Category Archives: Global health

Agencies fear hidden cholera deaths in Yemen as Covid-19 overwhelms clinics

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Thousands of deaths potentially missed as patients avoid health centres, with both diseases set to peak in coming weeks, warn NGOs

Aid agencies are warning that thousands of people in Yemen could be dying undetected from cholera as people are too frightened to seek treatment in health facilities overwhelmed by coronavirus.

Coronavirus cases in the war-torn country are due to peak in the coming weeks, but Oxfam has warned that health centres are seeing an unexpected drop in cholera cases, ahead of August’s rains when cholera will also increase.

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Donald Trump’s assault on the WHO is deeply worrying for global health | Peter Beaumont

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A diplomacy shaped around self-serving tittle-tattle now risks lives and undermines America’s standing in the world

The campaign by the Trump administration against the World Health Organization has often seemed faintly preposterous.

Over the months of the coronavirus pandemic its untruths and hyperbole have been dismissed by many as iterations of Trumpspeak, whose main purpose has been to distract from the US’s catastrophic response to Covid-19, which has claimed almost 140,000 lives and devastated the economy.

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WHO’s Covid-19 inquiry is a shrewd move in a sea of disinformation

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Its findings should illuminate global responses amid conspiracy theories and Trump’s mudslinging

In the world of epidemiology it’s sometimes said that pandemics are lived forwards and understood backwards.

We encounter them head-on, chaotically, trying to fathom the disease in real time even while trying to mitigate its impact. Lessons generally come later as the evidence accumulates.

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Viruses do not take breaks. The world can learn from how the DRC is beating Ebola

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The African conflict zone has shown resilience and resourcefulness – and leaders tackling Covid-19 should heed its example

The Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has ended. Thursday marked 42 days since the last person with Ebola was discharged from care, double the maximum length of time it takes for symptoms to appear. Nearly two years of hard work and leadership by the communities in DRC has paid off, with the end of the first Ebola outbreak in a conflict zone.

It’s a time for celebration but not complacency. Viruses do not take breaks. DRC’s 10th Ebola outbreak may have come to a close but an 11th, in the north-west part of the country, was detected on 1 June. Cases are appearing 240km away from Mbandaka, the centre of this latest outbreak.

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Delhi to transform 25 luxury hotels into Covid-19 care centres

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Fearful hotel workers asked to take on role of hospital support staff as cases in Delhi rise

Staff at luxury hotels in Delhi are to start welcoming guests not with traditional garlands but with a medical gown.

Amid growing concerns that there are not enough hospital beds to cope with the rising number of cases, the Delhi government has become the first in the country to requisition its hotels. Starting this week, 25 establishments will be repurposed as emergency Covid-19 care centres for patients with mild to moderate symptoms. In a sign of how overwhelmed medical staff are becoming, hotel employees are being trained in case they have to administer some of the care.

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Discretion saves lives: quick cleans and ‘Hotel Quarantine’ in Niamey

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Understanding fear of stigma is essential in the battle against coronavirus in Niger’s capital. All photographs by Juan Haro for Unicef

It feels strange to cover the coronavirus crisis in Niger. Everyday life is taking its normal course, but you sense a strangeness in the air. It is manifested in the neighbourhoods, in the space between people. In a society where physical contact is part of the fabric of things, social distancing remains a challenge.

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Herbal cures and no sanitation: the Lima residents battling Covid alone – in pictures

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Over 70% of the indigenous Peruvian community of Cantagallo Island have tested positive for coronavirus. This is how they are surviving lockdown

• All photographs by Florence Goupil, who received a grant from the Covid-19 National Geographic emergency fund for journalists

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Nigeria to cut healthcare spending by 40% despite coronavirus cases climbing

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Nurses say they have been left without promised compensation as £75m set aside for renovation of parliament buildings

Plans by Nigeria’s government to cut healthcare spending risk undermining the country’s coronavirus response and severely impacting already strained services, health and transparency groups have warned.

Funding for local, primary healthcare services will be cut by more than 40% this year in a revised budget expected to be passed into law in the coming weeks.

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‘I know they aren’t healthy’: the energy drink craze sweeping Afghanistan

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From children in Kabul to Taliban chiefs, the sweet, caffeine-heavy drinks are wildly popular, defying fears on nutrition

They are sold outside schools, in hospital lobbies, on street corners and in every supermarket; served at wedding receptions and ministerial meetings, while television adverts and billboards praise their qualities. 

Energy drinks have taken over Afghanistan, and the high-caffeine sweet beverages are enjoyed by all ages – including toddlers and pregnant mothers – without much attention being paid to potential health risks.

In a busy Kabul neighbourhood, Salim Wahidi, 22, has dozens of different brands stacked up next to his small roadside stand. The supplies run out fast. 

“We sell a couple of hundred each day, but that’s not even much because there are so many vendors like me,” he says, sharing one of the drinks with his 13-year-old cousin, Mustafa, who works with him. “People love energy drinks, it’s often their first choice. Every child drinks them, every adult.”

Awareness of potential health hazards is low

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How South Africa’s action on Covid-19 contrasts sharply with its response to Aids

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Country’s swift response is distinct from the handling of the HIV crisis 20 years ago. Have lessons been learnt?

Twenty years ago Nelson Mandela made an impassioned plea for international cooperation on “one of the greatest threats humankind has faced”.

Aids was ravaging lives and overwhelming health systems, at its peak killing up to 1,000 people a day in South Africa.

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‘Finally, a virus got me’: Ebola expert on nearly dying of coronavirus

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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”.

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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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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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A rise in deaths from preventable diseases must not be part of Covid-19’s legacy

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The world may be faced with a new foe, but old ones lie in wait if lockdowns disrupt existing vaccination programmes

In The Conjurer, a 16th-century painting by Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch, a spectator stands in rapt attention as a magic trick is performed. He bends forward, wholly absorbed by the spectacle, blissfully unaware of the man behind him casually picking his pocket.

As we mark World Immunisation Week 2020, all eyes are on Covid-19. Across the globe, researchers have responded with remarkable speed and ingenuity. More than 100 vaccine candidates are in development, and several human clinical trials have begun. Though significant hurdles lie ahead, we can be optimistic that a vaccine will emerge from the fray.

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Africa’s Covid-19 research must be tailored to its realities – by its own scientists | Monique Wasunna

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Trust is essential in the pandemic and scientists here can set the priorities that make the most sense for our people

Research to find a cure and effective treatment for Covid-19 is well under way, with hundreds of trials already announced. But very few involve African researchers, and this is a mistake.

Although Africa has yet to feel the full force of the coronavirus, preventing severe cases is a higher priority than it is elsewhere. Africa needs research that is tailored to our reality.

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Soap and solace scarce as Sri Lanka’s tea pickers toil on amid lockdown

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Workers in a sector with a history of exploitation face hazards including a lack of masks and overcrowded accommodation

In Sri Lanka, police have been enforcing tough lockdown measures and a strict curfew since March. The country’s inspector general has instructed police to take action against social media users who criticise the government or spread “malicious” pandemic information.

An exception has been made, however, for the country’s tea pickers. A caveat on the country’s lockdown order, issued on 20 March, read: “Paddy farming and plantation, including work on tea small holdings and fishing activities, are permitted in any district.”

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Pandemic potentially a ‘death sentence’ for many prison inmates, experts warn

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Lack of space and funding combined with often limited access to medical support increases vulnerability of prisoners, says study

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    • Chronic overcrowding and underfunding have left prisons around the world vulnerable to being ravaged by coronavirus, criminal justice experts have warned.

    The challenges of a record global prison population of 11 million have been brought to light in a report published by Penal Reform International (PRI) which found that 102 countries have prison occupancy levels of more than 110%.

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    Pandemic could ‘turn back the clock’ 20 years on malaria deaths, warns WHO

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    Deaths in sub-Saharan African countries could double to more than 700,000 this year if Covid-19 crisis disrupts programmes

    Deaths from malaria could double across sub-Saharan Africa this year if work to prevent the disease is disrupted by Covid-19, the World Health Organization has warned.

    The UN’s global health agency said that if countries failed to maintain delivery of insecticide-treated nets and access to antimalarial medicines, up to 769,000 people could die of malaria this year. That figure, which would be more than double the number of deaths in 2018, would mark a return to mortality levels last seen 20 years ago.

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    Snapshots of a world in lockdown: ‘The crisis has crossed a new threshold’

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    At noon on 4 April 2020, the day Covid-19 cases passed 1m globally, photojournalist Lucien Lung used webcams from Antarctica to Argentina to capture images of the global shutdown

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    • Photographer Lucien Lung had been trying to unique find a way to cover the coronavirus pandemic despite being unable to leave his Paris flat. Using webcams, he captured the planet in lockdown at a specific time on a symbolic date: 4 April, the day Covid-19 cases exceeded 1m across the globe.

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    Refugees among hundreds of overseas medics to respond to NHS call

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    Scheme allowing doctors to join as medical support workers is welcomed but calls to ‘permit doctors to work as doctors’ persist

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    • Hundreds of foreign-born doctors, including refugees, have signed up to become medical support workers as part of a new scheme aimed at helping the NHS tackle the coronavirus pandemic.

    NHS England launched the initiative for international medical graduates and doctors after calls to fast track the accreditation of overseas medics.

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