Tag: WHO

Categories : Cardiovascular DiseaseTags :

WHO Says Overwork is Killing 745 000 People a Year

On By ModernMedia
Exhausted man looking at laptop in a restaurant. Photo by Tim Gouw from Pexels

Long working hours led to 745 000 deaths from stroke and ischaemic heart disease in 2016, a 29% increase from 2000, according to a report by the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization.

Published in Environment International, this is the first global analysis of the loss of life and health associated with working long hours. The global analysis drew on 37 studies on ischaemic heart disease with over 768 000 participants and 22 studies on stroke with more than 839 000 participants.
The WHO and ILO estimate that, in 2016, 398 000 people died from stroke and 347 000 from heart disease as a result of having worked at least 55 hours a week. Between 2000 and 2016, the number of deaths from heart disease due to working long hours rose by 42%, and those from stroke by 19%.

This burden of work-related disease is particularly significant in men (72% of deaths were males), people living in the Western Pacific and South-East Asia regions, and middle-aged or older workers. Most of these deaths were among people aged 60-79 years, who had worked for 55 hours or more per week between the ages of 45 and 74 years.

Long work hours are now known to cause about one-third of the total estimated work-related burden of disease, and so is now the risk factor with the largest occupational disease burden. This shifts thinking towards a relatively new and more psychosocial occupational risk factor to human health.

Compared to a 35-40 hour work week, a 55 hour or more work week is associated with an estimated 35% higher risk of a stroke and a 17% higher risk of dying from ischaemic heart disease, concluded the study.

Increasing numbers of people are working long hours, currently standing at 9% of the world’s population. Even more people are being put at risk of work-related disability and early death by this trend.

This report comes just as the COVID pandemic is feeding a trend towards increased work hours. In China, 18 health workers died from overwork-related illnesses in the pandemic.

“The COVID pandemic has significantly changed the way many people work,“ said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “Teleworking has become the norm in many industries, often blurring the boundaries between home and work. In addition, many businesses have been forced to scale back or shut down operations to save money, and people who are still on the payroll end up working longer hours. No job is worth the risk of stroke or heart disease. Governments, employers and workers need to work together to agree on limits to protect the health of workers.”

“Working 55 hours or more per week is a serious health hazard,” added Dr Maria Neira, Director, Department of Environment, Climate Change and Health, at the WHO. “It’s time that we all, governments, employers, and employees wake up to the fact that long working hours can lead to premature death”.

The WHO pointed out the following actions that governments, employers and workers can take protect workers’ health:  

  • governments can introduce, implement and enforce laws, regulations and policies that ban mandatory overtime and ensure maximum limits on working time;
  • bipartite or collective bargaining agreements between employers and workers’ associations can arrange working time to be more flexible, while at the same time agreeing on a maximum number of working hours;
  • employees could share working hours to ensure that numbers of hours worked do not climb above 55 or more per week.  

Source: World Health Organization

Journal information: Pega, F., et al. 2021. Global, regional, and national burdens of ischemic heart disease and stroke attributable to exposure to long working hours for 194 countries, 2000–2016: A systematic analysis from the WHO/ILO Joint Estimates of the Work-related Burden of Disease and Injury. Environment International, p.106595.

Categories : COVIDTags : 1 Comment

Scientists Urge Deeper Look into Possible ‘Lab Escape’ Origin of COVID

On By ModernMedia
Computer image of SARS-CoV-2. From CDC at Pexels

In a letter in the journal Science, eighteen scientists from world-leading research institutions are urging their colleagues to dig deeper into the origins of the coronavirus responsible for the global pandemic. 

They argue that there is still not enough evidence to rule out the possibility that the SARS-CoV-2 virus escaped from a lab in China, and they call for a “proper investigation” into the matter.

“We believe this question deserves a fair and thorough science-based investigation, and that any subsequent judgment should be made on the data available,” said Dr. David Relman, professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University who helped pen the letter.

They were motivated partly by the March 30 publication of a report commissioned by the World Health Organization that sought to discover the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

The report’s authors, jointly credited to the WHO and China, ranked each of four possible scenarios on a scale from “extremely unlikely” to “very likely.” After assessing evidence provided by the Chinese team members, the authors concluded the probability that the virus jumped from animal to humans via an intermediary animal was “likely to very likely,” while an accidental laboratory release was deemed “extremely unlikely.”

Other potential pathways the investigators considered were a direct jump from animal to human without an intermediate host (“possible to likely”) and transmission from the surface of frozen food products (“possible”).

But Relman and his co-authors said the WHO investigators did not have enough information to reach these conclusions.

“We’re reasonable scientists with expertise in relevant areas,” Relman said, “and we don’t see the data that says this must be of natural origin.”

Ravindra Gupta, a professor of clinical microbiology at the University of Cambridge who signed the letter, said he would like to review lab notes from scientists working at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and see a list of viruses used at the institute over a five-year period.

The WHO report documents a meeting between its investigators and several members of the institute, including lab director Yuan Zhiming, who gave the joint team a tour of the facility.

At the meeting, representatives of WIV refuted the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 could have leaked from the lab, noting that none of the three SARS-like viruses cultured in the laboratory are closely related to that virus.

They also pointed out that blood samples obtained from workers and students in a research group led by Shi Zhengli, a WIV virologist who studies SARS-like coronaviruses that originate in bats, contained no SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, which would indicate a current or past infection.

However, Relman said that, as a scientist, more than this thirdhand account was needed for him to exclude the possibility of of an accidental laboratory leak.

“Show us the test you used: What was the method? What were the results and the names of the people tested? Did you test a control population?” Relman said. “On all accounts, it was not an adequate, detailed kind of presentation of data that would allow an outside scientist to arrive at an independent conclusion.”

WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was similarly cautious about the report’s findings.

“Although the team has concluded that a laboratory leak is the least likely hypothesis, this requires further investigation, potentially with additional missions involving specialist experts, which I am ready to deploy,” he said in an address to WHO member states on March 30. “Let me say clearly that, as far as WHO is concerned, all hypotheses remain on the table.”

Michael Worobey, who studies viruses at the University of Arizona to better understand pandemics, also signed the letter. From the beginning of the pandemic, he considered that it was either an escape from a lab or natural transmission from animal to human. His stance is still unchanged.

“There just hasn’t been enough definitive evidence either way,” he said, “so both of those remain on the table for me.”

Worobey works in his own lab with a grad student who collects viruses from bats in the wild, and he’s considered how this kind of work could introduce new pathogen to humans.

“As someone who does this, I’m very aware of the opening that creates for new viruses to get close to humans, and so I think that’s another reason I take this seriously,” he said. “I’m concerned about it in my own work.”

SARS-CoV-2 has been shown not to be a laboratory construct genetically modified to make it more transmissible to humans, Worobey said. But an unmodified virus could have been brought into the lab and then moved into humans.

“I’ve seen no evidence that I can look at and say, ‘Oh, OK, this certainly refutes the accidental lab origin and makes it virtually 100% certain that it was a natural event,'” he said. “Until we’re at the stage, both possibilities are viable.”

Scientists said there was one piece of conclusive evidence that would indicate the virus had indeed spread to humans through a natural event—the discovery of the wild animals in whom the virus originated.

Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunobiology and epidemiology at Yale University, noted that the WHO report mentioned the testing of more than 80 000 animal samples collected across China. None of those tests turned up a SARS-CoV-2 antibody or snippet of the virus’ genetic material before or after the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in China.

“However, it is possible that an animal reservoir was missed and further investigation may reveal such evidence,” said Iwasaki, another signatory to the letter.

David Robertson, the head of viral genomics and bioinformatics at the University of Glasgow had not signed the letter, saying he didn’t understand the point.

“Nobody is saying that a lab accident isn’t possible—there’s just no evidence for this beyond the Wuhan Institute of Virology being in Wuhan,” he said, adding that viruses naturally jump from animals to humans all the time.

Although he agreed with the authors of the letter that it was essential to find the origins of SARS-CoV-2 to prepare for the next pandemic, “wasting time investigating labs is a distraction from this,” he said.

Relman disagrees.

“If it turns out to be of natural origin, we’ll have a little bit more information about where that natural reservoir is, and how to be more careful around it in the future,” he said. “And if it’s a laboratory, then we’re talking about thinking much more seriously about what kinds of experiments we do and why.”

The letter’s authors noted that in this time of anti-Asian sentiment in some countries, it was Chinese doctors, scientists, journalists and citizens who shared with the world crucial information about the spread of the virus.

“We should show the same determination in promoting a dispassionate, science-based discourse on this difficult but important issue,” they wrote.

Source: Medical Xpress

Journal information: Jennifer Sills et al. Investigate the origins of COVID-19, Science (2021). DOI: 10.1126/science.abj0016

Categories : COVIDTags :

Indian COVID Variant ‘of Global Concern’ Says WHO

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The World Health Organization said on Monday that a SARS-CoV-2 variant circulating in India is of global concern.

“We classify it as a variant of concern at a global level,” Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO technical lead on COVID, told a briefing. “There is some available information to suggest increased transmissibility.”

India’s daily COVID statistics are down slightly but remain high. The health ministry said Monday there were 366 161 new cases and 3754 deaths from the virus in the previous 24-hour period. Public health experts believe the new cases and deaths to be an underestimate of the true picture.

India has 22.6 million COVID cases so far, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. India’s case load is surpassed only by the US, with 32.7 million COVID cases.   

There is also growing concern in India about ‘black fungus’ or mucormycosis, an opportunistic fungal infection which is affecting COVID patients and also those who have recovered from the disease. It typically only appears in immunocompromised patients. COVID patients with diabetes are particularly susceptible to mucormycosis, medical experts said.
 Meanwhile, struggling to contain its own COVID outbreak, Nepal is running short of oxygen and oxygen tanks and has asked Mount Everest climbers and guides not to abandon their oxygen cylinders on the mountain, rather bringing them back down so that medical facilities can fill them to give to COVID patients.  

Kul Bahadur Gurung, a senior official with the Nepal Mountaineering Association, told Reuters, “We appeal to climbers and Sherpas [Himalayan people living around Nepal and Tibet, well known for climbing mountains] to bring back their empty bottles wherever possible as they can be refilled and used for the treatment of the coronavirus patients who are in dire needs.”  

A Nepal health ministry official speaking to Reuters said the country needs 25 000 oxygen tanks immediately.

Source: Voice of America

Categories : AntibioticsTags :

WHO Says New Antibiotic Treatments are Falling Behind

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The development projects of new antibiotic treatments are falling behind, despite increasing awareness of the antibiotic resistance threat, according to a recently released report by the World Health Organization. 

The WHO revealed that none of the 43 antibiotics that are currently in clinical development sufficiently address the problem of drug resistance in the world’s most dangerous bacteria.

Dr Hanan Balkhy ,Assistant Director General on AMR, WHO said that, “The persistent failure to develop, manufacture, and distribute effective new antibiotics is further fueling the impact of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and threatens our ability to successfully treat bacterial infections.”

All of the new antibiotics released onto the market in the past few decades have been variations of those developed in the 1980s.

The impact of AMR is most severely felt in resource-constrained settings and in vulnerable populations such young children. Bacterial pneumonia and bloodstream infections are some of the major causes of childhood mortality under age 5, and about 30% of neonates with sepsis die due to bacterial infections resistant to multiple first-line antibiotics.

WHO puts out its Antibacterial Pipeline Report every year, reviewing antibiotics under development. The report evaluates the potential of the candidates to address the most threatening drug-resistant bacteria outlined in the WHO Bacterial Priority Pathogens List (WHO PPL). Since it began in 2017, this list, which includes 13 priority drug-resistant bacteria, has informed and guided priority areas for research and development.

The 2020 report paints a picture of an almost stalled pipeline with only few antibiotics in recent years receiving regulatory approval. Most of these agents in development have little extra clinical benefit over current ones, with 82% of recently approved antibiotics being derivatives of previous  ones with well-established drug-resistance, and drug resistance to these new ones is expected to emerge rapidly.

The review concludes that “overall, the clinical pipeline and recently approved antibiotics are insufficient to tackle the challenge of increasing emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance”.

Speeding up development requires innovative approaches. For the first time. the 2020 WHO pipeline report includes a comprehensive overview of non-traditional antibacterial medicines, detailing 27 antibacterial agents in the pipeline. These range from antibodies to bacteriophages and therapies that boost the immune response and weaken bacterial effects.

The report notes that there are some promising products in different stages of development. However, only a fraction of these will ever make it to the market due to the economic and inherent scientific challenges in the drug development process. This, along with the small return on investment from successful antibiotic products, has limited the interest of major private investors and most large pharmaceutical companies.

Only a fraction of the promising products in the pipeline will make it to market because of financial and scientific obstacles in the development process. 

The preclinical and clinical pipelines continue to be driven by small- and medium-sized companies, which often struggle to finance their products through clinical trials and approval.

The COVID pandemic has deepened the global understanding of the health and economic implications of uncontrolled disease, as well as funding gaps, including investments in R&D of antimicrobial medicines and vaccines, while also demonstrating that much can be achieved with political will and sufficient funding.

“Opportunities emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic must be seized to bring to the forefront the needs for sustainable investments in R&D of new and effective antibiotics,” said Haileyesus Getahun, Director of AMR Global Coordination at WHO. “Antibiotics present the Achilles heel for universal health coverage and our global health security. We need a global sustained effort including mechanisms for pooled funding and new and additional investments to meet the magnitude of the AMR threat.”

To address funding challenges in antibiotics development, WHO partnered with the Drugs for Neglected Diseases intitive (DNDi) to set up the Global Antibiotic R&D Partnership (GARDP) to develop promising treatments.

In addition, the WHO has been working closely with other non-profit funding partners such as the CARB-X to “push” and accelerate antibacterial research. Another important new initiative is the AMR Action Fund, a partnership by the European Investment Bank. pharmaceutical companies and philanthropies.

Source: News-Medical.Net

Categories : COVID Medical IndustryTags :

Global COVID Recovery Needs to Address Oxygen Shortages

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At the virtual launch of Global Citizen’s Recover Better Together Campaign, access to vaccines and medical resources was highlighted as a key area to address.

“Covid-19 has threatened the lives and livelihoods of everyone on the planet. To respond, we must take several urgent actions. The only way that we will be able to recover better, together is by defeating the virus everywhere through universal access of vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics,” said World Health Organization Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

To this end, the Recover Better Together Campaign, an initiative organised by the Global Citizen, the European Commission and the WHO, aims to create momentum for global COVID pandemic recovery, with a return to the implementation of global goals.

“To fight the pandemic, we need to pool resources, capabilities, knowledge and intellectual property. That is why we continue to call on world leaders to support the COVAX facility to ensure rapid and equitable access to Covid-19 vaccines for all countries. Another important step is to enable the transfer of medical technology for the duration of the pandemic,” said President Cyril Ramaphosa.

One of key medical resource is oxygen, which is in short supply in many low- and middle-income countries, which have to provide enough for up to half a million COVID patients. WHO data shows that 1.1 million cylinders are needed daily in developing countries, with Africa seeing the biggest surge in demand. Hospitals in Nigeria have reported running out of oxygen, leading to preventable deaths.

According to the WHO, public hospitals across 41 African countries have fewer than 2000 working ventilators. In comparison, the United States has more than 170 000 ventilators. The South African private sector has about 4000 ventilators, and around 2000 in the public sector. The WHO said the launch of the Covid Tools Accelerator Therapeutics pillar, co-led by Unitaid and Wellcome, has improved access to oxygen. On 25 February the Covid-19 Oxygen Emergency Taskforce was also launched by the WHO.

Unitaid Executive Director Dr Philippe Duneton said the Taskforce now needs an additional $90 million US for delivery of oxygen in up to 20 countries including Malawi, Nigeria and Afghanistan.

“This is a global emergency that needs a truly global response, both from international organisations and donors. Many of the countries seeing this demand struggled before the pandemic to meet their daily oxygen needs,” said Duneton. “Now it’s more vital than ever that we come together to build on the work that has already been done, with a firm commitment to helping the worst-affected countries as quickly as possible.”

Source: Health-e News

Categories : COVID General InterestTags :

WHO Team in China Denied Key COVID Information

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The World Health Organization team sent to China to investigate the origins of the COVID virus have been frustrated in their efforts to secure key data.

Team member Dominic Dwyer, infectious disease expert, said that they had only been given a summary instead of the raw patient data that they had requested.

Raw, anonymised patient data is part of standard outbreak investigation, Dwyer said, and this was particularly important because half of the initial 174 patients had no contact with the wet market.

“That’s why we’ve persisted to ask for that,” said Dwyer. “Why that doesn’t happen, I couldn’t comment. Whether it’s political or time or it’s difficult.”

Although Wuhan is the site of the initial outbreak, China has sought to cast doubt on its origin there, pointing to a source outside the country that may have come in with frozen food.

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that he had “deep concerns” over the initial findings of the investigation, saying that “It is imperative that this report be independent, with expert findings free from intervention or alteration by the Chinese government.”

Peter Ben Embarek, the WHO delegation leader, said that the virus likely had an animal origin and may have taken a “very long and convoluted path involving also movements across borders”. The possibility that it may have travelled in frozen food is worth investigating, he added.

After their two week quarantine, the WHO team members were only allowed to go on visits organised by their Chinese hosts. Thea Kolsen Fischer, an immunologist and another WHO team member, said to the New York Times that she saw the investigation as “highly geopolitical”.

“Everybody knows how much pressure there is on China to be open to an investigation and also how much blame there might be associated with this,” she said.

Team member Peter Daszak, and president of the EcoHealth Alliance, said that it “was not my experience”.

“As lead of animal/environment working group I found trust and openness with my China counterparts. We did get access to critical new data throughout,” he tweeted.

“New data included environmental and animal carcass testing, names of suppliers to Huanan market, analyses of excess mortality in Hubei, range of Covid-like symptoms for months prior, sequence data linked to early cases and site visits with unvetted live question and answer.”

Source: The Guardian

Categories : COVIDTags :

WHO Warns of ‘Catastrophic Failure’ over COVID Vaccination

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The World Health Organization head, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has warned that the world faces a “catastrophic moral failure” because of unequal access to COVID vaccines. 

He said that 49 wealthier states had conducted 39 million vaccinations between them, but one poor country had only 25 doses.

To date, the US, China, India, Russia and the UK have all developed vaccines, and mostly prioritised their own populations to receive them – although the German company BioNTech developed theirs in collaboration with Pfizer, and even so, the EU failed to secure vaccines sufficiently in advance. 

Dr Tedros spoke to an executive board session of the WHO, saying: “I need to be blunt: the world is on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure – and the price of this failure will be paid with lives and livelihoods in the world’s poorest countries.”

He warned that a selfish approach to vaccination would lead to hoarding and rising prices.

“Ultimately, these actions will only prolong the pandemic, the restrictions needed to contain it, and human and economic suffering,” he added.

Calling on nations to accelerate their progress, he said: “My challenge to all member states is to ensure that by the time World Health Day arrives on 7 April, Covid-19 vaccines are being administered in every country, as a symbol of hope for overcoming both the pandemic and the inequalities that lie at the root of so many global health challenges.” 

Thus far, 180 countries have signed on to the Covax initiative, which aims to negotiate as a bloc for lower vaccine prices. The initiative aims to distribute vaccines to low- and middle income countries, 92 of which will have their vaccines paid for by the initiative. Dr Tedros said that two billion doses had been secured, with an option of a billion more, with the first doses delivered by February.

UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock said in a reaction to Dr Tedros’ warnings that, “The UK is the world’s biggest supporter, financial supporter, of the global programme to ensure access to vaccines in all countries in the world.”

The UK has contributed £548m ($734m) to the Covax initiative. Canada drew criticism after it was revealed that, due to vaccine hoarding, the 70 poorest countries would only be able to vaccinate 10% of their population, while Canada had secured enough vaccines for five times its population of nearly 38 million. However, these vaccines are “hypothetical” according to Karina Gould, Canada’s minister of international development. Canada is also contributing $380 million to Covax. Furthermore, discussions are reportedly under way for South Africa to secure some of the vaccines allocated to Canada.

Source: BBC News

Categories : COVIDTags :

WHO Team Arrives in China for COVID Origin Investigations

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Following months of negotiations, and then a list minute hiccough when two team members were denied entry last week, a team of 10 specialists from the WHO arrives in China to carry out their investigations into the origins of COVID.

China, through rapid action and total lockdowns, managed to clamp down on the coronavirus outbreak inside its borders, preventing it from spreading significantly outside of Wuhan, while in Wuhan itself, life has largely returned to normal. In recent weeks, however, new cases have been appearing in Hebei province around Beijing and in Heilongjiang province in the northeast.

Just before travelling, team leader Peter Ben Embarek told AFP news agency that it “could be a very long journey before we get a full understanding of what happened”.

He cautioned against expecting instant results, saying, “I don’t think we will have clear answers after this initial mission, but we will be on the way,” he said.

For a number of months, China has been saying that the virus may not have originated in Wuhan. There has been a lot of unsubstantiated speculation that the SARS-CoV-2 might have been accidentally released from a lab.

Prof Dale Fisher, chair of the global outbreak and response unit at the WHO, told the BBC that he hoped the rest of the world would regard this as a scientific visit. “It’s not about politics or blame but getting to the bottom of a scientific question,” he said.

When the WHO team arrives in China, they will still have to wait through a two week quarantine. Fabian Leendertz, a professor in the epidemiology of highly pathogenic microorganisms at Germany’s public health institute and working remotely with the team, says that their plan of action will be developed over the next two weeks while they are still in quarantine. The team is expected to look at the infamous wet market in Wuhan where it was originally believed the virus made the jump from animals to humans, as well as working with Chinese colleagues and local clinics to establish a picture of the virus’ origins.

Source: BBC News

Categories : COVID UncategorizedTags : 1 Comment

WHO Team Barred from Entry into China

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According to the World Health Organization, its team sent to China to investigate the origins of COVID were denied entry.

Conveying his disappointment at the team being barred from entry into China due to visas not being issued, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “today, we learned that Chinese officials have not yet finalized the necessary permissions for the team’s arrival in China.”

Addressing the media in Geneva, he continued, “I’m very disappointed with this news, given that two members had already begun their journeys and others were not able to travel at the last minute, but had been in contact with senior Chinese officials.”

“But I have been in contact with senior Chinese officials. And I have once again made it clear that the mission is a priority for WHO and the international team.” He added, “We are eager to get the mission underway as soon as possible.” 

The experts were to investigate the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in Wuhan.  The team of 10 will be led by Peter Ben Embarek, WHO’s expert on zoonoses – diseases that cross over the species barrier into humans from animals.

Dr Michael Ryan, the emergencies chief at WHO, said the understanding was that the team would begin the deployment from Tuesday, and that two of its members had begun travelling to China, with one member already turned back due to visa issues while the other was still in transit.

“We did not want to put people in the air unnecessarily if there wasn’t a guarantee of their arrival in China being successful,” said Ryan. “Dr Tedros has taken immediate action and has spoken with senior Chinese officials and has fully impressed upon them the absolute critical nature of this.”
“We hope that this is just a logistical and bureaucratic issue that can be resolved very quickly,” he continued.

According to the The Financial Times, Hua Chunying, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, on Wednesday said, “Tracing the source [of the virus] is a complicated issue. To ensure that the international team’s work progresses smoothly, they must go through the necessary procedures.”

Source: The Independent