Congo’s humanitarian crisis helped mpox spiral again into a global health emergency

Patients listen to a doctor outside the consultation room of the Mpox treatment centre at Nyiragongo General Referral Hospital, north of Goma on August 17, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 18 August 2024
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Congo’s humanitarian crisis helped mpox spiral again into a global health emergency

  • Millions are thought to be out of reach of medical help or advice in the conflict-torn east, where dozens of rebel groups have been fighting Congolese army forces for years over mineral-rich areas, causing a huge displacement crisis

GOMA, Congo: Sarah Bagheni had a headache, fever, and itchy and unusual skin lesions for days, but she had no inkling that her symptoms might have been caused by mpox and that she might be another case in a growing global health emergency.
She also has no idea where to go to get medical help.
She and her husband live in the Bulengo displacement camp in eastern Congo, a region that is effectively ground zero for a series of mpox outbreaks in Africa.
This year’s alarming rise in cases, including a new form of the virus identified by scientists in eastern Congo, led the World Health Organization to declare it a global health emergency on Wednesday. It said the new variant could spread beyond the five African countries where it had already been detected — a timely warning that came a day before Sweden reported its first case of the new strain.
In the vast central African nation of Congo, which has had more than 96 percent of the world’s roughly 17,000 recorded cases of mpox this year — and some 500 deaths from the disease — many of the most vulnerable seem unaware of its existence or the threat that it poses.
“We know nothing about this,” Bagheni’s husband, Habumuremyiza Hire, said Thursday about mpox. “I watch her condition helplessly because I don’t know what to do. We continue to share the same room.”
Millions are thought to be out of reach of medical help or advice in the conflict-torn east, where dozens of rebel groups have been fighting Congolese army forces for years over mineral-rich areas, causing a huge displacement crisis. Hundreds of thousands of people like Bagheni and her husband have been forced into overcrowded refugee camps around Goma, while more have taken refuge in the city.
Conditions in the camps are dire and medical facilities are almost nonexistent.
Mahoro Faustin, who runs the Bulengo camp, said that about three months ago, administrators first started noticing people in the camp exhibiting fever, body aches and chills — symptoms that could signal malaria, measles or mpox.
There is no way of knowing how many mpox cases there might be in Bulengo because of a lack of testing, he said. There haven’t been any recent health campaigns to educate the tens of thousands of people in the camp about mpox, and Faustin said he’s worried about how many people might be undiagnosed.
“Just look at the overcrowding here,” he said, pointing to a sea of ramshackle tents. “If nothing is done, we will all be infected here, or maybe we are already all infected.”
Around 70 percent of the new mpox cases in the Goma area in the last two months that were registered at a treatment center run by Medair were from displacement camps, said Dr. Pierre Olivier Ngadjole, the international aid group’s health adviser in Congo. The youngest of those cases was a month-old baby and the oldest a 90-year-old, he said.
In severe cases of mpox, people can develop lesions on the face, hands, arms, chest and genitals. While the disease originated in animals, the virus has in recent years been spreading between people via close physical contact, including sex.
Bagheni’s best hope of getting a diagnosis for her lesions is a government hospital that’s a two-hour drive away. That’s likely out of the question, given that she already struggles with mobility having previously had both her legs amputated.
Seven million people are internally displaced in Congo, with more than 5.5 million of them in the country’s east, according the UN refugee agency. Congo has the largest displacement camp population in Africa, and one of the largest in the world.
The humanitarian crisis in eastern Congo has almost every possible complication when it comes to stopping an mpox outbreak, said Dr. Chris Beyrer, director of Duke University’s Global Health Institute.
That includes war, illicit mining industries that attract sex workers, transient populations near border regions, and entrenched poverty. He also said the global community missed multiple warning signs.
“We’re paying attention to it now, but mpox has been spreading since 2017 in Congo and Nigeria,” Beyrer said, adding that experts have long been calling for vaccines to be shared with Africa, but to little effect. He said the WHO’s emergency declaration was “late in coming,” with more than a dozen countries already affected.
Beyrer said that unlike COVID-19 or HIV, there’s a good vaccine and good treatments and diagnostics for mpox, but “the access issues are worse than ever” in places like eastern Congo.
In 2022, there were outbreaks in more than 70 countries around the world, including the United States, which led the WHO to also declare an emergency that lasted until mid-2023. It was largely shut down in wealthy countries within months through the use of vaccines and treatments, but few doses have been made available in Africa.
The new and possibly more infectious strain of mpox was first detected this year in a mining town in eastern Congo, about 450 kilometers (280 miles) south of Goma. It’s unclear how much the new strain is to blame, but Congo is now enduring its worst outbreak yet and at least 13 African countries have recorded cases, four of them for the first time.
The outbreaks in those four countries — Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda — have been linked to Congo’s, and Doctors Without Borders said Friday that Congo’s surge “threatens a major spread of the disease” to other countries.
Salim Abdool Karim, an infectious disease expert who chairs the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s emergency committee, said the Congo outbreak has a particularly concerning change, in that it’s disproportionately affecting young people. Children under 15 account for 70 percent of cases and 85 percent of all deaths in the country, the Africa CDC reported.
Unlike the 2022 global outbreak, which predominantly affected gay and bisexual men, mpox now appears to be spreading in heterosexual populations.
All of Congo’s 26 provinces have recorded mpox cases, according to the state-run news agency. But Health Minister Samuel-Roger Kamba said Thursday that the country doesn’t have a single vaccine dose yet and he pleaded for “vigilance in all directions from all Congolese.”
Dr. Rachel Maguru, who heads the multi-epidemic center at Goma’s North Kivu provincial hospital, said they also don’t have drugs or any established treatments for mpox and are relying on other experts such as dermatologists to help where they can. A larger outbreak around the city and its numerous displacement camps already overburdened with an influx of people would be “terrible,” she said.
She also noted a pivotal problem: poor and displaced people have other priorities, like earning enough money to eat and survive. Aid agencies and stretched local authorities are already wrestling with providing food, shelter and basic health care to the millions displaced, while also dealing with outbreaks of other diseases like cholera.
 

 


Air India plane with 242 on board crashes at India’s Ahmedabad airport

Updated 4 sec ago
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Air India plane with 242 on board crashes at India’s Ahmedabad airport

  • The plane was reportedly a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, one of the most modern passenger aircraft
  • It was headed to Gatwick airport in the United Kingdom when it crashed in a civilian area near the airport

NEW DELHI: An Air India plane headed to London with 242 people on board crashed minutes after taking off from India’s western city of Ahmedabad on Thursday, the airline and police said, without specifying whether there were any fatalities.

The plane was headed to Gatwick airport in the UK, Air India said, while police officers said it crashed in a civilian area near the airport.

Aviation tracking site Flightradar24 said the plane was a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, one of the most modern passenger aircraft in service.

“At this moment, we are ascertaining the details and will share further updates,” Air India said on X.

The crash occurred when the aircraft was taking off, television channels reported. One channel showed the plane taking off over a residential area and then disappearing from the screen before a huge cloud of fire rising into the sky from beyond the houses.

Visuals also showed debris on fire, with thick black smoke rising up into the sky near the airport.

They also showed visuals of people being moved in stretchers and being taken away in ambulances.

According to air traffic control at Ahmedabad airport, the aircraft departed at 1.39 p.m. (0809 GMT) from runway 23. It gave a “Mayday” call, signalling an emergency, but thereafter there was no response from the aircraft.

Flightradar24 also said that it received the last signal from the aircraft seconds after it took off.

“The aircraft involved is a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner with registration VT-ANB,” it said.

Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The last fatal plane crash in India involved Air India Express, the airline’s low-cost arm.

The airline’s Boeing-737 overshot a “table-top” runway at Kozhikode International Airport in southern India in 2020. The plane skidded off the runway, plunging into a valley and crashing nose-first into the ground.
Twenty-one people were killed in that crash.


Air India passenger plane with 244 aboard crashes in India’s northwestern Ahmedabad city

Updated 3 min 17 sec ago
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Air India passenger plane with 244 aboard crashes in India’s northwestern Ahmedabad city

NEW DELHI: An Air India passenger plane with 244 people onboard crashed Thursday in India’s northwestern city of Ahmedabad, the airline and local media reported.

Visuals on local television channels showed smoke billowing from the crash site near the airport in Ahmedabad.

Faiz Ahmed Kidwai, the director general of the directorate of civil aviation, told The Associated Press that Air India flight AI 171, a Boeing 787, crashed into a residential area called Meghani Nagar five minutes after taking off at 1:38 p.m. local time.

The flight was bound for London’s Gatwick Airport.

There were 232 passengers and 12 crew members onboard and emergency teams have been activated at the airport, Kidwai said.

The 787 Dreamliner is a widebody, twin-engined plane. This is the first crash ever of a Boeing 787 aircraft, according to the Aviation Safety Network database.


Beijing hails improving Vatican ties after Pope Leo names first Chinese bishop

Updated 12 June 2025
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Beijing hails improving Vatican ties after Pope Leo names first Chinese bishop

  • China recognizes appointment of Joseph Lin Yuntuan as auxiliary bishop of Fuzhou, capital of eastern Fujian province
  • The Vatican and China do not have formal diplomatic relations because the Holy See recognizes Taiwan

BEIJING: Beijing hailed on Thursday improving ties with the Vatican after the first appointment of a Chinese bishop under Pope Leo XIV, signaling the new pontiff’s support for a controversial accord on nominations struck by his predecessor.

The Holy See expressed “satisfaction” on Wednesday at the recognition by China of the appointment of Joseph Lin Yuntuan as auxiliary bishop of Fuzhou, capital of eastern Fujian province. The pope made the nomination on June 5.

Beijing’s foreign ministry said the naming of the first Chinese bishop under the new pope had “enhanced understanding and mutual trust through constructive dialogue” with the Vatican.

“China is willing to work together with the Vatican to promote the continuous improvement of China-Vatican relations,” foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said at a regular news briefing.

The Vatican and China do not have formal diplomatic relations because the Holy See recognizes Taiwan, the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own territory.

However, they agreed in a historic deal in 2018 to let both sides have a say in the naming of bishops in China, home to about 12 million Catholics.

The deal – the text of which has never been made public – has drawn criticism within the Church, with some seeing it as allowing the Communist Party government a stranglehold over China’s Catholics.

The deal was renewed several times as Pope Francis sought to make inroads for the Church in China, most recently in October 2024 for four years.

“With the joint efforts of both sides, the provisional agreement on the appointment of bishops has been smoothly implemented,” Lin Jian said.


Rescuers in South Africa search for the missing after floods leave at least 49 dead

Updated 12 June 2025
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Rescuers in South Africa search for the missing after floods leave at least 49 dead

  • The missing included four high school students who were swept away when their bus was caught up in the floods near a river on Tuesday
  • The floods hit early Tuesday after an extreme cold front brought heavy rain, strong winds and snow to parts of eastern and southern South Africa

CAPE TOWN, South Africa: Rescue teams began a third day searching for missing people Thursday after floods devastated parts of South Africa’s rural Eastern Cape province and left at least 49 dead.

Authorities said they expected the death toll to rise.

The missing included four high school students who were swept away when their bus was caught up in the floods near a river on Tuesday. Six students on the bus were confirmed dead, while three were rescued after clinging onto trees and calling out for help, according to the provincial government.

The floods hit the province early Tuesday after an extreme cold front brought heavy rain, strong winds and snow to parts of eastern and southern South Africa. Forecasters had warned about the damaging weather last week.

Eastern Cape provincial government officials said they believed people were still missing but did not give an exact number. They were working with families to find out who was still unaccounted for, they said.

On Wednesday, rescue teams brought bodies out of the water in blue body bags, while witnesses said many people had taken refuge on the top of buildings or in trees.

The floods centered on the town of Mthatha and its surrounding district, which is around 430 kilometers (267 miles) south of the east coast city of Durban.

Officials said at least 58 schools and 20 hospitals were damaged, while hundreds of families were left homeless after their houses were submerged under water or washed away by the floods. Critical infrastructure including roads and bridges has been badly damaged, Eastern Cape Premier Oscar Mabuyane said.

He said it was one of the worst weather-related disasters his province had experienced.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced he had activated the National Disaster Management Center to help local authorities in the Eastern Cape, while national officials were expected to visit the province on Thursday.


Ukrainian pea prices may rise amid expected exports to China, producers say

Updated 12 June 2025
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Ukrainian pea prices may rise amid expected exports to China, producers say

  • UAC said an increase in demand could push pea prices up to as much as 16,000 hryvnias ($385.33) per metric ton

KYIV: Prices for Ukrainian peas may rise significantly by mid-summer on the back of expected significant supplies to China, which opened its market to Ukrainian peas this spring, Ukrainian producers union UAC said on Thursday.

Farmers sowed 250,000 hectares of peas in 2025 compared with 212,000 hectares in 2024, farm ministry data shows.

“China has opened its market, and a significant part of the peas will probably go there,” UAC said in a statement.

UAC said an increase in demand could push pea prices up to as much as 16,000 hryvnias ($385.33) per metric ton ex works (EXW) in late summer against the current 14,000 hryvnias.

The farm ministry has said pea production in Ukraine could increase to 476,000 metric tons in the 2025/26 July-June season from 409,000 tons in 2024/25.

Ukraine exports its peas mostly to Turkiye, India, Italy, Malaysia, the ministry said.