Category Archives: Global health

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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    Photographing poverty’s pandemic: ‘It’s a different beast in South Africa’

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    In the first of a series focusing on the work of photographers during the coronavirus crisis, Jerome Delay trains his lens on South Africa

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    • We’ve become used to the images of western cities around quarantine. In the empty streets of industrial and post-industrial societies tightly connected by globalisation, absence has become one of the most powerful metaphors of the coronavirus.

    It’s a very different story in countries where inequality and poverty are much more acute; where access to a safe and distanced space in which to isolate is limited by poverty, social status and economics, and intimate social connections have a different importance.

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    Foreigners targeted in Central African Republic as coronavirus fears grow

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    Peacekeeping and aid operations face disruption as outsiders are scapegoated in one of Africa’s most vulnerable countries

    A backlash against foreigners in Central African Republic threatens to disrupt peacekeeping and aid supplies in one of Africa’s most fragile countries.

    Since an Italian missionary was identified as CAR’s first coronavirus case last month, xenophobia has been on the rise. Unfounded stories widely published in the country’s newspapers and on social media have portrayed foreigners as unwelcome importers of a disease that could further impoverish the country.

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    Doctors sue Zimbabwe government over lack of Covid-19 protective equipment

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    Court application warns ‘many lives will be lost’ without urgent action to provide face masks

    The Zimbabwean government has been taken to court over its failure to provide doctors working on the frontline of the Covid-19 pandemic with masks.

    The Zimbabwe Association for Doctors for Human Rights (ZADHR) is seeking to compel the authorities urgently to provide personal protective equipment (PPE) for medical practitioners, warning that medics in the country’s troubled health sector will otherwise die.

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    Coronavirus could turn back the clock 30 years on global poverty

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    Economic impact of global shutdown could push half a billion people into privation, researchers warn

    Half a billion people could be pushed into poverty as economies around the world shrink because of the coronavirus outbreak, a new study has warned.

    Poverty levels in developing countries could be set back by up to 30 years, research released by the United Nations University’s World Institute for Development Economics Research warned on Thursday.

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    Bangladesh sends food aid to sex workers as industry goes into lockdown

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    Up to 100,000 women could be left unable to support families as brothels are closed amid fears of Covid-19 outbreak

    The government of Bangladesh has started sending emergency food and aid to the tens of thousands of women working in the country’s commercial sex industry as brothels across the country close.

    To try to contain the spread of the Covid-19 virus, the authorities have ordered the lockdown of the sex industry, closing the country’s biggest brothel in Goalanda in the Rajbari District of Dhaka until 5 April along with many others across the country.

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    Brazil coronavirus: medics fear official tally ignores ‘a mountain of deaths’

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    Lack of testing and failure to report on cases means scale of outbreak could be far greater than thought, doctors warn

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    • Brazil is bracing for a surge in coronavirus cases as doctors and researchers warn that underreporting and a lack of testing mean nobody knows the real scale of Covid-19’s spread.

    “What’s happening is enormous underreporting,” said Isabella Rêllo, a doctor working in emergency and intensive care in Rio de Janeiro hospitals, in a widely shared Facebook post challenging official numbers. “There are MANY more,” she wrote.

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    ‘If it comes, it will overwhelm us’: Malawi braces for coronavirus

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    Concern is growing that a woefully inadequate health system will leave Malawi unable to cope when Covid-19 arrives

    When the overcrowded, long-distance bus from Johannesburg arrived at the Malawian border post of Mwanza last week, one passenger was dead. Fearing he had picked up Covid-19 in South Africa and infected all his fellow travellers, the guards sent everyone to a hastily built quarantine centre for 14 days.

    The man had died of other causes but Malawi, which is well used to devastating diseases like HIV and Aids, cholera and malaria, is taking no chances. Along with São Tomé, Comoros, South Sudan, Burundi, and Sierra Leone in Africa, it is one of the last countries in the world not to have confirmed a single Covid-19 case yet.

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    Coronavirus crisis may deny 9.5 million women access to family planning

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    Charity warns loss of services caused by lockdowns could result in millions of unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortions

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    • Up to 9.5 million women and girls could miss out on vital family planning services this year because of Covid-19, potentially resulting in thousands of deaths.

    Marie Stopes International warned on Friday that travel restrictions and lockdowns could have a devastating affect on women as they struggle to collect contraceptives and access other reproductive healthcare services, such as safe abortions, across the 37 countries in which it works.

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    Back poor countries fighting Covid-19 with trillions or face disaster, G20 told

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    Experts warn leaders of huge social and economic consequences of failing to support developing states against ‘unprecedented threat’

    Economists and global health experts have called on G20 leaders to provide trillions of dollars to poorer countries to shore up ailing healthcare systems and economies, or face a disaster that will rebound on wealthier states through migration and health crises.

    Twenty experts, among them four Nobel prizewinners, including Joseph Stiglitz, Lord Nicholas Stern and seven chief economists of the World Bank and other development banks, have written to G20 leaders to warn of “unimaginable health and social impacts” as coronavirus rips through the developing world, taking overburdened healthcare systems beyond breaking point, and causing economic and social devastation.

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    Bosnia crams thousands of migrants into tent camp to ‘halt Covid-19 spread’

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    Move to makeshift facility in remote village sparks fears over social distancing and access to water, heat and power

    Authorities in Bosnia have ordered the transfer of thousands of migrants to a remote camp in Lipa, a village about 25 kilometres from the border with Croatia, due to the coronavirus outbreak in the country.

    In a document seen by the Guardian, the Bihać city civil defence headquarters asked that the move be carried out “in order to take urgent measures to prevent the onset of the disease caused by Covid-19”.

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