Category Archives: Global health

From vaccine mandates to a chatting ban: how schools in the Asia Pacific are managing Delta

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Outbreaks of the highly infectious Delta variant have led to closures in some countries, while others push to keep classrooms open

As countries across Asia battle worsening Covid outbreaks, schools face particular challenges in keeping children and teachers safe. Some countries – determined that classrooms stay open – are relying on measures like masks, smaller groups and even bans on talking in class to limit infections. In others, schools remain shut.

Here’s a look at what countries around Asia and the region are doing to prevent Covid spread in schools:

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Make historic campaign to ban leaded petrol ‘blueprint to phase out coal’, says UN

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Hailing end to toxic fuel additive, Guterres says same commitment is needed to eliminate other pollutants

The UN secretary general and environmentalists have welcomed a declaration by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) on the end of leaded petrol in the face of years of “underhand” opposition.

As Algeria became the last country to stop selling the toxic fuel last month, the two-decade campaign to ban it has been called a “milestone for multilateralism”.

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Children return to school in Jakarta as Indonesia eases Covid restrictions

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After 18 months of remote learning, some students will re-enter classrooms as the capital sees a fall in coronavirus infections

After almost 18 months, children in Jakarta will begin to re-enter classrooms on Monday, as Indonesia, which faces on of the worst Covid outbreaks globally, eases restrictions in some areas.

Indonesia began gradually loosening its lockdown measures last week, allowing restaurants and places of worship to open their doorsat 25% capacity, and malls to operate at 50% capacity. The relaxed rules were introduced across several regions in Java and Bali , including greater Jakarta, greater Bandung and greater Surabaya.

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‘They don’t come for us’: Haitians face agonising wait for help after quake

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People in need of water, food and shelter are fending for themselves as aid response complicated by heavy rain, gangs and distrust of international agencies

On the morning a catastrophic earthquake struck southern Haiti, Jackson Mason, a barber, was picking up water and other shopping from Cavaillon’s bustling market.

“The earth below me started to shake – people were thrown into the air, others yelled, praying to Jesus to save them,” Mason, 35, says. “Everything flew in the air, even the wallets in people’s hands.”

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Malaria trial shows ‘striking’ 70% reduction in severe illness in children

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A study in Burkina Faso and Mali suggests combining anti-malarial drugs and vaccination could reduce deaths and hospitalisations

A trial combining vaccinations and prevention drugs has substantially lowered the number of children dying of malaria in two African countries, according to researchers.

The results of the study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, have been hailed as “very striking”, especially at a time when decades-long progress on combating malaria has stalled in some countries.

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‘Use your £11bn climate fund to pay for family planning,’ UK told

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More than 60 NGOs call for spending rule change, saying people on frontline of climate crisis want greater access to reproductive healthcare

The UK government has been urged to open up its £11bn pot of climate funding to contraception, as research from low-income countries shows a link between poor access to reproductive health services and environmental damage.

In a letter to Alok Sharma, president of the UN Cop26 climate conference, an alliance of more than 60 NGOs has called for the funding eligibility rules to be changed to allow projects concerned with removing barriers to reproductive healthcare and girls’ education to access climate funds.

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‘Hidden pandemic’: Peruvian children in crisis as carers die

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With 93,000 children in Peru losing a parent to Covid, many face depression, anxiety and poverty

When Covid-19 began shutting down Nilda López’s vital organs, doctors decided that the best chance of saving her and her unborn baby was to put her into a coma.

Six months pregnant, López feared she would not wake up, or that if she did, her baby would not be there.

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‘Maestro of humanity’: Italian surgeon Gino Strada dies at 73

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Tributes paid to doctor whose NGO set up world-class hospitals in war zones such as Iraq, Yemen and Sudan

Tributes have been paid to Gino Strada, the Italian surgeon and “maestro of humanity” known for setting up world-class hospitals for the victims of war, who has died aged 73.

The medic, who in 1994 co-founded the humanitarian organisation Emergency to provide free, quality healthcare for those injured in conflict, died on Friday in France, reports said.

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Concern grows in Kenya after alarming rise in suicide cases

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Mental ill-health and ‘warped’ notions of masculinity among reasons mooted for rise of nearly 50% in a year

There is growing alarm in Kenya over a shocking rise in the number of suicides in the country.

Almost 500 people are reported to have killed themselves in the three months to June this year, more than the whole of 2020, according to the Kenyan police.

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Fears for Indonesia provinces as Delta variant spreads out of Java

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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Covid surge pushes Indonesia’s health system to the brink

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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Indonesia tightens restrictions as it confirms record new coronavirus infections

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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.

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Half of Zimbabweans fell into extreme poverty during Covid

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.”

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