Sports research shows female athletes twice more likely to develop concussions than male counterparts
Liz Williams was standing pitch-side at a women’s rugby match and she did not like what she was seeing. Williams, who researches forensic biomechanics at Swansea University, UK, had equipped some of the players with a mouth-guard that contained a sensor to measure the speed of head movement. She wanted...
US gun violence: Counselling ties high suicide incidence to easy firearm access in homes
The risk of death by suicide in the United States is higher when guns are easily accessible in a home, research finds. However, keeping firearms unloaded and locked away in homes resulted in a decreased suicide and homicide incidence in the past five years, according to the findings. This was...
How overmedication may lead to 150,000 premature deaths, 4.6m inpatients and cost US taxpayer $62 billion
When the risk of the medications outweighs their potential benefits, patients are in danger of significant health consequences. Every day, 750 older adults are hospitalised due to serious side-effects from their medications, including falls, allergic reactions and internal bleeding. With each additional medication prescribed, the risk of an adverse reaction...
Tackling overmedication: Half of all doctors in US accepted $2.4 billion bribes from drug firms to prescribe their products
When my grandmother Carol Mitchell was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2010 at the age of 72, she was prescribed a drug called carbidopa/levodopa. She swallowed the little oblong pill four times a day – 7 am, 11 am, 3 pm and 7 pm. In the years that followed, her...
US army exit from Afghanistan sets stage for Taliban warlords to scramble for drug profits and power
The United States spent more than $8 billion over 15 years on efforts to deprive the Taliban of their profits from Afghanistan’s opium and heroin trade, from poppy eradication to airstrikes and raids on suspected labs. As the United States wraps up its longest war, Afghanistan remains the world’s biggest...
US records more firearm-related deaths than any other wealthy nation, 2020 was deadliest in 20 years
Maeve Wallace has studied maternal health in the United States for more than a decade, and a grim statistic haunts her. Five years ago, she published a study showing that being pregnant or recently having had a baby nearly doubles a woman’s risk of being killed. More than half of...
Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers accused of raping, abusing Tigray women in conflict zones
Amnesty International said this week that Ethiopian government forces, Amhara region’s militia group and Eritrean forces have been systematically raping and abusing hundreds of women and girls in the conflict in the country’s northern Tigray region. As part of a new report, Amnesty spoke to 63 survivors of rape and...
Hits and misses: Wild thought, accidental visa to America, then unexpected ticket
I did not plan to go to America. The decision just made itself. One Wednesday morning on the bus along Ngong Road, Nairobi, on my way to the office, I put my hand in my inner coat pocket and discovered that I had inadvertently carried my passport. As I turned...
Marathon king Eliud Kipchoge returns home, shuns talk of retiring after Olympics gold
Eliud Kipchoge arrived back in Nairobi, Kenya after he successfully defended his Olympic marathon title at Tokyo 2020. Kipchoge finished in two hours, 8 minutes, 38 seconds on a breezy and humid day along the streets of Sapporo. It was 80 seconds ahead of runner-up Abdi Nageeye of the Netherlands....
Kenya, Nigeria in the eye of a gathering storm as violent nonstate actors resort to weaponised drones in wars
The risk of militarisation of drone technology in Africa represents a new asymmetric tool, which experts now fear nonstate groups may deploy to extend the reach of their coercion, reshaping the African battlefield. A study has listed Kenya in East Africa, Nigeria in West Africa, which have in recent years...
