The country has no testing capacity for the B.1.617.2 strain and medics are concerned about resilience of health system
Doctors in Afghanistan have expressed fears that the Covid-19 variant first discovered in India could now be spreading quickly in the country.
At Kabul’s main Covid hospital, where all 100 beds are occupied, doctors said that many critically ill patients had recently returned from India. Up to 10 people die here every day.
Continue reading...Investing in midwifery could prevent two-thirds of maternal and newborn deaths, but investment and training are urgently needed
The world is facing a shortage of 900,000 midwives, with more than half the shortfall in Africa, where nearly two-thirds of maternal deaths occur, according to a new survey.
Insufficient resources and a failure to recognise the importance of the role mean there has been little progress since the last study in 2014, according to the State of the World’s Midwifery report, which looked at 194 countries.
Continue reading...UNFPA says £130m being withheld would have helped prevent 250,000 child and maternal deaths in poorest countries
The British government is slashing its funding to the UN population fund (UNFPA) in a move described as “devastating” for women and girls.
The agency confirmed on Wednesday that the UK, its largest donor, is cutting funding for contraceptives and reproductive health supplies by 85% this year – from £154m to £23m – and cutting core funding from £20m to £8m.
Continue reading...Only a fifth of Oxford/AstraZeneca doses expected by May delivered as export bans, hoarding and supply shortages bite
The global vaccine-sharing initiative Covax has so far delivered about one in five of the Oxford/AstraZeneca doses it estimated would arrive in countries by May, according to a Guardian analysis, starkly illustrating the cost of export bans, hoarding and supply shortages for a scheme that represents a key lifeline for many in the developing world.
The organisations that run Covax had predicted countries would receive fewer vaccines than expected after the Indian government restricted exports from its largest manufacturer in response to a catastrophic second wave there, but the figures reveal the shortfall to be severe, leaving many governments scrambling to secure doses elsewhere.
Continue reading...Health workers spent years targeting agonising and blinding eye disease, which was rife in rural areas
The Gambia has become the second country in Africa to eliminate trachoma, one of the leading causes of blindness.
The achievement, announced by the World Health Organization on Tuesday, came after decades of work on the disease, which has damaged the sight of about 1.9 million people worldwide. Ghana was the first country in Africa to eliminate the disease in 2018.
Continue reading...Rise in cases feared as murders halt campaigns and leave many women too afraid to work
Gul Meena Hotak was on her regular rounds, going door-to-door giving polio vaccinations in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, when she heard gunshots.
The 22-year-old’s immediate concern was for the safety of her friend Negina and other colleagues nearby. “Negina and my supervisor were in a neighbourhood close by when a gunman approached and shot at them. My supervisor escaped with gunshot injuries, but Negina was killed on the spot,” Hotak said.
Continue reading...Authorities act to counter rumours out-of-date shots are being used as people drag their heels over being vaccinated
More than 16,000 expired AstraZeneca Covid-19 doses are to be destroyed in Malawi as concerns over vaccine hesitancy increase.
The vaccines are among 102,000 doses donated by the African Union (AU) to the Malawian government last month.
Continue reading...Rwanda study raises fears erosion of efficacy may have begun, with children at greatest risk
Resistance to malaria drugs in Africa may be starting to take hold, according to a study that maps changes similar to those seen a decade ago when drug resistance spread in south-east Asia.
In Cambodia and neighbouring countries, the artemisinin drug compounds widely used against malaria are no longer always effective. The falciparum malaria parasites have developed genetic mutations that allow them to evade the drugs. There has been great concern that drug resistance could spread to Africa, which has the highest burden of cases of this type of malaria – and the highest toll of child deaths from it.
Continue reading...They are 20 disparate diseases that, like mines, unduly affect the world’s poorest people. Now there’s a plan to eradicate them by 2030
In January the World Health Organization launched a new strategy for eradicating neglected tropical diseases, boldly setting targets to eliminate 20 of them by 2030.
But what are neglected tropical diseases (NTDs)? There is no easy answer. The concept was first proposed in the early 2000s to bring to light a group of diseases that disproportionately affect poor people yet, despite their collective impact, do not attract as much attention as diseases such as HIV/Aids, malaria or tuberculosis.
Continue reading...Bernardo Catchura spent a last desperate night seeking treatment in the healthcare system he had spent decades campaigning to improve. His wife is still unsure how he died
In their 15 years together, Maimuna Catchura had not known her husband to be ill. But one night in late January, 39-year-old lawyer, activist and musician Bernardo Catchura could not sleep, and complained of severe stomach pain.
The pain forced Catchura from his bed at his house in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau’s capital. That night he would navigate the country’s medical care maze, visiting pharmacies, clinics and hospitals. Before the night was through, he even considered crossing the border into Senegal to get help.
Continue reading...Murders of two volunteers and a nurse come one day after relaunch of national vaccination campaign
Two female volunteers and a nurse working door to door to vaccinate children against polio were shot dead by gunmen in two separate incidents in the Afghan city of Jalalabad on Tuesday.
On the same day, government officials confirmed that an explosion had rocked Jalalabad’s health ministry headquarters but no casualties were reported.
Continue reading...Leap of 50% in cases in three months and just 7m jabs across continent ‘infecting 11 health workers an hour’
Rising cases of coronavirus in Africa threaten to overrun fragile healthcare systems and test the continent’s much-touted resilience to the disease, according to the World Health Organization’s regional office for the continent.
The global health body stated that infections were on the rise in at least 12 countries in Africa including Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya and Guinea.
Continue reading...Life-saving techniques fall out of favour on maternity wards in developing countries over Covid fears
Small and sick babies are at increased risk of dying due to disruptions in care caused by coronavirus, a survey of health workers across 62 mainly developing countries has found.
Every year, 2.5 million babies die within 28 days of birth, and more than 80% of them have low birth weight. A technique for premature and small babies known as kangaroo mother care (KMC), involving early prolonged skin-to-skin contact with their mothers and breastfeeding, can help reduce mortality.
Continue reading...Parents whose only hope was finding foreign sponsorship or a clinical trial are now looking for homegrown breakthroughs
For three years, Vidya tried to find the cause of her son’s recurrent fevers and low cognitive development. When she found out, she was devastated.
Vineeth, 10, has an incurable illness – mucopolysaccharidosis type 2 – that affects his organs. Afflicting just one in a million, the enzyme-replacement medication that can help stop the illness getting any worse costs £100,000 a year, far beyond the reach of even a wealthier Indian parent.
Continue reading...Dr Michael Ryan says Covid-19 is ‘very much in control’ as global infections rise for first time in almost two months
Despite the spread of Covid-19 being slowed in some countries due to lockdowns and vaccination programs, it is “premature” and “unrealistic” to the think the pandemic will be over by the end of the year, the World Health Organization’s executive director of emergency services has said.
Speaking at a press briefing Geneva, Dr Michael Ryan said while vaccinating the most vulnerable people, including healthcare workers, would help remove the “tragedy and fear” from the situation, and would help to ease pressure on hospitals, the “virus is very much in control”.
Continue reading...At least four people have died in the epidemic, causing heightened alarm across west Africa
Health officials in Guinea are racing to contain a new outbreak of Ebola that has killed at least four people and raised concerns across west Africa, which previously suffered the worst from the virus.
On Monday morning, a fourth victim died in Guinea and four others are being treated in an isolation centre, suffering vomiting, diarrhoea and bleeding. At least seven of the people who contracted the virus attended the funeral of a nurse in Goueke, a town near the Liberian border, on 1 February the government said on Sunday.
Continue reading...Cases appear low and sports venues are packed, but protests are on the rise as jobs are lost and personal debt soars
Traffic jams and soaring pollution levels are back. Political leaders are organising mass rallies, far more focused on fighting each other than any virus. If poorer Nepalis are struggling with the dire economic fallout from Covid-19, on the surface, at least, it appears daily life in the capital, Kathmandu, is back to normal.
“It’s as if nothing has happened. The nightclubs are crowded. Schools and colleges are reopening. Sports venues are full. It doesn’t seem like there is any Covid,” says Sameer Mani Dixit, a public health specialist. “It defies logic.”
Continue reading...A savage reversal of aid is happening at the very moment people need our help most. MPs must join together to stop it
Nothing shames our country more than Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, paying the bills for Covid off the backs of the poor – at home and abroad.
He has recently been pushed off his plan to cut £20 a week from the already low universal credit paid to 6 million of Britain’s poorest families.
Continue reading...If nations make vaccine delivery equitable, step up testing and study variant genomes, the pandemic could be under control by January 2022
A year ago, on 30 January, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of the new coronavirus a public health emergency of international concern – the highest level of alarm at our disposal under international law.
At the time there were 98 confirmed cases and no deaths reported outside China. The WHO repeatedly urged all countries to capitalise on the “window of opportunity” to prevent widespread transmission of this new virus.
Continue reading...Nations outbidding each other creates an ‘immoral race towards the abyss’
Pharmaceutical companies should do more to transfer vaccine technology to prevent the poorest countries falling behind in the distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, according to an expert.
The warning came from Dag-Inge Ulstein, the co-chair of the global council trying to speed up access to Covid vaccines for the world’s poor, known as the Act (Access to Covid-19 Tools) Accelerator. Ulstein, Norway’s international development minister, oversees the drive to ensure vaccines reach the poor – the Covax programme.
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