Category Archives: Global health

Fears for Indonesia provinces as Delta variant spreads out of Java

Posted on by

Shortages of beds and oxygen as Covid variant reaches areas with weaker healthcare systems

Scenes that have for months haunted hospitals across Indonesia’s Java island are appearing across the country, as the Delta variant spreads to new provinces, causing shortages of beds and oxygen.

Images have circulated on social media of overstretched hospitals in both Papua and Kalimantan. One video shows a patient lying inside an ambulance, with two of his relatives sitting next to him. “The people need help. [I] have brought them to hospitals but all of them rejected us. [The hospitals] said there is no oxygen. How come the government can’t provide oxygen?” the ambulance driver, who recorded the video, can be heard saying. The Twitter account reported that the patient finally died.

Continue reading...

Struggling for work and food, Indonesia’s poorest suffer as Covid crisis deepens

Posted on by

Restrictions on mobility introduced to stop the spread of the virus have been catastrophic for those living in poverty

Usually every Eid al-Adha, Riki Priyanto’s father would bring home goat or beef from the nearby mosque. The meat had been donated by devotees and distributed to the poor, like Riki’s family, to celebrate the Islamic day of sacrifice.

His mother would cook goat meat satay for their lunch and Riki would sit next to his three younger siblings in the middle of their 3x3m house in North Jakarta. They would eat the special meal together.

Continue reading...

Making coffins, giving shelter: volunteers step in as Covid overwhelms Indonesia

Posted on by

As the country becomes the epicentre of the pandemic, a growing number of volunteer groups have assembled to fill in gaps in the government response

Every day, before 7am, volunteers gather in front of a house in Yogyakarta. Wearing masks and maintaining distance, they measure and cut panels of wood, smoothing the edges with sandpaper. For the past 11 days, the front yard has been turned into an emergency casket-making workshop. The coffins are painted white, and lined inside with plastic.

The volunteers are lecturers, security guards, artists and police officers who set aside their time to help the community, which is being ravaged by Covid. They work until nightfall.

Continue reading...

Climate crisis ‘may put 8bn at risk of malaria and dengue’

Posted on by

Reducing global heating could save millions of people from mosquito-borne diseases, study finds

More than 8 billion people could be at risk of malaria and dengue fever by 2080 if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise unabated, a new study says.

Malaria and dengue fever will spread to reach billions of people, according to new projections.

Continue reading...

Covid surge pushes Indonesia’s health system to the brink

Posted on by

Shortages of beds, oxygen and staff reported across island of Java as number of cases rise sharply

Hospitals across the Indonesian island of Java are running out of oxygen, medicines, beds and even staff as a sharp rise in Covid cases pushes the country’s health system to the brink.

Indonesia, which is facing one of the worst outbreaks in Asia, announced 34,379 new cases and 1,040 fatalities on Wednesday, both record highs.

Continue reading...

Indonesia’s hospitals in Covid crisis as car parks turned into emergency rooms

Posted on by

Spread of the Delta variant blamed for significant rise in cases that have threatened to overwhelm the medical system

Standing outside the glass wall at one of the emergency installations in a hospital in Tangerang, Benten, Uta Verina Maukar, 26, looked at her mother as she lay resting on a bed. She texted her mother, telling her that she was standing outside. Her mother looked at her from across the room, and with an oxygen mask on her face, tried to sit up so she could see her better. They both looked at each other like that for a while. That was the last time Uta saw her mother’s face.

She died from Covid the following day. She was 51.

Continue reading...

‘I refuse to visit his grave’: the trauma of mothers caught in Israel-Gaza conflict

Posted on by

Many women have lost children, been separated from newborns or are unable to breastfeed and bond with their babies because of the war

In the last month of her pregnancy, May al-Masri was preparing dinner when a rocket landed outside her home in northern Gaza, killing her one-year-old son, Yasser.

Masri had felt the explosion’s shockwave when the attack happened last month, but was largely unharmed. Running outside once the air had cleared, she found her husband severely wounded and her child’s body covered in blood.

Continue reading...

Indonesia tightens restrictions as it confirms record new coronavirus infections

Posted on by

The country’s infections, the worst in south-east Asia, have passed two million

Indonesian health authorities are battling a new surge in coronavirus infections, as the National Agency for Disaster Management (BNPB) reported the highest one-day total, with 14,535 cases confirmed in the 24 hours to Monday.

Daily case totals are reaching levels last seen in January, the peak of Indonesia’s fight against the virus.

Continue reading...

Half of Zimbabweans fell into extreme poverty during Covid

Posted on by

Poor families cannot afford healthcare and schooling but good harvests offer some hope, World Bank finds

The number of Zimbabweans in extreme poverty has reached 7.9 million as the pandemic has delivered another economic shock to the country.

According to the World Bank’s economic and social update report, almost half of Zimbabwe’s population fell into extreme poverty between 2011 and last year, with children bearing the brunt of the misery.

Continue reading...

High in the Himalayas, villagers hit by Covid are left to fend for themselves

Posted on by

In India’s remote peaks, the pandemic’s toll is worsened by lack of medical facilities, roads and information

Phalguni Devi has spent a fortnight living in a cattle shed. Looking out on a rainy afternoon in early June, she worries that if the rain does not let up, her fever will worsen.

Devi, 51, shares the shed with a cow and two cats, and this has taken its toll. Herbal concoctions have not worked and the visit to a pharmacist in the nearest town, in the Nijmola valley in the Himalayas, which took an entire day, did not help.

Continue reading...

Blood brother: the Kashmiri man who is India’s biggest donor

Posted on by

The ‘blood man’ of conflict-racked Kashmir has donated 174 pints of blood since 1980 but feels ‘crushed’ by his poverty

Shabir Hussain Khan was taking an afternoon nap when he heard a commotion outside his house. A friend had been injured in a football match and had lost a lot of blood. Khan, who did not have any transport, rushed to the hospital by foot to donate some. It was 4 July 1980. Yesterday the man known locally as the “blood man of Kashmir” donated his 174th pint of his blood to strangers at the public hospital close to his Srinagar home.

“Blood is not something you can buy in the market,” says Khan, who has an O-negative blood group. “In those days blood donation was not common, nor were blood banks. The way blood is available readily now, it was not like that before. Also there was no connectivity at that time. We only had radios and two or three landline phones in the entire locality.”

Continue reading...

Vaccines and oxygen run out as third wave of Covid hits Uganda

Posted on by

Vaccine thefts reported and hospitals unable to admit patients as cases leap 2,800% in a month

Uganda has all but run out of Covid-19 vaccines and oxygen as the country grapples with another wave of the pandemic.

Both private and public medical facilities in the capital, Kampala and in towns across the country – including regional hubs in Entebbe, Jinja, Soroti, Gulu and Masaka – have reported running out or having acute shortages of AstraZeneca vaccines and oxygen. Hospitals report they are no longer able to admit patients to intensive care.

Continue reading...

‘They stormed the ICU and beat the doctor’: health workers under attack

Posted on by

From Brazil to Myanmar, five doctors and nurses treating coronavirus patients share their experiences

Since the pandemic began, healthcare workers have been venerated for treating patients with Covid-19, but they have also been attacked for doing their job.

Five doctors and nurses treating coronavirus patients, some of whom asked to be kept anonymous, recount their experiences.

Continue reading...

Spat at, abused, attacked: healthcare staff face rising violence during Covid

Posted on by

Data shows increased danger for those on the frontline in the pandemic, with misinformation, scarce vaccines and fragile health systems blamed

Hundreds of healthcare workers treating Covid patients around the world have experienced verbal, physical, and sometimes life-threatening attacks during the pandemic, prompting calls for immediate action from human rights campaigners.

Covid-related attacks on healthcare workers are expected to rise as new variants cause havoc in countries such as India and rollouts of vaccination programmes belatedly get under way in some countries, according to the UN special rapporteur on the right to health.

Continue reading...

MPs tell Johnson: you have a duty to help vaccinate the world

Posted on by

Exclusive: group urges prime minister to tackle ‘desperate shortage’ in developing nations

Boris Johnson has a “moral duty” to immediately start matching each vaccine administered at home with a donated dose to poorer countries across the world, a cross-party group of MPs and peers has said.

Several Tory backbenchers joined the call, which puts further pressure on the prime minister to boost supplies given to developing nations facing a “desperate shortage” of jabs.

Continue reading...

‘Protect and invest’: WHO calls for 6m more nurses worldwide

Posted on by

Warnings of brain drain from developing world as Covid adds to numbers of nurses leaving profession

Health ministers around the world are being urged to sign off on plans to create 6m more nursing jobs by 2030, amid warnings that Covid-19 has exacerbated a global shortage and could spark a “brain drain” from the developing world.

Delegates meeting virtually this week at the World Health Assembly, the key decision-making body of the World Health Organization, are expected to adopt a resolution calling on countries to transform the nursing profession through more investment, support and training.

Continue reading...

Afghanistan’s doctors braced for rapid spread of India Covid variant

Posted on by

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...

Global shortfall of nearly 1m midwives due to failure to value role, study finds

Posted on by

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...

‘Devastating for women and girls’: UK cuts 85% in aid to UN family planning

Posted on by

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...

Revealed: big shortfall in Covax Covid vaccine-sharing scheme

Posted on by

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...