B4 Thursday, July 2, 2020 The Garden City Telegram

By Hannah Norman Kaiser Health News (TNS)

Three Tuesdays each month, Katherine O’Brien straps on her face mask and journeys about half an hour by Metra rail to Northwestern University’s Lurie Cancer Center.

What were once packed train cars rolling into Chicago are now eerily empty, as those usually commuting to tower-ing skyscrapers weather the pandemic from home. But for O’Brien, the excursion is man-datory. She’s one of millions of Americans battling cancer and depends on chemotherapy to treat the breast cancer that has spread to her bones and liver.

“I was nervous at first about having to go downtown for my treatment,” said O’Brien, who lives in a suburb, La Grange, and worries about contracting the coronavirus. “Family and friends have offered to drive me, but I want to minimize everyone’s exposure.”

While her treatment hasn’t changed since the novel coro-navirus spread across the United States, the 54-year-old is at high risk of severe com-plications should she become infected. Those risks haven’t declined significantly for her despite the Illinois governor’s loosening of COVID-related restrictions.

She’s not alone in fearing the deadly combination of COVID-19 and cancer. One study, which reviewed records of more than 1,000 adult cancer patients who had tested posi-tive for COVID-19, found that 13 percent had died. That’s compared with the overall U.S. mortality rate of 5.9 percent, according to Johns Hopkins.

Beyond the concern of cancer

patients - with their already depleted immune systems - catching the virus, many doctors worry about people delaying their scans and check-ups and missing time-sensitive diagnoses. A KFF poll found that nearly half of Americans had skipped or postponed medical care because of the outbreak. Cancer patients seeking care face an array of obstacles as states reopen, such as heavily restricted in-hospital appointments and new clinical trials on hold.

“Cancer doesn’t care that there’s a coronavirus pandemic taking place,” said Dr. Robert Figlin, chair in hematology-oncology at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles. “We don’t want people who have abnormali-ties to delay having them evaluated.”

In late March, Megan-Claire Chase, 43, of Dunwoody, Georgia, got laid off from her job as a project manager for a staffing company, losing the health care benefits that came with it. Her chief concern was paying for a diagnostic mam-mogram and MRI, still on the calendar for two days before her benefits were to end. Currently in remission from stage 2A breast cancer, Chase sched-ules scans for every six months well in advance at Breast Care Specialists in Atlanta.

“When I got there, it was really unsettling. You almost feel like a leper,” said Chase, noting the socially distanced waiting room and heavily sanitized clipboards. Already hyper-careful since her days of chemotherapy, Chase car-ries her own pens in her purse, along with gloves and extra masks.

Cancer centers across the

country are taking extra pre-cautions. At Northwestern, patients are funneled through a single entryway, where masks are required, and are met by a security guard and a tem-perature check before signing in with receptionists seated behind plastic shields, O’Brien said. No visitors or accom-panying family members are allowed inside the building, and the cafeteria and waiting rooms are devoid of unneces-sary germ-spreading agents _ no magazines or coffee machine in sight. The cubicle where she receives infusions of Abraxane used to seat four patients; now, only two sit in the space.

Where they can, many doc-tors are turning to telemedicine to limit cancer patients’ trips to the hospital. In Salt Lake City, Dr. Mark Lewis, director of gastrointestinal oncology for Intermountain Healthcare, a 23-hospital system serving Utah and surrounding states, says about half his patient visits are now virtual. He’s also making some patients’ treatments less intense and less frequent. As at Northwestern, patients must arrive at the hospital solo for appointments unless assistance is physically necessary. It’s a significant shift for Lewis, who’s had up to 30 family members in his office for appointments alongside his patients for mental support.

“We are writing the rules as we go, trying to keep patients’ immune systems up and the cancer at bay,” said Lewis. Still, he’s concerned about a later spike in cancer mortality due to the coronavirus pandemic. The coronavirus aside, the National Cancer Institute estimates over 600,000 Americans will die of cancer this year.

Fearing the deadly combo: COVID-19 and cancer

On “Treatment Tuesdays,” as she has dubbed them, Katherine O’Brien makes the trek into Chicago by commuter rail from her home in the suburb of La Grange, Illinois, for chemotherapy. She is shown posing with her nurse, Drucella Stingley. [COURTESY KATHERINE O’BRIEN]

By Shashank Bengali and Zulfiqar Ali Los Angeles Times (TNS)

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - The boys struck out from their village in Pakistan’s rugged tribal belt and came to this frontier city to work at Maula Khan’s drink stand, a wooden cart shaded by an umbrella on a road bustling with migrants, war refugees and swerving rickshaws.

Umar Gul and Muhammad Siraj stood in the 108-degree heat, pouring freshly squeezed lemons mixed with jaggery into steel cups for 12 cents a serving. They were far from home, but when the coronavirus pandemic closed their elementary school in March, their fami-lies needed them to work.

“I decided to support my parents,” said Umar, a 14-year-old who was in the fourth grade. His 13-year-old cousin Muhammad, whose father owns the lem-onade cart and demanded the boys join him, was in the grade below. Neither is counting on returning to school when classes resume.

“I’m not sure,” Umar shrugged, his shoulders slumped under a loose-fit-ting shalwar kameez. “My father doesn’t have enough money for my education.”

Experts warn that the COVID-19 pandemic could force millions of children in developing nations out of classrooms for good and into the workforce, reversing two decades of hard-won progress against underage labor and exposing vulnerable girls and boys to hazardous conditions, phys-ical stress, emotional trauma and exploitation.

“In precarious households that are economically vul-nerable, they have to make a decision every day, how to spend their income and how to generate income,” said Cornelius Williams, associate director of child protection at UNICEF.

“If these families go below the poverty line, they may have to make these ugly choices.”

Monthslong economic lockdowns and the threat of a prolonged global recession have worsened hardships for poor families, espe-cially those who depend on informal jobs and lack social protections. In low- and middle-income countries, the number of children living in poverty could rise 15 percent by the end of 2020 to 672 million, accord-ing to UNICEF and Save the Children, an international charity.

Nearly two-thirds of these children live in Africa and South Asia, in coun-tries where child labor i s e n t r e n c h e d d e s p i t e legal prohibitions, rising school enrollment and economic modernization. The International Labor Organization estimates there are 152 million victims of child labor worldwide working as farm hands, herders, miners, weavers, shop assistants, domestic servants - often as part of a family business.

Child rights advocates have spent decades persuad-ing governments, employers and parents that child labor is not only dangerous but

also prevents societies from growing more educated and creating better-paying jobs.

The campaign has worked: About 100 million fewer children are working today compared to 20 years ago, according to U.N. agencies.

The U.N. had set a target of eliminating child labor by 2030. But experts worry that the economic shock will force parents to choose between their children’s future and daily survival.

“The danger is that we will lose that trajectory,” Williams said. “That target would become impossible.”

Although some medical evidence suggests that chil-dren are less susceptible to COVID-19 infections than adults, the pandemic’s toll on young people goes beyond health.

I n w a r - t o r n Y e m e n , humanitarian aid is drying up, threatening children with starvation. Reports of child abuse are increas-ing in developed nations such as Singapore and the U.S. Pediatricians warn that keeping kids out of school could be worse in the long run than the disease itself.

Worldwide, more than 1.5 billion students have been affected by school clo-sures. Like many countries, Pakistan tried to shift to online learning and televised classes.

But in the rugged, impov-erished tribal zone along the Afghan border, such measures were effectively impossible.

Internet access in the region is almost nonexis-tent: Wi-Fi connections are prohibitively expensive, and the government has blocked mobile 3G and 4G service since 2016 as part of its war against a long-running insurgency. Most households get only three to four hours of electricity a day.

Even before the pan-demic, Pakistan had some of the world’s worst edu-cation statistics, with 44 percent of school-age chil-dren not attending classes. Education through age 16 is free under the law, but the cost of books, uniforms and other expenses weighed on families in the tribal belt.

With more than 200,000 COVID-19 infections and low testing rates, Pakistan has not said when schools will reopen.

Umar and Muhammad, who started school years late because their families had been displaced by fight-ing in Bajaur, were both good students, fond of Urdu lan-guage classes, with hopes of enlisting in the army.

But when the shutdown hit, the family’s calculation was simple.

“ W e a r e p o o r , ” Muhammad’s father Maula Khan said, “and we need extra hands to help us earn.”

The drink stand gener-ates about $3.50 a day for the family of seven to live on in Peshawar, home to large numbers of migrants from the tribal districts and refugees from the war in Afghanistan. Maula Khan, his ankles swollen from standing beside the cart all day, said working was the best thing for the boys’ future.

“This will train them to start their own lemonade stands,” he said.

COVID-19 could wipe out progress in war against child labor

Teenage migrant farm workers pick ripe Roma tomatoes in Cristo Rey, Sinaloa, Mexico. [DON BARTLETTI/LOS ANGELES TIMES/TNS]

Mary W. Jackson one of agency’s ’Hidden Figures’

By Kelcie Willis The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (TNS)

NASA announced last week that its headquarters will be named after one of its history-making engineers.

In a news release, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced the agency's Washington, D.C., headquar-ters building will be named after Mary W. Jackson, its first African American female engineer.

"Mary W. Jackson was part of a group of very important women who helped NASA succeed in getting American astronauts into space. Mary never accepted the status quo, she helped break barriers and open opportunities for African Americans and women in the field of engineering and tech-nology," Bridenstine said in a

statement. "Today, we proudly announce the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters building. It appropriately sits on 'Hidden Figures Way,' a reminder that Mary is one of many incredible and talented professionals in NASA's history who contrib-uted to this agency's success. Hidden no more, we will continue to recognize the con-tributions of women, African Americans, and people of all backgrounds who have made NASA's successful history of exploration possible."

Jackson graduated with bachelor's degrees in math-ematics and physical science from Hampton University, a historically Black university, in 1942. She was a mathema-tician and aerospace engineer who started her NASA career in the segregated West Area Computing Unit of the agen-cy's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. She was recruited by the National Advisory Committee for

Aeronautics (NACA) in April 1951. NACA was succeeded by NASA in 1958, where she worked until her retirement in 1985.

She worked along with two other history-making Black mathematicians, Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughan, during the space race. The wom-en's stories were told in Margot Lee Shetterly's 2016 nonfiction book "Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race." It was also adapted into a motion picture that same year. Jackson was portrayed by Janelle Monae in the film.

Jackson died in 2005 at the age of 83. In 2019, President Donald Trump signed the Hidden Figures Congressional Gold Medal Act, which posthu-mously honored Jackson. It also honored Johnson, Vaughan and Christine Darden, who joined NASA's pool of "human com-puters" in 1967.

NASA headquarters to be renamed