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| At least 70 children dead in Venezuela measles outbreak: NGO | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: 6 Apr 2018, 01:17 AM (70 Views) | |
| skibboy | 6 Apr 2018, 01:17 AM Post #1 |
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05 April 2018 At least 70 children dead in Venezuela measles outbreak: NGO ![]() © AFP/File | A woman prepares a syringe at a vaccination point against measles in Cucuta, Colombia, at the international brigde Simon Bolivar on the border with Venezuela, on March 21, 2018 CARACAS (AFP) - At least 70 children from an indigenous tribe have died from an outbreak of measles in a remote jungle region of eastern Venezuela, a human rights group said Thursday. "The propagation started in early January and we are calling for a health alert," said Armando Obdola, head of the Kape Kape NGO. Obdola said he had been recording the deaths in the state of Delta Amacuro, where children of the Warao indigenous community have been dying since the beginning of the year. "There are no medicines, and there's nothing the doctors and nurses can do." Latin America was declared free of measles in 2016, but the Pan American Health Organization last month reported a virulent outbreak in Venezuela. The country has the highest number of confirmed cases, 159, among nine Latin American countries that reported cases in the first three months of 2018. The second biggest outbreak, in Brazil, has 14 confirmed cases, all of them imported from Venezuela. "All confirmed cases were reported in unvaccinated Venezuelan citizens between the ages of nine months and 18 years," said PAHO. Measles, a highly contagious viral disease that affects children in particular, is preventable with vaccination. Venezuela's deepening economic crisis has caused chronic shortages of food and medicines. Access to affected areas are difficult. The Warao settlements are located on the edge of the Orinoco River, eight hours' travel from the regional capital Tucupita. "Sometimes getting to a sick person is impossible. The boats do not have fuel, and despite the seriousness of the situation the silence of the authorities has prevailed," said Obdola. Venezuela's Health Minister Luis Loez said Tuesday on Twitter that the government of President Nicolas Maduro is fine-tuning details for the launch of a national vaccination plan for diphtheria, measles and yellow fever. Source: france24.com
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| skibboy | 26 Apr 2018, 02:13 AM Post #2 |
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25 April 2018 Cheap, portable test can identify risk of measles ![]() © AFP/File | A child receives a vaccination against measles by a family physician on April 16, 2018 in the Romanian capital, Bucharest WASHINGTON (AFP) - A cheap, portable device can warn of a person's vulnerability to infectious diseases like measles, which kills tens of thousands of people each year, mainly in developing countries, researchers said Wednesday. The test, called the Measles-Rubella Box (MR Box), uses a finger-prick volume of blood to detect the presence of antibodies against measles and rubella in only 35 minutes. Measles kills about 134,000 children per year, and rubella causes some 100,000 children to be born with birth defects such as deafness. Researchers brought the device -- which is about the size of a toaster oven and uses -lab-on-a-chip- technology made with inkjet printers to manipulate blood samples to the Kakuma refugee camp in northwestern Kenya where they tried it on 144 children and caregivers. "The system had a good ability to determine whether a person was at risk for measles and rubella infection," Amy Summers, an epidemiologist at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who was involved with the field trial in Kenya, told reporters on a conference call. "This was done by detecting whether a person had antibodies to either measles or rubella in their body, either from a prior infection of measles and rubella or from being vaccinated." Its accuracy "matched the international laboratory-standard reference tests of the Kenyan Medical Research Institute for 86 percent of measles samples, and 91 percent of rubella samples," said study co-author Darius Rackus, post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Toronto. The cost per microfluidic cartridge was about $6 at the time of the field study in 2016, but technological advances have since lowered it to about $1 or less, he said. Researchers hope the device will be useful in remote settings or places where people are at risk of vaccine-preventable diseases and other illnesses. "This technology would be very useful in places where people are displaced by humanitarian emergencies, which right now could be in, for instance, with the forced displacement of the Rohingya from Myanmar to Bangladesh," said Summers. "So populations who are displaced by humanitarian emergencies are especially vulnerable to vaccine preventable diseases" because they often have low vaccination coverage and suffer from overcrowding and malnutrition, she said. Co-author Aaron Wheeler, a professor at the University of Toronto, said his lab is currently working on a similar lab-on-a-chip test for malaria and other tests for Zika virus. "And of course, there are many more tests than we have the manpower or financial resources to develop, but that is the dream, that this type of system with its flexibility could be sent out into the world," he said. The study appears in the April 25 edition of the journal Science Translational Medicine. Source: france24.com
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3:23 PM Jul 11