H5N1

Yemen: In a country stalked by disease, Covid-19 barely registers

Via The Guardian: Yemen: in a country stalked by disease, Covid barely registers. Excerpt:

On a ward in Ataq general hospital, in the dusty central province of Shabwa in Yemen, six-month-old Muna Bassam is lying on her back, eyes closed, her distended belly moving up and down with the labour of breathing.  

In the corridor outside her room, a poster shows before-and-after photos of several children admitted to the ward who have managed to recover from acute malnutrition – still painfully thin, but smiling and alert.  

Muna’s family have already taken her to hospital once before. Worried about being able to pay for her treatment and fuel to return to the village, their prayers for her this time around are even more urgent. 

“My wife and I had 20 children. Eleven of them died,” said the baby’s grandfather, Abdullah. “But that was a long time ago. This should not still be happening today.”

Elsewhere in the overwhelmed hospital, children are suffering with cholera, diphtheria and dengue fever, contagious diseases that have stalked Yemen since the outbreak of war six years ago. For patients and doctors here, in what the UN says is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, coronavirus barely registers.  

“We don’t have a neurosurgeon. We don’t have a maternity ward. We treat 20 children a month for malnutrition and now we are admitting more and more people severely ill with complications from dengue fever – more than 3,000 cases so far this year. The generator doesn’t always keep the equipment on,” says Dr Ali Nasser Saeed, the hospital director. “Coronavirus is nowhere near our biggest problem.”

World Food Programme awarded Nobel Peace Prize

Via the World Food Programme: World Food Programme awarded Nobel Peace Prize Statement by WFP Executive Director David Beasley.

ROME – The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the World Food Programme (WFP) is a humbling, moving recognition of the work of WFP staff who lay their lives on the line every day to bring food and assistance for close to 100 million hungry children, women and men across the world. People whose lives are often brutally torn apart by instability, insecurity and conflict. 

Every one of the 690 million hungry people in the world today has the right to live peacefully and without hunger. Today, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has turned the global spotlight on them and on the devastating consequences of conflict. Climate shocks and economic pressures have further compounded their plight. And now, a global pandemic with its brutal impact on economies and communities, is pushing millions more to the brink of starvation. 

The Nobel Peace Prize is not WFP’s alone.  We work closely with government, organizations and private sector partners whose passion for helping the hungry and vulnerable equals ours. We could not possibly help anyone without them. We are an operational agency and the daily work of our staff each day is driven by our core values of integrity, humanity and inclusion.  

Where there is conflict, there is hunger. And where there is hunger, there is often conflict. Today is a reminder that food security, peace and stability go together. Without peace, we cannot achieve our global goal of zero hunger; and while there is hunger, we will never have a peaceful world.

Bill Gates on COVID-19, vaccines and global health

Via The New York Times: Bill Gates on Coronavirus, Vaccines and Global Health. Excerpt:

On Monday, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation released the fourth of its annual Goalkeeper reports, which track the slow but steady progress the world has made toward more than a dozen health-related goals set forth by the United Nations in 2015.

This year’s was unrelentingly grim. The coronavirus pandemic has scorched away years of work: More families are in dire poverty, malnutrition is increasing, far fewer children are getting immunized. 

The assessment comes as the United States, stung harder by the virus than any other country, is retreating from the global health stage and seems focused primarily on saving itself. Could it ever return to its role as the world’s leader in both competence and generosity? In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Gates devoted a half-hour to explaining why he was optimistic that it would. 

“It’s my disposition,” he said. “Plus, I’ve got to call these people up and make the pitch to them that this really makes sense — and I totally, totally believe it makes sense.”

By “these people,” he was referring to leading figures in the White House and Congress, whom he has personally lobbied to do “this”: namely, add an extra $4 billion to the fiscal stimulus package now under debate in Congress so that poor countries can get Covid-19 vaccines.  

Ultimately his goal is far more ambitious: to double American foreign aid from less than 0.25 percent of gross domestic product to 0.5 percent or more. He sees the pandemic as an opportunity to do that. 

“As they say,” he added cheerily, “the U.S. government — after it’s tried every other thing — does the right thing.” 

As he did in Silicon Valley while battling competitors and antitrust regulators, Mr. Gates can calculate his chances of success with a ruthless logic. That has rarely been as true as it is now, as a once-in-a-century pandemic devastates the impoverished countries where he focuses his giving.  

The damage has been wrought less by the virus — so far it has killed much smaller percentages of the populations of Asia and Africa than of the Americas and Western Europe — than by the economic impact, which has been far greater in countries where people and governments “have no spare reserves to draw on,” Mr. Gates said. 

The collapse of tourism, declines in remittances from relatives working abroad, the shutdown of ports, mines and oil wells, school closings and new stresses on fragile health care systems have all created enormous suffering. 

Not since 1870 have so many countries been in recession at once, according to the Goalkeeper report. Between 1990 and 2020, the percentage of the world’s population living in extreme poverty, which is now defined as living on less than $2 a day, shrank to less than 7 percent from 37 percent. In just the past few months, 37 million people have fallen back below the line, the report estimated.  

“The longer the pandemic lasts, the worse its economic scars will be,” it added.

12,000 people per day could die from COVID-19 linked hunger by end of year, potentially more than the disease, warns Oxfam

Via ReliefWeb, a new release from Oxfam: 12,000 people per day could die from Covid-19 linked hunger by end of year, potentially more than the disease, warns Oxfam. Excerpt:

Eight of the biggest food and beverage companies pay out $18 billion to shareholders as new epicentres of hunger emerge across the globe 

As many as 12,000 people could die per day by the end of the year as a result of hunger linked to COVID-19, potentially more than could die from the disease, warned Oxfam in a new briefing published today. The global observed daily mortality rate for COVID-19 reached its highest recorded point in April 2020 at just over 10,000 deaths per day. 

‘The Hunger Virus’ reveals how 122 million more people could be pushed to the brink of starvation this year as a result of the social and economic fallout from the pandemic including through mass unemployment, disruption to food production and supplies, and declining aid. 

Oxfam’s Interim Executive Director Chema Vera said: “COVID-19 is the last straw for millions of people already struggling with the impacts of conflict, climate change, inequality and a broken food system that has impoverished millions of food producers and workers. Meanwhile, those at the top are continuing to make a profit: eight of the biggest food and drink companies paid out over $18 billion to shareholders since January even as the pandemic was spreading across the globe - ten times more than the UN says is needed to stop people going hungry.” 

The briefing reveals the world’s ten worst hunger hotspots, places such as Venezuela and South Sudan where the food crisis is most severe and getting worse as a result of the pandemic. It also highlights emerging epicentres of hunger – middle income countries such as India, South Africa, and Brazil – where millions of people who were barely managing have been tipped over the edge by the pandemic. For example: 

Brazil: Millions of poor workers, with little in the way of savings or benefits to fall back on, lost their incomes as a result of lockdown. Only 10 percent of the financial support promised by the federal government had been distributed by late June with big business favored over workers and smaller more vulnerable companies.  

India: Travel restrictions left farmers without vital migrant labour at the peak of the harvest season, forcing many to leave their crops in the field to rot. Traders have also been unable to reach tribal communities during the peak harvest season for forest products, depriving up to 100 million people of their main source of income for the year. 

Yemen: Remittances dropped by 80 percent – or $253 million - in the first four months of 2020 as a result of mass job losses across the Gulf. Borders and supply route closures have led to food shortages and food price spikes in the country which imports 90 percent of its food.  

Sahel: Restrictions on movement have prevented herders from driving their livestock to greener pastures for feeding, threatening the livelihoods of millions of people. Just 26 percent of the $2.8bn needed to respond to COVID-19 in the region has been pledged. 

Kadidia Diallo, a female milk producer in Burkina Faso, told Oxfam: “COVID-19 is causing us a lot of harm. Giving my children something to eat in the morning has become difficult. We are totally dependent on the sale of milk, and with the closure of the market we can’t sell the milk anymore. If we don’t sell milk, we don't eat.”

As COVID-19 devastates already fragile health systems, over 6,000 additional children under five could die a day, without urgent action

Via ReliefWeb, a UNICEF news release: As COVID-19 devastates already fragile health systems, over 6,000 additional children under five could die a day, without urgent action. Excerpt:

NEW YORK, 13 MAY 2020 – An additional 6,000 children could die every day from preventable causes over the next six months as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to weaken health systems and disrupt routine services, UNICEF said today. 

The estimate is based on an analysis by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, newly published in The Lancet Global Health journal. Based on the worst of three scenarios in 118 low- and middle-income countries, the analysis estimates that an additional 1.2 million under-five deaths could occur in just six months, due to reductions in routine health service coverage levels and an increase in child wasting.  

These potential child deaths will be in addition to the 2.5 million children who already die before their 5th birthday every six months in the 118 countries included in the study, threatening to reverse nearly a decade of progress on ending preventable under-five mortality. 

Some 56,700 more maternal deaths could also occur in just six months, in addition to the 144,000 deaths that already take place in the same countries over a six-month period.  

“Under a worst-case scenario, the global number of children dying before their fifth birthdays could increase for the first time in decades,” said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore. “We must not let mothers and children become collateral damage in the fight against the virus. And we must not let decades of progress on reducing preventable child and maternal deaths be lost.”

COVID-19: Nearly 1 in 5 young children in the US are not getting enough to eat, new research found

Via The New York Times, appalling news: Nearly 1 in 5 young children in the US are not getting enough to eat, new research found.

Research released Wednesday shows a rise in food insecurity without modern precedent. Nearly a fifth of young children are not getting enough to eat, according to surveys of their mothers by the Brookings Institution. The rate is three times higher than in 2008, at the worst of the Great Recession, reports Jason DeParle. 

When food runs short, parents often skip meals to keep children fed. But a survey of households with children 12 and under by Lauren Bauer, a Brookings fellow in economic studies, found that 17.4 percent reported the children themselves were not eating enough, compared with 5.7 percent during the Great Recession. 

Inadequate nutrition can leave young children with permanent developmental damage. 

“This is alarming,” Ms. Bauer said. “These are households cutting back on portion sizes, having kids skip meals. The numbers are much higher than I expected.”  

Ms. Bauer said disruptions in school meal programs might be part of the problem, with some families unable to reach distribution sites and older siblings at home competing for limited food.

Ms. Bauer has been collecting data for The Hamilton Project’s Future of the Middle Class Initiative Survey of Mothers with Young Children. Analyzing a separate nationally representative sample, The Covid Impact Survey, Ms. Bauer found that nearly 23 percent of households said they lacked money to get enough food, compared with about 16 percent at the worst of the Great Recession. Among households with children, the share without enough food was nearly 35 percent, up from about 21 percent in the previous downturn.  

The findings come as Democrats and Republicans are at odds over proposals to raise food stamp benefits. Democrats want to increase benefits by 15 percent for the duration of the economic downturn, arguing that a similar move in 2009 reduced hunger during the Great Recession. 

Congress has enacted a short-term increase for about 60 percent of the caseload, but the increase omits the poorest recipients. Citing large expansions of other safety-net programs, Republicans say that is sufficient to meet rising needs.

Decline in remittances from COVID-19 pandemic could be hard-felt in Haiti

Via The Haitian Times: Decline in remittances from pandemic could be hard-felt in Haiti. Excerpt:

Members of the Haitian diaspora are among the millions of people throughout the world facing job loss, late payments and other financial burdens, as the economy contracts in response to the novel coronavirus pandemic. 

But few countries rely on remittances from diaspora members as heavily as Haiti. In 2019, remittances represented more than 36% of Haiti’s GDP. The economic slowdown in the developed world could have a serious impact on Haitians who rely on this money to pay for necessities like food.  

According to figures provided by Inter-American Dialogue, an international affairs think tank, remittances to Haiti totaled more than $3.3 billion in 2019, a growth of 4.5% from the previous year. The year-over-year increase prevented Haiti’s economy from further declining, as the country experienced negative economic growth last year, wrote Manuel Orozco, a senior fellow at Inter-American Dialogue, in a March 18 paper, “Migration Remittances and the Impact of the Pandemic,” which examined remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean.  

A decline in remittances could exacerbate an alarming food crisis in Haiti. Free trade policies imposed by industrialized nations since the 1980s have made the country more reliant on imported food, eroding its once-robust agricultural sector and leading to increased unemployment. The crisis has also been exacerbated by natural disasters and the political unrest that ground the country to a halt in 2019.   

Charles Edouard-Denis of Petionville owns a seafood export company called HOPE Haiti. Many of the fishermen he employs are no longer working, after Haitian law required his company to stop fishing for lobsters beginning April 1.   

These employees cannot count on a social safety net, like many workers in the United States.  

“If they were getting some remittances, they’re going to be more dependent on those as time goes by, until we are allowed to start back up again and start producing and exporting,” Edouard-Denis said.

He expressed hope that business will resume by July. Until then, he is helping his employees by paying their full salaries for April and agreeing to pay half of their salaries for both May and June.   

The $1 million worth of seafood HOPE Haiti exports each year by Edouard Denis’s estimate represents a small chunk of Haiti’s export base, one source of foreign exchange and income. Clothing, textiles and cosmetics account for nearly 90% of the roughly $1 billion in goods Haiti exports. Along with remittances, this key source of income has also been threatened by coronavirus. 

Not only COVID-19: New generation of locusts in east Africa ‘extremely alarming’

Via The Irish Times: New generation of locusts in east Africa ‘extremely alarming’. The full report and then another link:

A new generation of desert locusts is spreading across east Africa, posing a significant threat to food supplies across the region.  

Aid organisations and Horn of Africa agriculture ministers were expected to meet on Thursday to discuss the way forward, as well as the impact coronavirus is having on attempts to stop the locusts spreading. 

Last week, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation said the situation in East Africa remains “extremely alarming”. Swarms are gathering and maturing in Ethiopia, Kenya and possibly Somalia, it said in an update. “This represents an unprecedented threat to food security and livelihoods because it coincides with the beginning of the long rains and the planting season.”  

One swarm of locusts can include as many as 150 million insects and travel as far as 150km a day. The UN says a swarm can eat as much food as 35,000 people. 

Sea crossing 

Locusts also lay eggs in the soil, which take two weeks to hatch. While efforts to stop the insects have been ongoing for months, the coronavirus pandemic has interfered with shipments of pesticides, protective clothing and surveillance technology. If not properly combatted, the swarms could increase 400 times by harvest season in June, the UN says. 

The locusts originally crossed the Red Sea from Yemen. Earlier this year, locust swarms reached South Sudan, Djibouti, Sudan, Eritrea, Tanzania and DR Congo, and caused Somalia to declare a state of emergency. In January, a swarm of locusts forced an Ethiopian Airlines plane to divert from its course.  

The UN says the new generation can form swarms 20 times the size of the previous ones. 

In March, Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni said prayer had helped “neutralise” swarms of locusts in his country’s northeast. 

“Prayer is already working,” the 75-year-old said in a national address. “The locusts came but they ate nothing. They had already eaten a lot of things in Kenya and Somalia . . . They were just sitting in trees.”    

Humanitarian crisis 

“I think we gave them a lot of harassment,” said Samuel Kavuma, the general who has been directing the Ugandan army’s operations against the locusts. In a phone call with The Irish Times, Gen Kavuma said the swarms that came earlier this year didn’t even seem to have laid eggs, as expected. 

Speaking to the UN Security Council last week, David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Programme, mentioned the locusts as one of the reasons 2020 could see the world facing the worst humanitarian crisis since the second World War. 

“We’re already facing a perfect storm,” Mr Beasley said, while also talking about changing weather patterns, the wars in Syria and Yemen, crises in South Sudan and the Sahel region, and the coronavirus pandemic. 

“In a worst-case scenario, we could be looking at famine in about three dozen countries and, in fact, in 10 of these countries we already have more than one million people per country who are on the verge of starvation.”

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization has a Desert Locust Situation Update page, which shows the problem extends all the way to Pakistan and India.

COVID-19 will almost double acute hunger by end of 2020

Via the UN's World Food Programme: COVID-19 will almost double acute hunger by end of 2020. Excerpt:

The COVID-19 pandemic will see more than a quarter of a billion people suffering acute hunger by the end of the year, according to new figures from the World Food Programme (WFP). 

Latest numbers indicate the lives and livelihoods of 265 million people in low and middle-income countries will be under severe threat unless swift action is taken to tackle the pandemic, up from a current 135 million. 

That is nearly double the number in the newly published Global Report on Food Crises 2020, which estimates that 135 million people in 55 countries currently face acute hunger as a result chiefly of conflict, the effects of climate change, and economic crises. That report was drawn up prior to the emergence of COVID-19 as a pandemic, and the contrasting figures provide a startling insight into the devastating potential of this virus. 

Concern is highest for those in countries across Africa as well as the Middle East, as the virus threatens lives and livelihoods along with the trading networks they rely on for survival. 

“These new projections show the scale of the catastrophe we are facing,” warned WFP chief economist Arif Husain. “We must make sure that tens of millions of people already on the verge of starvation do not succumb to this virus or to its economic consequences in terms of loss of jobs and incomes. 

“Just like in developed nations, governments are doing all they can to assist their people. We need to do the same for tens of millions of people.” 

The greatest worry is for people living in conflict zones and those forced from their homes and into refugee camps, with countries of concern including northeastern Nigeria, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen. 

“These are the people I’m most worried about,” said Husain. “They did not need COVID-19. Even without it their lives were hanging by a thread. They literally depend on us for their lives. If we cannot get to them for any reason they end up paying the ultimate price. We need to prioritize the people and make sure we’re there. Because if it’s not us, it’s no one else.”

UK: Number of older people diagnosed with malnutrition trebles in a decade

Via The Guardian: Number of older people diagnosed with malnutrition trebles in a decade. Excerpt:

The number of older people diagnosed with malnutrition has more than trebled to almost 500,000 in the past decade, according to research.  

More than 1 million people aged 60 and over – one in 10 – are either malnourished or at risk of malnutrition, the NHS Digital figures showed. 

But because the vast majority of these people – 93% – live at home, their malnourishment often goes unnoticed. The independent Malnutrition Task Force have said that Christmas is an ideal opportunity to spot the signs that people might be struggling to eat enough to keep themselves well. 

“It is shocking that 1.3 million older people suffer from or are at risk of malnutrition in our country and the root of the problem doesn’t just lie with poverty,” said Dianne Jeffrey, the chair of the Malnutrition Task Force. 

“There are other contributing factors which add to the risk. Public health messages that don’t always relate to this age group; a lack of ability to shop, eat and drink at home without help. As well as loneliness and isolation, grief and bereavement, poor physical and mental health or a lack of awareness of the risks by health and social care staff,” she added.  

Data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (Elsa) showed various factors are contributing to the rise in diagnoses of malnutrition among older people. These include over 230,000 people aged 75 and over having difficulty with the physicality of eating, such as cutting up food, and above 1.9 million having difficulty eating food because of a dental condition. 

Not being able to afford to eat may be another cause of malnutrition, particularly for those older people living in poverty. Elsa’s data shows that over 360,000 people aged 50-64 and over 29,000 of 65-74 year-olds admit having to cut or skip meals because they didn’t have enough money. 

“Increasing numbers of people diagnosed with malnutrition is a cause for concern because poor nutrition can be both a cause and consequence of ill health,” said Caroline Abrahams, charity director of Age UK, a member of the task force. 

“Signs will often go unnoticed until they have made a negative impact on health and wellbeing. Malnourishment can cause long-term health problems for otherwise healthy and independent older people. It can also mean more visits to the GP, increased chances of being admitted to hospital and longer recovery times from illness,” she added.  

Treating someone who is malnourished is two or three more times expensive for the healthcare system than someone who is not malnourished and identifying and addressing the problem could result in significant savings. Estimates put the cost of malnutrition on health and social care is expected be at around £13bn by 2020 and that figure is estimated to rise further with the rapidly ageing population.