Only the fact that they are two males was provided, but the current state of the admitted passengers, as well as their nationality, are unknown, though it is assumed that they are foreigners.

Until now, no information has been released by the corresponding authorities, about the origin of the cruise and where the boat was heading, which according to information, has already left the Dominican port.

However, “the coronavirus will not disappear; it will continue, and countries will have to learn to manage it alongside other respiratory problems such as the flu,” Tedros said, adding that the 90% drop in mpox cases encourages hope for a quick resolution to this health crisis.

Tedros recalled that the criteria for determining whether the covid pandemic is no longer an international emergency will be discussed at the next meeting of the committee of experts, which has met quarterly since 2020 to analyze the evolution of the health crisis.

The WHO chief emphasized that, while the number of cases in both the covid and mpox crises is declining, the world still faces numerous health challenges, citing the cholera outbreaks currently declared in 29 countries, including the one that has killed 280 people in Haiti.

The rise in cases is primarily due to two factors, lamented this community health specialist on World AIDS Day this Thursday: The lack of fuel paralyzed Haiti, preventing patients from attending medical appointments, and insecurity prevented people living in the so-called “red zones” from visiting health centers to receive care.

According to the most recent Ministry of Public Health and Population data, there are approximately 150,000 people in Haiti living with HIV/AIDS, 145,000 of who are adults and 5,700 of whom are children. 85% of those infected with the virus are aware of their situation, and 90% are receiving treatment. In 2021, 4,300 people became infected with HIV and 1,500 died from AIDS-related illnesses, bringing the total number of deaths in the country to 217,000 since the outbreak began.

Women account for 59% of those living with HIV, making them the most vulnerable to the disease due to factors such as higher poverty, more visits to health centers than men, greater vulnerability, and a lack of economic and financial autonomy. According to health officials, approximately 133,000 people have active access to antiretrovirals, to eradicate the disease in Haiti by 2030.

Scientists say they have made a breakthrough designing a vaccine against all 20 known types of flu.

It uses the same messenger-ribonucleic-acid (mRNA) technology as successful Covid vaccines.

Flu mutates and the current annual jab is updated to ensure the best match for the sort circulating but would probably not protect against new pandemic types.

The new vaccine triggered high levels of antibodies, in tests on ferrets and mice, that could fight a broad range.

The antigens it contains – safe copies of recognisable bits of all 20 known subtypes of influenza A and B viruses – can teach the immune system how to fight them and, hopefully, any new strain that could spark a pandemic, the researchers say, in the journal Science.

“The idea here is to have a vaccine that will give people a baseline level of immune memory to diverse flu strains,” Dr Scott Hensley, one of the scientists behind the work, at the University of Pennsylvania, said.

“There will be far less disease and death when the next flu pandemic occurs.”

The 2009 swine flu pandemic – caused by a virus that jumped species to infect humans – was less serious than initially feared.

But the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic is thought to have killed tens of millions of people.

Director of the Institute for Global Health and Emerging Pathogens at Mount Sinai Hospital, in New York, Adolfo García-Sastre, said: “Current influenza vaccines do not protect against influenza viruses with pandemic potential.

“This vaccine, if it works well in people, would achieve this.

“The studies are preclinical, in experimental models.

“They are very promising and, although they suggest a protective capacity against all subtypes of influenza viruses, we cannot be sure until clinical trials in volunteers are done.”

Estanislao Nistal, a virologist at San Pablo University, said: “All of this implies the potential for an easily and rapidly constructed universal vaccine that could be of great use in the event of a pandemic outbreak of a novel influenza virus.”  (BBC)

Nearly half of the world's population, or 3.5 billion people, suffer from oral diseases, the majority of them in low- and middle-income countries, the World Health Organization said on Thursday.

The most common oral illnesses are tooth decay, severe gum disease, tooth loss and oral cancers, with untreated tooth decay affecting nearly 2.5 billion people, the United Nations agency said.

About 380,000 new cases of oral cancers are diagnosed every year, it said.

HAITI SEES A SURPRISE RETURN OF CHOLERA, AS A GANG BLOCKADE CAUSES A SHORTAGE OF DRINKING WATER

WHO cited large out-of-pocket expenditure and the unavailability of highly specialized dental equipment in primary healthcare facilities as two of the reasons for the high prevalence of oral diseases, especially in poor countries.

"Oral health has long been neglected in global health, but many oral diseases can be prevented," said WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

The agency suggested countries include equitable oral health services as part of their national planning and integrate oral health services into their primary health care models, while also improving access to affordable fluoride toothpaste, among other measures.

SOURCE: AP — The World Health Organization says it’s holding an open forum to rename the disease monkeypox, after some critics raised concerns the name could be derogatory or have racist connotations.

In a statement Friday, the UN health agency said it has also renamed two families, or clades, of the virus, using Roman numerals instead of geographic areas, to avoid stigmatisation. The version of the disease formerly known as the Congo Basin will now be known as Clade one or I and the West Africa clade will be known as Clade two or II.

WHO said the decision was made following a meeting of scientists this week and in line with current best practices for naming diseases, which aims to “avoid causing offense to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional, or ethnic groups, and minimize any negative impact on trade, travel, tourism or animal welfare.”

Numerous other diseases, including Japanese encephalitis, Marburg virus, Spanish influenza and Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome have been named after the geographic areas where they first arose or were identified. WHO has not publicly suggested changing any of those names.

Monkeypox was first named in 1958 when research monkeys in Denmark were observed to have a “pox-like” disease, although they are not thought to be the animal reservoir.

WHO said it was also opening a way for the public to suggest new names for monkeypox, but did not say when any new name would be announced.

To date, there have been more than 31,000 cases of monkeypox identified globally since May, with the majority of those beyond Africa. Monkeypox has been endemic in parts of central and west Africa for decades and was not known to trigger large outbreaks beyond the continent until May.

WHO declared the global spread of monkeypox to be an international emergency in July and the US declared its own epidemic to be a national emergency earlier this month.

Outside of Africa, 98 percent of cases are in men who have sex with men. With only a limited global supply of vaccines, authorities are racing to stop monkeypox before it becomes entrenched as a new disease.

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The World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Assistant Director-General for Emergencies, Dr Ibrahima Soce Fall, says countries need to work more together to stop the rapidly spreading outbreak of Monkeypox, “no matter the nationality, skin colour or religion of the affected population”.

“We have been working on Monkeypox in Africa for several years, but nobody was interested.

“What is unfortunately called a ‘neglected tropical diseases.’ We worked a lot on that with very few resources and only when the northern countries became affected by this disease the world reacted. It was the same with the Zika virus and we have to stop this discrimination.”

On July 23, the WHO declared the spread of the virus to be a public health emergency of international concern – the organisation’s highest level of alert. Through this, WHO aims to enhance coordination, cooperation of countries and all stakeholders, as well as global solidarity.

According to Dr Fall, “the world must be involved to protect these populations, no matter their nationality, their skin colour, or their religion, etc. I think it is extremely important and now that more than 70 countries are affected in the world, everyone is getting active”.

Until this year, the virus which causes Monkeypox rarely spread outside Africa where it is endemic. But reports of a handful of cases in Britain in early May signalled that the outbreak had moved into Europe.

“It is important, and we have already been doing so, to accelerate the research and development agenda on Monkeypox so that the most affected African countries can have the resources to prevent and fight against Monkeypox,” said Dr Fall.

A vaccine was approved in 2019 for the prevention of Monkeypox, however availability remains limited at the moment.

“We have had many cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Central African Republic, Cameroon, and some sporadic cases in countries such as Ghana, Benin, etcetera,” Dr Fall said.

“I think it is time that the world invests so that these populations that are living in rural areas and in forest areas, can be protected.

” . . . If we only treat what is happening in Europe and America, we will only treat the symptoms of Monkeypox, but not the real disease. It is important that the world gets mobilised to this kind of disease.”

SOURCE: UNifeed

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SOURCE: AP — The World Health Organization said the expanding monkeypox outbreak in more than 70 countries is an “extraordinary” situation that now qualifies as a global emergency, a declaration Saturday that could spur further investment in treating the once-rare disease and worsen the scramble for scarce vaccines.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the decision to issue the declaration despite a lack of consensus among members of WHO’s emergency committee. It was the first time the chief of the U.N. health agency has taken such an action.

“In short, we have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly through new modes of transmission about which we understand too little and which meets the criteria in the international health regulations,” Tedros said.

“I know this has not been an easy or straightforward process and that there are divergent views among the members” of the committee, he added.

Although monkeypox has been established in parts of central and west Africa for decades, it was not known to spark large outbreaks beyond the continent or to spread widely among people until May, when authorities detected dozens of epidemics in Europe, North America and elsewhere.

Declaring a global emergency means the monkeypox outbreak is an “extraordinary event” that could spill over into more countries and requires a coordinated global response. WHO previously declared emergencies for public health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak, the Zika virus in Latin America in 2016 and the ongoing effort to eradicate polio.

The emergency declaration mostly serves as a plea to draw more global resources and attention to an outbreak. Past announcements had mixed impact, given that the U.N. health agency is largely powerless in getting countries to act.

Last month, WHO’s expert committee said the worldwide monkeypox outbreak did not yet amount to an international emergency, but the panel convened this week to reevaluate the situation.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 16,000 cases of monkeypox have been reported in 74 countries since about May. To date, monkeypox deaths have only been reported in Africa, where a more dangerous version of the virus is spreading, mainly in Nigeria and Congo.

In Africa, monkeypox mainly spreads to people from infected wild animals like rodents, in limited outbreaks that typically have not crossed borders. In Europe, North America and elsewhere, however, monkeypox is spreading among people with no links to animals or recent travel to Africa.

WHO’s top monkeypox expert, Dr. Rosamund Lewis, said this week that 99% of all the monkeypox cases beyond Africa were in men and that of those, 98% involved men who have sex with men. Experts suspect the monkeypox outbreaks in Europe and North America were spread via sex at two raves in Belgium and Spain.

Michael Head, a senior research fellow in global health at Southampton University, said it was surprising WHO hadn’t already declared monkeypox a global emergency, explaining that the conditions were arguably met weeks ago.

Some experts have questioned whether such a declaration would help, arguing the disease isn’t severe enough to warrant the attention and that rich countries battling monkeypox already have the funds to do so; most people recover without needing medical attention, although the lesions may be painful.

“I think it would be better to be proactive and overreact to the problem instead of waiting to react when it’s too late,” Head said. He added that WHO’s emergency declaration could help donors like the World Bank make funds available to stop the outbreaks both in the West and in Africa, where animals are the likely natural reservoir of monkeypox.

In the U.S., some experts have speculated whether monkeypox might be on the verge of becoming an entrenched sexually transmitted disease in the country, like gonorrhea, herpes and HIV.

“The bottom line is we’ve seen a shift in the epidemiology of monkeypox where there’s now widespread, unexpected transmission,” said Dr. Albert Ko, a professor of public health and epidemiology at Yale University. “There are some genetic mutations in the virus that suggest why that may be happening, but we do need a globally-coordinated response to get it under control,” he said.

Ko called for testing to be immediately scaled up rapidly, saying that similar to the early days of COVID-19, that there were significant gaps in surveillance.

“The cases we are seeing are just the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “The window has probably closed for us to quickly stop the outbreaks in Europe and the U.S., but it’s not too late to stop monkeypox from causing huge damage to poorer countries without the resources to handle it.”

In the U.S., some experts have speculated that monkeypox might become entrenched there as the newest sexually transmitted disease, with officials estimating that 1.5 million men are at high risk of being infected.

Dr. Placide Mbala, a virologist who directs the global health department at Congo’s Institute of National Biomedical Research, said he hoped any global efforts to stop monkeypox would be equitable. Although countries including Britain, Canada, Germany and the U.S. have ordered millions of vaccine doses, none have gone to Africa.

“The solution needs to be global,” Mbala said, adding that any vaccines sent to Africa would be used to target those at highest risk, like hunters in rural areas.

“Vaccination in the West might help stop the outbreak there, but there will still be cases in Africa,” he said. “Unless the problem is solved here, the risk to the rest of the world will remain.”

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