Day: September 22, 2021

BRASILIA, Sept 22 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has selected two biomedical centres in Argentina and Brazil as regional hubs to develop and produce mRNA-based vaccines to fight COVID-19 in Latin America, the regional health agency said.

The idea is to tap existing manufacturing capacities to help transfer vaccine technology developed by Moderna in the United States to a region badly hit by the coronavirus and still without access to enough vaccines.

The Bio-Manguinhos Institute of Technology on Immunobiologicals at Fiocruz, Brazil’s premier biomedical lab, was picked for its history of vaccine manufacturing, and has already made “promising advances” developing mRNA vaccine technology, PAHO said.

Sinergium Biotech, a private sector biopharmaceutical company, was selected as the centre in Argentina and will partner with pharmaceutical lab mAbxience of the same group to develop and manufacture active vaccine ingredients.

The Americas branch of the World Health Organization said vaccine manufacture should benefit the entire region, with distribution funded by PAHO’s Revolving Fund.

A similar effort in Africa to develop COVID-19 vaccine production replicating Moderna’s shot has been slowed by talks with the US company, a WHO official said last week.

Moderna said in October it would not enforce patents related to its shot during the pandemic, raising hopes that other companies might be able to copy its vaccine and help boost global production.

In practice, though, it is hard to replicate a vaccine without the information on how it is made, and the WHO-backed tech transfer hub in South Africa has so far not reached a deal with the company.

The Americas region has borne the brunt of COVID-19 infections to date, with 87.6 million cases recorded and over 2.16 million lives lost. Yet vaccine distribution continues to be unequal, PAHO has said, with few countries in the region reaching the year-end 40 per cent vaccine target set by the WHO.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

AL-JABALAIN (Sudan), Sept 22 (NNN-AGENCIES) — South Sudanese refugee Dawood Kour fled to Sudan to turn the page on a life of displacement, only to be forced onto the streets once more after floodwaters submerged his rickety

shelter.

Kour crossed the border in November, fleeing years of conflict in his home city of Malakal — itself prone to flooding.

South Sudan became the world’s newest independent nation in 2011, seceding from Sudan. But in late 2013, it plunged into a devastating, five-year civil war that it has yet to fully recover from.

Since fleeing, Kour had lived in the Al-Qanaa camp, a growing community of around 35,000 refugees in the Al-Jabalain district of White Nile state.

But this month, Kour was displaced yet again as floodwaters inundated the camp. He moved to the nearest patch of dry land he could find — the roadside.

The waters rose so fast that “we had no time to collect our belongings,” Kour said. “We only carried our children.”

“We now have no food, medication or anything to fight the swarms of mosquitoes.”

Over 288,000 residents and refugees have been affected in Sudan where heavy rains and flash floods have hit 13 of the 18 states, according to the United Nations.

Humanitarian needs have swelled, and been exacerbated by the disaster in neighbouring South Sudan too, where the deluge has affected and displaced about 426,000 people, the UN said.

In Sudan, thousands of refugees were relocated to different camps, while others took shelter in villages that were spared, but many are now living on the streets.

“They have become homeless,” said Ibrahim Mohamed, a senior official at Sudan’s refugee commission.

“We are facing a serious challenge of finding new land to relocate them to.”

Torrential rains pummel Sudan annually between June and October.

The downpours often leave the country grappling with severe flooding that wrecks properties, infrastructure and crops.

Last year, Sudan declared a three-month state of emergency as flooding that the UN has called the country’s worst in a century left around 140 people dead and 900,000 affected.

So far this year, the floods have killed more than 80 people nationwide and damaged or destroyed around 35,000 homes, according to Sudanese authorities.

In the Al-Jabalain district, neither Sudanese villagers nor the refugees were prepared for the inundation.

“Villagers say they have not witnessed such floods in 40 years,” said Anwar Abushura, the head of Al-Qanaa camp.

Refugees desperately built a rudimentary dirt barrier to try to protect their shelters, Kour said.

“But the water arrived at such a fast pace, and the flood barrier collapsed within two days,” he said.

Many refugees had to make their way through the stagnant floodwater to salvage building materials and belongings from the collapsed shelters.

“We have no food or even rugs to sleep on,” said refugee David Bedi, 45, whose shelter was engulfed.

“We just want to build roofs over our children’s heads.”

Aid workers have warned of a looming outbreak of diseases among the doubly displaced refugees.

Al-Qanaa camp head Abushura said they were expecting a “medical disaster”.

Around 150 refugees from Al-Qanaa and the nearby Al-Alagaya camp, including children, were diagnosed with malaria on Monday, according to figures compiled by Sudan’s refugee commission.

Darquos Manuel, 32, said food had been spoilt, “mosquitoes are eating the children and the rains continue to pour down even as we live on the streets”. “There is little chance for survival under these conditions,” he said.

At Al-Alagaya camp, where many refugees were relocated, Nagwa James pointed to shelters that had buckled under the relentless torrents of water.

“We fear… we will get flooded the same way Al-Qanaa did,” the South Sudanese refugee said.

Conditions were already poor, “mosquitoes are everywhere and there are alot of infections”, she added.

Mohamed Ali Abuselib, head of the camp, said refugees had been moved from low-lying areas.

But most are in the open, he added, “and we are expecting more floods”.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

ABUJA, Sept 22 (NNN-ALLAFRICA) — The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) has reported that more than 300,000 children have died and over one million pushed out of school in 12 years of an insurgency in Nigeria’s North East region.

New data from the agency on the condition of children in the states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe since 2009, when Boko Haram fighters first struck in the region, show that 5,129 out-of-school children are battling mental illnesses as a result of the conflict.

Unicef said the deaths underlined the direct and indirect attacks on children.

“Children killed in crossfires, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), children used as suicide bombers, children killed by malnutrition, among others,” said Peter Hawkins, Unicef’s representative in Nigeria.

“The scars of conflict are real and enduring for children. Too many children in northeast Nigeria are falling victim to a conflict they did not start.

“Attacks against children must stop immediately. In the meantime, we are committed to working with our partners to provide psychosocial and other support to conflict-affected children so they can regain their childhood and restart their lives.”

Hawkins said that the EU-funded Support to Early Recovery and Resilience Project, implemented by Unicef, was aimed at improving the mental health of 5,129 out-of-school children in Borno state.

He also said that stress and violence had been linked to poor brain development, depression and poor self-esteem and children exposed to conflict and violence were at risk of long-term mental health and psychosocial issues.

The conflict-affected out-of-school children in Borno were receiving services, including mental health support in safe spaces to strengthen their well-being, resilience, literacy skills and self-reliance, he said.

The agency’s intervention had provided 15,552 children with vocational training, 1,610 with literacy and numeracy skills, and 5,194 were enrolled into integrated Qur’anic schools.

The spokesman for the Nigerian army, Gen Onyeala Nwachukwu, has expressed worries that terrorists loyal to the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) remained relentless in their campaign as they have embarked on mass recruitment of terrorists.

At the headquarters of the Theatre Command for Operation Hadin Kai of the Nigerian army in Maiduguri, Borno state capital, he said: “I would like to mention that ISWAP, very recently, has been depleted by the surrendering of their members, as well as a conflict between them.

“They have embarked on what I will call a massive recruitment drive and I consider it very important to engage the media to block this recruitment.”

He noted that Boko Haram insurgents have been surrendering.

He explained that the troops had succeeded in curtailing the jihadist groups after insurgents almost took over the three state capitals of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe.

Three years ago, Boko Haram was advancing towards Abucha. Today they have been boxed into the Timbuks (islands in the Lake Chad region).

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

Tackling the threat of climate change and COVID-19 were the dominant themes of leaders’ speeches Wednesday at the U.N. General Assembly annual debate.

“While the world was fighting against the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis also struck at full force,” said President Andry Rajoelina of the African island nation of Madagascar.

Successive years of climate change-driven droughts have ravaged parts of his country. This year, swarms of locusts and armyworms have wiped out crops. The U.N. says more than 1 million Malagasy people in the country’s south are “marching toward starvation” with thousands already in famine-like conditions.

“If we do not act, the crisis will continue and get worse,” Rajoelina said of the consequences of global warming. “Madagascar calls upon each state to act in an equitable fashion and commensurate with their polluting activities.”

In six weeks, nations will meet in Glasgow, Scotland, for a progress report on the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. All signs point to the planet falling short of keeping global warming to a cap of 1.5 degrees Celsius. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has focused much of his engagement this week on getting the robust commitments needed to reach that target.

Rich nations have benefited from growth that resulted in pollution, and now “have a duty to help developing countries grow their economies in a green and sustainable way,” Johnson said in a Twitter post Monday. He is due to deliver his address late Wednesday.

Combating climate change was among the topics of discussion in separate meetings U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres held Tuesday with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei and Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez ahead of their remarks to the assembly.

Fighting COVID-19

After the coronavirus pandemic kept heads of state from attending last year’s General Assembly meetings, about 100 are attending this year’s session in New York. Others are choosing to stay home and deliver recorded remarks.

U.S. President Joe Biden delivered his remarks in person on Tuesday and then returned to Washington, where he convened a virtual summit Wednesday on ending the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’re not going to solve this crisis with half-measures or middle-of-the-road ambitions, we need to go big,” he said. “And we need to do our part: governments, the private sector, civil society leaders, philanthropists. This is an all-hands-on-deck crisis.”

He announced that the United States — which has already donated some 600 million vaccine doses to developing countries — is buying another 500 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine to give to low- and middle-income countries. They will start shipping out in January 2022.

Unresolved issues

Entrenched geopolitical issues also came up.

In video remarks, Jordan’s King Abdullah reiterated the need for a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians, while Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud chastised Iran over its nuclear activities.

“We support international efforts aimed at preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon,” King Salman said. “We are very concerned at Iranian steps that go counter to its commitments, as well as daily declarations from Iran that its nuclear program is peaceful.”

Only three female leaders were scheduled to speak Wednesday in a field of 30, highlighting the obstacles women still face in reaching the highest levels of government.

Meanwhile, it is mostly on the margins of the U.N. General Assembly debate that the real diplomacy takes place.

Wednesday evening the foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — were to meet.

Britain’s newly appointed foreign secretary, Liz Truss, said the group shares an interest in maintaining stability in volatile regions and in preventing terrorism.

“If we want to avoid Afghanistan becoming a haven for global terror then the international community — including Russia and China — needs to act as one in its engagement with the Taliban,” she said.

G-20 foreign ministers also were to meet Wednesday to discuss the situation in Afghanistan.

Source: Voice of America

Amnesty International is accusing the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies of creating an “unprecedented human rights crisis” by failing to provide enough COVID-19 vaccines for the world’s poorest nations.

In a report issued Wednesday, the human rights advocacy group says AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Novavax and the partnership of Pfizer and BioNTech have “failed to meet their human rights responsibilities” by refusing to participate in global vaccine sharing initiatives and share vaccine technology by waiving their intellectual property rights.

Amnesty says only a “paltry” 0.3% of the 5.76 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines distributed around the world have gone to low-income countries, while 79% have gone to upper-middle and high-income countries. It says the disparity is “pushing weakened health systems to the very brink and causing tens of thousands of preventable deaths every week,” especially in parts of Latin America, Africa and Asia.

The organization says Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna alone are set to make $130 billion combined by the end of 2022.

“Profits should never come before lives,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general.

Amnesty is calling on governments and pharmaceutical companies to immediately deliver 2 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines to low and lower-middle income countries to meet the World Health Organization’s goal of vaccinating 40% of the population of such countries by the end of the year.

COVID Summit

The report was issued ahead of U.S. President Joe Biden’s virtual COVID Summit, held in conjunction with this week’s United Nations General Assembly. Biden is expected to announce a global vaccination target of 70% along with an additional purchase of 500 million doses of the two-shot Pfizer vaccine, bringing the United States’ overall donations to more than 1.1 billion doses.

“America is committed to beating COVID-19. Today, the United States is doubling our total number of global donated vaccines to more than 1.1 billion. For every shot we’ve put in an American arm to date, we are donating three shots globally,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday on Twitter.

Extreme poverty

The Asian Development Bank says the pandemic likely pushed as many as 80 million people in Asia’s developing nations into extreme poverty last year. A report issued Tuesday by the Manila-based institution said the region’s developing economies will likely grow at a slower-than-expected pace in 2021 due to lingering COVID-19 outbreaks and the slow pace of vaccination efforts

The ADB is predicting Southeast Asian economies to grow by just 3.1 percent this year, a drop from the 4.4 percent rate forecast in its economic outlook back in April.

Source: Voice of America