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Children

Dengue fever surges in Brazil; The latest health stories from around the world

Article by Lalita Panicker, Consulting Editor, Views and Editor, Insight, Hindustan Times, New Delhi Brazil is seeing an unprecedented surge in dengue, a viral disease that can cause excruciating pains and is sometimes fatal. An unusually hot rainy season, along with rapid, unplanned urbanization, have fuelled its spread this year. Health officials have reported more …

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Malaria vaccine rolled out in Cameroon; The latest health stories from around the world

Article by Lalita Panicker, Consulting Editor, Views and Editor, Insight, Hindustan Times, New Delhi  After a 60-year quest, childhood malaria vaccinations were administered to infants and toddlers in Cameroon on 22 January, the world’s first routine immunization against the disease.  Remarkably, the RTS,S or Mosquirix, made by GlaxoSmithKline and approved for general use in 2021 …

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Malaria vaccine resulted in 13% drop in deaths; The latest health stories from around the world

Article by Lalita Panicker, Consulting Editor, Views and Editor, Insight, Hindustan Times, New Delhi In a major analysis in Africa, the first vaccine approved to fight malaria cut deaths among young children by 13% over nearly 4 years, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported last week. Data from a pilot rollout of the vaccine, called …

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Nobel Prize awarded for COVID-19 mRNA vaccine development; The latest health stories from around the world

Article by Lalita Panicker, Consulting Editor, Views and Editor, Insight, Hindustan Times, New Delhi The 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been jointly awarded to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2023/press-release/  The discoveries by the two …

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Gambian families take government to court over cough syrup deaths; The latest health stories from around the world

Article by Lalita Panicker, Consulting Editor, Views and Editor, Insight, Hindustan Times, New Delhi Families of 20 Gambian children who died after consuming cough syrups made in India will take their government to court this month for allegedly mishandling drug imports — a rare step in one of Africa’s poorest countries, where few have the …

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RSV

FDA approves new RSV vaccine; The latest health stories from around the world

Article by Lalita Panicker, Consulting Editor, Views and Editor, Insight, Hindustan Times, New Delhi A panel advising the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last week recommended that it approve a vaccine given to pregnant people to protect infants from respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which can cause severe lung infections. https://www.science.org/content/article/news-glance-china-s-ethics-oversight-arpa-h-s-new-science-and-210-million-protein? The vote was unanimous …

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Pfizer announces promising results for RSV vaccine

Barney Graham, a former scientist at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), was thrilled when Pfizer announced encouraging results from an experimental vaccine that could protect against a major childhood killer. In a press release, the company said immunizing pregnant women with its vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) protected their babies from severe …

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World Mosquito Day 2022: Climate change could threaten to expand malaria transmissions in Africa

Africa faces new challenges in its fight against malaria: the climate is becoming more mosquito friendly just as the insects are evolving to evade the insecticides and the malaria parasites are becoming resistant to medicines that have brought down deaths. In 2020, the World Health Organization estimated approximately 90% of malaria cases and 92% of deaths occurred in Africa. Over 600,000 African children died of malaria in that year alone.