200 pre-schoolers poisoned by school meals in China
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RNZ News
a day ago
- RNZ News
‘Alarming' rates of bullying, depression among Asian New Zealanders reported
Kelly Feng, chief executive of Asian Family Services, says the report points to "a silent crisis". Photo: 123RF Almost half of Asian parents say their children have been bullied at school in the past 12 months, with Indian households most affected followed by Chinese families, according to the results of a health survey unveiled on Wednesday. The New Zealand Asian Well-being and Mental Health Report also revealed that more than half of Asian adults showed signs of depression, with young adults particularly affected. Commissioned by Asian Family Services, the report is the third of its kind, with earlier iterations published in 2020 and 2021 , respectively. The report showed 46.3 percent of Asian parents believed their child had experienced bullying at school in the past 12 months. Among those who reported bullying, Indian households comprised 39.5 percent, while Chinese families made up 32.6 percent, the report said. The most common types of bullying were verbal (71.8 percent), which included name-calling, teasing, threats and racial slurs, and social (36.9 percent), which included exclusion and spreading rumours. The 2025 Asian Well-being and Mental Health Report shows Indian families are most affected by bullying. Photo: Supplied / Asian Family Services The report also highlighted physical bullying (34.6 percent) and cyberbullying (14.1 percent) such as harassment and mean messages. Primary and intermediate school students were most affected, indicating an early onset of bullying behaviour, the report said. Anxiety, social withdrawal, heightened emotional reactivity, low self-esteem, depression and self-harm were among parents' reported outcomes. The report showed just over a third of Asian parents were satisfied with their school's response to bullying. Kelly Feng, chief executive at Asian Family Services. Photo: RNZ / Yiting Lin Kelly Feng, chief executive at Asian Family Services, described the results as "alarming". Feng was surprised to see a gap between Indian and Chinese families' experiences with bullying but noted it might be due to a higher rate of reporting among Indian parents. "I think [Asian] parents' confidence in responding to bullying [is] very low," Feng said. "As parents, all of them are very good at ... providing emotional support, but less confident to access professional help. "Most of the parents also have no idea where to seek support ... and [they don't] know the system or how to navigate if the school doesn't respond." People attend the inaugural Asian Mental Health and Wellbeing Summit last year. Photo: RNZ / Liu Chen Feng said many Asian parents wouldn't want to "make a big fuss about it" and would end up moving school or even cities if they failed to get support from the school. The report recommended establishing a national anti-bullying strategy with ethnic sensitivity, and funding Asian-led community navigators in schools to help parents access support. Training teachers in bullying prevention, improving accessibility to mental health services, and developing parent toolkits and peer support networks were also key recommendations in the report. More than half of the respondents - 57.2 percent - were at risk of depression, an increase from the results reported in 2021 (44.4 percent). Koreans (69.1 percent) and Indians (63.5 percent) were most affected, with Chinese individuals showing the lowest high-risk rate (16.3 percent), the report found. The risk of depression among Asian New Zealanders as shown in the 2025 Asian Well-being and Mental Health Report. Photo: Supplied / Asian Family Services Depression rates peaked among young adults aged between 18 and 29 (72 percent) and were also higher among females (60.3 percent) than males (53.9 percent). Between 2021 and 2025, the proportion of Asians with no significant depressive symptoms declined from 55.7 percent to 42.8 percent, while those at high risk rose from 14.8 percent to 20.8 percent. Discrimination remained a significant issue, with more than one in five people (22.2 percent) experiencing race-based bias, the report found. Life satisfaction among Asian communities had notably declined by 11.4 percent since 2021, particularly among younger adults and those living in urban centres, the report said. "These findings point to a silent crisis," Feng said. "Asian communities are navigating mental health challenges, discrimination and disconnection - often without adequate support. "We urgently need culturally responsive interventions in schools, workplaces and healthcare settings." The report was funded by the Ethnic Communities Development Fund, which is administered by the Ministry for Ethnic Communities. The survey was conducted online from 2-21 May, gathering responses from 1016 Asian adults nationwide. If it is an emergency and you feel like you or someone else is at risk, call 111.
Scoop
2 days ago
- Scoop
Pacific Security And Health Leaders Pledge Cooperation
A conference of Pacific security and health leaders concluded in Suva last week with the promise to "collaborate more" on a drug crisis spiralling out of control. But public health experts say that law enforcement are undermining efforts to combat the drug-driven spread of HIV in Fiji, putting the wider region at risk. This comes at a time when transmission of the disease has risen to levels only surpassed by the Philippines within the Asia-Pacific region, according to UNAIDS. National HIV Response Taskforce chair Dr Jason Mitchell believes Fiji is still far behind where they need to be in terms of detection and prevention measures. "I think a lot of times when we are trying to introduce strong public health interventions, there's opposition, oftentimes from our law enforcement agencies." Dr Mitchell told RNZ Pacific that progressive prevention measures, such as needle and syringe programmes, are often opposed at all levels of Pacific governments. "There may be legislation that they are often expected to uphold. They could also be responding to the public or political sentiments around drugs and drug users." Speaking at the recent Pacific Regional and National Security Conference 2025, held in Suva, Dr Mitchell said that the growing drug trade in the Pacific is driving the spread of HIV. "About 50 percent of people who were infected with HIV last year were as a result of intravenous drug use" UN: 'Of course' police don't help According to a new UNAIDS report, "Aids, Crisis and the Power to Transform" Fiji stands out in all the worst ways. "Since 2014, number of new HIV infections in Fiji has risen by an alarming 10-fold. UNAIDS estimates that in 2014, there were fewer than 500 people living with HIV in Fiji. Just 10 years later, that number was 5900." That rate, according to the report puts Fiji above Papua New Guinea, the previous regional leaders, to the second fastest transmission rate in the Asia-Pacific, behind only the Philippines. The report further acknowledges that given people struggle to access support services where their case would be recorded, these estimates could fall short. "In 2024, only 36 percent of people living with HIV in Fiji were aware of their HIV status, and only 24 percent were receiving treatment." When asked whether law enforcement in Fiji hinders public health efforts, UNAIDS head Renata Ram said yes. "In the Pacific, law enforcement policies can sometimes create significant barriers to effective HIV prevention, particularly for key populations such as sex workers, men who have sex with men, and people who use drugs." "The criminalisation of these populations in many Pacific Island countries contributes to increased stigma and discrimination, driving them further away from essential health and HIV services." Ram said that colonial-era laws that continue to criminalise same-sex relations, sex work and drug possession are causing HIV-infected persons to avoid seeking help. "Punitive drug laws and the lack of protective legal environments for vulnerable populations hinder the implementation and scale-up of high-impact interventions, such as needle-syringe programmes and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP)." Collaboration needed on all fronts Fiji Police Commissioner Rusiate Tudravu said at the conference that he and Dr Mitchell are finding time to sit down and have a chat. "It's more befitting for us to have more conference in regards to this, so that we can know what's happening in other countries, share information, look into the success stories of other countries, and how can we ourselves learn from what other countries are doing well." Tudravu said they have to fight a war on two fronts: trying to hold back the spread of drugs internally, while stopping the flow of drugs into the country from the wider Pacific. "We share information, we share resources, and we help each other... but having said that Pacific islands are limited to the resources that we have, so we need the partners that are out there, our bigger brothers, to come on board, because what we are doing in the Pacific also affects them." Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime's head of the Pacific programme Virginia Comolli told RNZ Pacific that a transnational operation, with shared resources and the help of Australia and New Zealand, would give police the space to make changes internally. "This is certainly a law enforcement issue that requires involvement of the police and customs, etc, but it also requires these security actors to cooperate closely with doctors, with public health practitioners, with mental health specialists." Comolli said she was impressed with how open and frank the police leaders were. "They are the first ones to say they cannot fight this challenge alone... who would admit that capabilities within law enforcement aren't always up to scratch." "They also highlighted how legislation needs to be to be updated in order to be on par with these emerging challenges in the introduction of new illicit substances. So I think there was lots of honesty there."
RNZ News
3 days ago
- RNZ News
China is catching up to the US in brain tech, rivaling firms like Elon Musk's Neuralink
By Kristie Lu Stout and Fred He , CNN The chip of Beinao-1 is about the size of a coin. CNN Photo: CNN Newsource "I want to eat" popped up in Chinese characters on a computer at a public hospital in central Beijing. The words were formed from the thoughts of a 67-year-old woman with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, who is unable to speak. The demonstration, captured on video in March by Beijing Radio and Television Station, was part of a clinical trial involving five patients implanted with a coin-sized chip called Beinao-1, a wireless so-called brain computer interface (BCI) - a technology led by scientists in the US, but in which experts say China is quickly catching up. Luo Minmin, director of the Chinese Institute for Brain Research (CIBR) and the chief scientist behind the trial, said there was a "very strong" need for BCI technology, saying they had been "overwhelmed" by requests from potential patients. "The patients were saying that this feels so great, like they can gain or regain the control of (their) muscles," he told CNN in May during a rare interview at his lab, located an hour's drive away from Beijing Xuanwu Hospital, where the trial took place. Luo said the technology was showing "high accuracy" in decoding signals from the brains of patients and translating the signals into text speech or machine movements. His team is planning to speed up human trials by implanting chips into 50 to 100 more patients over the next year. "We are hoping that we can move this process faster," he said. "If it's proven to be safe and effective … it can be used clinically across the world." Luo Minmin at the Chinese Institute for Brain Research lab, in Beijingon May 28, 2025 Photo: CNN Newsource As of May, Beinao-1 says a total of five patients, the same number as Elon Musk's Neuralink , has its implants. Another US company Synchron, whose investors include Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, has undergone trials with 10 patients, six in the United States and four in Australia. Maximilian Riesenhuber, a professor of neuroscience at Georgetown University who was not involved in the Beinao trials, told CNN that despite starting later than the US, China is making advances. "China has definitely shown the ability to not just catch up, but also then be competitive, and now actually to start, also to drive the field in some areas," he said. "Excitingly, there's a lot of research activities in both countries, because they've realized the potential in BCI." According to Precedence Research, a market research firm, the market for brain technology was worth about $2.6 billion last year and is expected to rise to $12.4 billion by 2034. But for both China and the US, this technology is about much more than cash. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has long aimed to turn his country into a science and economic powerhouse. In March, he wrote in state-owned media that the tech industry had become the "forefront" and "main battlefield" of global competition. His ambitions have sparked concern in the US, resulting in an ongoing tech war, particularly in the semiconductor industry. CIBR was jointly founded by the Beijing municipal government and several local universities in 2018, about two years after Elon Musk founded Neuralink near San Francisco. In 2023, CIBR incubated a private company named NeuCyber NeuroTech to focus on brain tech products such as Beinao-1. Luo, who is also the startup's chief scientist, gave CNN rare access to the institute in May. For years, he said, the ALS patient, who is in her 60s, was unable to express herself. "She's awake, she knows what she wants but she could not speak out," said the scientist, who got his PhD in neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania and spent nearly a decade in the US. "Following the implantation, she can now speak simple sentences quite accurately via the system." All BCI researchers must address the balance between risk and effectiveness. Riensenhuber said most American firms use the more invasive method to place chips inside the dura mater, an outer layer of tissue that covers and protects the brain and spinal cord, in order to capture better signal. But these methods require riskier surgeries. "It is interesting to see that NeuCyber is apparently able to get enough information even through the dura to allow the decoding of specific words," he said. The test on the ALS patient, which began in March, marked the Beinao-1 chip's third trial in humans. Those trials made up what the developers described in a press release as "the world's first batch of semi-invasive implantation of wireless BCI in human brains." As of May, two more trials have been conducted, for a total of five. Amid rising geopolitical tensions, comparisons between US and Chinese tech breakthroughs are common. Brain computer interface technology first started in the 1970s in the US. Decades later, the Obama Administration launched its "Brain Initiative" in 2013, investing more than $3 billion to fund over a thousand neuroscience technology projects since, according to the National Institute of Health. Synchron, based in New York, was the first firm to start human trials in July 2021. Three years later, a new BCI system developed at UC Davis Health translated the brain signals of an ALS patient into speech, achieving an accuracy of 97% - the most accurate system of its kind, the university said in a statement. The same year, Musk's company completed its first human trial , enabling the participant to control a computer mouse with a brain implant . China got its start in brain tech only in the 1990s, but it's advancing fast. In 2014, Chinese scientists introduced the idea of a national project on brain tech to match similar efforts in the US and Europe, according to the Ministry of Science and Technology. Two years later, brain tech was mentioned in the country's five-year plan, which outlines China's national priorities and goals. "Brain science is new in China," said Lily Lin, a former research assistant at one of China's top neuroscience research units from 2021 to 2023. "So, it started a bit late, but its speed of development has been faster than other countries. And the country has given a lot of funding to many scientific research units, and this funding is increasing every year." Last year, the government issued its first ethical guidelines for research in this area. At the local level, municipal governments in Beijing, Shanghai and other major cities have also offered support for brain technology companies from research and clinical trials to commercialization. Brain models on display inside the lab of CIBR in Beijing, China on May 28, 2025. Photo: CNN Newsource Riesenhuber and other researchers from Georgetown University published research on China's BCI development in 2024, stating that efforts from Chinese researchers were "comparable in sophistication" to those in the US and the United Kingdom. "We found China's non-invasive BCI research to be comparable with that of other scientifically advanced nations and to be working to overcome obstacles to greater fidelity, throughput, and wider use," according to the issue brief. "China's invasive BCI research, while historically behind its non-invasive efforts, has picked up the pace and is approaching global standards of sophistication." Luo, who has worked in both countries, says the US is the "front-runner" in both invasive and non-invasive brain tech. But, comparing Beinao-1 and Neuralink is like looking at "apples and oranges," he added. The two systems differ not only in implant location but also in the type of brain signals recorded, as well as the method of data transmission. The Chinese chip records a wider range of brain areas, with lower precision for each neuron. "All in all, I don't think these two products are in a competitive or exclusive relationship," Luo added. "The jury is still out, and we don't know yet which route will ultimately benefit patients better." - CNN
