Academics’ analysis of burial plots points to excess deaths level in crisis-ridden country
A groundbreaking study using high-resolution satellite imagery to analyse graveyards has found that deaths have nearly doubled in Aden, the centre of Yemen’s coronavirus outbreak.
The discovery has given a sense of the true scale of the havoc the pandemic has wreaked on the vulnerable country.
Continue reading...Data from tens of thousands of people around the world used to identify those at highest risk of active TB before they get sick
Scientists have developed a new tool to predict the chances of a person developing tuberculosis, which could help limit the spread of the disease and improve the life chances of millions of people .
Researchers at University College London (UCL) said they believe they have produced an algorithm that could help eliminate the disease in some countries.
Continue reading...The government is being urged to dispel myths and ensure drugs are available – and take responsibility for the millions of stray dogs
By the time the patient, a young man, reached Dr Ramesh Masthi at a Bengaluru hospital, it was too late to save him. After being bitten by a pack of stray dogs as he went out to buy some milk, his family had applied a paste of green chillis, then lime juice and finally, when the wound looked gruesome, turmeric.
“He came about a week after he was bitten. The wound was serious, and we couldn’t save him. There is so much ignorance about dog bites and myths. A rabies shot in time would have saved him,” Masthi says.
Continue reading...Adults and children are regularly shackled and locked up in 60 countries, report finds
Hundreds of thousands of people with mental health conditions in 60 countries are still being chained, according to a comprehensive and damning new study.
Human Rights Watch says that men, women and children – some as young as 10 – are regularly shackled or locked in confined spaces for weeks, months, and even years, across Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas.
Continue reading...Almost all planned work against the disease has gone ahead this year, delivering nets, drugs and the world’s first malaria vaccine
More than 90% of anti-malaria campaigns planned this year across four continents are on track, despite disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic, according to new research.
The delivery of insecticide-treated nets and provision of antimalarial medicines in the majority of malaria-affected countries across Africa, Asia and the Americas were still going ahead, a high-level meeting organised by the RBM Partnership to End Malaria heard on Thursday.
Continue reading...One explanation for virus not behaving as expected could be previous exposure to other infections, experts tell MPs
The coronavirus pandemic has peaked earlier than expected in many African countries, confounding early predictions, experts have told MPs.
Scientists do not yet know why, but one hypothesis is the possibility of people having pre-existing immunity to Covid-19, caused by exposure to other infections.
Continue reading...The legacy of a successful battle is now helping combat Covid, but we must stay vigilant, says WHO’s Africa regional director
Africa has declared victory over a virus that once paralysed 75,000 children on the continent every year.
Four years have now passed since wild polio was last detected in Africa. After a year of rigorously evaluating polio data from all 47 countries in the WHO’s African region, an independent body of experts announced during a virtual ceremony on Tuesdaythat the continent was free of wild polio.
Continue reading...Achievement comes following Nigeria vaccination drive, with last cases of wild virus recorded four years ago
Africa is expected to be declared free from wild polio, after decades of work by a coalition of international health bodies, national and local governments, community volunteers and survivors.
Four years after the last recorded cases of wild polio in northern Nigeria, the Africa Regional Certification Commission (ARCC) is expected to certify that the continent is free of the virus, which can cause irreversible paralysis and in some cases death.
Continue reading...Lockdown has tipped many working-class Nigerians from struggle to crisis
Drawing open the curtains in Alapere, Lagos, unveils a sea of shanty roofs and watery-coloured housing blocks. “We don’t see any virus but we see suffering,” says Juliana Chokpa, a 38-year-old cleaner.
This working-class Lagos community has been reeling from job losses, a collapse in informal services, and rising food and transport costs. The pandemic, Chokpa says, has wrought a swift descent from struggle into crisis.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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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