A sub-Saharan African nation has been declared malaria-free for the first time in 50 years.

Cape Verde was given the status by the World Health Organization (WHO) as it has not reported a single case of local transmission in three years.

Experts have described this as a major achievement.

Malaria is a huge killer on the continent. In 2022, 580,000 people in Africa died from the disease, amounting to 95% of fatalities worldwide.

The disease is caused by a complex parasite which is spread by mosquito bites.

Vaccines are now being used in some places but monitoring the disease and avoiding mosquito bites are the most effective ways to prevent malaria.

Cape Verde, a small island nation off the coast of West Africa, has taken years to reach this point by strengthening its health systems and increasing access to diagnosis and treatment of all cases.

Surveillance officers have been detecting cases early, as well as controlling mosquitoes. //

On an island, it is easier to map out the areas most affected by the disease and see how it is being transferred from one island to another, compared to a continuous land mass.

In badly affected countries such as Nigeria, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo, there is a highly mobile population regularly crossing borders, making it difficult for one country to eradicate the disease on its own.

Cape Verde's success "gives us hope that with existing tools, as well as new ones including vaccines, we can dare to dream of a malaria-free world", WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

The last country in sub-Saharan Africa to be declared malaria-free was the island nation of Mauritius in 1973. Algeria, in North Africa, achieved this status in 2019.

A new experimental antibiotic can handily knock off one of the world's most notoriously drug-resistant and deadly bacteria —in lab dishes and mice, at least. It does so with a never-before-seen method, cracking open an entirely new class of drugs that could yield more desperately needed new therapies for fighting drug-resistant infections.

The findings appeared this week in a pair of papers published in Nature, which lay out the extensive drug development work conducted by researchers at Harvard University and the Swiss-based pharmaceutical company Roche. //

In this case, the new drug—dubbed zosurabalpin—fights off the Gram-negative bacterium carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii, aka CRAB. Though it may sound obscure, it's an opportunistic, invasive bacteria that often strikes hospitalized and critically ill patients, causing deadly infections worldwide. It is extensively drug-resistant, with ongoing emergence of pan-resistant strains around the world—in other words, strains that are resistant to every current antibiotic available. Mortality rates of invasive CRAB infections range from 40 to 60 percent. In 2017, the World Health Organization listed it as a priority 1: critical pathogen, for which new antibiotics are needed most urgently.

Zosurabalpin may just end up being that urgently needed drug, as Gugger and Hergenrother write in their commentary: "Given that zosurabalpin is already being tested in clinical trials, the future looks promising, with the possibility of a new antibiotic class being finally on the horizon for invasive CRAB infections."

Eye drops are uniquely risky because the eye is an immune-privileged site.

Via Scientific Reports: Infectivity of exhaled SARS-CoV-2 aerosols is sufficient to transmit covid-19 within minutes. The case for continued masking and improved ventilation seems inarguable. The abstract:

Exhaled SARS-CoV-2-containing aerosols contributed significantly to the rapid and vast spread of covid-19. However, quantitative experimental data on the infectivity of such aerosols is missing. Here, we quantified emission rates of infectious viruses in exhaled aerosol from individuals within their first days after symptom onset from covid-19.

Six aerosol samples from three individuals were culturable, of which five were successfully quantified using TCID50. The source strength of the three individuals was highest during singing, when they exhaled 4, 36, or 127 TCID50/s, respectively.

Calculations with an indoor air transmission model showed that if an infected individual with this emission rate entered a room, a susceptible person would inhale an infectious dose within 6 to 37 min in a room with normal ventilation.

Thus, our data show that exhaled aerosols from a single person can transmit covid-19 to others within minutes at normal indoor conditions.

By virtually every standard, protein from meat, which has been the basis of the human diet since the inception of the species, is far superior to plant protein. Dr. Benjamin Bikman, author of the 2020 book Why We Get Sick: The Hidden Epidemic at the Root of Most Chronic Disease–and How to Fight It, explained why on “The Ultimate Health Podcast.”

“By every metric, every single animal protein is superior to every single plant protein,” Bikman said. “A person can eat a modest amount of animal protein and know that they are literally getting every single amino acid they could possibly need in a good ratio. If it’s plant protein, well, then you kind of have to guess, and you hope you’re getting it all.”

Plant proteins, Bikman added, “are enriched with things called ‘anti-nutrients,’” which are “molecules that will inhibit the intestines’ ability to digest the protein.”

“So that’s kind of adding insult to injury,” Bikman explained, “because when someone’s trying to get all their protein from plant proteins, not only are they getting an inferior source of amino acids and an inferior profile of amino acids, they’re not even digesting the amino acids in the proteins they think they’re getting.” //

In her book, The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet, nutrition journalist Nina Teicholz spent almost a decade researching the science behind health authorities’ recommendations for a low-fat, meat-restricted diet. Her findings were breathtaking.

“Almost nothing that we commonly believe today about fats generally and saturated fat in particular appears, upon close examination, to be accurate,” she wrote.

Teicholz outlined how the data to support a low-fat diet was manipulated with selective findings to back pre-determined conclusions. The landmark Seven Countries study, for example, the legacy project of American Physiologist Ancel Keys to support a low-fat diet, omitted data from 15 countries that would have contradicted any correlation between dietary fat and heart disease.

Further, a paper published by the National Library of Medicine in April debunked the conventional narrative that red meat consumption is responsible for the proliferation of non-communicable diseases. Researchers assessed mean meat intake in different regions of the world and found that while some academics claim red meat is hazardous to human health, only slight increases in disease risk were reported in areas where meat consumption was well above the global average. Even then, “there is little to no effect on absolute risk,” they wrote, “and the certainty of evidence remains low to very low based on the best available summary evidence.” //

Despite the fear-mongering over global livestock emissions, a trio of Spanish researchers published a study in April finding emissions from wildlife comparable to domesticated animals raised in natural grazing systems. In other words, contrary to climate alarmists’ warnings that livestock capital will pollute the planet into an environmental apocalypse, the elimination of animal emissions requires the extinction of natural species. //

If the government steps in to slap warning labels on anything at grocery stores to manipulate the American diet, it should be ultra-processed foods. Often saturated in seed oils and several different kinds of added sugars while deprived of fiber and healthy fat, these toxic ultra-processed products make up nearly three-fourths of the U.S. food supply. It’s no wonder 6 in 10 Americans suffer from at least one chronic disease while 4 in 10 suffer from at least two.

For years, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allowed food manufacturers to market chemically processed grains drenched in sugary syrups as cereal with a “healthy” label slapped on the box. //

A 2013 paper from French researchers found sugar can stimulate a reward response in the brain stronger than that of even cocaine. Believe artificial sugar sweeteners are the antidote? Think again. The 2013 paper identified “sweetness,” not necessarily just “sugar,” as the culprit stimulant. Their findings corroborated similar conclusions in another landmark study on sugar and its addictive value by French researchers in 2007.

Beyond addiction, ultra-processed foods are dangerous. A February study from London’s Imperial School of Public Health linked consumption of ultra-processed products to early mortality. In other words, those Pillsbury Biscuits might not kill you tomorrow, but they may take over 30 years. If an ultra-processed diet doesn’t kill you early, it’s certain to make you sick. //

Ultimately, the scientists pushing for meat warning labels are anti-science. Meat is healthy and good for the planet. If labels are to be put on anything, it should be ultra-processed foods. Since these scientists are not interested in warning the public about the foods that are causing obesity and chronic disease, that suggests they are not interested in genuine wellness and are instead pushing an agenda and a dangerous, unhealthy one at that.

For nearly 200 years, the Fugates — known as the blue people of Kentucky — remained largely sealed off from the outside world as they passed their blue skin from generation to generation. //

Cawein devised a cure for this disorder: more blue. Counterintuitively, the best chemical for activating the body’s process of turning methemoglobin to hemoglobin is methylene blue dye. The Fugates he treated ingested this dye and within a few minutes, the blue coloration of their skin disappeared, and their skin turned pink.

As long as they kept ingesting pills of the substance regularly, these blue people of Kentucky could live their lives normally.

Back in 2014, dermatologist Bridget McIlwee saw a 3-year-old patient in central Texas with unusual bumps on his ear.

"They looked a little bit like almost kind of a benign mole that you would see in a child, except that you wouldn't expect something like that to come up quickly and then multiply," she says.

McIlwee sent off a sample for laboratory testing, and the results came back pointing to a surprising culprit: The boy had tested positive for cutaneous leishmaniasis, a neglected tropical disease. The World Health Organization says between 600,000 and 1 million new infections happen worldwide every year, mostly in tropical regions of the Americas, the Mediterranean basin, the Middle East and Central Asia — not in Texas. These illnesses can be disfiguring, even if they are rarely fatal.

Treatments for Onchocerca volvulus
Usage/Drug -- Adult Dose -- Pediatric dose
To kill microfilariae:

• ivermectin 150 mcg/kg orally in one dose every 6 months

• 150 mcg/kg orally in one dose every 6 months
  To kill macrofilariae:

• doxycycline* 200 mg orally daily for 6 weeks

• 200 mg orally daily for 6 weeks

• Doxycycline is not standard therapy, but several studies support its use and safety. Treatment with ivermectin should be given one week prior to treatment with doxycycline in order to provide symptom relief to the patient. If the patient cannot tolerate 200 mg PO daily of doxycycline, 100mg PO daily is sufficient to sterilize female Onchocerca