As it marks World Cancer Day, the World Health Organization is calling for action to tackle breast cancer, the most common and leading cause of cancer deaths among women.

 

Every year, more than 2.3 million women are diagnosed with breast cancer, and nearly 700,000 die of the disease, which disproportionately affects women living in low- and middle-income countries.

 

WHO officials say women who live in poorer countries are far less likely to survive breast cancer than women in richer countries.   

 

“Breast cancer survival is 50 percent or less in many low- and middle-income countries, and greater than 90 percent for those able to receive the best care in high income countries,” says Bente Mikkelsen, director of the Noncommunicable Diseases Department at the WHO.

 

She says the odds are stacked against women who live in poor countries, noting many must sell their assets to pay for the treatment they need.   

 

She notes that women also are discouraged from seeking and receiving a timely diagnosis for their condition because of the stigma attached to breast cancer.   

 

“A woman subjected to racial and ethnic disparities will receive lower quality care and be forced to abandon treatment,” she says.

 

WHO data show more than 20 high income countries have successfully reduced breast cancer mortality by 40 percent since 1990. It finds five-year survival rates from breast cancer in North America and western Europe is better than 95 percent, compared to 66 percent in India and 40 percent in South Africa.

 

Mikkelsen says by closing the rich-poor inequity gap, some 2.5 million lives could be saved over the next two decades.

 

“Time is, unfortunately, not on our side. Breast cancer will be a larger public health threat for tomorrow, and the gap in care will continue to grow.  

 

She says that “by the year 2040, more than 3 million cases and 1 million deaths are predicted to occur each year worldwide. Approximately 75 percent of these deaths will occur in low- and middle-income countries.”

 

Coinciding with World Cancer Day, the WHO is launching a global breast cancer initiative to tackle the looming threat. The initiative contains a series of best practices for addressing this significant public health issue.

 

The strategy rests on three main pillars: early-detection programs so at least 60 percent of breast cancers are diagnosed and treated as an early-stage disease; starting treatment within three months of diagnosis; managing breast cancer to ensure at least 80 percent of patients complete their recommended treatment.

 

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the WHO, says, “Countries with weaker health systems are least able to manage the increasing burden of breast cancer … so, it must be a priority for ministries of health and governments everywhere.

 

“We have the tools and the knowhow to prevent breast cancer and save lives,” he says.   

 

Benjamin Anderson, medical officer and lead of the WHO’s global breast cancer initiative, says one of the best ways to implement the initiative is through primary health care systems.   

 

“The patient pathway is the basis of the three pillars of the global cancer initiative framework. What we anticipate is that by using awareness, education in the public, combined with professional education, it sets us up for the diagnostic processes that must take place and the treatment that has to follow.”  

 

The World Health Organization warns failure to act now to address cancer in women, including breast cancer, will have serious intergenerational consequences.

 

It cites a study by the International Agency for Research on Cancer that reported that because of “the estimated 4.4 million women who died from cancer in 2020, about 1 million children became maternal orphans in that year,” 25 percent of which was due to breast cancer.

 

Mikkelsen observes, “the children whose mothers die from cancer experience health and educational disadvantages throughout their lives.”

 

WHO officials acknowledge the cost of drugs to treat breast cancer could be a matter of life or death. It notes the price of certain oral drugs is less than $1, while others range from $9,000 to $10,000.

 

As many countries are unable to negotiate prices, they say the WHO is working to increase the availability and affordability of breast cancer medication.
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Editor’s note: Here is a fast take on what the international community has been up to this past week, as seen from the United Nations perch. 

Two years since Myanmar military coup

The U.N. special rapporteur for Myanmar warned Tuesday that two years after its coup, Myanmar’s military will try to legitimize its hold on power through sham elections this year, and he urged the international community not to recognize or engage with the junta.

Humanitarians await ‘guidelines’ from Afghan Taliban on women aid workers

The U.N. humanitarian chief said Monday he is awaiting a list of guidelines from Taliban authorities to allow Afghan women to work in the humanitarian sector, following a decree last month that has restricted their work. Martin Griffiths said he also asked Taliban officials if they are not going to rescind their decree now, then they should extend exemptions to cover all aspects of humanitarian work.

Iran dismisses IAEA report

Iran’s atomic energy organization on Wednesday dismissed a report by the United Nations nuclear watchdog that said Tehran had made an undeclared change to uranium enriching equipment at its Fordow plant. The IAEA said its inspectors found a modification to an interconnection between two clusters of centrifuges that was substantially different than what Iran had declared.

Red Cross warns world dangerously unprepared for next pandemic

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies warned Monday in its World Disaster Report that the world is dangerously unprepared for the next pandemic, and this will have severe health, economic and social consequences for countries around the world.

In brief 

— The World Health Organization said Monday that COVID-19 continues to be a global health emergency. Following a meeting of the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee on January 27, WHO Chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the pandemic is probably at a transition point that must be carefully navigated. The committee offered temporary recommendations including continuing vaccinations especially for high-risk groups. The health agency says as of January 29 there have been more than 753 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and over 6.8 million deaths globally.

— WHO also launched a new initiative Friday to reach the target of saving 2.5 million women’s lives from breast cancer by 2040. The campaign seeks to promote early detection, timely diagnosis and comprehensive management of breast cancer. WHO says there are more than 2.3 million cases of breast cancer annually, making it the most common cancer among adults. In 95% of countries, breast cancer is the first or second leading cause of female cancer deaths. Survival rates vary dramatically both between and within countries, with nearly 80% of deaths from both breast and cervical cancer occurring in low- and middle-income countries. Saturday is World Cancer Day.

— The Food and Agriculture Organization said Friday that global food commodity prices had dropped in January for the 10th consecutive month. The FAO Food Price Index averaged 131.2 points in January, 0.8% lower than in December and 17.9% below its peak in March 2022. The price indices for vegetable oils, dairy and sugar drove the January decline, while those for cereals and meat remained largely stable. Wheat prices were down by 2.5% as production in Australia and Russia outperformed expectations. The FAO said low domestic prices could result in a small cutback in wheat plantings in Russia, the world’s largest exporter, while the impact of the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine are estimated to reduce winter wheat area plantings by 40%. Record plantings are forecast in India.

— The U.N. said that an inter-agency aid convoy delivered five truckloads of medications, shelter materials, tool kits, hygiene items and solar lamps to the Zaporizhzhia region in the southeast Ukraine on Thursday. The supplies are headed for people in Huliaipole, where about 3,000 people remain close to the front line. Humanitarians say the community has been without electricity and water since March, as power stations were damaged by fighting and cannot be repaired because of the ongoing hostilities. This is the second convoy this week to reach frontline communities, after a convoy reached Donetsk region on January 31. U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths will brief the U.N. Security Council on the humanitarian situation on February 6.

What we are watching next week

On February 6, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will brief member states on his priorities for the year ahead. With the world facing conflicts, inflation and climate catastrophes, look for him to amplify his calls for unity and urgent action.
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Logistics manager Nicholas Rehak was visiting his parent’s home in Baltimore County, Maryland, several years ago. He was standing on the back deck one night when he noticed a bluish white light.

“It was shaped in a damn near perfect oval and it started to rise,” Rehak told VOA. “I’m talking straight up vertical, no deviation. It sat there for nearly 30 seconds and then suddenly it vanished — like a lamp when someone pulls the plug. Just sudden darkness.”

Perhaps it was a drone. Rehak said that was his first thought.

“But I’ve never seen a drone take off perfectly vertical like that, from ground to sky without so much as a wobble,” he continued. “It was far too low to the ground to be a larger aircraft. So what was it? If I close my eyes, I can still see the light plain as day.”

For decades, Americans have reported sighting unidentified flying objects — commonly referred to as UFOs — zigging, zagging and hovering in the sky. Many were ridiculed for their assertions.

Now, however, the U.S. government is tracking and studying reports of what they refer to as unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP). More than 350 new cases have been reported to the government since March 2021, according to an unclassified document released last month by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. That number far exceeds what was reported over the 17 years prior, suggesting either a dramatic increase in sightings or a greater willingness to report them.

“It’s no longer embarrassing to talk about,” said Steve Mort, a New Orleans, Louisiana, resident. “I’ve always known true extraterrestrial UAPs exist — they’re likely our ancestors checking back in on us. The only thing I’m shocked by is that the government is officially confirming this.”

The January report, however, cautions against making such conclusions. While approximately half of the 366 reported UAP sightings remain unexplained, the ODNI wrote its “initial characterization does not mean positively resolved or unidentified.”

In other words, the U.S. government says it does not know what many of the mysterious objects are. And while the Department of Defense and NASA are taking steps to investigate UAPs, an impatient and imaginative American public is debating the mystery on its own.

Extraterrestrial life

Many in the scientific community say there is nothing particularly unusual about the steps the government is taking.

This includes American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

“If there’s something in your night sky and you don’t know what it is, maybe it’s harmful, right?” Tyson said, speaking with VOA. “Well, investigating that potential harm is the entire mission statement of the military.”

“It’s nothing deeper than that,” he continued, “other than there are many people out there who wish it was something deeper despite having a lack of evidence to prove it.”

While there is a wide variety of opinions on whether extraterrestrial life has visited Earth, there appears to be a consensus that life likely exists beyond Earth.

According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in June 2021, 65% of Americans say they believe intelligent life exists on other planets.

“Each time we build a bigger telescope, we discover more and more galaxies in our ever-expanding universe,” said Robert Sheaffer, an author and investigator of UAPs. “Our universe is so unimaginably vast, it would be foolish to claim there are no other planets with life, or with intelligent civilizations.”

Differing conclusions

Americans as a whole appear divided on whether UAPs are extraterrestrial spacecraft visiting our planet. But the percentage who do believe in alien visitation has grown.

A YouGov survey last September found 34% of Americans believe UFOs are alien ships or alien life forms. An equal percentage said they didn’t know what accounts for UFOs while 32% believed they had a natural scientific explanation.

In a similar survey by Newsweek/Princeton in 1996, only 20% of Americans believed UFOs were evidence of extraterrestrial life while 51% said they could be explained by natural science.

Tyler Ogilvie, a musician from Syracuse, New York, said he recently spotted a mysterious spacecraft zooming overhead.

“I was legitimately convinced I was seeing something mystical or otherworldly,” he told VOA. “It was incredible … until a sobering Google search proved otherwise. It turned out I was looking at Elon Musk’s Starlink [a series of satellites launched by SpaceX to provide broader internet access].”

“But I think it’s a valuable experience,” Ogilvie added. “I learned how quickly the human mind can be convinced of something that it wants to believe is true. I want to believe it because I think it would make more sense out of our seemingly meaningless existence if we could put it into the perspective of the universe as a whole.”

Others agree.

“I think we don’t want to be alone,” Nicholas Rehak said.

“It gives me goosebumps to dream of what might be out there,” said Carl Fink, a software developer in New Orleans, “and contemplating the cosmos helps me consider the possibility of things I couldn’t previously imagine.”

Tyson said imagining life in other parts of the universe is part of a longer trend in human history.

“We used to think our planet was the center of the cosmos, but then through the help of Galileo and others we learned we orbit a sun,” the astrophysicist explained. “But at least everything in the universe orbited our sun … until we learned it didn’t. We’d go on to learn that other stars in the galaxy have their own planets, and that, in fact, there are hundreds of billions of other galaxies in our universe and we’re not at the center of anything.”

He added, “It’s good for our ego to understand that the universe literally doesn’t revolve around us and that we’re probably not the only life form out there.”

‘Where is the evidence?’

Are the UAPs being reported to the U.S. government in record numbers proof that alien life forms are finally reaching out?

Tyson is a skeptic.

“You’re telling me that a million humans are airborne at any given time — with cellphones that can take photos and capture video — and none of us have gotten clearer footage of these supposed alien spacecraft?” he said. “We have the technology to livestream these encounters, so where is the evidence? I know, I know. Everyone wants to meet the aliens, but for me — and I don’t want to stop anyone from investigating the lights in the sky, of course — there’s not enough evidence of visiting aliens to pique my interest.”

The Pentagon office responsible for tracking and studying sightings has preliminarily identified 163 of the recent reports as “balloon or balloon entities” while others have been attributed to weather events, birds, drones, or airborne debris such as plastic bags.

Still, 171 other reported sightings since March 2021 remain unexplained. Are they aliens? Foreign governments spying on America? Secret U.S. weapons tests?

“UAPs can be anything,” said Emily Songster, a music teacher in Asheville, North Carolina. “But imagining the possibility of life on other planets coming to visit us makes for a more fun and interesting world. I think that’s why many people look to aliens for answers and, personally, I’m glad we’re beginning to officially take these things seriously.”
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More than 200 years after Napoleon met defeat at Waterloo, the bones of soldiers killed on that famous battlefield continue to intrigue Belgian researchers and experts, who use them to peer back to that moment in history.

“So many bones — it’s really unique!” exclaimed one such historian, Bernard Wilkin, as he stood in front of a forensic pathologist’s table holding two skulls, three femurs and hip bones.

He was in an autopsy room in the Forensic Medicine Institute in Liege, eastern Belgium, where tests are being carried out on the skeletal remains to determine from which regions the four soldiers they belong to came from.

That in itself is a challenge.

Half a dozen European nationalities were represented in the military ranks at the Battle of Waterloo, located 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of Brussels.

That armed clash of June 18, 1815 ended Napoleon Bonaparte’s ambitions of conquering Europe to build a great empire, and resulted in the deaths of around 20,000 soldiers.

The battle has since been pored over by historians, and — with advances in the genetic, medical and scanning fields — researchers can now piece together pages of the past from the remains buried in the ground.

Some of those remains have been recovered through archeological digs, such as one last year that allowed the reconstitution of a skeleton found not far from a field hospital the British Duke of Wellington had set up.

But the remains examined by Wilkin surfaced through another route.

‘Prussians in my attic’

The historian, who works for the Belgian government’s historical archives, said he gave a conference late last year and “this middle-aged man came to see afterwards and told me, ‘Mr Wilkin, I have some Prussians in my attic'”.

Wilkin, smiling, said the man “showed me photos on his phone and told me someone had given him these bones so he can put them on exhibit… which he refused to do on ethical grounds”.

The remains stayed hidden away until the man met Wilkin, who he believed could analyze them and give them a decent resting place.

A key item of interest in the collection is a right foot with nearly all its toes — that of a “Prussian soldier” according to the middle-aged man.

“To see a foot so well preserved is pretty rare, because usually the small bones on the extremities disappear into the ground,” noted Mathilde Daumas, an anthropologist at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles who is part of the research work.

As for the attributed “Prussian” provenance, the experts are cautious.

The place it was discovered was the village of Plancenoit, where troops on the Prussian and Napoleonic sides bitterly fought, Wilkin said, holding out the possibility the remains might be those of French soldiers.

Scraps of boots and metal buckles found among the remains do point to uniforms worn by soldiers from the Germanic side arrayed against the French.

But “we know that soldiers stripped the dead for their own gear,” the historian said.

Clothes and accessories are not reliable indicators of the nationality of skeletons found on the Waterloo battlefield, he stressed.

DNA testing

More dependable, these days, are DNA tests.

Dr Philippe Boxho, a forensic pathologist working on the remains, said there were still parts of the bones that should yield DNA results, and he believed another two months of analyses should yield answers.

“As long as the subject matter is dry we can do something. Our biggest enemy is humidity, which makes everything disintegrate,” he explained.

The teeth in particular, with traces of strontium, a naturally occurring chemical element that accumulates in human bones, can point to specific regions through their geology, he said.

Wilkin said an “ideal scenario” for the research would be to find that the remains of the “three to five” soldiers examined came from both the French and Germanic sides.
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The Biden administration took a first step Friday toward ending federal protections for grizzly bears in the northern Rocky Mountains, which would open the door to future hunting in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said state officials provided “substantial” information that grizzlies have recovered from the threat of extinction in the regions surrounding Yellowstone and Glacier national parks.

But federal officials rejected claims by Idaho that protections should be lifted beyond those areas, and they raised concerns about new laws from the Republican-led states that could potentially harm grizzly populations.

“We will fully evaluate these and other potential threats,” said Martha Williams, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Friday’s move kicks off at least a year of further study before final decisions about the Yellowstone and Glacier regions.

State officials have insisted any future hunts would be limited and not endanger the overall population.

However, Republican lawmakers in the region in recent years also adopted more aggressive policies against gray wolves, including loosened trapping rules that could lead to grizzlies being inadvertently killed.

As many as 50,000 grizzlies once roamed the western half of the U.S. They were exterminated in most of the country early last century by overhunting and trapping, and the last hunts in the northern Rockies occurred decades ago. There are now more than 2,000 bears in the Lower 48 states and much larger populations in Alaska, where hunting is allowed.

The species’ expansion in the Glacier and Yellowstone areas has led to conflicts between humans and bears, including periodic attacks on livestock and sometimes fatal maulings of humans.

Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte welcomed the administration’s announcement and said it could lead to the state reclaiming management of a species that’s been under federal protections since 1975. He said the grizzly’s recovery “represents a conservation success.”

The federal government removed protections for the Yellowstone ecosystem’s grizzlies in 2017. Wyoming and Idaho were set to allow grizzlies to be hunted when a judge restored those protections in 2018, siding with environmental groups that said delisting wasn’t based on sound science. Those groups want protections kept in place so bears can continue moving into new areas.

“We should not be ready to trust those states,” said attorney Andrea Zaccardi, of the Center for Biological Diversity.

U.S. government scientists have said the region’s grizzlies are biologically recovered but in 2021 decided that protections were still needed because of human-caused bear deaths and other pressures. Bears considered problematic are regularly killed by wildlife officials.

A decision on the states’ petitions was long overdue. Idaho Gov. Brad Little on Thursday had filed notice he intended to sue over the delay. Idaho’s petition was broader than the ones filed by Montana and sought to lift protections nationwide.

That would have included small populations of bears in portions of Idaho, Montana and Washington state, where biologists say the animals have not yet recovered to sustainable levels. It also could have prevented the return of bears to other areas such as the North Cascades region.
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