Richard Cash saved 50 million lives

Dr. Richard Cash died Oct. 22, 2024 at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at 83. How many people have accomplished anything like this?

During a cholera outbreak in 1968 in villages east of Dhaka, two young public health specialists began giving desperately ill patients liter after liter of a simple formula: salt and sugar dissolved in clean water….

The results from oral solution were stunning. The recovery and survival rates were unprecedented and the treatment, known as Oral Rehydration Therapy, became the medical standard — credited by the World Health Organization and other groups for saving more than 50 million lives, including many children, since the 1970s…

Studies of oral rehydration methods to treat cholera and other diseases went back to the 19th century but gained increased attention in the 1960s by health scientists including Dilip Mahalanabis with the Johns Hopkins Medical Research and Training in Kolkata, then known as Calcutta.

Mahalanabis’s team experimented with various solutions to treat cholera patients in the early stages of the disease. He reported that nearly all the patients survived.

The clinical observations by Dr. Cash and Nalin during the cholera outbreak in what was then the Pakistani province East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) offered the first extensive evidence on the effectiveness of the oral rehydration therapy. Only two patients out of dozens required additional IV treatment…

Dr. Cash did not invent this, but he helped prove and publicize its effectiveness. https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2024/10/26/richard-cash-cholera-rehydration-dies/. Approximately 990 words.

And good news from this week’s Fix the News:

Public health wins in Kenya, Uganda, Bangladesh, and Tanzania
Earlier this month, over 6.5 million children in Kenya and Uganda were vaccinated against polio, Bangladesh just launched the final phase of its HPV vaccination campaign to protect 6.2 million girls against cervical cancer, and Tanzania is celebrating a reduction in bilharzia infections from historical levels of above 50% to under 2% of the overall population.

Truckers love EVs

While trucks are only 4 percent of the vehicles on the road (in the US), they make up almost a quarter of the country’s transportation emissions. Around 10,000 of those trucks were just put on the road in 2023, up from 2,000 the year before.

Amazon, for example, has ordered and deployed thousands of electric delivery vans made by Rivian; the company says it has electric trucks operating in 1,800 cities in the United States. FedEx has electric trucks rolling through the streets of Los Angeles. The logistics company Schneider has dozens of Class 8 electric semi-trucks delivering loads throughout Southern California.

And the drivers operating them say they love driving electric. Marty Boots, a 66-year-old driver for Schneider in South El Monte, Calif., appreciates the lightness and the smoothness of his Freightliner eCascadia semi-truck. “Diesel was like a college wrestler,” he said. “And the electric is like a ballet dancer.”… Some drivers were hesitant when first trying out the technology. But once they try it, he said, most are sold. “You get back into diesel and it’s like, ‘What’s wrong with this thing?’” he said. “Why is it making so much noise? Why is it so hard to steer?”

Many drivers have reported that the new vehicles are easier on their bodies — thanks to both less rocking off the cab, assisted steering and the quiet motor. “We’re seeing people who would retire driving a diesel truck now working more years with an electric truck.”

Full article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2024/01/18/electric-truck-drivers-vehicles/ (1,200 words). Let me know if you can’t access that.

Experts on relationships

All relationships take work to help them function healthily – but what can you do when bonds urgently need repairing? Here’s advice from therapists on how to build better connections with everyone in your life, from your mother to your manager.

Headlines:

Communication is key
Make time to talk
Listen to and acknowledge the other person’s feelings
Be yourself within relationships
Report rather than act out any issues
Embrace arguing (occasionally)
Lower your expectations of others
Hurtful comments can come from a place of love
If you aren’t close to family, don’t force it
Say sorry when necessary
Accept that relationships with children often aren’t what we hoped for
When faced with really challenging behaviour, look back
Reboot yourself before you try to reboot a relationship
Schedule planning meetings
Don’t expect problems to be resolved quickly
Avoid fighting over who is right or wrong
Work out what you can change yourself
Consider whether friendships are worth salvaging
In the workplace, treat others as you wish to be treated

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/sep/26/the-experts-therapists-on-19-ways-to-have-much-happier-healthier-relationships. 2,600 words. One to three paragraphs on each item.

And good news from this week’s Fix the News:

No cervical cancer cases among HPV-vaccinated women in Scotland
A groundbreaking study, the first to track a national group of women over a lengthy period, has found no cases of cervical cancer among women born between 1988 and 1996 who were fully vaccinated against HPV at ages 12 and 13. STAT
…
‘Game-changing’ HIV drug to be made affordable in 120 countries
Pharma giant Gilead has signed agreements with six manufacturers to make and sell cheaper versions of its HIV prevention drug lenacapavir in 120 ‘high-incidence, resource-limited’ countries. Lenacapavir, a twice-yearly injection, has been shown to offer near-complete protection from HIV in recent trials. Guardian

UK closes last coal power plant

Britain was the birthplace of the industrial revolution, around 1780, and a major reason was that coal was plentiful and accessible. On September 30 2024, its last coal-powered electrical generating plant closed, replaced by natural gas, nuclear, and renewables:

This was a country powered by coal — dug by a million miners, used to make cheap energy, to generate heat, then steam, then electricity. Coal heated the homes, ran the trains and made the steel and cement.

The first coal-fired electric plant in the world was built in England in 1882. The term “smog” was coined here, too.

Now Britain is the first in the global club of wealthy countries to quit coal — relying instead on natural gas, nuclear power and a combination of renewable energy sources.

We’re moving into the future. Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/09/29/uk-last-coal-power-plant/ (about 1,400 words). Also see https://xkcd.com/2992/ (remember to hover over the pic for an extra joke).

And just one good news item from this week’s Fix the News:

A lead-free future
Lead poisoning kills more people than HIV and malaria combined. Now the first-ever global public-private partnership has committed $150 million to end lead poisoning in children in developing countries once and for all. Over the past few years Bangladesh, Malawi and Madagascar have all achieved outsized impact in fighting lead expose with low-cost and effective approaches.