Manzini, Eswatini — Traditional medicine, or “muti,” is an important part of Eswatini’s culture. However, an increasing demand for muti has placed some of the southern African kingdom’s animal species at risk of extinction. That’s something conservationists and molecular biologists want to change.

Molecular biologist Zamekile Bhembe, who works for the USAID-funded EWild Laboratory at the University of Eswatini, is fighting poachers and trying to get them convicted for their crimes.

She said poaching for traditional medicinal purposes is a leading cause of biodiversity decline, and she wants stronger regulations to protect wildlife.

“Every time you see biodiversity declines, there will be some sort of poaching involved,” she said. “As a country, we cannot deny that we are using these resources as our traditional medicine. It’s just that we need a way of regulating.”

For generations, the people of Eswatini have held traditional beliefs and values close to their hearts. This is reflected in the fact that more than 80% of the population still consults traditional healers, or “witchdoctors,” for advice and healing.

These healers use a wide range of plant and animal species to create traditional medicine, drawing on knowledge passed down through generations. However, excessive hunting has endangered the local populations of pangolins, crocodiles, vultures and owls, leading to calls for more sustainable practices.

Makhanya Makhanya, president of the Witchdoctors Association, is a widely renowned traditional healing practitioner in his own right. He said the role of traditional healers needs to be protected.

Such healers, he said, have served Eswatini for generations, providing healing and support to those in need. But he said current laws do not reflect the reality of their work. He wants to see regulations that recognize the traditional healers’ role in society and allow them to continue their work.

Patrick Maduna, a South African citizen, said he travels from neighboring South Africa to Eswatini to seek traditional medicinal solutions. His preference for traditional healing shows the complex relationship between modern and traditional medicine in Eswatini.

“I came all the way from South Africa to Swaziland for traditional attention,” he said. “I have been using the same traditional doctor since 2006, I have been coming to the same place. For me to come and get traditional attention, for me, it’s like therapy. I have never, ever gone to the hospital.”

Maduna said if there were laws in Eswatini to limit the poaching of animals for traditional medicine, he believes the so-called witchdoctors would comply with the rules.
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SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s government will take final steps to suspend the licenses of striking junior doctors next week as they refuse to end their weekslong walkouts that have burdened the country’s medical services, officials said Thursday.

More than 90% of the country’s 13,000 medical interns and residents have been on strike for about a month to protest the government’s plan to sharply increase medical school admissions. Their strikes have caused hundreds of canceled surgeries and other treatments at hospitals.

Officials say it is urgent to have more doctors because South Korea has a rapidly aging population, and its doctor-to-population ratio is one of the lowest in the developed world. But doctors say schools can’t handle an abrupt, steep increase in students, and that it would ultimately undermine the country’s medical services.

The government has been taking a series of administrative steps required to suspend their licenses after they missed a government-set, February 29 deadline to return to work.

The steps include sending officials to formally confirm the absences of strikers, informing them of possible license suspensions and giving them chances to respond.

Vice Health Minister Park Min-soo told a briefing Thursday that the government is expected to complete those steps for some of the striking doctors next week and will send them notices about its final decision to suspend their licenses.

Park earlier said that under South Korea’s medical law, the striking doctors could face at a minimum three-month suspensions and even indictments by prosecutors for refusing the government’s back-to-work order.

He urged the striking doctors to return to work immediately, suggesting those who end their strikes could receive softer punishments.

“They should return as soon as possible not only for patients but also for their future careers. This kind of exhaustive walkout from hospitals must not continue any longer,” Park said. “As we’ve said many times, we won’t treat those who return swiftly as equally as those who return late.”

It’s unclear whether and how many striking doctors would return to their hospitals at the last minute. According to Park, none of the strikers who were informed of their possible license suspension has responded.

Senior doctors at major university hospitals recently decided to submit resignations next week in support of the junior doctors. Still, most of them will likely continue to report to work. If they walk off the job, that would hurt South Korea’s medical services severely.

Two senior doctors, who lead an emergency doctors’ committee for the walkouts, were recently given government notices that their licenses would be suspended for three months for allegedly inciting the junior doctors’ walkouts.

The striking junior doctors account for less than 10% of South Korea’s 140,000 doctors. But in some major hospitals, they represent about 30%-40% of the doctors, assisting senior doctors during surgeries and dealing with inpatients while training.

The government aims to increase the country’s medical school enrollment cap by 2,000 starting next year, from the current cap of 3,058 that has been unchanged since 2006.

Wednesday, the government announced detailed plans on how to allocate those additional 2,000 admission seats to universities, a sign that it won’t back down its plan.

Officials say more doctors are required to address a long-standing shortage of physicians in rural areas and in essential but low-paying specialties. But doctors say newly recruited students would also try to work in the capital region and in high-paying fields like plastic surgery and dermatology. They say the government plan would also result in doctors performing unnecessary treatments due to increased competition.

Surveys show that a majority of South Koreans support the government’s push to create more doctors, with critics suspecting that doctors, one of the highest-paid professions in South Korea, worry about lower incomes due to the supply of more doctors.
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Pacific leaders are on high alert after U.S. scientists warned that the world is nearing a historic mass coral bleaching brought on by high water temperatures fueled by climate change. VOA’s Jessica Stone reports. (Produced by Jessica Stone)
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SYDNEY — An annual university report said although Australia’s environmental scorecard deteriorated in 2023, the nation fared better than many other countries.

While 2023 was the hottest year on record globally, for Australia it was the eighth hottest year because of wet and relatively mild conditions.

The research is carried out each year by the Australia National University,  or ANU, and is contained in the Australian Environment 2023 Report.

Researchers use scientific information to give Australia a score out of 10. In 2023, it was 7.5, down from 8.7 the previous year.

The decline was mostly due to reduced rainfall compared to 2022.  They stress that the report card is not a reflection of the Canberra government’s policies, but a general assessment of the health of the environment.

Information about the weather data is used alongside satellite data on threatened species, biodiversity and water flows to calculate the annual score.

Australia’s biodiversity took a significant hit last year, according to the study. It states that a record 130 species were added to the Threatened Species List, compared with the average of 29 species added annually.

The university survey details how Australia’s population grew “rapidly” last year by 3.5%, its fastest growth in decades.

The study revealed that Australians are the world’s 10th worst greenhouse gas emitters per person, just after Saudi Arabia.

Professor Albert Van Dijk from the Australian National University’s Fenner School of Environment told VOA the country’s greenhouse gas emissions increased for the first time in five years – mainly because domestic air travel picked up after COVID.

“While our emissions per person are very slowly going down – a lot more slowly than in most, you know, industrialized countries, but they are going down slowly – but our population is growing so fast,” he said. “It is growing faster than our emissions are going down.  So, you know, we are not achieving the emissions reductions as a country that we need to achieve.”

Overall, the annual ANU report states that Australia is the world’s 15th largest emitter of greenhouse gases, contributing 1% of global emissions.

Van Dijk believes as a wealthy nation, Australia should be doing more to combat the impact of climate change.

“If you look at the uptake of electric vehicles, if you look at the use of renewables, we are still a laggard internationally,” he said. “We have got the 10th highest emissions per person globally; three times the global average, two times the average Chinese person.”

He said countries like the United Kingdom are doing more to reduce the emission per person.

“Australia needs to really step up its game. I think we should be very worried about the state of the environment globally, and especially about climate change.”

Australia’s government has for the first time legislated a target to cut carbon emissions by 43% from 2005 levels by 2030 and to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

 
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Washington — An array of advanced tests found no brain injuries or degeneration among U.S. diplomats and other government employees who suffer mysterious health problems once dubbed “Havana syndrome, ” researchers reported Monday.

The National Institutes of Health’s nearly five-year study offers no explanation for symptoms including headaches, balance problems and difficulties with thinking and sleep that were first reported in Cuba in 2016 and later by hundreds of American personnel in multiple countries.

But it did contradict some earlier findings that raised the specter of brain injuries in people experiencing what the State Department now calls “anomalous health incidents.”

“These individuals have real symptoms and are going through a very tough time,” said Dr. Leighton Chan, NIH’s chief of rehabilitation medicine, who helped lead the research. “They can be quite profound, disabling and difficult to treat.”

Yet sophisticated MRI scans detected no significant differences in brain volume, structure or white matter — signs of injury or degeneration — when Havana syndrome patients were compared to healthy government workers with similar jobs, including some in the same embassy. Nor were there significant differences in cognitive and other tests, according to findings published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

While that couldn’t rule out some transient injury when symptoms began, researchers said it’s good news that they couldn’t spot long-term markers on brain scans that are typical after trauma or stroke.

That “should be some reassurance for patients,” said study co-author Louis French, a neuropsychologist at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center who treats Havana syndrome. “It allows us to focus on the here and now, to getting people back to where they should be.”

A subset, about 28%, of Havana syndrome cases were diagnosed with a balance problem called persistent postural-perceptual dizziness, or PPPD. Linked to inner-ear problems as well as severe stress, it results when certain brain networks show no injury but don’t communicate properly. French called it a “maladaptive response,” much like how people who’ve slouched to alleviate back pain can have posture trouble even after the pain is gone.

The Havana syndrome participants reported more fatigue, posttraumatic stress symptoms and depression.

The findings are the latest in an effort to unravel a mystery that began when personnel at the U.S. embassy in Cuba began seeking medical care for hearing loss and ear-ringing after reporting sudden weird noises.

Early on, there was concern that Russia or another country may have used some form of directed energy to attack Americans. But last year, U.S. intelligence agencies said there was no sign a foreign adversary was involved and that most cases appeared to have different causes, from undiagnosed illnesses to environmental factors.

Some patients have accused the government of dismissing their ailments. And in an editorial in JAMA on Monday, one scientist called for more research to prepare for the next such health mystery, cautioning that NIH’s study design plus the limits of existing medical technology could have missed some clues.

“One might suspect that nothing or nothing serious happened with these cases. This would be ill-advised,” wrote Dr. David Relman of Stanford University. In 2022, he was part of a government-appointed panel that couldn’t rule out that a pulsed form of energy could explain a subset of cases.

The NIH study, which began in 2018 and included more than 80 Havana syndrome patients, wasn’t designed to examine the likelihood of some weapon or other trigger for Havana syndrome symptoms. Chan said the findings don’t contradict the intelligence agencies’ conclusions.

If some “external phenomenon” was behind the symptoms, “it did not result in persistent or detectable pathophysiologic change,” he said.

The State Department said it was reviewing NIH’s findings but that its priority was ensuring affected employees and family members “are treated with respect and compassion and receive timely access to medical care and all benefits to which they are entitled.”
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CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Mice accidentally introduced to a remote island near Antarctica 200 years ago are breeding out of control because of climate change, and they are eating seabirds and causing major harm in a special nature reserve with “unique biodiversity.”

Now conservationists are planning a mass extermination using helicopters and hundreds of tons of rodent poison, which needs to be dropped over every part of Marion Island’s 297 square kilometers (115 square miles) to ensure success.

If even one pregnant mouse survives, their prolific breeding ability means it may have all been for nothing.

The Mouse-Free Marion project — pest control on a grand scale — is seen as critical for the ecology of the uninhabited South African territory and the wider Southern Ocean. It would be the largest eradication of its kind if it succeeds.

The island is home to globally significant populations of nearly 30 bird species and a rare undisturbed habitat for wandering albatrosses — with their 10-foot wingspan — and many others.

An undisturbed habitat, at least, until stowaway house mice arrived on seal hunter ships in the early 1800s, introducing the island’s first mammal predators.

The past few decades have been the most significant for the damage the mice have caused, said Dr. Anton Wolfaardt, the Mouse-Free Marion project manager. He said their numbers have increased hugely, mainly due to rising temperatures from climate change, which has turned a cold, windswept island into a warmer, drier, more hospitable home.

“They are probably one of the most successful animals in the world. They’ve got to all sorts of places,” Wolfaardt said. But now on Marion Island, “their breeding season has been extended, and this has resulted in a massive increase in the densities of mice.”

Mice don’t need encouragement. They can reproduce from about 60 days old and females can have four or five litters a year, each with seven or eight babies.

Rough estimates indicate there are more than 1 million mice on Marion Island. They are feeding on invertebrates and, more and more, on seabirds — both chicks in their nests and adults.

A single mouse will feed on a bird several times its size.

Conservationists snapped a photo of one perched on the bloodied head of a wandering albatross chick.

The phenomenon of mice eating seabirds has been recorded on only a handful of the world’s islands.

The scale and frequency of mice preying on seabirds on Marion has risen alarmingly, Wolfaardt said, after the first reports of it in 2003. He said the birds have not developed the defense mechanisms to protect themselves against these unfamiliar predators and often sit there while mice nibble away at them. Sometimes, multiple mice swarm over a bird.

Conservationists estimate that if nothing is done, 19 seabird species will disappear from the island in 50 to 100 years, he said.

“This incredibly important island as a haven for seabirds has a very tenuous future because of the impacts of mice,” Wolfaardt said.

The eradication project is a single shot at success, with not even a whisker of room for error. Burgeoning mice and rat populations have been problematic for other islands. South Georgia, in the southern Atlantic, was declared rodent-free in 2018 after an eradication, but that was a multiyear project; the one on Marion could be the biggest single intervention.

Wolfaardt said four to six helicopters will likely be used to drop up to 550 tons of rodenticide bait across the island. Pilots will be given exact flight lines and Wolfaardt’s team will be able to track the drop using GPS mapping.

The bait has been designed to not affect the soil or the island’s water sources. It shouldn’t harm the seabirds, who feed out at sea, and won’t have negative impacts for the environment, Wolfaardt said. Some animals will be affected at an individual level, but those species will recover.

“There’s no perfect solution in these kinds of things,” he said. “There is nothing that just zaps mice and nothing else.”

The eradication project is a partnership between BirdLife South Africa and the national Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, which designated Marion Island as a special nature reserve with the highest level of environmental protection. It has a weather and research station but is otherwise uninhabited and dedicated to conservation.

The department said the eradication of mice was “essential if the unique biodiversity of the island is to be preserved.”

Wolfaardt said the amount of planning needed means a likely go-ahead date in 2027. The project also needs to raise about $25 million — some of which has been funded by the South African government — and get final regulatory approvals from authorities.

Scientists have tried to control the mice of Marion in the past.

They were already a pest for researchers in the 1940s, so five domestic cats were introduced. By the 1970s, there were around 2,000 feral cats on the island, killing half a million seabirds per year. The cats were eliminated by introducing a feline flu virus and hunting down any survivors.

Islands are critical to conservation efforts, but fragile. The Island Conservation organization says they are “extinction epicenters” and 75% of all species that have gone extinct lived on islands. About 95% of those were bird species.

“This really is an ecological restoration project,” Wolfaardt said. “It’s one of those rare conservation opportunities where you solve once and for all a conservation threat.”
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SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Assemblyman Anthony Rendon likes to spend his spare time away from the Capitol in Sacramento with his 4-year-old daughter at home near Los Angeles. Last weekend, he took her ice skating and afterward to an indoor playground, then let her get a donut after she agreed to ride her scooter on the way there. 

 

“Those are the types of things that make me happy,” he said this week in an interview outside the state Assembly chambers, where he’s served as a lawmaker for a dozen years. 

 

Now Rendon, a Democrat who was one of the longest-serving Assembly speakers in California history, is spending his last year in office trying to make happiness more central to policymaking. He created a first-in-the-nation group to study the issue, called the Select Committee on Happiness and Public Policy Outcomes, which held its first public hearing this week. 

It would be “silly” for lawmakers to not study how they can make people happier, Rendon said. 

 

“Because if we have everybody clothed, everybody housed, everybody has a job and they’re miserable, then we’ve failed at what we’re trying to do,” he said, adding that lawmakers should think about happiness as a priority in policymaking. 

 

In California, three-quarters of adults say they are “very happy” or “pretty happy,” while 26% say they are “not too happy,” according to a September 2023 survey from the Public Policy Institute of California. Adults aged 18 to 34, people who are renters, those without a post-high school degree, and Californians with an annual household income of $40,000 or lower tend to be less happy than others. 

 

California is breaking new ground in the United States. At least 12 state legislatures in the nation have committees focused on mental health and substance abuse issues, but no other state legislature has a committee devoted to happiness, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. 

 

But the idea to consider happiness in public policy isn’t unprecedented: The landlocked country of Bhutan in South Asia prioritizes happiness as a goal of public policy, measuring it through something written into its constitution called the Gross National Happiness Index. The country surveys residents on their level of happiness, and officials work to increase happiness by providing residents with free health care and education, protecting cultural traditions, and preserving forests, said Phuntsho Norbu, consul general of the Kingdom of Bhutan to the United States. 

 

The government cannot make every person happy, but it should “create the right conditions that will allow people to pursue happiness,” Norbu said. 

 

Lawmakers on California’s new committee heard this week from experts about the things that make people happy, what public officials can do to help and what role state and local government can play. The committee isn’t set on any solutions yet but plans to release a report with its findings after lawmakers adjourn for the year at the end of August, said Katie Talbot, Rendon’s spokesperson. 

 

Assembly member Pilar Schiavo, a Democrat representing part of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County, hopes the committee’s work can address poor mental health among youth in California, which her 11-year-old daughter has told her is a big issue in her class at school. 

 

“It’s a true crisis that we have on our hands right now,” Schiavo said. “This is really getting to the heart of what that crisis is about.” 

 

Research demonstrates that leisure activities, social relationships and life circumstances contribute to a person’s happiness, said Meliksah Demir, a professor of happiness at California State University, Sacramento. Public officials can work toward improving happiness by investing in mental health resources, making green spaces more accessible and teaching about the value of happiness early on in schools, Demir said. 

Happiness has wide-ranging benefits that include making people more likely to vote, more creative and healthier, he said. 

 

The Public Policy Institute of California’s September survey found that 33% of adults overall say they are very satisfied with their job, 31% say they are very satisfied with their leisure activities and 44% are very satisfied with their housing. 

 

Californians’ level of happiness decreased during the pandemic, but experts are still researching the decline, said Mark Baldassare, the group’s survey director. 

 

California, which is often ahead of other states on issues such as climate policy and civil rights, is behind many parts of the world in prioritizing happiness in policymaking, Rendon said. He was inspired to create the happiness committee in part by a report on happiness released annually by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. 

 

Last year’s report said that how people view the effectiveness of government — including how well it raises money, delivers services and avoids civil war — can influence their happiness. The United States was 15th in a world happiness ranking based on a three-year average from 2020 to 2022, according to the report. Scandinavian countries, including Finland and Iceland, ranked the highest. 

 

Rendon’s decision to create the happiness committee aligns with his approach to making state policy that focuses on “bigger picture” social issues, longtime labor lobbyist Kristina Bas Hamilton said. People have different perspectives on government involvement in their lives, but the creation of the committee evokes the ultimate purpose of government, she said.

 

“Government’s role is to provide for its people,” Bas Hamilton said. “The goal is to have happy citizens. That’s the goal of all public policy.” 
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