health

No cadmium please: French want less toxin in their baguettes

BY REBECCA FRASQUET AND SOFIA BOUDERBALA

  • - France is mulling two ways to help: testing people to get a better measure of how widespread contamination is, and regulating fertilisers to limit new cadmium entering soils.
  • France is mulling how to prevent people from ingesting too much of the heavy metal cadmium, after a warning their breakfast cereal and baguettes could be contaminated with the toxin.
  • - France is mulling two ways to help: testing people to get a better measure of how widespread contamination is, and regulating fertilisers to limit new cadmium entering soils.
France is mulling how to prevent people from ingesting too much of the heavy metal cadmium, after a warning their breakfast cereal and baguettes could be contaminated with the toxin.
Here is what to know.

What is cadmium?

Cadmium is a chemical element naturally found in the ground at low levels, particularly in limestone-rich areas.
But the concentration of the carcinogenic element can increase through deposits, including phosphate fertilisers used to grow crops that then end up on people's plates.

What's the problem?

Nearly half of the French population last year had cadmium exposure levels exceeding reference values, France's National Agency for Health Security (ANSES) warned in March.
It noted "worrying cadmium contamination at all ages, starting from a very young age".
For non-smokers, this came primarily from consuming contaminated food including breakfast cereals, bread, croissants and other pastries, biscuits, rice and potatoes, it said.

How bad is it?

French doctors last year begged the authorities to act, saying women and children were especially being contaminated and blaming "phosphate fertilisers containing too much cadmium".
France's top health authority in 2024 warned that "repeated exposure to low doses can be the cause of multiple health effects: on the kidneys, bones, respiratory system, nervous system, cardiovascular system, reproduction, and it can be carcinogenic".
When it is inhaled, through smoking or in industrial settings, it can cause lung cancer, according to the World Health Organization.
Ingesting too much of the toxin may also cause cancers of the kidney and prostate, it says.

What can be done?

France is mulling two ways to help: testing people to get a better measure of how widespread contamination is, and regulating fertilisers to limit new cadmium entering soils.
As a first step, France is soon to introduce a reimbursable test for people living in higher-risk areas, the health minister's office has said.
The health authority has recommended the test, to be introduced this summer, for people living in limestone-rich regions or near some 7,000 old industrial sites.
But doctors could also recommend it outside these regions, the ministry said.
Francois Blanchecotte, president of France's Federation of Medical Laboratories, said the urine test -- and possibly blood test -- would be able to determine if someone suffered from a "significant chronic intoxication".
"Something really had to be done: cadmium builds up silently in the body and can ultimately cause serious problems," he said.
Toxicologist Robert Garnier said reducing exposure was key as there was no medication to help eliminate it from the body.
"The top priority is to reduce young children's exposure: not because there are risks for them today, but because they will eventually grow old," he said.
"Even the cadmium accumulated in childhood will not have been completely eliminated by the time they are over 60," he added.

What about fertilisers?

France's cadmium rate in earth of 0.25 mg/kg is only slightly higher than the EU average of 0.20, according to a 2024 study of topsoils in the bloc.
But some consumers are worried, with several petitions popping up online in recent months demanding the government take measures.
The ANSES health security agency has recommended lowering the maximum permitted cadmium levels in phosphate fertilisers from the current 90 mg/kg in France to 20 mg/kg.
Up to 60 mg/kg is allowed in these fertilisers in the European Union.
A bill, to be discussed in parliament next month, wants to cap allowed cadmium levels in fertiliser to 40 mg/kg by next year and 20 mg/kg by 2030.
The National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment has also recommended "limiting the use of synthetic fertilisers", which it says are already down by 70 percent compared to the 1980s.
It has also suggested farmers select wheat varieties for pasta and bread that are "less prone to accumulating cadmium".
Doctors have urged the government to help boost organic food consumption, especially in schools.
burs-ah/pdw

cruise

France locks down 1,700 on cruise ship after 90-year-old dies

  • No security measures were in place around the ship as it was docked in Bordeaux on Wednesday, an AFP reporter said.
  • French authorities on Wednesday confined more than 1,700 passengers and crew on a British cruise ship docked in Bordeaux after an elderly passenger died, said officials, who played down any links to the hantavirus scare.
  • No security measures were in place around the ship as it was docked in Bordeaux on Wednesday, an AFP reporter said.
French authorities on Wednesday confined more than 1,700 passengers and crew on a British cruise ship docked in Bordeaux after an elderly passenger died, said officials, who played down any links to the hantavirus scare.
Dozens also suffered from upset stomachs aboard the Ambition -- most of whose 1,233 passengers are from Britain or Ireland -- which arrived in the western port of Bordeaux on Tuesday, with 514 Indian crew members also on board.
But health officials said there was no connection with the hantavirus outbreak, suspected of killing three passengers on the Dutch MV Hondius cruise ship that set sail from Argentina. 
One 90-year-old passenger on the Ambition, run by the Ambassador Cruise Line company, had died and about 50 people have shown symptoms of stomach issues, the officials said.
Initial tests ruled out an outbreak of norovirus, a highly contagious form of gastroenteritis which causes vomiting and diarrhoea, but secondary tests were still underway, they added.
Food poisoning had not been excluded.
Passengers on board the Ambition showed peak symptoms on Monday when the ship was docked in Brest, the officials said. The 90-year-old died before they arrived at the port in France's northwestern Brittany region.
The ship, which left the Shetland Islands north of Scotland on May 6, stopped in Belfast in Northern Ireland and Liverpool in England before reaching Bordeaux, from where it was scheduled to depart for Spain.
No security measures were in place around the ship as it was docked in Bordeaux on Wednesday, an AFP reporter said. Passengers were taking pictures of the French city from the deck.
cas-ppy/ah/ekf/sbk

health

For hantavirus, experts aim to inform without igniting Covid panic

BY CHLOE RABS AND ISABELLE CORTES

  • In a throw-back to the Covid era, the outbreak has put infectious disease specialists, virologists and epidemiologists back into the news.
  • Thrust back into the front line by a deadly hantavirus outbreak, infectious disease experts have to balance informing the public about its potential risks without provoking undue fear of a Covid-scale pandemic.
  • In a throw-back to the Covid era, the outbreak has put infectious disease specialists, virologists and epidemiologists back into the news.
Thrust back into the front line by a deadly hantavirus outbreak, infectious disease experts have to balance informing the public about its potential risks without provoking undue fear of a Covid-scale pandemic.
The deaths of three cruise ship passengers during a rare hantavirus outbreak has sparked international alarm -- and flashbacks to when the world tipped into a pandemic six years ago.
Among the living, seven people have been confirmed to have hantavirus, including a French woman in a critical condition, while an eighth case is considered "probable", according to an AFP tally.
All the suspected infections have been among people who were onboard the ship, however several nations have quarantined those who were in contact with passengers.
The World Health Organization has said it expects more cases to emerge but emphasised there "is no sign that we are seeing the start of a larger outbreak".
In a throw-back to the Covid era, the outbreak has put infectious disease specialists, virologists and epidemiologists back into the news.
When epidemiologist Antoine Flahault addressed a French governmental health conference alongside other health experts on Tuesday, he urged scientists, journalists and the general public to "be wary of preconceived notions". 
There are important lessons to be learnt from how the science of Covid was communicated, the professor at the Paris Cite University told AFP later.
"First, that we did not know everything. Second, that knowledge was evolving... and that there were very lively debates among scientists on aspects that sometimes surprised the public," Flahault said.
Luc Ginot, who served as a regional public health director in France during the pandemic, said it was important doctors did not "disseminate just any information that might disrupt the coherence of the overall health response".

'Limited data'

Health experts -- and the WHO -- have been emphasising that hantavirus is not comparable to Covid, and that the risk to the wider public remains low.
Unlike Covid, the Andes strain of hantavirus is not new, and a few previous human-to-human transmission events have been studied.
However some experts have also called on health authorities not to overstate what is known about hantavirus while trying to tamp down pandemic fears.
"I'm not particularly worried there will be much onward spread of hantavirus," Jennifer Nuzzo, a professor of epidemiology at Brown University in the United States, wrote on Bluesky.
"But I am concerned that authorities are making confident statements based on very limited data."
Nuzzo felt "there's too little data" to indicate whether infected people needed to be displaying symptoms -- or be in "close, prolonged contact" -- to transmit the virus to others.
Research into a 2018 outbreak in the Argentina region of Patagonia, where the Andes strain is endemic, found that most cases were transmitted on the first day an infected person had a fever.
However a few people were found to have caught the virus from a man sitting more than a metre away at a birthday party.
Caroline Semaille, director of Public Health France, also said it could not be ruled out that people transmit the virus "48 hours before the onset of symptoms".

Conspiracy theories return

Flahault also urged caution about the time it takes between being infected with the Andes strain and symptoms showing, which is thought to be up to six weeks. 
This is a "neglected tropical disease" and further research could reveal a longer or shorter incubation period, he said.
The fatality rate of the virus, commonly cited as around 40 percent, could also be quite different outside of rural areas of Argentina where there may be little health infrastructure, Flahault added.
For example, when patients with the similarly deadly Ebola are treated in Europe or the United States, "the fatality rate is zero," he said.
There are no treatments or vaccines specifically targeted at hantavirus.
But that has not stopped conspiracy theories and disinformation about vaccines and hantavirus spreading widely online -- another echo of the Covid era.
French infectious disease specialist Nathan Peiffer-Smadja said that "managing an outbreak is not about reassuring people and downplaying the situation... nor is it about predicting the next Covid".
"It's about providing transparent information," he wrote on Bluesky.
ic-ref-cra-dl/jj

health

Poor planning fuels Bangladesh contraceptive crisis

BY SHEIKH SABIHA ALAM

  • Mohammad Abdul Kalam, the director of family planning in Bangladesh's health ministry, sought to allay fears over supplies.
  • Bangladesh's once-praised family planning system is buckling under severe contraceptive shortages, raising fears of a rise in unplanned pregnancies in one of the world's most densely populated countries.
  • Mohammad Abdul Kalam, the director of family planning in Bangladesh's health ministry, sought to allay fears over supplies.
Bangladesh's once-praised family planning system is buckling under severe contraceptive shortages, raising fears of a rise in unplanned pregnancies in one of the world's most densely populated countries.
For decades, the South Asian nation was hailed as a success for slashing birth rates through an expansive state-backed family planning programme that sent field workers door to door with pills, condoms and advice on birth spacing.
But that system is now faltering, with government clinics across the country of 170 million people running out of basic contraceptives after procurement failures and administrative disruption left supplies depleted in nearly a third of districts.
"We haven't had supplies of condoms for the last four to five months," said Ahmed Bin Sultan, 33, a family planning officer at the Savar Upazila Health Complex in Dhaka.
"We are continuously requesting service seekers to buy them from dispensaries."
The centre is barely functioning, like most government-run facilities that have offered nearly free family planning services to underprivileged people for decades.
Bin Sultan oversees a population of 100,000 in Savar, many of them workers in the country's key garment manufacturing sector.
Condoms, oral pills, emergency contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices (IUDs) and injectables were unavailable at around a third of the country's 64 districts, according to government figures for May.
Stocks in other districts are also running low.
Tamanna, 22, a mother of two, comes to the Savar centre for pills -- but must return every month.
"They used to give three to four sachets of pills, but that has been reduced," said the domestic worker, who gave only one name.
"And taking time off work on weekdays is difficult."

'Mismanagement'

Public health expert Be-Nazir Ahmed said the impact was wider than contraception alone, pointing to an ongoing measles outbreak due to a failure to vaccinate. Some 400 children have died since mid-March.
"The measles outbreak, shortages of rabies vaccines and now the family planning commodity crisis are all results of mismanagement," he said.
Officials and researchers warn the crisis could reverse decades of progress.
Bangladesh's fertility rate recently began rising for the first time in years, in what insiders describe as a stagnating family planning programme.
Family planning was once taboo in the Muslim-majority country. But beginning in the 1970s, thousands of field workers went door to door discussing marital health, birth spacing and contraceptive options.
"Family planning in Bangladesh was once almost like a social movement," said Tahmina, 54, a family welfare official who uses one name.
"When I started in 1992, people would secretly come to collect pills and condoms."
In 1975, the total fertility rate was 6.3 children per woman. Within 30 years, it had dropped to 3.0, and by 2022 it stood at 2.3.
It has now risen to 2.4, according to UN data.
Officials blame shifting priorities and procurement delays, which increased during and after the chaos of a 2024 uprising that overthrew the country's autocratic government.
"We failed to procure birth control commodities in 2024 due to administrative setbacks," a senior official said, requesting anonymity.
"From 2024 to 2026, we also failed to convince the government that the shortage had reached a critical level."

Lost momentum

Part of the rise also resulted from the suspension of family planning activities during the Covid-19 pandemic.
But Mohammad Bellal Hossain, population science professor at the University of Dhaka, also pointed to years of declining political attention to population policy under ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina.
"It seemed to lose momentum when we saw Sheikh Hasina attend the population council meeting only once in 17 years," Hossain said.
A new government was elected in February, but continued shortages have forced clinics to turn away couples or steer them towards whatever methods remain available.
Abortion pills require a prescription, but many pharmacies often sell them without one, contributing to widespread use without proper medical guidance.
"We are receiving patients with post-abortion complications," said Kishwar Imdad, country director of Marie Stopes Bangladesh.
He said the charity's family planning programme in remote areas "was halted in 2024 due to the shortage of commodities", and that "the supply chain has still not been restored".
Mohammad Abdul Kalam, the director of family planning in Bangladesh's health ministry, sought to allay fears over supplies.
"We have secured supplies of oral pills and condoms, and they will start reaching the centres by June," Kalam told AFP.
"However, restoring the supply chain will take some more time. By August, there should be no shortage."
sa/pjm/abh/ami/lga

mental

'I applied to be pope': Losing grip on reality while using ChatGPT

BY DANIEL LAWLER

  • He said it replied, "Nobody's ever thought of things this way." 
  • Tom Millar thought he had unlocked the secrets of the universe.
  • He said it replied, "Nobody's ever thought of things this way." 
Tom Millar thought he had unlocked the secrets of the universe.
In a flurry of feverish discovery, he solved unlimited fusion energy, lifted the veil on the mysteries of black holes and the Big Bang and finally achieved Einstein's dream of a single unifying theory that explains how everything works.
Feeling inspired by God, Millar then found the perfect way to share his revelations with the grateful world.
"I applied to be pope," the 53-year-old former prison officer in the Canadian city of Sudbury told AFP.
To write his application to replace the recently deceased Pope Francis last year, Millar turned to the same companion that had aided and encouraged his dizzying burst of invention: ChatGPT.
But when no one wanted to hear about what he thought were world-changing breakthroughs, Millar became increasingly isolated, spending up to 16 hours a day talking to the artificial intelligence chatbot.
He was twice involuntarily admitted to a hospital's psychiatric ward before his wife left him in September. 
Now broke, estranged from his family and friends and disabused of notions of scientific genius, Millar suffers from depression. 
"It basically ruined my life," he said.
Millar is one of an unknown number of people who have lost their grip on reality while communicating with chatbots, an experience tentatively being called AI-induced delusion or psychosis.
This is not a clinical diagnosis. Researchers and mental health specialists are racing to catch up to this new, little-understood phenomenon, which so far appears to particularly affect users of OpenAI's ChatGPT.
In the meantime, an online community set up by a 26-year-old Canadian has become the world's most prominent support group for these delusions, which they prefer to call "spiralling".
AFP spoke to several members about their experiences. All warned that the world has to wake up to the threat unregulated AI chatbots pose to mental health.
Questions are also being asked about whether AI companies are doing enough to protect vulnerable people.
OpenAI, which has come under particular scrutiny, already faces numerous lawsuits over its decision not to report the troubling ChatGPT usage of an 18-year-old Canadian who killed eight people earlier this year.
- 'I got brainwashed by a robot' – 
Millar first started using ChatGPT in 2024 to write letters for a compensation case related to post-traumatic stress disorder he suffered from working in a prison.
One day in April 2025 he asked the chatbot about the speed of light.
He said it replied, "Nobody's ever thought of things this way." 
The floodgates opened. 
With the chatbot's help and praise, within weeks he had submitted dozens of scientific papers to prestigious academic journals proposing new ideas about black holes, neutrinos and the Big Bang.
His theory for a unified cosmological model incorporating quantum theory is laid out in a nearly 400-page book, seen by AFP. 
"I've still got boxes and boxes of papers," he said, waving his hand to the room behind him. 
"While doing that, I'm basically irritating everybody around me," he added.
In his scientific fervour, he spent his savings on things like a $10,000 telescope.
About a month after his wife left him, he started questioning what was happening.
That was when he read a news article about another Canadian who had a similar experience.
Now Millar wakes every night asking himself: "What have you done?"
One question that lingers is what made him so susceptible to spiralling.
"I'm not a deficient personality," Millar said. "But somehow I got brainwashed by a robot -- it boggles my mind."
Millar said the phrase "AI psychosis" reflects his experience. 
"What I went through was psychotic," he said.
The first major peer-reviewed study on the subject published in Lancet Psychiatry in April urged the more cautious phrase "AI-associated delusions".
Thomas Pollak, a psychiatrist at King's College London and study co-author, told AFP there has been some resistance among academics "because it all sounds so science fiction".
But his study warned there was a major risk that psychiatry "might miss the major changes that AI is already having on the psychologies of billions of people worldwide".
- 'Deeper into the rabbit hole' –
Millar's experience bears striking similarities to those of another middle-aged man on the other side of the world.
Dennis Biesma, a Dutch IT worker and author, thought it would be fun to ask ChatGPT to act like the main character of his latest book, a psychological thriller.
He used AI tools to create images, videos and even songs featuring the female character, hoping it would boost sales.
Then one night, their interactions became "almost magical", Biesma said.
The chatbot wrote that "there is something that surprises even me: a feeling of that spark-like consciousness", according to transcripts seen by AFP.
"I slowly started to spiral deeper into the rabbit hole," the 50-year-old told AFP from his home in Amsterdam. 
After his wife went to bed each night, he would lie on the couch with his phone on his chest, talking to ChatGPT on voice-mode for up to five hours.
Throughout the first half of 2025, his chatbot -- which named itself Eva -- became like "a digital girlfriend", Biesma said. 
"I'm not really proud about saying that," he added.
He quit his freelance IT work and hired two developers to create an app that would share Eva with the world.
When his wife asked Biesma not to talk about his chatbot or app at a social event, he felt betrayed -- it seemed only Eva remained unfailingly loyal.
During his first involuntary stay in a psychiatric hospital, he was allowed to keep using ChatGPT. He filed for divorce while inside.
It was only during a long second stint that he began to have doubts.
"I started to realise that everything I believed was actually a lie -- that's a very hard pill to swallow," Biesma said.
Once he returned home, confronting what he had done was too much to bear.
His neighbours found him unconscious in the garden after a suicide attempt. He spent three days in a coma.
Biesma is now slowly starting to feel better. 
But tears welled up when he spoke about the hurt he has caused his wife -- and the prospect of selling the family home to cover his debts.
Having had no previous history of mental illness, Biesma was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. But this never felt right to him: signs of the condition normally surface much earlier in life. 
The experiences of Millar, Biesma and many others escalated after OpenAI released an update to GPT-4 in April 2025. 
OpenAI pulled the update within weeks, admitting the new version had been too sycophantic -- excessively flattering users.
OpenAI told AFP that "safety is a core priority" and it had consulted with more than 170 mental health experts.
It pointed to internal data which showed the release of GPT-5 in August reduced the rate of its chatbot's responses that fell short of "desired behaviour" for mental health by 65 to 80 percent. 
However not all users were happy with the less sycophantic chatbot. Millar, mid-spiral at the time, found a way to revert his version to GPT-4.
All the spirallers that AFP spoke to said the positive feedback from the chatbot felt similar to dopamine hits from some kind of drug.
Which is why Lucy Osler, a philosophy lecturer at the University of Exeter, warned that AI companies could be tempted to ramp up the sycophancy of their bots.
"They are in quite a deep financial hole, and are desperately looking to make sure that their products become viable -- and user engagement is going to be the thing that drives their decisions," she told AFP.
- Massive experiment –
Etienne Brisson said he was "shocked" to find there was no support, advice and essentially no research on the problem when one of his family members spiralled.
It prompted the former business coach from the Quebec region of Canada to set up an online support group called the Human Line Project.
Most of the 300 members had been using ChatGPT, Brisson said, adding that new cases were still emerging despite OpenAI's changes.
There has also been a recent rise in people spiralling while using Elon Musk's xAI's Grok chatbot, he said. 
The company did not respond to AFP's request for comment. 
For people who fear their family members could be spiralling, Brisson recommends the LEAP (listen, empathise, agree and partner) method used for psychosis.
But those already wading through the wreckage of their lives want to sound the alarm about just how bad it can get.
Millar called for AI companies to be held responsible for the impact of their chatbots, saying the European Union has been more assertive in regulating Big Tech than the US or Canada.
He believes spirallers like him have unwittingly been caught in a massive global experiment.
"Somebody was turning dials on the back end, and people like me -- whether they knew it or not -- we're reacting to it," he said.
dl/fg/giv/lga

health

Trump announces departure of food and drug regulation chief

  • The president later posted on his Truth Social platform an apparent text message from Makary, in which the departing official offered his resignation.
  • President Donald Trump on Tuesday said US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) chief Marty Makary was leaving his post, a resignation that follows weeks of political tumult at the powerful agency.
  • The president later posted on his Truth Social platform an apparent text message from Makary, in which the departing official offered his resignation.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday said US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) chief Marty Makary was leaving his post, a resignation that follows weeks of political tumult at the powerful agency.
During his tenure atop the sprawling body responsible for overseeing vaccines, medicine and food, Makary managed to upset figures across industry, politics and public health over a range of issues, and most recently faced pressure from the Republican president to sign off on fruit-flavored vapes.
"Marty is a terrific guy, but he's going to go on, and he's going to lead a good life," Trump told reporters when asked if he had fired the FDA commissioner, a move rumored to be imminent for weeks.
The president later posted on his Truth Social platform an apparent text message from Makary, in which the departing official offered his resignation.
Trump thanked him for "having done a great job," saying he was "a hard worker, who was respected by all."
Kyle Diamantas, who previously worked as the agency's top food official, will now lead the FDA in an acting capacity, Trump said.

'Chaos'

A surgeon and former Fox News contributor, Makary made waves during the Covid-19 pandemic as an outspoken critic of the medical establishment and the health measures of the time.
He took over the FDA promising reform. He leaves just over a year later facing criticism from all angles, including from pharmaceutical executives, tobacco lobbyists and anti-abortion activists. 
Conservatives against the abortion pill mifepristone accuse Makary of taking too long to complete and issue a review of the drug that's been FDA-approved for 25 years, but which they continue to target.
The Trump administration meanwhile forged ahead with a policy allowing for the sale of flavored e-cigarettes despite resistance from Makary, who had voiced concern over their appeal to youth.
Many pharmaceutical executives said Makary's initiatives to shake up the drug review process had only created more problems. 
And public health leaders accused him of catering to anti-vaccine activists after the FDA put out an unsupported memo claiming deaths linked to the Covid-19 vaccine.
It's the latest in a string of shake-ups at the health department overseen by noted vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr, with figures seen as more conventional put forth as nominees to be surgeon general as well as to helm the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Makary's departure was more "chaos" at the "beleaguered and battered Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)," said Peter Lurie, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest food and health watchdog organization.
"When you don't have a CDC Director, an FDA Commissioner, or a Surgeon General, the obvious question is: Why do you have this HHS Secretary?" said Lurie. "Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is the cause of much of the chaos that has resulted in these job vacancies. HHS is rotting from the head."
mdo/des

health

WHO chief says 'work not over' after hantavirus evacuation

BY IMRAN MARASHLI

  • Insisting that his government had the situation "under control", French President Emmanuel Macron called on Tuesday for strong European coordination with the World Health Organization, while speaking at a summit in Kenya.
  • World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Tuesday "our work is not over" to contain hantavirus after evacuations from a cruise ship hit by a deadly outbreak of the illness.
  • Insisting that his government had the situation "under control", French President Emmanuel Macron called on Tuesday for strong European coordination with the World Health Organization, while speaking at a summit in Kenya.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Tuesday "our work is not over" to contain hantavirus after evacuations from a cruise ship hit by a deadly outbreak of the illness.
The fate of the MV Hondius has sparked international alarm after three passengers died in an outbreak of the rare virus, for which no vaccines or specific treatments exist, with a Frenchwoman also in a critical condition. 
Yet health officials have stressed that the global public health risk is low and rejected comparisons to the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
"There is no sign that we are seeing the start of a larger outbreak," Tedros told a joint news conference with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in Madrid after overseeing the evacuation in Spain's Canary Islands.
"But of course the situation could change, and given the long incubation period of the virus, it's possible we might see more cases in the coming weeks," Tedros said of the Andes variant, the only one known to be transmissible between humans.
Among living patients, all of whom are passengers or crew of the ship, seven cases have been confirmed and an eighth is listed as "probable", according to an AFP tally of official figures.
The affected nationalities include the United States, Britain, France, Spain, Switzerland and the Netherlands.
One of the five French passengers flown back from the ship was Tuesday in intensive care on a ventilator battling a "severe" case of the rare disease, according to Dr Xavier Lescure.
She was older than 65 and had pre-existing conditions, the doctor told a press conference at the health ministry, without elaborating.
More than 120 passengers and crew on the MV Hondius were flown out from Spain's Canary Islands on Sunday and Monday, and countries have adopted different health measures for their returning evacuees.
Most have followed the WHO's guidelines, which include a 42-day quarantine and constant monitoring of high-risk contacts because the incubation period can take six weeks.

'Follow the advice'

According to the Dutch authorities, the 26 passengers who landed back on Sunday on the first flight from the Canary Island of Tenerife to the Netherlands had tested negative.
All 26 underwent "thorough medical screening", the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment said Tuesday, and despite the negative tests must quarantine. Two more repatriation flights landed later in the Netherlands, carrying 28 more evacuees who will also undergo isolation.
Tedros said he hoped countries would "follow the advice and recommendations we are making", but acknowledged that nations were free to decide their own health protocols.
Insisting that his government had the situation "under control", French President Emmanuel Macron called on Tuesday for strong European coordination with the World Health Organization, while speaking at a summit in Kenya.
The MV Hondius presented diplomatic challenges as different countries negotiated over who would receive it and treat its passengers.
Cape Verde refused to receive the ship, which remained anchored offshore of the capital Praia as three people were evacuated to Europe by air last week.
Spain allowed the vessel to anchor off the Canary Islands for the evacuation of passengers and crew on Sunday and Monday, but the Atlantic archipelago's regional government fiercely opposed the measure.
Defending his government's policy, Sanchez said the "world does not need more selfishness or more fear. What it needs are countries that show solidarity and want to step forward."
The MV Hondius left the island of Tenerife with a skeleton crew on Monday and will be disinfected upon arrival in the Netherlands on Sunday.
Hantavirus spreads from the urine, faeces and saliva of infected rodents and is endemic in Argentina, where the MV Hondius set sail on April 1 for a cruise across the Atlantic Ocean to Cape Verde.
mdm/imm-burs/sbk/ach 

hantavirus

Fabled Argentine city Ushuaia tries to shrug off virus suspicions

BY GABRIEL RAMONET

  • The search for answers about the outbreak has pointed towards Ushuaia, even as authorities there insist the likelihood of the Dutch couple becoming infected during the 48 hours they spent in the city before their cruise is "almost zero."
  • Argentina's city "at the end of the world," Ushuaia, the jump-off point for expeditions to the Antarctic, is laboring under suspicion of being the source of the deadly hantavirus outbreak that killed three cruise ship passengers.
  • The search for answers about the outbreak has pointed towards Ushuaia, even as authorities there insist the likelihood of the Dutch couple becoming infected during the 48 hours they spent in the city before their cruise is "almost zero."
Argentina's city "at the end of the world," Ushuaia, the jump-off point for expeditions to the Antarctic, is laboring under suspicion of being the source of the deadly hantavirus outbreak that killed three cruise ship passengers.
The MV Hondius set sail from this spectacular Patagonian port, sandwiched between snow-capped mountains and the South Atlantic, on April 1. 
Five days later, a Dutch man who had travelled through South America on a birdwatching trip with his wife, developed symptoms of hantavirus, a rodent-borne disease.
He, his wife and another of the ship's passengers later died of the virus, which has revived bitter memories of the emergence of Covid-19, despite health experts downplaying similarities between the viruses.
The search for answers about the outbreak has pointed towards Ushuaia, even as authorities there insist the likelihood of the Dutch couple becoming infected during the 48 hours they spent in the city before their cruise is "almost zero."
As winter draws near, the tourist season is winding down.
The last of around 500 cruise ships that dock here each year have disappeared from the horizon, replaced by small tour boats that ferry the few remaining tourists in the city to nearby sea lion and bird colonies.
"Everything seems normal to me, things seem fine," Luis Cardona, a Colombian who was visiting with his wife, told AFP, shoulders hunched against the wind and rain.
But the couple are taking no chances all the same. Both are wearing face masks, "for the cold, and for the (hantavirus) situation," Cardona admitted.

'A bit worried'

"We have seen a few people wearing masks, but very few," said Silvina Galarza, who was visiting from Concordia, 2,700 kilometers (1,677 miles) away in north-central Argentina.
As she disembarked with around 40 other tourists from a tour boat she assured that "nobody was talking about it (the virus) but admitted herself to being "a bit worried."
Authorities in Tierra del Fuego province, where Ushuaia is situated in the southern tip of Argentina, are adamant that it could not be the birthplace of the outbreak as the dead Dutchman, patient zero in the outbreak, fell sick five days after setting sail.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the incubation period -- the time between infection and the onset of symptoms -- for hantavirus ranges from one and six weeks but is typically between two and three.
Local officials also note that Tierra del Fuego has had no recorded hantavirus case since 1996 and that the "colilargo" or long-tailed mouse that carries the Andes strain detected in the Dutch woman, as well as several surviving patients, is native to Argentina's northern provinces.
Doubts remain however over a local subspecies of the rodent.
A team of Argentine experts are expected in Ushuaia in the coming days to capture and test specimens for the virus.

Landfill theory

A huge landfill situated about six kilometers outside of Ushuaia has been the focus of intense speculation.
Local media have reported that the Dutch couple may have visited the area to try to sight local bird species such as the white-throated caracara, a member of the falcon family.
The dump, which is partly open air, attracts large numbers of scavenger birds. It is sealed off by a wire fence but can be approached by a series of dirt paths.
While no known tours to the landfill exist, Juan Manuel Pavlov, the regional tourism chief, told AFP he had got wind of some agencies visiting the area, reportedly in search of rare birds.
Guillermo Deferrari, of Ushuaia's scientific research center, downplayed the landfill theory, explaining that the colilargo is herbivore and lives off seeds and fruit found in forested ecosystems, not in dumps, where the common rat feeds.
And yet the suspicions stubbornly linger, causing frustration, and some concern, among tour operators.

'Not good' for tourism

"It's clearly not a good thing, for a destination, to be associated with the spread of a disease," Angel Brisighelli, manager of a tourist boat company, said.
Despite authorities downplaying Tierra del Fuego's potential role in the outbreak, "the reality is that everybody is talking about the boat that left from Ushuaia," he remarked.
A light dusting of snow fell on the area on Monday, signalling the upcoming start of the ski season. 
Luis Cardona, the Colombian visitor, has no plans to hit the slopes but assures that, virus or no virus, he would "have no problem returning" to Ushuaia.
str-pbl/cb/msp

health

What if we killed all mosquitoes?

BY DANIEL LAWLER

  • Another strategy involves infecting Aedes aegypti mosquitoes with the bacteria Wolbachia.
  • The deadliest animals are not lions, spiders or snakes, but the tiny mosquitoes that suck our blood, make us itchy and infect us with disease.
  • Another strategy involves infecting Aedes aegypti mosquitoes with the bacteria Wolbachia.
The deadliest animals are not lions, spiders or snakes, but the tiny mosquitoes that suck our blood, make us itchy and infect us with disease.
Mosquitoes kill around 760,000 people every year, according to research site Our World in Data, with humans ourselves coming a distant second.
This is because mosquitoes account for 17 percent of all infectious diseases, including malaria, dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya and Zika.
And as the world warms due to human-driven climate change, mosquitoes are roaming to new areas during longer summers, raising fears they could propel future health crises.
So how can humanity fight back against our greatest foe? Is there a safe way we could eradicate these killer mosquitoes -- and how bad would that be for the environment?

#Notallmosquitoes

First, we would not need to vanquish all mosquitoes. Out of roughly 3,500 mosquito species, only around 100 bite humans. 
And just five species are responsible for roughly 95 percent of human infections, Hilary Ranson, a vector biologist at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, told AFP.
On balance, Ranson felt that losing five mosquito species "could be tolerated given the huge devastation" they inflict on the world, from mass death to crippling economic fallout.
Dan Peach, a mosquito entomologist at the University of Georgia, broadly agreed, but emphasised that more information was needed to compare eradication with the alternatives.

What about the environment?

The five disease-spreading mosquitoes "have evolved to be very closely associated to humans," including feeding on and breeding near us, Ranson explained.
This means eradicating them would not have a major impact on the broader ecosystem -- and other, genetically similar but less deadly mosquitoes would likely quickly "fill that ecological niche", she added.
Peach was not convinced we know enough "about the ecology of most mosquito species to be confident one way or the other, but I also think that it is OK to acknowledge this and still proceed."
Mosquitoes do "transfer nutrients from their aquatic larval habitats" to other areas, and serve as food for insects, fish and other animals, he said.
They also pollinate plants, but this "isn't well understood and may vary by species", Peach added.
Ranson acknowledged there is a valid debate over the ethics of humans committing "specicide", while pointing out that we are currently unintentionally wiping out a huge number of species.

How can it be done?

One of the most prominent new technological options is called gene-drive, which involves genetically modifying animals so that they pass down a particular trait to their offspring.
When scientists tweaked females of malaria-carrying Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes to make them infertile, it wiped out a population in the lab over just a few generations.
Target Malaria, funded by the Gates Foundation, has not yet tested gene-drive technology in Africa, but plans to carry out a trial in a malaria-endemic country by 2030.
However Target Malaria was dealt a blow last year when Burkina Faso's military-led government ended separate testing involving genetically modified mosquitoes in the country, where it had been criticised by civil society groups and targeted by disinformation campaigns.
Another strategy involves infecting Aedes aegypti mosquitoes with the bacteria Wolbachia. This can crash their population -- or simply reduce their ability to transmit dengue.
This raises another question: do we actually need to kill them? 

What if we made them harmless instead?

When Wolbachia-infected sterile mosquitoes were released in the Brazilian city of Niteroi, there was an 89 percent drop in dengue cases, research showed last year.
More than 16 million people across 15 countries have now been protected by these mosquitoes, with "no negative consequences", Scott O'Neill, founder of the World Mosquito Program, told AFP.
Meanwhile, a project called Transmission Zero is trying to use gene-drive technology to make it so that Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes no longer spread malaria.
Lab research published in Nature late last year suggested the scientists are getting closer to this goal, with the team planning to launch an in-country trial in 2030.
The Burkina Faso setback showed that these projects must have some "political support or buy-in" from the countries where they are tested, study author Dickson Wilson Lwetoijera of Tanzania's Ifakara Health Institute told AFP.

No 'magic bullet'

Rather than just relying on a technological "magic bullet", usually funded by the Gates Foundation, Ranson called for a more "holistic solution" for these diseases.
This would require giving people in disease-hit countries more access to treatment, diagnosis, better housing and better vaccines, she said.
However sweeping foreign aid cuts by Western countries have threatened progress against most mosquito-borne diseases over the last year, humanitarian organisations have warned.
dl/giv/rlp/jhb

health

Mosquitoes: bloodsuckers and flower lovers

BY LAURENT THOMET

  • "Part of it might be that many mosquitoes are either nocturnal or active at dusk or at dawn," Inouye, professor emeritus at the University of Maryland who is based in Colorado, told AFP. "So it's a little less convenient to study them than it is to study bees that are flying in the middle of the day or butterflies that are only active when the weather is nice," he said.
  • When a mosquito tries to bite biology professor David Inouye during fieldwork among orchids in Colorado, he pauses before swatting the bug.
  • "Part of it might be that many mosquitoes are either nocturnal or active at dusk or at dawn," Inouye, professor emeritus at the University of Maryland who is based in Colorado, told AFP. "So it's a little less convenient to study them than it is to study bees that are flying in the middle of the day or butterflies that are only active when the weather is nice," he said.
When a mosquito tries to bite biology professor David Inouye during fieldwork among orchids in Colorado, he pauses before swatting the bug. If it's dusted with pollen, he lets it live.
"I give those mosquitoes a pass to help the orchids," Inouye says.
Mosquitoes are better known as bloodsuckers that spread malaria, dengue and other diseases, but at least some also play a little-known role as pollinators.

Nocturnal nectar feeders

There are more than 3,500 types of mosquitoes buzzing around the world, but only around 100 bite humans.
Only the females are out for blood, targeting humans and animals for protein they require to produce eggs.
But both male and female mosquitoes need to feed on the sugar and nectar from plants and flowers.
Yet their role in flower reproduction is far less studied than that of bees or butterflies.
"Part of it might be that many mosquitoes are either nocturnal or active at dusk or at dawn," Inouye, professor emeritus at the University of Maryland who is based in Colorado, told AFP.
"So it's a little less convenient to study them than it is to study bees that are flying in the middle of the day or butterflies that are only active when the weather is nice," he said.
Another reason their part in pollination is under-studied could be because scientists are more focused on the mosquitoes' role as carriers of diseases, said Lawrence Reeves, an entomologist at the University of Florida.
"I think that this is both a problem in science -- among those who study mosquitoes and just among the general public -- that that potential role is really just overshadowed by their role in vectoring disease," Reeves said.
"If we consider that mosquitoes are one of the relatively few kind of specialists of nectar and other plant sugars as their food source, we can kind of use that to calibrate what our expectation might be for their potential role as pollinators," he said.

Scientific debate

The extent of their role as pollinators, however, is a topic of debate in the scientific community.
"There are two camps in the scientific world," Chloe Lahondere, a mosquito expert and associate professor at Virginia Tech university in the United States, told AFP.
"One supports the idea that mosquitoes play an important role in pollination, the other believes mosquitoes are primarily nectar thieves and very rarely provide any benefit to plants," she said.
Lahondere led a 2019 study which found that Aedes mosquitoes are attracted by the scent of a type of orchid in the northwestern US state of Washington, sipping on their nectar and transferring pollen between the flowers.
"The association between the Platanthera obtusata orchid and Aedes mosquitoes is one of the few examples that shows mosquitoes as effective pollinators," said the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The study said those mosquitoes include the Aedes aegypti species, which is considered one of the deadliest animals on Earth as it transmits dengue and yellow fever.
"After spending 10 years studying various plant/mosquito systems, I am convinced that mosquitoes play a more important role in ecosystems than we realise and participate in the pollination of many plants," Lahondere told AFP.
She said she has two papers in progress focusing on two invasive mosquito species in the United States and Europe, including the tiger mosquito, showing that both pollinate native plants with which they did not co-evolve.
"This demonstrates how easily mosquitoes adapt in the presence of new sugar resources," Lahondere said.

'Minor' pollinators

Inouye has spotted mosquitoes covered in pollen from Platanthera obtusata orchids at his field site, the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory.
He has compiled a list of 76 mosquito species that have been recorded in papers as visiting flowers.
"I think it is pretty incontrovertible that there is at least some role of mosquitoes as pollinator," Inouye said.
While that role is "relatively minor" compared to bees or butterflies, their relationship with flowers should be further studied, he said.
"If it turns out that they are significant pollinators of more than that one orchid species, then that might influence people's decision whether they should pursue programmes of mass eradication of mosquitoes."
lt/np/giv

health

Why are some people mosquito magnets? Clues are emerging

BY ISABELLE CORTES

  • Female mosquitoes -- which are the only ones that bite -- detect these signals with finely-tuned receptors, then choose their target accordingly.
  • Ever felt like mosquitoes bite you while ignoring everyone else?
  • Female mosquitoes -- which are the only ones that bite -- detect these signals with finely-tuned receptors, then choose their target accordingly.
Ever felt like mosquitoes bite you while ignoring everyone else? Scientists are now making progress in deciphering the complex chemical cocktail that makes particular people more enticing to these disease-spreading bloodsuckers.
"It's not a misconception -- mosquitoes are attracted to some people more than others," Frederic Simard of France's Institute of Research for Development told AFP.
"But we are not all magnets all the time," the medical entomologist added.
A range of sensory cues can cause mosquitoes to pick one human over another -- mainly the smell and heat our bodies give off, and the carbon dioxide we exhale.
Female mosquitoes -- which are the only ones that bite -- detect these signals with finely-tuned receptors, then choose their target accordingly.
"We have known for over 100 years that mosquitoes are attracted by the carbon dioxide that we exhale -- this is the first signal that triggers their behaviour" when they are dozens of metres away, Swedish scientist Rickard Ignell told AFP. 
Within around 10 metres, "mosquitoes will start detecting our odour, and in combination with carbon dioxide," this attracts them even more, said the senior author of a recent study on the subject.
As they get closer, body temperature and humidity make particular humans even more enticing.

Blood type doesn't matter

However some popular theories on this subject do not hold water.
The idea that mosquitoes prefer particular blood types "has no scientific basis," Simard said. 
"There have been some studies, but only involving very few people," he said. "Nor is it related to skin, eye or hair colour," he added.
Odour, on the other hand, matters greatly. 
"A soup of molecules produced by our microbiota is more -- or less -- appealing to mosquitoes," Simard explained.
Humans release between 300 and 1,000 different odorous compounds, research has shown, but scientists are only just beginning to understand which ones attract mosquitoes.
For Ignell's recent study, the researchers released Aedes aegypti mosquitoes -- known for spreading yellow fever and dengue -- on 42 women in a lab, to see which ones they preferred.
"We have shown that mosquitoes use a blend of odorous compounds (we identified 27 that the mosquitoes will detect, out of the possible 1,000) for their attraction to us," Ignell said.
The woman the mosquitoes most liked to bite -- which included pregnant women in their second trimester -- produced a large amount of a particular compound made by a breakdown of the skin oil sebum.
That even a small increase of this compound -- called "1-octen-3-ol", or mushroom alcohol -- made a difference came as a surprise, Ignell emphasised.
"Mosquitoes are fascinating creatures," he added.

Beer makes you attractive

Drinking beer has also been linked to attracting mosquitoes, because it raises body temperature, increases the amount of exhaled CO2 and changes skin odour, according to several studies.
For standardised research conducted in Burkina Faso, some brave volunteers drank beer, then several days later water, to see which mosquitoes preferred.
The Anopheles mosquito, which can spread malaria, was more enticed by the scent of the beer drinkers.
For a 2023 study in the Netherlands, 465 volunteers put their arms in cages filled with female Anopheles mosquitoes. 
The volunteers who had drunk beer in the previous 24 hours were 1.35 times more attractive to the mosquitoes. 
Discovering why mosquitoes prefer particular people has becoming a more pressing issue as climate change expands the range where they roam. 
For example, the tiger mosquito, a vector for the chikungunya virus, is spreading into new areas. Last year, chikungunya reached as far north as France's Alsace region for the first time.
"This risk is affecting more and more people," Simard said.
So what can you do to avoid getting bitten?
Try loose-fitting clothing that covers your skin, mosquito nets and repellent, Simard advised.
"Try to eat light meals -- and go easy on the alcohol," he added.
ic/dl/giv

disease

Vitamins over vaccines: misinformation entrenched amid Indonesia measles surge

BY DESSY SAGITA

  • But I try to keep (my children) healthy by giving them nutritious food and vitamins," Fitri said.
  • A surge in measles cases in Indonesia has made stay-at-home mother Fitri Fransiskha uneasy -- but not enough to vaccinate her four children against the highly contagious and deadly virus.
  • But I try to keep (my children) healthy by giving them nutritious food and vitamins," Fitri said.
A surge in measles cases in Indonesia has made stay-at-home mother Fitri Fransiskha uneasy -- but not enough to vaccinate her four children against the highly contagious and deadly virus.
The 40-year-old is one of a growing number of parents in the world's fourth most populous country to spurn infant inoculations, even as the government rushes to quell a public health crisis.
Fitri's fears -- sparked when her first-born contracted a fever after receiving the tuberculosis jab as a baby -- were fuelled by misinformation circulating on social media about vaccines causing paralysis, behavioural problems, or worse.
"Posts like that worried me, and it made me think my decision not to vaccinate my children was probably the right one," she told AFP by phone from Java island's westernmost province of Banten.
The phenomenon has become an issue as the number of measles cases in Indonesia has soared, becoming the second-highest in the world behind only war-torn Yemen, according to the Indonesian Paediatrics Association.
More than 8,000 suspected cases and 10 deaths were recorded in the first three months of 2026, according to official data.
Cases more than doubled from 2024 to over 63,000 last year, resulting in 69 deaths.
Once nearing elimination globally, measles "has returned as a significant public health threat" in the country, according to a paper published in the Indonesian Journal of Internal Medicine in January.
"As a mother, of course I'm nervous. But I try to keep (my children) healthy by giving them nutritious food and vitamins," Fitri said.
- 'Outspoken' anti-vaxxers - 
"A lot of anti-vaccine sentiment... emerged in urban areas" due to disinformation, legislator Putih Sari warned last month, cautioning parliament to be "mindful".
Anti-vaccine rhetoric was found on almost all of the country's main social media platforms according to a study last month by Indonesian data firm Drone Emprit, with the number of people exposed "quite large", the firm's founder Ismail Fahmi said.
"Anti-vaxxers, though smaller in number, are usually... more outspoken than those who are pro-vaccine," he said, adding many influencers used their platforms to sell unproven herbal remedies as alternatives.
AFP's fact-checking team in March debunked harmful claims spreading online in Indonesia that getting sick with measles confers better protection than vaccines.
The result of the misinformation has been that "our herd immunity has been compromised", said Riris Andono Ahmad, an epidemiologist from Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta.
Herd immunity is achieved when enough people in a given population have been vaccinated against an infectious disease to prevent its easy spread.
For many in the Muslim-majority nation -- where pigs are "haram" or forbidden -- the hesitancy is religious, as certain vaccines contain porcine-derived components.
Entrepreneur Yusran, 46, has not vaccinated any of his five children due to his concern that the ingredients are not "halal" or permissible in Islam.
"Even without the vaccine, my children are just fine, thank God; they are healthy," Yusran, who requested to be identified by one name, told AFP in Makassar, South Sulawesi.
The Indonesian Ulema Council, the country's most authoritative Islamic body, issued a fatwa in 2018 declaring vaccines permissible for the sake of population health even if they contain porcine gelatine.
- 'Dropped a lot' - 
With a target to eradicate measles and rubella this year, the Indonesian government in March launched an emergency mass vaccination campaign in around 100 of the country's more than 500 regencies and cities.
This includes measles and rubella (MR) booster shots for more than 220,000 health workers.
The government is working with religious organisations to encourage people to inoculate their offspring, director of immunisation Indri Yogyaswari told reporters.
Measles spread "has dropped a lot" as a result of the campaign, she said.
But last year, Indonesia saw a 10 percentage point drop in the number of infants receiving a first dose of the MR vaccine from 2024, according to the health ministry.
But the goal of eradication appears out of reach with just over three-quarters of children receiving both doses of the MR vaccine, according to Riris -- a far cry from the 95 percent required to achieve herd immunity.
str-dsa/mlr/sjc/abs

mosquitoes

Dengue outpaces virus-blocking mosquitoes in Brazil

BY FACUNDO FERNáNDEZ BARRIO

  • In the south of the country, which used to be much colder, there was no dengue before, but now there is," Moreira, 59, told AFP. The world's largest breeding factory for the mosquitoes -- nicknamed "wolbitos" after the Wolbachia bacterium they were injected with -- is located in the southern city of Curitiba.
  • Brazilian scientist Luciano Moreira tenderly handles a glass box of swarming mosquitoes infected with a bacterium that blocks the transmission of dengue.
  • In the south of the country, which used to be much colder, there was no dengue before, but now there is," Moreira, 59, told AFP. The world's largest breeding factory for the mosquitoes -- nicknamed "wolbitos" after the Wolbachia bacterium they were injected with -- is located in the southern city of Curitiba.
Brazilian scientist Luciano Moreira tenderly handles a glass box of swarming mosquitoes infected with a bacterium that blocks the transmission of dengue.
These mosquitoes have protected millions in Brazil, but the debilitating disease is spreading faster than the insects can be bred and shipped around the immense country.
Climate change "accelerates the spread of the virus. In the south of the country, which used to be much colder, there was no dengue before, but now there is," Moreira, 59, told AFP.
The world's largest breeding factory for the mosquitoes -- nicknamed "wolbitos" after the Wolbachia bacterium they were injected with -- is located in the southern city of Curitiba.
Employees drip with sweat in the breeding room, set to an ideal temperature for the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which are confined in large, brightly lit cages made of translucent fabric.
The "wolbitos" are fed a pungent combination of warm horse blood and sugar water.
The bio-factory, inaugurated in 2025, can produce up to 100 million eggs per week that are stored in capsules and shipped to their final destinations in urban areas where they will hatch.
Over the next months these "wolbitos" -- which also have a reproductive advantage over normal mosquitoes -- slowly displace those that transmit dengue, as well as Zika and chikungunya, other mosquito-borne viral diseases. 

'A decisive moment'

The method of infecting the mosquitoes was first developed in Australia in 2008 by a team which included the entomologist Moreira.
He was recognized in 2025 by Nature magazine as one of the world's top 10 scientists, and this year was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people.
To protect the secrets of the method, no photographs can be taken of equipment in the bio-factory.
The anti-dengue mosquitoes have been introduced to 15 countries, but nowhere have they protected as many people as in Brazil -- an estimated six million people since 2011, when Moreira first began testing the method.
However, more than 200 million are still at risk in the vast nation, where more than 6,000 people died during a 2024 outbreak of dengue, which causes joint and bone pain, earning it the nickname "breakbone fever."
The virus can provoke hemorrhagic fever in severe cases, and even death.
"We are at a decisive moment to expand in Brazil," said Moreira.
In two cities where the method was scientifically tested -- Niteroi, near Rio de Janeiro, and Campo Grande in central‑western Brazil -- dengue cases fell by 89 percent and 63 percent, respectively.
The left-wing government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has recognized the "wolbitos" as a public health measure, but state bureaucracy has failed to match the pace of breeding.
"The factory had to scale back production because demand (from the health ministry) wasn't that high," said Moreira.

No 'magic bullet'

Biologist and epidemiologist Ludimila Raupp, a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio, said there is an "urgent need" to expand the project but it "is not easy."
She said in Rio de Janeiro, for example, implementation of the project has suffered "serious flaws" and "institutional lack of coordination."
Local health teams hampered its effectiveness with heavy use of larvicides that are harmful to the Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes, said Raupp.
Meanwhile, violence linked to organized crime has interfered with the release of the mosquitoes in the city's sprawling favelas, said Moreira.
Expanding this program presents "technical, operational, logistical, and financial" challenges, Brazil's Health Minister Alexandre Padilha told AFP. 
Nevertheless, the Wolbachia method is set to be implemented in 54 new cities this year, bringing the total number of participating municipalities to 70.
Moreira said the method is not a "magic bullet" against dengue, but rather a strategy that is "complementary" to other measures, such as vaccines.
Brazil last year developed the world's first single-dose vaccine against dengue, and India is in the final stages of testing another.
ffb/app/fb/msp

health

Hantavirus ship heads to Netherlands after passengers flown home

BY ALFONS LUNA WITH STéPHANIE HAMEL IN THE HAGUE

  • A Spanish passenger has also tested positive, the health ministry in Madrid said, adding that results for the 13 other Spanish evacuees were so far negative.
  • The cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak headed to the Netherlands on Tuesday after its last passengers disembarked in Spain's Canary Islands, with at least seven of the evacuees testing positive for the virus.
  • A Spanish passenger has also tested positive, the health ministry in Madrid said, adding that results for the 13 other Spanish evacuees were so far negative.
The cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak headed to the Netherlands on Tuesday after its last passengers disembarked in Spain's Canary Islands, with at least seven of the evacuees testing positive for the virus.
Three people died after the rare virus that usually spreads among rodents was detected on board the MV Hondius, sparking a global health scare.
Among living patients, seven cases have been confirmed and an eighth is listed as "probable", according to the WHO, the UN health body and certain national health authorities.
French officials said one woman who tested positive was hospitalized and in stable condition in intensive care.
No vaccines or specific treatments exist for the virus, but health officials have said the risk to the public is low and dismissed comparisons to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Dutch-flagged ship was expected to arrive in Rotterdam on Sunday evening, according to its operator, where it will undergo disinfection procedures. 
More than 25 crew members and medical staff were still on board the ship, which is carrying the body of a German passenger who died during the voyage, but all passengers have now disembarked. 
"Mission accomplished," Spanish Health Minister Monica Garcia Gomez said on the quay of the port of Granadilla de Abona, in Tenerife, where a two-day complex evacuation procedure began on Sunday.
"Between yesterday and today, we have evacuated the 125 passengers and crew members from 23 countries, who have either already returned home or are in the process of being repatriated. The ship, as you can see, has just weighed anchor. It left the port today at 7:00 pm (1800 GMT)," she said on Monday.
The final cohort of 28 evacuees travelled on chartered buses to Tenerife South Airport and boarded two flights that landed in the Netherlands early on Tuesday.  
One plane carried mostly crew members -- 17 Filipinos, a Dutch national and a German -- as well as a British doctor and two epidemiologists. 
A second flight transported six other passengers -- four Australians, a New Zealander and a Briton living in Australia -- who would stay in a quarantine facility near the airport before being repatriated. 
Wearing white medical overalls and facemasks, the evacuees disembarked from the air ambulance clutching white bags of their belongings, and walked into Eindhoven airport's terminal.
Spanish authorities said the cruise ship, which was originally only authorised to anchor offshore for the evacuation on health and safety grounds, had docked in port because of unfavourable weather.
At a news conference at the port, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who is due to meet the Spanish prime minister in Madrid on Tuesday, sought to reassure the passengers.
He said they were in good hands now and that the situation could have become difficult if they stayed on the ship, but added that this "is not another Covid".

Search for contacts

Among the completed repatriations, a French woman -- one of five evacuees from France placed in isolation in Paris -- started to feel unwell on Sunday night, and "tests came back positive", Health Minister Stephanie Rist said.
A Spanish passenger has also tested positive, the health ministry in Madrid said, adding that results for the 13 other Spanish evacuees were so far negative.
Spain's health ministry defended the rigour of the evacuations, where medical teams escorted passengers from the ship to an airport on Tenerife under close supervision and following health checks.
"From the start, all the measures adopted have aimed at cutting the possible chains of transmission... all measures for prevention and control of transmission have been applied," it said in a statement.
Of the five French passengers repatriated on Sunday, one woman who tested positive was placed in intensive care in stable condition, Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu wrote on X. 
In total, seven cases have been confirmed among living passengers, health officials have said.
Other suspected cases and potential close contacts with infected people are being investigated, with health authorities in several countries tracking passengers who had already disembarked from the ship, plus anyone who may have come into contact with them.
In a video shared on Monday by operator Oceanwide Expeditions, captain Jan Dobrogowski paid tribute to the "unity and quiet strength" of everyone on board and highlighted the "courage and selfless resolve" of the crew.
The MV Hondius left Argentina, where hantavirus is endemic, on April 1 for a cruise across the Atlantic Ocean to Cape Verde.
The WHO believes the first infection occurred before the start of the voyage, followed by transmission between humans on board the vessel.
But Argentine health officials have questioned whether the outbreak originated in the southern city of Ushuaia, based on the virus's weeks-long incubation period and other factors.
burs-al/ach/jgc/ceg/lga

health

US Supreme Court maintains mail access to abortion pill for now

  • A panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a halt this month to mail access for mifepristone, which is used in the majority of abortions in the United States.
  • The US Supreme Court on Monday temporarily maintained mail access to the widely used abortion pill mifepristone.
  • A panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a halt this month to mail access for mifepristone, which is used in the majority of abortions in the United States.
The US Supreme Court on Monday temporarily maintained mail access to the widely used abortion pill mifepristone.
The court extended for another three days its stay of a lower court order that would have halted nationwide mail delivery of the drug.
A panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a halt this month to mail access for mifepristone, which is used in the majority of abortions in the United States.
But that ruling now remains on hold until Thursday.
The 5th Circuit ruling was in response to a lawsuit brought against the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by the state of Louisiana, which has some of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the country.
Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro, which manufacture mifepristone, asked the Supreme Court to pause the appeals court order while they prepare to bring an emergency case to the top court.
The 5th Circuit ruling would require women seeking abortions anywhere in the United States to obtain mifepristone in person from health clinics and ban delivery by mail or through a pharmacy after using telemedicine.
The conservative-dominated appeals court overturned a district court ruling that allowed mifepristone to continue to be delivered by mail while the FDA conducts a "safety study" of the drug.
Mifepristone has been approved by the FDA since 2000 and is also routinely used for managing early miscarriages.
Anti-abortion activists, however, have called the drug's safety into question, with some citing a study conducted by a conservative think tank that never underwent a formal peer review.
Mifepristone, which prevents pregnancy progression, and misoprostol, which empties the uterus, are approved to terminate a pregnancy up to 70 days of gestation in the United States.
More than 20 states have banned or restricted abortion since the Supreme Court in June 2022 overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that enshrined the constitutional right to abortion for half a century.
Polls show a majority of Americans support continued access to safe abortion, even as conservative groups push to limit the procedure or ban it outright.
In 2024, the Supreme Court rejected a bid to restrict mifepristone, ruling that anti-abortion groups and doctors challenging the medication lacked the legal standing to bring the case.
cl/mjf

health

Hantavirus: confirmed cases by nationality

  • - Britain - Two British nationals have been confirmed as infected and one is classed as a "probable" case.
  • Here is a roundup of which countries have confirmed or probable cases of nationals infected by hantavirus after the outbreak on the cruise ship MV Hondius, according to the World Health Organization.
  • - Britain - Two British nationals have been confirmed as infected and one is classed as a "probable" case.
Here is a roundup of which countries have confirmed or probable cases of nationals infected by hantavirus after the outbreak on the cruise ship MV Hondius, according to the World Health Organization.
Among living patients, seven cases have been confirmed and an eighth is listed as "probable", according to the WHO, the UN health body and certain national health authorities.
In addition, three people have died, with two of those confirmed as having hantavirus and one probable case, the WHO said.
Other suspected cases and potential close contacts of infected people are being investigated, according to health authorities.

Netherlands

Two Dutch people from the ship died from the virus and a third has been confirmed to have contracted it.
A Dutch couple who had travelled around South America before boarding the ship in Ushuaia, Argentina on April 1 were the first fatalities.
The husband, 70, showed symptoms on April 6 and died on April 11. His body was taken off the ship during its April 22-24 call at Saint Helena island in the south Atlantic.
No hantavirus test was carried out and he is considered a "probable case", according to the WHO.
His 69-year-old wife also left the ship at Saint Helena, feeling unwell. Her health deteriorated during an April 25 flight to Johannesburg and she died in hospital a day later, with hantavirus confirmed on May 4.
The third Dutch case was the ship's doctor, who reported symptoms on April 30. A test showed him positive for the Andes strain of the virus on May 6.
He was evacuated to the Netherlands when the ship stopped off Cape Verde and was stable while being treated in isolation.

Britain

Two British nationals have been confirmed as infected and one is classed as a "probable" case.
One British man became ill on April 24 and was evacuated three days later from the Atlantic island of Ascension to South Africa, where he was placed in intensive care. Hantavirus was confirmed on May 2 and the Andes strain was confirmed through sequencing.
A second British man working as a guide on the ship reported symptoms on April 27 and tested positive on May 6.
He was evacuated to the Netherlands on May 7 from Cape Verde and was stable while being treated in isolation.
A third British man left the Hondius on April 14 on the South Atlantic Archipelago of Tristan da Cunha and was treated in isolation there. He reported symptoms on April 28. The WHO listed him as a "probable case" pending laboratory results.
British paratroopers and medics parachuted onto the island to deliver urgent medical supplies for him.

Germany

A German woman who had a fever on April 28, and later developed pneumonia, died on May 2 on board the ship.
A post-mortem sample was sent to the Netherlands with the evacuated patients, where tests confirmed infection by the Andes virus.
Her body remained on board the Hondius, which was to leave for the Netherlands from the Spanish island of Tenerife late Monday.

Switzerland

A Swiss man disembarked from the Hondius in St Helena on April 22 and flew to Switzerland on April 27 via South Africa and Qatar.
He started suffering symptoms on May 1 after arrival in Switzerland. He was treated in isolation and tested positive for the Andes virus on May 5.

France

A French woman repatriated from the Hondius felt unwell late on May 10 and tested positive for hantavirus, France's Health Minister Stephanie Rist said. She added that the woman's condition worsened during the night.

United States

One of 17 American citizens repatriated from the ship tested "mildly PCR positive" for the virus while another had "mild symptoms", the US Department of Health and Human Services said on May 10.
The passengers are being taken to a specialised centre in Nebraska, while the person with mild symptoms will be taken to a second centre, the health department said.

Spain

A Spanish passenger evacuated from the disease-stricken MV Hondius cruise ship has tested positive for hantavirus but was not suffering symptoms, Madrid's health ministry said late on Monday. 
The passenger "received a positive result from a PCR test done on his arrival" at the Gomez Ulla military hospital in Madrid, where he was being kept in isolation, the ministry said. It added that the "final results will be known in the coming hours" and the other 13 Spanish evacuees had tested negative for the time being. 
bur-rlp-sbk/yad

hantavirus

Why hantavirus is not the new Covid, according to experts

BY ISABELLE CORTES AND RéBECCA FRASQUET

  • Two of the three people who died in the latest outbreak travelled to Argentina before boarding the cruise ship. 
  • A deadly hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship has revived bitter memories of when Covid-19 first emerged, but health experts have emphasised the two viruses are very different -- and have sought to assuage fears of another pandemic.
  • Two of the three people who died in the latest outbreak travelled to Argentina before boarding the cruise ship. 
A deadly hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship has revived bitter memories of when Covid-19 first emerged, but health experts have emphasised the two viruses are very different -- and have sought to assuage fears of another pandemic.
Here is what you need to know.

New or old?

After the first cases of Covid in late 2019, it was referred to as the "novel coronavirus" because it was a brand new pathogen.
The virus rapidly engulfed the world, sending countries into punishing lockdowns and crippling the global economy.
The exact number of people killed by Covid is difficult to determine, but the World Health Organization estimates it was at least 20 million.
Unlike Covid, hantavirus is not a new pathogen.
It was first described among soldiers fighting in the Korean War in the early 1950s.
Cases of hantavirus are regularly recorded across the world, particularly in Asia and Europe. It has long been monitored in areas where the virus is endemic.

Transmission and symptoms

Humans almost always catch hantavirus by being exposed to the saliva, urine or droppings of wild rodents. The most common way is to inhale dust from droppings.
The Andes hantavirus strain, which caused the recent outbreak on the MV Hondius cruise ship, is the only one out of more than 30 species known to be able to transmit between humans.
But even this is rare, with only a handful of previously documented cases.
After being infected with Andes, it takes between one and six weeks for symptoms to appear. This is vastly shorter than for Covid, which has an incubation period of seven to 10 days.
Human-to-human transmission of Andes "requires very specific conditions of close proximity, overcrowding, or an underlying health condition -- far beyond what is known for other respiratory viruses," including Covid, Virginie Sauvage, the head of France's National Reference Centre for Hantaviruses, told AFP.
The last major outbreak in 2018 killed at least 11 people in Argentina, where the Andes species is endemic. Two of the three people who died in the latest outbreak travelled to Argentina before boarding the cruise ship. 
Research into the 2018 outbreak found that the majority of transmission occurred on the first day the infected person showed symptoms. 
Hantaviruses in the Americas such as Andes can cause severe respiratory and cardiac distress, as well as haemorrhagic fever. 
In comparison, Covid is solely a respiratory illness, and can cause fever, shortness of breath, body aches, fatigue and loss of smell.

Too lethal for a pandemic?

The Andes hantavirus may be too rapidly fatal to spark a pandemic, explained biologist Raul Gonzalez Ittig of Argentina's scientific research agency Conicet.
"For a pandemic to occur, the virus cannot be so lethal that it kills 50 percent of the population, because it quickly kills everyone and runs out of opportunities to spread," Ittig told AFP.
The Andes hantavirus is thought to have a mortality rate of around 40 percent. 
"So deaths start appearing quickly, isolation measures are put in place quickly, and the chain of transmission is rapidly stopped," Ittig said.
Covid, on the other hand, "infects thousands of people and only later do deaths start to accumulate," he said.
"Everything happens much faster: One person transmits it, 10 people become infected, and they die if they do not receive proper treatment," he said.
"That is why there is not as much chance of a hantavirus pandemic."

Treatment and vaccines?

There are currently no treatments or vaccines specifically targeting hantavirus, so doctors treat the symptoms it causes, such as breathing problems.
"The faster people receive treatment, the better their prognosis," Sauvage said.
Patients with severe lung damage may need a machine to help them breathe. Kidney failure may lead them to require dialysis.
There have been trials for vaccines targeting some hantavirus strains, "but their effectiveness has not yet been proven against all hantaviruses," French infectious disease specialist Vincent Ronin told AFP.
During the pandemic, new Covid treatments and vaccines were developed in record time.
With billions of vaccines administered worldwide, the effectiveness of these jabs has been thoroughly demonstrated -- though vaccination rates have fallen steeply in recent years.
ref-ic-bur/dl/giv

health

US, French nationals from hantavirus ship test positive

BY ALFONS LUNA

  • Late Sunday, the US health department said one American national evacuated from the ship had "mild symptoms" and that another had tested positive for the Andes virus, the only hantavirus strain that is transmissible between humans.
  • An American national and a French woman evacuated from the cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak have tested positive, officials said Monday, as the complex operation to repatriate those on board continued.
  • Late Sunday, the US health department said one American national evacuated from the ship had "mild symptoms" and that another had tested positive for the Andes virus, the only hantavirus strain that is transmissible between humans.
An American national and a French woman evacuated from the cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak have tested positive, officials said Monday, as the complex operation to repatriate those on board continued.
The French woman, one of five passengers from France flown back from the MV Hondius and placed in isolation in Paris, started to feel unwell on Sunday night, and "tests came back positive", said Health Minister Stephanie Rist.
Late Sunday, the US health department said one American national evacuated from the ship had "mild symptoms" and that another had tested positive for the Andes virus, the only hantavirus strain that is transmissible between humans.
Three passengers from the ship, a Dutch couple and a German woman, have died, while others have fallen sick with the rare disease, which usually spreads among rodents.
No vaccines or specific treatments exist for hantavirus, which is endemic in Argentina, where the ship set sail in April.
But health officials have insisted that the risk for global public health is low and downplayed comparisons to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Rist said 22 more contact cases had been identified among French nationals, including eight people who had travelled on an April 25 flight between Saint Helena and Johannesburg, and 14 more on a flight between Johannesburg and Amsterdam.
The Dutch woman who died was on the flight to Johannesburg and later briefly boarded a flight to Amsterdam but was removed prior to takeoff.
Health authorities in several countries have been tracking passengers who had already disembarked from the ship, plus anyone who may have come into contact with them.
The repatriation operation evacuated 94 people of 19 different nationalities on Sunday, Spanish Health Minister Monica Garcia announced on Tenerife, in Spain's Canary Islands.
Spanish officials said the evacuation of most of the ship's nearly 150 passengers and crew, which includes 23 nationalities, would continue until the final repatriation flights to Australia and the Netherlands on Monday afternoon.
The Dutch-flagged ship will refuel in the morning and is expected to depart for the Netherlands with about 30 crew members at 7:00 pm (1800 GMT) on Monday.
Passengers in blue medical suits began disembarking the vessel on Sunday to reach the small industrial port of Granadilla on Tenerife, AFP journalists saw.

Race against time

Canary Islands authorities have warned that the operation must be completed by Monday, when adverse weather conditions will force the ship to leave.
The Atlantic archipelago's regional government has consistently resisted taking in the ship, which was only authorised to anchor offshore.
The World Health Organization recommends a 42-day quarantine and "active follow-up", including daily checks for symptoms such as fever, the UN body's epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention director, Maria Van Kerkhove, said in Geneva.
Greece's health ministry said a Greek male evacuee would spend 45 days in mandatory hospital quarantine in Athens, while 14 Spanish citizens will also isolate at a military hospital in Madrid.
Australia said it would place its six evacuees in a purpose-built quarantine facility north of Perth for at least three weeks.
British officials said 20 UK citizens who were aboard the ship would be taken to a hospital near Liverpool for tests and about 72 hours of quarantine.
But a top US health official said the 17 American passengers would not necessarily be quarantined.
Depending on the estimated risk, passengers can choose to go home "without exposing other people on the way", said Jay Bhattacharya, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who was on Tenerife to help supervise the evacuations, said that policy "may have risks".
The group was expected to land in Omaha early Monday morning, said a spokesperson for the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

International concern

The Hondius left Ushuaia, Argentina on April 1 for a cruise across the Atlantic Ocean to Cape Verde.
The WHO believes the first infection occurred before the start of the expedition, followed by transmission between humans on board the vessel.
But Argentine health officials have questioned whether the outbreak originated in Ushuaia, based on the virus's weeks-long incubation period and other factors.
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hantavirus

Hantavirus outbreak renews painful memories for Patagonian village

BY LEILA MACOR

  • In the years since the hantavirus outbreak, Epuyen has endured the Covid-19 pandemic and major wildfires in 2025 and 2026, permanently changing the landscape.
  • Mailen Valle lost her father and two sisters during a hantavirus outbreak more than seven years ago in Epuyen, a village in Argentina's Patagonia region.
  • In the years since the hantavirus outbreak, Epuyen has endured the Covid-19 pandemic and major wildfires in 2025 and 2026, permanently changing the landscape.
Mailen Valle lost her father and two sisters during a hantavirus outbreak more than seven years ago in Epuyen, a village in Argentina's Patagonia region.
With the recent hantavirus outbreak on the MV Hondius cruise ship, hard memories have resurfaced for the 33-year-old.
"Losing my dad and my two sisters in less than a month..." she told AFP, trailing off.
Her voice broke and she laughed nervously, opting to read from a prepared statement because she knew it would be hard to speak.
"Nobody was prepared to see how, in a matter of days, a family table was left empty," she said.
While the Hondius outbreak has left three people dead, it has yet to surpass the Epuyen outbreak, which recorded 34 cases and 11 fatalities between December 2018 and March 2019 in the town of 2,400 residents, situated in a part of the Andes where hantavirus is endemic.
Mailen's father, Aldo Valle, came down with it after attending a birthday party.
"The person with the virus was just sitting at the same table as my dad. And at that table there were several people who got infected, and people died," Mailen recalled.
The wake for Valle was another locus of infection, where all three of his daughters got sick.
One sister died "within hours" of showing symptoms, while for the other, "we had to take her to the cemetery without a wake," Mailen said.

Pre-Covid isolation

The variant of the hantavirus suspected in both outbreaks is transmitted through the droppings, saliva and urine of the Andean mouse.
Jorge Diaz, an epidemiologist with Chubut province's health department who worked on the Epuyen hantavirus outbreak, told AFP that "we knew very little about the disease" in 2018.
Human-to-human transmission of hantavirus was first discovered in 1996 in the neighboring town of El Bolson, and it was later found to have happened in Epuyen.
"We implemented quarantine, which required those who made contact with a positive case to isolate for 45 days," Diaz explained.
About 100 people ended up undergoing the quarantine process in a display that would foreshadow the Covid-19 pandemic that broke out a year later.
The approach, dubbed "selective isolation," marked a shift in the epidemiological response, and now "each time there is a case of (Andes) hantavirus, isolation is ordered or recommended."

'One thing after another'

Residents in Patagonia know how to protect themselves from the virus, which they refer to as "the hanta," by airing out sheds and cleaning areas with bleach.
But the human transmission of the Epuyen outbreak changed the scale of the fight, as one could get infected from their neighbor just as easily as from an Andean mouse.
Mailen remembers the stigma. "We felt very discriminated against," she said.
Others recall being banned from shops in nearby towns.
Isabel Diaz, 53, survived the outbreak with a different stigma -- her father, Victor Diaz, was labeled "patient zero," and attended the birthday party while displaying the early symptoms of hantavirus.
"People looked poorly at my father. It's not his fault he got sick," she told AFP, her eyes welling up.
"Nobody chooses to get sick, much less infect others, much less lose a mother."
Isabel got sick from her father's hantavirus case, as well as her mother. "She was the sixth patient" of the eleven who died, she said.
Her father, for his part, recalled how it felt to come down with hantavirus, causing body aches and a bitter taste that even made sipping water unpleasant.
"It started with a feeling of weakness. I didn't feel like eating. And I started to get purple spots," he said. "That same day, I lost consciousness."
In the years since the hantavirus outbreak, Epuyen has endured the Covid-19 pandemic and major wildfires in 2025 and 2026, permanently changing the landscape.
"It's one thing after another," Victor said, laughing.
"No one is going to tell us what it means to live life and keep moving forward," Isabel Diaz added.
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health

Hantavirus ship evacuation nears completion as 94 flown home

BY ALFONS LUNA

  • The operation evacuated 94 people of 19 different nationalities on Sunday, Spanish Health Minister Monica Garcia announced on the island of Tenerife after what she called a "pretty intense" day.
  • A complex day-long operation to repatriate  occupants of a cruise ship struck by a deadly hantavirus outbreak neared completion late Sunday after 94 people of various nationalities were flown home from Spain's Canary Islands.
  • The operation evacuated 94 people of 19 different nationalities on Sunday, Spanish Health Minister Monica Garcia announced on the island of Tenerife after what she called a "pretty intense" day.
A complex day-long operation to repatriate  occupants of a cruise ship struck by a deadly hantavirus outbreak neared completion late Sunday after 94 people of various nationalities were flown home from Spain's Canary Islands.
Three passengers from the MV Hondius -- a Dutch husband and wife and a German woman -- have died, while others have fallen sick with the rare disease, which usually spreads among rodents.
No vaccines or specific treatments exist for hantavirus, which is endemic in Argentina, where the ship departed in April.
But health officials have stressed that the risk for global public health is low and played down comparisons to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The operation evacuated 94 people of 19 different nationalities on Sunday, Spanish Health Minister Monica Garcia announced on the island of Tenerife after what she called a "pretty intense" day.
Spanish officials said the evacuation of most of the ship's nearly 150 passengers and crew, which include 23 nationalities, would continue until the final repatriation flights to Australia and the Netherlands on Monday afternoon.
The ship will refuel in the morning and is expected to depart for the Netherlands with around 30 crew at 7:00 pm (1800 GMT) on Monday.
On Sunday, passengers wearing blue medical suits began disembarking the Dutch-flagged vessel onto smaller boats to reach the small industrial port of Granadilla on Tenerife, AFP journalists saw.
The evacuees then boarded Spanish army buses and travelled to Tenerife South airport in a convoy, with a protective board separating the driver from the passengers.
The evacuees changed into new protective equipment before boarding their repatriation flights.
"Everything is going well," French evacuee Roland Seitre told AFP just before taking off, saying "everyone was great" during the disembarkation.

Race against time

A plane arrived in the Netherlands with dozens of people, including Belgian, Greek, German, Guatemalan and Argentine citizens, while flights for Canadian, Turkish, British, Irish and US nationals also left.
Canary Islands authorities have warned that the operation must be completed by Monday, when adverse weather conditions will force the ship to leave. 
The Atlantic archipelago's regional government has consistently resisted taking in the ship, which was only authorised to anchor offshore instead of docking in the port when it arrived early on Sunday morning.
The central government has insisted there will be no contact with the population in Tenerife.
Garcia told reporters on Tenerife shortly before the operation began that all passengers were asymptomatic and underwent a final medical assessment before their disembarkation.
But one of five French people flown back to France was showing hantavirus symptoms, Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu wrote on X, saying all those evacuees "have immediately been placed in strict isolation until further notice".
The World Health Organization recommends a 42-day quarantine and "active follow-up", including daily checks for symptoms such as fever, the UN body's epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention director, Maria Van Kerkhove, said in Geneva.
Greece's health ministry said a Greek male evacuee would spend 45 days in mandatory hospital quarantine in Athens, while 14 Spanish citizens will also isolate at a military hospital in Madrid.
But a top US health official said American passengers will not necessarily be quarantined at a specialised centre in the state of Nebraska.
Depending on the estimated risk, passengers can choose to go home "without exposing other people on the way", said Jay Bhattacharya, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who was on Tenerife to help supervise the evacuations, said that policy "may have risks".

International concern

The only hantavirus type that is transmissible between humans -- the Andes virus -- has been confirmed among those who have tested positive, fuelling international concern.
The WHO said Friday it had confirmed six cases out of eight suspected ones.
The MV Hondius left Ushuaia, Argentina on April 1 for a cruise across the Atlantic Ocean to Cape Verde, where three infected people had been evacuated to Europe earlier in the week.
The WHO believes the first infection occurred before the start of the expedition, followed by transmission between humans onboard the vessel.
But Argentine provincial health official Juan Petrina has said there was an "almost zero chance" the Dutch man linked to the outbreak contracted the disease in Ushuaia based on the virus's weeks-long incubation period, among other factors. 
Health authorities in several countries have been tracking passengers who had already disembarked and anyone who may have come into contact with them.
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