TEHRAN (AA) – On June 2 last year, after reporting zero deaths from COVID-19 following two years of multiple devastating waves, Iran’s Health Minister Bahram Einollahi congratulated the nation. Ten months on, the Middle East’s worst-hit country is grappling with the eighth wave of the coronavirus pandemic — an alarming surge in new...
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AA) – Climate change-driven salinity is posing serious health problems to pregnant women and child health in Bangladesh, experts say. “Salinity has taken everything I had – my unborn child. We were born in the land of salt, and live in salinity. We have accepted our fate and endured the misery we are […]
ANKARA (AA) – Indian health authorities have canceled the license of a pharmaceutical firm that manufactured cough syrup linked to the deaths of at least 19 children in Uzbekistan last year. The action comes just days after three employees of Marion Biotech, located in Noida in northern Uttar Pradesh state, were arrested by police after [&hell...
ISTANBUL (AA) – Amid a record fall in birth rates in 2022, Japan has seen an increase in the number of men and women committing suicide, which officials believe is due to the COVID-19 fallout. Recent government data showed that the number of women committing suicide increased by 7,135 in 2022, 67 more than the […]
Maaret Masrin, Syria (AFP): Syrian medics have launched the first cholera vaccination campaign in the rebel-held northwest since a deadly outbreak began last year, amid increased fears of contagion after last month’s devastating earthquake. Health workers are going door to door to inoculate people in homes and displacement camps in the I...
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AA) – Anwara Begum, an elderly Rohingya woman, has been struggling at a congested refugee camp in Bangladesh with her family since an August 2017 exodus following a brutal military crackdown in their home country of Myanmar. In the last five-and-a-half years of her existence as a forcefully displaced person in the refu...
RABAT, Morocco (AA) – Morocco on Monday inaugurated the country’s first laboratory for medical and industrial use of cannabis. In a statement, the Cooperative Bio Cannat said the lab in the northwestern city of Chefchaouen will be used to process cannabis in food and pharmaceutical industries. According to the statement, the lab obtained a per...
NEW DELHI (AA) – Indian police have finally arrested three employees of a company that manufactured the cough syrup linked to the deaths of at least 19 children in Uzbekistan last year. India launched a probe in December after authorities in Uzbekistan said children there died because of side effects of the cough syrup manufactured [&hel...
Jakarta, Indonesia (AFP): Dinosaur-themed birthday decorations still hang on the walls of Safitri Puspa Rani’s Indonesian home, where the family celebrated their youngest son’s birthday last year. “Knock knock! Hey everyone! It’s my eighth birthday!” said a beaming Panghegar Bhumi in a video in September, while ma...
Bab al-Hawa, Syria (AFP): World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday urged the international community to help earthquake-hit northwest Syria, on his first ever visit to rebel-held areas of the war-ravaged country. “The people of northwest Syria need the assistance of the international community to recover an...
