Day: August 24, 2024
GENEVA — U.N. agencies are scaling up cholera prevention and treatment programs to get on top of a new, deadly cholera outbreak in Sudan that threatens to further destabilize communities suffering from hunger and the ill effects of more than 16 months of conflict.
The recent cholera outbreak has resurged after several weeks of heavy rainfall and resulting flooding,” Kristine Hambrouck, UNHCR representative in Sudan, told journalists Friday in Geneva.
Speaking on a video-link from Port Sudan, she warned, “Risks are compounded by the continuing conflict and dire humanitarian conditions, including overcrowding in camps and gathering sites for refugees and Sudanese displaced by the war, as well as limited medical supplies and health workers.”
She expressed particular concern about the spread of the deadly disease in areas hosting refugees, mainly in Kassala, Gedaref and al-Jazirah states.
“In addition to hosting refugees from other countries, these states are also sheltering thousands of displaced Sudanese who have sought safety from ongoing hostilities,” she said.
The United Nations describes Sudan as the largest displacement crisis in the world. Latest figures put the number of people displaced inside Sudan at more than 10.7 million, with an additional 2 million who have fled to neighboring countries as refugees.
Additionally, the UNHCR says Sudan continues to host tens of thousands of refugees from countries such as Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Sudan’s health ministry officially declared a cholera outbreak on August 12. In the one month since the first suspected cases were reported, the World Health Organization says 658 cholera cases and 28 deaths have been reported by five states, “with a high case-fatality ratio of 4.3%.”
Kassala has reported the highest number of cholera cases at 473, followed by Gedaref with 110 cases, and al-Jazairah with 51 cases. Two other states, Khartoum and River Nile, have reported fewer numbers.
“These cases are not linked to the previous cholera outbreak, which had been declared in September 2023,” said Dr. Shible Sahbani, the WHO representative to Sudan, noting that the outbreak “technically ended” in May 2024 after no cases were reported for two consecutive incubation periods.
Speaking from Port Sudan, Sahbani described the situation in Kassala as very worrisome. He said the state’s health system already was under stress because of the large number of displaced people and refugees living there. “So, the health system is not able to cope with the additional influx of refugees and IDPs [internally displaced persons].”
“But in addition to that, it puts a big burden on the WASH system — the water, sanitation, and hygiene system. So, this makes the situation more complicated in favor of the spread of cholera,” he said.
Besides the dangers posed by cholera, UNICEF representative Hambrouck also warns of an increasing number of cases of waterborne diseases, including malaria and diarrhea, which also need to be brought under control.
“Constraints in humanitarian access are also impacting response efforts. Violence, insecurity and persistent rainfall are hampering the transportation of humanitarian aid,” she said.
She noted that more than 7.4 million refugees and internally displaced Sudanese living in White Nile, Darfur and Kordofan states are having to do without “critical medicines and relief supplies” because of delays in delivery.
The WHO and UNHCR are working closely with Sudan’s Ministry of Health to coordinate the cholera outbreak response. Among its many initiatives, UNHCR says it is working with health partners to strengthen surveillance, early warning systems and contact tracing in affected locations.
“Disease surveillance and testing are ongoing, and awareness-raising and training on cholera case management for health staff are also being conducted,” said Hambrouck.
For its part, Sahbani said the WHO has prepositioned cholera kits and other essential medical supplies “in high-risk states in anticipation of the risks associated with the rainy season.”
He said the WHO was spearheading a cholera vaccination campaign, noting that “a three-day oral cholera vaccination campaign in two localities of Kassala state concluded Thursday.”
He said the campaign already has used 51,000 doses and “the good news is that we got the approval of an additional 155,000 doses of cholera vaccine. So, this is the good news in the middle of this horrible crisis.”
One dose of the vaccine, he said, would protect the population against cholera for six months, while two doses would provide protection for up to three years.
“So, this is really good news because this will help us to contain the outbreak,” he said. Without more funding, however, he warned the good news will quickly evaporate, noting that the WHO has received just one-third of its $85.6 million appeal.
“This will indeed limit our capacity to launch a robust response to reach a larger segment of the people in need,” he said.
His UNHCR colleague, Hambrouck, echoed the sentiments.
“With the humanitarian situation and funding level already precarious prior to this latest cholera outbreak, funds are desperately needed to support the provision of health care and other life-saving aid,” she said.
…
DALLAS, Texas — Nearly a century after Babe Ruth called his shot during the 1932 World Series, the jersey worn by the New York Yankees slugger when he hit the home run to center field could sell at auction for as much as $30 million.
Heritage Auctions is offering up the jersey Saturday night in Dallas.
Ruth’s famed, debated and often imitated “called shot” came as the Yankees and Chicago Cubs faced off in Game 3 of the World Series at Chicago’s Wrigley Field on October 1, 1932. In the fifth inning, Ruth made a pointing gesture while at bat and then hit a home run off Cubs pitcher Charlie Root.
The Yankees won the game 7-5 and swept the Cubs the next day to win the series.
That was Ruth’s last World Series, and the “called shot” was his last home run in a World Series, said Mike Provenzale, the production manager for Heritage’s sports department.
“When you can tie an item like that to an important figure and their most important moment, that’s what collectors are really looking for,” Provenzale said.
Heritage said Ruth gave the road jersey to one of his golfing buddies in Florida around 1940 and it remained in that family for decades. Then, in the early 1990s, that man’s daughter sold it to a collector. It was then sold at auction in 2005 for $940,000, and that buyer consigned it to Heritage this year.
In 2019, one of Ruth’s road jerseys dating to 1928-30 sold for $5.64 million in an auction conducted at Yankee Stadium. That jersey was part of a collection of items that Ruth’s family had put up for sale.
…
SINTRA, Portugal — The doorbell to Martinho de Almada Pimentel’s house is hard to find, and he likes it that way. It’s a long rope that, when pulled, rings a literal bell on the roof that lets him know someone is outside the mountainside mansion that his great-grandfather built in 1914 as a monument to privacy.
There’s precious little of that for Pimentel during this summer of “overtourism.”
Travelers idling in standstill traffic outside the sunwashed walls of Casa do Cipreste in Cintra sometimes spot the bell and pull the string “because it’s funny,” he says. With the windows open, he can smell the car exhaust and hear the “tuk-tuk” of outsized scooters named for the sound they make. And he can sense the frustration of 5,000 visitors a day who are forced to queue around the house on the crawl up single-lane switchbacks to Pena Palace, the onetime retreat of King Ferdinand II.
“Now I’m more isolated than during COVID,” the soft-spoken Pimentel, who lives alone, said during an interview this month on the veranda. “Now I try to (not) go out. What I feel is: angry.”
This is a story of what it means to be visited in 2024, the first year in which global tourism is expected to set records since the coronavirus pandemic brought much of life on Earth to a halt. Wandering is surging, rather than leveling off, driven by lingering revenge travel, digital nomad campaigns and so-called golden visas blamed in part for skyrocketing housing prices.
Cue the violins, you might grouse, for people like Pimentel who are well-off enough to live in places worth visiting. But it’s more than a problem for rich people.
“Not to be able to get an ambulance or to not be able to get my groceries is a rich people problem?” said Matthew Bedell, another resident of Sintra, which has no pharmacy or grocery store in the center of the UNESCO-designated district. “Those don’t feel like rich people problems to me.”
Overtourism generally describes the tipping point at which visitors and their cash stop benefiting residents and instead cause harm by degrading historic sites, overwhelming infrastructure and making life markedly more difficult for those who live there.
Look a little deeper and you’ll find knottier issues for locals and their leaders, none more universal than housing prices driven up by short-term rentals like Airbnb, from Spain to South Africa.
The summer of 2023 was defined by the chaos of the journey itself — airports and airlines overwhelmed, passports a nightmare for travelers from the US. Yet by the end of the year, signs abounded that the COVID-19 rush of revenge travel was accelerating.
In January, the United Nations’ tourism agency predicted that worldwide tourism would exceed the records set in 2019 by 2%. By the end of March, the agency reported, more than 285 million tourists had travelled internationally, about 20% more than the first quarter of 2023. The World Travel & Tourism Council projected in April that 142 of 185 countries it analyzed would set records for tourism, set to generate $11.1 trillion globally and account for 330 million jobs.
Aside from the money, there’s been trouble in paradise this year, with Spain playing a starring role in everything from water management problems to skyrocketing housing prices and drunken tourist drama.
Protests erupted across the country as early as March, with thousands of people demonstrating in Spain’s Canary Islands against visitors and construction that was overwhelming water services and jacking up housing prices.
Japan set records for tourist arrivals. In Fujikawaguchiko, a town that offers some of the best views of Mount Fuji, leaders erected a large black screen in a parking lot to deter tourists from overcrowding the site. The tourists apparently struck back by cutting holes in the screen at eye level.
Air travel, meanwhile, only got more miserable, the U.S. government reported in July.
Tourism is surging and shifting so quickly, in fact, that some experts say the very term “overtourism” is outdated.
Michael O’Regan, a lecturer on tourism and events at Glasgow Caledonian University, argues that “overtourism” doesn’t reflect the fact that the experience depends largely on the success or failure of crowd management.
“There’s been backlash against the business models on which modern tourism has been built and the lack of response by politicians,” he said in an interview. Tourism “came back quicker than we expected,” he allows, but tourists aren’t the problem. “So what happens when we get too many tourists? Destinations need to do more research.”
Virpi Makela can describe exactly what happens in her corner of Sintra. Incoming guests at Casa do Valle, her hillside bed-and-breakfast near the village center, call Makela in anguish because they cannot figure out how to find her property amid Sintra’s “disorganized” traffic rules that seem to change without notice.
“There’s a pillar in the middle of the road that goes up and down and you can’t go forward because you ruin your car. So you have to somehow come down but you can’t turn around, so you have to back down the road,” says Makela, a resident of Portugal for 36 years. “And then people get so frustrated they come to our road, which also has a sign that says `authorized vehicles only.’ And they block everything.”
A 40-minute train ride to the west, Sintra’s municipality has invested in more parking lots outside town and youth housing at lower prices near the center, the mayor’s office said.
More than 3 million people every year visit the mountains and castles of Sintra, long one of Portugal’s wealthiest regions for its cool microclimate and scenery. Sintra City Hall also said via email that fewer tickets are now sold to the nearby historic sites. Pena Palace, for example, began this year to permit less than half the 12,000 tickets per day sold there in the past.
It’s not enough, say local residents, who have organized into QSintra, an association that’s challenging City Hall to “put residents first” with better communication, to start. They also want to know the government’s plan for managing guests at a new hotel being constructed to increase the number of overnight stays, and more limits on the number of cars and visitors allowed.
“We’re not against tourists,” reads the group’s manifesto. “We’re against the pandemonium that (local leaders) cannot resolve.”
…