WHO
Africa to finally receive first batch of vaccines for deadly mpox virus
The continent will belatedly get 10,000 shots amid criticism of delays to the process caused by WHO red tape.
Africa’s first batch of mpox vaccines will this week finally reach the continent, weeks after they have been made available in other parts of the world.
The 10,000 shots, donated by the US, will be used to tackle a dangerous new variant of the virus, formerly known as monkeypox, after a 2022 outbreak triggered global alarm.
Vaccines have already been made available in more than 70 countries outside Africa, and the failure to provide the continent with anti-mpox shots until now displays worrying problems in the way international agencies deal with global health emergencies, medical officials and scientists warned last week
They say that it took the World Health Organization (WHO) until this month to officially start the process needed to give African countries easy access to large quantities of vaccines via international agencies – despite the fact that the disease has afflicted people there for decades. That process could have begun years ago, they told Reuters.
Mpox is a potentially deadly infection that causes flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions, and spreads through close physical contact. It was declared a global health emergency by the WHO on 14 August after the new variant, known as clade Ib, began to spread from the Democratic Republic of the Congo into neighbouring African countries.
The long wait for WHO approval for international agencies to buy and distribute the vaccines has forced individual African governments and the continent’s public health agency – the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) – to instead request donations of shots from rich countries.
That cumbersome process can collapse – as it has before – if donor nations feel they should keep the vaccines to protect their own populations.
Helen Rees, a member of the Africa CDC’s mpox emergency committee, and executive director of the Wits RHI Research Institute in Johannesburg, South Africa, said to Reuters it was “really outrageous” that, after Africa struggled to access vaccines in the Covid pandemic, the continent had once again been left behind.
(source: theguardian.com)
Trump cuts all ties with WHO, continues to blast China for COVID-19 response and Hong Kong laws
U.S. President Donald Trump officially cut ties with the World Health Organization, continued to criticize China for its COVID-19 response and blasted the country for a new law targeting Hong Kong. Priviledges granted to Hong Kong to be suppressed.
Donald Trump choisit la guerre froide avec la Chine
Le président américain a acté la cassure en multipliant les gestes de défiance, notamment à propos de Hongkong. Sa détermination tranche avec la mansuétude dont il a longtemps fait preuve à l’égard de la Chine.
Entre la Chine et les Etats-Unis, l’heure est désormais à la guerre froide. Donald Trump l’a acté, vendredi 29 mai, en multipliant les gestes de défiance vis-à-vis de Pékin. Le président des Etats-Unis va ainsi lancer le processus de révocation des exemptions accordées à Hongkong, du fait de la remise en cause de son statut spécial par les autorités chinoises.
« Cette décision aura un impact sur l’ensemble des accords que nous avons avec Hongkong », a assuré Donald Trump, qui a qualifié de « tragédie pour le peuple de Hongkong, pour la Chine, et pour le monde entier » les atteintes contre l’autonomie concédée en 1997 par les autorités chinoises, lors de la rétrocession du territoire à la Chine par la Couronne britannique. Cette autonomie devait s’étendre pendant un demi-siècle. Pékin « n’a pas tenu sa parole », a assuré le président après le feu vert donné à une loi de sécurité nationale par le Parlement chinois. « La Chine a remplacé sa formule promise “un pays, deux systèmes”, par “un pays, un système” », a-t-il ajouté.
Coronavirus may never end
Pathogen may just become another endemic infection: WHO (World Health Organization)
The novel coronavirus may never go away and populations around the world will have to learn to live with it, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Wednesday.
As some countries around the world begin gradually easing lockdown restrictions imposed in a bid to stop the novel coronavirus from spreading, the WHO said it may never be wiped out entirely.
The virus has infected more than 4.2 million people around the world and killed nearly 300,000.
« We have a new virus entering the human population for the first time and therefore it is very hard to predict when we will prevail over it, » said Michael Ryan, the WHO’s emergencies director.
« This virus may become just another endemic virus in our communities and this virus may never go away, » he told a virtual press conference in Geneva.
« HIV has not gone away – but we have come to terms with the virus. »
More than half of humanity has been put under some form of lockdown since the coronavirus crisis began.
But the WHO warned there was no way to guarantee that easing the restrictions would not trigger a second wave of infections.
TANIKO Madagascar 