Day: December 1, 2022

ABIDJAN— Eighteen people go on trial in Ivory Coast on Wednesday accused of involvement in one of West Africa’s bloodiest militant attacks — a machine-gun assault on a beach resort in 2016 that left 19 dead.

But only four of the 18 will be physically present for the long-awaited proceedings in Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s economic hub as the others are either on the run or being held in Mali.

On March 13, 2016, three men wielding assault rifles attacked Grand-Bassam, a tourist complex 40 kilometres east of Abidjan popular with foreigners.

In an operation echoing a militant massacre the previous year in Tunisia, they stormed the beach and then attacked several hotels and restaurants.

The 45-minute bloodbath ended when the three were shot dead by Ivorian security forces.

Al-Qaeda’s North African affiliate, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which claimed responsibility the same day, said the attack was in response to anti-jihadist operations in the Sahel by France and its allies, and targeted Ivory Coast for having handed over AQIM militants to Mali.

Several dozen people were arrested, including three suspected accomplices of the dead attackers, who were detained in Mali.

The charges against the 18 include acts of terrorism, murder, attempted murder, criminal concealment, illegal possession of firearms and ammunition “and complicity in these deeds,” Public Prosecutor Richard Adou said last

week.

Nineteen people were killed — nine Ivorians, four French citizens, a Lebanese, a German, a Macedonian, a Malian, a Nigerian and a person who could not be identified.

Thirty-three people of various nationalities were wounded.

Aude Rimailho, a lawyer representing French plaintiffs, said those on trial were “small fry” and cautioned against seeing the proceedings as a chance for closure, adding “the people who planned the operation are in Mali.”

The prospects of seeing them on trial there are clouded by “the chill between France and Mali,” she said, referring to a breakdown in relations between Paris and the Malian ruling junta.

Mali is the epicentre of a decade-long jihadist revolt that has shaken the Sahel, claiming thousands of lives and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.

The attack on Grand-Bassam was the first and deadliest in a string of sporadic attacks on countries lying on the coast of the Gulf of Guinea, south of the Sahel.

In January 2017, members of France’s Barkhane anti-jihadist force captured a key suspect, Mimi Ould Baba Ould Cheikh.

He is described by Ivory Coast investigators as one of the instigators of the Grand-Bassam attack and by Burkina Faso as the “operation leader” in an assault on the Burkinabe capital Ouagadougou in January 2016 that claimed 30 lives.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

MOGADISHU— The Government of Germany and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have together increased humanitarian assistance through cash transfers to mitigate the impact of drought on the food security and livelihoods of affected rural communities in Mogadishu, Somalia.

Hunger is increasing and intensifying in Mogadishu with about 6.7 million people, including over 300,000 of those already facing famine conditions, expected to be acutely food insecure until end of the year.

Approximately half of those facing famine are in rural, hard-to-reach areas.

The ability of the most vulnerable to endure drought has now been exhausted, and over one million people have left their homes in search of assistance.

“The current drought affecting the country is the worst we’ve seen in at least four decades, and parts of the country are on the brink of famine,” says FAO Representative in Somalia, Etienne Peterschmitt.

“FAO’s Cash Transfer assistance to vulnerable rural communities addresses their immediate needs while helping to mitigate livelihood collapse. This keeps families together during crisis, reducing the risks associated with displacement, and paving the way for a faster, future recovery,” he added.

German Ambassador to Somalia Sebastian Groth says it is crucial to bring everyone on board hence the reason why Germany is working closely with its partners such as FAO and the Somali government to support people in all of Somalia.

“To save a family’s livelihood means the family can stay at their beloved home in difficult times. And the whole family will be able to get back onto their feet much quicker again when conditions normalize,” he said.

With continued support from Germany to FAO in Somalia, the “Livelihood response to mitigate impacts of drought on food security and livelihoods” project is providing three months of unconditional cash transfer assistance to 6,050 families in farming communities, due to the ongoing drought.

To date, FAO has reached 5,519 families with three months of cash transfers amounting to $1,057,170.

Additionally, 4,800 families are receiving cash transfers while rehabilitating communal infrastructures critical to water management.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Somalia centers around improving food security and nutrition and protecting livelihoods in the face of shocks as well as promoting resilient agri-food value chains, integrated water and land management, climate smart agri-food systems and providing technical support and capacity development to the Government of Somalia at local, State and Federal levels across the areas within its mandate.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

A new, long-lasting drug could be a game-changer for preventing HIV infections, experts say.

Advocates are hopeful that those who need it most in low- and middle-income countries will not have to wait for it as long as they have for previous HIV drugs. But questions remain about access and price.

The drug is called cabotegravir and is delivered as a shot once every other month. In clinical trials, it did a better job at preventing infection than another option — a pill taken once a day.

The bimonthly injection seems to be an easier treatment regimen to stick to than daily pills, according to Mitchell Warren, executive director of AVAC, an HIV prevention advocacy organization.

“If you can take a pill every day, that’s great. But if you can’t, we see a lot of people who start [taking the pills] who don’t continue,” he said.

Aside from the inconvenience, there can be a stigma attached to taking the pills, Warren said. The drugs for prevention, called pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, are the same as the drugs used to treat HIV infection.

“If you’re a young person and your parents find your pill bottle, they say, ‘Why are you taking this pill? Are you HIV infected?’ And the young person may say, ‘No, I’m protecting myself,'” Warren said. “And they say, ‘Well, why are you having sex?'”

Long-lasting drugs like cabotegravir or another new product, a once-a-month vaginal ring, offer patients more choices, he added.

About 1.5 million people were newly infected with HIV in 2021, according to the World Health Organization, about 60% of them in Africa.

Uganda and Zimbabwe approved cabotegravir for PrEP earlier this year. They are the first countries in sub-Saharan Africa to do so.

These approvals come less than a year after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized it.

That’s progress, Warren said. FDA approved PrEP pills in 2012, but “it took three years before any African regulatory agency approved it. So, we’ve already seen a condensing of that timeline.”

Cabotegravir costs $22,000 per year in the United States. ViiV Healthcare, the company that makes the drug, has not officially announced what it will cost in low- and middle-income countries, but it is expected to be much lower. Some aid groups have indicated that ViiV will offer the drug at $250 per year.

“The problem is that actually that won’t be really affordable for countries who need to roll it out and scale up,” said Jessica Burry, a pharmacist with humanitarian group Doctors without Borders.

PrEP pills cost about $54 per year, Warren said.

“The hope is that early in 2023, we can see a price point that is much closer to that 54 [dollars] than to the 250 [dollars],” he said. “Hopefully, in the $100 range per year.”

ViiV said it is working with the U.N.-backed Medicines Patent Pool to allow generic manufacturers to produce cabotegravir at a lower price for low- and middle-income countries.

ViiV said cabotegravir is more complicated to manufacture than most HIV drugs. No generic manufacturers have been selected yet. Once they are, it will take about three to five years before a generic version is on the market.

The company has filed for regulatory approval in 11 countries so far. Burry says there should be more.

“If they’re going to be the only supplier for the next four or five years until generics are available, then they really need to step up to the plate and actually file, register and get that drug available,” she said.

Demand for the drug is unclear. PrEP pills have been slow to catch on.

About 845,000 people in more than 50 countries took them in 2020, but the United Nations was aiming for 3 million by that time.

“We don’t have a ton of PrEP users, so if you’re ViiV, you’re looking at a very small market,” Warren said.

Warren said providers and advocates need to help grow that market. They need to do a better job connecting people at risk with programs that offer PrEP, he added.

“Some of the early PrEP programs began with us thinking that if you just bought the product, people would magically show up,” he said.

Warren hopes to change that as part of a coalition that includes ViiV, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Health Organization and others.

“There’s a huge effort in this coalition to bring in civil society from day one, and the communities that this product is meant to help and support,” he said.

The slow uptake means PrEP has not yet shown that it can make much of a real-world impact, Warren noted. He hopes to see research programs launch next year to find the best ways to reach the communities most at risk and lower infection rates.

“If we can’t show that in the next three years, then we don’t necessarily need all these generic manufacturers, because there will not be a market for this product,” he said.

Source: Voice of America