Month: March 2014

By Alphonso Toweh MONROVIA (Reuters) – The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Sunday that Liberia has confirmed two cases of the deadly Ebola virus that is suspected to have killed at least 70 people in Guinea. The outbreak of the highly contagious Ebola, which in its more acute phase, causes vomiting, diarrhoea and external bleeding, has sent Guinea’s West African neighbours scrambling to contain the spread of the disease. Eleven deaths in towns in northern Sierra Leone and Liberia, which shares borders with southeastern Guinea where the outbreak was first reported, are suspected to be linked to Ebola.

By Andrew Osborn LONDON (Reuters) – Archaeologists in Britain said on Sunday they had solved a 660-year-old mystery, citing DNA tests which they said proved they had found a lost burial site for tens of thousands of people killed in medieval London by the "Black Death" plague. The breakthrough follows the discovery last year of 13 skeletons wrapped in shrouds laid out in neat rows during excavations for London's new Crossrail rail line, Europe's biggest infrastructure project. Archaeologists, who say the find sheds new light on medieval England and its inhabitants, later found 12 more skeletons taking the total to 25. Limited records suggest up to 50,000 victims were buried in the cemetery in London's Farringdon district, one of two emergency burial sites.

By Katharine Houreld and Jessica Donati KABUL/KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) – The deeply conservative, all-male crowd at Afghanistan's Kandahar stadium stared in disbelief as the small woman in a modest black headscarf stood up and reached for the microphone. Habiba Sarabi's speech in the southern Taliban heartland city lasted only a few minutes, thanking the crowd for supporting her candidacy in next month's presidential election. During their strict Islamist rule from 1996-2001, the Afghan Taliban had banned women from education, voting and most work, and they were not allowed to leave their homes without permission and a male escort. A fair election would mark Afghanistan's first democratic transfer of power, a monumental achievement for Afghans struggling to end decades of bloodletting and cement fragile gains in education, health and human rights.

By Ben Hirschler CAMBRIDGE, England (Reuters) – AstraZeneca, which will complete its move to Cambridge by 2016, is already putting down roots in the ecosystem of the university city as it seeks to revitalize its drug research. Britain’s second-biggest pharmaceuticals group said on Monday it had struck an unique deal with the state-funded Medical Research Council (MRC) under which academic scientists will work alongside its staff at its new Cambridge site. Transplanting AstraZeneca to the university city in the east of England forms the centerpiece of a $2.5 billion restructuring plan by Chief Executive Pascal Soriot, who hopes closer links with academia will spark ideas and innovation. AstraZeneca has suffered a dry period in drug discovery in recent years and badly needs to find new medicines to replace blockbusters like Nexium for heartburn and Crestor for high cholesterol that will lose patent protection in a few years.

By Ransdell Pierson and Bill Berkrot WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A non-surgically implanted heart valve meant to delay open heart surgery in children with congenital heart defects worked well for all but a few patients during a year of follow-up observation, in line with favorable results seen in original clinical trials of the Medtronic Inc product. The Melody transcatheter pulmonary valve was approved in 2010 under a U.S. humanitarian device exemption, which allowed it on the market as long as a follow-up study was conducted to assess the product’s reliability and safety. “The valves had excellent function during the first year, judged by no more than mild leakage and very few patients had narrowing of the valve,” said Dr. Aimee Armstrong of the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital Cardiac Catheterization Laboratories, who was lead investigator for the follow-up study sponsored by Medtronic. Within the first year of the study, eight adverse events were seen, including three cases of heart infections, two abnormal heart rhythms and one case each of bacterial infection, major stent fracture and blood clot in the lung.