’ father and members of her family, the twins’ mother Mayah fled her town of Ayos to Cameroon’s capital Yaounde some 140 kilometers (87 miles) away, where she and her daughters took refuge at a hospital where they lived awaiting the operation.

Source: AFP