Day: December 8, 2022
Aid workers in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo warned Thursday of a possible “health disaster” because of an alarming surge in cholera cases in makeshift camps for displaced people.
Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, said that between November 26 and December 7, 256 patients had been admitted to its cholera treatment center in Munigi, near the eastern city of Goma.
A third of them were children under five, the aid agency added.
“In just 10 days, the number of people suspected of having cholera has increased alarmingly,” MSF said in a statement.
More than 177,000 people were “now trapped in dire conditions” in the Nyiragongo area north of the city, having fled the advance of the M23 rebel group in recent weeks.
And as heavy showers fell during the rainy season, these displaced people were forced to live in shelters made from nothing more than branches and tarpaulin.
“We have neither showers nor toilets,” Nyira Safari, the mother of an eight-year-old girl with cholera symptoms, told MSF.
She took her daughter, who was “very weak and could barely stand,” to an MSF-supported health center for treatment.
Aid response inadequate
Tens of thousands of people are living packed together with no access to sanitation.
“Given the lack of food, shelter, latrines and showers, all the ingredients are there for a health disaster,” said Simplice Ngar-One, head of MSF’s cholera response in Goma.
“Despite our repeated calls, the current humanitarian response is far from adequate,” Ngar-One said. “That is just not understandable, as these people are only a few kilometers from Goma, home to many humanitarian organizations.”
The M23, a mostly Congolese Tutsi group, resumed fighting in late 2021 after lying dormant for years, and has seized swathes of territory north of Goma.
Kinshasa accuses Rwanda of providing the M23 with support — something that U.N. experts and U.S. officials have also pointed to in recent months.
But Kigali has accused the DRC of collusion with the FDLR, a former Rwandan Hutu rebel group established in the DRC after the genocide of the Tutsi community in 1994 in Rwanda.
The World Health Organization reports COVID-19 cases are continuing their downward spiral in Africa but warns the pandemic is not over and nations must remain vigilant.
Following a recent four-week resurgence of COVID-19, cases and deaths once again are dropping in Africa. Since this month-long spike ended on November 20, the World Health Organization has recorded slightly more than 12,300 new cases and 50 deaths.
The WHO regional director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, said these numbers are at their lowest levels since the start of the pandemic in 2020.
“Despite the recent uptick, there is hope that Africa will be spared the challenges of the previous two years when surging cases marred the holiday season for many,” said Moeti. “While the current efforts keep the pandemic within control, we are carefully monitoring its evolution. We must remain vigilant and be ready to adopt more stringent preventive measures if necessary.”
Moeti said investments in COVID-19 management over the last three years are paying off and the region is better able to cope with the virus. She notes the number of intensive care unit beds has increased and medical oxygen production has grown.
She said Africa also has strengthened its laboratory capacity including conducting genomic sequencing. But she added that worrisome gaps in vaccination remain, especially among the most vulnerable.
Moeti said it is urgent that health workers be vaccinated to protect them from getting severe illness and dying. Other high-risk groups who must be vaccinated, she said, include the elderly, people living with HIV, and those who have potentially life-threatening conditions such as diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease.
“These, in our view, are the groups in which we need to … really push, accelerate in coverage, increasing the proportion of people that are covered and reaching the highest level of coverage possible, while also, of course, making sure that those of them who took their first series of vaccines early also are boosted so to sustain the level of immunity, particularly protect them against severe illness,” she said.
The WHO reports only 26 percent of Africans are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Regional director Moeti said greater coverage can be achieved and more people reached by integrating COVID-19 vaccination into routine immunization and primary health care services.
As the pandemic winds down, she said, COVID-19 should be brought out of an emergency response mode and integrated into routine health care.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has set global malaria control efforts back, especially in Africa, the World Health Organization says.
However, this year’s World Malaria Report says countries were able to lessen disruptions to prevention, testing and treatment.
In 2019, before the pandemic struck, there were 568,000 malaria deaths. Despite the pandemic and other humanitarian emergencies, WHO information shows concerted action by countries has prevented the worst potential impacts of COVID-19-related disruptions to malaria services.
WHO officials say the world has largely managed to salvage many of the gains made against malaria during the past 20 years.
Abdisalan Noor, head of the WHO Global Malaria Program’s Strategic Information unit, said malaria cases dramatically increased in the first year of the pandemic. However, he said the number of cases last year remained largely the same as in 2020.
“Overall, however, the pandemic and its related disruptions have led to increases in malaria burden over the last two years, and we estimate that about 63,000 deaths and about 13 million cases [were] attributed to disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said.
Most deaths and cases have occurred in the WHO African region, Noor said, adding that progress in malaria control is continuing. For example, he said 11 countries with the world’s highest malaria levels have largely held the line against the disease during the pandemic. Among them are Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Mali and Tanzania,
Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, Noor said nearly 300 million insecticide-treated bed nets were distributed to susceptible families. Bed nets are regarded as the most important tool against malaria, and their declining effectiveness is of concern.
Noor cited growing insecticide resistance and households’ decreasing retention of bed nets as major problems.
“In particular, because of the physical durability of the bed net itself as well as the maintenance of the bed net in the household … we are not getting the gains we would have hoped for from the ITN [insecticide-treated net], which essentially means that given that mass campaigns have been every three years, we have a considerable period between campaigns when people are not receiving effective protection,” he said.
WHO officials consider the current setback as a temporary glitch on the road to global malaria elimination. They say key opportunities, such as a new generation of malaria control tools, could help accelerate progress toward this goal.
They say long-lasting bed nets with new insecticide combinations and other innovations in vector control are in the offing, and by late next year, the world’s first malaria vaccine will be offered to millions of children. Also, they add, other lifesaving malaria vaccines are in development.
Taiwanese chip giant TSMC is building a second U.S. facility in the southwest state of Arizona, highlighting the Biden Administration’s push to bring more of the semiconductor supply chain to the United States. But are there enough trained workers there to meet the demand? Michelle Quinn has our story from Arizona, where they are ramping up training for workers and students at all levels. Videographer: Levi Stallings
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After more than half a century, the last Boeing 747 rolled out of a Washington state factory on Tuesday.
The 747 jumbo jet has taken on numerous roles — a cargo plane, a commercial aircraft capable of carrying nearly 500 passengers, and the Air Force One presidential aircraft — since it debuted in 1969. It was the largest commercial aircraft in the world and the first with two aisles, and it still towers over most other planes.
The plane’s design included a second deck extending from the cockpit back over the first third of the plane, giving it a distinctive hump that made the plane instantly recognizable and inspired a nickname, the Whale. More elegantly, the 747 became known as the Queen of the Skies.
It took more than 50,000 Boeing employees less than 16 months to churn out the first 747. The company has completed 1,573 more since then.
But over the past 15 years or so, Boeing and its European rival Airbus released new wide-body planes with two engines instead of the 747’s four. They were more fuel-efficient and profitable.
Delta was the last U.S. airline to use the 747 for passenger flights, which ended in 2017, although some other international carriers continue to fly it, including the German airline Lufthansa.
The final customer is the cargo carrier Atlas Air, which ordered four 747-8 freighters early this year. The last was scheduled to roll out of Boeing’s massive factory in Everett, Washington, on Tuesday night.
Boeing’s roots are in the Seattle area, and it has assembly plants in Washington state and South Carolina. The company announced in May that it would move its headquarters from Chicago to Arlington, Virginia.
The move to the Washington, D.C., area puts its executives closer to key federal government officials and the Federal Aviation Administration, which certifies Boeing passenger and cargo planes.
Boeing’s relationship with the FAA has been strained since the deadly crashes of its best-selling plane, the 737 Max, in 2018 and 2019. The FAA took nearly two years — far longer than Boeing expected — to approve design changes and allow the plane back in the air.
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Britain’s Conservative government on Wednesday approved the United Kingdom’s first new coal mine in three decades, a decision condemned by environmentalists as a leap backwards in the fight against climate change.
Hours earlier, the government reversed a ban on building new onshore windfarms in Britain. Opponents called that announcement a cynical attempt to offset criticism of the mine decision.
Cabinet Minister Michael Gove decided the mine in the Cumbria area of northwest England would have “an overall neutral effect on climate change and is thus consistent with government policies for meeting the challenge of climate change,” the government said.
It said coal from the mine would be used to make steel — replacing imported coal — rather than for power generation.
The mine will extract coking coal, the type used in steelmaking, from under the Irish Sea and process it on the site of a shuttered chemical plant in Whitehaven, a town 550 kilometers northwest of London.
Supporters say the mine will bring much-needed jobs to an area hard hit by the closure of its mines and factories in recent decades.
Opponents say the mine is a major blow to the U.K.’s status as a world leader in replacing polluting fossil fuels with clean renewable energy. They argue it will undermine global efforts to phase out coal and make it harder for Britain to meet its goals of generating 100% of electricity from clean energy sources by 2035 and reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
John Gummer, a Conservative politician who heads the Climate Change Committee, a government advisory body, said the decision “sends entirely the wrong signal to other countries about the U.K.’s climate priorities.”
Doug Parr, policy director at Greenpeace U.K., said “the U.K. government risks becoming a superpower in climate hypocrisy rather than climate leadership. How can we possibly expect other countries to rein in fossil fuel extraction when we’re building new coal mines here?”
Britain has taken steps to bolster its domestic energy supply since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent oil and gas prices soaring. The U.K. imports little Russian oil or gas, but its lightly regulated energy market leaves customers highly exposed to price fluctuations.
Many homes and businesses have seen bills double or triple in the past year, though a government price cap — due to end in April — has prevented even steeper hikes.
The invasion of Ukraine has made countries across Europe reconsider plans to cut their use of fossil fuels. Britain has also approved more North Sea oil and gas drilling, while the Czech Republic reversed a plan to stop coal mining in a key region.
France recently restarted a shuttered coal plant, abandoning an earlier vow by President Emmanuel Macron to close all coal-burning plants in the country by the end of this year.
The mine decision came a day after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak lifted a ban on building new windfarms on British soil.
Wind produced more than a quarter of the U.K.’s electricity in 2021. But since 2015, the Conservative government has opposed new wind turbines on land because of local opposition. A majority of Britain’s wind farms are at sea.
While running for the Conservative Party’s leadership in the summer, Sunak pledged to keep the ban. But amid growing calls for change from Conservative lawmakers, the government said Tuesday it could allow wind farms in areas where communities support them, pending a “technical consultation.”
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