Category Archives: Global development

Millions predicted to develop tuberculosis as result of Covid-19 lockdown

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With attention focused on coronavirus, undiagnosed and untreated TB cases will cause 1.4 million to die, research suggests

The head of a global partnership to end tuberculosis (TB) said she is “sickened” by research that revealed millions more people are expected to contract the disease as a result of Covid-19 restrictions.

Up to 6.3 million more people are predicted to develop TB between now and 2025 and 1.4 million more people are expected to die as cases go undiagnosed and untreated during lockdown. This will set back global efforts to end TB by five to eight years.

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Vietnam crushed the coronavirus outbreak, but now faces severe economic test

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Strict quarantining and widespread testing have helped the country avoid disaster, but with tourism on hold the nation’s future is uncertain

Vietnam didn’t just flatten its coronavirus curve, it crushed it. No deaths have been reported, official case numbers have plateaued at just 271, and no community transmissions of the virus have been reported in the last two weeks. On 23 April, the nation eased lockdowns in its major cities and life is gradually returning to normal. It is a stark contrast to many other nations including the US, where more Americans have died from Covid-19 than during the entire Vietnam war.

Kidong Park, the World Health Organisation’s representative to Vietnam, has praised the country’s response to the crisis.

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Chile: pandemic highlights health crisis as lockdown halts inequality protests

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Coronavirus arrives against backdrop of unresolved social tensions that fueled last year’s explosion of protests

For six months, Chile was shaken by a wave of protests in which millions took to the streets to protest against inequality. Residents of the capital, Santiago, grew accustomed to the raucous crowds thronging the main square to sing and chant against the government.

Now, with parts of the capital on coronavirus lockdown, wind rasps through an empty Plaza Italia as a handful of shoppers hurry past security forces enforcing the stay-at-home order.

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‘For the lives of our mothers’: Covid-19 sparks fight for maids’ rights in Brazil

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Millions of domestic workers have been told to keep working or been laid off without pay. Now their families are fighting back against a ‘structurally racist’ system

For as long as Juliana França can remember, on weekdays her mother, Caterina, has made the four-hour round bus trip from the working-class area of Baixada Fluminense, outside Rio de Janeiro, to the city’s affluent South Zone to work as a maid.

But when Covid-19 arrived in Brazil, França begged her to stay at home.

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Where India’s government has failed in the pandemic, its people have stepped in

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Civil society has outperformed the state in helping to feed India’s poorest. It should be seen as ally not enemy

The highways connecting India’s overcrowded cities to the villages had not seen anything like it since the time of partition 73 years ago. Hundreds of thousands of workers were on the move, walking back to their villages with their possessions bundled on their heads.

On 24 March, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered a nationwide 21-day lockdown to contain the coronavirus pandemic. States sealed their borders, and transport came to a halt. With no trains or buses to take them home, India’s rural-to-urban migrant population, estimated at a staggering 120 million, took to the roads. On 5 April a statement from the home ministry said 1.25 million people moving between states had been put up in camps and shelters.

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Uganda megachurch criticised for choir tour as children stranded by Covid-19

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Watoto church investigated over decision not to pull out as 48 children are among those stuck abroad due to border closures

The Ugandan government has launched an investigation into the activities of a megachurch in Kampala after seven members of its internationally renowned children’s choir were diagnosed with Covid-19 following an overseas tour.

The country’s child affairs minister, Florence Nakiwala Kiyingi, told the Guardian the Internal Security Organisation was investigating Watoto church for allegedly breaching child labour laws, taking the children out of the country without permission and putting them at risk by not cancelling the tour as coronavirus cases escalated and countries closed their borders.

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‘It’s being built on our blood’: the true cost of Saudi Arabia’s $500bn megacity

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With an artificial moon and flying taxis, Neom has been billed as humanity’s next chapter. But beneath the glitzy veneer lies a story of threats, forced eviction and bloodshed

“The future has a new home,” proclaims the website.

“It’s a virgin area that has a lot of beauty,” says the voice over a string section soundtrack as the promotional video tracks colour-tinted panoramic shots of picturesque desert expanses, and deep azure lagoons.

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Easing of lockdown a relief to Ghana’s poor – despite fears it is premature

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As Accra and Kumasi’s markets and shops reopen, government defends decision to partially lift coronavirus restrictions

Since the sudden easing of a three-week lockdown in Ghana’s two major cities, Accra and Kumasi, daily life is gradually returning to normal.

Markets and commercial districts that had ground to an eerie halt have buzzed back to life. Stores and banks have slowly reopened. Modest traffic jams have emerged as many people who had escaped the lockdown return to the cities. But schools, places of worship, restaurants and bars remain shut.

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Malaysia cites Covid-19 for rounding up hundreds of migrants

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In move condemned by UN, refugees including Rohingya arrested amid rising climate of xenophobia

Malaysian authorities have rounded up and detained hundreds of undocumented migrants, including Rohingya refugees, as part of efforts to contain coronavirus, officials said.

Authorities said 586 undocumented migrants were arrested in a raid in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, on Friday. Armed police walked people through the city in a single file to a detention building, according to activists. The UN said the move could push vulnerable groups into hiding and prevent them from seeking treatment.

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‘Let the boats in’: Rohingya refugees plead for stranded relatives to be saved

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Two boats still stranded at sea as Malaysia accused of using Covid-19 as an excuse to turn them back

Rohingya refugees whose relatives, including children, have been stranded for weeks on cramped boats have urged international governments to act before they perish at sea.

Two boats carrying around 500 people were last spotted off Bangladesh about a week ago, but are believed to have returned to the high seas. The refugees on board, who were fleeing desperate conditions in camps in Bangladesh, had attempted to reach Malaysia but appear to have been turned away. Bangladesh has also said it will not allow the boats to dock.

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‘We needed to do more’: volunteers step up in lockdown Lagos

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Groups of professionals are helping deliver essential packages in Nigeria’s largest city

Twelve friends fill hundreds of carefully arranged aid packages into four cars, then trail through Oniru’s empty streets, past sky-coloured luxury apartment blocks.

In what is notionally an affluent suburb along Lagos’s coastline, the cars stop outside the shells of abandoned, part-constructed buildings, and the friends file into the informal housing compounds that sprawl within.

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Sudan to outlaw female genital mutilation

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Campaigners welcome move to criminalise those carrying out FGM, but warn it will take time to eradicate practice entirely

Sudan looks set to outlaw female genital mutilation (FGM), in a significant move welcomed by campaigners.

Anyone found carrying out FGM will face up to three years in prison, according to a document seen by the Guardian.

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Africa’s heavy-handed lockdown policing must not become the new normal | Karen Allen and Anton du Plessis

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The coronavirus response in South Africa is an eerie throwback to apartheid. State control needs to be carefully monitored across the continent

In times of fear, rules go out of the window and the default position is often one of force. A recent doorstep tribute in a Johannesburg suburb to applaud the efforts of essential workers was dubbed an “illegal gathering” by police summoned to break up the event. A resident remarked that it was an eerie reminder of South Africa’s past – a throwback to the times of apartheid.

“The rules keep changing,” admitted one officer when it was suggested that the response was heavy-handed. No harm was done but the incident highlights the potential shifts in power dynamics that fear brings, as well as the disconnect between good intentions and how they are implemented.

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‘No food, water, masks or gloves’: migrant farm workers in Spain at crisis point

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Workers in lockdown trapped in dire conditions on fruit and salad farms that supply UK supermarkets, UN warns

Migrant workers on Spanish farms that provide fruit and vegetables for UK supermarkets are trapped in dire conditions under lockdown, living in cardboard and plastic shelters without food or running water.

Thousands of workers, many of them undocumented, live in settlements between huge greenhouses on farms in the southern Spanish provinces of Huelva and Almeria, key regions for European supply chains.

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Covid-19 could mark a deadly turn in Ghana’s fight against fake drugs

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With substandard medicines already in wide circulation, fears are growing that coronavirus could create a lethal ‘parallel crisis’

When Joana Opoku-Darko’s daughter Anna was 18 months old, she came down with malaria, a disease common in Ghana and especially deadly for children.

She bought medication from a pharmacy in Ghana’s capital, Accra; when Anna’s fever didn’t subside she took her to a hospital, where they ran some tests.

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‘This moment is leaving a mark on me’: framing Rio under Covid-19’s shadow

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Nicoló Lanfranchi arrived in Brazil to make a film about traditional medicine and ended up charting a tragedy that acquired a deeply personal dimension

Photographing a funeral is never easy, no matter how professional the photographer, and even more so amid a pandemic. But for Nicoló Lanfranchi, capturing the burial of Covid-19 victim Elizabeth Baez, 82, which took place this month at the São João Batista cemetery in Rio de Janeiro, was especially difficult.

As he photographed the gravediggers in protective clothing with Elizabeth’s son Henrique, 49, the only mourner allowed, watching on from behind a mask, Lanfranchi thought of his own father, Piero. At 72, Piero was in intensive care with Covid-19 in a hospital in Voghera, in Lombardy, northern Italy – one of the worst-affected places on Earth.

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UK aid efforts to tackle gender equality marred by ‘inaccuracy’, says watchdog

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Whitehall auditor warns ‘ambitious aims’ will not be achieved without better oversight, planning and evaluation of programmes

Efforts by the UK government to achieve gender equality through its aid programmes need to be better managed and more transparent, according to the financial watchdog.

The National Audit Office (NAO) said the Department for International Development’s (DfID) 12-year gender equality strategy was wide-ranging, but did not have a long-term, costed, implementation plan, limiting “its ability to assess progress and consider value for money”.

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Fear and illness stalk Indonesia’s packed jails as prisoners hope for early release

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Political activists wait to find out if they will be included in government pardon scheme to stop the spread of Covid-19

It has been two months since Andi Rizky last saw her uncle Jimmy, a drug offender in Cilegon Prison, Banten province, in person. Since the middle of March, the prison has banned visitors because of concerns about the spread of the coronavirus.

In 10-minute video calls to replace the visits, the pair have discussed the Indonesian government’s plan to release thousands of prisoners.

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‘They are starving’: women in India’s sex industry struggle for survival

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Exclusion from government Covid-19 relief has left many reliant on private food donations, as fears raised over protection from transmission after lockdown

Rasheeda Bibi has five rupees to her name. A worker in India’s sex industry, she lives in the narrow lanes of Kolkata’s Kalighat red light area with her three children in a room she rents for 620 rupees (£6) a month.

As a thunderstorm rages through the city, Bibi worries about the leaky roof of her small room.

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Coronavirus ‘could undo 30 years of UK’s international development work’

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Impact of pandemic could be felt by world’s poorest for years to come, international development secretary tells MPs

The coronavirus pandemic threatens to undo 30 years of international development work, with a bleak picture for the world’s poorest, the international development secretary, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, told MPs.

Giving evidence to a parliamentary inquiry into the effectiveness of UK aid, Trevelyan said her biggest fear was that the secondary impact of the health crisis would be felt by the world’s poorest for years to come.

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