Category: Health

There is growing optimism that India could resume exports of COVID-19 vaccines as production expands at a rapid pace, putting the country on track to immunize its adult population in the coming months

“We had put a target of 1.85 billion doses for ourselves. That has been organized by the end of December and thereafter the government will be able to allow vaccine exports,” N.K. Arora, head of the national technical advisory group on immunization told VOA. “We will have several billion doses available next year.”

India, a vaccine powerhouse, was expected to be a major supplier of affordable COVID- 19 vaccines to developing countries.

However, after supplying 66 million doses to nearly 100 countries, New Delhi halted exports in April following a deadly second wave of the pandemic, slowing inoculation programs of countries from Africa to Indonesia.

There is no official comment on a timeline for resumption of exports, with officials stressing that for the time being, the focus is on India’s domestic rollout.

“First, all of our adults will have to be immunized, we have to take care of our own people,” Arora said.

The issue of vaccine supplies is expected to figure in the summit meeting of the Quad nations — the United States, Japan, India and Australia — Friday in Washington.

Public health experts say India will likely wait to restart exports until the country’s festive season ends in November to ensure it does not have to grapple with a third wave. Currently authorities are racing to administer at least one dose to all adults.

India has given one shot to roughly two thirds of its population but only 20% of its approximately 900 million adults have been fully inoculated.

In April, as a ferocious surge in infections took a heavy toll, the government had faced criticism for exporting vaccines when most of its own population was not inoculated.

India has been urged to resume exports as the country’s vaccination program gains momentum and the supply of vaccines increases.

The World Health Organization told a press briefing in Geneva Tuesday that it has been assured that supplies from India will restart this year. Officials said that discussions in New Delhi have emphasized the importance of ensuring that India is “part of the solution for Africa.”

African countries have struggled to inoculate their populations — only about 3% of the continent’s population is vaccinated.

“Given the successful ramp-up of domestic production and the diminishing intensity of its own outbreak, we hope that India will ease its restrictions,” a spokesman for the Gavi alliance, co-leading the global vaccine sharing platform COVAX, told VOA.

The Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest producer of the AstraZeneca vaccines, has said that exports could resume as India nears a level where sufficient stocks are available for its inoculation drive.

“In the next two months, we do expect slow easement of exports. But you have to also check with the government; ultimately it is their decision,” SII chief executive Adar Poonawalla said on Friday.

The institute was to be one of the major suppliers of affordable vaccines to COVAX, but the vaccine-sharing platform’s ability to get sufficient doses for low- and middle-income countries took a hit when India shut down exports.

“Countries with a low level of vaccination can breed variants and if the world does not cover those people there is an opportunity for mutants to rise and creep into other countries, making it harder control the pandemic,” K. Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India, said.

Eyes will also be on the Quad summit next week to see how it makes headway on the vaccine initiative announced in March under which the four countries had decided to produce 1 billion doses in India by 2022 with financial backing from the United States and Japan.

“The summit will be a good opportunity to take stock and expedite that initiative. Some conversations have happened, let us see what progress is made,” an official in India’s Ministry of External Affairs, who did not want to be named, said.

Vaccines produced under the Quad initiative were meant for countries in the Indo-Pacific region. These and other developing countries have turned to China, which has supplied over a billion doses, while Western countries are seen to have lagged in their efforts to vaccinate developing countries.

However, hopes are rising that India will emerge as a major global supplier as new production facilities are set up and the basket of vaccines expands.

The SII for example is set to ramp up production to 200 million doses next month –nearly three times its output in April when India halted exports. Indian companies are also set to make millions of doses of both domestically developed vaccines and those developed overseas, such as the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, and Russia’s Sputnik V.

“It may look like a presumptuous statement, but we will immunize many countries next year, and these will be with affordable shots. There is no confusion in that. India is committed to it and I see no difficulty at all,” Arora said.

Source: Voice of America

The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Africa reached 8,134,511 as of yesterday afternoon, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said.

The Africa CDC, the specialised healthcare agency of the African Union, in its continental COVID-19 dashboard, indicated that the death toll from the pandemic across the continent stands at 206,202.

Some 7,454,718 patients across the continent have recovered from the disease so far.

South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia and Ethiopia are among the countries with the most cases in the continent, according to the agency.

In terms of the caseload, southern Africa is the most affected region, followed by the northern and eastern parts of the continent, while central Africa is the least affected region in the continent, according to the Africa CDC

Source: Nam News Network

The World Health Organization is warning that COVID-19 vaccine export bans and hoarding by wealthy countries will prolong the pandemic in Africa, preventing recovery from the disease in the rest of the world.

While more than 60% of the U.S., European Union, and British populations have been vaccinated, only 2% of COVID vaccine shots have been given in Africa.

The COVAX facility has slashed its planned COVID-19 vaccine deliveries to Africa by 25% this year. WHO Africa regional director Matshidiso Moeti says the 470 million doses now expected to arrive by the end of December are enough to vaccinate just 17% of Africans on the continent.

“Export bans and vaccine hoarding still have a chokehold on the lifeline of vaccine supplies to Africa.… Even if all planned shipments via COVAX and the African Union arrive, Africa still needs almost 500 million more doses to reach the yearend goal. At this rate, the continent may only reach the 40% target by the end of March next year,” Moeti said.

The WHO reports more than 8 million cases of COVID-19 in Africa, including more than 200,000 deaths. Forty-four African countries have reported the alpha variant and 32 countries have reported the more virulent and contagious delta variant.

Moeti warns of further waves of infection and loss of life in this pandemic. Given the short supply of vaccines, she urges strict adherence to preventive measures, such as mask wearing and social distancing.

She reiterates WHO’s call for a halt to booster shots in wealthy nations, except for those with compromised immune systems and at risk of severe illness and death.

“I have said many times that it is in everyone’s interest to make sure the most at-risk groups in every country are protected. As it stands, the huge gaps in vaccine equity are not closing anywhere near fast enough. The quickest way to end this pandemic, is for countries with reserves to release their doses so that other countries can buy them,” she said.

Moeti said African countries with low vaccination rates are breeding grounds for vaccine-resistant variants. She warned this could end up sending the world back to square 1, with the pandemic continuing to ravage communities worldwide if vaccine inequity is allowed to persist.

Source: Voice of America

Former Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who fought for independence from France, reconciled his conflict-ravaged nation and was then ousted amid pro-democracy protests in 2019 after two decades in power, has died at age 84.

A statement from the office of current President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, did not provide the cause of death or information about funeral arrangements.

Bouteflika had suffered a stroke in 2013 that badly weakened him. Concerns about his state of health, kept secret from the Algerian public, helped feed public frustration with his 20-year, corruption-tarnished rule. Mass public protests by the Hirak movement led to his departure.

An astute political chameleon, Bouteflika had been known as a wily survivor ever since he fought for independence from colonial ruler France in the 1950s and 1960s.

He stood up to Henry Kissinger as Algeria’s long-serving foreign minister, successfully negotiated with the terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal to free oil ministers taken hostage in a 1975 attack on OPEC headquarters, and helped reconcile Algerian citizens with each other after a decade of civil war between radical Muslim militants and Algeria’s security forces.

“I’m a non-conformist politician. I’m a revolutionary,” Bouteflika told The Associated Press on the eve of his first presidential victory in 1999, after a campaign tarnished by fraud charges that drove his six rivals to pull out of the vote.

Upon taking office, Bouteflika promised “to definitively turn the somber pages of our history to work for a new era.”

Born March 2, 1937, to Algerian parents in the border town of Oujda, Morocco, Bouteflika was among Algeria’s most enduring politicians.

In 1956, Bouteflika entered the National Liberation Army, formed to fight Algeria’s bloody independence war. He commanded the southern Mali front and slipped into France clandestinely.

After the war’s end, Bouteflika became foreign minister at just 25, at a time when Algeria was a model of doctrinaire socialism tethered to the Soviet Union. Its capital, Algiers, was nicknamed “Moscow on the Med.”

He kept that post for 16 years, helping to raise Algeria’s influence and define the country as a leader of the Third World and the Non-Aligned Movements. He was active in the United Nations and presided over the U.N. General Assembly in 1974.

In 1978, he slipped from sight for nearly two decades, spending more than six years in exile to escape corruption charges that were later dropped.

Algeria’s army held the reins of power throughout that time. The National Liberation Army had been transformed into a single party that ruled until 1989, when a multiparty system was introduced.

But as the Islamic Salvation Front party, or FIS, rapidly gained support, the army canceled Algeria’s first multi-party legislative elections in 1992 to thwart a likely victory by the Muslim fundamentalists. An insurgency erupted that left an estimated 200,000 dead over the ensuing years.

Bouteflika took office in 1999, Algeria’s first civilian leader in more than three decades. He managed to bring stability to a country nearly brought to its knees by the violence, unveiling a bold program in 2005 to reconcile the fractured nation by persuading Muslim radicals to lay down their arms.

Bouteflika and the armed forces neutralized Algeria’s insurgency, but then watched it metastasize into a Saharan-wide movement linked to smuggling and kidnapping — and to al-Qaida.

Bouteflika stood with the United States in the fight against terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, particularly on intelligence-sharing and military cooperation. It marked a turnaround from the militantly anti-American, Soviet-armed Algeria of years past when figures like Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver took refuge there.

Bouteflika’s powerful political machine had the constitution changed to cancel the presidency’s two-term limit. He was then reelected in 2009 and 2013, amid charges of fraud and a lack of powerful challengers.

His firebrand past dissolved as age and illness took its toll on the once-charismatic figure. Corruption scandals over infrastructure and hydrocarbon projects dogged him for years and tarnished many of his closest associates. His brother, two former prime ministers and other top officials are now in prison over corruption.

Bouteflika balked at the region-wide calls for change embodied by the 2011 Arab Spring revolutions that overthrew three dictators to his east. Bouteflika tamped down unrest through salary and subsidy increases, a vigilant security force and a lack of unity in the country’s opposition. He also failed to restore civic trust or create an economy that could offer the jobs needed for Algeria’s growing youth population despite the nation’s vast oil and gas wealth.

Bouteflika was increasingly absent from view during his third and fourth presidential terms after suffering a stroke. The extent to which Bouteflika was controlled by the army remained unclear. He once told the AP that he turned down the job of president in 1994 because he was unable to accept conditions set by the military.

Algeria’s Hirak protests erupted after he announced plans to run for a fifth term in 2019, and it was the then-army chief who sealed Bouteflika’s fate by siding with the demonstrators. Bouteflika had no choice but to step down.

Despite new elections and some gestures toward the protesters, Algeria’s leadership remains opaque and has recently cracked down on dissent, notably among Berber populations.

The secrecy surrounding Algeria’s leaders is such that it’s unclear whether Bouteflika ever married or had any survivors.

Source: Voice of America

Somalia’s government has condemned what it calls the unlawful detention of President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo’s national security adviser.

Somali government spokesman Abdirashid Hashi in a tweet Friday said Fahad Yasin was detained at Djibouti airport.

Yasin was flying from Turkey to Mogadishu with a stop in Djibouti.

Government spokesman Hashi tweeted such acts will not help to strengthen ties between Somalia and Djibouti.

Djibouti’s Minister of Economy and Finance Ilyas Dawaleh tweeted a response to the communication director’s accusation.

Dawaleh asked him to “refrain from any inappropriate and baseless statements.”

Djibouti’s Foreign Minister Mohamed Yusuf added, “There are fake news released in social media trying to create confusion and drag Djibouti into Somalia internal challenges and crisis. We will continue to stand by our brothers and sisters in Somalia but never interfere in their internal affairs.”

Yasin, who is the former head of Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency, is at the center of a power struggle between Somalia’s president and prime minister.

Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble suspended Yasin over the disappearance of a female cybersecurity spy, who the agency says was killed by al-Shabab militants.

Her family believes Somalia’s spy agency was responsible for her disappearance.

Yasin was due to attend a national security meeting on Saturday to discuss the controversial case.

The case has Farmajo and Roble in a stand-off that threatens the country’s elections and security gains.

Farmajo on Thursday issued a suspension of Roble’s executive powers, which the prime minister promptly rejected.

Source: Voice of America