Latest news with #childHealth
UAE Moments
05-07-2025
- Health
- UAE Moments
Sheikh Mohammed Funds Dh7m Treatment to Save Syrian Girl
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, has stepped up to cover the Dh7 million cost of life-saving treatment for a two-year-old Syrian girl battling spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a rare genetic disorder. The move came after the girl's uncle shared an emotional plea on social media, asking for help to fund her urgent medical care. Her treatment will take place at Al Jalila Children's Hospital in Dubai—one of the few places in the world equipped to handle such cases. A Family's Plea Answered in Days Yaqeen Kankar's family had been struggling to find a diagnosis for her critical condition. Doctors warned that without the expensive gene therapy, she might only have a few months to live. But just three days after their online appeal, the family got the call that changed everything. 'Sheikh Mohammed is like a father to all children,' said Yaqeen's father, Ibrahim Kankar. 'We never imagined this would happen so quickly. Now my daughter has a chance at a normal childhood.' Advanced Care at Dubai's Al Jalila Hospital Al Jalila Children's Hospital welcomed Yaqeen for testing and began preparing for Zolgensma, a one-time gene therapy that's considered one of the world's most expensive treatments. Doctors are closely monitoring her condition to ensure the best possible care during the process. SMA attacks motor neurons in the body, making it difficult for children to move, eat, or even breathe without help. With timely treatment, children like Yaqeen can live fuller lives.
Malay Mail
03-07-2025
- Politics
- Malay Mail
Indonesia's free school meal scheme under fire after food poisoning, protests and delays
JAKARTA, July 4 — When an Indonesian mother dropped off her daughter at school in May, she did not expect her to become violently sick after eating lunch from the government's new billion-dollar free meal programme. 'My daughter had a stomachache, diarrhoea, and a headache,' the woman told AFP on condition of anonymity about the incident in the Javan city of Bandung. 'She also couldn't stop vomiting until three in the morning.' Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto touted the populist scheme as a solution to the high rates of stunted growth among children, as he carved his way to a landslide election victory last year. But its rollout since January has stumbled from crisis to crisis, including accusations of nepotism, funding delays, protests and a spate of food poisonings. It was slated to reach as many as 17.5 million children this year to the tune of US$4.3 billion. But so far it has only served five million students nationwide from January to mid-June, according to the finance ministry. The poisoning issues were not isolated to that girl's school—five others reported similar incidents. But Prabowo has lauded the number of illnesses as a positive. 'Indeed there was a poisoning today, around 200 people out of three million,' he said in May. 'Over five were hospitalised, so that means the success rate is 99.99 per cent. A 99.99 per cent success rate in any field is a good thing.' Elementary schoolchildren eating food prepared by the government's free meal program at a classroom in Jakarta. — AFP pic Rushed policy Large-scale aid programmes in Indonesia have a history of allegations of graft at both the regional and national levels. Experts say this programme is particularly vulnerable, with little in the way of accountability. 'A big budget means the possibility of corruption is wide open, and with lax monitoring, corruption can happen,' said Egi Primayogha, a researcher at Indonesia Corruption Watch. 'Since the beginning, the programme was rushed, without any good planning. There is no transparency.' The programme was rolled out soon after Prabowo took office in October and local investigative magazine Tempo reported that 'several partners appointed' were Prabowo supporters in the election. Agus Pambagio, a Jakarta-based public policy expert, said Prabowo rushed the plan, with critics saying there was little public consultation. 'Japan and India have been doing it for decades. If we want to do it just like them within a few months, it's suicide,' he said. 'We can't let fatalities happen.' The plan's stated aim is to combat stunting, which affects more than 20 per cent of the country's children, and reduce that rate to five per cent by 2045. Prabowo's administration has allocated US$0.62 per meal and initially set a budget of 71 trillion rupiah (US$4.3 billion) for this year. But authorities have been accused of delays and under-funding the programme. A catering business in capital Jakarta had to temporarily shut down in March because the government had not paid the $60,000 it was owed. The case went viral and it eventually got its money back. Poses risk The government announced a US$6.2 billion budget boost recently but revised it by half as problems mounted in its ambitious quest to deliver meals to almost 83 million people by 2029. Widespread cuts to fund the programme's large budget also sparked protests across Indonesian cities in February. Yet some say the programme has benefited their child. 'It's quite helpful. I still give my son pocket money, but since he got free lunch, he could save that money,' Reni Parlina, 46, told AFP. However a May survey by research institute Populix found more than 83 per cent of 4,000 respondents think the policy should be reviewed. 'If necessary, the programme should be suspended until a thorough evaluation is carried out,' said Egi. The National Nutrition Agency, tasked with overseeing free meal distribution, did not respond to an AFP request for comment. The agency has said it will evaluate the scheme and has trained thousands of kitchen staff. Kitchen partners say they are taking extra precautions too. 'We keep reminding our members to follow food safety protocols,' said Sam Hartoto of the Indonesian Catering Entrepreneurs Association, which has 100 members working with the government. While they seek to provide assurances, the debacles have spooked parents who doubt Prabowo's government can deliver. 'I don't find this programme useful. It poses more risks than benefits,' said the mother of the sick girl. 'I don't think this programme is running well.' — AFP
Yahoo
29-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Edinburgh dad's heartbreak as baby's everyday symptom leads to devastating diagnosis
An Edinburgh dad has opened up on his family's devastation after their son's first birthday party led to a rare diagnosis. Marc Robson and his partner Melinda Garratt noticed their little boy Finley wasn't his usual self on the day of his party, and he started throwing up. Finley still wasn't feeling right the day after, so the family decided to call 111. Melinda, 31, and Marc, 32, said they were advised to visit a pharmacist. They were told it may be due to Finley transitioning from formula to cow's milk, though this didn't help his condition. READ MORE: Edinburgh police swoop on residential street as 'emergency incident' unfolds READ MORE: Edinburgh dad's new career after going viral on Facebook 'by chance' After several trips to A&E, Finley began vomiting blood. Finley was eventually rushed to Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary, where doctors found a tumour on his brain. Marc, who grew up in Edinburgh before starting a family in Newcastle, told Chronicle Live: "When we initially went to the RVI we thought it was going to be stomach issues, so hearing it was a tumour was very tough. "The only way I can describe it is it was almost like I wasn't in my own body when I was hearing it. It was a strange feeling. Melinda was in tears." Finley underwent an operation the following day which removed the majority of the tumour from his brain. Marc said: "They took him away from us at about 9.30am and we didn't see him again until 6.30pm. It was a very, very long day." Sign up for Edinburgh Live newsletters for more headlines straight to your inbox Approximately one week later the family received preliminary results which revealed the tumour could be one of four aggressive forms. And on Monday (June 23) the family received the heartbreaking news that Finley's tumour was the most aggressive of the four - an Atypical Teratoid Rhabdoid Tumor (ATRT) - an extremely rare form of brain cancer. Finley will now begin chemotherapy on Monday (June 30). Marc said: "I'm not sure if it has even sunk in fully for us yet. We've had quite a few sleepless nights. It's so hard to explain what it's like hearing the news. It's almost as if you're watching someone else get that news. "I think the next stage when he has the chemo is when it's going to hit the most. When we need to manage the treatment and his wellbeing even more than we already do. "Contact with family and friends is going to be non-existent because of the side effects and his immune system going down. And when he loses his hair we've decided that we're going to shave it off to get it over and done with. "The doctor recommended we do that too because we didn't realise but when babies go through this they can easily choke on their hair when they're sleeping. We'll shave it off when we feel that his scars have healed from his operation." Finley will receive chemotherapy for the next five months before undergoing tests to see if it has been successful. Reflecting on how Finley has been coping with treatment, Marc said: "He doesn't talk other than he's recently started saying 'dada' so he can't really tell you what's wrong. "But you can tell he's been in a lot of pain since the operation, which is normal. After his first operation he didn't really move much, he was sleeping a lot and couldn't lift his head up so we had to hold him. Join Edinburgh Live's Whatsapp Community here and get the latest news sent straight to your messages. "He used to love rolling around but you could see that it was frustrating him when he was trying to move but he couldn't because he was in pain and he didn't quite understand why he was in pain." The couple have set up a GoFundMe page to help ease the financial burden they have already encountered since Finley became unwell. Marc, who works as a business development manager for a company which provides maintenance for care homes, is currently receiving full pay. However, he is unsure how much he will be able to work once Finley begins chemo. Melinda, who works for Lookers car sales company, is currently off work. As well as helping to manage bills and any unexpected costs that arise as the couple navigate treatments and time away from work, the money raised will also help the couple with hospital parking fees and travel expenses. For more information and how to donate visit the GoFundMe page here.
Yahoo
29-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
A million kids won't live to kindergarten because of this disastrous decision
The deadliest country in the world for young children is South Sudan — the United Nations estimates that about 1 in 10 children born there won't make it to their fifth birthday. But just a hundred years ago, that was true right here in the United States: Every community buried about a tenth of their children before they entered kindergarten. That was itself a huge improvement over 1900, when fully 25 percent of children in America didn't make it to age 5. Today, even in the poorest parts of the world, every child has a better chance than a child born in the richest parts of the world had a century ago. How did we do it? Primarily through vaccines, which account for about 40 percent of the global drop in infant mortality over the last 50 years, representing 150 million lives saved. Once babies get extremely sick, it's incredibly hard to get adequate care for them anywhere in the world, but we've largely prevented them from getting sick in the first place. Vaccines eradicated smallpox and dramatically reduced infant deaths from measles, tuberculosis, whooping cough, and tetanus. And vaccines not only make babies likelier to survive infancy but also make them healthier for the rest of their lives. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., unfortunately, disagrees. President Donald Trump's secretary of health and human services (HHS), a noted vaccine skeptic who reportedly does not really believe the scientific consensus that disease is caused by germs, recently announced the US will pull out of Gavi, an international alliance of governments and private funders (mainly the Gates Foundation) that works to ensure lifesaving vaccinations reach every child worldwide. His grounds? He thinks Gavi doesn't worry enough about vaccine safety (he does not seem to acknowledge any safety concerns associated with the alternative — dying horribly from measles or tuberculosis). The Trump administration had already slashed its contribution to Gavi as part of its gutting of lifesaving international aid programs earlier this year, leaving any US contributions in significant doubt. But if Kennedy's latest decision holds, it now appears that the US will contribute nothing to this crucial program. The US is one of many funders of Gavi, historically contributing about 13 percent of its overall budget. In 2022, we pledged $2.53 billion for work through 2030, a contribution that Gavi estimates was expected to save about 1.2 million lives by enabling wider reach with vaccine campaigns. That's an incredibly cost-effective way to save lives and ensure more children grow into healthy adults, and it's a cost-effective way to reduce the spread of diseases that will also affect us here in the US. Diseases don't stay safely overseas when we allow them to spread overseas. Measles is highly contagious, and worldwide vaccination helps keep American children safe, too. Tuberculosis is becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics, which makes it harder and more expensive to treat, and widespread vaccination (so that people don't catch it in the first place) is the best tool to ensure dangerous new strains don't develop. It is genuinely hard to describe how angry I am about the casual endangerment of more than a million people because Kennedy apparently thinks measles vaccines are more dangerous than measles is. The American people should be furious about it, too. If other funders aren't able to cover the difference, an enormous number of children will pointlessly die because the US secretary of health and human services happens to be wildly wrong about how diseases work. But the blame won't end with him. It will also fall on everyone else in the Trump administration, and on the senators who approved his appointment in the first place even when his wildly wrong views were widely known, for not caring enough about children dying to have objected. Kennedy, it's worth noting, is not even a long-standing Trump loyalist. He's a kook who hitched his wagon to the Trump train a few months before the election. He doesn't have a huge constituency; it wouldn't have taken all that much political courage for senators to ask for someone else to lead HHS. A lot of his decisions are likely to kill people — from his decision to ban safe, tested food dyes and instead encourage the use of food dyes some people are severely allergic to because they're 'natural' to his courtship of American anti-vaxxers and his steps to undermine accurate guidance on American child vaccination. Trump could still easily override Kennedy on Gavi, if Trump cared about mass death. But if it holds, pulling out of Gavi is likely to be Kennedy's deadliest decision — at least so far. He reportedly may not believe that AIDS is caused by HIV, either, and he can surpass the death toll of this week's decision if he decides to act on that conviction by gutting our AIDS programs in the US and globally. But whether or not the Gavi withdrawal is the deadliest, it certainly stands out for its sheer idiocy. (The Gates Foundation is going to heroic lengths to close the funding gap, and individual donors matter, too: You can donate to Gavi here.) None of this should have been allowed to happen. Since Kennedy's confirmation vote in the Senate passed by a narrow margin with Mitch McConnell as the sole Republican opposing the nomination, every single other Republican senator had the opportunity to prevent it from happening — if they were willing to get yelled at momentarily for demanding that our health secretary understand how diseases work. I am glad the United States does not have the child mortality rates of South Sudan. I'm glad that even South Sudan does not have the child mortality rates of our world in 1900. I'm glad the United States participated in the worldwide eradication of smallpox, and I was glad that we paid our share toward Gavi until the Trump administration slashed funding earlier this year. I'm even glad that mass death is so far in our past that it's possible for someone to be as deluded about disease as Kennedy is. But I am very, very sick of seeing the greatest achievements of our civilization, and the futures of a million children, be ripped to shreds by some of the worst people in politics — not because they have any alternative vision but because they do not understand what they are doing.
New York Times
25-06-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Why Is World Hunger America's Problem?
Some readers are fed up with me! 'Don't guilt trip me' is a refrain I heard from many readers of my recent columns from West Africa and South Sudan about children dying because of cuts in American humanitarian aid. Let me try to address the kinds of concerns critics have raised in Times comments and on social media: These may be tragedies, but they are not our tragedies. They are not our problems. I don't mean to sound cold-hearted, but we are not the world's doctor, and we can't end all suffering. True. We cannot save every dying child, or every mom hemorrhaging in childbirth. But our inability to save all lives does not imply that we should save none. A starving child on the brink of death can be brought back with a specialty peanut paste, Plumpy'Nut, costing just $1 a day. And the anemia that often causes women to hemorrhage and die in childbirth can be prevented with prenatal minerals and vitamins costing $2.13 for an entire pregnancy. Don't those seem reasonable investments? It's widely acknowledged that there were problems in American humanitarian aid. Why should American taxpayers, already strained and facing rising debt, have to foot the bill for dysfunction? I've followed the United States Agency for International Development for decades, and by far the worst dysfunction has been the chaos following U.S.A.I.D.'s dismantling this year. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
