Health

LONDON: The World Health Organization (WHO) was holding an emergency meeting to discuss the recent outbreak of monkeypox, a viral infection more common to west and central Africa, after over 100 cases were confirmed or suspected in Europe. In what Germany described as the largest outbreak in Europe ever, cases have been reported in at least nine countries – Belgium, …

LONDON: Three of New Zealand’s touring party have tested positive for coronavirus but their four-day warm-up against English county Sussex will still go ahead, cricket chiefs said on Friday. “Batsman Henry Nicholls, seamer Blair Tickner and bowling coach Shane Jurgensen were flagged after a round of Rapid Antigen tests on the first morning in Hove and will undergo five days …

Researchers tracked 6,729 volunteers ages 18 to 69, who got two shots of either AstraZeneca’s viral vector vaccine or an mRNA vaccine from Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna after recovering from an infection with the coronavirus and who reported long COVID symptoms of any severity at least once between February and September 2021. The odds of reporting long COVID – symptoms lasting …

When people cannot maintain a safe distance to avoid the spread of COVID-19, a newly designed desktop “air curtain” can block aerosols in exhaled air, researchers found. Air-curtains – artificially created streams of moving air – are often used to protect patients in operating rooms. At Nagoya University in Japan, researchers tested their new desktop device by simulating a blood …

DUBAI: A specialised medical team at Dubai Hospital has performed the first successful surgery using the Da Vinci Xi Surgical Robot on a 22-year-old Emirati patient suffering from a blockage in the upper part of the ureter. The complaint made the patient suffer from enlarged kidneys and its complications. Dr. Yasser Ahmad Al Saeedi, Consultant, Robotic Surgeon and Head of …

BONN: The World Bank said on Wednesday it will make $30 billion available to help stem a food security crisis threatened by Russia’s war in Ukraine, which has cut off most grain exports from the two countries. The total will include $12 billion in new projects and over $18 billion funds from existing food and nutrition-related projects that have been …

The US Food and Drug Administration has authorized the use of a booster shot of Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 5 to 11, the regulator said on Tuesday. The authorization makes everyone in the United States aged five and above eligible for booster doses of the vaccine, although the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) …

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Wednesday called for collective efforts to eradicate polio from the country, ARY News reported. Chairing a meeting of National Task Force on Polio Eradication in Islamabad, the prime minister assured the federal government would extend every possible assistance and cooperation in this regard. PM Shehbaz Sharif voiced his concerns over the detection of recent …

ISLAMABAD: Although the current heatwave sweeping across India and Pakistan was consistent with what experts have come to expect in a changing climate, the head of the global weather body has said that it was premature to attribute the extreme heat in South Asia solely to the phenomenon of climate change. “But heatwaves are more frequent and more intense and …

Online articles shared hundreds of thousands of times on social media claim the global outbreak of severe hepatitis in children is linked to Covid-19 vaccines, citing an April 2022 study as evidence. But health authorities and independent experts dismissed the idea that the shots are to blame, saying most of those affected were too young to be vaccinated and that …