LONDON: The World Health Organization declared the mpox outbreaks in Congo and elsewhere in Africa a global emergency on Wednesday, with cases confirmed among children and adults in more than a dozen countries and a new form of the virus spreading. Few vaccine doses are available on the continent.
Earlier this week, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the mpox outbreaks were a public health emergency, with more than 500 deaths, and called for international help to stop the virus’ spread.
“This is something that should concern us all ... The potential for further spread within Africa and beyond is very worrying,” said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The Africa CDC previously said mpox, also known as monkeypox, has been detected in 13 countries this year, and more than 96 percent of all cases and deaths are in Congo. Cases are up 160 percent and deaths are up 19 percent compared with the same period last year. So far, there have been more than 14,000 cases and 524 people have died.
“We are now in a situation where (mpox) poses a risk to many more neighbors in and around central Africa,” said Salim Abdool Karim, a South African infectious diseases expert who chairs the Africa CDC emergency group. He said the new version of mpox spreading from Congo appears to have a death rate of about 3-4 percent.
In 2022, WHO declared mpox to be a global emergency after it spread to more than 70 countries that had not previously reported mpox, mostly affecting gay and bisexual men. In that outbreak, fewer than 1 percent of people died.
Michael Marks, a professor of medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said declaring these latest mpox outbreaks in Africa an emergency is warranted if that might lead to more support to contain them.
“It’s a failure of the global community that things had to get this bad to release the resources needed,” he said.
Officials at the Africa CDC said nearly 70 percent of cases in Congo are in children younger than 15, who also accounted for 85 percent of deaths.
Jacques Alonda, an epidemiologist working in Congo with international charities, said he and other experts were particularly worried about the spread of mpox in camps for refugees in the country’s conflict-ridden east.
“The worst case I’ve seen is that of a six-week-old baby who was just two weeks old when he contracted mpox,” Alonda said, adding the baby has been in their care for a month. “He got infected because hospital overcrowding meant he and his mother were forced to share a room with someone else who had the virus, which was undiagnosed.”
Save the Children said Congo’s health system already had been “collapsing” under the strain of malnutrition, measles and cholera.
The UN health agency said mpox was recently identified for the first time in four East African countries: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. All of those outbreaks are linked to the one in Congo. In Ivory Coast and South Africa, health authorities have reported outbreaks of a different and less dangerous version of mpox that spread worldwide in 2022.
Earlier this year, scientists reported the emergence of a new form of the deadlier form of mpox, which can kill up to 10 percent of people, in a Congolese mining town that they feared might spread more easily. Mpox mostly spreads via close contact with infected people, including through sex.
Unlike in previous mpox outbreaks, where lesions were mostly seen on the chest, hands and feet, the new form causes milder symptoms and lesions on the genitals. That makes it harder to spot, meaning people might also sicken others without knowing they’re infected.
Before the 2022 outbreak, the disease had mostly been seen in sporadic outbreaks in central and West Africa when people came into close contact with infected wild animals.
Western countries during the 2022 outbreak mostly shut down the spread of mpox with the help of vaccines and treatments, but very few of those have been available in Africa.
Marks of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said that in the absence of mpox vaccines licensed in the West, officials could consider inoculating people against smallpox, a related disease. “We need a large supply of vaccine so that we can vaccinate populations most at risk,” he said, adding that would mean sex workers, children and adults living in outbreak regions.
Congo hasn’t received any of the mpox vaccines it has requested.
Congolese authorities said they have asked for 4 million doses, Cris Kacita Osako, coordinator of Congo’s Monkeypox Response Committee, told The Associated Press. Kacita Osako said those would mostly be used for children under 18.
“The United States and Japan are the two countries that positioned themselves to give vaccines to our country,” Kacita Osako said.
Dr. Dimie Ogoina, a Nigerian mpox expert who chaired WHO’s emergency committee, said there were still significant gaps in understanding how mpox is spreading in Africa. He called for stronger surveillance to track the outbreaks.
“We’re working blindly when we’re not able to test all suspected cases,” Ogoina said.
Although WHO’s emergency declaration is meant to spur donor agencies and countries into action, the global response to previous declarations has been mixed.
Dr. Boghuma Titanji, an infectious diseases expert at Emory University, said the last WHO emergency declaration for mpox “did very little to move the needle” on getting things like diagnostic tests, medicines and vaccines to Africa.
“The world has a real opportunity here to act in a decisive manner and not repeat past mistakes, (but) that will take more than an (emergency) declaration,” Titanji said.
WHO declares mpox outbreaks in Africa a global health emergency as a new form of the virus spreads
https://arab.news/g2m5e
WHO declares mpox outbreaks in Africa a global health emergency as a new form of the virus spreads
- “The potential for further spread within Africa and beyond is very worrying,” said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
- “We are now in a situation where (mpox) poses a risk to many more neighbors in and around central Africa,” said Salim Abdool Karim, a South African infectious diseases expert
Landmark projects, career prospects draw Filipino architects to GCC
- Some 2,000 Filipino architects are now working in GCC countries
- Saudi Arabia, UAE offer young professionals learning, certification
Manila: When Daryl Anasco moved to Riyadh five years ago, he was drawn by Saudi Arabia’s construction boom under Vision 2030 and its ambitious megaprojects, in which he immediately saw a window of opportunity for his career.
Fairly new to the profession and only 24 at the time, Anasco soon found himself immersed in work and projects he would not have been able to pursue in his native Bohol province in the central Philippines.
“They offer unique opportunities in my field that are not available in the Philippines ... Here in Saudi, it’s only now that I have experienced being involved in big projects. That’s one of the advantages of working here. They entrust us with big projects,” Anasco told Arab News.
There are some 2,000 Filipino architects working in GCC countries, according to data from the United Architects of the Philippines.
“They really have trust in us Filipinos. That’s my experience,” Anasco said.
“From residential I jumped to a giga-project. That’s one of the good things about working here. You’ll get to be part of big-ticket projects.”
This month, he will take the oath as a licensed architect in Riyadh, which is a significant career step that he says gives him greater confidence to seize even more opportunities in the future.
“Hopefully, I can join the biggest project in the world today, which is here in Saudi Arabia — NEOM,” he said, referring to the flagship multibillion-dollar smart city project.
“There’s a lot of job hirings here now in Saudi ... I would like to explore more.”
Cecilio Ebuenga, who left Manila for Saudi Arabia in 2004, said there has always been “room for growth” in the region for architects building their careers.
“We were given the chance to deliver our talent, our skills. We are given more roles here as professionals,” he said.
“You get recognized as a professional and it gave me more confidence.”
Ebuenga has been working with one of the biggest Saudi Arabia companies specializing in home and garden supplies.
“The working environment in Saudi is very professional. They have high regard for us Filipino architects and engineers. You can feel their respect,” he said. “We are given equal opportunity.”
New possibilities for growth have been open for Filipino architects and designers also in the UAE which, like Saudi Arabia, offers young graduates opportunities for learning and certification.
“The industry here is thriving, and there are many opportunities to grow professionally, gain experience, and be part of landmark developments,” said Precious Ann Padaong.
Padaong is a Bataan native who in 2019 found work in Dubai — home to some of the most iconic contemporary infrastructure projects, including the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building.
She was 24 when she moved to the UAE, where she also obtained her professional license.
“Becoming a licensed architect has greatly boosted my confidence and expanded my network,” Padaong said.
“Working here allows me to be part of something big ... I’m exposed to projects and responsibilities I never imagined I could handle. Although there is still much to learn, it’s exciting to see how far I’ve come.”
Russia puts Navalny lawyers on trial
- The trial of the three – Vadim Kobzev, Alexei Liptser and Igor Sergunin – opened in the Vladimir region east of Moscow
- Arrested in October 2023, the trio are accused of participating in an ‘extremist’ organization
PETUSHKI, Russia: A Russian court on Thursday put three lawyers who used to represent the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny on trial over “extremism” charges.
Navalny died in unclear circumstances in an Arctic prison colony in February, where he was serving a 19-year sentence for leading an “extremist” organization.
Since his death, Russian authorities have escalated a campaign against the Kremlin critic’s backers, allies and family — arresting journalists who covered his court hearings and adding his wife, Yulia Navalnaya, to a “terrorists and extremists” blacklist.
The trial of three of his former lawyers — Vadim Kobzev, Alexei Liptser and Igor Sergunin — opened Thursday in a court in the Vladimir region east of Moscow, AFP journalists in the courtroom reported.
The three stood in a metal cage for defendants at the start of the hearing, before the judge granted the prosecution’s request to move the session behind closed doors, ejecting public spectators and journalists from the hall.
Arrested in October 2023, the trio are accused of participating in an “extremist” organization, charges which carry a maximum of six years.
Investigators say they passed messages between Navalny and his associates in the outside world, helping the Kremlin critic continue his outlawed political activity from behind bars.
At the time, Navalny’s team alleged the arrest of the lawyers was an attempt to isolate Navalny even further in prison, where he spent most of the time in solitary confinement.
At a pre-trial hearing, Sergunin pleaded guilty, independent media reported, while Kobzev and Liptser rejected the charges.
The Kremlin has rejected accusations from Navalny’s allies that President Vladimir Putin ordered him killed in jail.
The West and Moscow were in talks about freeing Navalny in a prisoner exchange when he died.
Over a decade of opposing the Kremlin, the charismatic opposition leader drew tens of thousands to anti-government street demonstrations.
He nearly died in 2020 after being poisoned on a campaign trip to Siberia ahead of regional elections.
An investigation by Navalny’s team, Western and Russian media outlets connected the assassination attempt to Russian FSB agents.
Most of his former allies, including his wife Navalnaya who has pledged to continue his work, live in exile.
Thailand’s new PM outlines policies to parliament as consumer mood drops
- Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra highlights signature plan for a ‘digital wallet’ handout of 10,000 baht to 50 million people
- The scheme has been criticized by economists and former central bank governors as fiscally irresponsible, which the government rejects
BANGKOK: Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra on Thursday outlined her government’s policy agenda to parliament, headlined by plans to give away 450 billion baht ($13.4 billion) in handouts to jumpstart Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy.
Political newcomer Paetongtarn’s cabinet was sworn in this month, after parliament elected her Thailand’s youngest premier following the shock removal of predecessor Srettha Thavisin by a court decision.
The polices largely continue ally Srettha’s agenda and that of their populist Pheu Thai party, including debt restructuring and legalizing casinos to draw in investment and more tourists.
Paetongtarn told parliament her government was facing challenges, including structural economic problems, and said the government would act with urgency to stimulate growth.
“If there are no financial and fiscal measures to support economic growth, it is expected that the country’s economic growth rate will not exceed 3 percent per year,” she said.
That would result in the public debt level approaching the ceiling of 70 percent to gross domestic product (GDP) in 2027, she said. Public debt stood at 63.74 percent of GDP at the end of July.
“Therefore, it is a great challenge that the government must urgently restore the country’s economy to quickly grow strongly again,” Paetongtarn said.
While she highlighted the signature plan for a ‘digital wallet’ handout of 10,000 baht ($300) to 50 million people, some of which Paetongtarn has previously said will be given in cash, there were no updates on how or when it would be rolled out.
The government had said this week it would distribute 145 billion baht ($4.2 billion) of the program to support vulnerable groups later this month.
The scheme has been criticized by economists and former central bank governors as fiscally irresponsible, which the government rejects. It has struggled to find sources of funding.
The government insists the policy is necessary to energize the economy, which the central bank expects to grow 2.6 percent this year, up from 1.9 percent in 2023 but far adrift of most regional peers.
Consumer confidence dropped for a sixth straight month to a 13-month low in August, a survey showed on Thursday.
Paetongtarn, 38, made her debut appearance in parliament as Thailand’s second female prime minister. She is the fourth member of her family to hold the top job.
Among those was her father, the billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand’s most influential and divisive politician over the past two decades, who has backed the stimulus plan and is a key figure behind her Pheu Thai party.
Starmer to say UK’s national health service needs ‘major surgery’
- His speech in central London follows the publication of a 142-page investigation which found that the health of Britons had deteriorated over the past 15 years
LONDON: Prime Minister Keir Starmer will warn Thursday that Britain’s state-run National Health Service must “reform or die” after an independent report said the venerated institution was in a “critical condition.”
Starmer, whose Labour party was elected by a landslide in July, will promise “the biggest reimagining” of the NHS since it was founded 76 years ago.
His speech in central London follows the publication of a 142-page investigation which found that the health of Britons had deteriorated over the past 15 years.
The report’s author, Ara Darzi, an unaffiliated Lord in parliament’s upper chamber, said the NHS had fallen into “disrepair” due to a lack of investment, top-down reorganization and the coronavirus pandemic.
“What we need is the courage to deliver long-term reform — major surgery not sticking plaster solutions,” Starmer was due to say, according to excerpts of his speech released to reporters.
“The NHS is at a fork in the road, and we have a choice about how it should meet these rising demands.
“Raise taxes on working people to meet the ever-higher costs of aging population — or reform to secure its future.
“We know working people can’t afford to pay more, so it’s reform or die,” Starmer was expected to say.
Health minister Wes Streeting told Sky News there would be “three big shifts” — moving certain services from hospitals to the community, fully switching from analog to digital and “giving staff the tools to do the job, so that we tackle that productivity challenge.”
He said the government would not “do as the Conservatives did, which is just pour more money into a broken model, and fail to reform.”
Labour dumped the Conservatives out of power on July 4 in part on a pledge to “fix” the NHS, accusing the Tories of having “broken” it during their 14 years in power.
Darzi’s report notes that the NHS is seeing a surge in patients suffering multiple long-term illnesses such as diabetes and high blood pressure.
It says the UK has higher cancer rates than other countries and is lagging behind in its treatment of major conditions.
It also notes that waiting lists have swelled to 7.6 million and that a tenth of patients at accident and emergency wards now wait 12 hours or more before being seen.
Darzi said that he was “shocked” by what he discovered but added that the NHS’s vital signs “remain strong.”
Starmer was expected to outline the three areas of reform for a 10-year plan to “turn around the NHS,” whose universal model is a source of British pride, despite its shortcomings in meeting demand.
Just over a year ago, his Tory predecessor Rishi Sunak announced a 15-year drive to recruit more than 300,000 staff to deal with a chronic shortage of doctors and nurses.
At the time, it was estimated that the NHS would have a staff shortfall of 360,000 by 2037 because of an aging population, a lack of domestically trained health workers and difficulties recruiting and retaining staff, in part because of new visa rules.
“The challenge is clear before us; the change could amount to the biggest reimagining of our NHS since its birth,” the prime minister was set to say.
Starmer, whose mother was an NHS nurse, has spent much of his first two months in power blaming the Tories for leaving Labour a dire inheritance in sectors ranging from health to the economy and prisons.
The Conservatives, whose leader Sunak is the son of an NHS doctor and a pharmacist, accuse him of exaggerating the country’s problems as a way of laying the groundwork for future tax increases.
Hundreds gather on Seattle beach to remember American activist killed by Israeli military
- Hundreds of people turned out at a beach in Washington for an evening vigil remembering Aysenur Ezgi Eygi
SEATTLE: For her 26th birthday in July, human rights activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi gathered friends for a bonfire at one of her favorite places, a sandy beach in Seattle where green-and-white ferries cruise across the dark, flat water and osprey fish overhead.
On Wednesday night, hundreds of people traveled to the same beach in grief, love and anger to mourn her. Eygi was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers last Friday in the occupied West Bank, where she had gone to protest and bear witness to Palestinian suffering.
“I can’t imagine what she felt like in her last moments, lying alone under the olive trees,” one of her friends, Kelsie Nabass, told the crowd at the vigil. “What did she think of? And did she know all of us would show up here tonight, for her?”
Eygi, who also held Turkish citizenship, was killed while demonstrating against settlements in the West Bank. A witness who was there, Israeli protester Jonathan Pollak, said she posed no threat to Israeli forces and that the shooting came during a moment of calm, following clashes between stone-throwing protesters and Israeli troops firing tear gas and bullets.
The Israeli military said Eygi was likely shot “indirectly and unintentionally” by its soldiers, drawing criticism from American officials, including President Joe Biden, who said he was “outraged and deeply saddened” her killing.
“There must be full accountability,” Biden said in a statement released Wednesday. “And Israel must do more to ensure that incidents like this never happen again.”
The deaths of American citizens in the West Bank have drawn international attention, such as the fatal shooting of a prominent Palestinian-American journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, in 2022 in the Jenin refugee camp. The deaths of Palestinians who do not have dual nationality rarely receive the same scrutiny.
Eygi’s family has demanded an independent investigation.
As the sun set, turning the sky on the horizon a pale orange, friends recalled Eygi as open, engaging, funny and devoted. The crowd spilled beyond a large rectangle of small black, red, green and white Palestinian flags staked in the sand to mark the venue for the vigil.
Many attendees wore traditional checked scarves — keffiyehs — in support of the Palestinian cause and carried photographs of Eygi in her graduation cap. They laid roses, sunflowers or carnations at a memorial where battery-operated candles spelled out her name in the sand.
Several described becoming fast friends with her last spring during the occupied “Liberated Zone” protest against the Israeli agression on Gaza at the University of Washington. Yoseph Ghazal said she introduced herself as “Baklava,” a name she sometimes used on messaging apps, reflective of her love of the sweet Mediterranean dessert.
Eygi, who attended Seattle schools and graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in psychology this year, helped negotiate with the administration on behalf of the protesters at the encampment, which was part of a broader campus movement against the Gaza war.
“She felt so strongly and loved humanity, loved people, loved life so much that she just wanted to help as many as she could,” Juliette Majid, 26, now a doctoral student at North Carolina State University, said in an interview. “She had such a drive for justice.”
Eygi’s uncle told a Turkish television station that she had kept her trip a secret from at least some of her family, blocking relatives from her social media posts. Turkish officials have said they are working to repatriate her body for burial, per the family’s wishes.
Sue Han, a 26-year-old law student at the University of Washington, only knew Eygi for a few months after meeting her at the university encampment, but they quickly became close, laughing and blasting music in Eygi’s beat-up green Subaru. Eygi would pick Han up at the airport after her travels. Most recently, Eygi greeted her with a plastic baggie full of sliced apples and perfectly ripe strawberries.
Han saw Eygi before she left. Eygi was feeling scared and selfish for leaving her loved ones to go to the West Bank with the activist group International Solidarity Movement; Han said she couldn’t imagine anyone more selfless.
Eygi loved to connect people, bringing disparate friends together for coffee to see how they mixed, Han said. The same was true when she would bring people together on the beach, and it was true of the vigil, too.
“I was looking around at everybody sharing stories about Aysenur, sharing tears and hugs, and this is exactly what she would have wanted,” Han said. “These new relationships all sharing Aysenur as the starting seed — it’s the legacy she would have wanted.”
