Latest news with #healthcrisis
ABC News
3 hours ago
- Health
- ABC News
Saving Samoa's bees; a mission in motion
This Week on Radio Australia — we're turning up the volume on Pacific voices! On Nesia Daily, hosts Jacob McQuire and Michael Chow buzz into the world of beekeeping in Samoa, catching up with a local beekeeper in the wake of World Bee Day. Over on Politok, Scott Waide dives deep into the Pacific's health crisis unpacking the political pulse behind the region's struggling systems. And on Nesian Footy, Sam Wykes and Tinirau Arona go one-on-one with a former rugby star, tracing his wild ride across continents — the highs, the heartbreaks, and everything in between. From culture to current affairs, sport to storytelling — it's all happening this week on Radio Australia. Relax into your Sunday morning with two hours of the best stories from across the Pacific. Host Kuntamari crofts, will take you on a Pacific Sundays journey, bringing you stories that will inspire, entertain and inform you.
Irish Times
a day ago
- Health
- Irish Times
Gaza's last hospitals battle to save patients amid severe depletion of life-saving medical items
No helium to operate MRI machines. No antibiotics to treat infected wounds. No room in surgery for general medical conditions, and no new tyres for ambulances wrecked by driving through Gaza 's bombed streets. This is the lot of the 19 hospitals still functioning – most only partially – in the devastated enclave where they serve a war zone with 2.1 million people that has received no significant medical aid for almost three months. The severe depletion of life-saving medical items in Gaza comes as Israel's offensive floods hospitals with casualties, their bodies torn and burned by bombs and often also crushed by the rubble of their collapsed homes. READ MORE 'There are countless examples of lives that could have been saved but were lost because of shortages, or because they could not be evacuated for treatment abroad,' said Allam Nayef, head of intensive care and anaesthesiologist at a field hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza run by the health ministry and MSF, the international medical charity. Infection is a major risk. 'Bacteria have become like monsters' in Gaza's hospitals, he said. A wounded Palestinian child, the only surviving child of doctor Dr Alaa al-Najjar, lies in a hospital bed at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis after an Israeli airstrike hit their home. Photograph: Hani Alshaer/Anadolu One patient was injured so badly his feet had to be amputated, but 2½ months later Nayef found himself anaesthetising the same patient again: his wounds were infected and doctors could only save his life with a fresh amputation, this time above the knees. Gaza's hospitals have plunged further into crisis since Israel resumed its offensive on March 18th after breaking a two-month ceasefire. Local health authorities say more than 3,700 Palestinians have been killed and about 11,000 injured since then. Israel has laid full siege to the territory since March 2nd, preventing all aid deliveries and pushing the population to the brink of famine . In recent days it has allowed limited humanitarian aid to enter, but UN officials have described this as a 'drop in the ocean' compared with the need. [ In pictures: Many in Gaza face malnutrition as blockade enters third month Opens in new window ] During the ceasefire, medical supplies had surged into the enclave, and the World Health Organisation built up stocks in warehouses and hospitals. But doctors say crucial items have now run out or become so depleted that their use is severely rationed. Trauma doctors must resort to inadequate workarounds to try to save lives, while the lack of supplies is causing needless deaths and greater pain for those who survive. 'If someone needs 20 tablets of antibiotics, we give them four,' said Raafat al-Majdalawi, director general of the Al-Awda Health and Community Association, which operates two hospitals in the strip. One of them, Al-Awda hospital, the last functioning medical facility in northern Gaza, was evacuated of all staff and patients on Thursday evening on orders from the Israeli military, according to the UK charity Medical Aid for Palestinians, citing hospital director Mohamed Salha. The hospital had been encircled by Israeli troops and repeatedly shelled this month. 'Inpatients still needed care,' Salha said. 'However, the shelling continued and directly targeted the hospital, leaving us with no choice.' In the hospitals still operating, doctors are severely limited in their ability to help patients. 'There is no scope to prescribe all that an injured patient needs,' said Taisir al-Tanna, a vascular surgeon at Al-Ahli hospital in North Gaza. 'I am restricted by what can be found here.' Wounded Palestinian children and babies are brought to the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital after an attack by the Israeli military on the Zaytoun Quarter of Gaza Strip on May 29th. Photograph: Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images The hospital was forced to close for weeks after Israeli air strikes in mid-April destroyed the emergency ward. It has since reopened, but Tanna, who carries out up to a dozen surgeries each day, said he lacked crucial materials such as artificial blood vessels to replace damaged arteries; correctly sized sutures for vascular repair; and specialised catheters to remove blood clots during surgical procedures. This month Tanna operated on a 26-year-old bombing victim with a gash in his abdomen that severed a main artery supplying blood to the lower limbs. No artificial blood vessels were available so he used a surgical plastic tube, known as a shunt, hoping that within 48 hours an artificial vessel could be found. 'We couldn't get one, and a foot turned gangrenous, so we had to amputate it,' said Tanna. In the absence of many kinds of antibiotics and disinfectants, and with the injured packed into overcrowded wards, post-operative infection is a major scourge, said Nayef. One cause of infection, he said, was the use of external fixators — long pins piercing the skin attached to a metal frame outside the body that are used to hold broken bones together. They carry a bigger risk of contamination than other methods of setting bones, but doctors have to rely on them because of a shortage of screws and plates used for internal fixation. The lack of a functioning MRI machine has cost yet more lives, said Nayef. He and other doctors could not intervene to save the 20-year-old son of a colleague whose neck was wounded by shrapnel. 'He had a lentil-sized hole, and it appeared his spinal cord had been injured,' said Nayef. 'We needed an MRI scan to assess the damage so we could treat him or try to evacuate him from Gaza.' The injury affected an area in the spinal cord that controlled breathing, said Nayef. The man remained on a ventilator suffering lung infections until he died. Nayef himself, like most Palestinians in Gaza, has been displaced multiple times. Until he moved to Deir al-Balah this month, he worked in the Gaza European hospital in Khan Younis, but it closed on May 13th after a series of Israeli strikes. That meant the loss of another 25 emergency beds, Nayef said. Israel said it was targeting Mohammad Sinwar, the Hamas chief in Gaza, at the hospital. It has subsequently said Sinwar was killed. The WHO said this month that 94 per cent of all hospitals in Gaza had been 'damaged or destroyed'. Some 18 non-profits working in the strip, including Oxfam and Medical Aid for Palestinians, on Wednesday said the attacks on hospitals 'violate international humanitarian law and are part of the systematic dismantling of Gaza's already fragile health system'. [ I showed my friends in Israel this photo of a starving baby in Gaza and asked them if they knew Opens in new window ] 'All we do now is war medicine, to try to save a life or save a limb,' said Nayef. 'There is no scope for scheduled operations and for most reconstructive surgery. 'If we get a mass casualty event, we have to start with those most likely to survive, and by the end we will have lost two or three of the others.' Victoria Rose, a UK plastic surgeon volunteering at the Nasser Medical complex in Khan Younis, described the situation there as 'absolutely dire' as doctors struggled to treat 'more and more' casualties. 'We are running out of basic things like blades for scalpels, gloves, gauze and solutions to clean the skin with,' she said. Patients' recovery is being badly delayed by another factor: malnutrition. Starvation is creeping through the enclave as food stocks dwindle. Patients 'don't have the vital nutrients, vitamins and minerals that they need to heal', said Rose. Ahmad al-Farra, head of paediatrics at the same hospital, said this was the war's most critical period. 'There is starvation, fear, and people are being forced to evacuate from place to place,' he said. 'In two or three weeks, no vaccines will be available to give to any child. All the diseases that are preventable will come back.'– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
The Herald
a day ago
- Health
- The Herald
KZN health MEC Simelane calls for urgent action against older men impregnating girls
'This is not only a health crisis, it's a social justice emergency. Unless we talk about it and act decisively, we will continue to see young lives destroyed. We are raising a broken generation if we remain silent,' said Simelane. The MEC called for unity and decisive action, proposing that district mayors, amakhosi (traditional leaders) and izinduna (headmen) collaborate with government and civil society to confront the crisis. 'We need to come together and deal with this matter head-on because the activities are happening where we are. Children get pregnant in our societies, in our communities.' Simelane also highlighted the troubling pattern where victims, once pregnant, avoid healthcare services due to fear of exposing perpetrators, who are often adult men who are family breadwinners or protected by informal family agreements. 'What is more concerning is that some young victims stop accessing healthcare and social services once they realise we are legally required to report the perpetrators. This puts young girls at high risk, specially when they are forced to give birth in unsafe conditions.' Under law, any sexual activity with a person under the age of 16 is considered statutory rape. Clinics and hospitals are required to report such cases to law enforcement authorities.
Al Jazeera
a day ago
- Business
- Al Jazeera
Can we reverse the obesity epidemic?
Obesity has become one of the most rapidly escalating health crises of our time. The World Obesity Federation says one billion people will be overweight by 2030, twice as many as in 2010. This epidemic goes far beyond individual choices or diet. It is fuelled by entrenched social inequalities, the far-reaching influence of the food industry and systemic obstacles that make healthy living increasingly difficult. Presenter: Stefanie Dekker Guests: Ogweno Stephen – World Obesity Federation Dr Rocio Salas-Whalen – Endocrinologist Adrian Scarlett – Content Creator
CTV News
a day ago
- Climate
- CTV News
Half of world's population endured extra month of extreme heat due to climate change, experts say
Bathers cool off in the water while others sunbathe on a Barcelona beach, Spain, Wednesday, July 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) Scientists say 4 billion people, about half the world's population, experienced at least one extra month of extreme heat because of human-caused climate change from May 2024 to May 2025. The extreme heat caused illness, death, crop losses, and strained energy and health care systems, according to the analysis from World Weather Attribution, Climate Central and the Red Cross. 'Although floods and cyclones often dominate headlines, heat is arguably the deadliest extreme event,' the report said. Many heat-related deaths are unreported or are mislabeled by other conditions like heart disease or kidney failure. The scientists used peer-reviewed methods to study how much climate change boosted temperatures in an extreme heat event and calculated how much more likely its occurrence was because of climate change. In almost all countries in the world, the number of extreme heat days has at least doubled compared with a world without climate change. Caribbean islands were among the hardest hit by additional extreme heat days. Puerto Rico, a territory of the United States, endured 161 days of extreme heat. Without climate change, only 48 would have occurred. 'It makes it feel impossible to be outside,' said Charlotte Gossett Navarro, chief director for Puerto Rico at Hispanic Federation, a nonprofit focused on social and environmental issues in Latino communities, who lives in the San Juan area and was not involved in the report. 'Even something as simple as trying to have a day outdoors with family, we weren't able to do it because the heat was too high,' she said, reporting feeling dizzy and sick last summer. When the power goes out, which happens frequently in Puerto Rico in part because of decades of neglected grid maintenance and damage from Hurricane Maria in 2017, Navarro said it is difficult to sleep. 'If you are someone relatively healthy, that is uncomfortable, it's hard to sleep ... but if you are someone who has a health condition, now your life is at risk,' Gossett Navarro said. Heat waves are silent killers, said Friederike Otto, associate professor of climate science at Imperial College London, one of the report's authors. 'People don't fall dead on the street in a heat wave ... people either die in hospitals or in poorly insulated homes and therefore are just not seen,' he said. Low-income communities and vulnerable populations, such as older adults and people with medical conditions, suffer the most from extreme heat. The high temperatures recorded in the extreme heat events that occurred in Central Asia in March, South Sudan in February and in the Mediterranean last July would have not been possible without climate change, according to the report. At least 21 people died in Morocco after temperatures hit 118 degrees Fahrenheit (48 degrees Celsius) last July. People are noticing temperatures are getting hotter but don't always know it is being driven by climate change, said Roop Singh, head of urban and attribution at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, in a World Weather Attribution statement. 'We need to quickly scale our responses to heat through better early warning systems, heat action plans, and long-term planning for heat in urban areas to meet the rising challenge,' Singh said. City-led initiatives to tackle extreme heat are becoming popular in parts of South Asia, North America, Europe and Australia to coordinate resources across governments and other agencies. One example is a tree-planting initiative launched in Marseille, France, to create more shaded areas. The report says strategies to prepare for heat waves include monitoring and reporting systems for extreme temperatures, providing emergency health services, cooling shelters, updated building codes, enforcing heat safety rules at work, and designing cities to be more heat-resilient. But without phasing out fossil fuels, heat waves will continue becoming more severe and frequent and protective measures against the heat will lose their effectiveness, the scientists said. ____ Isabella O'malley, The Associated Press The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content.
