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
’We are simply going to starve’: UN chief visits Rohingya refugees amid aid funding shortfall
- ’We are simply going to starve’: UN chief visits Rohingya refugees amid aid funding shortfall
Guterres’ visit on Friday to the border district of Cox’s Bazar — his second to Bangladesh — is seen as crucial after the UN World Food Programme (WFP) announced potential cuts to food rations, following the shutdown of USAID operations.
The WFP has said it may reduce food rations for the Rohingya from $12.50 to just $6 per month starting in April because of a lack of funding, raising fears among aid workers of rising hunger in the overcrowded camps.
“Whatever we are given now is not enough. If that’s halved, we are simply going to starve,” said Mohammed Sabir, a 31-year-old refugee from Myanmar who has lived in the camps since fleeing violence in 2017.
The WFP said earlier this month that the reduction was due to a broad shortfall in donations, not the Trump administration’s decision to cut US foreign aid globally, including USAID. But a senior Bangladeshi official told Reuters that most likely played a role, as the United States has been the top donor for Rohingya refugee aid.
Bangladesh is sheltering more than 1 million Rohingya, members of a persecuted Muslim minority who fled violent purges in neighboring Myanmar mostly in 2016 and 2017, in camps in the southern Cox’s Bazar district, where they have limited access to jobs or education.
Roughly 70,000 fled to Bangladesh last year, driven in part by growing hunger in their home Rakhine state, Reuters has reported.
Sabir, a father of five children, said: “We are not allowed to work here. I feel helpless when I think of my children. What will I feed them?”
“I hope we are not forgotten. The global community must come forward to help,” Sabir said.
The WFP has emphasized that it requires $15 million in April to maintain full rations for the refugees. But fears are growing about the impact on food security during the holy month of Ramadan, which this year ends in the last days of March.
Bangladesh’s interim government, which took power in August 2024 following mass protests that ousted former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, is hoping that Guterres’ visit will help draw international attention to the crisis and mobilize aid for the refugees.
Guterres is scheduled to take part in a fasting break on Friday afternoon with refugees during Iftar, accompanied by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, the head of Bangladesh’s interim government.
“Without work or income, this will have catastrophic consequences,” 80-year-old refugee Abdur Salam said of the food ration cuts. “What kind of life is this? If you can’t give us enough food, please send us back to our homeland. We want to return to Myanmar with our rights.”
Driving ban puts brakes on young women in Turkmenistan
- There is no legislation specifically outlawing women under 30 from obtaining a driving license in Turkmenistan
- But it is one of many informal prohibitions that is universally followed, so women that do drive must do so without a permit
ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan: Mekhri feels “a sense of freedom and self-confidence” when she’s behind the wheel of a car – despite being forced to drive illegally because of an unwritten rule preventing women getting a license.
In Turkmenistan, the reclusive Central Asian state where she lives, young women are effectively banned from driving.
“I know the rules of the road. I drive calmly, don’t overtake anyone and know how to park,” the 19-year-old said.
Like other women interviewed by AFP in Turkmenistan – ranked by rights groups as one of the most closed and repressive countries in the world – she withheld her surname.
There is no legislation specifically outlawing women under 30 from obtaining a driving license.
But it is one of many informal prohibitions that is universally followed, so women that do drive must do so without this precious permit, which is indeed against the law.
“When my daughter wanted to enroll at the driving school, we were told that she could take lessons but that she would probably not pass the test,” said Guzel, Mekhri’s 57-year-old mother.
So instead of paying for lessons, Guzel assumed the role of instructor and now takes Mekhri outside the capital, Ashgabat, to practice.
“Where there are few cars, police officers and cameras, I let my daughter take the wheel and I teach her,” Guzel, who started driving when she was 40, said.
Among the other transport-related diktats imposed by father-and-son duo Gurbanguly and Serdar Berdymukhamedov – who have ruled the country one after the other since 2006 – are a ban on black cars.
Owners have been forced to paint the vehicles white, the favorite color of Gurbanguly, whose official titles are “Hero-Protector” and “leader of the Turkmen nation.”
Many young women share Mekhri’s frustration.
“I wanted to take my test at 18. At the driving school, the instructor immediately warned the many girls there: ‘You’ve come for nothing. You won’t be able to take it,” said Maisa, a 26-year-old saleswoman.
“But up to the exam, driving schools take both boys and girls, because they pay,” she said.
Goulia, 19, said her parents had wanted to buy her a car when she went to university so she could be more independent, do the family shopping and take her grandmother to hospital and the chemist’s.
“But because of the difficulties that girls like me face getting a driver’s license, my mother said she would have to postpone the decision,” she said.
“I’ve just turned 19 and I can’t get a license but the boys can and I don’t understand why,” she added.
Turkmenistan’s motor transport agency did not respond to an AFP request to comment.
Contacted via phone by AFP, one driving school said “women have the right to enroll in the course and take the exam” before abruptly hanging up.
But another instructor from Ashgabat acknowledged the informal ban.
“It is due to a sharp increase in accidents involving female drivers,” the instructor said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“After an investigation by the authorities, it turned out they were simply buying driving licenses,” the instructor said – a claim AFP could not verify.
Rules have also been tightened for women over 30 who are not covered by the informal ban.
To register a car in their own name, they have to show a marriage certificate, family record book and a report from their employer.
Authorities routinely reject accusations that they are restricting women’s rights.
Responding to a recent United Nations report criticizing the country, the government said: “The motherland treats mothers and women with great respect.”
Ahead of International Women’s Day on March 8, President Serdar Berdymoukhamedov gifted every woman the equivalent of $3 – enough to buy a cake or six kilograms (13 pounds) of potatoes.
‘He is not a criminal’: legal immigrants caught up in Trump raids
- The agency said on social media that it had conducted several raids in Aurora, a Denver suburb, on February 5
DENVER: D Pablo Morales has nothing against Donald Trump, and when the US president promised mass deportations, he was not worried because as a legal migrant from Cuba, he thought they would only affect criminals.
But then immigration officers arrested his son, Luis — a rideshare driver who has never broken the law and was also in the US legally.
“He has all his papers, he has his social security number, his work authorization,” Morales told AFP, displaying the documents.
The two men were visiting friends in Denver when they were woken by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid.
When agents knocked on the door, they calmly presented their papers thinking they had nothing to fear — until Luis was handcuffed and sent to an administrative detention center.
He has yet to be released.
Luis filled out paperwork to apply for residency in 2023 but, the agents told his father, he did not have a hearing date for his application.
Immigration lawyers say the blame lies with the backlog in the US immigration system, where cases often drag on for years because of a shortage of judges.
Luis has lived in New York for almost four years and is married to an American citizen.
“He is not a criminal,” insists his father.
“He’s a hardworking boy like me; we came to this country... to work,” explains this former employee of a Las Vegas casino.
ICE did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the case when contacted by AFP.
The agency said on social media that it had conducted several raids in Aurora, a Denver suburb, on February 5.
“100+ members of the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua were targeted for arrest and detention in Aurora, Colorado, today by ICE,” it posted.
According to a report by Fox News, around thirty people were arrested, of whom only one was a gang member.
“I don’t understand,” said Morales. “They were looking for Venezuelans who are part of a criminal gang.
“If he is Cuban and he shows them his papers, I don’t know why they are coming to take him away.”
Local media reported an asylum seeker was also among those rounded up in that particular raid.
Trump rode back into the White House on a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment sweeping America.
He pledged to carry out “the largest deportation operation in history.”
However, data shows ICE deported fewer people in February — Trump’s first full month in office — than it did under Joe Biden in the same month last year, according to a report by NBC.
But its actions have been very visible, with military jets used to ostentatiously deport handcuffed people to Latin American countries, or to detention at Guantanamo Bay.
Colorado knows it is in the crosshairs.
Its capital, Denver, is a sanctuary city, where Democratic authorities limit the cooperation of local law enforcement with federal immigration police.
And Aurora has been cast by Trump and conservative media as a symbol of an “occupied America,” because of a viral video showing armed men breaking into an apartment there.
City police point out that crime has fallen in Aurora over the last two years.
Last month’s raids were little more than “photo ops” says Laura Lunn, an immigration lawyer.
“I think that the focus on Aurora was a fabricated story to begin with. They’re trying to solve a problem that never existed,” says Lunn, a member of the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network.
“The rhetoric that the government is using — conflating immigration and criminals — is really damaging, because those two things are not the same.”
ICE says that while its agents are targeting criminals, they are content to make “collateral arrests.”
During the first month of the Trump presidency, the proportion of people without criminal records detained by ICE increased from six to 16 percent, according to the New York Times.
Lunn says no one is safe anymore, even immigrants who are just awaiting their day in court but who have everything in order.
She advises her worried clients to always have photocopies of their files.
“People are being detained today that I would never have guessed even a month ago that they would be detained,” she says.
“It’s really hard for us to predict who might be at risk.”
World Food Programme to cut aid to 1 million people in Myanmar
- The World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday more than one million people in war-torn Myanmar will be cut off from food aid starting in April due to “critical funding shortfalls”
YANGON: The World Food Programme will be forced to cut off one million people in war-torn Myanmar from its vital food aid because of "critical funding shortfalls", it said Friday.
The United States provided the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) with $4.4 billion of its $9.7 billion budget in 2024 but Washington's international aid funding has been slashed under President Donald Trump.
Myanmar has been gripped by civil war following a 2021 military coup, plunging it into what the UN describes as a "polycrisis" of mutually compounding conflict, poverty and instability.
The WFP says more than 15 million people in the country of 51 million are unable to meet their daily food needs, while the UN warned last year that Rakhine state in the west faces an "imminent threat of acute famine".
"More than one million people in Myanmar will be cut off from WFP's lifesaving food assistance starting in April due to critical funding shortfalls," said a statement.
"These cuts come just as increased conflict, displacement and access restrictions are already sharply driving up food aid needs," it added.
The statement did not mention the United States by name, nor any other donor countries.
But it said that without immediate new funding, "WFP will only be able to assist 35,000 of the most vulnerable people", including children under five, pregnant and breastfeeding women, and the disabled.
Trump's campaign to dismantle the United States' foreign aid contributions has put the humanitarian community into a tailspin.
"The situation across the country continues to deteriorate," said the WFP's Myanmar director Michael Dunford.
"It is essential that the international community does not forget the people of Myanmar in their time of need."
Trump's scheme to slash federal spending has been unofficially spearheaded by his top donor, the world's richest man, Elon Musk.
Some of the most concentrated fire has been on Washington's aid agency USAID -- which has a $42.8 billion budget and is a major contributor to WFP.
But USAID only accounts for between 0.7 and 1.4 percent of total US government spending over the last 25 years, according to the Pew Research Center.
Myanmar troops under armed attack flee across border: Thai military
- A group of Myanmar soldiers fled across the Thai border on Friday after an assault by an ethnic armed group ousted them from their base, Thailand’s military said
BANGKOK: A group of Myanmar soldiers fled across the Thai border on Friday after an assault by an ethnic armed group ousted them from their base, Thailand’s military said.
Myanmar has been riven by civil war after the military seized power in a 2021 coup, with the junta fighting an array of armed ethnic organizations and pro-democracy partisans.
Fighters from the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) attacked the Pulu Tu frontier military base in the early hours of Friday, the Thai military said.
“The Myanmar military defended the base but ultimately the KNLA successfully seized control,” it said in a statement.
“Several Myanmar soldiers were killed and some fled across the border into Thailand.”
The statement did not specify how many Myanmar soldiers had crossed the border into Thailand’s Tak province but said they had been “provided humanitarian assistance.”
KNLA forces seized the base around 3:00 am (2030 GMT Thursday), according to a spokesman for the organization’s political wing, the Karen National Union.
The KNLA fighters took the base after Myanmar troops “abandoned their guns and ran into Thailand,” it said.
A spokesman for the Myanmar junta could not be reached for comment.
The Pulu Tu base is around 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of the border town of Myawaddy, a vital trade node that became a battleground between anti-junta fighters and the military last year.
The region is also the epicenter of the scam-center boom in Myanmar, where thousands of foreign nationals trawl the Internet for victims to trick with romance or investment schemes.
Many workers say they were trafficked into the centers and thousands have been repatriated through Thailand in recent weeks under mounting international pressure.
The KNLA has been fighting for decades to establish greater autonomy for the Karen people living along Myanmar’s southeastern flank.
It is among dozens of ethnic armed organizations, already active before the coup, which have proved the most effective fighting forces against the junta.
While the military has suffered substantial territorial losses, analysts say it remains strong in Myanmar’s heartland, with an air force capable of inflicting punishing losses on its adversaries.
The junta issued a conscription order a year ago to boost its embattled ranks, allowing it to call up all men aged 18-35 for military service.
