Day: August 17, 2022

The Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday highlighted the need to support millions facing starvation and disease in the Horn of Africa.

Speaking from Geneva, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said drought, conflict, climate change and increasing prices for food, fuel and fertilizer, are all contributing to lack of access to sufficient food.

The countries affected are Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda.

“Hunger and malnutrition pose a direct threat to health, but they also weaken the body’s defenses, and open the door to diseases including pneumonia, measles and cholera,” he explained.

Tedros said the crisis is forcing some people to choose between paying for food and healthcare, Many are migrating in search of food, which can put them at increased risk of disease.

WHO has provided more than $16 million from an emergency fund to address needs, but more support is required.

The agency is appealing for $123.7 million which will be used to prevent and control outbreaks, treat malnutrition, and provide essential health services as well as medicines.

Appeal for Tigray

Tedros said the drought is compounding the “man-made catastrophe” in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopian, where war has raged for nearly two years.

Some six million people are under siege by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces, he said, “sealed off from the outside world, with no telecommunications, no banking services and very limited electricity and fuel.”

As a result, they are facing multiple outbreaks of malaria, anthrax, cholera, diarrhea and other diseases. 

“This unimaginable cruelty must end. The only solution is peace,” said Tedros. 

At the end of the briefing, he appealed for greater global attention to the situation in Tigray.

“I can tell you that the humanitarian crisis in Tigray is more than (in) Ukraine, without any exaggeration. And I said it many months ago, maybe the reason is the colour of the skin of the people in Tigray”.

Ukraine nuclear readiness

Also at the briefing:

A senior WHO official has underscored the agency’s readiness to respond to any potential nuclear incident in Ukraine.

Dr. Michael Ryan, Executive Director, was answering a journalist’s question regarding the deteriorating situation around the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

WHO has been involved with the Ukrainian authorities since the beginning of the war, he said, including through the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

“We’re in constant communication with the IAEA and remain ready as a member of the UN system to react, if there’s a need to react,” said Dr Ryan.

“A nuclear accident obviously would be catastrophic in the situation, to human life and to the environment, so we do remain concerned about that. We’re guided by our colleagues at the IAEA, and will continue to offer medical response support to them and to the Government of Ukraine.”

Source: United Nation

The director-general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said Wednesday that Ethiopia’s conflict-ridden province of Tigray is the worst humanitarian and man-made disaster on Earth.

The WHO chief said more than 6 million people in Tigray have been under siege by Ethiopia and Eritrea for nearly two years. He said they have been sealed off from the outside world with no electricity, no banking services, and only limited fuel supplies.

Tedros said a trickle of food aid and medicine has been reaching the beleaguered northern province since a truce between the Ethiopian government and Tigray rebel forces was declared in late March. The population is still facing multiple outbreaks of diseases, including malaria, anthrax and cholera, he added.

“Nowhere in the world would you see this level of cruelty, where … a government punishes 6 million of its people for more than 21 months by denying them basic services,” he said.

The 57-year-old Tedros is not a neutral observer of the Tigray conflict. He is a native of the region, served as a Tigray regional health official in the early 2000s, and later spent more than a decade in the Ethiopian government, first as minister of health, then as minister of foreign affairs.

Tedros noted that peace talks for the Tigray conflict are ongoing. However, he said, they are leading nowhere because powerful countries in the developed world are not using their influence to make it happen.

He said all eyes are focused on the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine, to the detriment of the tragedy playing out in Tigray.

“The humanitarian crisis in Tigray is more than Ukraine without any exaggeration,” Tedros said. “And, I said this many months ago, maybe the reason is the color of the skin of the people in Tigray. … This is the worst disaster on Earth as we speak. I am from Tigray. It is not because I am from Tigray I am saying this. That is the truth.”

Tedros said he is appealing to the Ethiopian government to resolve the conflict in Tigray peacefully. He said he also is appealing to the Russian government to end the war in Ukraine and choose peace.

He said both the Ethiopian and Russian governments can make peace happen if they choose to do so.

Source: Voice of America

UNITED NATIONS— British pharmaceutical company GSK has been awarded a contract to produce the world’s first malaria vaccine so that millions more children will be protected against the killer disease, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) announced.

The landmark award, valued at up to 170 million U.S. dollars, will lead to 18 million doses of the RTS,S vaccine available over the next three years, potentially saving thousands of young lives annually.

Children under five are still among the most vulnerable to malaria. In 2020, nearly half a million boys and girls died from the disease in Africa alone, a rate of one death every minute.

Etleva Kadilli, director of UNICEF’s Supply Division, said the rollout sends a clear message to malaria vaccine developers to continue their work.

“We hope this is just the beginning. Continued innovation is needed to develop new and next-generation vaccines to increase available supply, and enable a healthier vaccine market,” she said.

“This is a giant step forward in our collective efforts to save children’s lives and reduce the burden of malaria as part of wider malaria prevention and control programs,” she added.

Malaria is caused by parasites and transmitted to humans through infected female Anopheles mosquitoes. While the disease is preventable and curable, it can be fatal if left untreated.

More than 30 countries have areas with moderate to high malaria transmission, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), and the vaccine could provide added protection to more than 25 million children each year once supply ramps up.

The RTS,S malaria vaccine, a result of 35 years of research and development, is the first-ever vaccine against a parasitic disease.

It was launched in a 2019 pilot program, coordinated by WHO, in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi, and has reached more than 800,000 children.

In October last year, the UN health agency recommended its widespread use in countries with moderate to high malaria transmission.

UNICEF expects that demand for the malaria vaccine will be high among affected countries.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK