Health experts are calling for action to expand cancer care and control in the developing world. A paper published by the medical journal Lancet says cancer was once thought of mostly as a problem in the developed world. But it says cancer is now a leading cause of death and disability in poor countries.
Experts from Harvard University and other organizations urge the international community to fight cancer aggressively. They say it should be fought the way HIV/AIDS has been fought in Africa.
Cancer kills more than seven and a half million people a year worldwide. The experts say almost two-thirds are in low-income and middle-income countries.
They say cancer kills more people in developing countries than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. But they say the world spends only five percent of its cancer resources in those countries.
Felicia Knaul from the Harvard Medical School was one of the authors of the paper. She was in Mexico when she was found to have breast cancer. She received treatment there. She says the experience showed her the sharp divide between the rich and the poor in treating breast cancer.
FELICIA KNAUL: "And we are seeing more and more how this is attacking young women. It's the number two cause of death in Mexico for women thirty to fifty-four. All over the developing world, except the poorest-poorest, it’s the number one cancer-related death among young women. And, I think we have to again say that there is much more we could do about it than we are doing about it."
Professor Knaul met community health workers during her work in developing countries. She says they were an important part of efforts to reduce deaths from cervical cancer. They were able to persuade women to get tested and to get vaccinated against a virus that can cause it.
The experts say cancer care does not have to be costly. For example, patients can be treated with lower-cost drugs that are off-patent. This means the drugs are no longer legally protected against being copied.
In another new report, the American Cancer Society says cancer has the highest economic cost of any cause of death. It caused an estimated nine hundred billion dollars in economic losses worldwide in two thousand eight.
That was one and a half percent of the world economy, and just losses from early death and disability. The study did not estimate direct medical costs. But it says the productivity losses are almost twenty percent higher than for the second leading cause of economic loss, heart disease.
And that's the VOA Special English Health Report, written by Caty Weaver with Vidushi Sinha. I’m Barbara Klein.
Thanks to http://gandalf.ddo.jp/ for audio and text
Thursday, October 30th, 2014
From Washington, this is VOA news. Kurdish forces in Syria getting reinforcements. Ebola cases in Liberia slowing down. I'm Ray Kouguell reporting from Washington.
Kurdish fighters in northern Syria are getting a boost in their battle with Islamic State militants in the town of Kobani.
A group of about 50 rebels from the Free Syrian Army arrived Wednesday in Kobani after crossing into Syria from Turkey.
A group of Iraqi Kurdish fighters flew into an airport in southeastern Turkey Wednesday and then proceeded toward the Syrian border under escort by Turkish security forces.
A senior official at the World Health Organization says the number of new cases of Ebola in Liberia, the worst affected country, is starting to go down. Lisa Schlein reports.
After months of near-futile battle with Ebola, a glimmer of hope is beginning to emerge in Liberia. WHO Assistant Director-General Bruce Aylward says he is cautiously optimistic that the tide may be turning.
He says there has been a huge effort to inform the population about how Ebola is transmitted in order to get people to change the behaviors that are putting them at risk. Most notably, he says, safe burial practices are being more widely adopted. Dr. Aylward says progress is being made in trying to build up clinical care and treatment capacity.
Lisa Schlein, for VOA news, Geneva.
President Obama says the United States may continue to see individual cases of Ebola until the outbreak in West Africa is contained.
At the White House Wednesday, Mr. Obama honored U.S. health workers who have returned from West Africa and those planning to go. He called them heroes who are serving with skills and courage, putting themselves in the heart of the Ebola epidemic for no other reason than the sense of duty.
This is VOA news.
Ukraine's interior minister, Arsen Avakov, says 91 people "in positions of leadership" have been fired from the ministry, including 8 generals found to have links to past pro-Russian governments.
He says the dismissals targeted department heads, including the ministry's regional directorates in Kyiv and Donetsk.
NATO says it detected "unusual" activity in European airspace over the past two days.
A NATO military spokesman in Brussels says that four groups of Russian warplanes have been "conducting significant military maneuvers" over the Baltic Sea, North Sea and the Black Sea.
Norwegian, British, Portuguese, German and Turkish fighters were sent up to intercept and identify the Russian planes.
Russia successfully launched an unmanned rocket with supplies for the International Space Station from Kazakhstan on Wednesday just hours after a catastrophic explosion destroyed a similar mission in the United States.
On Tuesday, an unmanned commercial rocket with supplies and equipment for the space station burst into fiery fragments just seconds after liftoff from Wallops Island in the U.S. state of Virginia off the Atlantic coast.
The cause of the mishap is under investigation.
No one was hurt.
Egypt is evacuating hundreds of families from their homes along its border with the Gaza Strip.
Egyptian authorities are trying to stop "terrorist operations" they believe are originating in the Palestinian territory through tunnels under the border. Edward Yeranian has more.
Al Jazeera TV showed live webcam footage of a bulldozer knocking down a cement- and cinder-block building in the northern Sinai border town of Rafah. The report said Egyptian authorities had ordered 600 families in one area of Rafah to leave their homes.
Egyptian media report that local army commanders spoke with affected residents, giving them 48 hours to remove their belongings.
Egypt declared a state of emergency in the northern Sinai following a terrorist attack last Thursday that killed more than 30 Egyptian soldiers.
Edward Yeranian, Cairo.
Pakistani military officials say eight soldiers have been killed in an operation against militants in the country's Khyber tribal region.
The clash Wednesday also left 21 militants dead.
A landslide in hilly south-central Sri Lanka buried scores of homes, raising fears that hundreds of people may have been killed.
Heavy rains triggered the wave of mud.
A 50-meter-wide river of lava crossed one residential property and is now headed for the main road in the seaside town of Pahoa in the U.S. island state of Hawaii.
The molten stream from Kilauea volcano is threatening dozens of homes and businesses.
Thanks to http://gandalf.ddo.jp/ for audio and text
Wednesday, October 29th, 2014
From Washington, this is VOA news. NASA supply ship rocket to space station explodes on launch. President Obama warns against Ebola quarantines. I'm Ray Kouguell reporting from Washington.
An unmanned commercial rocket that was supposed to send a cargo ship to the International Space Station exploded just seconds after liftoff from a NASA launch pad in the southeastern state of Virginia.
The privately owned rocket barely got off the ground before it blew up just after sunset Tuesday on Wallops Island off the Atlantic coast.
There was no one on board the Antares rocket and no one on the ground was hurt. But NASA says there was significant vehicle and cargo damage.
President Obama says no other nation is doing as much as the U.S. to contain or ultimately stop the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
He has also praised American health workers who volunteered to fight the virus.
White House correspondent Luis Ramirez reports.
Without mentioning any state by name, the president on Tuesday said policies on quarantines and isolation of health workers who have had contact with Ebola patients should not be such that they discourage Americans from helping fight the disease.
"Those workers who are willing and able and dedicated to go over there in a really tough job, that they're applauded, thanked and supported. That should be our priority.”
The administration has rejected calls for a ban on travel to and from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and recommended against automatic quarantines of people arriving from those countries.
Mr. Obama reminded Americans Tuesday that only two people have been infected with Ebola on U.S. soil. He said officials should be guided by science, not fear, in dealing with the disease.
Luis Ramirez, VOA news, at the White House.
This is VOA news.
Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters are headed to Kobani, Syria, to help Syrian Kurds fight Islamic State militants for control of the town just south of the Turkish border.
Kurdish officials say 80 fighters equipped with artillery and machine guns are expected to join the battle for Kobani Tuesday. Another 72 are expected to arrive today.
The fighting continued Tuesday, with the U.S. saying it launched four more aerial attacks on Islamic State positions in Kobani and nine other strikes against jihadists in Iraq.
Foreign ministers and representatives from 40 nations met Tuesday in Berlin to focus on helping Syria's neighbors cope with the huge group of refugees who have been pushed from their country by more than years of war.
The U.N. has registered more than three million Syrian refugees. Turkey and Lebanon each are hosting more than one million people.
At least 18 workers are trapped underground after an accident at a coal mine in southern Turkey.
Initial reports say flooding inside the mine near the town of Ermenek in Karaman province caused a cave-in. But later reports say workers were trapped by the water.
Turkey's emergency management agency says a broken pipe in the mine caused the flooding.
In Hong Kong, protesters marked a one-month anniversary of the student-led pro-democracy demonstrations Tuesday.
The anniversary comes amid an impasse between the protesters and authorities in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory. Ivan Broadhead reports.
Tuesday dawned amid a sea of 2,000 tents and countless democracy activists on the streets of the Hong Kong Central business district.
In the cool breeze, a group of students marked the end of the first full month of the democracy protest by singing the lilting refrain of the Umbrella Movement anthem, Under a Vast Sky.
Late Tuesday, the students continue to strategize, and sing, at the now nightly rally in Umbrella Square.
Ivan Broadhead, Hong Kong.
Protesters want Beijing to repeal its decision to screen candidates for the territory's 2017 election for chief executive.
Authorities have refused, instead declaring the gatherings to be illegal and cracking down on the protesters several times.
Russia will recognize results of upcoming elections in two separatist regions of eastern Ukraine.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says the voting scheduled for November 2nd will be important for what he calls the "legitimization of power" in the unrecognized "People's Republics" of Donetsk and Luhansk.
And a 50-meter-wide river of lava continues to creep down a mountainside in the U.S. island state of Hawaii.
The village's roughly 1,000 residents have been told to evacuate.
It's all coming from the Kilauea volcano at 2,000 degrees.
Thanks to http://gandalf.ddo.jp/ for audio and text
Tuesday, October 28th, 2014
From Washington, this is VOA news. The U.S. ambassador to the U.N. says West Africa's need for help in fighting Ebola is staggering, and an American nurse who is quarantined in the U.S. after returning from West Africa is allowed to go home. I'm Michael Lipin reporting from Washington.
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is calling for a greater international response to the Ebola outbreak that has killed almost 5,000 people in West Africa.
In a Twitter message posted on Monday as she spent a day in Guinea, Samantha Power said the "scale of need is staggering." She also said the provision of the "most basic resources to the affected countries will help to save lives.”
Power later touched down in Sierra Leone for the second leg of her regional tour, which also will take her to Liberia.
Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia all have been hit hard by Ebola.
In Guinea, Power highlighted the efforts of Doctors Without Borders and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control to treat Ebola patients, build medical facilities and educate people about the virus.
A U.S. nurse quarantined for exposure to Ebola has been cleared to return home as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control issued new guidelines for health workers returning from West Africa.
The CDC said Monday that health workers at the highest risk of infection should voluntarily quarantine themselves at home.
But the U.S. agency said most medical workers returning from West Africa would not need isolation and could simply be monitored by U.S. authorities.
The new guidelines come as New Jersey Governor Chris Christie announced that an American nurse quarantined by state officials could finish her quarantine at home.
You are listening to VOA news.
International humanitarian officials who have just returned from Iraq say a major humanitarian emergency is unfolding in the conflict-ridden country.
A joint mission by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs visited the Iraq regions of Baghdad, Irbil and Dohuk and viewed the situation along the Iraqi-Turkish border. Lisa Schlein has more on what they found.
The mission says the situation is particularly dramatic in Kurdistan, which is bearing the brunt of the displacement crisis.
That region currently is hosting 850,000 of the 1.8 million people who have fled attacks from the so-called Islamic State group.
Assistant Secretary-General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation Hesham Youssef says humanitarian requirements are enormous.
"Winterization and shelter are priorities, particularly in the north because of those who are living in dire conditions. Medical care also is a priority because many camps do not have adequate medical facilities and schooling perhaps is the biggest problems for many. But, as far as displaced persons are concerned, there are zero schools.”
Last week, the United Nations appealed for $2.2 billion to meet the humanitarian needs of 5.2 million Iraqis through 2015.
Lisa Schlein, for VOA news, Geneva.
Countries in the Horn of Africa will receive more than $8 billion for economic development as part of a new initiative unveiled in Ethiopia.
Monday's aid pledges came from the European Union and three international development banks in a regional meeting in Addis Ababa hosted by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
The multi-billion dollar initiative is designed to help eight Horn of Africa nations to reduce poverty and create economic growth and opportunities.
The nations include Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda.
Tunisia's main opposition party is claiming victory after Sunday's election for a new parliament.
The secular Nidaa Tounes party said Monday that it has won almost 80 seats in the 217-member assembly, citing exit polls and preliminary results.
Those figures indicated that the moderate Islamist Ennahda party would take around 60 seats.
About 90 parties competed in the election, the latest democratic step since Tunisians overthrew their authoritarian leader, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, in 2011.
Thanks to http://gandalf.ddo.jp/ for audio and text
Monday, October 26th, 2014
From Washington, this is VOA news. Coming up, airstrikes continuing against the Islamic State. Also the latest on the Ebola outbreak.
Syrian activists say more than 800 people have been killed in ground fighting in Kobani in the six-week battle between Islamic State militants and Kurdish fighters for control of the Syrian town just south of the Turkish border.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Sunday that nearly 500 jihadists and more than 300 Kurds have been killed.
American fighter jets launched five more airstrikes on Islamic State positions in the last 24 hours, with plumes of black smoke from the blast billowing into the skies over Kobani on Sunday.
British and U.S. soldiers have formally marked the end of combat operations in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province by [handling] handing [their] over their control of the country's largest military base to Afghan soldiers.
At its peak, the coalition combined base held up to 40,000 personnel including foreign troops and contractors. With an overall drawdown taking place, 12,000 foreign soldiers to train and advise Afghan forces will remain in the country after December.
The government of Mali seeks to prevent a major Ebola outbreak after a two-year-old girl died from the virus after traveling across the country from Guinea.
Meantime, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations has begun a tour of West African countries to assess international support for nations struggling to contain the Ebola outbreak.
In Washington, President Obama met Sunday with his public health and national security advisers to discuss what the White House called "appropriate measures" to contain the spread of the domestic Ebola cases.
This is VOA news.
Exit polls from Ukraine's pro-Europe and nationalist parties have scored a major victory in the country's parliamentary election.
The bloc led by current President Petro Poroshenko won 23 percent of the vote ahead of the People's Front party of his ally, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who took 21 percent. The Self-Help party of western Ukraine was in third place with 13 percent of the vote, while the opposition Bloc party of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych finished a surprising fourth with nearly 8 percent.
Sunday's election was the first parliamentary poll since street protests in the capital, Kyiv, forced Moscow-backed Yanukovych to flee in February, assuring a pro-Europe leadership under President Petro Poroshenko.
Polls are showing a majority of Ukrainian supporting economic and democratic reforms, especially a crackdown on corruption, leading eventually to European Union membership.
Tunisians went to the polls on Sunday to elect their first full parliament under a new constitution. We get more now from Lisa Bryant.
Sunday's vote dominated Tunisia's airwaves as voters lined up early in the morning to cast their ballots.
Tunis resident Mariam Touati waited at a polling station in the old Medina area. What's key, she says, are realistic political programs emphasizing education and economic development, and not just idle talk.
Voter Iheb Attia hopes the elections will achieve a national consensus so Tunisia can move forward to prosperity.
Lisa Bryant, for VOA news, Paris.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has been reelected to a second term to lead the [country's] world's fifth-largest nation.
With 98 percent of the vote counted, Ms. Rousseff won 51.5 percent of the ballots over her opponent, center-right senator Aecio Neves.
The vote is widely seen as an endorsement of Ms. Rousseff's Workers' Party, which has held the presidency since 2003.
An Egyptian court has convicted 23 young democracy activists of staging an illegal demonstration and sentenced them to three years in prison even in the face of international calls for their release.
The activists were arrested in June for violating a law that bans all but police-sanctioned protests, the part of a continuing crackdown on dissent in Egypt by the government of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.
Some of the activists had supported the military's overthrow last year of the democratically elected government of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi. But they since have turned against the el-Sissi government with its severe restrictions on street protests.
You can get more news by going to our website at voanews.com.
Thanks to http://gandalf.ddo.jp/ for audio and text
Saturday, October 25th, 2014
From Washington, this is VOA news. Boko Haram's release of schoolgirls reportedly will occur. In the U.S., New York City hatchet attack is called a terrorist act. I'm Vincent Bruce reporting from Washington.
According to Reuters news agency, Moussa Mahamat Dago, the number-two official in Chad's Foreign Ministry, says he expects Nigeria's deal with militant group Boko Haram to free more than 200 kidnapped schoolgirls will go through despite the apparent breakdown of a cease-fire.
Reuters reports Dago says Nigeria and Boko Haram have verbally agreed to a series of points, including the release of the schoolgirls and of jailed Boko Haram fighters.
No estimate of when that will happen.
New York City's police Commissioner William Bratton is calling Thursday's hatchet attack that wounded two officers an act of terrorism.
Bratton says a search of computers at the home of suspect Zale Thompson uncovered Islamic extremist websites as well as articles about beheadings, the Canadian parliament shooting and the White House intruders.
Police say Thompson had converted to Islam but probably acted on his own.
As the world focuses on the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, cholera has sickened thousands and killed dozens in Ghana's capital. Chris Stein has more.
More than 7,000 people have been infected with cholera in Ghana's capital, Accra, since June, fifty-seven of whom died from the disease.
Simpson Boateng, the director of public health for the Accra Metropolitan Assembly, says food cooked in unsanitary conditions is mainly to blame for the disease. Overflowing gutters and fetid, open sewers are common across the capital.
Chris Stein, for VOA news, Accra.
Visit us at out website voanews.com 24 hours a day for more on these stories. This is VOA news.
The U.S. military says it has not confirmed reports that Islamic State militants are using chlorine gas bombs against Iraqi security forces in their fight to grab more territory.
A Pentagon spokesman, speaking Friday, said U.S. authorities have seen reports of such attacks in U.S. and Iraq media, but Rear Admiral John Kirby said, "We don't have any indications that they are true in terms of usage and in terms of possession.”
Two U.S. nurses two caught Ebola while caring for a Liberian patient are now virus free, while another U.S. Ebola patient is prompting new quarantine measures in and around New York City.
Nina Pham, a nurse at a Dallas, Texas, hospital that treated the first patient diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S., was released from a hospital Friday and met with President Barack Obama. Mr. Obama gave a hug to Pham.
Health officials say another Dallas nurse who has been treated for Ebola, Amber Vinson, no longer has detectable levels of the virus.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest indicated Pham's recovery is a testament to the nation's ability to deal with the disease.
"I think this also should be a pretty apt reminder that we do have the best medical infrastructure in the world, and certainly a medical infrastructure that's in place to protect the American public. And the track record of treating Ebola patients in this country is very strong, particularly for those who are quickly diagnosed and admitted through the system.”
Authorities in Egypt say two attacks in the Sinai Peninsula have killed at least 28 security forces in some of the deadliest violence since the military overthrow of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi last year.
Officials say at least 25 troops were killed in the first attack. In a second attack, gunmen opened fire on another check point near Al-Arish, the main town in the northern part of the restive peninsula.
Turkey's president says Syrian Kurds and Free Syrian Army fighters are joining forces to defend the [Syrian border of Kobani] Syrian border city of Kobani from Islamic State extremists.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has agreed to allow Syrian rebels to transit through his country, said Friday that a deal had been reached allowing 1,300 moderate Syrian rebels safe passage to the besieged city.
Hong Kong's pro-democracy protest leader say they plan to hold a vote to measure public support for their government reform proposals.
A coalition of protest groups says it will hold the referendum on Sunday at the main downtown protest site.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry says the United States is willing to hold denuclearization talks with North Korea.
More on all these stories at our website voanews.com. I'm Vincent Bruce reporting from Washington.
本城市首頁
看回應文章
等級：8
