Day: March 4, 2022

The U.N. children’s agency says it is procuring nearly seven million doses of polio vaccine to inoculate children in Malawi. The action follows a confirmed polio case last month in Malawi’s capital, the first reported in Africa in five years and the first in Malawi in decades.  

Malawi had last reported a polio case in 1992. The country was declared polio-free in 2005 — 15 years before the African continent as a whole was declared polio-free.  

But health experts said the polio strain which paralyzed a three-year-old child last month is similar to one in Pakistan, and noted that the child was not fully vaccinated against polio. 

UNICEF said the planned mass immunization will target the unvaccinated as well as children previously vaccinated, so all can have full protection from the polio virus.  

Rudolf Schwenk, UNICEF’s representative in Malawi, said preparations are under way for the first round of vaccinations, expected to start March 21. 

“We are installing new vaccine refrigerators, repairing vaccine refrigerators already in use or available at district level, and distributing vaccine carriers and cold boxes,” he said. 

George Jobe, executive director for the Malawi Heath Equity Network, said the emphasis should be on convincing mothers to have trust in vaccines, which has eroded because of misconceptions associated with COVID-19 vaccines.   

“There is need for more awareness raising by government of Malawi, different partners including UNICEF itself, and when doing that awareness raising, it should be made clear that vaccines for children have been there, earlier that the COVID-19 vaccine, and these are routine in Malawi,” Jobe said. 

Schwenk said the training of health workers and community leaders is already under way. 

Malawi provides a polio vaccine that targets polio virus type 1 and type 3, following the eradication of polio virus type 2 many years back. 

UNICEF said the oral polio vaccine to be administered is for wild poliovirus type 1.

The U.N. agency said the 6.9 million doses will cover the first two rounds of the mass immunization campaign in March and April. It says more vaccine is expected to cover all four rounds of the polio immunization campaign, expected to end in June.   

In the meantime, experts from the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative are working to detect any other potential cases in Malawi and neighboring countries. 

 
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The head of Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, is again threatening to end service to the International Space Station, saying Russia will stop supplying rocket engines to the United States and may curtail cooperation on the station in retaliation for Western sanctions against Russia for the invasion of Ukraine. NASA says operations on the orbiting observatory are normal.  

In an interview with Russian state television Thursday, Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said, considering the situation, “We can’t supply the United States with our world’s best rocket engines. Let them fly on something else, their broomsticks, I don’t know what.”

Rogozin said Russia has delivered 122 RD-180 engines to the U.S. since the 1990s, of which 98 have been used to power Atlas launch vehicles. The Washington Post said the engines are also used by United Launch Alliance, the joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing to launch national security missions for the Pentagon. 

Russia said it would cut off the supply of the RD-181 engines used in Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket, which is used to fly cargo and supplies to the International Space Station. 

Projects with Germans scrapped

Rogozin tweeted Thursday that Russian cosmonauts would not cooperate with Germany on joint experiments on the Russian segment of the ISS. Roscosmos will conduct them independently. He went on to say the “Russian space program will be adjusted against the backdrop of sanctions; the priority will be the creation of satellites in the interests of defense.” 

Earlier in the week, in another interview with state television, Rogozin noted Russia is responsible for space station navigation, as well as fuel deliveries to the orbiting lab. He said Roscosmos “will closely monitor the actions of our American partners and, if they continue to be hostile, we will return to the question of the existence of the International Space Station.”

Russia had announced earlier that it was suspending cooperation with Europe on space launches from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana in response to Western sanctions.

Cooperation in space has traditionally avoided politics, and when asked about the situation Tuesday during a meeting of the NASA Advisory Council, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said, “Despite the challenges here on Earth, and they are substantial …. NASA continues the working relationship with all our international partners to ensure their safety and the ongoing safe operations of the ISS.”

Some information for this report came from Reuters.
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Software giant Microsoft announced Friday that it is suspending “all new sales of Microsoft products and services in Russia” over that country’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Like the rest of the world, we are horrified, angered and saddened by the images and news coming from the war in Ukraine and condemn this unjustified, unprovoked and unlawful invasion by Russia,” the company said in a statement.

The company added that it was ‘stopping many aspects of our business in Russia in compliance with governmental sanctions decisions.’

Many companies have announced they are ending or limiting their activity in Russia. Some companies include Apple, Nike and Dell Technologies.

Microsoft added that it will continue to work with Ukraine to protect the country from Russian cyberattacks, noting it already had during an attack on a “major Ukrainian broadcaster.”

“Since the war began, we have acted against Russian positioning, destructive or disruptive measures against more than 20 Ukrainian government, IT and financial sector organizations,” Microsoft said. “We have also acted against cyberattacks targeting several additional civilian sites. We have publicly raised our concerns that these attacks against civilians violate the Geneva Convention.”

Some information in this report comes from Reuters.

 
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Even before Russian forces shelled the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, sparking a fire in a nearby building early Friday, Ukraine’s main nuclear regulatory agency had sought “immediate assistance” from the international nuclear agency.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said Wednesday he had received a letter from the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine (SNRIU) asking for “immediate assistance to ensure the safety of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and other nuclear facilities in the country.”

Grossi said the IAEA had begun consultations on the request.

The letter submitted to IAEA by the Ukraine agency said the staff at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant had been kept at the site since Russian military forces took control of it a week ago. The agency said the staff members were facing “psychological pressure and moral exhaustion,” Grossi said.

He cautioned that the staff must be allowed to rest and rotate schedules “so that their crucial work can be carried out safely and securely.”

Early Friday, Russian forces shelled Europe’s largest nuclear plant, Zaporizhzhia, sparking a fire in a building outside the plant, Ukraine’s state emergency service said on Friday. The plant produces about 25% of Ukraine’s power.

Initially, the mayor of the nearby town of Enerhodar said the plant was on fire. But a short time later, the plant director told Ukraine 24 television that the fire had started outside the building perimeter and that security seemed to be restored to the facility, according to Reuters.

IAEA Director General Grossi said the event highlights once again why he has repeatedly stressed that any military or other action that could threaten the safety or security of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants must be avoided.

“I remain gravely concerned about the deteriorating situation in Ukraine, especially about the country’s nuclear power plants, which must be able to continue operating without any safety or security threats,” he said. “Any accident caused as a result of the military conflict could have extremely serious consequences for people and the environment, in Ukraine and beyond.”

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of “nuclear terror” after the Zaporizhzhia plant shelling, Agence France-Presse reported.

The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant has been undergoing decommissioning since an accident in 1986 caused a meltdown of one of its nuclear reactors. Significant amounts of nuclear material remain in various facilities at the site in the form of spent fuel and other radioactive waste.

Ukraine also has 15 other operational nuclear reactors at four sites in the country, providing roughly half of its electricity, which SNRIU reported Thursday continue to operate normally.

The IAEA, in a statement, said it is monitoring developments in Ukraine, with a special focus on the safety and security of its nuclear power reactors. The IAEA remains in constant contact with its counterpart and will continue to provide regular updates on the situation in Ukraine.

War-related dangers

Richard Weitz, director of the Center for Political-Military Analysis at the Hudson Institute in Washington, told VOA the most significant danger at the Chernobyl plant comes from possible damage to the confinement structure due to hostilities.

He said the reactors elsewhere in Ukraine, which do not have confinement structures, are vulnerable to being hit by missiles.

“This is the first time we’ve had a war between two countries that have large civilian nuclear power complexes. And that, I think, is even a greater risk than Chernobyl that something’s going to happen to disrupt the shielding and safety of one of those reactors,” Weitz said.

Chary Rangacharyulu, a physics and engineering professor at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, said the Russians may try to use the nuclear plants for political leverage, but he doubts they are “so foolish to destroy those facilities and let out radioactivities into the atmosphere.”

“However, if they make mistakes and blow up a facility or two, the harm will not be limited to Ukraine. It will go beyond. Russia and Belarus are the neighboring countries that will be very much affected. Let us hope and pray that the Russian government is not that insane to cause harm to its own people,” he said in a written response to questions from VOA.

Wade Allison, a professor of physics and a fellow at Keble College at Oxford University in England, said he saw no threat posed by the Chernobyl situation because “there have been no active nuclear reactors at Chernobyl since 2000. Spent fuel is not a problem.”

VOA’s Tatiana Vorozhko contributed to this report. 

 
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