US President Barack Obama called the Ebola outbreak in West Africa a threat to global security on Tuesday and broadly expanded the US response by ordering thousands of troops to the region along with an aggressive effort to train health care workers and build treatment centres.
He called on other countries to quickly provide more helpers, supplies and money.
“If the outbreak is not stopped now, we could be looking at hundreds of thousands of people affected, with profound economic, political and security implications for all of us,” Obama declared after briefings at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
Obama acted under pressure from regional leaders and international aid organisations who pleaded for a heightened US role in confronting the deadly virus, especially in the hardest-hit countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
“In West Africa, Ebola is now an epidemic,” Obama said.
“It’s spiralling out of control, it is getting worse.“
The stepped-up US response includes sending 3,000 troops to the region, including medics and corpsmen for treatment and training, engineers to help build treatment facilities and logistics specialists to assist in patient transportation.
Obama also announced that Major General Darryl Williams, head of US Army Africa, will head a military command centre based in Liberia.
The announcement came the same day the World Health Organisation warned that the number of West African Ebola cases could begin doubling every three weeks and that the crisis could end up costing nearly 1 billion US Dollars to contain.
Nearly 5,000 people have become ill from Ebola in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Nigeria and Senegal since it was first recognised in March.
The World Health Organisation says it anticipates the figure could rise to more than 20,000.
Obama described task ahead as “daunting” but said what gives him hope is that “the world knows how to fight this disease.“
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Category: health – Page 322
George W. Bush Urged Us to Prepare for Future Pandemics in 2005 | NowThis
‘If we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare’ — George W. Bush warned about getting ahead of something like COVID-19 way back in 2005.
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In US news and current events today, listen to Pres. Bush urgently stress the importance of being prepared for a pandemic back in 2005. In this clip, Pres. George W. Bush addressed the Nat’l Institutes of Health about having a game plan to fight future pandemics. Pres. Bush was reportedly alarmed after reading a history book about the 1918 flu pandemic where millions had died. Out of that interest came a grand outline for future administrations to follow in response to a global pandemic.
Listening in the audience that day was Dr. Anthony Fauci, dir. of the Nat’l Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and current leader in the fight against COVID-19 today.
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A Potential Universal Flu Vaccine Just Passed an Important Clinical Trial
There may be hope yet for a universal flu vaccine — one powerful dose of immunisation that can provide long-lasting protection for multiple influenza strains, all in a single shot.
A discovery like that would be a holy grail for public health, and after more than a decade of careful research, a specific version called FLU-v is now moving into the last rounds of clinical testing.
So far, researchers say the results have been “very encouraging”, and the vaccine has successfully passed phase I and phase II clinical trials. Although trials in these phases are limited to assessing the safety of the vaccine, there’s also evidence it might be effective.
Scientists say doing this type of exercise will make your brain more powerful
According to Li and Spitzer, running on a treadmill, or performing another sustained aerobic exercise—like dancing or kickboxing—on a regular basis might actually enhance motor skill-based learning.
When comparing the brains of mice that exercised versus those who did not, Li and Spitzer found that specific neurons switched their chemical signals (neurotransmitters), after exercising, which led to improved learning for motor skill-specific acquisition.
While physical exercise is proven to promote motor skill learning in normal individuals as well as those with neurological disorders, the mechanism of action is unclear. The study found that that one just week of voluntary wheel running enhances the acquisition of motor skills in normal adult mice. Voluntary being the keyword here.
Tiny RNA that should attack coronavirus diminish with age, disease
A group of tiny RNA that should attack the virus causing COVID-19 when it tries to infect the body are diminished with age and chronic health problems, a decrease that likely helps explain why older individuals and those with preexisting medical conditions are vulnerable populations, investigators report.
MicroRNAs play a big role in our body in controlling gene expression, and also are a front line when viruses invade, latching onto and cutting the RNA, the genetic material of the virus, says Dr. Sadanand Fulzele, aging researcher in the Department of Medicine and Center for Healthy Aging at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.
But with age and some chronic medical conditions, the attacking microRNA numbers dwindle, reducing our ability to respond to viruses, says Dr. Carlos M. Isales, co-director of the MCG Center for Healthy Aging and chief of the MCG Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism.
A new, highly sensitive chemical sensor uses protein nanowires
Writing in the journal NanoResearch, a team at the University of Massachusetts Amherst reports this week that they have developed bioelectronic ammonia gas sensors that are among the most sensitive ever made.
The sensor uses electric-charge-conducting protein nanowires derived from the bacterium Geobacter to provide biomaterials for electrical devices. More than 30 years ago, senior author and microbiologist Derek Lovley discovered Geobacter in river mud. The microbes grow hair-like protein filaments that work as nanoscale “wires” to transfer charges for their nourishment and to communicate with other bacteria.
First author and biomedical engineering doctoral student Alexander Smith, with his advisor Jun Yao and Lovley, say they designed this first sensor to measure ammonia because that gas is important to agriculture, the environment and biomedicine. For example, in humans, ammonia on the breath may signal disease, while in poultry farming, the gas must be closely monitored and controlled for bird health and comfort and to avoid feed imbalances and production losses.
Op-Ed: We’re in the middle of a mental-health crisis. Many were struggling before the pandemic
Others are being hit hard by the impact of quarantine — feeling overwhelmed while trying to balance work with childcare, being stuck at home with an abusive partner or parent, or being alone for extended periods of time.
Since it’s Mental Health Awareness Month, here are some tips to help you cope with the crisis:
More from Invest in You: Young adults confront fears, stress as they navigate pandemic Over-eating, self-medicating lead to skyrocketing grocery bills How to help out others without breaking your own bank
It turns out that mental illness is normal.
To that point, many people were struggling to keep it together before the crisis. Some had never experienced a mental-health challenge before and are now suffering from anxiety and depression. Some are struggling to adjust to the direct health and economic consequences of the virus — job loss, financial stress, illness and/or the death of a loved one.
Gene therapy can cure lameness in horses, research finds
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Injecting DNA into injured horse tendons and ligaments can cure lameness, new research involving scientists at Kazan Federal University, Moscow State Academy and The University of Nottingham has found.
The gene therapy technology was used in horses that had gone lame due to injury and within two to three weeks the horses were able to walk and trot. Within just two months they were back to full health, galloping and competing.
The study has big implications not just for the veterinary world but the future of human medicine — injuries like these are common in people as well as animals, not just in lameness but in other illnesses and diseases from the legs and arms through to the back and hips.
This AI tool predicts who’s got COVID-19 without testing
A new AI diagnostic tool trained on crowdsourced symptom data can predict whether someone likely has COVID-19 without testing.
The model was trained on data from more than 2.5 million users of the COVID Symptom Study app developed at King’s College London, which anyone can download to report their daily health status.
FDA Approval Granted for Simplified Ventilator Design From Particle Physics Community
In a little over a month, a team of physicists and engineers from around the world took a simplified ventilator design from concept all the way through approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. This major milestone marks the ventilator as safe for use in the United States under the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization, which helps support public health during a crisis.
The Mechanical Ventilator Milano, or MVM, is the brainchild of physicist Cristiano Galbiati. The Gran Sasso Science Institute and Princeton University professor, who normally leads a dark matter experiment in Italy called DarkSide-20k, found himself in lockdown in Milan, a city hit hard by COVID-19. Hearing reports of ventilator shortages and wanting to help, Galbiati reached out to fellow researchers to develop a ventilator with minimal components that could be quickly produced using commonly available parts.
“The sense of crisis was palpable, and I knew the availability of ventilators was critical,” said Galbiati, who obtained his Ph.D from the University of Milan. “We had been doing some complicated projects in physics that required working with gases, and I thought it our duty to find a way to push oxygen into the lungs of patients.”