Category Archives: South and Central Asia

‘Black fungus’ disease linked to Covid spreads across India

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7,200 mucormycosis cases reported, usually in patients with diabetes or compromised immune systems

States across India have begun declaring a “black fungus” epidemic as cases of the fatal rare infection shoot up in patients recovering from Covid-19.

The fungal disease, called mucormycosis, has a 50% mortality rate. It affects patients initially in the nose but the fungus can then spread into the brain, and can often only be treated by major surgery removing the eye or part of skull and jaw.

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Myanmar doctors sound Covid warning as neighbours see record cases

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The potential arrival of a highly transmissable variant could overwhelm health systems already struggling after military coup

Doctors in Myanmar have warned the country would be unable to cope with a major outbreak of Covid-19 as hospitals and medical facilities struggle to function in the aftermath of February’s military coup.

Fears are growing about the potential impact of a highly transmissible variant as neighbouring countries, chiefly India but also Thailand and Laos, battle record numbers of Covid cases.

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UK accused of a ‘abandoning’ Rohingya with ‘catastrophic’ 40% aid cut

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Children in overcrowded Cox’s Bazar settlement likely to suffer most from reduced humanitarian spending, say campaigners

The government has been accused of abandoning Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh after cutting aid to the humanitarian response by more than 40%.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) pledged £27.6m to the humanitarian sector’s joint response plan launched this week, compared with £47.5m last year.

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Indian authors speak out over plan to reissue Narendra Modi exam book

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Pankaj Mishra and Arundhati Roy attack Penguin Random House India for putting out book by a prime minister they say has mishandled Covid and persecuted writers

Leading Indian authors Pankaj Mishra and Arundhati Roy have spoken out against Penguin Random House India’s decision to publish and promote a book by Narendra Modi during the country’s coronavirus crisis, with Mishra accusing PRH India of “enlist[ing] in a flailing politician’s propaganda campaign”.

In a letter published in the London Review of Books blog, Mishra wrote to the chief executive of PRH India, Gaurav Shrinagesh, after the publisher announced it would be reissuing Modi’s book Exam Warriors while, in Mishra’s words, “smoke from mass funeral pyres rose across India”. India suffered a world record one-day death toll from Covid-19 on Wednesday – 4,529 – with the overall figure believed to be much higher than the official death toll of 283,248.

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Climate disasters ‘caused more internal displacement than war’ in 2020

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Refugee organisation says 30m new displacements last year were due to floods, storms or wildfires

Intense storms and flooding triggered three times more displacements than violent conflicts did last year, as the number of people internally displaced worldwide hit the highest level on record.

There were at least 55 million internally displaced people (IDPs) by the end of last year, according to figures published by the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).

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Stench of death pervades rural India as Ganges swells with Covid victims

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Stigma and cost of wood leave families with no choice but to immerse their dead in river

There was a time before when the Ganges was “swollen with dead bodies”.

In 1918, when the great flu pandemic swept through India and killed an estimated 18 million people, the water of this river – upon which so many lives depended – was filled with the stench of death.

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‘Pray for Myanmar’: Miss Universe pageant gets political

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Thuzar Wint Lwin, in dress of besieged Chin minority, highlights brutal repression since coup in Myanmar

In the months leading up to the Miss Universe pageant, most contestants were busy making promotional films and rehearsing for their moment in the limelight. Thuzar Wint Lwin of Myanmar was on the streets of Yangon, protesting against the country’s brutal army.

As the military used increasingly deadly force to crush rallies opposing its February coup, she visited the relatives of those who had been killed, donating her savings. Online, she raised awareness of military violence, despite the risk of retaliation.

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Covid vaccines: India export delay deals blow to poorer countries

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Efforts in Africa and elsewhere hit by decision not to export AstraZeneca jab until end of year

Vaccine programmes across Africa and much of the developing world will suffer big delays after the world’s biggest producer said it would not be exporting the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine until the end of the year.

“We continue to scale up manufacturing and prioritise India … We also hope to start delivering to Covax and other countries by the end of this year,” Adar Poonawalla, chief executive of the Serum Institute of India (SII), said in a statement on Tuesday.

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Bangladeshi journalist arrested and charged over alleged document theft

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Rozina Islam’s family claim reporter was assaulted and subject to ‘mental torture’ by officials

One of Bangladesh’s most prominent investigative journalists, known for her anti-corruption reporting and criticism of the government’s response to Covid-19, has been arrested and charged under the country’s Official Secrets Act.

Rozina Islam, 42, a senior investigative journalist at the Bengali daily Prothom Alo appeared before a Dhaka court on Tuesday morning charged with stealing official health ministry documents . The court turned down the police’s appeal that she be remanded in their custody to be interrogated.

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Indian mosque bulldozed in defiance of high court order

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Local officials in Uttar Pradesh demolish mosque that had stood since time of British rule

A local administration in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh has defied a state high court order and bulldozed a mosque, in one of the most inflammatory actions taken against a Muslim place of worship since the demolition of the Babri Mosque by a mob of Hindu nationalist rioters in 1992.

The mosque, in the city of Ram Sanehi Ghat in Uttar Pradesh, had stood for at least six decades, since the time of British rule, according to documents held by its committee.

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Locked out of school: Pakistan’s digital divide has students struggling

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When Covid shut schools, fees still had to be paid even if rural pupils could not access online lessons

Iqbal Khan works as a chauffeur in Lahore. His children are in his home village in a rural area north of Peshawar. Both of these very different areas of Pakistan have the same problem for many of their young people: no means of getting access to an education.

Online learning was not an option for Khan’s children as the pandemic locked down schools across cities and countryside. Even as he worked to pay the school fees, his two sons, aged 16 and 13, were unable to access any lessons as their schools went digital.

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‘Urgent. Oxygen needed’: Nepalis mobilise to take charge in Covid crisis

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Amid political turmoil and an overwhelmed health system, young activists are stepping up in response to the pandemic

A ping and: “ICU bed needed. Please it’s urgent.” Another ping: “Where can I find Remdesivir. EMERGENCY.” Ping: “Very urgent oxygen cylinder needed, patient at last stage.” The messages never let up; a constant stream of posts pleading for hospital beds, oxygen, plasma and medicine.

It’s not Nepal’s government helpline, but an online group set up by a 24-year-old public health graduate.

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‘Revolution dwells in the heart’: Myanmar’s poets cut down by the military

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Khet Thi, who captured the unflinching determination of the Myanmar public, was the third poet to be killed by the military since the coup

His words captured the unflinching determination of the Myanmar public in the face of military brutality: “They shoot in the head, but they don’t know revolution dwells in the heart.”

The poet Khet Thi was taken from his home in Shwebo, in the Sagaing region, last Saturday. The next day, his wife collected his body from a hospital. His organs had been removed, she told BBC Burmese.

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Afghanistan: fighting resumes in south after three-day ceasefire for Eid

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Taliban and government forces clash in Helmand, the scene of intense battles following US troop withdrawal

Fighting between the Taliban and Afghan government forces has resumed in the southern province of Helmand, officials said, ending a three-day ceasefire agreed by the warring sides to mark the Eid al-Fitr holiday.

There were clashes on Sunday on the outskirts of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand, which has seen intense fighting since the United States began its final troop withdrawal from Afghanistan on 1 May, an Afghan military spokesperson and a local official said.

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‘Hosnia had dreams’: grief in Kabul as girls’ school targeted

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Hazara community in mourning but defiant after more than 60 people killed in school bomb blasts


Latifa and Hosnia had been sharing a wooden bench in their classroom at Kabul’s Sayed Al-Shuhada school for the past three years.

When Latifa transferred to Sayed Al-Shuhada, the two girls were immediately drawn to each other and became best friends, always together in their free time, studying side by side, walking home together after school. They found comfort in each other’s presence; support in a place that has never been easy for girls and women.

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Scores more bodies of suspected Covid victims found in Indian rivers

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At least 90 more corpses wash up in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh as virus continues spreading into poor rural areas

At least 90 more bodies of suspected Covid-19 victims have washed up in rivers in India, as the virus continues to spread into poor rural areas and the country recorded its highest daily death toll so far.

More than 70 corpses were discovered floating in the Ganges River in the Buxar district of the state of Bihar and dozens more bodies were found upstream in the Ghazipur and Ballia districts in the neighbouring state of Uttar Pradesh.

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What is the deadly ‘black fungus’ seen in Covid patients in India?

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Usually very rare, mucormycosis has a high mortality rate and is difficult to treat

A rare black fungus that invades the brain is being increasingly seen in vulnerable patients in India, including those with Covid-19, as the health system continues to struggle in the midst of the pandemic.

The health ministry on Sunday released an advisory on how to treat the infection. In the state of Gujarat, about 300 cases had been reported in four cities, including Ahmedabad, according to data from state-run hospitals.

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Nepal says its Covid response is under control – everyone can see it’s not true

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I’ve watched from the UK as family and friends share increasingly desperate news. Nepal’s leaders have ensured the lack of preparation

Waiting for India’s Covid wave to break over Nepal has been as painful as it was inevitable. Now that it’s happening, this country of 30 million people is even more hapless and unprepared than India seems to have been.

My friend, Dr Rakshya Pandey, a pulmonary care doctor in Kathmandu, says that during her long shifts, the thought sometimes enters her mind: ‘‘Where would I go if I get sick? Where would I take my mother if she gets the virus?”

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India: dozens of suspected Covid victims wash up on Ganges River banks

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Locals believe bodies were dumped in river because cremation sites are overwhelmed

Dozens of bodies believed to be Covid-19 victims have washed up on the banks of the Ganges River in northern India as the pandemic spreads into India’s vast rural hinterland, overwhelming local health facilities as well as crematoriums and cemeteries.

Local official Ashok Kumar said that about 40 corpses washed up in Buxar district near the border between Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, two of India’s poorest states.

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‘Like purgatory’: diaspora in despair as India sinks deeper into Covid crisis

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Indian Americans scramble to secure oxygen canisters for family members, desperately work to raise funds and pressure US legislators to lift vaccine patents

Since the pandemic began, Fatima Ahmed has lost 29 of her family members in India and one in the US to Covid-19.

A few days ago, her uncle died in his car as he was driving back home from a hospital in Hyderabad, a city in southern India. “All the hospitals were at capacity, so they couldn’t take him in,” said Ahmed. “He pulled over and he called the rest of the family, the khandan – before he passed.”

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