OVERLOOKED INFECTION KILLS 150,000 BABIES A YEAR, MOSTLY IN AFRICA - STUDY
DAKAR - A bacterial infection passed from mothers to babies kills around 150,000 unborn children and infants a year but has been widely overlooked in developing countries, researchers said on Monday as they urged faster progress on developing a vaccine.
Nearly one in five pregnant women worldwide is infected with Group B Streptococcus (GBS), which causes stillbirths, deaths and permanent problems such as vision and hearing loss in babies, researchers found in the first global study of the disease.
Africa is disproportionately affected, with 65 percent of the world’s stillbirths and infant deaths from GBS, though it is home to only about 13 percent of the world’s population, according to the study led by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Most of these deaths could be prevented by a new vaccine that is still in clinical development, the study found.
“The burden of Group B strep has been underappreciated, particularly in low and middleincome countries,” co-author Shabir Madhi of Wits University in South Africa told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
In high-income countries pregnant women are typically screened for GBS and given antibiotics during labor to prevent infecting the baby, which is effective, the researchers said.
But this is rarely done in developing countries where laboratory screening is limited and many births take place at home, they said.
In Africa the rate of infection in pregnant women is also higher than worldwide, ranging from 25 to 35 percent, although it is not clear why, said Madhi.
There is no vaccine currently available to prevent GBS, but one still undergoing trials was found to be 80 percent effective and could potentially prevent 231,000 infant and maternal GBS cases a year, the study found. “If the vaccine is developed, the place it’s most needed is in Africa,” Madhi said. Unfortunately, he added, it will likely not be on the market for at least five years.
“It is now essential to accelerate the GBS vaccine development activities,” said co-author Johan Vekemans of the World Health Organisation in a statement. – THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION.
Focused on ending hunger, Africa neglects rising obesity
DAKAR - Focused for decades on ending hunger, African countries have largely failed to address a rising obesity epidemic that could soon become the greater public health crisis, experts said as new data was released.
A quarter of the world’s 41 million overweight children under five live in Africa, a figure that has nearly doubled on the continent in the last two decades, according to the Global Nutrition Report published at the weekend.
There are still six times more children on the continent whose growth is stunted from malnutrition, and that number is also increasing, the report said.
But noncommunicable diseases such as diabetes and heart disease, most of which are obesity-related, are expected to become the biggest killer in Africa by 2030, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
“Diets are changing, but they are not becoming more nutritious,” said Corinna Hawkes, co-chair of the Global Nutrition Report.
“We’re worried that because attention hasn’t been paid to this issue, obesity has had the space to grow,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
More than 30 percent of adults in Africa are overweight, according to WHO, with obesity rates nearing 10 percent even in very poor countries such as Sierra Leone and Liberia.
In some places people are both overweight and malnourished, experts said. Sometimes a mother is obese but her children are stunted, said Hawkes.
Highly processed foods have become increasingly affordable and available worldwide, which is one of the primary drivers, said Bruce Lee, executive director of the Global Obesity Prevention Centre at Johns Hopkins University.
Moreover, in Africa people are often unaware that these foods are unhealthy and do not necessarily see being overweight as a problem, he said.
“If you have a country where the concern was always not getting enough food, it’s going to take a while to shift people’s perceptions,” Lee told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
West Africa’s regional health organisation (WAHO) makes no mention of weight gain or obesity in all 60 pages of its 2016-2020 strategic plan, although it notes “alarming” rates of diabetes and growing prevalence of high blood pressure.
Aid organisations that address hunger should adapt their existing programmes to also prevent obesity, said Hawkes.
School meal programmes in West Africa, for example, are usually focused on making sure children get enough food but sometimes have no standards for quality, she said.
Obesity-related conditions are usually expensive to treat and will take a heavy toll on developing countries’ economies, experts say.
“If we invest in nutrition, we’ll be helping to achieve other development goals,” said Hawkes. “This is not a side issue.”