Measles jab plan targets 1m children
By Anonymous on Apr 25, 2013 03:46 am 24 April 2013 Last updated at 22:02 ET By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News 
Drop-in clinics have been set up during the outbreak in Swansea
One million schoolchildren in England are to be targeted by a measles vaccination plan aimed at curbing the growing threat of outbreaks.
Health officials warn epidemics similar to the one in Swansea, which has seen nearly 900 cases, could occur anywhere.
There are fears that a generation of children have low levels of protection after the MMR scare a decade ago.
The catch-up campaign, run through GPs, schools and community groups, will focus on children aged 10 to 16.
The campaign is expected to cost £20m and the Department of Health already has 1.2 million vaccines ready to go.
It will aim to vaccinate children yet to be protected with the MMR - measles, mumps and rubella - jab by September.
Measles is a highly contagious disease characterised by a high fever and a rash. In one in 15 cases it can lead to severe complications, such as pneumonia and inflammation of the brain, and can be fatal.
In 2012, there were nearly 2,000 cases of measles in England - the highest figure for nearly two decades.
This year could be another record with cases already higher than at the same point last year.
Discredited research Children aged between 10 and 16 are the most likely to have missed jabs when research linked MMR with autism and caused vaccination rates to plummet. The research has been since been discredited.
Continue reading the main story Analysis
Travel back in time to the mid-90s and measles was not a worry. It had been effectively eradicated in the UK with cases only coming from abroad.
It seems remarkable that two decades later such campaigns are needed.
Discredited claims by Andrew Wakefield of a link between MMR and autism led to vaccination rates falling to 80% by 2005, far below the level needed to prevent the spread of the disease.
Those unvaccinated children are now entering a vulnerable period in their lives as they transition to secondary school.
It is a significant moment as mixing with far more pupils significantly increases the risk of infection.
Being older also means the dangers of complications will be higher.
Vaccination rates have since recovered to record levels. It suggests measles will be confined to the Wakefield generation and not be a long-term problem.
The most urgent need for vaccination is in the third-of-a-million completely unprotected children in that age group. They should be given their first MMR jab before the next school year and a booster jab later.
A similar number of children who had only their first MMR vaccine will be targeted with their booster.
The aim is to give a further third-of-a-million children in other age groups, who are not totally protected, their vaccines as well.
Prof David Salisbury, the director of immunisation at the Department of Health, said parents needed to act to prevent outbreaks on their doorstep.
"Swansea is the wake-up call for parents and it tells us just how infectious measles is - it just spreads like wildfire.
"If you think your child has not had one or even two doses of MMR, for goodness sake contact your GP and get it sorted out.
"The message from Swansea is very clear and it is trivialised at the risk of your children's health."
Similar plans are already under way in Wales.
Both Scotland and Northern Ireland maintained relatively high MMR uptake but NHS boards in Scotland are to write to parents of all unvaccinated or partially vaccinated children aged 10 to 17 with an invitation to attend for vaccination over the next few weeks.
Danger zones Figures from Public Health England show there have been 587 confirmed cases of measles in the first three months of 2013.
Measles outbreak: In graphics
A fifth of cases needed hospital treatment and 15 people developed complications such as pneumonia, meningitis and gastroenteritis.
The cases were mostly in the north-east and north-west of England, even though the north of the country generally maintained high levels of vaccination at the height of the MMR scare.
Dr Mary Ramsay, head of immunisation at Public Health England, said: "We have potential for school outbreaks in many areas of the country.
"The areas most likely to be affected would be London and the south and east of the country, where we know that the historical coverage was not as high."
Prof Salisbury said he worried about London because of the high density of people, who were rapidly moving.
He warned that children who received single jabs, instead of the combined MMR, may also need additional protection as there had been "major problems" with the quality and storage of some of the vaccines handed out.
He added that nobody should be considering single jabs now.
Dr Paul Cosford, the director for health protection at Public Health England, said: "Although nationally the numbers needing catch-up vaccination is quite large, there are relatively few in each local area.
"We are confident that local teams have the resources to identify and vaccinate those children most at risk."
Read in browser » 
CIA 'tracked Boston bomb suspect'
By Anonymous on Apr 24, 2013 11:56 pm 24 April 2013 Last updated at 22:44 ET 
Tamerlan Tsarnaev travelled to Russia in 2012 for a lengthy trip to the Russian republic of Dagestan
The US government added one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects to a counter-terrorism database about 18 months ago, officials have told US media.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was flagged after Russian authorities suspected him of plotting an attack there.
An FBI preliminary investigation found no evidence of a threat to the US.
Also on Wednesday, a US lawmaker confirmed the bombs were set off by remote-control.
But the devices - which killed three people and injured more than 260 - were not sophisticated and had to be triggered within a few blocks of the explosives, officials have told US media.
FBI 'not at fault' Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who was killed in a firefight with police on Thursday night, was added to a US government database at the request of the CIA, officials said.
The database is known as the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or Tide, and contains as many as 745,000 entries.
Individuals on that list are not necessarily on the so-called terrorist watch list.
The news of Tsarnaev's inclusion in the database comes after authorities said the US intelligence community had no information about threats to the marathon ahead of the 15 April attacks.
Continue reading the main story The Tsarnaev brothers
- Sons of Chechen refugees from the troubled Caucasus region of southern Russia
- Family is thought to have moved to the US in 2002 from Russian republic of Dagestan
- They lived in the Massachusetts town of Cambridge, home to Harvard University
- Dzhokhar, 19, (right) was awarded a scholarship to pursue further education; he wanted to become a brain surgeon, according to his father
- Tamerlan, 26, was an amateur boxer who had reportedly taken time off college to train for a competition; he described himself as a "very religious" non-drinker and non-smoker
About six months before the CIA requested his name be added to Tide, the FBI asked the Russians for more information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev but received none, and closed its investigation.
After a classified briefing in the House intelligence committee on Wednesday, Democratic Congressman Dutch Ruppersberger said he believed the FBI was not at fault.
"I feel, based on the testimony today, that the FBI did exactly what they would do and they followed through the protocols that were necessary once they got that information," Mr Ruppersberger told reporters.
He also said he had been told the bombs were detonated with a "garage door opener-type of device".
Tamerlan Tsarnaev's younger brother and suspected accomplice, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was injured during the police manhunt and remains in hospital in a fair condition.
Officers captured him as he hid in a boat covered by a tarpaulin in a garden in Watertown, Massachusetts.
Officials initially had said he exchanged gunfire with police for more than an hour before he was captured on Friday, but the Associated Press reported on Wednesday Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had been unarmed.
The Associated Press reported authorities did not find a gun on the boat. A 9mm handgun was recovered from the site where a transport official was allegedly shot by Tamerlan Tsarnaev on Thursday night.
Suspects' parents arriving The younger brother has been charged in hospital with using a weapon of mass destruction and malicious destruction of property resulting in death. He could be sentenced to death if convicted on either count.
In bedside questioning, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has said he and his brother were angry about the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, officials have told US media.
But the brothers are not believed to have had direct contact with a militant organisation, lawmakers said after closed-door briefings. It is suspected the brothers became radicalised online.
The suspects' parents, Anzor Tsarnaev and Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, are due to arrive in the US on Thursday, Russian media reported.
The Tsarnaev family has origins in the troubled, predominantly Muslim republic of Chechnya in southern Russia.
They had been living in the US for about a decade at the time of the attack, but in 2012, Tamerlan Tsarnaev returned to Russia to visit.
He spent six months with relatives in Dagestan, another Muslim Russian republic, which has an active Islamist militant insurgency.
Read in browser » Frantic search for Dhaka survivors
By Anonymous on Apr 25, 2013 03:19 am 24 April 2013 Last updated at 19:51 ET 
Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.
Andrew North: "This is the worst disaster in Bangladesh's industrial history and the casualties are still rising"
A frantic search for survivors is under way at a building outside the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, which collapsed, killing at least 96 people.
Rescue workers with drilling machines are working with volunteers, some using their bare hands, to try to free survivors - some heard crying out.
Tens of thousands of weeping family members are gathered at the site.
The disaster has prompted questions over Bangladesh's chronically poor safety standards.
Bangladesh has one of the largest garment industries in the world, providing cheap clothing for major Western retailers which benefit from its widespread low-cost labour.
Police said the factory owners had ignored warnings not to allow their workers into the building after cracks were noticed on Tuesday - cracks which, according to reports, had even attracted the interest of local news stations.
The owners of the factory are now said to have gone into hiding.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has announced a national day of mourning on Thursday in memory of the victims.
'Like a pancake' According to one firefighter, some 2,000 people were in the Rana Plaza building in Savar, some 30km (20 miles) outside Dhaka, when it collapsed suddenly on Wednesday morning.
Continue reading the main story At the scene
Anbarasan Ethirajan BBC News, Savar
Grieving relatives have been anxiously waiting outside the collapsed building in Savar. Rescue teams have been working frantically using concrete cutters and cranes digging through the rubble to pull people out.
It is still not clear how many people are trapped inside, although local media say there are hundreds. A doctor at the local hospital told the BBC that their services had been stretched.
The reason for the collapse is not yet known. The latest incident has once again raised questions about safety standards in the country's thriving garments industry. However, factory owners say safety standards have improved significantly in recent years.
Firefighters and soldiers joined volunteers in the effort to locate survivors in the mangled wreckage of concrete and steel.
"I heard them cry. We can't leave them behind this way," fire official Abul Khayer told AP news agency.
Lengths of textile that were earlier being cut into garments - many destined for Western consumers - were now being used as makeshift slides to evacuate survivors and corpses.
Mosammat Khursida wailed as she looked for her husband, AP reported.
"He came to work in the morning. I can't find him," she said. "I don't know where he is. He does not pick up his phone."
Lines of relatives filed by numbered bodies of victims, looking for their family members.
Local hospitals were overwhelmed with a reported 1,000 people injured.
Survivors said the building had collapsed suddenly, without warning.
"It became completely dark on this side," a witness said. "There was a lot of dust from the collapsing debris, so we ran downstairs. When we came out we saw the whole building collapsed."
Only the ground floor of the building remained intact, officials said.
"The whole building collapsed like a pancake within minutes. Most workers did not have any chance to escape," national fire department chief Ahmed Ali told AFP news agency.
Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.
Bangladeshi factory worker: "In one minute everything collapsed"
Speaking at the scene, Home Minister Muhiuddin Khan Alamgir said the building had violated construction codes and "the culprits would be punished".
In November, a fire at a garment factory in the Dhaka suburb of Tazreen drew international attention to working conditions in Bangladesh's textile industry.
Primark, a clothes retailer with a large presence in Britain, confirmed that one of its suppliers was on the second floor of the Rana Plaza.
It said it was "shocked and deeply saddened by the appalling incident" and that it would work with other retailers to review standards.
Discount giant Wal-Mart - which was found to be sourcing products from the Tazreen factory - said it was still trying to establish whether its goods were being produced at the Rana Plaza.
"We remain committed and are actively engaged in promoting stronger safety measures, and that work continues,'' said Wal-Mart spokesman Kevin Gardner.
Hospitals are overwhelmed with the injured
A company called New Wave, with two factories in the building, supplies firms from around Europe, the US and Canada.
Meanwhile, Spanish retailer Mango said it had not been using any of the suppliers in the building but had been in talks with one of them to produce a batch of test products.
'Catch-22' Edward Hertzman, a textiles broker based in New York, told Reuters news agency that pressure from US retailers to keep costs down was in part responsible for unsafe conditions.
"Bangladesh is the longest lead-time country and a difficult country to work in, so the only way it becomes competitive is by offering the lowest [cost]. That's the catch-22," he said.
"If the factories want to raise prices to make up for rising wages and costs, the buyers say, 'Oh why do we want to go to Bangladesh if I could go to China, Pakistan, Cambodia etc for a similar price?"
He said if Western companies really wanted safety standards to improve, they would have to accept that they need to start paying higher prices.
The last major building collapse in Bangladesh was in 2010, when a four-storey building in Dhaka caved in, killing at least 25 people and injuring several others.
In 2005, there was a building collapse near the site of Wednesday's incident, killing 64 people.
Read in browser » Official GDP figures for UK awaited
By Anonymous on Apr 24, 2013 07:01 pm 24 April 2013 Last updated at 19:01 ET 
Can consumer power prevent a triple-dip recession?
Official figures due to be released later will reveal whether the UK has slipped into a triple-dip recession.
The Office for National Statistics will issue its preliminary estimates for gross domestic product (GDP) for the first three months of the year.
The economy shrank in the last quarter of 2012. A second quarter of contraction would put the UK economy officially back in recession.
But on average, economists are forecasting growth of 0.1%.
A poll of analysts by Reuters resulted in forecasts ranging between a contraction of 0.2% and growth of 0.3%.
A contraction would mean the UK has fallen into recession for the third time since the financial crisis struck in 2008.
Economists say news of another recession may have a psychological impact on consumers and businesses, but they argue that the broader picture of the economy will remain unchanged.
The UK has flat-lined since 2008, and small levels of growth or contraction will have little impact on that general trend.
They also express caution about reading too much into the preliminary ONS figures, which are likely to be revised at a later date.
Continue reading the main story The UK's continued weak economic growth has been blamed on lacklustre consumer spending, continued problems in the eurozone - a major export market - and the impact of the government's austerity measures.
On Wednesday, the Bank of England announced an expansion of its Funding for Lending Scheme (FLS), designed to help small businesses get loans.
Continued weak growth is likely to increase pressure on Chancellor George Osborne, who is already facing calls from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to rethink the pace of his austerity programme.
Poor growth has already encouraged two international rating agencies to strip the UK of its triple-A rating.
Shadow financial secretary to the Treasury, Chris Leslie, said that even if the UK escaped a triple-dip recession, low growth "isn't good enough".
"After nearly three years of flat-lining, we need to see decisive evidence that a strong and sustained recovery is finally under way," he said.
The government insists its austerity measures are vital to bringing down government borrowing, and guarantee growth in the long-term.
The ONS is due to publish the GDP estimates at 0930 BST.
Read in browser » Two investigated over Kate images
By Anonymous on Apr 24, 2013 08:56 pm 24 April 2013 Last updated at 20:56 ET 
The duchess attended a charity event at London's National Portrait Gallery on Wednesday evening
The head of the publisher of France's Closer magazine and a photographer are under formal investigation in France over the publication of pictures of a sunbathing Duchess of Cambridge.
Topless pictures of the duchess, taken during a private holiday in France, were published by Closer in September.
Local newspaper La Provence used pictures of her in her swimwear.
Mondadori boss Ernesto Mauri and La Provence's Valerie Suau are under investigation for invasion of privacy.
Ms Suau has admitted capturing images of the duchess in her swimwear but denies having taken the topless photos.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge launched legal proceedings in France following the publication of the pictures last autumn.
Shortly afterwards, a Paris court banned Closer from re-publishing the images and ordered the gossip magazine to hand over the originals within 24 hours, or face a daily fine of 10,000 euros (£8,000).
In their ruling, magistrates described the pictures as "particularly intrusive".
The images were published in other European magazines as the ruling did not cover publications outside France, but no British newspapers printed them.
Sources sacrosanct Prince William and Catherine also filed a separate criminal complaint under France's strict privacy laws.
The BBC's Christian Fraser said that when they started legal proceedings back in October, there was no name on their criminal complaint.
The identity of the photographer who took the topless photos was withheld by magazine Closer - in French law the protection of media sources is sacrosanct.
But the duke and duchess had kept up the pressure, our correspondent added.
Six months on, their campaign appeared to have taken a significant step forward with the prosecutor putting the two people under formal investigation for breach of privacy, he said.
As the royal couple prepare for the birth of their first child, this was a timely reminder they were not prepared to compromise on their privacy, he added.
Mr Mauri, head of Mondadori - an Italian publisher owned by the country's former Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi - is under investigation for allowing the topless pictures to be published on 14 September.
La Provence also published some images from the couple's holiday.
Paper's support It is unclear when they were formally placed under investigation but the AFP news agency reported that it was earlier this month.
Closer magazine has argued the photos were taken from a public road and were not in the least offensive.
The pictures were taken when the royals were in southern France, at a chateau owned by Viscount Linley, the Queen's nephew.
The Italian publishing group said: "Mondadori is not aware of anything new with respect to what is already known about the issue."
La Provence said Ms Suau had the paper's "support in the legal challenge she is facing today".
Read in browser » Cameron policy role for Jo Johnson
By Anonymous on Apr 24, 2013 11:07 pm 24 April 2013 Last updated at 23:07 ET 
Jo Johnson, like his brother and David Cameron, was educated at Eton and Oxford
The prime minister has appointed Jo Johnson - the younger brother of Mayor of London Boris Johnson - as the head of his policy unit.
Jo Johnson was elected as MP for Orpington, in London, in May 2010.
Mr Cameron, who is also setting up a new advisory board on policy, has been accused of failing to listen to his MPs and Tory activists in the past.
BBC political correspondent Vicki Young said he was making a clear attempt to improve communication with his party.
It followed bruising battles over gay marriage, Europe, planning laws and Lords reform, she added.
She said the appointment of Jo Johnson, 41, who like his brother and the prime minister was educated at Eton and Oxford, was being seen as an attempt to give Conservative policy-making a sharper edge.
Mr Cameron's new advisory board on policy will balance the experience of MPs such as Peter Lilley - who served in Margaret Thatcher's cabinet - with prominent roles for several younger backbenchers.
They include Mr Cameron's former press secretary, George Eustice, and MP for Wolverhampton South West Paul Uppal.
Read in browser » 
No comments:
Post a Comment