Day: March 19, 2022

The world is at a ‘dangerous moment’ in the fight against diseases like polio, a senior World Health Organization official said, as efforts begin to immunize 23 million children across five African countries after an outbreak in Malawi.

In February, Malawi declared its first case of wild poliovirus in 30 years, when a 3-year old girl in the Lilongwe district was paralyzed as a result of her infection.

The case raised alarm because Africa was declared free of wild polio in 2020 and there are only two countries in the world where it is endemic: Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan marked a year without cases in January 2022.

“This is a dangerous moment,” Modjirom Ndoutabe, polio coordinator for WHO Africa, told Reuters in a phone interview from Brazzaville, the Republic of Congo.

“Even if there is one country in the world with polio, all the other countries are in big trouble.”

Ndoutabe said the coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns had slowed efforts to vaccinate children against other diseases such as polio, and also hit surveillance.

According to the Gavi vaccine alliance, childhood immunization services in the 68 countries it supports dropped by 4% in 2020, representing 3.1 million more “zero-dose” children likely unprotected from childhood diseases like polio, diphtheria and measles, and 3 million more under-immunized children than in 2019.

“This is a tragedy,” Seth Berkley, chief executive of Gavi, said in an interview with Reuters. “The challenge is getting that back up.”

In Malawi, where polio vaccine coverage is high – above 90% in most districts – rates during the pandemic fell by 2%, according to Janet Kayita, WHO Malawi head. She said the child who was paralyzed had one dose of the polio vaccine at birth, but not the other doses needed for full protection.

Kayita said surveillance had been more significantly impacted. The case is linked to a strain circulating in Pakistan’s Sindh province in 2019, which means it does not impact Africa’s polio-free status. But teams are now scrambling to answer how it arrived in Malawi, and how long it spread undetected.

Polio, a highly infectious disease spread mainly through contamination by fecal matter, used to kill and paralyze thousands of children annually. There is no cure, but vaccination brought the world close to ending the wild form of the disease.

Mass rollout

In a bid to prevent renewed spread in Africa, almost 70,000 vaccinators will go door-to-door in Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, to give all children under 5 the oral polio vaccine in a $15.7 million campaign funded by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, the WHO said in a statement on Friday.

The first round, beginning Monday, will target more than 9 million children, followed by three further rounds aiming to reach all under-5-year-olds, regardless of their vaccination status, to boost immunity, Kayita said.

Efforts have also been stepped up to track any cases linked to the Malawi outbreak and to monitor transmission in wastewater. So far, no other linked cases have been found.

Vaccine-derived polio, a form of the disease stemming from incomplete vaccination coverage, is more widespread globally, and recent outbreaks have sparked concerns about how the coronavirus pandemic may have hit vaccination coverage.

Israel is battling an outbreak of vaccine-derived polio, its first since the 1980s, after a case was discovered in Jerusalem last week. Almost 12,000 children have since been vaccinated.

Ukraine reported its first vaccine-derived polio case in five years last year, but urgent efforts to curb the outbreak were halted after the Russian invasion on Feb. 24.

Complete vaccination protects against both forms of the disease, and a focus on that will halt both the outbreak in Malawi in months and all forms of polio in Africa by 2023, said Ndoutabe, who described his sorrow when he first heard of the Malawi case setback.

“But we did not stay in this sadness. We had to act quickly,” he said.

Source: Voice of America

The official anthem of 48th session of OIC Council of Foreign Ministers is being launched in Islamabad today (Saturday).

It will be jointly inaugurated by Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and Minister for Information and Broadcasting Chaudhary Fawad Hussain.

The theme of OIC meeting, being held in Islamabad on 22nd and 23rd March, is Partnering for Unity, Justice and Development.

Prime Minister Imran Khan will make keynote address at the inaugural session.

Apart from addressing core issues on the agenda particularly Palestine and Jammu and Kashmir, the Conference discussions will focus on key priorities such as countering Islamophobia, recovery from Covid-19 pandemic and diverse matters of peace and security, economic development, cultural and scientific cooperation and revitalizing role of OIC.

Source: Radio Pakistan

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — Afghanistan is the unhappiest country in the world — even before the Taliban swept to power last August. That’s according to a so-called World Happiness report released ahead of the U.N.-designated International Day of Happiness on Sunday.

The annual report ranked Afghanistan as last among 149 countries surveyed, with a happiness rate of just 2.5. Lebanon was the world’s second saddest country, with Botswana, Rwanda and Zimbabwe rounding out the bottom five. Finland ranked first for the fourth year running with a 7.8 score, followed by Denmark and Switzerland, with Iceland and the Netherlands also in the top five.

Researchers ranked the countries after analyzing data over three years. They looked at several categories, including gross domestic product per capita, social safety nets, life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity of the population, and perceptions of internal and external corruption levels.

Afghanistan stacked up poorly in all six categories, a confounding result coming as it did before the Taliban arrival and despite 20 years of U.S. and international investment. The U.S. alone spent $145 billion on development in Afghanistan since 2002, according to reports by the U.S. special inspector general for Afghanistan.

Still, there were signs of increasing hopelessness.

Gallup did a poll in 2018 and found that few Afghans they surveyed had much hope for the future. In fact the majority said they had no hope for the future.

Years of runaway corruption, increased poverty, lack of jobs, a steady increase in people forced below the poverty line, and erratic development all combined into a crushing malaise, said analyst Nasratullah Haqpal. Most Afghans had high hopes after 2001, when the Taliban were ousted and the U.S.-led coalition declared victory.

“Unfortunately the only focus was on the war, the warlords and the corrupt politicians,” said Haqpal.

“People just became poorer and poorer and more disappointed and more unhappy… that is why these 20 years of investment in Afghanistan collapsed in just 11 days,” he said referring to the Taliban’s lightning blitz through the country before sweeping into Kabul in mid-August.

When Masoud Ahmadi, a carpenter, returned to Afghanistan from neighboring Pakistan after the 2001 collapse of the Taliban, his hopes for the future were bright. He dreamed of opening a small furniture-making shop, maybe employing as many as 10 people. Instead, sitting in his dusty 6-foot by 10-foot workshop on Saturday, he said he opens just twice a week for lack of work.

“When the money came to this country, the leadership of the government took the money and counted it as their personal money, and the people were not helped to change their life for the better,” said Ahmadi.

The report warns that Afghanistan’s numbers might drop even further next year when it measures Afghans’ happiness level after the arrival of the Taliban. The economy is currently in free fall as the group struggles to transition from insurgency to governing.

Source: Voice of America