In a first, HIV-positive mom donates liver to save child
3 polio cases in Niger
JOHANNESBURG, Oct 6, (Agencies): Faced with the only chance to save a child’s life, doctors in South Africa have performed a medical first – transplanting part of the liver from a HIV-positive mother into her HIV-negative child, it was announced Thursday.
The doctors at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg revealed that one year after the operation, the child may not have caught the virus from her new liver.
The child had a terminal liver disease and would have died without the transplant.
Medication given to the child “may have prevented the transmission of HIV. However, we will only know this conclusively over time,” said Jean Botha, chief surgeon at the university.
The team of doctors at the Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre performed what it said was the first liver transplant from a mother living with HIV to her HIV-negative child, who was close to death after waiting six months for a donor.
They said that the mother and child, who have not been identified, have fully recovered and are in good health. After transplants, liver remaining in the donor is able to regenerate rapidly.
The mother, who is being successfully treated with antiretroviral (ART) medication, had repeatedly asked to donate her liver to save her child’s life – posing a major ethnical debate for doctors due to the risk of HIV transmission.
“The transplant team faced the dilemma of saving the child’s life whilst at the same time knowing that the child might end up HIV positive,” the university added. “The actual chance of transmitting HIV was unknown.”
South Africa has the world’s largest HIV treatment programme with 7.1 million people living with HIV, a 18.9 percent adult prevalence rate.
About 3.7 million people in the country receive treatment for HIV, so the use of HIV-positive donors could help tackle the severe shortage of donors.
In 2017, 14 children waiting for liver transplants in Johannesburg died before having the operation.
Polio: Health officials have detected three cases of polio in southern Niger, near the border with Nigeria, the health ministry said Friday, just months after a major UN vaccination operation.
Experts from Niger, the World Health Organization and the UN’s children agency UNICEF have already arrived in the area to investigate.
Polio is a highly infectious viral disease which mainly affects young children and can result in permanent paralysis. There is no cure and it can only be prevented through immunisation.
Sunscreen: New research in Hong Kong has found that UV filters commonly used in sunscreen are polluting surrounding waters and could endanger human health, one of the city’s leading universities said Thursday.
An “extensive amount” of seven common UV filter chemicals was found in Hong Kong seawater as well as in fish, shrimps and mussels on aqua-farms, scientists from Hong Kong Baptist University told reporters.
“The effect of these contaminants passing along the food chain to humans and the long-term impact on human fertility cannot be neglected,” said Dr Kelvin Leung, who led the research.
Tests performed on zebrafish, which share a similar genetic structure to humans, showed the polluted water caused abnormalities and a higher mortality rate in the fish’s embryos as the chemicals entered the food chain.
The university described the study as a world-first in identifying the harm caused by a combination of polluting chemicals in sunscreen.
Researchers said they would conduct further tests to learn more about the effects of UV filters on the human body.
Malaria: Kansai Plascon, owned by Tokyo-listed Kansai Paint Co Ltd, has launched the world’s first mosquito repellant paint in Zambia to help it reach a target to eliminate malaria by 2021, the company and a Japanese government official said.
Malaria, spread by mosquitoes, is a treatable disease if caught early, but current anti-malarial drugs are failing in many areas as people develop resistance to them.
Zambia aims to eradicate malaria, the southern African country’s biggest killer, within three years after deaths from the disease halved last year from 2014, the government said in June.
Hanai Junichi, Japan International Cooperation Agency’s (JICA) Zambia resident representative said his agency was carrying out the initiative in partnership with Kansai.