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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.”
Continue reading...Lack of space and funding combined with often limited access to medical support increases vulnerability of prisoners, says study
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%.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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
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.
Continue reading...Scheme allowing doctors to join as medical support workers is welcomed but calls to ‘permit doctors to work as doctors’ persist
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.
Continue reading...In the first of a series focusing on the work of photographers during the coronavirus crisis, Jerome Delay trains his lens on South Africa
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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Lack of testing and failure to report on cases means scale of outbreak could be far greater than thought, doctors warn
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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Charity warns loss of services caused by lockdowns could result in millions of unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortions
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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Matatus, the shared, tightly-packed minibuses popular throughout the country, are feared to be a weak link in efforts to contain coronavirus, but conductors are working to make journeys as hygienic as possible
All photographs by Joost Bastmeijer
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”.
Continue reading...As the Red Cross launches an emergency appeal, its president calls for the world to pull together
If the first casualty of war is truth, the second may very well be something the entire world values highly right now: healthcare.
Families fleeing conflict, or currently in its crosshairs, know that medical assistance is a rare and precious privilege in war zones. Amid the terror of bombs and bullets, a functioning medical facility is a life-saving oasis, but it’s a near certainty medical staff will be overworked and short on supplies.
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