Franck Kuwonu, Africa Renewal*
People living in Lagos State in Nigeria, simulate sneezing into their elbows during a coronavirus prevention campaign. Credit: Africa Renewal
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 23 2020 (IPS) – Re-opening economies is a tough balancing act between keeping people safe from the virus while ensuring they can still make a living.
Some four months after the first COVID-19 case in Africa was reported in Egypt, countries on the continent are beginning to ease public health and social measures, such as lockdowns and curfews, imposed to curb the spread of the pandemic.
In Côte d’Ivoire, commercial activities have resumed, and students are…
KUALA LUMPUR and SYDNEY, Sep 1 2020 (IPS) – After accusing the World Health Organization (WHO) of pro-China bias, President Donald Trump from the UN agency. Although the US created the UN system for the post-Second World War new international order, Washington has often had to struggle in recent decades to ensure that it continues to serve changing US interests.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Invisible virus trumps POTUS
In early July, Washington gave the officially advising the UN of its intention to withdraw from the WHO, created by the US as the global counterpart to the now century-old Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO).
However, the White House decision as it …
A photo-collage. Credit: Peter Costantini.
SEATTLE, Oct 23 2020 (IPS) – By late September, the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States had claimed . That’s equivalent to a slightly higher toll than the 418,500 United States deaths in World War II, adjusted for relative population and duration. [See note below.]
With four percent of the world’s population, the U.S. has suffered 20 percent of global COVID-…
Sorghum is has nutritional and health benefits. Small scale farmer, Catherine Sibanda examines her sorghum crop in field, in Jambezi District, Zimbabwe, March 2015. Credit: Busani Bafana / IPS
BULAWAYO, Dec 2 2020 (IPS) – COVID-19 has magnified global food insecurity and is driving unhealthy eating and worsening malnutrition, food experts say. They have called for deliberate global investment in food as medicine on the back of growing diet-related illnesses.
Famed Greek physician, Hippocrates, foretold the future of food. He is attributed to have said: ‘Let food be thy medicine and let medicine be thy food’. COVID-19 has pushed the conversation about food as med…
A TB patient at the Srinagar-based Chest Diseases Hospital in the Indian state of Kashmir. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS
Jan 15 2021 (IPS) – In July 1921, a French infant became the first person to an experimental vaccine against tuberculosis (TB), after the mother had died from the disease. The vaccine, known as Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG), is the same one still used today.
This first dose of BCG was the culmination of 13 years of research and development.
BCG remains the only licensed vaccine against TB and 2021 marks its .
Today, all eyes are on the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine. But while the number of people …
Vulnerable people need support, not stricter laws
APIA, Samoa, Feb 25 2021 (IPS) – Earlier this month, and in December 2020 the Government of Samoa conducted operations that resulted in the confiscation of a total of 1,400 grams of methamphetamine at the border, smuggled from the US.
The law enforcement officials (from the Ministry of Customs and Revenue and the Ministry of Police and Prisons) that intercepted these drugs deserve congratulations for their professionalism and skill. Meth is destructive and harmful and it is good to see this potential threat removed from the community.
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Mar 23 2021 (IPS) – have significant access to coronavirus vaccines before 2023. Unfortunately, a year’s delay will cause an estimated 2.5 million avoidable deaths in low and lower-middle income countries. As the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General has put it, the world is at the brink of a .
Anis Chowdhury
Vaccine apartheid
The EU, US, UK, Switzerland, Canada and their allies continue to the developing country proposal to temporarily suspend the World Trade Organization (WTO) Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement to enable greatly increased, affordable supplies of COVID-19 vaccines, d…
Credit: SHE Investments Cambodia
BANGKOK, Thailand, May 7 2021 (IPS) – We are living through a decisive moment. The COVID-19 pandemic’s devasting impact is reaching every corner of the world. As we look back at this period, we will see history divided into a pre-COVID and a post-COVID world.
And a defining feature of the post-COVID world will be the digital transformation that has permeated every aspect of our lives. Chief Technology Officers can say that the pandemic has done their job for them, accelerating the digitalization of economies and societies at an unimaginable pace.
The digital transformation has gone hand in hand with the rise …
Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait
Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Jun 16 2021 (IPS) – The climate crisis is amplifying the effects of instability and violence in the world’s poorest countries. Nowhere is this more visible than in Africa’s Central Sahel region, where increasing temperature, floods, droughts and other climate change-induced disasters are triggering conflicts, displacement, and pushing girls and boys into the shadows.
The Africa Region Climate Week Virtual Thematic Sessions are taking place this week and soon world leaders will come together for Africa Climate Week, in the lead up to this year’s climate talks in the UK, they…
A Somali resident sells meat at a market in Hudur, where food shortages continue to cause suffering. Meanwhile, between 720 and 811 million people in the world faced hunger in 2020 – some 161 million more than for 2019 – the UN Secretary-General said July 12; “new, tragic data”, which indicates the world is “tremendously off track” to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals () by 2030. Credit: UN Photo/Tobin Jones
BRUSSELS, Belgium / JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia, Jul 30 2021 (IPS) – A short answer to this question is yes, but it is obvious and predictable failure was visible for some time. This debate started before 2015, the year in which the Sustainable Develop…