Month: October 2023

Bird flu has been detected in the Antarctica region for the first time, according to British experts, raising concerns the deadly virus could pose a threat to penguins and other local species.

Scientists had been fearing that the worst outbreak of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) in history would reach Antarctica, a key breeding ground for many birds.

The British Antarctic Survey said its staff took samples from brown skua seabirds after they died on Bird Island in South Georgia, a British overseas territory east of South America’s tip and north of Antarctica’s main landmass.

The tests were sent to Britain and came back positive, the U.K.’s polar research institute said in a statement on Monday.

The virus was most likely brought by birds returning from their migration to South America, where there has been a huge number of bird flu cases, it added.

Visitors to South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands are under enhanced biosecurity measures, and scientific field work involving birds there has been stopped, the statement said.

There have been regular bird flu outbreaks since the virus first emerged in 1996.

Since mid-2021, much larger outbreaks started to spread southward to previously untouched areas including South America, leading to mass deaths among wild birds and tens of millions of poultry being culled.

‘Devastating news’

Michelle Wille, a bird flu expert at the University of Melbourne, said the spread of bird flu to the Antarctica region was “devastating news.”

“The situation could change rapidly,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Ian Brown, virology head at the U.K.’s Animal and Plant Health Agency, warned last week that there was a risk migrating birds could spread the virus from South America to the Antarctica islands and then onto the main landmass.

This could be a “real concern” for populations of birds such as penguins that are unique to Antarctica, he told journalists.

Birds such as penguins that have never before been exposed to the virus would have no prior immunity, potentially making them more vulnerable.

In better news, the Animal Plant Health Agency also said last week that preliminary research had confirmed that the populations of two seabirds — northern gannets and shag — had shown immunity to bird flu.

Humans rarely catch bird flu, but when they do it is usually via direct contact with infected birds.

Earlier this month, a two-year-old girl died from bird flu in Cambodia, the third death recorded in the country this year.

The virus has also been detected in a growing number of mammals, raising fears it could mutate into a version that is more transmissible between humans. 
…

Thirty-three U.S. states are suing Meta Platforms Inc., accusing it of damaging young people’s mental health through the addictive nature of their social media platforms.

The suit filed Tuesday in federal court in Oakland, California, alleges Meta knowingly installed addictive features on its social media platforms, Instagram and Facebook, and has collected data on children younger than 13, without their parents’ consent, violating federal law.

“Research has shown that young people’s use of Meta’s social media platforms is associated with depression, anxiety, insomnia, interference with education and daily life, and many other negative outcomes,” the complaint says.

The filing comes after Meta’s own research in 2021 found that the company was aware of the damage Instagram can do to teenagers, especially girls.

In Meta’s 2021 study, 13.5% of teen girls said Instagram makes thoughts of suicide worse and 17% of teen girls said it makes eating disorders worse.

Meta responded to the lawsuit by saying it has “already introduced over 30 tools to support teens and their families.”

“We’re disappointed that instead of working productively with companies across the industry to create clear, age-appropriate standards for the many apps teens use, the attorneys general have chosen this path,” the company added.

Meta is one of many social media companies facing criticism and legal action, with lawsuits also filed against ByteDance’s TikTok and Google’s YouTube.

Measures to protect children on social media exist, but they are easily circumvented, such as a federal law that bans kids under 13 from setting up accounts.

The dangers of social media for children have been highlighted by U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, who said the effects of social media require “immediate action to protect kids now.”

In addition to the 33 states suing, nine more state attorneys general are expected to join and file similar lawsuits.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 
…

Phoenix, Arizona, in America’s Southwest, is the site of a Taiwanese semiconductor chip making facility. One part of President Joe Biden’s cornerstone agenda is to rely less on manufacturing from overseas and boost domestic production of chips that run everything from phones to cars. Many Taiwanese workers who moved to the U.S. to work at the facility — face the challenges of living in a new land. VOA’s Stella Hsu, Enming Liu and Elizabeth Lee have the story.
…

Artificial intelligence companies and governments should allocate at least one third of their AI research and development funding to ensuring the safety and ethical use of the systems, top AI researchers said in a paper on Tuesday. 

The paper, issued a week before the international AI Safety Summit in London, lists measures that governments and companies should take to address AI risks. 

“Governments should also mandate that companies are legally liable for harms from their frontier AI systems that can be reasonably foreseen and prevented,” according to the paper written by three Turing Award winners, a Nobel laureate, and more than a dozen top AI academics. 

Currently there are no broad-based regulations focusing on AI safety, and the first set of legislation by the European Union is yet to become law as lawmakers are yet to agree on several issues.

“Recent state of the art AI models are too powerful, and too significant, to let them develop without democratic oversight,” said Yoshua Bengio, one of the three people known as the godfather of AI.

“It [investments in AI safety] needs to happen fast, because AI is progressing much faster than the precautions taken,” he said.

Authors include Geoffrey Hinton, Andrew Yao, Daniel Kahneman, Dawn Song and Yuval Noah Harari.

Since the launch of OpenAI’s generative AI models, top academics and prominent CEOs such as Elon Musk have warned about the risks on AI, including calling for a six-month pause in developing powerful AI systems.

Some companies have countered this, saying they will face high compliance costs and disproportionate liability risks.

“Companies will complain that it’s too hard to satisfy regulations — that ‘regulation stifles innovation’ — that’s ridiculous,” said British computer scientist Stuart Russell.

“There are more regulations on sandwich shops than there are on AI companies.” 
…

The World Health Organization reported Monday that progress was being made in efforts to prevent and respond to cases of sexual misconduct but acknowledged that abuse by WHO staff remained problematic.  

“For the past two years, WHO has intensified our work to prevent and respond to any form of sexual misconduct, sexual exploitation, sexual harassment, said Gaya Gamhewage, director of prevention and response to sexual misconduct at WHO.

“However, the numbers are still going up for the simple reason, I believe, that all the cases have not surfaced yet. So, the numbers will keep going up for some time. But this does not mean that what we are doing is not having any effect. In fact, what we are doing is surfacing this issue, as well,” she said.

The numbers would seem to bear this out. Over the past 12 months, the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services, or IOS, reports it has investigated 287 allegations of sexual misconduct in all WHO regions.

Gamhewage said, “WHO is working on preventing and responding to sexual misconduct related to its own workforce—our staff, our contractors, our implementing partners.  This does not include numbers for peacekeepers.”

Approximately 83 of these cases are related to the 10th Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with 25% of that number pertaining to alleged abuse by WHO personnel.  

According to a WHO press release, the remaining allegations were related to other agencies operating during the outbreak. The WHO received investigation reports related only to accusations against people associated with the WHO, including consultants and other contractors.

“Since 2021, we have entered the names of 25 alleged perpetrators of sexual misconduct into the U.N. Clear Check database to prevent future employment within the U.N. system,” said LisaMcClennon, IOS director.

“Several have been dismissed, including five staff members related to findings of sexual conduct during the period. And several former personnel were informed that their actions would have led to termination had they still been in service.”

The Democratic Republic of Congo announced its 10th Ebola outbreak on August 1, 2018, in the country’s volatile Eastern provinces, claiming 2,299 lives by the time WHO declared the epidemic over on June 25, 2020.

WHO created a special unit in November 2021 to address sexual misconduct to rid the organization of exploitative behavior.  This was triggered by a sexual scandal which erupted during the Ebola epidemic involving many responders including peacekeepers, U.N. personnel, and contractors.

McClennon said the 83 alleged perpetrators identified in the report are connected to that 2018-2020 mission in the DRC.

“WHO has been taking required follow-up action for each of these cases, including information shared with the national authorities, referral to other U.N. agencies and issuing case closure letters to the alleged subjects,” McClennon said. “While reports are confidential, we are taking disciplinary action in the substantiated cases.”

WHO reports that the highest number of alleged sexual perpetrators are found in Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean.

“We do not like to reveal which countries because we can identify alleged perpetrators and it can actually interfere with the investigation,” Gamhewage said.

The WHO official said she believed populations in these regions are highly vulnerable to sexual abuse due to the large number of countries affected by health emergencies and humanitarian crises, explaining that the large U.N. presence in these countries was in response to the enormous needs.

“We know sexual misconduct happens when there is a power differential, and that power differential is used for sexual exploitation. And this used to happen with impunity.

“But with the work we are doing, we are getting complaints and concerns raised. So, I think we should not expect numbers to go down any time soon,” Gamhewage said. “What we want is to surface all of the numbers, so Lisa [McClennon] and her team can assess which ones need to be investigated.”

Gamhewage said it was important to listen to the testimony and experience of any victim or survivor.

“What we need to do is understand there could be a risk there, and then we can start preventive action,” she said.

Since it was unlikely that sexual misconduct could be completely eradicated, Gamhewage said, “What we are looking for is zero tolerance, not for zero cases.”
…

The world is moving too slowly to meet pledges to end deforestation by 2030, with the destruction worsening in 2022, according to a report by a coalition of environmental organizations released on Monday.

More than 140 countries – representing the vast majority of the world’s woodlands – pledged at the 2021 United Nations climate summit in Glasgow to halt and reverse forest loss and degradation by the end of the decade.

Yet deforestation increased by 4% worldwide in 2022 compared with 2021, as some 66,000 square kilometers (25,000 square miles) were destroyed, the annual Forest Declaration Assessment report said. That means the world is 21% off track to end deforestation by 2030.

“The world’s forests are in crisis. The opportunity to make progress is passing us by,” said Erin Matson, a senior consultant at environmental group Climate Focus.

The report was conducted by a coalition of civil society and research organizations who assess progress toward pledges to eliminate deforestation by 2030.

That includes the Glasgow pledge and the 2014 New York Declaration on Forests, which saw a shorter list of countries as well as dozens of the world’s biggest companies make a similar commitment.

Efforts to preserve old-growth tropical forests — prized for their dense carbon content and rich biodiversity — are 33% off track, with 4.1 million hectares lost in 2022, according to the study.

In a news briefing, the researchers involved in the report stressed that the annual $2.2 billion in public funds channeled to projects to protect forests every year is a fraction of the investment needed.

The study also looked beyond deforestation to analyze forest degradation, with one researcher estimating the area of degraded forests to be much larger than the area of global deforestation.

Drivers of forest degradation include logging activities, livestock grazing, and road construction, according to Climate Focus.

But some parts of the world are making progress, said Franziska Haupt, a lead author and managing partner at consultancy Climate Focus.

Haupt said that some 50 countries are on track to end forest loss, with Brazil, Indonesia and Malaysia showing drastic reductions in deforestation.

“Hope isn’t lost,” Haupt said. “These countries set clear examples that others must follow.”

Brazil, which is responsible for around 30 percent of the world’s deforestation, has seen a significant turnaround with a new government that is much more committed to fighting deforestation than the last, said a WWF Brazil representative during the news conference.

“This showcases what could happen when countries with good laws and the books actually invest in enforcing them,” said Darragh Conway, lead on rights & governance for the Forest Declaration Assessment.
…

Nigeria is ramping up its environmental education efforts as floods and soil erosion increase due to climate change. The latest education initiative is a card game called Play, Learn and Act Now, or PLAN. Gibson Emeka has this story from Abuja, Nigeria.
…

The coming election to choose the World Health Organization’s next chief of the South-East Asia Regional Office, or SEARO, has become contentious as the person who takes up that post could influence the health of billions of people. 

The daughter of Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is one of two candidates for the SEARO position. Saima Wazed’s nomination has sparked controversy with many health experts calling it “nepotism,” and expressing concern over the election process to fill senior roles at the U.N. health body. 

A candidate for the SEARO post should have a “strong technical and public health background and extensive experience in global health”, according to the WHO website. The candidate should also have “competency in organizational management” and “proven historical evidence for public health leadership”, the website says.

The next SEARO chief will be elected through a secret ballot by the region’s 11 member countries, which include Bangladesh, Nepal and India. The vote is scheduled to take place in New Delhi during a WHO regional committee meeting Oct. 30-Nov. 2. 

Countries in the region nominate candidates to head the WHO regional office.

Wazed was nominated by the government of Bangladesh. 

In addition to Wazed, who is a mental health advocate, only one other candidate has been put forward: Shambhu Acharya, a public health expert and senior WHO official who was nominated by Nepal. 

Questions have been raised about the disparity between the candidates’ qualifications.  

Wazed has a master’s degree in clinical psychology from Barry University, a school in Florida. She has spent nearly a decade serving as an adviser to the director general of the WHO on mental health and autism issues. 

Acharya has been with the WHO for almost 30 years. He has experience working with the U.N. body in senior positions and holds a Ph.D. in public health, health policy and financing from the University of North Carolina. 

Sixteen public health experts in Nepal issued a statement saying that Acharya “is the better fit” of the two candidates vying for the SEARO director’s position. 

“[Acharya] possesses a very strong public health background and has extensive leadership experience in tackling global health issues,” the statement said. 

“He knows the public health and medical challenges of our region intimately, having worked for three decades to strengthen responses at local, national, regional and global levels, including in Nepal, Bangladesh and India, apart from his responsibilities at [the] WHO headquarters in Geneva.” 

So far there have not been any public statements of support for Wazed from public health experts in Bangladesh.  

Right now a strong anti-Hasina wave is sweeping Bangladesh, ahead of next general election all likely to be held in January. With the US closely monitoring the forthcoming election in Bangladesh many believe the ruling Awami League party will not be able to rig the elections this time and lose power. In such a situation many, long-known as pro-Awami League groups, are not speaking in support of Hasina, her party and family members now. 

However, AK Abdul Momen, Bangladesh’s foreign minister spoke in support of Wazed’s candidacy several days ago. 

In an interview with the Indian newspaper The Hindu, the minister demanded that Nepal withdraw its candidate from the contest for the WHO-SEARO post.

“[Nepal’s candidate] had been working in the WHO for the last 30 years and was in a decision-making position. So why have [health indices] not improved in the whole of the South East Asian region, even though he himself is a person of South Asian origin?” Momen asked while adding that Acharya should “step down” from the race for the WHO-SEARO post.

Wazed, who has held advisory positions at some Bangladesh government mental health bodies, rebuffed accusations that her nomination was “fueled by nepotism” because her mother is the prime minister. She said those critical of her nomination were overlooking her experience and achievements in the field of mental health. 

“They ignore that I have been an adviser to WHO’s DG on Mental Health & Autism, or that I have been a member of the WHO’s Expert Advisory Panel on mental health for almost a decade,” Wazed wrote in an Inter Press Service opinion piece earlier this month. 

“They do not mention that I am [the] chief adviser to Bangladesh’s National Mental Health Strategic Plan, or that I was a technical expert for Bangladesh’s National Mental Health Act of 2018,” she wrote.

Bangladesh’s nomination of Wazed has also come under scrutiny by several activists and public health experts. 

Bishow Parajuli, former U.N. resident coordinator and U.N. Development Program representative in Myanmar and Zimbabwe, said that Wazed has limited experience and qualifications to assume such a leadership position. 

“In a country with so many qualified and competent health professionals, the nomination of Ms. Wazed, and her use of the Prime Ministerial Office to engage with the various world leaders, also shows nepotism and the influence of her mother’s office in the process. …The selection must be made ‘on the basis of merits,’” he said in emailed comments. 

Paris-based Bangladeshi social activist and physician Pinaki Bhattacharya said Wazed has none of the required qualifications for the WHO-SEARO post.

“Hasina and her daughter are not aware that while being a descendant of the powerful can give one political advantage, the position of a professional international health leader requires the necessary education, skills and talent,” he told VOA. 

In recent weeks, Wazed accompanied her mother, Sheikh Hasina, on a high-profile diplomatic tour attending the U.N. General Assembly in New York and the summit in New Delhi of the 20 biggest economies, known as the G20. Wazed accompanied Prime Minister Hasina during her meetings with U.S. President Joe Biden, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Wazed said she is used to being held to different professional standards than men, and having her identity reduced to simply being “her mother’s daughter,” which is blatant sexism, Wazed said.

Wazed has not responded to a VOA email requesting direct comment on the nepotism issue.

Kent Buse is director of the Global Healthier Societies Program at The George Institute for Global Health at Imperial College London. Buse told VOA that the rules governing the selection of directors across all WHO regions need considerable reform to ensure public confidence in the merit-based nature of the organization. 

“This relates to improving transparency and delivering enhanced oversight of the election process. This should include better scrutiny of the candidate’s compliance with the existing codes of conduct governing the campaign processes.”
…

Countries are deadlocked over how to design a fund to help countries recover and rebuild from climate change-driven damage, with just over 30 days left before crucial United Nations climate negotiations kick off in Dubai.  

Two dozen countries involved in a committee tasked with designing a “loss and damage” fund wrapped up the last meeting in the early hours of Saturday in Aswan, Egypt, with developing and developed countries at odds over central questions: which entity should oversee the fund, who should pay and which countries would be eligible to receive funding.  

The committee was expected to draft a list of recommendations for implementing the fund, which was agreed in a breakthrough last year at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, and would be the first U.N. fund dedicated to addressing irreparable climate-driven damage from drought, floods and rising sea levels.  

Instead, the group agreed to meet one more time in Abu Dhabi on Nov. 3 before the COP28 U.N. summit begins in Dubai on Nov. 30 to try to bridge divisions, which could set the tone for the two-week climate negotiations.  

“The entire COP28 negotiations could get derailed if developing countries’ priorities on funding for loss and damage are not adequately addressed,” said Preety Bhandari, a senior adviser on finance at the World Resources Institute.  

Among the most contentious issues last week was whether the World Bank should host the fund – a position pushed by the U.S. and developed countries – or whether the U.N. create a new body to run the fund, as developing countries have urged.  

Housing a fund at the World Bank, whose presidents are appointed by the United States, would give donor countries outsized influence over the fund and result in high fees for recipient countries, developing countries argue.  

“Its operational culture, the way in which the World Bank has been assisting countries in their development policies, I think it’s not fit for purpose in relation to what we’re looking for from this new climate facility,” said Cuba’s U.N. Ambassador Pedro Pedroso Cuesta, chair of the G77 (developing countries) and China.  

He said the creation of a “new independent entity” to run the fund is the core of its position.  

In response to these criticisms, a spokesperson for the World Bank told Reuters: “We are supporting the process and are committed to working with countries once they agree on how to structure the loss and damage fund.”  

The United States, the European Union and others want a more targeted fund. The EU wants a fund dedicated to the most “vulnerable” while the U.S. has said the fund should focus on areas like slow-onset climate impacts such as sea-level rise.  

Countries are also split over who should pay.  

Brandon Wu, director of policy & campaigns for NGO ActionAid USA called on the United States to back off its insistence that the World Bank house the fund.  

U.S. negotiator Christina Chan, a senior adviser to Special Envoy on Climate John Kerry, pushed back on criticism that the U.S. is obstructing progress on loss and damage.  

“We have been working diligently at every turn to address concerns, problem-solve, and find landing zones,” she said.
…

Kenyan developers have designed a mobile phone application that police say is helping to safeguard smartphones from theft, recover stolen cell phones and prevent loss of data. Victoria Amunga reports from Nairobi. Camera: Jimmy Makhulo
…

A California research team is conducting a five-year ecological study of six songbird species in northwestern New Mexico oil fields to see how sensory intrusions affect the birds’ survival, reproduction and general health.

The Santa Fe New Mexican says the study by avian researchers from California Polytechnic State University will zero in on the specific impacts of noise and light pollution.

As the human population swells and generates more light and sound, researchers are curious about how those multiplying stressors might compound the challenges of climate change in New Mexico’s San Juan Basin, the newspaper reported.

Clint Francis, an ecology professor at California Polytechnic, said early studies that examined whether excessive noise and light decreased bird populations were done in more urban settings, where the birds were threatened by prowling cats, toxic chemicals and speeding cars.

The next step is to isolate either noise or light in a rural area to see how one or the other affects the songbirds, Francis said.

He did such research in this same northwestern New Mexico region in 2005. This time the aim is to observe how the two together affect the birds in a locale where the conditions can be clearly measured in tandem.

“We try to hold everything constant but vary noise and light pollution to try to understand whether there is, perhaps, surprising cumulative effects when you have both of those stimuli together,” Francis told the New Mexican.

The research will focus on six types of songbirds: ash-throated flycatchers, gray flycatchers, mountain bluebirds, Western bluebirds, chipping sparrows and house finches.

Francis hopes the study will uncover information that can help people adjust their noise and light to coexist better with birds.

The study is being funded by a grant of almost $900,000 from the National Science Foundation.
…

Researchers in the United States have shown for the first time they can safely and effectively infect human volunteers with Zika virus, a step toward learning more about the disease and developing vaccines and treatments.  

The study – known as a “controlled human infection model” – has previously been controversial for Zika because of the risks to participants and lack of treatments. 

But U.S. regulators and the World Health Organization ruled the new model, developed by a team at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, was safe and scientifically important.  

Zika is a viral infection spread by mosquitoes, which is usually mild or asymptomatic. 

But a major outbreak in the Americas in 2015 and 2016 showed it can be dangerous for pregnant women and fetuses, causing devastating birth defects such as microcephaly, a disorder in which a child is born with an abnormally small head and brain.  

There are no vaccines or treatments, and the outbreak in the Americas ended before new ones could be fully tested. Infections have dwindled worldwide since, with about 40,000 reported last year from that region. 

But the WHO has warned that surveillance can be patchy, and transmission patterns for Zika are not well understood. Climate change is also likely to boost the spread, which is already established in 91 countries. 

Anna Durbin, the Johns Hopkins professor who led the study, said developing countermeasures was essential because infections could re-surge. 

Also significant, she added, was the mental health burden on pregnant women in endemic regions, who worry about the virus and their babies — but have limited protection options.  

Durbin and her colleagues used two strains of Zika to infect 20 female volunteers who were not pregnant or lactating. All developed laboratory-confirmed infections, with mild illness. Eight others got a placebo.  

To minimize the risks, the patients were admitted to an inpatient unit and monitored until they were free of the virus. They agreed to use birth control methods for two months.  

The next step is evaluating the strains in male volunteers, in part to assess how long the virus, which can be sexually transmitted, stays infectious in semen.  

Durbin said several vaccine manufacturers have already asked to use the strains to test experimental products.  

The data was presented as an abstract at the annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in Chicago.  
…

The World Health Organization warns that tens of thousands of survivors of a series of powerful 6.3 magnitude earthquakes that struck western Afghanistan’s Herat province between October 7 and 15 are in desperate need of humanitarian aid and essential health services.

“I have personally seen how these multiple earthquakes flattened villages, displaced thousands of people and left many families in urgent need of humanitarian and health assistance,” said Alaa AbouZeid, health emergencies team lead for WHO Afghanistan.

Speaking in Kabul on Friday, AbouZeid said, “Over 114,000 people are in urgent need of lifesaving health assistance. … The health consequences are staggering.”

Those most seriously affected by the disaster, he said, are women, girls, boys and the elderly, “who account for over 90% of the deaths and injuries. Many children are left orphaned.”

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, reports that the earthquakes directly affected more than 66,000 people — about 1,500 killed, some 2,000 injured, at least 3,700 homes destroyed and another 21,300 buildings damaged.

“I have talked to people affected by earthquakes, and the sense of loss is heartbreaking,” said Luo Dapeng, WHO representative in Afghanistan. “Many people spent days digging under the rubble to search for members who either died or got injured.”

According to an initial assessment by the WHO, at least 40 health facilities across nine districts were damaged, resulting in severe disruptions of health services for an estimated 580,000 people.

AbouZeid said health providers were afraid to go into those buildings, which showed visible cracks and risked collapse. “So, most health services for now are provided from tents,” he said, calling the situation untenable.

“We need immediate action to restore, renovate and ensure services that provide health facilities, especially in wintertime. The survivors need water [and] better shelters that can protect them from the harsh winter,” he said.

“Last year, Herat experienced minus 30 degrees centigrade during wintertime, and winter has already started in Afghanistan,” he said. “So, there are needs for water and sanitation to stop any possible disease outbreaks.”

He said that WHO staff in Afghanistan was on the ground within hours of the disaster and able to treat the injured, provide medicine and medical supplies, and give mental health and trauma care.

“Thanks to the long and established presence in Herat, we were able to rapidly mobilize resources … and extend immediate lifesaving support to the affected population at the most critical time of the emergency.”

He said the WHO has deployed 21 female health workers, including doctors and midwives, to Herat to ensure that women have unimpeded access to the health services they need.

“They have been distributed over different facilities to provide services for their female patients, with a special focus on reproductive health services, obstetrics, gynecology services and child health services,” AbouZeid said.

The WHO launched an appeal for $7.9 million Wednesday to provide urgent and essential health services for 114,000 of the most vulnerable people in the next six months.

AbouZeid said the WHO needs to scale up emergency health needs urgently and swiftly “as the upcoming winter season is bringing new health risks and exposure to the affected population currently living outdoors or in tents.”
…