Hunger-striking mum of jailed UK-Egyptian close to death: family
Laila Soueif, 69, was hospitalised Thursday in London with "critically low" blood sugar, having resumed her full hunger strike last week.
Doctors gave "her proteins that help the body produce glucose", her anxious daughter Sanaa Seif said outside St Thomas hospital in London.
"It worked for a couple of hours" but the "bottom line is, we're losing her, and... there is no time," Seif added, saying her mother was still refusing to accept glucose.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer "needs to act now, not tomorrow, not Monday. Now, right now," she said.
"It's a miracle that we still have her, I'm really proud of her, and I want to remind Keir Starmer (of) his promise to us."
Soueif's son Abdel Fattah was arrested in Egypt in September 2019 and sentenced to five years in prison on charges of "spreading false news" after sharing a Facebook post about police brutality.
The 43-year-old writer and activist has become a symbol of the plight of thousands of political prisoners languishing in Egyptian jails.
A United Nations panel of experts on Wednesday determined his detention was arbitrary and illegal and called for his immediate release.
Soueif has been on hunger strike since September 29, 2024, the day her son was expected to be released after completing his five-year prison sentence.
Abdel Fattah, who has spent most of the past decade behind bars, has also been on hunger strike himself since March 1 after learning his mother had been hospitalised with dangerously low blood sugar and blood pressure.
Following her February hospitalisation, Soueif decided to ease her strike after Starmer said he had pressed for her son's release in a call with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
She began consuming 300 calories a day through a liquid nutritional supplement, still going without food until last week, when she returned to consuming only rehydration salts, tea without sugar and vitamins.
Her family says she has lost over 40 percent of her bodyweight since September.
Last week, Starmer's office again said the prime minister had pressed for Abdel Fattah's release in a call with Sisi.
A key figure in the 2011 uprising that toppled longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak, he has been detained under successive administrations since.
Soueif's daughter said she had been in contact with the UK foreign ministry. "They know she's dying. They know in detail how she's dying," she said, visibly upset.
A foreign ministry spokesperson told AFP they were "concerned to hear of Laila's hospitalisation" and continued to press for Abdel Fattah's release.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
France 24
13 hours ago
- France 24
How social media can 'trigger' eating disorders in young people
Young women and girls are much more likely to suffer from illnesses such as anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorder, though rates among men have been increasing. Research has shown the percentage of people worldwide who have had some kind of eating disorder during their lives rose from 3.5 percent in 2000 to 7.8 percent in 2018, a timeframe that captures the rise of social media. For the professionals trying to help teenagers recover from these disorders, misinformation from influencers on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram is a huge problem. "We no longer treat an eating disorder without also addressing social media use," French dietitian and nutritionist Carole Copti told AFP. "It has become a trigger, definitely an accelerator and an obstacle to recovery," she added. The causes of eating disorders are complex, with psychological, genetic, environmental and social factors all having the potential to make someone more susceptible. Social media "is not the cause but the straw that may break the camel's back," said Nathalie Godart, a psychiatrist for children and adolescents at the Student Health Foundation of France. By promoting thinness, strictly controlled diets and relentless exercise, social media weakens already vulnerable people and "amplifies the threat" to their health, she told AFP. 'Vicious cycle' Just one recent example is the #skinnytok trend, a hashtag on TikTok full of dangerous and guilt-inducing advice encouraging people to drastically reduce how much food they eat. For Charlyne Buigues, a French nurse specialising in eating disorders, social media serves as a gateway to these problems, which are "normalised" online. She condemned videos showing young girls with anorexia exposing their malnourished bodies -- or others with bulimia demonstrating their "purges". "Taking laxatives or vomiting are presented as a perfectly legitimate way to lose weight, when actually they increase the risk of cardiac arrest," Buigues said. Eating disorders can damage the heart, cause infertility and other health problems, and have been linked to suicidal behaviour. Anorexia has the highest rate of death of any psychiatric disease, research has found. Eating disorders are also the second leading cause of premature death among 15- to 24-year-olds in France, according to the country's health insurance agency. Social media creates a "vicious cycle," Copti said. "People suffering from eating disorders often have low self-esteem. But by exposing their thinness from having anorexia on social media, they gain followers, views, likes... and this will perpetuate their problems and prolong their denial," she added. This can especially be the case when the content earns money. Buigues spoke of a young woman who regularly records herself throwing up live on TikTok and who had "explained that she was paid by the platform and uses that money to buy groceries". 'Completely indoctrinated' Social media also makes recovering from eating disorders "more difficult, more complicated and take longer", Copti said. This is partly because young people tend to believe the misleading or fake diet advice that proliferates online. Copti said consultations with her patients can feel like she is facing a trial. "I have to constantly justify myself and fight to make them understand that no, it is not possible to have a healthy diet eating only 1,000 calories -- that is half what they need -- or that no, it is not normal to skip meals," she said. "The patients are completely indoctrinated -- and my 45-minute weekly consultation is no match for spending hours every day on TikTok," she added. Godart warned about the rise of people posing as "pseudo-coaches", sharing incorrect, "absurd" and potentially illegal nutrition advice. "These influencers carry far more weight than institutions. We're constantly struggling to get simple messages across about nutrition," she said, pointing out that there are lifelines available for those in need. Buigues takes it upon herself to regularly report problematic content on Instagram, but said it "serves no purpose". "The content remains online and the accounts are rarely suspended -- it's very tiring," she said. The nurse has even advised her patients to delete their social media accounts, particularly TikTok. "It may seem radical but until young people are better informed, the app is too dangerous," she said.
France 24
a day ago
- France 24
Gaza rescuers say Israeli fire kills 10 near aid site as ceasefire push stalls
"At least 10 Palestinians were killed and more than 100 others... were wounded due to gunfire from Israeli vehicles towards thousands of citizens" approaching the US aid site west of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP. The casualties were taken to Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, he said. Israel has faced mounting international criticism over the humanitarian crisis in war-ravaged Gaza, where the United Nations has warned the entire population faces famine. Nearly 20 months into the war, negotiations remain deadlocked. A brief truce collapsed in March, and Israel has since intensified operations to destroy Hamas. In the Gaza Strip, aid is only trickling in after Israel partially lifted a more than two-month total blockade, and the United Nations reported looting of its trucks and warehouses last month. 'Death traps, not aid points' The UN's World Food Programme has called on Israel "to get far greater volumes of food assistance into Gaza faster", saying desperation was "contributing to rising insecurity". The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which is administered by contracted US security with support from Israeli troops, began distributing food in the Gaza Strip on May 26. The United Nations and other major aid groups have refused to cooperate with the organisation, saying it violated basic humanitarian principles, and appeared crafted to cater to Israeli military objectives. Officially a private effort, GHF said it had distributed 2.1 million meals as of Friday. In a statement on Sunday, Hamas accused Israeli forces operating in Rafah of committing "a new massacre against hungry civilians who had gathered at the so-called 'humanitarian aid' distribution sites", calling them "mass death traps, not humanitarian relief points". Truce talks The Palestinian militant group said Saturday that it had responded positively to a US-backed ceasefire proposal, but Washington's main negotiator criticised Hamas's reply as "totally unacceptable". Hamas said it had emphasised the need for a permanent ceasefire -- long a sticking point for Israel. And a source within the Palestinian group's political bureau added that it had also pushed for a "full Israeli withdrawal" from the Gaza Strip. On Friday, Israel had warned Hamas to either accept the deal and free the hostages held in Gaza "or be annihilated". US envoy Steve Witkoff called Hamas's response to its truce offer on Saturday "totally unacceptable", and urged it to "accept the framework proposal we put forward". "That is the only way we can close a 60-day ceasefire deal in the coming days in which half of the living hostages and half of those who are deceased will come home to their families and in which we can have... substantive negotiations in good-faith to try to reach a permanent ceasefire," he added in a post on X. Of the 251 hostages taken during Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack, 57 remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead. The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Saturday that at least 4,117 people have been killed in the territory since Israel resumed its offensive on March 18, taking the war's overall toll to 54,381, mostly civilians. Hamas's attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. © 2025 AFP
AFP
3 days ago
- AFP
'Make America Healthy Again' report cites nonexistent studies: authors
The highly anticipated "Make America Healthy Again" (MAHA) report was released on May 22 by the presidential commission tasked with assessing drivers of childhood chronic disease. But it included broken citation links and credits authors with papers they say they did not write. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt downplayed the errors as "formatting issues" during a press briefing on May 29 (archived here). "It does not negate the substance of the report," said Leavitt, who expressed confidence in Kennedy and his team, and insisted their work was "backed on good science." Image White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt takes questions during the daily briefing at the White House in Washington, DC, on May 29, 2025 (AFP / Jim WATSON) The issues were first reported May 29 by NOTUS (archived here), a US digital news website affiliated with the nonprofit Allbritton Journalism Institute. Noah Kreski (archived here), a Columbia University researcher listed as an author of a paper on adolescent anxiety and depression during the Covid-19 pandemic, told AFP the citation is "not one of our studies" and "doesn't appear to be a study that exists at all." The citation included a link (archived here) that purported to send users to an article in the peer-reviewed medical journal JAMA Pediatrics, but it was broken. Jim Michalski, a spokesman for the JAMA Network (archived here), said it "was not published in JAMA Pediatrics or in any JAMA Network journal." Columbia University epidemiologist Katherine Keyes (archived here), who was also listed as an author of the supposed JAMA study, told AFP she does research on the topic but does not know where the statistics credited to her came from, and that she "did not write that paper." She expressed concern about the error saying: "Citation practices are an important part of conducting and reporting rigorous science." She said she would be happy to send her actual research on depressive symptoms in adolescents and young adults "to the MAHA committee to correct the report, although I have not yet received information on where to reach them." Guohua Li, another Columbia University professor named in the citation (archived here), said the reference is "totally fabricated" and that he does not even know Kreski. AFP also spoke with Harold Farber, a pediatrics professor at Baylor College of Medicine (archived here), who said the paper attributed to him "does not exist" nor had he ever collaborated with the co-authors credited in the MAHA report. Similarly, Brian McNeill, spokesperson for Virginia Commonwealth University, confirmed that professor Robert Findling (archived here) did not author a paper the report says he wrote about advertising of psychotropic medications for youth. A fourth paper on ADHD medication was also not published in the journal Pediatrics in 2008 as claimed in the MAHA report, according to the journal's publisher, the American Academy of Pediatrics. A keyword search reveals a blog post with the same title as the purported paper, "Direct-to-consumer advertising and the rise in ADHD medication use among children" but it has a different author and is not a peer-reviewed publication (archived here). The Democratic National Committee blasted the report as "rife with misinformation" in a May 29 press release, saying Kennedy's agency "is justifying its policy priorities with studies and sources that do not exist" (archived here). Citations edited The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) declined to comment, referring AFP's questions to the White House. At her briefing, Leavitt declined to answer how the report was produced and whether artificial intelligence tools may have been used to craft it, directing those questions back to HHS. t reported its analysis of the citations showed "oaicite" was attached to the URLs, the presence of which indicates the use of artificial intelligence products from OpenAI (archived here). Within hours of the briefing, an edited version of the report replaced the original paper on the White House website (archived here). Changes are not flagged or marked as corrections, but the four citations investigated by AFP were replaced with working links. The modifications are as follows: The paper said to come from the team at Columbia University was swapped out for a reference to a briefing on the Teen National Health Interview Survey published by KFF (archived here). The nonexistent paper credited to Farber was replaced with a paper on oral corticosteroid medication prescribed for asthma he published in Pediatrics in 2017 (archived here). An article published in the journal Psychiatric Services in 2006 replaced the paper initially credited to Findling (archived here). The reference to a paper on ADHD medication advertising was supplanted by a 2013 article from The New York Times (archived here) Concerns about Kennedy The revelations about the MAHA study came just a day after Kennedy attacked major medical journals, accusing them of collaborating with the pharmaceutical industry and threatening to bar government scientists from publishing in them. Kennedy was approved as health secretary earlier this year despite widespread alarm from the medical community over his history of promoting vaccine misinformation and denying scientific facts. Since taking office, he has ordered the National Institutes of Health to probe the causes of autism -- a condition he has long falsely tied to the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. The report's chronic disease references appear to nod to that same disproven theory, discredited by numerous studies since the idea first aired in a late 1990s paper based on falsified data. It also criticizes the "over-medicalization" of children, citing surging prescriptions of psychiatric drugs and antibiotics, and blaming "corporate capture" for skewing scientific research. Image US Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS) (L) look on as Director of the National Institutes of Health Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya holds up a copy of a MAHA health report during a MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) Commission Event in the White House in Washington, DC, on May 22, 2025. A White House report detailing Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s priorities devotes sizable space to stoking fear about vaccines -- even as it tackles more grounded worries over chemicals and diet. (AFP / Jim WATSON) Read more of AFP's reporting on health misinformation here. Gwen Roley and Manon Jacob contributed reporting to this article.
