KINSHASA  – Congolese authorities announced a ban on Wednesday on harboring suspected Ebola patients and promised police protection for health workers at burials, in a bid to fight back against local resistance to efforts to combat the disease. Συνεχίστε την ανάγνωση «Ebola response tightens in eastern Congo as seven new cases confirmed: health ministry»

Zimbabwe has launched a crowdfunding campaign to deal with an outbreak of cholera that has so far killed 25 people, mostly in the capital, Harare.

New Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube sent an appeal on Twitter, sharing a mobile payment account number.

An emergency has been declared and public gatherings banned in Harare to prevent the spread of infection.

In 2008, a cholera outbreak killed some 4,000 people and at least 100,000 people fell ill.

This was a key factor in persuading President Robert Mugabe to agree a power-sharing government with the opposition, as the government did not have the money to deal with the outbreak. Συνεχίστε την ανάγνωση «Zimbabwe launches cholera crowdfunding campaign»

Grade school kids may be more likely to develop asthma if they consumed lots of drinks sweetened with sugar and high fructose corn syrup or if their mothers drank these beverages often during pregnancy, a recent study suggests. To assess the connection between childhood asthma, sodas and other sugar-sweetened beverages, researchers examined data about eating habits from about 1,000 mother-child pairs as well as information on kids’ health, including whether they had an asthma diagnosis by ages 7 to 9. After accounting for maternal obesity and other factors that can also influence kids’ odds of developing asthma, researchers found that … Συνεχίστε την ανάγνωση Prenatal and early childhood fructose tied to asthma in kids

GENEVA  – The fight against the deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), which has killed at least 722 people over the past five years, is honing in on its target: camels. MERS coronavirus (MERS-CoV), a member of a virus family ranging from the common cold to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, appears to have emerged in humans in Saudi Arabia in 2012, but has now been traced back in camels to at least 1983. Almost all the outbreaks so far originated in the Arabian Gulf, but MERS-CoV could infect humans wherever there are one-humped dromedary camels – two-humped bactrians are not … Συνεχίστε την ανάγνωση Health experts zero in on camels to fight deadly MERS virus

LONDON  – AstraZeneca said on Thursday it had agreed to sell the U.S. rights to a portfolio of anesthetics to South Africa’s Aspen Group for up to $766 million, a year after Aspen bought the rights outside the United States. The British group said it would continue to manufacture and supply the seven medicines – Diprivan, EMLA, Xylocaine/Xylocard/Xyloproct, Marcaine, Naropin, Carbocaine and Citanest – for a transition period of up to five years. “Disposing the remaining rights to the medicines allows both companies to benefit from greater efficiencies as AstraZeneca continues to focus our resources on our three main therapy … Συνεχίστε την ανάγνωση Aspen to buy remaining AstraZeneca anesthetic rights for up to $766 million

WASHINGTON – The U.S. government proposed cutting nicotine in cigarettes to «non-addictive» levels on Friday in a major regulatory shift designed to move smokers toward potentially less harmful e-cigarettes. Shares of major tobacco companies in the United States and UK slumped in heavy trading volume after the proposal was unveiled by the head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, with the world’s biggest producers losing about $26 billion of market value. «Nicotine itself is not responsible for the cancer, the lung disease and heart disease that kill hundreds of thousands of Americans each year,» FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said. … Συνεχίστε την ανάγνωση U.S. proposes cigarette nicotine cut, shift toward e-cigarettes

Microsoft Corp on Monday unveiled a new service that allows customers to use its cloud technology on their own servers, part of the company’s efforts to refocus its product line to compete more effectively with rivals Amazon.com Inc and Google. “One of the key differentiations we have with Azure versus our two biggest competitors in the cloud platform space is our ability to support true hybrid solutions,” Judson Althoff, Microsoft’s executive vice president of worldwide commercial business, told Reuters. Microsoft is hoping to carve a niche among customers who cannot or do not want to have to move all their … Συνεχίστε την ανάγνωση Microsoft to offer local version of Azure cloud service

AstraZeneca and Hutchison China MediTech said on Thursday they had initiated a global late-stage clinical trial of the experimental drug savolitinib in a relatively rare type of kidney cancer. The launch triggers a $5 million payment from AstraZeneca to the Shanghai-based drugmaker, which is listed in London and is known as Chi-Med. The move underscores Chi-Med’s drive to bring modern Chinese drugs to the international market. The Phase III study will test savolitinib in c-MET-driven papillary renal cell carcinoma. Συνεχίστε την ανάγνωση AstraZeneca, Chi-Med take kidney cancer drug into final testing

April Zhang, a 21-year-old student from Shanghai, reflects the fast-shifting attitudes of China’s younger generations toward sex. She’s confident to talk about a topic once taboo here and is well educated about the risks. Zhang and her young contemporaries – though far from uniform in their views – are much more open in their attitudes to sex than their conservative parents and increasingly aware of the need for protection against sexually-transmitted diseases. This sex savvy generation is set to spur sharp growth of the country’s condom market, a key driver behind a deal by Chinese investors to buy the world’s … Συνεχίστε την ανάγνωση Safe Sex: Chinese buy condom business as savvy youth spur demand

German drugmaker Bayer won the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s priority review status for an experimental drug for a difficult to treat type of blood cancer, bolstering its development pipeline. Based on results of a Phase II study, the FDA plans to review Bayer’s copanlisib within six months instead of the usual 10 for use against follicular lymphoma which has returned or persisted despite at least two prior therapies, the company said in a statement on Wednesday. Bayer, which is taking over U.S. seeds group Monsanto, is trying to follow up in its drug development efforts on the recent success … Συνεχίστε την ανάγνωση Bayer gets FDA priority review for blood cancer drug