Category: Medical

Recent crises have pushed the gender inequality gap even wider and new technology has brought new threats to women’s autonomy and safety. This year’s International Women’s Day celebrated under the theme “DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality” is an opportunity to strengthen efforts to uplift and empower women and girls’ digital participation to ultimately improve their lives.

Sima Bahous, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women has described it as “digital poverty”: the digital divide which “disproportionately affects women and girls with low literacy or low income, those living in rural or remote areas, migrants, women with disabilities, and older women”.

On a continent that contributes only 13% towards global internet users, nearly 45% fewer women than men have access to the internet in sub-Saharan Africa.

That means alarmingly high numbers of African women and girls are left out of digitally-enhanced opportunities such as employment, mobile money transactions and banking.

From a health perspective, excluding women and girls from digital participation restricts their access to life-saving information. That can have dire consequences in a region such as eastern and southern Africa where young women and girls carry the burden of HIV.

In our region, women and girls continue to be disproportionately affected by HIV, accounting for 63% of the region’s new HIV infections in 2021. HIV infections are three times higher among adolescent girls and young women (aged 15 to 24 years) than among males of the same age.

The factors fueling this reality are power, deep-set inequalities and limited access to information among other factors.

Our report Dangerous Inequalities highlights that sexual reproductive health rights (SRHR) barriers, lack of quality comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) and restrictive and contradictory policy frameworks make it difficult, if not impossible, for adolescent girls and young women to access essential SRHR and HIV prevention and treatment services.

Furthermore, sociocultural norms, stigmas, discrimination, perceptions and age of consent laws impede young women and girls from accessing HIV testing and SRHR services.

Such barriers discourage young women and adolescent girls from approaching healthcare centres for their sexual reproductive needs.

This leaves girls with insufficient knowledge and skills to protect themselves from unsafe and unhealthy sexual practices, leading to HIV infection and sexually transmitted infections, teenage pregnancies, unsafe abortions and sexual violence.

The UNFPA “Seeing The Unseen” report highlights that 13% of all young women in developing countries begin childbearing while still being children themselves. In eastern and southern Africa, the overall weighted pregnancy prevalence among adolescent girls and young women (10-24 years of age) is alarmingly high at 25%.

We have completely normalised the abnormal. That is a crisis in itself. However, closing the gender equality gap will give us the opportunity to change the inequality trajectory for women and girls.

Technology and the digital space should be made more inclusive and accessible in our region and beyond. Virtual medical consultations, SRHR apps and searchable information should be options our young women and girls should be able to explore in a shame-free, destigmatised environment.

We applaud African developers who have created multiple free apps such as In Her Hands developed by the Southern African Development Community with the support of UNAIDS. Such apps work to empower young women and girls with SRHR information as well as expand HIV prevention outreach.

However, all our efforts to make the digital world accessible and inclusive should also be safe. Unfettered access to information and unscrupulous persons leave women vulnerable to misinformation on the very health issues they would seek to treat.

Furthermore, while the virtual world gives us a space to create boundaries and interact at a seemingly safe level for school, work and socialization, online violence against women is proving to be pervasive.

A UN brief shares physical threats, sexual harassment, stalking, zoombombing and sex trolling as examples of some of the attacks women face online.

It is therefore important to accelerate internet literacy for women and girls and equip them with precautionary and reactionary measures to ensure their digital safety before online violence permeates the physical world leading to serious challenges such as physical stalking, abduction and trafficking.

In spite of the challenges and safety concerns, the digital world can be an empowering space when harnessed correctly. Safe digital spaces hold the potential to disseminate life-saving, evidence-based information on SRHR, HIV prevention, treatment, GBV reporting and related support mechanisms at the click of a button.

Initiatives addressing SRHR and HIV ought to be framed with an inclusive digital lens at the fore. Multi-stakeholder collaboration is key, particularly with the private sector, internet service providers and data hubs.

At UNAIDS, we have partnered with UNESCO, UNICEF, UNFPA and UN Women to launch the ‘Education Plus’ Initiative. The initiative accelerates actions and investments to prevent HIV by ensuring adolescent girls and young women in Africa have equal opportunities to access quality secondary education, alongside key education and health services and support for their economic autonomy and empowerment.

Furthermore, the Transforming Education Summit is a key initiative of Our Common Agenda launched by UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, in September 2021. It works to recover pandemic-related learning losses and sow the seeds to transform education in a rapidly changing world.

If harnessed effectively, connectivity and openly accessible digital teaching and learning resources can contribute to the transformation and democratization of education.

As we work to end AIDS by 2030, access to new prevention technologies such as long-acting PrEP to be rolled out in Botswana, Uganda and Zimbabwe should be expanded to the entire region. That should be rolled out without disparity between rich and poorer countries.

Emerging technologies such as the vaginal ring, an important feminist option, need to be supported to increase efficacy and accessibility. Furthermore, the preventive benefits of antiretroviral treatment need to be promoted and understood. Platforms such as social media should be considered powerful and accessible tools to raise awareness of HIV prevention and care in our region.

Technology is a game changer in access to health information and enabling young people to break taboos around sexual health and HIV and feel empowered in their bodies.

We need to urgently level the digital space, use it to end gender inequalities and safeguard our women and girls from the scourge of HIV. There is no price on human life: Ending AIDS is a promise that can and must be kept.

Source: Inter Press Service

A year since Malawi confirmed its first case of wild poliovirus type 1 in 30 years, more than 33 million children across five southern African countries have been vaccinated against the virus, with over 80 million vaccine doses administered over the past year.

A total of nine wild poliovirus cases have been reported so far, with one in Malawi and eight in neighbouring Mozambique since the declaration of an outbreak on 17 February 2022 in Malawi. The last confirmed case to date was in August 2022 in Mozambique. The wild poliovirus in Malawi and Mozambique originated from Pakistan, one of the two last endemic countries.

Concerted emergency response launched following the outbreak in 2022 has helped increase protection among children through vaccines in Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. The countries have also ramped up disease surveillance and community mobilization to help find cases and halt the virus.

“Southern Africa countries have made huge efforts to bolster polio detection, curb the spread of the virus and ensure that children live without the risk of infection and lifelong paralysis,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Director for Africa. “We continue to support the polio control efforts across the region so that every child receives the protection they need.”

To date, 19 vaccination rounds have been concluded in the most at-risk areas and at least five more are planned for 2023 in the five countries.

Additionally, more than 10 new environmental surveillance sites have been set up over the past year in the affected countries with support from WHO. The fully operational sites are playing a critical role in the efforts to detect silent circulating poliovirus in wastewater.

“Response teams have worked intensely in the fight against polio not only in Malawi but in the rest of the neighbouring countries in a coordinated manner. We will not rest until we reach and vaccinate every child to stop polio transmission,” said Dr Emeka Agbo, acting Country Coordinator for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in Malawi.

Reaching all households where eligible children live is critical to protect them against the risk of paralysis. The national health authorities, with support from the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, efforts are ongoing to map cross-border communities, migratory routes, border crossings and transit routes.

“Community health workers have been pivotal in the vaccination campaigns and will continue going door-to-door, bringing polio vaccines to children who might otherwise be missed,” said Dr Jamal Ahmed, WHO Polio Eradication Programme Manager.

Polio is highly infectious and affects unimmunized or under immunized children. In Malawi and Mozambique, it has paralysed children younger than 15 years. There is no cure for polio, and it can only be prevented by immunization. Children across the world remain at risk of wild polio type 1 as long as the virus is not eradicated in the last remaining areas in which it is still circulating.

Despite the circulation of wild poliovirus type 1 and the variant polioviruses, incredible progress has been made. Since 1988, when the Global Polio Eradication Initiative was set up, polio cases have plummeted by 99% from an estimated annual total of 350 000.

Importation of any case must be treated as a serious concern and high-quality response efforts to reach every child with polio vaccine are critical to prevent further spread.

On 25 January 2023, the WHO Emergency Committee under the International Health Regulations concluded that the risk of international spread of poliovirus remains a public health emergency of international concern.

Source: World Health Organization

Avian flu has reached new corners of the globe and become endemic for the first time in some wild birds that transmit the virus to poultry, according to veterinarians and disease experts, who warn it is now a year-round problem.

Reuters spoke to more than 20 experts and farmers on four continents who said the prevalence of the virus in the wild signals that record outbreaks will not abate soon on poultry farms, ramping up threats to the world’s food supply. They warned that farmers must view the disease as a serious risk all year, instead of focusing prevention efforts during spring migration seasons for wild birds.

Outbreaks of the virus have widened in North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa, undefeated by summer heat or winter cold snaps, since a strain arrived in the United States in early 2022 that was genetically similar to cases in Europe and Asia.

On Wednesday, Argentina and Uruguay each declared national sanitary emergencies after officials confirmed the countries’ first infections. Argentina found the virus in wild birds, while dead swans in Uruguay tested positive.

Egg prices set records after the disease last year wiped out tens of millions of laying hens, putting a staple source of cheap protein out of reach to some of the world’s poorest at a time the global economy is reeling from high inflation.

Wild birds are primarily responsible for spreading the virus, according to experts. Waterfowl like ducks can carry the disease without dying and introduce it to poultry through contaminated feces, saliva and other means.

Farmers’ best efforts to protect flocks are falling short.

In the United States, Rose Acre Farms, the country’s second-largest egg producer, lost about 1.5 million hens at a Guthrie County, Iowa, production site last year, even though anyone who entered barns was required to shower first to remove any trace of the virus, Chief Executive Marcus Rust said.

A company farm in Weld County, Colorado, was infected twice within about six months, killing more than 3 million chickens, Rust said. He thinks wind blew the virus in from nearby fields where geese defecated.

“We got nailed,” Rust said. “You just pull your hair out.”

The United States, Britain, France and Japan are among countries that have suffered record losses of poultry over the past year, leaving some farmers feeling helpless.

“Avian flu is occurring even in a new poultry farm with modern equipment and no windows, so all we could do now is ask God to avoid an outbreak,” said Shigeo Inaba, who raises chickens for meat in Ibaraki prefecture near Tokyo.

Poultry in the Northern Hemisphere were previously considered to be most at risk when wild birds are active during spring migration. Soaring levels of the virus in a broad range of waterfowl and other wild birds mean poultry now face high risks year round, experts said.

“It’s a new war,” said Bret Marsh, the state veterinarian in the U.S. state of Indiana. “It’s basically a 12-month vigil.”

In a sign the threat is expected to persist, Marsh is seeking funds from Indiana’s lawmakers to hire an additional poultry veterinarian and poultry health-specialist. Indiana lost more than 200,000 turkeys and other birds over the past year, while total U.S. deaths top 58 million birds, according to U.S. government data, surpassing the previous 2015 record.

The virus is usually deadly to poultry, and entire flocks are culled when even one bird tests positive.

Vaccinations are not a simple solution: they may reduce but not eliminate the threat from the virus, making it harder to detect its presence among a flock. Still, Mexico and the EU are among those vaccinating or considering shots.

Global problem

Wild birds have spread the disease farther and wider around the world than ever before, likely carrying record amounts of the virus, said Gregorio Torres, the head of the science department at the Paris-based World Organisation for Animal Health, an intergovernmental group and global authority on animal diseases. The virus changed from previous outbreaks to a form that is probably more transmissible, he told Reuters.

“The disease is here to stay at least in the short term,” Torres said.

Torres could not confirm the virus is endemic in wild birds worldwide, though other experts said it is endemic in certain birds in places like the United States.

While the virus can infect people, usually those who have contact with infected birds, the World Health Organization says the risk to humans is low.

The form of the virus circulating is infecting a broader range of wild birds than previous versions, including those that do not migrate long distances, said David Suarez, acting laboratory director of the U.S. government’s Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory in Georgia.

Such infections of “resident” birds are helping the virus to persist throughout the year when it didn’t previously, he said.

Black vultures, which inhabit the southern United States and previously avoided infections, are now among the species suffering, said David Stallknecht, director of the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study at the University of Georgia.

The virus has also infected mammals like foxes, bears and seals.

“We all have to believe in miracles,” Stallknecht said, “but I really can’t see a scenario where it’s going to disappear.”

Crossing borders

High virus levels in birds like blue-winged teal, ducks that migrate long distances, helped spread the virus to new parts of South America, Stallknecht said.

Countries including Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia in recent months reported their first cases.

Ecuador imposed a three-month animal-health emergency on Nov. 29, two days after its first case was detected, the country’s Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock said. So far, more than 1.1 million birds have died, the ministry said.

Infections in Uruguay and Bolivia put the disease close to top global chicken exporter Brazil, which has never confirmed a case. Brazilian Agriculture Minister Carlos Favaro said on Wednesday the country investigated three suspected cases, but test results came back negative.

“Everyone is focused on preventing the flu from reaching our country,” said Gian Carlos Zacchi, who raises chickens for processor Aurora in Chapecó in Brazil’s Santa Catarina state.

Some experts suspect climate change may be contributing to the global spread by altering wild birds’ habitats and migratory paths.

“The wild bird dynamics have shifted, and that’s allowed the viruses that live in them to shift as well,” said Carol Cardona, an avian flu expert and professor at the University of Minnesota.

Farmers are trying unusual tactics to protect poultry, with some using machines that make loud noises to scare off wild birds, experts said.

In Rhode Island, Eli Berkowitz, an egg producer and chief executive of Little Rhody Foods, sprayed the disinfectant Lysol on goose poop on a walkway of his farm in case it contained the virus. He also limits visitors to the farm, a more traditional precaution.

Berkowitz said he is bracing for March and April when migration season will pose an even greater risk to poultry.

“You’d better buckle up and hold on for your dear life,” he said.

Source: Voice of America

GENEVA— The World Health Organization (WHO) said that a widespread outbreak of the mpox (monkeypox) remained a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).

The WHO officially declared in July last year that the mpox outbreak outside of the traditional endemic areas in Africa had already turned into a PHEIC, the highest level of alert that the global health authority could issue.

In a statement on Wednesday, the WHO said its experts acknowledged the progress in the global response to the mpox outbreak and a further decline in the number of reported cases during the last few months.

However, a few countries continued to see a sustained incidence of cases, while other regions were likely to have under-reporting of confirmed cases. The WHO committee of experts and WHO Secretary-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus have therefore both maintained that mpox remains an international public health emergency.

The latest statistics from the WHO have shown that the current global risk of the mpox outbreak is assessed as moderate, while being reduced from moderate to low in the Region of South-East Asia. It also remains low in the Western Pacific Region.

Meanwhile, the WHO said its preparedness and response plan against the mpox outbreak, which was launched in July 2022 to help guide coordinated public health action, would come to an end in June 2023.

Two WHO regions, Europe and the Americas, which reported 95 percent of diagnosed cases, have maintained stable in case numbers during recent weeks.

As of Feb. 3, 43 countries and territories had not detected any new cases in the past three months, the WHO European Region reported. The Region of the Americas has also reported a stable number of cases in the last six weeks, with 200 to 250 cases per week.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

GENEVA— The World Health Organization will continue pushing until it finds an answer to how the COVID-19 pandemic started, the agency’s chief said following a report suggesting it had abandoned the search.

Solving the mystery of where the SARS CoV-2 virus came from and how it began spreading among humans is considered vital for averting future pandemics.

Yet an article on the Nature website Tuesday said faced with a lack of cooperation from China, where the outbreak began in late 2019, the WHO had given up on the search.

“We need to continue to push until we get the answer,” agency chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters, referring to the search for the origins of the virus.

“Knowing how this pandemic started is very, very important and very crucial,” he said.

He said he had recently sent a letter to a top official in China “asking for cooperation, because we need cooperation and transparency in the information … in order to know how this started”.

The two main theories that have been hotly debated have centred on the virus naturally spilling over from bats to an intermediary animal and into humans, or escaping due to a lab accident.

The WHO carried out a first phase of investigation by sending a team of international experts to Wuhan, China, in early 2021 to produce a first phase report, written in conjunction with their Chinese counterparts.

But that investigation faced criticism for lacking transparency and access, and for not sufficiently evaluating the lab-leak theory, which it deemed “extremely unlikely”.

The political rhetoric reached fever-pitch over that theory, which was favoured by the administration of former US president Donald Trump but always flatly rejected by China.

Tedros has meanwhile from the start insisted that all hypotheses remained on the table, and the WHO has repeatedly called on China to provide further access to investigate.

Tedros said there were two reasons for not abandoning the origins search.

The first was scientific, he said: “We need to know how this started in order to prevent the next one.”

“The second (is) moral: millions of people lost their lives, and many suffered, and the whole world was taken hostage by a virus.”

“It’s morally very important to know how we lost our loved ones.”

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

ADDIS ABABA— The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has warned that Climate change continues to strike Africa with extreme weather events.

The WMO Secretary-General, Professor Petteri Taalas in a statement says the devastating drought in the greater horn of Africa, including parts of Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Somalia is manifestation of the impacts of climate change.

“More than 13 million people are facing severe food insecurity in the horn of Africa and the health of 6 million children from these countries is affected by malnutrition,” said Prof. Taalas who spoke during the conference of heads of National Meteorological and Hydrological (NMHSs) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, says the failure of five rainfall seasons has had devastating effects of crops and this could impact the harvests.

Prof. Taalas told the meeting attended by Heads of National and Meteorological and hydrological Services, regional and global experts in weather, climate and water services with decision-makers in Africa that more than 3 million livestock supporting the livelihoods of pastoral communities have died in the Region.

He told the meeting that is discussing the need for enhancing digital transformation of the Hydro-Meteorological Services in the Region that digital transformation of the NMHSs “will make accessing severe weather warnings and alerts easy,” he said and added that, “Technology transformation will strengthen and modernize NMHSs to perform their public weather functions for the safety of lives and property.”

The Secretary-General noted that the digital transformation of the Meteorological services in Africa will help fasten data transmission speed “and increase the ability to create products and services for realtime, exchange of information, critical for forecasting and warnings of hydro-Meteorological hazards, so as to warn the public and enhance safety.”

In his remarks, the Ethiopian State Minister for Water and Energy, Dr Abraha Adugna, noted that the frequency and intensity of hazards on the continent is significant adding that the impacts are having pressure in socioeconomic sectors.

Dr. Adugna said that the Ethiopia government in partnership with the Ethiopian Meteorological Institute (EMI) has established a modernized network for collecting meteorological data for early warning services in a bid to improve lives and livelihood.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK