Peru was one of the first Latin America countries to go into lockdown – but the jump in new cases is undeniable, and experts say it’s due to people’s behaviour
Peru seemed to be doing everything right.
Its president, Martín Vizcarra, announced one of the earliest coronavirus lockdowns in Latin America on 16 March.
Continue reading...Campaigners condemn letter from USAid’s John Barsa, calling it ‘a disgraceful and dangerous attack on essential health services’
Civil society groups have condemned calls by the Trump administration to remove references to sexual and reproductive health from the UN Covid-19 humanitarian response plan (HRP).
In a letter to the UN secretary-general António Guterres on Monday, John Barsa, the acting administrator for the US agency for international development (USAid), called on the UN to “stay focused on life-saving interventions” and not include abortion as an essential service.
Continue reading...Samantha Murozoki bartered her jeans and sneakers to stop the food running out, inspiring others to pitch in
It is 7am and hundreds of children have come out on this chilly morning to queue for a plate of porridge.
With makeshift masks covering their faces, the children wait for Samantha Murozoki to start dishing up the warm food into whatever plastic tub, plate, tin cup – or even ripped-off corner of a cardboard box – is presented to her.
Continue reading...Photojournalist Paddy Dowling travelled to Sudan to find out what happened to those growing up in the midst of genocide
The Darfur genocide claimed the lives of an estimated 300,000 civilians, forced 1.6 million people to flee their homes inside the country and a further 600,000 refugees to spill across borders of neighbouring countries.
Of those internally displaced people (IDPs) affected by the large-scale conflict in this region of western Sudan, more than 60% were children, according to the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Continue reading...Nineteen-year-old Soraya Ameri had just given birth when gunmen stormed the ward. She recounts her escape – and the desperate search for her daughter
Soraya Ameri’s premature baby daughter had been whisked off to an incubator and the new mother was lying down, exhausted and sore from her stitches, when the shooting started.
Gunmen – dressed in police uniforms – had stormed the maternity ward of a hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan, where Ameri had just given birth. She was bundled into a safe room with others, one woman next to her in labour, but her baby was outside.
Continue reading...Image captured the plight of the millions of migrant labourers left unable to return home in the pandemic
A photograph of a migrant labourer, his face contorted with anguish as he sits on the roadside in Delhi speaking to his wife about their sick baby boy, has come to symbolise the ordeal of India’s daily wage workers; penniless, and unable to get home to their families because of the lockdown.
Rampukar Pandit, a construction worker in the Indian capital, had heard that his 11-month-old son was seriously unwell. With no public transport to reach his home in Begusarai in Bihar, 1,200 km (745 miles) away, he started walking. He reached Nizamuddin Bridge where, exhausted and hungry, he could go no further.
Continue reading...Magufuli caused alarm by branding lab tests a ‘dirty game’ and hailing natural remedies. Now he is calling for country to open up
Tanzania’s divisive president John Magufuli has said the economy is “more important than the threat posed by coronavirus”, adding that he wants to reopen the country for tourism despite warnings that Africa could face the next wave of the disease.
The comments by Magufuli, who has modelled his populist response on that of Donald Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro – in repeatedly denying the risk of the pandemic to his country – come amid mounting alarm among Tanzania’s neighbours over his approach.
Continue reading...Survivor reveals further evidence to Guardian and La Repubblica of Malta’s deadly strategy to intercept migrants crossings
Further evidence of Malta’s strategy to push migrants back to the conflict zone of Libya has been revealed by a woman who survived a Mediterranean crossing in which 12 people died.
A series of voice messages obtained by the Guardian have provided confirmation of the Maltese government’s strategy to use private vessels, acting at the behest of its armed forces, in order to intercept migrant crossings and return refugees to Libyan detention centres.
Continue reading...Complaint filed by international coalition of labor unions lists numerous incidents of harassment, including attempted rape
An international coalition of labor unions has filed a complaint against McDonald’s, alleging systemic sexual harassment of its employees around the world.
The complaint, filed at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s offices in the Netherlands, lists numerous incidents of harassment, including attempted rape and indecent exposure in the United States, a promotion in exchange for sexual acts in Brazil, and a hidden cellphone camera installed in the women’s changing room in France.
Continue reading...Many of the people I support in Kinshasa have no money, no soap, no water – and when they are struggling to breathe, no ventilators
We’re used to emergencies and people dying in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, whether it’s a result of the long-running conflict or Ebola, cholera and malaria. But coronavirus has knocked us for six, because it has affected people we are very close to.
I’ve been working in development for decades, but I have to admit I have shed tears these past few weeks.
Continue reading...Villagers who have lost everything are sheltering in makeshift camps where food, bedding and water are in short supply
It was about 1am last Thursday when Dorothy Masika was woken by the rumble of water and boulders as they crashed down Mount Rwenzori.
Then came the alarms raised by those living in the hilltop areas, those who could run, racing down to warn people along the valley and lowlands to run. A torrent of water was on its way down the mountain. Four rivers in Kasese district – the Nyamwamba, Mubuku, Nyamughasana and Lhubiriha – had burst their banks.
Continue reading...Pandemic adds to jihadi and climate change threats to present ‘immense challenge’ for region
More than 43 million people in west Africa are likely to be in urgent need of food assistance in the coming months – double initial estimates – as the Covid-19 outbreak accelerates, the World Food Programme has said.
Food insecurity could also double this year to affect 265 million people across the continent; west Africa, where the outbreak of the virus is most severe, is of increasing concern.
Continue reading...The pandemic has left many people in Orile, Lagos state, struggling for survival – and compounded the risks of the area’s heavily polluted air and water supply
For Nurudeen Olugbade taking photographs of life in Orile-Iganmu, Lagos state, during the pandemic is a way to affirm that the disruption it has wrought on the neglected town does matter.
“We are not really seen. There’s very little attention paid to us but the struggle out here is real,” says Olugbade, 28, who has documented the crisis on his phone.
Continue reading...As herds are devastated and crops destroyed across east Africa, there are fears of violence as competition for grazing increases
Tiampati Leletit had heard tales of massive desert locust swarms darkening Kenya’s horizon. But when they hit his farm the devastation was all too real. They ate everything.
“I have never seen anything like this. When the swarms of locust invaded, they consumed everything and all the vegetation was gone. The livestock had nothing to eat,” says the 32-year-old. In January, he had 80 goats. Today he has four.
Continue reading...But continent will have fewer deaths than Europe and US because of its younger population and other lifestyle factors
Nearly a quarter of a billion people across 47 African countries will catch coronavirus over the next year, but the result will be fewer severe cases and deaths than in the US and Europe, new research predicts.
A model by the World Health Organization’s (WHO) regional office for Africa, published in the BMJ Global Health, predicts a lower rate of transmission and viral spread across the continent than elsewhere, resulting in up to 190,000 deaths. But the authors warn the associated rise in hospital admissions, care needs and “huge impact” on services such as immunisation and maternity, will overwhelm already stretched health services.
Continue reading...Britain’s former prime minister says only international cooperation can bring the pandemic to an end
Gordon Brown has warned that a second or third wave of coronavirus infection could emanate from poor countries with undeveloped health systems, saying the risks can be controlled only by coordinated international action.
The global crisis of the Covid-19 pandemic will not end until it is “eradicated in every continent”, the former prime minister said.
Continue reading...A group of migrants, former addicts and ex-prisoners have formed a collective which grows and delivers food to isolated villagers
At first sight, the 23 people who live together next to a petrol station in the Spanish city of Salamanca have little to bind them together.
Some are migrants who have braved sea crossings in small boats or the razor-wire fences of camps in Ceuta and Melilla in Morocco; some have struggled with drug or alcohol addiction; some have been in prison, and some have ended up on the streets.
Continue reading...Spain is removing lethal razor wire from its borders in north Africa, but elsewhere the controversial ‘concertinas’ stay put
You could barely see that it was a finger. “The wound was large, with several deep cuts into the flesh. He had tried to climb the fence and was up there when he was caught by police in the middle of the night,” says András Léderer, advocacy officer for the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a Budapest-based NGO.
“He lost his balance. The wound was so horrific because as he fell, he tried to grab the razor wire – and also, he said, touched the second layer of the fence, which is electrified.”
The unnamed Pakistani refugee in his 30s had attempted to cross the fence near Sombor, Serbia, to get into Hungary in 2016. The coils of metal that lacerated his finger are ubiquitous at the perimeters of “Fortress Europe” and can be found on border fences in Slovenia, Hungary, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Spain and France.
Peter Piot tells of his brush with death and predicts people will suffer effects of the virus for years
Peter Piot, the scientist who helped discover the Ebola virus, and the director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, has told of his brush with death after contracting Covid-19.
The professor had never previously been seriously ill, but after 40 years studying and leading the global response to infectious diseases including HIV and Aids, he said that “finally, a virus got me”.
Continue reading...Disruption of essential maternity and health services is the biggest crisis faced by under fives since second world war
As many as 6,000 children around the world could die every day from preventable causes over the next six months due to the impact of coronavirus on routine health services, the UN has warned.
Global disruption of essential maternal and child health interventions – such as family planning, birth and postnatal care, and vaccinations – could lead to an additional 1.2 million deaths of under fives in just six months, according to analysis by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, published in the Lancet Global Health Journal.
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