The man was fishing from a kayak when a shark bit his dangling foot
His companion tried to save him, but he died on the way to shore
This is the 13th shark incident in Hawaii so far this year, authorities say
(CNN) -- A man fishing from a kayak off a Hawaiian
island has died after being bitten by a shark, authorities said Monday.
The incident was the latest in an alarming spate of shark attacks in the
state this year.
The attack took place
Monday morning half a mile off a point near Little Beach in Makena State
Recreation Area on the island of Maui, the Department of Land and
Natural Resources (DLNR) said.
The victim's companion,
who was also on a kayak, told the department that his friend was fishing
for baitfish with artificial lures when a shark bit one of his feet,
which was dangling over the edge of the boat.
The man's companion, who
was about 500 yards away when the attack took place, paddled over to
him, tied a tourniquet to try to stem severe bleeding and called on a
tour boat in the vicinity for help, authorities said.
The tour boat brought the
man to shore, and he was then taken to the hospital. But authorities
believe he died of his injuries during the boat journey, said Rod Antone
of the Mayor's Office of the County of Maui.
The man was in his 40s,
but authorities are unsure if he was a local resident or a tourist,
Antone said. The identities of the man and his companion have not been
disclosed.
"We offer our
condolences to the family of the victim. Our thoughts and prayers are
with them," said William J. Aila, Jr., the DLNR chairman.
Authorities say they
have closed the waters off Makena State Recreation Area following the
attack. Beaches in the area remain open, but the DLNR said people are
advised to stay out of the water.
The area will reopen at noon Tuesday if no more sharks are seen in the vicinity, the department said.
The attack is the 13th shark incident reported in Hawaii so far this year, and the eighth on Maui, authorities said.
That's well above the
state's average of four unprovoked shark attacks per year over the past
20 years. The 10 incidents reported in 2012 were unprecedented at the
time, the DLNR said.
"We are not sure why
these bites are occurring more frequently than normal, especially around
Maui," Aila said. "That's why we are conducting a two-year study of
shark behavior around Maui that may give us better insights."
Aila said that authorities hope and expect "that numbers of incidents will return to a more normal range in the near future."
In August, a German tourist died after being bitten by a shark while she was vacationing in Hawaii.
DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — The Ebola outbreak ravaging West Africa is
"totally out of control," according to a senior official for Doctors
Without Borders, who says the medical group is stretched to the limit in
its capacity to respond.
The current outbreak has caused more
deaths than any other on record, said another official with the medical
charity. Ebola has been linked to more than 330 deaths in Guinea, Sierra
Leone and Liberia, according to the latest numbers from the World
Health Organization.
International organizations and the
governments involved need to send in more health experts and increase
public education messages about how to stop the spread of the disease,
Bart Janssens, the director of operations for the group in Brussels,
told The Associated Press on Friday.
"The reality is clear that the epidemic is now in a second wave," Janssens said. "And, for me, it is totally out of control."
The
outbreak, which began in Guinea either late last year or early this
year, had appeared to slow before picking up pace again in recent weeks,
including spreading to the Liberian capital for the first time.
"This
is the highest outbreak on record and has the highest number of deaths,
so this is unprecedented so far," said Armand Sprecher, a public health
specialist with Doctors Without Borders.
According to a World
Health Organization list, the highest previous death toll was in the
first recorded Ebola outbreak in Congo in 1976, when 280 deaths were
reported. Because Ebola often touches remote areas and the first cases
sometimes go unrecognized, it is likely that there are deaths that go
uncounted, both in this outbreak and previous ones.
The multiple
locations of the current outbreak and its movement across borders make
it one of the "most challenging Ebola outbreaks ever," Fadela Chaib, a
spokeswoman for the World Health Organization, said earlier in the week.
The
outbreak shows no sign of abating and that governments and
international organizations were "far from winning this battle," Unni
Krishnan, head of disaster preparedness and response for Plan
International, said Friday.
But Janssens' description of the Ebola
outbreak was even more alarming, and he warned that the governments
affected had not recognized the gravity of the situation. He criticized
the World Health Organization for not doing enough to prod leaders and
said that it needs to bring in more experts to do the vital work of
tracing all of the people who have been in contact with the sick.
"There
needs to be a real political commitment that this is a very big
emergency," he said. "Otherwise, it will continue to spread, and for
sure it will spread to more countries."
The World Health Organization did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
But
Tolbert Nyenswah, Liberia's deputy minister of health, said that people
in the highest levels of government are working to contain the outbreak
as proved by the fact that that Liberia had a long period with no new
cases before this second wave.
The governments involved and
international agencies are definitely struggling to keep up with the
severity of the outbreak, said Krishnan of Plan, which is providing
equipment to the three affected countries and spreading information
about how people can protect themselves against the disease. But he
noted that the disease is striking in one of the world's poorest
regions, where public health systems are already fragile.
"The
affected countries are at the bottom of the human development index," he
said in an emailed statement. "Ebola is seriously crippling their
capacities to respond effectively in containing the spread."
The
situation requires a more effective response, said Janssens of Doctors
Without Borders. With more than 40 international staff currently on the
ground and four treatment centers, Doctors Without Borders has reached
its limit to respond, he said.
"It's the first time in an Ebola
epidemic where (Doctors Without Borders) teams cannot cover all the
needs, at least for treatment centers," he said.
It is unclear,
for instance, if the group will be able to set up a treatment center in
Liberia, like the ones it is running in in Guinea and Sierra Leone, he
said. For one thing, Janssens said, the group doesn't have any more
experienced people in its network to call on. As it is, some of its
people have already done three tours on the ground.
Janssens said
this outbreak is particularly challenging because it began in an area
where people are very mobile and has spread to even more densely
populated areas, like the capitals of Guinea and Liberia. The disease
typically strikes sparsely populated areas in central or eastern Africa,
where it spreads less easily, he said.
By contrast, the epicenter of this outbreak is near a major regional transport hub, the Guinean city of Gueckedou.
He
said the only way to stop the disease's spread is to persuade people to
come forward when symptoms occur and to avoid touching the sick and
dead.
"There is still not a real change of behavior of the
people," he said. "So a lot of sick people still remain in hiding or
continue to travel. And there is still news that burial practices are
remaining dangerous."
___
Associated Press video journalist
Bishr Eltouni in Brussels and writer Jonathan Paye-Layleh in Monrovia,
Liberia, contributed to this report.
Geneva (AFP) - The death
toll in west Africa's three-nation Ebola outbreak has risen to 337, the
World Health Organization said Wednesday, making it the deadliest ever
outbreak of the haemorrhagic fever.
Fresh data
from the UN health agency showed that the number of deaths in Guinea,
the hardest-hit country, has reached 264, while 49 had died in Sierra
Leone and 24 in Liberia.
The
new toll marks a more than 60-percent hike since the WHO's last figure
on June 4, when it said 208 people had succumbed to the deadly virus.
Including
the deaths, 528 people across the three countries have contracted
Ebola, one of the deadliest viruses known to man, the WHO said.
A majority of cases, 398 of them, have surfaced in Guinea, where west Africa's first ever Ebola outbreak began in January.
Sierra Leone has registered 97 cases in total, while Liberia has seen 33.
Health workers wear protective suits in an isolation center for people infected with Ebola at Donka …
WHO has described the
epidemic as one of the most challenging since the virus was first
identified in 1976 in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.
That outbreak, until now the deadliest, killed 280 people, according to WHO figures.
Ebola
is a tropical virus that can fell its victims within days, causing
severe fever and muscle pain, weakness, vomiting and diarrhoea -- in
some cases shutting down organs and causing unstoppable bleeding.
No medicine or vaccine exists for Ebola, which is named after a small river in the DRC.
Aid
organisations have said the current outbreak has been especially
challenging since people in many affected areas have been reluctant to
cooperate with aid workers and due to the practice of moving the dead to
be buried in other villages.
West African authorities have also been struggling to stop mourners from touching bodies during traditional funeral rituals.
File photo of chimpanzees. (credit: SIA KAMBOU/AFP/Getty Images)
ATLANTA (CBS Atlanta) — A new study finds that early human ancestors got herpes from chimpanzees.
According to LiveScience,
researchers at the University of California, San Diego found that the
“herpes simplex virus 1 infected hominids before their evolutionary
split from chimps 6 million years ago.” In comparison, the herpes
simplex 2 virus was transferred from chimps to human ancestors nearly
1.6 million years ago.
“Before we were human, there was still cross-species transmission
into our evolutionary lineage,” Joe Wertheim, study author and assistant
research scientist at the university’s AntiViral Research Center, told
LiveScience.
Wertheim noted in his study that herpes simplex virus 2 was caused by
“cross-species transmission” from modern chimp ancestors to humans,
while the herpes simplex virus 1 is a split between the chimp and human
viruses.
“Understanding how and when we acquired viruses that currently infect
us can give us perspective on future, potential cross-species
transmission events that would lead to the introduction of new human
viruses,” Wertheim told LiveScience.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most people infected with herpes do not know they have it and there is currently no cure for the disease.
Wertheim’s study was published in the Molecular Biology and Evolution journal.
CDC: Cases Confirmed In 15 States, Including N.Y., With 25 In Florida AloneJune 16, 2014 6:19 PM
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — First there was West Nile virus. Now health experts are warning about another virus carried by mosquitoes.
The chikungunya virus — or “chik-v” — has sickened tens of thousands
of people throughout the Caribbean with high fever and severe pain. Now
Americans are coming down with it, too, and there’s fear that it will
spread, CBS 2′s Kristine Johnson reported.
“This is not a fatal infection; it’s just a miserable infection,”
said Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of Vanderbilt University’s
Department of Preventive Medicine.
Cases of the mosquito-borne virus
have been confirmed in 15 states, including New York. According to the
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 25 cases have been
reported in Florida alone.
“The chikungunya fever will last for three, four, five days,”
Schaffner said. “You’re miserable. Then you’ll get better. We can treat
you symptomatically.”
So far, all of the infected Americans have contracted the virus in
parts of the world where it is common. But researchers are worried that
mosquitoes in the U.S. could pick up the disease by biting infected
people.
“There’s a concern that people from the United States who go to the
Caribbean might be bitten by infected mosquitoes and then bring this
illness, this virus, back to the United States,” Schaffner siad. “We
have the kind of mosquito that will transmit this virus here in the
U.S.”
Prior outbreaks have occurred in Africa, Asia, and Europe. Late last
year, the virus was found for the first time on the Caribbean islands,
where more than 100,000 people have been sickened.
“So far, we have no evidence that there are U.S.-bred mosquitoes that have become infected,” Schaffner said.
There is no vaccine to prevent the virus, which is rarely fatal.
Employees of the Dominican
Ministry of Public Health stick posters on a wall during an information
campaign to prevent the spread of the mosquito which transmits the
Chikungunya virus in Santo Domingo on May 30, 2014 (AFP Photo/Erika
Santelices)
San Salvador (AFP) -
Salvadoran health authorities confirmed Saturday that a dengue-like
disease that has been spreading across the Caribbean has now appeared in
the Central-American country.
Health
Minister Violeta Menjivar said at least 1,200 people have been formally
diagnosed with the chikungunya viral disease, although the positive
testing must still be confirmed by the US Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention.
Menjivar,
interviewed by state-run Channel 10 television, said that cases were
found on the outskirts of the Ayutuxtepeque municipality just outside
the capital San Salvador.
In
that area at the end of May, the ministry's epidemiologists and
infectious disease specialists detected an outbreak of a rare viral
disease that caused fever and skin rash, which they said affected at
least 181 people.
She said suspected cases were also found in residents in two other area on the edge of northern San Salvador.
The mosquito that transmits chikungunya -- the Aedes aegypti -- is the same one that spreads dengue.
The health ministry has asked people "to eliminate breeding sites" at their homes.
There
is no vaccine or treatment for chikungunya, which has infected millions
of people in Africa and Asia since the disease was first recorded in
1952.
It has also spread to
southern Europe -- with an outbreak in Italy in 2007 and southern France
in 2010 -- and arrived in the Caribbean last year, appearing in
Martinique and Saint Martin.
Chikungunya produces symptoms similar to dengue, including high fever, joint pain and skin rash.
The
disease's name is derived from an east African word meaning "that which
bends up," referring to the way that patients are stooped over in pain.
California’s whooping cough outbreak
has reached epidemic levels, with 800 new cases in the last two
weeks, according to the state’s public health agency.
There have been 3,458 cases of the respiratory infection,
formally known as pertussis, in California as of June 10, the
state’s Department of Public Health reported. That’s more than
were reported in all of 2013. Most at risk are newborns, and two
have died in California so far this year.
“Our biggest concern is always infants,” Stacey Martin,
an epidemiologist with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention’s division of bacterial diseases, said in a telephone
interview. “There’s a gap in coverage between birth and the
first vaccine.” Whooping cough carries different symptoms at different
ages. For children, a case can begin with a cough and runny nose
before the cough worsens, characterized by a whooping sound that
gives the disease its nickname. Infants don’t always have a
cough but their faces may turn red or purple.
More than 900 of California’s cases occurred in April and
May, a fivefold increase on the typical number seen in non-peak
years, said Corey Egel, a spokesman for state health department.
The high number of cases isn’t unexpected because of the
cyclical nature of the disease. California last had a widespread
outbreak, or “peak,” in 2010. Martin said the priority is to
encourage pregnant women to get the vaccine for pertussis, which
the CDC has recommended since 2013.
Vaccinating pregnant women and infants helps prevent the
spread of the disease, Ron Chapman, the state’s health
department director, said yesterday in a statement.
The CDC recommends infants be vaccinated as early as six
weeks after birth, because the effect of a vaccination given to
their mother during pregnancy soon wears off, Martin said. The
CDC also suggests shots for those spending time with newborns.
Nationwide, there have been three other deaths reported
from whooping cough this year, Martin said. In total, 9,964
cases of whooping cough were reported in the U.S. through June
8, compared with 7,573 at the same time last year, the CDC said.
Comparative
growth rates in vertebrates. Dinosau rs grew intermediate to
endothermic mammals and birds and ectothermic reptiles and fi sh, but
closest to living mesotherms.John Grady
Dinosaurs may not have been cold-blooded like modern reptiles or
warm-blooded like mammals and birds instead, they may have dominated
the planet for 135 million years with blood that ran neither hot nor
cold, but was a kind of in-between that's rare nowadays, researchers
say.
Modern reptiles such as lizards, snakes and turtles are cold-blooded
or ectothermic, meaning their body temperatures depend on their
environments. Birds and mammals, on the other hand, are warm-blooded,
meaning they control their own body temperatures, attempting to keep
them at a safe constant in the case of humans, at about 98.6 degrees
Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius).
Dinosaurs are classified as reptiles, and so for many years scientists thought the beasts were cold-blooded,
with slow metabolisms that forced them to lumber across the landscape.
However, birds are modern-day dinosaurs and warm-blooded, with fast
metabolic rates that give them active lifestyles, raising the question
of whether or not their extinct dinosaur relatives were also
warm-blooded. [Avian Ancestors: Dinosaurs That Learned to Fly (Images)] Animal metabolism
To help solve this decades-old mystery, researchers developed a new
method for analyzing the metabolism of extinct animals. They found
"dinosaurs do not fit comfortably into either the cold-blooded or
warm-blooded camp they genuinely explored a middle way," said lead study
author John Grady, a theoretical ecologist at the University of New
Mexico.
Scientists often seek to deduce the metabolisms of extinct animals by
looking at the rates at which their bones grow. The method resembles
cutting into a tree and looking at the thickness of the rings of wood
within, which can reveal how well or poorly that tree grew any given
year. Similarly, looking at the way bone is deposited in layers in
fossils reveals how quickly or slowly that animal might have grown.
Grady and his colleagues not only looked at growth rings in fossils,
but also sought to estimate their metabolic rates by looking at changes
in body size as animals grew from birth to adults. The researchers
looked at a broad spectrum of animals encompassing both extinct and
living species, including cold- and warm-blooded creatures, as well as
dinosaurs.
The scientists found growth rate to be a good indicator of metabolic
rates in living animals, ranging from sharks to birds. In general,
warm-blooded mammals that grow about 10 times faster than cold-blooded
reptiles also metabolize about 10 times faster.
When the researchers examined how fast dinosaurs grew, they found
that the animals resembled neither mammals nor modern reptiles, and were
neither ectotherms nor endotherms. Instead, dinosaurs occupied a middle
ground, making them so-called "mesotherms." Modern mesotherms
Today, such energetically intermediate animals are uncommon, but they
do exist. For instance, the great white shark, tuna and leatherback sea
turtle are mesotherms, as is the echidna, an egg-laying mammal from
Australia. Like mammals, mesotherms generate enough heat to keep their
blood warmer than their environment, but like modern reptiles, they do
not maintain a constant body temperature. [See Photos of Echidna and Other Bizarre Monotremes]
"For instance, tuna body temperature declines when they dive into
deep, colder waters, but it always stays above the surrounding water,"
Grady told Live Science.
Body size may play a role in mesothermy, because larger animals can
conserve heat more easily. "For instance, leatherback sea turtles are
mesotherms, but smaller green sea turtles are not," Grady said. However,
mesothermy does not depend just on large size. "Mako sharks are
mesotherms, but whale sharks are regular ectotherms," Grady said.
Endotherms can boost their metabolisms to warm up "for instance, we
shiver when cold, which generates heat," Grady said. "Mesotherms have
adaptations to conserve heat, but they do not burn fat or shiver to warm
up. Unlike us, they don't boost their metabolic rate to stay warm."
Some animals are what are known as gigantotherms, meaning they are
just so massive that they maintain heat even though they do not actively
control their body temperature.
"Gigantotherms like crocodiles rely on basking to heat up, so they
are not mesotherms," Grady said. "Gigantotherms are slower to heat up
and cool down, but if they rely on external heat sources like the sun,
then they are not mesotherms. In general, mesotherms produce more heat
than gigantotherms and have different mechanisms for conserving it." Advantages of being a mesotherm
Mesothermy would have permitted dinosaurs to move, grow and reproduce
faster than their cold-blooded reptilian relatives, making the
dinosaurs more dangerous predators and more elusive prey. This may
explain why dinosaurs dominated the world until their extinction about
65 million years ago, Grady suggested.
At the same time, dinosaurs' lower metabolic rates compared to
mammals allowed them to get by on less food. This may have permitted the
enormous bulk that many dinosaur species attained. "For instance, it is
doubtful that a lion the size of T. rex would be able to eat
enough wildebeests or elephants without starving to death," Grady said.
"With their lower food demands, however, a real T. rex was able to get by just fine."
All in all, Grady suspected that where direct competition occurs,
warm-blooded endotherms suppress mesotherms, mesotherms suppress active
but cold-blooded ectotherms, and active ectotherms suppress more
lethergic sit-and-wait ectotherms
Although mesothermy appears widespread among dinosaurs, not every
dinosaur was necessarily a mesotherm, Grady said. "Dinosaurs were a big
and diverse bunch, and some may have been endotherms or ectotherms," he
said. "In particular, feathered dinosaurs are a bit of a mystery. What
do you call a metabolically intermediate animal covered in feathers? Is
it like the mesothermic echidna? Or just a low-power endotherm?"
The first bird, Archaeopteryx, "was more like a regular
dinosaur than any living bird," Grady said. "It grew to maturity in
about two years. In contrast, a similarly sized hawk grows in about six
weeks, almost 20 times faster. Despite feathers and the ability to take
flight, the first birds were not the active, hot-blooded fliers their
descendants came to be."
These findings could help shed light on how warm-blooded animals such as humans evolved.
"The origins of endothermy in mammals and birds are unclear," Grady
said. Studying the growth rates of the ancestors of birds and mammals
"will shed light on these mysterious creatures."
The scientists detailed their findings in the June 13 issue of the journal Science.
FREETOWN (Reuters) -
Sierra Leone shut its borders to trade with Guinea and Liberia on
Wednesday and closed schools, cinemas and nightclubs in a frontier
region in a bid to halt the spread of the Ebola virus.
Sixteen
people have died of Ebola in Sierra Leone, a figure that has doubled in
the last week, Ministry of Health figures showed.
Authorities will also mount health checkpoints in the eastern Kailahun
district and mandated that all deaths there be reported before burial.
Anyone who dies of the virus must be buried under the supervision of
health personnel, the Information Ministry said.
The decision to close district schools came after a nine-year-old whose
parents died of Ebola tested positive for the virus, Deputy Minister of
Information Theo Nicol told Reuters.
"There is more contacts
between school-going kids than adults hence the closure of schools in
the most affected district," he said. The ban exempted churches and
mosques but religious leaders should urge anyone with a fever to go to a
clinic, he said.
Local groups welcomed the measures given public
concern over the virus, which can be transmitted by touching victims or
their body fluids.
The virus initially causes a raging fever,
headaches, muscle pain and conjunctivitis, before moving to severe
phases that bring on vomiting, diarrhoea and internal and external
bleeding.
Some 328 cases and 208 deaths are linked to Ebola in
Guinea, according to the World Health Organization, making the outbreak
one of the deadliest for years.
More than half of new deaths in Guinea were in the southern region of
Gueckedou, epicenter of the outbreak which began in February, near the
Sierra Leone and Liberian borders. The town is known for its weekly
market which attracts traders from neighboring countries.
(Reporting by Umaru Fofana; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Janet Lawrence)
Tyler CurryBecome a fanFreelance columnist and fiction writer; creator, The Needle Prick Project
Posted:
Updated:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-blog
It is hard to imagine that it was only 34 years ago when the
first case of HIV was first documented in the United States. Shortly
after, the virus seemed to spread like wildfire, burning a path of
hysteria, frustration and sadness across the U.S. and throughout the
world. In a short period of time, and thanks to a series of political
blunders from the Reagan administration and many other political figures
across the nation, HIV went from hundreds to millions and became the
closest we have ever come to a modern plague.
Although there is
still no cure for the virus, this plague is now classified as a chronic
illness with those who are HIV positive living long and healthy lives.
So the obscene terror that lived in the hearts of every gay man in the
world merely three decades ago has all but been erased in the mines of
the millennial age. In its place now lives a vague but
often-impenetrable fear of those who carry HIV and a diluted sense of
safety based on the idea that the transmission of HIV is related to a
character flaw of promiscuity. This blind faith that the virus is
relinquished to "other" types of people has allowed for this disease to
continue affecting the millennial generation at staggering rates.
According to the Center for Disease Control's National Progress Report
of 2013, an estimated 1.1 million people are living with HIV in the
United States with 50,000 more becoming infected each year. One out of
every six people living with the virus are unaware that they are
infected, thus continuing the cycle of transmission. And worse, one out
of every five gay men are living with HIV, yet the millennial generation
often treats the disease as if it is only reserved for the history
books.
But beyond the numbers, just what exactly does it mean to
live HIV in today's world? For starters, HIV is now officially
classified as a chronic disease. Although most people assume that
treatment involves a series of toxic cocktails that HIV positive men and
women take throughout the day, a person diagnosed today will most
likely be on one daily pill to manage the virus. And reports suggest
that, given a person is compliant with their medication; they can expect
the same estimated lifespan as they did when they were HIV negative.
"A
person who is 20-years-old and diagnosed today can expect to live into
their 70s, roughly the same lifespan they would expect prior to being
diagnosed," says Dr. Gary Blick, HIV Specialist and Founder of World
Health Clinicians, an international HIV treatment organization.
However,
it isn't all good news. The span of your life may be the same, but your
worries certainly are not. People living with the virus run an
increased risk of developing other life-threatening diseases such as
cancer, heart attack and stroke. Combined with other STI's, these risks
are even bigger, making it even more important for a person living with
HIV to manage all aspects of their health, not just their pillboxes.
However, an HIV positive diagnosis is merely a charge to be drastically
more responsible with a person's health instead of an order to make
arrangements for a pending funeral.
To many of the people living
with the disease, it is also a scarlet branding that induces emotional
and psychological symptoms that far outweigh the side effects listed on
the side of their medication bottles.
The organizations charged
with delivering the message of HIV awareness and prevention have
grappled with advancing their messaging with the advancements of modern
medicine. Managing HIV is a drastically different animal than it was
merely a decade ago, but many still view the virus with the same gravity
that they did in the 1990s. The few organizations who have tried to
modernize the approach to HIV education have been lambasted for "making
light" of the disease, trying to "make HIV cool," or downplaying the
severity of living with the virus.
This struggle over messaging
has never been more contentious then in the present as institutional
juggernauts like the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) battles with more
progressive activists and organizations over the promotion of PrEP, or
pre-exposure prophylaxis. This new drug, nicknamed the birth control
pill for HIV, now personifies the crux in HIV treatment debate.
PrEP
is an Antiretroviral Therapy drug that, if taken correctly by an HIV
negative individual, has a 99 percent efficacy rate in preventing the
transmission of HIV from someone who is HIV positive. This drug has been
on the market since 2012, but several prominent organizations such as
AHF, the largest HIV treatment provider in the U.S., have taken an
active stance against the HIV prevention pill.
Michael Weinstein,
the Executive Director of AHF, has publicly referred to PrEP as a party
drug and suggested that the "people who would be taking the drug" could
not be trusted to be compliant with their dosage. This stigmatizing
rhetoric, combined with the pharmaceutical company, Gilead's,
unwillingness to advertise the drug to at-risk populations, has led to a
virtual standstill in people seeking a prescription for the prevention
pill.
People like J Nick Shirley, a 24-year-old gay man from
Dallas, represent the most at risk demographics for HIV transmission,
and yet has never heard of PrEP. When asked about the new form of
prevention, he was shocked that this was the first time he was hearing
about it.
"I just can't believe that we have such a
ground-breaking tool at our disposal and so many people don't know about
[PrEP]," Shirley said. "I am pretty sure none of my friends know about
it. We have never talked about it before."
Long term HIV survivor,
activist and former reality T.V star, Jack Mackenroth, is mortified
that organizations like AHF have taken on such a damaging approach to
PrEP.
"If this were the '90s, people would be lining up down the
streets to take PrEP," says Mackenroth. "It is so sad that the fear that
we went through has given way to the judgment and stigma from gay men
onto other gay men. HIV isn't going anywhere if we don't wake up and
realize that condom-only messages don't work."
Which leads us to
the use of the problem; organizations using worn out methods of
education and prevention, further stigmatizing others looking for
prevention methods beyond condoms and leaving the vast majority of
millennial, at-risk individuals to believe that HIV is a virus that
"other" people get.
Movies like The Normal Heart serve
as history lessons, leading young gay men to cry, "Never forget," while
failing to realize the dangers they face. LGBT youth are left grappling
for connection, because most of the visible reminders of the risk of HIV
are only ashes, while the living, more relevant examples prefer to
remain in silence for fear of public ridicule and castigation. Sadly,
the community that was once unified under the call to fight the virus is
now complacent in a pseudo-class system of HIV status that only serves
to perpetuate transmission.
But change is on the horizon.
Grassroots campaigns such as HIV Equal, The Stigma Project, The Needle
Prick and several others have worked to change the climate of HIV stigma
for those living with the virus and educate the public on the real vs.
perceived danger of HIV transmission. A new wave of young, HIV positive
faces, such as Josh Robbins, Cory Lee Frederick and Jake Forth are
making their presence known in the public eye, humanizing the virus for
the millennial generation while serving as living examples that HIV is
still an issue for their age group. And this year, as the Obama
Administration unveiled the HIV Care Continuum at the third annual
HIV/AIDS Strategy, President Obama's HIV prevention policy recognized
Antiretroviral treatment as a valid form of prevention, giving authority
to the fact that HIV positive men who achieve undetectable viral load
levels are actively preventing the spread of HIV.
While the level
of danger has waned over the past three decades, the threat of HIV
still remains. Unlike the generations first affected by the virus, the
millennial age is now armed a wealth of information and a variety of
prevention tools to change the course of HIV for good. And this young
generation should take note that these tools came at a very heavy cost.
If you have had sex even once since your last HIV test without a
condom, it is worth it educate yourself on PrEP and determine if it is
right for you. It only takes one time to transmit the virus, and it only
takes one pill a day to stop it. The millennial generation no longer
has to face a multitude of limitations when concerning HIV, so there is
no excuse to get tested, know your status and pick up the slack in the
fight against HIV. After all, most of the heavy lifting has already been
done.
DALLAS
(AP) — Health officials say a Texas patient is the fourth person in the
United States to die of a rare brain disorder that is believed to be
caused by consumption of beef products contaminated with mad cow
disease.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says in a
statement that recent laboratory tests confirmed a diagnosis of variant
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in the patient.
The CDC says that in
each of the three previous U.S. cases, infection likely occurred outside
the U.S. And the center says the Texas patient's history included
extensive travel to Europe and the Middle East and suggests the
infection occurred outside the country.
The CDC says that
worldwide more than 229 variant CJD patients have been reported, with a
majority of them in the United Kingdom and France.
The
Texas Department of State Health Services says there are no state
public health concerns or threats associated with the case. The CDC and
DSHS are investigating.
The CDC says there is no known treatment for the disease and it is invariably fatal.
(Reuters) - Two mosquito-borne diseases - dengue fever and chikungunya -
are posing a serious threat to Florida and residents should take steps
to control mosquito populations to try to limit the danger, a leading
health expert said on Wednesday. The Florida Department of
Health, in its latest weekly report, said that through last week dengue
fever had been confirmed in 24 people in Florida and chikungunya
confirmed in 18 people. Both are viral diseases spread by mosquito
bites.
All of the infected people
in Florida have traveled to the Caribbean or South America and could
have become infected there, according to Walter Tabachnick, director of
the Florida Medical Entomological Laboratory in Vero Beach, which is
part of the University of Florida.
Epidemiologists
are worried that mosquitoes in Florida may have picked up the diseases
by biting infected people, which could kick off an epidemic in the
state, Tabachnick said.
"The threat is greater than I've seen in my lifetime," said Tabachnick, who has worked in the field for 30 years.
"Sooner or later, our mosquitoes will pick it up and transmit it to us. That is the imminent threat," he added.
Tabachnick
urged the public to eliminate standing water including in buckets and
rain barrels where mosquitoes can breed. "If there is public apathy and
people don't clean up the yards, we're going to have a problem,"
Tabachnick said.
Dengue is
potentially fatal, and both diseases cause serious and lingering
symptoms. The most common symptoms of chikungunya infection are fever
and joint pain, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention.
Tabachnick said the
last statewide epidemics in Florida of dengue occurred in the 1930s.
Localized epidemics of dengue occurred in 2013 in a small neighborhood
in Jensen Beach where 24 people were infected, and in 2009 and 2010 in
Key West where 28 people were infected, according to state and federal
reports.
The Caribbean Public
Health Agency said this week that authorities in 18 Caribbean countries
or territories had reported more than 100,000 confirmed or suspected
cases of chikungunya.
In the
Dominican Republic, where health officials reported more than 53,000
suspected cases, hospitals in hard-hit areas are treating hundreds of
new patients per day.
(Additional reporting by Ezra Fieser in Santo Domingo; Editing by David Adams and Will Dunham)
A Florida woman attacked by a shark said today that before she got into
the water she told her friends she was uneasy about getting into the
dark water "because you can't see what's down there."
What was down there was a shark that ripped into her leg and then swatted her in the face with its fin.
Jessica Vaughn, 22, of Coral Springs, Fla., was attacked Sunday
afternoon, but was well enough today to smile through a news conference
and even joke about it.
She probably won't get back into the ocean soon, however.
"It was really scary. Before we went out, I said I don’t like going into
the water... when I can’t see what’s down there," Vaughn said at the
Broward Health Medical Center. She added, "I've always had feelings of
something down under there because of the dark murky waters."
Vaughn said, "I feel very lucky. I wouldn't go back in that kind of water anymore."
She was going tubing with friends at the home of Peter Hogge around 1:30
p.m. Sunday. She said she was swimming on her back to the tube when she
was attacked by the shark.
"At first I felt like something punched my leg," Vaughn said. "I thought
a fish bit me. Then I saw my leg was cut open. I realized it wasn't a
fish."
"I thought I would be fine once I get into the tube," Vaughn said.
"It came up from behind her and bit her leg and then kind of smacked its
tail and most of its body out of the water, hit her in the face
actually, and took off," Peter Hogge told ABC News affiliate WPLG.
RELATED: When Animals Attack
"Her friends immediately pulled her back on the boat and bandaged her,"
Timothy Heiser, deputy fire chief at Fort Lauderdale Fire Department
told ABC News. The deputy chief said Vaughn's friends likely saved her
life by putting pressure on her gash.
"They did a really good job," Heiser said. "She could have lost too much blood and died."
Vaughn's friends raced the boat back to a dock where person on the 11th
floor of a nearby condo building heard them screaming and called 911,
according to Heiser. Paramedics arrived shortly after and brought Vaughn
to Broward Health Medical Center.
A picture of Vaughn's wound was tweeted by the Fort Lauderdale Fire
Rescue and it showed the muscle of Vaughn’s right leg was shredded,
exposing the bone.
Vaughn underwent two hours of surgery Sunday evening and is reported to be in good condition, according to the hospital.
"She will be discharged from the hospital in two to three days," said Dr. Zoran Potparic, who performed Vaughn's surgery.
Vaughn is expected to recover within three to four months, Potparic said.
"Infection is the very next thing we have to worry about, especially
since the coastal water tends to be very polluted," he said.
Vaughn said she is a waitress at a restaurant and doesn't have
insurance. She is thankful that social workers at the hospital are
looking to see if the Affordable Care Act could cover some of her
surgery costs.
"Shark attacks usually happen in northern Florida," Heiser said. "It's quite uncommon in this area."
"This is really the first shark attack that I've ever heard of," said
Brian Hogge, Peter Hogge's cousin who directed Vaughn to the dock. "I've
seen sharks before and there are a lot of water skiing activities going
on. But this is really the first time (a shark attack happened)."
Peter Hogge has set up a fundraiser on Gofundme.org to raise money for his friend's recovery.
Shark victim's foot dangled over boat
