At the Mass, organized in a closed circle due to the coronavirus pandemic, Cardinal Erdőprayed for God’s blessing to grant families strength. In published remarks about the Mass, he made clear that prayer was the best way to open Pope Francis’ family year in Hungary.
The Mass was also an attempt to prepare the Church for the arrival of Pope Francis, who will travel to Hungary’s capital in September to participate in the closing Mass of the 52nd Eucharistic Congress.
Erdő had announced recently that the Pope was to appear at the 2020 International Eucharistic Congress, an annual Catholic clergy and laypeople gatherin, but that it had to be canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic that authorities say killed more than 18,000 people in Hungary alone. The Cardinal explained that Pope Francis would instead visit the final day of the eight-day Congress in Budapest on September 12.
That visit comes as an encouragement to the many Hungarian families struggling to survive as the European Union nation of nearly 10 million people faces economic challenges.
Traditional Family
Hungary’s family affairs minister, Katalin Novák, wrote in a letter read at the Mass, that she appreciates that families could always count on Christian Churches’ service. She said that Church support was crucial as the government believes that the traditional family, which she called a “cornerstone of Christian life and culture,” is under attack.
Though Hungary’s population is still declining, the government claims its pro-family policy helped increase the number of marriages by 80 percent since 2010.
Miklós Soltész, the state secretary for church relations and ethnic minorities, said at the Mass that the number of couples deciding to have children has also grown.
Latest data from the World Health Organization (WHO) from more than 80 countries, showed a reduction in treatment of 21 per cent in the first year of the pandemic, compared with 2019.
“#Tuberculosis is preventable & treatable, but remains 1 of the ?’s top infectious killers because too many people go undiagnosed. Improved screening is essential to rapidly identify people with TB infection or disease & connect them with care”-@DrTedroshttps://t.co/isi33X05Iz
The biggest differences were in Indonesia (down 42 per cent), South Africa (41 per cent), the Philippines (37 per cent) and India (25 per cent).
“The disruption to essential services for people with TB is just one tragic example of the ways the pandemic is disproportionately affecting some of the world’s poorest people, who were already at higher risk for TB,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General.
“These sobering data point to the need for countries to make universal health coverage a key priority as they respond to and recover from the pandemic, to ensure access to essential services for TB and all diseases.”
TB remains one of the world’s deadliest infectious killers.
Each day, nearly 4,000 people die from TB and close to 28,000 people fall ill with this preventable and curable disease. Global efforts to combat it have saved an estimated 63 million lives since the year 2000.
Ahead of World TB Day on Wednesday 24 March, WHO pointed out that some countries have already taken steps to sidestep the impact of new coronavirus on the delivery of TB services.
Successful policies have included expanding the use of digital technologies such as computer-aided diagnosis in chest X-rays – particularly beneficial in countries lacking sufficient numbers of trained radiographers – along with the provision of remote advice and support and providing home-based TB prevention and care.
10 million a year infected
Despite these innovations, many people who have the preventable disease are still unable to access the care they need. Globally, some 10 million people fall ill with TB every year.
“WHO fears that over half a million more people may have died from TB in 2020, simply because they were unable to obtain a diagnosis,” WHO said, adding that this is by no means a new problem; before COVID-19 struck, the gap between the estimated number of people developing TB each year and the annual number of people officially diagnosed with the virus was about three million.
“The pandemic has greatly exacerbated the situation,” the UN health agency said.
Recommended steps
In new recommendations to help health authorities tackle the problem, the WHO urged systematic TB screening for the following groups: household and close contacts of people with TB, people living with HIV, people in prisons and detention centres, people exposed to silica (mainly miners).
Community screening is beneficial in vulnerable populations with limited access to health care, WHO insisted, such as urban poor communities, homeless communities, migrants, refugees, remote isolated communities, and other vulnerable or marginalized groups.
Further drug innovations have meant that health professionals should also encourage patients with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis to adopt the new shorter and fully oral medicine regime, which no longer has an injectable element.
This shorter regimen is nine to 11 months long “and research has shown that patients find it easier to complete the regimen, when compared to the longer regimens which last up to 20 months”, WHO said.
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The leading US public health expert Anthony Fauci will be the subject of a new book – for children.
Dr Fauci: How a Boy from Brooklyn Became America’s Doctor will be published on 29 June by Simon & Schuster.
The publisher told CNN the book was not endorsed by Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who has now served seven presidents but who rose to international fame last year as the coronavirus pandemic took hold. But the writer, Kate Messner, said she had spoken to Fauci “at the edges of his long work days”.
“Before Tony Fauci was America’s doctor,” she said, “he was a kid with a million questions, about everything from the tropical fish in his bedroom to the things he was taught in Sunday school.
“‘I’m really hopeful that curious kids who read this book – those we’re counting on to solve tomorrow’s scientific challenges – will see themselves in the pages of Dr Fauci’s story and set their goals just as high.”
The book about Dr Fauci, as reported by CNN. Photograph: CNN
At points in the last year it seemed Fauci’s chief goal was just not to be fired, as his frank advice clashed with Donald Trump’s inconsistent, politically motivated and often plain bizarre statements on the pandemic and how it might be contained.
But Fauci survived and even flourished while other members of the former president’s taskforce saw their reputations battered or were fired outright. According to Johns Hopkins University, by Monday more than 542,000 Americans had died of Covid-19, out of a case count of nearly 30m. The case count has slowed as the Biden administration has supervised a rapid vaccine rollout, though virus variants and public behaviour still pose considerable threats.
Recently turned 80, Fauci maintains powerful appeal among the young. In December, as Covid vaccines began to be used across the US, he told children he had saved Christmas by flying to the North Pole and giving Santa a shot.
The same month, he discussed with the Guardian the dominant theme of his career before Covid, the search for a cure for HIV and Aids.
“I’ve been in a very unique position of now being one of the very, very few people who were there from the very first day of HIV,” he said.
A friend reported Fauci as saying: “The one thing that I still have left that I want to do is put an end to” HIV.
Fauci is not the first beloved modern public figure to have his or her story told for children. For just one example, books about the late supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg – who was also from Brooklyn – have flourished.
According to an Amazon page for the book about Fauci, Messner and illustrator Alexandra Bye will offer children a story about “a curious boy in Brooklyn, delivering prescriptions from his father’s pharmacy on his blue Schwinn bicycle.
“His father and immigrant grandfather taught Anthony to ask questions,” the blurb says, “consider all the data, and never give up – and Anthony’s ability to stay curious and to communicate with people would serve him his entire life.”
The publisher also promises “a timeline, recommended reading, a full spread of facts about vaccines and how they work, and Dr Fauci’s own tips for future scientists”.
In an alert that warmer seas helped to fuel a record Atlantic hurricane season last year, along with intense tropical cyclones in the Indian and South Pacific Oceans, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) also underscored the long-term threat from sea level rise.
“About 40 per cent of the global population live within 100 kilometres of the coast, there is an urgent need to protect communities from coastal hazards, such as waves, storm surge and sea level rise” via “multi-hazard” warning systems and forecasting, said Professor Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General.
According to the UN agency, the “blue economy” is estimated at $3-6 trillion a year, accounting for more than three quarters of world trade and providing livelihoods for more than six billion people.
Millions of dollars in goods and hundreds of lives are still lost at sea each year, due to extreme weather conditions such as high winds, large waves, fog, thunderstorms, sea ice and freezing spray, WMO noted.
It described the ocean as “the Earth’s thermostat”, absorbing and transforming a significant portion of the sun’s radiation and providing heat and water vapour to the atmosphere.
Although vast ocean currents circulate this heat around the planet, often for thousands of kilometres, human activities have increasingly distorted this natural ocean/atmosphere equilibrium, WMO maintained.
The UN agency pointed to the fact that oceans absorb over 90 per cent of excess atmospheric heat trapped by greenhouse gases, which has come “at a heavy price as ocean warming and changes in ocean chemistry are already disrupting marine ecosystems and people who depend on them”.
This impact “will be felt for hundreds of years”, WMO chief Taalas continued, before pointing to the profound repercussions of ice melt for the rest of the globe, through changing weather patterns and accelerating sea level rise.
“In 2020, the annual Arctic sea ice minimum was among the lowest on record, exposing Polar communities to abnormal coastal flooding, and stakeholders such as shipping and fisheries, to sea ice hazards,” he explained.
Threat observation
Ahead of World Meteorological Day on Tuesday 23 March, the UN agency highlighted the value of the “24/7 work” of national weather centres in protecting lives and property “not just on land but also at sea”.
Although the accuracy and timeliness of weather forecasting have improved, WMO explained that vessels lacking the latest technology often went without this crucial shipping news.
“It is vital to improve decision support services to help mariners reach a balance between minimizing costs and routing, whilst also maximizing safety and avoiding hazardous maritime weather,” WMO said in a statement.
A key concern is increasing sea ice loss as the world warms up, it explained. “Less ice does not mean less danger and the consequences of a major accident in Arctic waters would be devastating for the environment. WMO is therefore trying to improve forecasts and warnings of both weather and ice conditions in polar regions.”
Gaps to be filled
Despite technological advances that have revolutionized ocean monitoring globally and helped to understand its link to weather and climate, the UN agency cautioned that “big geographical and research gaps” remain in the Global Ocean Observing System, amid increasing demand for forecasts and services.
The COVID-19 crisis made matters worse when in March 2020, governments and oceanographic institutions recalled nearly all oceanographic research vessels home.
“It also reduced the capacity of commercial ships to contribute vital ocean and weather observations,” WMO said. “Ocean buoys and other systems could not be maintained, in some cases leading to their premature failure.”
Sea level has risen by around 15 centimetres during the 20th century, according to WMO, from glacier melt, the expansion of warmer sea waters and additions from former ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.
Projections show that sea level rise could be in the order of 30-60 centimetres by 2100, even if greenhouse gas emissions are sharply reduced and global warming is limited to well below 2°C.
However, if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated, the increase will be between 60-110 centimetres.
Relief and Acer Therapeutics Sign Collaboration and License Agreement for Worldwide Development and Commercialization of ACER-001 for the Treatment of Urea Cycle Disorders and Maple Syrup Urine Disease – Book Publishing Industry Today – EIN Presswire
The European People’s Party has submitted a fresh request for a plenary debate on the latest revelations in Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder case, after the discussion was blocked by the Socialists and Democrats Group last week.
The call for a debate was initially made by the biggest bloc in the European Parliament on the 41st month since Caruana Galizia was killed by a car bomb.
The party had referred to the shocking testimony by self-confessed hitman Vince Muscat, who in court indicated that former minister Chris Cardona and former chief of staff Keith Schembri may have known of the murder plot. Both have denied the claims.
The EPP believes that following the alleged involvement of key officials and politicians, the Maltese government faces a profound crisis of credibility in the EU.
But in a tweet on Thursday afternoon, the EPP said “@TheProgressives continue to stick their head in the sand about serious allegations of involvement by Malta’s highest levels of government in the murder case and have now blocked a request for a plenary debate next week.”
EPP group chairman Manfred Weber had promised to file the request again.
Since then, Schembri has been accused in court of money laundering, criminal conspiracy, fraud and forgery, and was remanded in custody.
On Monday the EPP confirmed that despite the veto on the discussion, it had reintroduced its request for a debate and resolution.
The European Parliament “should insist the EC maintains pressure on Maltese authorities to end impunity,” the party tweeted.
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Regional TB mortality has gone down, declining by 9.4% between 2018 and 2019. This is notably higher than the average global decline in TB mortality (3.7%) and enough to have reached the End TB Strategy milestone of a 35% reduction by 2020 compared to 2015.
However, TB is second only to COVID-19 as an infectious disease that kills, and drug resistance is a major concern. There are also worrying indications that the COVID-19 pandemic may stall progress or cause significant setbacks in the fight against TB.
In 2019, there were an estimated 20 000 TB deaths in the WHO European Region – equivalent to 2.2 deaths per 100 000 people, and some 3560 TB deaths occurred in the European Union/European Economic Area (EU/EEA), equal to 0.7 deaths per 100 000. For 2019, in the European Region as a whole, there were some 216 000 new TB diagnoses, corresponding to 23.2 cases per 100 000. Twenty-nine countries in the EU/EEA reported a total of 47 504 TB cases, which equates to a rate of 9.2 cases per 100 000. Across the EU/EEA, most country-specific rates continue to decline; however, the EU/EEA as a whole is currently not on track to reach the goal of ending TB by 2030.
TB is far from being evenly distributed in the European Region. Around 83% of estimated cases occur in 18 countries, where incidence is five times higher than the EU/EEA average. Five of the 18 high priority countries are within the EU/EEA, and 13 are in eastern Europe and central Asia.
COVID-19’s impact on TB
The decrease in TB burden put the Region on course to reach the End TB Strategy milestone for 2020 and the regional action plan target for reduction of the TB incidence rate. However, there are grave concerns that the COVID-19 pandemic may jeopardise recent progress.
Negative impacts have already been observed in TB service delivery and notifications in high-burden countries, this is believed to indicate that fewer people have been tested, meaning that people with undiagnosed TB are not getting the treatment they need and run the risk of infecting others.
The findings of an ongoing assessment of the impact of COVID-19 on TB services and spread in the European Region, will be ready in Spring 2021.
Treatment outcomes remain suboptimal
Despite universal access to quality-assured anti-TB drugs, treatment outcomes in the Region remain suboptimal. Only 77% of patients successfully completed treatment in 2019, well below the global rate of 85%. Treatment success in the EU/EEA was lower still, with only 64% of all TB cases notified in 2018 being reported as having completed their treatment successfully.
Strains of TB that do not respond to commonly used treatment regimens are known as either multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) or extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB). Just 59% of MDR-TB cases notified in the Region in 2017 were successfully treated, far short of the 75% target. As for XDR-TB cases in 2016, treatment success was only 43%.
Across the Region, treatment outcomes for MDR-TB remain suboptimal. Unsuccessful treatment is one of the factors that drives resistance, often due to lack of effective TB medicines in treatment regimens for drug-resistant TB, and low adherence to therapy.
Overall, in the Region, every third pulmonary TB patient has a drug-resistant form of the disease. Across the Region, a quarter of drug-resistant TB patients have XDR-TB, and 70% of the world’s XDR-TB patients live in the European Region.
The percentage of newly notified TB patients tested using WHO-recommended rapid diagnostic tests increased from 45% in 2015 to 69% in 2019, but nonetheless remains below the global End TB Strategy target of 90%. Rapid diagnostic tests allow quicker diagnosis, resulting in minimisation of suffering, onward transmission and death.
People living with HIV are particularly susceptible to TB, and coinfection is common. In the European Region, only 52% of coinfected patients complete TB treatment successfully, far below the global rate of 76%. This means that in the European Region there is a lower probability of people with a coinfection being successfully treated and making a full recovery.
TB at centre of health agendas
Stella Kyriakides, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety stated: “The decline of tuberculosis in recent years is positive news. But TB continues to be a threat to some regions in the EU and continues to affect the most vulnerable in our society. We know that there is still more work to do. Together with our agencies, the Commission is committed to playing its part to eliminate TB through, in part, funding, research and the fight against antimicrobial resistance. Prevention, early diagnosis and access to treatment and care will also play key roles in this regard”.
ECDC Director Dr Andrea Ammon commented:
“In the EU/EEA, the overall TB notification rate continued to fall in 2019, highlighting some progress towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, despite this progress, the EU/EEA is not currently on track to reach the goal of ending the TB epidemic by 2030. Further to this, across all cohorts, treatment success in the EU/EEA remains well below the WHO targets. The wide-scale disruption to TB services due to the COVID-19 pandemic will make it even more difficult for Member States to reach the SDGs and treatment targets, but now is the time for countries to accelerate their progress towards eliminating TB”.
“How COVID-19 has drawn attention and resources away from TB services is of huge concern. I have no doubt that we’ll get COVID-19 under control. But the price of that can never be losing hard won progress with other health threats, like TB. Today, the risk of drug-resistant TB becoming even more resistant is real, and it’s not a risk we want to take. People need to realise this and understand the urgency of the action required and also know that we already have new opportunities and tools. Working towards ending TB is a crucial part of WHO’s European Programme of Work and, having treated TB patients myself as a doctor, it is something that’s very close to my heart. Great progress has been made in recent years, but challenges remain nonetheless. I therefore applaud the huge efforts made by countries in our region to overcome TB, a terrible and yet curable disease that causes great suffering,” said Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe.
He explained that a well-managed water cycle, encompassing drinking water, sanitation, hygiene, wastewater, transboundary governance and other key issues, “means defence against ill-health and indignity”.
It means a “response to challenges from a changing climate and increasing global demand”, Mr. Guterres added.
The fundamental question has been asked to understand water’s “true value” to better protect the vital resource for every person and every purpose, amid a growing global water crisis.
Today, about one in three people lack access to safe drinking water, and there are fears that by 2050, as many as 5.7 billion people could be living in areas where water is scarce for at least one month a year.
Furthermore, it is estimated that by 2040, global water demand could increase by more than 50 per cent, putting additional stress on the vital resource.
According to a new UN report, one of the key reasons for water waste and misuse is the inability to recognize the value of water.
“Recognizing, measuring and expressing water’s worth, and incorporating it into decision-making, are fundamental to achieving sustainable and equitable water resources management”, the report, Valuing Water, highlighted.
Launched in conjunction with World Water Day, the report also offers best practices and in-depth analyses to stimulate ideas and actions for better stewardship in the water and related sectors.
UNICEF/Helene Sandbu Ryeng
A sign at a school in South Sudan that reads “No water, No life.”
Water and sustainable development
In his message, Mr. Guterres underscored that water and sustainable development are intricately linked.
“There is no aspect of sustainable development that does not fundamentally rely upon it”, he said.
Ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all, is also one of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which countries have committed to achieve by 2030. While progress is being made towards this Goal, the pace needs to quadruple.
“Chronic under-investment in water and sanitation disadvantages and harms vast numbers of people. This is unacceptable”, the UN chief said, calling on everyone to “commit to intensifying efforts to truly valuing water so all may have equitable access to this most precious resource.”
/https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/6058bcbc0bdf2661a1831d09/0x0.jpg?cropX1=0&cropX2=2880&cropY1=22&cropY2=1642&w=696&resize=696,0&ssl=1 "U.S. And European Union Hit China With Sanctions Over Treatment Of Uyghurs")
