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
Donald Trump rewarding loyalists with pardon spree
- Trump is doling out pardons ‘that look like they’re almost quid pro quo for financial donations’
- Among those receiving a pardon was Paul Walczak, a nursing home executive convicted of tax crime
WASHINGTON: Reality TV stars. Former lawmakers. A sheriff. A nursing home executive. A drug kingpin.
What do they have in common?
They are among the Americans convicted of crimes who have received pardons from President Donald Trump since he took office in January.
And while US presidents have doled out questionable pardons in the past, Trump is doing so “in a bigger, more aggressive way with sort of no sense of shame,” said Kermit Roosevelt, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
“The pardon power has always been a little bit problematic because it’s this completely unconstrained power that the president has,” Roosevelt said.
“Most presidents have issued at least some pardons where people look at them and they say: ‘This seems to be self-serving’ or ‘This seems to be corrupt in some way.’“
But Trump is doling out pardons “that look like they’re almost quid pro quo for financial donations,” Roosevelt said.
Among those receiving a pardon was Paul Walczak, a nursing home executive convicted of tax crimes and whose mother attended a $1-million-per-plate fund-raising dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in April.
Other beneficiaries of Trump pardons include reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, who were serving lengthy prison sentences for bank fraud and tax evasion.
Their daughter, Savannah, is a prominent Trump supporter and gave a speech at last year’s Republican National Convention.
More than half a dozen former Republican lawmakers convicted of various crimes have also received pardons along with a Virginia sheriff sentenced to 10 years in prison for taking $75,000 in bribes.
On his first day in office, Trump pardoned more than 1,500 supporters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 as they sought to prevent congressional certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
The next day, Trump pardoned Ross Ulbricht, who had been serving a life sentence for running the “Silk Road” online marketplace that facilitated millions of dollars of drug sales.
Barbara McQuade, a former prosecutor who now teaches law at the University of Michigan, said Trump is not the first president to be accused of “allowing improper factors to influence their pardon decisions.”
Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton’s pardon of a commodities trader whose wife was a major Democratic donor and Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter, and other family members all drew some criticism.
“(But) Trump is in a class by himself in both scope and shamelessness,” McQuade said in a Bloomberg opinion column.
“To him, pardons are just another deal.
“As long as a defendant can provide something of value in return, no crime seems too serious,” she said.
Democratic lawmaker Jamie Raskin, in a letter to Ed Martin, Trump’s pardon attorney at the Justice Department, asked what criteria are being used to recommend pardons.
“It at least appears that you are using the Office of the Pardon Attorney to dole out pardons as favors to the President’s loyal political followers and most generous donors,” Raskin wrote.
Martin for his part has made no secret of the partisan nature of the pardons recommended by his office.
“No MAGA left behind,” Martin said on X after the pardon of the bribe-taking Virginia sheriff, a reference to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.
Lee Kovarsky, a University of Texas law professor, said Trump’s “pardon spree” opens up a “menacing new frontier of presidential power” that he calls “patronage pardoning.”
By reducing the penalty for misconduct, Trump is making a “public commitment to protect and reward loyalism, however criminal,” Kovarsky said in a New York Times opinion piece.
Rwanda quits Central African bloc in dispute with Congo
- Kigali had expected to assume the chairmanship of the 11-member bloc at a meeting on Saturday in Equatorial Guinea
- Instead, the bloc kept Equatorial Guinea in the role, which Rwanda’s foreign ministry denounced as a violation of its rights
KIGALI: Rwanda has said it would withdraw from the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), underscoring diplomatic tensions in the region over an offensive this year by Rwanda-backed M23 rebels in eastern Congo.
Kigali had expected to assume the chairmanship of the 11-member bloc at a meeting on Saturday in Equatorial Guinea.
Instead, the bloc kept Equatorial Guinea in the role, which Rwanda’s foreign ministry denounced as a violation of its rights.
Rwanda, in a statement, condemned Congo’s “instrumentalization” of the bloc and saw “no justification for remaining in an organization whose current functioning runs counter to its founding principles.”
It wasn’t clear if Rwanda’s exit from the bloc would take immediate effect.
The office of Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi said in a statement that ECCAS members had “acknowledged the aggression against the Democratic Republic of Congo by Rwanda and ordered the aggressor country to withdraw its troops from Congolese soil.”
M23 seized eastern Congo’s two largest cities earlier this year, with the advance leaving thousands dead and raising concerns of an all-out regional war. African leaders along with Washington and Doha have been trying to broker a peace deal.
Congo, the UN and Western powers accuse Rwanda of supporting M23 by sending troops and weapons.
Rwanda has long denied helping M23, saying its forces were acting in self-defense against Congo’s army and ethnic Hutu militiamen linked to the 1994 Rwandan genocide that killed around 1 million people, mostly ethnic Tutsis.
US President Donald Trump’s administration hopes to strike a peace accord between Congo and Rwanda that would also facilitate billions in Western investment in the region, which is rich in minerals including tantalum, gold, cobalt, copper and lithium.
ECCAS was established in the 1980s to foster cooperation in areas like security and economic affairs among its member states.
Chinese ship runs aground off Philippines-occupied island in the disputed South China Sea
- Confrontations have spiked between Chinese and Philippine coast guard and navy ships in the disputed waters in recent years
PUERTO PRINCESA: A Chinese ship ran aground in stormy weather in shallow waters off a Philippines-occupied island in the disputed South China Sea, prompting Filipino forces to go on alert, Philippine military officials said Sunday.
When Filipino forces assessed that the Chinese fishing vessel appeared to have run aground in the shallows east of Thitu Island on Saturday because of bad weather, Philippine military and coast guard personnel deployed to provide help but later saw that the ship had been extricated, regional navy spokesperson Ellaine Rose Collado said.
No other details were immediately available, including if there were injuries among the crewmembers or if the ship was damaged, Collado said.
Confrontations have spiked between Chinese and Philippine coast guard and navy ships in the disputed waters in recent years.
“The alertness of our troops is always there,” Col. Xerxes Trinidad of the Armed Forces of the Philippines told reporters. But when they saw that a probable accident had happened, “we tried to provide assistance as professionals” in accordance with international law on helping distressed vessels at sea.
“We’re always following international law,” Trinidad said.
Filipino villagers living in a fishing village on Thitu, which they call Pagasa island, immediately informed the Philippine military and coast guard after seeing the Chinese ship lying in the shallows about 1.5 nautical miles (2.7 kilometers) from their village, said MP Albayda, a local Filipino official, told The Associated Press.
“They got worried because the Chinese were so close but it was really the strong wind and waves that caused the ship to run aground,” said Albayda, adding that other Chinese ships pulled the stricken vessel away.
The stricken ship resembled what the Philippine military had repeatedly said were suspected Chinese militia ships, which had backed the Chinese coast guard and navy in blocking and harassing Philippine coast guard and military vessels in the disputed waters, a busy conduit for global trade and commerce.
Thitu Island is home to a Philippine fishing village and Filipino forces and is the largest of nine islands and islets occupied by the Philippines. It lies about 26 kilometers (16 miles) from Subi Reef, which China transformed into an island base along with six other barren reefs to reinforce its claim to virtually the entire South China Sea.
Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan are also involved in the long-simmering territorial standoffs, an Asian flashpoint that many fear could pit China and the United States in a major conflict.
The US does not lay any claim to the South China Sea but has repeatedly warned that it’s obligated to defend the Philippines, it’s longtime treaty ally, if Filipino forces, ships and aircraft come under an armed attack, including in the South China Sea.
Restive Indian state orders curfew after fresh violence
- The latest violence was triggered Saturday after reports of the arrest of five members, including a commander, of Arambai Tenggol, a radical Meitei group
IMPHAL: An Indian state riven by ethnic tensions imposed an Internet shutdown and curfew after protesters clashed with security forces over the arrest of some members of a radical group, police said Sunday.
Manipur in India’s northeast has been rocked by periodic clashes for more than two years between the predominantly Hindu Meitei majority and the mainly Christian Kuki community that have killed more than 250 people.
The latest violence was triggered Saturday after reports of the arrest of five members, including a commander, of Arambai Tenggol, a radical Meitei group.
Incensed mobs demanding their release stormed a police post, set fire to a bus and blocked roads in parts of the state capital Imphal.
Manipur police announced a curfew in five districts, including Imphal West and Bishnupur, due to the “developing law and order situation.”
“Prohibitory orders have been issued by District Magistrates. Citizens are requested to cooperate with the orders,” the police said in a statement.
Arambai Tenggol, which is alleged to have orchestrated the violence against the Kuki community, has also announced a 10-day shutdown in the valley districts.
The state’s home ministry has ordered all Internet and mobile data services in volatile districts to be shut off for five days in order to bring the latest unrest under control.
Internet services were shut down for months in Manipur during the initial outbreak of violence in 2023, which displaced around 60,000 people from their homes according to government figures.
Thousands of the state’s residents are still unable to return home owing to ongoing tensions.
Long-standing tensions between the Meitei and Kuki communities revolve around competition for land and public jobs.
Rights activists have accused local leaders of exacerbating ethnic divisions for political gain.
Travel ban may shut door for Afghan family to bring niece to US for a better life
- Trump suspended refugee resettlement on his first day in office
IRMO: Mohammad Sharafoddin, his wife and young son walked at times for 36 hours in a row over mountain passes as they left Afghanistan as refugees to end up less than a decade later talking about their journey on a plush love seat in the family’s three-bedroom suburban American home.
He and his wife dreamed of bringing her niece to the United States to share in that bounty. Maybe she could study to become a doctor and then decide her own path.
But that door slams shut on Monday as America put in place a travel ban for people from Afghanistan and a dozen other countries.
“It’s kind of shock for us when we hear about Afghanistan, especially right now for ladies who are affected more than others with the new government,” Mohammad Sharafoddin said. “We didn’t think about this travel ban.”
President Donald Trump signed the ban Wednesday. It is similar to one in place during his first administration but covers more countries. Along with Afghanistan, travel to the US is banned from Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
Trump said visitors who overstay visas, like the man charged in an attack that injured dozens of demonstrators in Boulder, Colorado, earlier this month, are a danger to the country. The suspect in the attack is from Egypt, which isn’t included in the ban.
The countries chosen for the ban have deficient screening of their citizens, often refuse to take them back and have a high percentage of people who stay in the US after their visas expire, Trump said.
The ban makes exceptions for people from Afghanistan on Special Immigrant Visas who generally worked most closely with the US government during the two-decade war there.
Thousands of refugees came from Afghanistan
Afghanistan was also one of the largest sources of resettled refugees, with about 14,000 arrivals in a 12-month period through September 2024. Trump suspended refugee resettlement on his first day in office.
It is a path Sharafoddin took with his wife and son out of Afghanistan walking on those mountain roads in the dark then through Pakistan, Iran and into Turkiye. He worked in a factory for years in Turkiye, listening to YouTube videos on headphones to learn English before he was resettled in Irmo, South Carolina, a suburb of Columbia.
His son is now 11, and he and his wife had a daughter in the US who is now 3. There is a job at a jewelry maker that allows him to afford a two-story, three-bedroom house. Food was laid out on two tables Saturday for a celebration of the Muslim Eid Al-Adha holiday.
Sharafoddin’s wife, Nuriya, said she is learning English and driving — two things she couldn’t do in Afghanistan under Taliban rule.
“I’m very happy to be here now, because my son is very good at school and my daughter also. I think after 18 years they are going to work, and my daughter is going to be able to go to college,” she said.
The family wants to help a niece
It is a life she wanted for her niece too. The couple show videos from their cellphones of her drawing and painting. When the Taliban returned to power in 2021, their niece could no longer study. So they started to plan to get her to the US at least to further her education.
Nuriya Sharafoddin doesn’t know if her niece has heard the news from America yet. She hasn’t had the heart to call and tell her.
“I’m not ready to call her. This is not good news. This is very sad news because she is worried and wants to come,” Nuriya Sharafoddin said.
While the couple spoke, Jim Ray came by. He has helped a number of refugee families settle in Columbia and helped the Sharafoddins navigate questions in their second language.
Ray said Afghans in Columbia know the return of the Taliban changed how the US deals with their native country.
But while the ban allows spouses, children or parents to travel to America, other family members aren’t included. Many Afghans know their extended families are starving or suffering, and suddenly a path to help is closed, Ray said.
“We’ll have to wait and see how the travel ban and the specifics of it actually play out,” Ray said. “This kind of thing that they’re experiencing where family cannot be reunited is actually where it hurts the most.”
The Taliban criticize the travel ban
The Taliban have criticized Trump for the ban, with their top leader Hibatullah Akhundzada saying the US was now the oppressor of the world.
“Citizens from 12 countries are barred from entering their land — and Afghans are not allowed either,” he said on a recording shared on social media. “Why? Because they claim the Afghan government has no control over its people and that people are leaving the country. So, oppressor! Is this what you call friendship with humanity?”
