Month: June 2022

The thirty-second meeting of the Emergency Committee under the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR) on the international spread of poliovirus was convened by the WHO Director-General on 15 June 2022 with committee members and advisers attending via video conference, supported by the WHO Secretariat. The Emergency Committee reviewed the data on wild poliovirus (WPV1) and circulating vaccine derived polioviruses (cVDPV) in the context of global eradication of WPV and cessation of outbreaks of cVDPV2 by end of 2023. Technical updates were received about the situation in the following countries and territories: Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Israel, Malawi, the occupied Palestinian territory and Pakistan, and written updates were provided by Eritrea and Yemen.

Wild poliovirus

The committee was very concerned that a second WPV1 had been detected in south-eastern Africa, in Mozambique, close to the border with Malawi where the first case was detected. Furthermore, genetic sequencing analysis of the two wild polioviruses indicates a single importation event from Pakistan / Afghanistan into southeastern Africa; the importation event is estimated to have occurred between July 2019 (date of the common node between Pakistan viruses and Malawi/Mozambique viruses) and December 2020 (date of the common node between Malawi and Mozambique viruses). COVID19-related severe movement restrictions implemented in March 2020 in Pakistan and Afghanistan means it is less likely exportation could have occurred between March and December 2020. The Malawi and Mozambique viruses independently evolved for about 0.9 and 1.2 years respectively until first detected and are both considered orphan viruses, and the absence of detection of circulating WPV1 viruses in Malawi and Mozambique between 2019 and 2021 suggests surveillance gaps in southeastern Africa. The original WPV1 cluster in south Asia has not been detected there since December 2020.

The committee noted that the certification of polio eradication African Region was not affected by the outbreak, as it is due to importation rather then endemic transmission. The committee also noted the importance of cross border activities in the outbreak response.

A multi-country response to the WPV1 outbreak is continuing, with four immunization rounds being conducted in Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia; Zimbabwe will join the response for rounds 3 and 4. Additionally, retrospective case searching, surveillance strengthening and improving essential immunization are all ongoing. The committee noted that while administrative coverage was high, problems with population data made these coverage estimates unreliable. Monitoring coverage by Lot Quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS) showed far lower coverage, and the committee noted that countries that have long been polio free needed assistance from GPEI partners in the implementation of supplementary immunization activities (SIAs).

The committee was concerned about the recent outbreak of WPV1 in the North Waziristan district of southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province in Pakistan. Since the last Emergency Committee (EC) meeting in February 2022, Pakistan has reported ten WPV1 cases from North Waziristan and two WPV1 positive environmental samples from the neighboring district of Bannu. With the ongoing WPV1 circulation in South KP, the risks to the rest of Pakistan has escalated.

The key challenges which hampered progress in southern KP include the complex security situation, specifically in North and South Waziristan, which resulted in inadequate access, missed children and reduced quality of SIAs. Community resistance with refusals to vaccination (including vaccination boycotts and fake finger-marking without vaccination), lack of female frontline workers and high turnover of frontline workers, and weak health infrastructure and service delivery all pose challenges. The ten WPV1 cases reported in 2022 are zero dose for routine immunization, zero dose or under-immunized in SIAs, and are from refusal families.

Another challenge in South KP is the sub-optimal Routine Immunization (RI) and progress on strengthening RI in South KP is slow.

The committee commended the dedication of frontline health workers who continue to seek every child who needed vaccination and extended its sympathy to the families of the 17 health workers who were killed in February 2022 in Takhar and Kunduz in Afghanistan. It is encouraging that 2.6 million previously unreached children have been vaccinated, and the number of children not yet accessed by immunization teams was down to an estimated 700,000. Data provided to the committee clearly showed that where house to house polio campaigns are possible the vaccine coverage is far higher.

There has been continuous / steady progress in the rest of Pakistan with no WPV1 detection in last 11 months. Last WPV1 case and positive environmental sample outside of South KP were detected in January 2021 and July 2021 respectively.

Source: World Health Organization

President Cyril Ramaphosa will travel to Schloss Elmau in the Federal Republic of Germany on Sunday, 26 June 2022, to participate in the G7 Leaders’ Summit at the invitation of the host, Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

The Summit is scheduled to take place on Monday, 27 June 2022.

Alongside the G7 member states, invited non-member states that will participate in the Summit are the Republic of South Africa, the Republic of Argentina, the Republic of India, the Republic of Indonesia and the Republic of Senegal.

Germany has indicated that it will seek to strengthen the G7’s responsibility for working towards “the global common good”, thus expanding cooperation with all partners, especially within the framework of the United Nations and the G20, based on a fair and rules-based multilateral system.

Reflecting the outward-looking approach of recent Presidencies of the G7, guest leaders are invited to join outreach sessions within the summit agenda. In order to ensure that this involvement is meaningful, Germany has also invited international organisations and guest experts in specific outreach sessions, whilst preserving space and time for G7 member-only agendas, discussions and negotiations.

South Africa will participate in two outreach sessions scheduled for 27 June 2022. The first will be a working lunch on “Investing in the future”, where issues of climate, energy and health will be discussed, followed by a working session titled “Stronger Together”, where the Summit will address food security issues and advancing gender equality.

South Africa has been a regular invitee of the G7. Participation in the 2022 Leaders’ Summit presents an opportunity for the country to highlight the concerns of developing countries and to advocate for the continued global attention for equitable distribution of resources, particularly with regards to the on-going pandemic as well as economic recovery measures.

Collectively, the G7 countries represent approximately 40% of global gross domestic product (GDP) and 10% of the world’s population. The agenda of the G7 has, since the turn of the century, evolved from a sole focus on discussions on economic and financial issues to matters of peace and security, global governance, international terrorism, the environment, refugees and other geo-political and foreign policy related matters.

The G7 was formally established in 1975 following the financial crisis brought about by the 1973 oil crisis. In an attempt to improve the coordination of global economic and financial policy, the initial meetings were held by the Finance Ministers of the world’s five most industrialized and developed countries – France, Germany, Japan, the US, and the UK, who were later joined by Canada and Italy at a Presidential level, to form the G7.

Source: The Presidency Republic of South Africa

NAIROBI, KENYA — Leaders of 54 countries in the British Commonwealth are meeting in Rwanda to discuss trade, food security, health issues, and climate change. The summit comes as Britain and Rwanda are facing criticism on a controversial migrant deal.

Commonwealth member states are meeting for the first time in four years to discuss ways to strengthen relations and tackle global problems ranging from health care and conflict to climate change and food security.

Speaking in Rwanda’s capital of Kigali and representing Queen Elizabeth, Britain’s Prince Charles said such a political union is still needed to overcome the world’s challenges.

“I treasure the friendships we have built over these past 70 years and look forward to their deepening in the years ahead,” Charles said. “As we build back from the pandemic that has devastated so many lives, as we respond to climate change and biodiversity loss that threatens our very existence and as we see lives destroyed by the unattenuated aggression of violent forces, such friendships are more important than ever.”

Rwanda is the newest country in the 54-member Commonwealth, and host of this year’s meeting.

The East African nation’s president, Paul Kagame, said his country became a member of the union to benefit from its unity and development.

“Everything we do, including joining the Commonwealth in 2009, is aimed at making sure that our people are connected, included and forward looking,” Kagame said. “We are delighted that through CHOGM you have the opportunity to know us and we aim to repay that trust with many years of continued friendship.”

Gabon and Togo are also set to join the Commonwealth. The West African nations will be the latest countries to become members of the union that have no ties to Britain.

The head of the Horn Institute for Strategic Studies, Hassan Khannenje, says Britain wants to strengthen the union after leaving the European Union in 2016.

“It’s one way for Britain after Brexit to reestablish a relationship with the Commonwealth, but also it signals the kind of interest Britain has acquired, especially in Rwanda’s role within the Commonwealth as a new member in trying to strengthen the Commonwealth relationship, especially in the wake of Brexit that has affected UK’s standing in the world in ways may affect it economically,” Khannenje said.

In April, Britain and Rwanda reached an agreement that allows the UK to send asylum seekers to Kigali, a deal that has been sharply criticized by human rights defenders.

However, speakers made no mention of the deal or the controversy surrounding it.

The union discussed how to mitigate the effect of climate change in the member states.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said some countries are facing existential threats from global warming.

“No one understands better than our Commonwealth friends in the Caribbean, the Pacific, the Indian Ocean who can see the incoming tides surging ever higher up their beaches, threatening to inundate their villages and towns and in time the entire land mass of some island states,” he said. “For them the baleful effects of climate change aren’t vague or theoretical but already happening before their eyes.”

During the meeting the Commonwealth provided $38 million to help the countries most affected by the changing climate.

Source: Voice of America

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA — South Africans living in the Eastern Cape are counting down to “Day Zero” when the taps in the Nelson Mandela Bay area will run dry. Experts say climate change induced drought has left reservoirs almost empty, while municipal mismanagement has city authorities scrambling to plug more than 3,000 leaking water pipes.

Sixty-eight-year-old grandma of five Virginia Kima lives in KwaNobuhle, a poor township in a region named after South Africa’s greatest hero and first Black president, Nelson Mandela Bay.

But life is hard these days, she said.

“Sometimes we stay about two or three days without water,” she said. “When there’s no water we do go to other areas and fetch water.”

Kima told VOA when the taps run dry, she walks 25 minutes to a school to fill bottles.

The bay area is suffering a critical water shortage. Authorities said regional dam water storage is at about 11 percent of capacity and could be about to get a lot worse.

At the current rate of use, two major reservoirs could run out completely in a matter of days. If that happens, 40 percent of the city of Gqeberha, with a population of about a million people, would be affected.

Luvuyo Bangazi, spokesman for the government committee dealing with the shortage, told VOA that authorities are racing to prevent “Day Zero,” when they run out of water.

“With regards to the exact date of Day Zero, you know we really cannot have such a date in the calendar because there are lots of moving parts,” he said. “We are doing everything we can in our power to avoid taps running dry.”

Bangazi said there are several reasons for the low water levels – both natural and man-made.

“We haven’t had good rains for more than seven years and we’ve had a sharp increase in water consumption from across sectors, be it residential, business, or other,” he said. “So, compounding that with obviously ailing infrastructure that leads to severe water leaks … almost 25-30% of our water [is] being lost due to water leaks caused by failing infrastructure.”

More than 3,000 leaks have been reported to city authorities, who say teams are scrambling to fix them.

Bangazi said the community also needs to cut back on water consumption, which he says is 60 million liters more per day than it should be for the size of population.

Meanwhile, authorities are setting up communal water points and aid workers are drilling boreholes for water wells.

Mary Galvin, an associate professor in development studies at the University of Johannesburg, said the water shortage shows the urgent need to combat climate change.

“Reaching Day Zero is an example, or is an expression, of a climate crisis which is here to stay — with higher temperatures, greater intensity of weather events, including drought and flood. So this is yet another manifestation that we see across the country and across Africa and across the world.”

Galvin noted that there is also an issue of water inequality in South Africa.

While wealthier residents of Nelson Mandela Bay can dig their own boreholes and buy storage tanks, the poor here, like Grandma Kima, must walk to find water.

The water shortage in Nelson Mandela Bay comes just a few years after the major South African tourist city of Cape Town narrowly averted its own Day Zero.

Source: Voice of America

ABUJA — Nigerian rights activists are reacting with outrage after a Nigerian politician and his wife were charged by British prosecutors with human trafficking with the intent to harvest organs.

Ike Ekweremadu is alleged to have smuggled a Nigerian boy into Britain to harvest his kidney for their sick daughter. The former deputy senate president and his wife appeared before the Uxbridge Magistrate’s Court on Thursday, two days after they were arrested by London police.

Prosecutors accused them of luring 15-year-old David Nwamini Ukpo from Nigeria to the UK to donate his kidney to their daughter. Prosecutors also accused them of forging documents to make Ukpo appear to be 21 years old.

It’s not clear if Ukpo was aware of the reason he was traveling, but a letter written by Ekweremadu to the British High Commission in December stated they were going to the UK for organ donation.

Ekweremadu’s daughter is reportedly battling a kidney disease. He and his wife were arrested on their way to Turkey to procure another organ after they allegedly were unable to continue the process with Ukpo.

They denied the allegations on Thursday but did not enter a plea and were held without bail.

Prominent Nigerian human rights activists have denounced the politician on social media. The co-founder of the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) Movement, Aisha Yesufu, tweeted, “How many missing people are related to organ harvesting? This is scary.”

Another activist, Rinu Oduala, said, “They really thought they would get away with it in the UK. Because Nigeria is a place where criminals occupy public offices, commit crimes and go scot-free.”

“That the former deputy Senate president might be involved in organ trafficking is disappointing to say the very least,” Oduala told VOA via a voice messaging app. “The Nigerian image, our reputation keeps dwindling out there. Every day our public officials make it harder for Nigerians to thrive out there, we’re forced to prove a point that we’re not that image of our country.”

Ekweremadu’s defense attorney, Gavin Irwin, described the allegations as “preposterous” Thursday.

On Friday, supporters on social media pledged their support for Ekweremadu, including a colleague, senator Dino Melaye, who twitted, “I stand with Ike.”

Ariyo-Dare Atoye, founder of the Nigeria Liberty Center, says it is too early to make conclusions.

“It is the aggregate of the records available to the UK embassy and the hospital that will be able to expose whether they followed due process,” he said. “Has any document been forged? Has there been any manipulation? All of this will come to the fore possibly in the next adjourned date. This is not something that anybody can cover up.”

The World Health Organization says one-tenth of all global organ transplants are performed using illegally acquired organs.

Under the UK’s Modern Slavery Act of 2015, conspiracy to harvest the organs of a child is a serious offense and perpetrators could face life imprisonment if found guilty.

Ekweremadu’s next hearing is July 7.

Source: Voice of America