Africa
At river where Tigrayan bodies floated, fears of ‘many more’
From time to time, a body floating down the river separating Ethiopia’s troubled Tigray region from Sudan was a silent reminder of a war conducted in the shadows. But in recent days, the corpses became a flow.
Bloated, drained of color from their journey, the bodies were often mutilated: genitals severed, eyes gouged, a missing limb. The Sudanese fishermen who spotted them, and the refugees from Tigray who helped pull them to shore, found many corpses’ hands bound. Some of them had been shot.
The Associated Press reported dozens of bodies floating down the Tekeze River earlier this week and saw six of the graves on Wednesday, marking the first time any reporters could reach the scene. Doctors who saw the bodies said one was tattooed with a common name in the Tigrinya language and others had the facial markings common among Tigrayans, raising fresh alarm about atrocities in the least-known area of the Tigray war.
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“They are from Tigray,” said Garey Youhanis, a Tigrayan who helped bury several bodies found on Sunday. With a piece of red cord, he demonstrated how their hands were tied behind their backs. He squatted on the rock-strewn shore, crossed himself and prayed.
The deaths are the latest massacre in a nine-month war that has killed thousands of civilians and is now spilling into other regions of Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous country and the anchor of the often-volatile Horn of Africa. Though Tigray forces in June reclaimed much of the region as Ethiopian and allied forces retreated, western Tigray is still controlled by authorities from Ethiopia’s neighboring Amhara region, who have cleared out many ethnic Tigrayans while saying the land is historically theirs. Witnesses have told the AP of watching mass expulsions.
More than 60,000 Tigrayans fled to Sudan, where thousands remain in makeshift camps a short walk from the river in the hope of hearing news from those who still arrive. Some scrutinized the bodies in the river for clues, and they have asked Sudanese police and the United Nations to exhume them for autopsies.
“In the last one week, 43 bodies were buried around this river,” the surgeon from the nearby Tigray town of Humera, Tewodros Tefera, told the AP. He and other refugees believe the bodies were dumped into the river at Humera, which has seen some of the worst violence since the war began in November.
“Some had amputated limbs and legs,” Tewodros said. “There was a man which we buried yesterday, his genital area was completely severed. ... So this is the kind of trauma that we’re seeing of western Tigray.”
He told the AP they hadn’t heard of any new bodies since Tuesday, when at least seven were found. But he believes an active search along the river could reveal “many, many more,” perhaps hundreds.
Ethiopia’s government has accused the rival Tigray forces of dumping the bodies themselves for propaganda purposes. A “fake massacre,” the spokeswoman for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Billene Seyoum, told reporters on Thursday.
But the discovery has increased international pressure on the prime minister, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, at a time when his government is already accused by the U.N., the United States and the European Union of besieging Tigray and blocking food and other aid to millions of people. Hundreds of thousands face famine conditions in the world’s worst hunger crisis in a decade.
Ethiopia’s prime minister in recent days referred to the Tigray forces as “weeds” and a “cancer,” bringing a warning from the U.N. special envoy on genocide prevention that such dehumanizing language “is of utmost concern.” Ethiopia’s government has said such talk is not meant to describe ordinary Tigrayans.
But the bodies in the river brought new fears of ethnic cleansing, or the forcing of a population from a region through expulsions and other violence.
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“We are deeply concerned by the latest developments,” the U.N. refugee agency in Sudan said on Thursday. It confirmed seeing one of the bodies pulled from the river along with “what appear to be several fresh graves.” It said it was unable to confirm the identifies of the dead or how they died.
Like other international aid organizations, the U.N. agency said it has no access on the Ethiopian side of the border region. Underlining that absence, the U.N. humanitarian agency on Wednesday tweeted a map showing no foreign aid group active in western Tigray. One that had worked there, the Dutch section of Doctors Without Borders, had its operations suspended by Ethiopia on July 30, accused by the government of spreading “misinformation” and illegally using satellite radio equipment.
Ethiopia’s government has alleged that aid groups are arming and supporting the Tigray forces, without evidence.
“Those who want corridors for weapons and non-humanitarian goods to be brought into them continue to try to manipulate the realities on the ground in an attempt to convince the world that unfettered access is not happening” in Tigray, the prime minister’s spokeswoman said. She called the Tigray forces, who dominated Ethiopia’s repressive government for years but were sidelined when Abiy took office, a “terrorist organization that has hijacked the well-being of the people of Tigray.”
Phone, internet and banking services remain down across the Tigray region of some 6 million people, and the U.N. says more than 5 million need help now. The Tigray forces, who have pushed into the neighboring Afar and Amhara regions and displaced more than 200,000 people, have said restoring basic services is a precondition to negotiations to end the war.
Tigray forces on Thursday entered the Amhara town of Lalibela, a UNESCO World Heritage site for its rock-hewn churches, a resident told the AP. While they entered peacefully, “yeah, we’re scared,” he said, worried about damage to what residents call the “new Jerusalem.” He estimated thousands of fighters were there and “many people are running away.” He spoke on condition of anonymity for his safety.
With the Tigray forces pushing south after threatening to go as far as the capital if needed, the U.N. humanitarian chief and the USAID administrator in visits to Ethiopia this week urged a cease-fire and talks. Sudan has offered to play a role in mediation. Sudan also could be a direct aid corridor to Tigray.
But the prime minister’s spokeswoman called Ethiopia’s relationship with Sudan “a bit tricky,” pointing to a border dispute. “That element needs to be thoroughly addressed before Sudan can be entertained as a credible party in negotiations,” she said.
For the refugees in Sudan, each body found in the river is a reminder of loved ones trapped in the fighting.
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Horrified, refugees in the Sudanese border community of Hamdayet spotted one body that looked familiar. Like most of the Tigrayans killed in the war, it was a young man.
“How can I not feel the death of my brother and friend?” said one of the Tigrayans who buried him, Awet, who gave only his first name. “I’m very sorry.”
The dead man’s name was Robel, the surgeon Tewodros said. By the water’s edge, his fingers tapping his graying temple in anxiety, he checked his phone for news of other bodies found.
Zimbabwe returns to strict lockdown to fight virus surge
Zimbabwe has returned to strict lockdown measures to combat a resurgence of COVID-19 amid vaccine shortages, the country’s information minister announced Tuesday.
Infections have dramatically increased in recent weeks despite a night curfew, reduced business hours, localized lockdowns in hotspot areas, and a ban on inter-city travel. The virus has spread to rural areas which have sparse health facilities.
Read:Virus infections surging in Africa’s vulnerable rural areas
To try to contain the spread, most people must stay at home, similar to restrictions on movement adopted in March last year when towns and cities became almost deserted, Information Minister Monica Mutsvangwa announced after a Cabinet meeting Tuesday.
People will now need letters from employers to justify why they must venture out of their neighborhoods “with immediate effect,” said Mutsvangwa.
“Stiffer penalties will be imposed for violations,” including revoking the licenses of offending businesses, she said.
Read:Fearing COVID, struggling Malawian women forgo prenatal care
Zimbabwe is one of more than 14 African countries where the delta variant is quickly spreading.
Infections are shooting up. Zimbabwe’s 7-day rolling average of daily new cases quadrupled over the past two weeks from 2.04 new cases per 100,000 people on June 21 to 8.39 new cases per 100,000 people on July 5, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Previously the country’s crowded cities were the centers of infection, but now rural areas are hard hit, said Mutsvangwa.
Read:Ethiopia declares immediate, unilateral cease-fire in Tigray
Government officials reported shortages of personal protective equipment, misinformation discouraging people from getting vaccines and shortages of health care workers. Some rural district hospitals require bulk oxygen tanks, while others need “functional” isolation centers, Mutsvangwa said.
Zimbabwe is one of many African countries suffering a resurgence of the disease, in contrast to other parts of the world where vaccines have allowed a return to something like normal life. To date, 9% of Zimbabwe’s 15 million people have received at least one vaccine dose and 3.7% have received two doses. Across Africa, less than 2% of the continent’s 1.3 billion people have received at least one vaccine jab, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Virus infections surging in Africa’s vulnerable rural areas
For Pelagia Bvukura, who lives in a rural part of north-central Zimbabwe, COVID-19 had always been a “city disease,” affecting those in the capital, Harare, or other, distant big towns.
“There was no virus for us. We only used to hear it was in Harare or other towns or when city people died and we buried them here,” she said recently, referring to the custom in Zimbabwe where those who move to the city often are buried at their family’s rural home.
That is changing now. A new surge of the virus is finally penetrating Africa’s rural areas, where most of the continent’s people live, spreading to areas that once had been viewed as safe havens from infections that hit cities particularly hard.
Read:Fearing COVID, struggling Malawian women forgo prenatal care
With facilities in the countryside ill-prepared to fight the coronavirus, residents like Bvukura worry that the next graves being dug could be for their neighbors — or even themselves.
Her village of Zvimba, 110 kilometers (68 miles) from Harare, has yet to record a major spike in infections, but it sits in a province that is the current epicenter of the virus.
“It is now on our doorsteps. It’s scary. We don’t know how to protect ourselves. We have never dealt with such a problem before,” she said.
Like many here, she wasn’t wearing a mask and is yet to be vaccinated.
Africa has recorded over 5.3 million cases and is experiencing the worst of a wave driven by more contagious and deadlier variants. The continent recorded a 39% increase in new cases in the week from June 14-20, according to the World Health Organization.
With homesteads spaced far apart, few visitors and rare public gatherings, rural areas appeared so insulated that they drew some people from cities to escape both infection and economic hardship.
“It was a dangerous, false sense of security. Now a tragedy is unfolding,” said Dr. Johannes Marisa, president of the Medical and Dental Private Practitioners of Zimbabwe Association in Harare.
The delta variant that has devastated India has been detected in at least 14 African countries including Congo, Mozambique, Namibia, Uganda, South Africa and Zimbabwe, and not just in the cities.
“We are starting to see an upward trend in the rural and marginalized areas,” said Edward Simiyu, Uganda country director of the charity group Mercy Corps, in a statement earlier in June.
In Zimbabwe, three of the four districts under strict lockdown and declared as epicenters of the outbreak are in the predominantly rural Mashonaland West province, which recorded over half of the 801 cases reported last weekend. Other hot spots also are largely rural, a first for this country.
“We are going to see a lot of deaths, especially arising from rural areas. COVID-19 is now coming from the rural areas,” said Marisa, attributing the spike to “a high degree of complacency,” a lack of information and few vaccinations, with urban areas prioritized.
Read:In poorest countries, surges worsen shortages of vaccines
The virus can also spread at funerals when city dwellers return to visit rural relatives.
“I was at a funeral in a rural area recently and people were surprised to see me wearing a mask,” he said.
Rural areas are ill-equipped to deal with the surge, and urban health care facilities are under strain in treating an increasing number of people from the countryside. Zimbabwe’s major referral hospital, Parirenyatwa in Harare, is prioritizing beds for COVID-19 patients.
“Parirenyatwa is almost full. These are not people from Harare. Health facilities in rural areas are miserable, so all those people are being referred to city hospitals,” Marisa said.
In Mozambique’s remote Tete province, a hotbed of infections where the delta variant was recorded, President Filipe Nyusi expressed worry.
“We don’t have many beds. … We don’t have many health staff in Tete either,” Nyusi said.
Because health care facilities in the countryside in places like Uganda are more poorly staffed than those in urban areas, “a penetration of COVID-19 infections in these rural and vulnerable regions is likely to be devastating, … risking more people slipping deeper into poverty, further worsening social inequities, divisions, and conflict,” said Simiyu of Mercy Corps.
Rural residents are finding it difficult to get vaccinated because of weak public health systems and vaccine distribution problems. Only 1% of Africa’s 1.3 billion people have been vaccinated, according to the WHO and the Africa Centers for Disease Control.
The Zvimba Rural District hospital only had just a small number of coronavirus vaccines, reserved for second doses, its staff said.
But even after the vaccine becomes available, “the ability of health systems to absorb those doses and get them distributed — particularly in rural communities — is the next huge problem on the horizon,” said Sean Granville-Ross, Africa regional director for Mercy Corps, in an interview with The Associated Press.
“There’s a risk vaccines could sit spoiling in warehouses across African capitals if countries aren’t ready to hit the ground running with mass vaccination campaigns, including in the hardest-to-reach rural areas where health infrastructure is already weak, as is trust in public health systems,” Granville-Ross said.
Read:‘This IS INSANE’: Africa desperately short of COVID vaccine
Those in rural areas who are desperate for the vaccines, including the elderly, live far from hospitals and clinics.
Matrida Tendayi, who is 100 years old, said she is too frail to walk to the nearest clinic in Dema, a rural area about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Harare, even if a vaccine was available.
“I have been waiting and waiting,” she said. “But they are not coming.”
Tigray fighters in Ethiopia reject cease-fire as ‘sick joke’
The fighters now retaking parts of Ethiopia’s Tigray region will pursue soldiers from neighboring Eritrea back into their country and chase Ethiopian forces to Addis Ababa ”if that’s what it takes” to weaken their military powers, their spokesman said Tuesday, as a conflict that has killed thousands of civilians looked certain to continue.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Getachew Reda said that “we’ll stop at nothing to liberate every square inch” of the Tigray region of 6 million people, nearly eight months after fighting erupted between the Tigray forces and Ethiopian soldiers backed by Eritrea.
He rejected the unilateral cease-fire Ethiopia’s government declared Monday as a “sick joke” and accused Ethiopia of long denying humanitarian aid to the Tigrayans it now “pretends to care about.” Ethiopia declared the unilateral cease-fire as its soldiers and hand-picked regional interim administration fled the Tigray regional capital following some of the fiercest fighting of the war.
Read:Ethiopia declares immediate, unilateral cease-fire in Tigray
“We want to stop the war as quickly as we can,” the Tigray spokesman said.
But he said liberating the region is not just about territory. “If there is still a menace next door,” whether it be in Eritrea, “extremists” from the neighboring Amhara region who have occupied western Tigray or Ethiopian forces, it’s about assuring Tigrayans’ security, he said.
The comments were sure to bring new alarm from the United States, United Nations and others who have pressed for an end to the fighting in Africa’s second most populous country that has sent hundreds of thousands of Tigrayans into the world’s worst famine crisis in a decade.
This week’s swift turn in the war has left people scrambling to understand the implications for Tigray, as communications links remained largely cut.
Eritrean soldiers, accused by witnesses of some of the war’s worst atrocities against Tigrayans, left the towns of Shire, Axum and Adwa, witnesses said, but it was not clear whether the retreat was temporary. The information ministry of Eritrea, a longtime enemy of Tigray’s former leaders and described by human rights groups as one of the world’s most repressive countries, did not immediately respond to questions.
“We don’t yet know if they are withdrawing” from Tigray altogether, acting U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robert Godec told the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. He said the U.S. had seen no statement from Eritrea saying it was committed to the cease-fire after “what appears to be a significant withdrawal of Ethiopian national defense forces from Tigray.”
The Tigray leaders have waged a guerrilla war since November after a political falling out with the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who had sidelined them from influential roles in Ethiopia’s government and military. An Ethiopian military spokesman did not answer the phone Tuesday.
Read:Witnesses: Airstrike in Ethiopia's Tigray kills more than 50
The arrival of Tigray forces in the regional capital, Mekele, on Monday was met with cheers. The fighters on Tuesday moved into Axum and Shire, a town that in recent months saw the arrival of hundreds of thousands of people fleeing intimidation in western Tigray and is a key staging area for humanitarian aid.
Tigray forces are now in control of much of the region after a major counteroffensive with mass popular support, International Crisis Group analyst William Davison said in a statement. They are “now in a position to facilitate access to many previously hard to reach areas,” he said, urging Ethiopia’s government not to sabotage the urgent humanitarian efforts.
But the Tigray forces’ talk “indicates how distrustful they are of the cease-fire,” Aly Verjee, a senior adviser at the United States Institute of Peace, told AP. “Of course, I think it’s highly irresponsible for them to say such things. It doesn’t do anything for people on the brink of famine. At the same time, I understand they’re motivated by deep suspicion of Eritrean forces in particular.”
Major questions remained about the fate of the more than 1 million civilians that the United Nations has said remain in parts of Tigray that have been hard, if not impossible, to reach with aid. The United States has said up to 900,000 people now face famine conditions, in the world’s worst hunger crisis in a decade.
That famine “is entirely man-made,” the acting U.S. assistant secretary of state said.
Sarah Charles, assistant to the administrator for the United States Agency for International Development, told the Washington hearing that the next week or two will be consequential. She urged Ethiopia to lift a “communications blackout” on Tigray and said forces from the Amhara region must lift checkpoints on key roads for aid delivery.
Read:Witnesses say airstrike in Ethiopia’s Tigray kills dozens
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters that “the impact of the current situation on the humanitarian operations in the region remains unknown right now.” Operations have been “constrained for the past few days due to the ongoing fighting.” The airport in Mekele was closed, and routes to deliver aid were not open, he said.
Ethiopia has said the cease-fire is in part for the delivery of aid but will last only until the end of the crucial planting season in Tigray — which is in September.
In Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, people said they weren’t sure who to believe amid the battlefield claims, and hoped for peace.
“It’s the innocent children, farmers and the poor people that are at the front of the war and are suffering,” resident Biruk Dessalegn said.
Fearing COVID, struggling Malawian women forgo prenatal care
Prenatal services at the health clinic were free, but the motorcycle taxi fare cost more than Monica Maxwell could afford. Just four weeks before delivering her baby, she cobbled together 1,400 kwacha ($1.75) for the 50-kilometer (31-mile) round trip. It was only her third visit -- fewer than her first two pregnancies. The money she made selling tomatoes at the local market dried up due to the pandemic. Her husband’s income selling goat meat also dwindled.
“It was the most difficult period of our lives. We had no money for our daily survival,” Maxwell, 31, said as she waited outside with other women to be seen by a medical midwife. “Mostly we stayed home.”
In a country where hospitals are so bare that women are expected to bring their own razor blades for cutting their babies’ umbilical cords, the deepening poverty brought on by the pandemic is further imperiling women’s lives.
Read:Virus outbreak in Fiji batters economy, tests health system
Officials say far fewer pregnant women in Malawi are getting the health care they need amid the pandemic, with many forgoing medical visits and relying solely on traditional birth attendants, who provide emotional support and administer traditional herbal treatments but are technically banned by the government from delivering babies because of their lack of formal training. Many families can’t afford clinic visits, or, like Maxwell, the transportation to get there; they also fear they’ll catch coronavirus in a medical facility.
At risk are the gains that Malawi — a largely rural sliver of a country, with 18 million people — has made over the past decade to combat its poor record of maternal deaths. Malawian women face a 1-in-29 lifetime risk of death related to a pregnancy or birth, according to the United Nations Population Fund. The country has 439 such deaths per 100,000 live births — a figure it had worked to reduce from 984 per 100,000 in 2004, as women got better access to medical care, especially in emergencies.
Still, Malawi’s rate is the third-highest in southern Africa. The rates are 19 per 100,000 births in the United States and 7 per 100,000 in the United Kingdom.
Malawian hospitals also suffered staffing shortages when nurses were mobilized to treat coronavirus patients — leading to some lack of experienced personnel for births, said Young Hong, of the United Nations Population Fund.
“Not only did the pandemic affect availability of manpower, it also exerted much pressure on the entire health system, including the stock out of certain medicines, equipment, basic medical supply like surgical gloves,” said Hong, who noted that eight Malawian women die daily of pregnancy complications, far higher than the COVID-19 toll. “This had a huge impact on the quality of maternal health service provision during the pandemic.”
At the Ndirande Health Center, just northeast of the country’s commercial capital of Blantyre, about 100 women visited daily for prenatal services before the pandemic. When COVID-19 emerged, that number dropped by half, and now is as low as 15 to 20 patients, said Jacqueline Kolove, a nursing officer at the clinic.
Sometimes even the women who come for prenatal care are afraid to deliver at the clinic during the pandemic, preferring to give birth at home. Malawian women are encouraged to give birth without medical intervention, and many here believe that emergency measures such as cesarean sections are shameful and a sign of weakness. Deciding to give birth at home, though, can be deadly — most women live too far away to make it in time if a dangerous complication arises.
“We explain to them why such a decision might have the dire consequences ... sometimes even calling their husbands and parents to try to reason with them,” Kolove said.
At Ndirande and other clinics, nurses, aides and medical midwives give pregnant women ultrasounds and use equipment to listen to the vital signs of mother and baby. A woman can undergo a cesarean section if needed, and medications are available to stop severe bleeding. Clinic staff take medical courses, observe simulated births, and become licensed.
Traditional birthing attendants learn from elders who pass down knowledge through generations and use little to no medical equipment — they listen to women’s bellies by placing their ears there, for example, and gather herbs to induce labor. They say certain herbs, boiled into a dark-green liquid, can address situations such as breech babies who needs to change positions.
Read:Australia battles several clusters in new pandemic phase
The government banned traditional birthing attendants’ delivery work in 2007, but the practice has continued, with the ban rarely enforced. Some attendants charge nothing, and they’ve seen an increase in women coming to them during the pandemic. Attendants such as Lucy Mbewe, who’s 56 and estimates she’s delivered 4,000 babies since 1983, say their work is key for women who can’t afford anything else.
Even the colorful African cloth that is widely used to wrap babies, carry them on mothers’ backs or create makeshift diapers can be a potential obstacle to care, Mbewe noted. “The government hospitals recommend that a woman who is going to deliver needs to carry with her at least 10 pieces of cloth, which is a deterrent to those that cannot even afford to put food on the table,” she said.
At government facilities, Malawian women are even expected to bring a covering for the delivery bed, buckets for water, and sometimes candles or flashlights. Mbewe provides clothing and soap when she helps women give birth. She pays for transportation home. Some women are so grateful they return to pay her; she uses that money to care for other needy clients, she said.
But medically trained midwives say the mounting use of attendants has caused a spike in complicated deliveries, with women going to the hospital only once it’s too late to save them. Mbewe says the complications are caused not by the traditional caregivers, but are attributable to expectant mothers getting pregnant at younger ages — a trend confirmed by a government report.
Midwives and health officials also say they’re fighting against misinformation about the virus and vaccines that deters women from seeking proper medical care. Malawi didn’t have a full social lockdown and has seen a dramatic rise in coronavirus cases, part of a surge across southern Africa. Experts believe cases are undercounted, and apprehension about the vaccine is widespread.
The Malawian government has administered less than 213,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine. And officials destroyed about 20,000 expired doses provided by COVAX, the U.N.-backed program to ship vaccines to poor countries. Across all of Africa, just 1% of the population of 1.3 billion people in 54 countries has had one dose of the vaccine, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nurses and midwives say some women fear they’ll secretly be given the vaccine if they deliver at a medical facility.
“They feel, as health workers, we are giving them the COVID-19 vaccine instead of oxytocin,” said Kolove, the nursing officer at the Ndirande Health Center, referring to medicine that strengthens contractions and reduces the risk of bleeding. “They feel we are cheating them. As a result, there are some cases where women refuse.”
Medical staff also understand that they and the women they treat are at a higher risk of contracting coronavirus. The medically trained midwives try to educate women, and they take every precaution possible against the virus, even though their work delivering babies makes keeping a physical distance impossible, said Keith Lipato, president of the Association of Malawian Midwives.
“We make sure that all midwives are screened and tested so that those with signs and symptoms are excused from work, and given the necessary medical treatment so that they do not infect clients and patients,” Lipato said.
The precautions don’t persuade many expectant mothers, though. Five months into her pregnancy, Margret Kosamu has yet to visit a health clinic. Instead, the 30-year-old has turned to a traditional birth attendant for just two visits. Her family’s farming income has dropped, but it’s not just an issue of money; she fears visiting a medical facility could kill her, not save her life.
“One is more likely going to contract the virus at the hospital than here,” she said of the attendant’s care.
Lipato and other medical workers fear that the pandemic will have long-lasting effects on women’s health in Malawi and beyond.
Read:As variant rises, vaccine plan targets ‘movable middle’
Patricia Gunde, 26, has not received any prenatal services during her first pregnancy. She prefers instead to receive the herbs her attendant says will keep her healthy and hasten labor. Gunde has no plans to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
“I am afraid,” she said. “I have heard many stories about it.”
With the traditional birth attendant, she feels at ease because women are seen one at a time.
When the attendant brings Gunde in for care, neither wears a mask.
Witnesses say airstrike in Ethiopia’s Tigray kills dozens
An airstrike hit a busy market in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray village of Togoga on Tuesday, according to health workers who said soldiers blocked medical teams from traveling to the scene. Dozens of people were killed, they and a former resident said, citing witnesses.
Two doctors and a nurse in Tigray’s regional capital, Mekele, told The Associated Press they were unable to confirm how many people were killed, but one doctor said health workers at the scene reported “more than 80 civilian deaths.” The health workers spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
The alleged airstrike comes amid some of the fiercest fighting in the Tigray region since the conflict began in November as Ethiopian forces supported by those from neighboring Eritrea pursue Tigray’s former leaders. A spokeswoman for Ethiopia’s prime minister did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Wounded patients being treated at Mekele’s Ayder hospital told health workers that a plane dropped a bomb on Togoga’s marketplace. The six patients included a 2-year-old child with “abdominal trauma” and a 6-year-old, the nurse said. An ambulance carrying a wounded baby to Mekele was blocked for two hours and the baby died on the way, the nurse added.
Read:UN: Famine is imminent in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region
Hailu Kebede, foreign affairs head for the Salsay Woyane Tigray opposition party and who comes from Togoga, told the AP that one fleeing witness to the attack had counted more than 30 bodies and other witnesses were reporting more than 50 people killed.
“It was horrific,” said a staffer with an international aid group who told the AP he had spoken with a colleague and others at the scene. “We don’t know if the jets were coming from Ethiopia or Eritrea. They are still looking for bodies by hand. More than 50 people were killed, maybe more.”
On Tuesday afternoon, a convoy of ambulances attempting to reach Togoga, about 25 kilometers (15 miles) west of Mekele, was turned back by soldiers near Tukul, the health workers said. Several more ambulances were turned back later in the day and on Wednesday morning, but one group of medical workers reached the site on Tuesday evening via a different route.
Those medical workers were treating 40 wounded people but told colleagues in Mekele that the number of wounded is likely higher as some people fled after the attack. Five of the wounded patients were said to need emergency operations but the health workers were unable to evacuate them.
“We have been asking, but until now we didn’t get permission to go, so we don’t know how many people are dead,” said one of the doctors in Mekele.
Another doctor said the Red Cross ambulance he was traveling in on Tuesday while trying to reach the scene was shot at twice by Ethiopian soldiers, who held his team for 45 minutes before ordering them back to Mekele.
Read: 'People are starving': New exodus in Ethiopia's Tigray area
“We are not allowed to go,” he said. “They told us whoever goes, they are helping the troops of the TPLF.”
The TPLF refers to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which governed Tigray until it was ousted by a federal government offensive in November. The subsequent fighting has killed thousands and forced more than 2 million people from their homes.
While the United Nations has said all sides have been accused of abuses, Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers have been repeatedly accused by witnesses of looting and destroying health centers across the Tigray region and denying civilians access to care.
This month, humanitarian agencies warned that 350,00 people in Tigray are facing famine. Aid workers have said they have been repeatedly denied access to several parts of the region by soldiers.
The government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed says it has nearly defeated the rebels. But forces loyal to the TPLF recently announced an offensive in parts of Tigray and have claimed a string of victories.
A resident in Adigrat, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of Mekele, said a group of Tigrayan fighters briefly entered the town on Tuesday, although he said it had since been retaken by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces. He said federal police had since been seen beating people in the center of the town.
Read:Amnesty report describes Axum massacre in Ethiopia’s Tigray
“Everybody is staying at home, there is no movement in the town,” he said.
Renewed fighting was also reported in Edaga Hamus and Wukro, two towns that sit on the main road to Mekele.
The reports came as Ethiopia held federal and regional elections on Monday. The vote was peaceful in most parts of the country, although there was no voting in Tigray.
The vote was delayed last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, heightening tensions between the federal government and the TPLF, which went ahead with its own regional election in September.
Angelina Jolie visits Burkina Faso as U.N. Special Envoy
Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie has visited war-weakened Burkina Faso to show solidarity with people who continue to welcome the displaced, despite grappling with their own insecurity, and said the world isn’t doing enough to help.
“The humanitarian crisis in the Sahel seems to me to be totally neglected. It is treated as being of little geopolitical importance,” Jolie told the Associated Press. “There’s a bias in the way we think about which countries and which people matter.”
Read: Burkina Faso says at least 100 civilians killed in attack
While Burkina Faso has been battling a five-year Islamic insurgency linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State that’s killed thousands and displaced more than one million people, it is also hosting more than 22,000 refugees, the majority Malian.
As Special Envoy to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Jolie marked World Refugee Day on Sunday in Burkina Faso’s Goudoubo refugee camp in the Sahel, where she finished a two-day visit. She spoke with the camp’s Malian refugees and internally displaced people in the nation’s hard-hit Center-North and Sahel regions.
After 20 years of work with the U.N. refugee agency, Jolie told the AP the increasing displacement meant the world was on a “terrifying trajectory towards instability”, and that governments had to do something about the conflicts driving the vast numbers of refugees.
“Compared to when I began working with UNHCR twenty years ago, it seems like governments have largely given up on diplomacy ... countries which have the least are doing the most to support the refugees,” she said.
Read:Churchill painting owned by Angelina Jolie sells for $11.5M
“The truth is we are not doing half of what we could and should ... to enable refugees to return home, or to support host countries, like Burkina Faso, coping for years with a fraction of the humanitarian aid needed to provide basic support and protection,” Jolie said.
Malians began fleeing to Burkina Faso in 2012 after their lives were upended by an Islamic insurgency, where it took a French-led military intervention to regain power in several major towns. The fighting has since spread across the border to Burkina Faso, creating the fastest growing displacement crisis in the world. Last month Burkina Faso experienced its deadliest attack in years, when gunmen killed at least 132 civilians in Solhan village in the Sahel’s Yagha province, displacing thousands.
The increasing attacks are stretching the U.N.’s ability to respond to displaced people within the country as well as the refugees it’s hosting.
“Funding levels for the response are critically low and with growing numbers of people forced to flee ... the gap is widening,” UNHCR representative in Burkina Faso Abdouraouf Gnon-Konde told the AP.
Read:Angelina Jolie lauds Bangladesh’s leadership role in Rohingya crisis
The attacks are also exacerbating problems for refugees who came to the country seeking security.
“We insisted on staying (in Burkina Faso), (but) we stay with fear. We are too scared,” said Fadimata Mohamed Ali Wallet, a Malian refugee living in the camp. “Today there is not a country where there isn’t a problem. This (terrorism) problem covers all of Africa,” she said.
In poorest countries, surges worsen shortages of vaccines
Hati Maronjei once swore he would never get a COVID-19 shot, after a pastor warned that vaccines aren’t safe.
Now, four months after the first batch of vaccines arrived in Zimbabwe, the 44-year-old street hawker of electronic items is desperate for the shot he can’t get. Whenever he visits a clinic in the capital, Harare, he is told to try again the next day.
“I am getting frustrated and afraid,” he said. “I am always in crowded places, talking, selling to different people. I can’t lock myself in the house.”
A sense of dread is growing in some of the very poorest countries in the world as virus cases surge and more contagious variants take hold amid a crippling shortage of vaccine.
The crisis has alarmed public health officials along with the millions of unvaccinated, especially those who toil in the informal, off-the-books economy, live hand-to-mouth and pay cash in health emergencies. With intensive care units filling up in cities overwhelmed by the pandemic, severe disease can be a death sentence.
Africa is especially vulnerable. Its 1.3 billion people account for 18% of the world’s population, but the continent has received only 2% of all vaccine doses administered globally. And some African countries have yet to dispense a single shot.
Health experts and world leaders have repeatedly warned that even if rich nations immunize all their people, the pandemic will not be defeated if the virus is allowed to spread in countries starved of vaccine.
“We’ve said all through this pandemic that we are not safe unless we are all safe,” said John Nkengasong, a Cameroonian virologist who heads the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We are only as strong as the weakest link.”
Zimbabwe, which has imposed new lockdown measures because of a sharp rise in deaths and cases in the country of over 15 million people, has used just over a million of 1.7 million doses, blaming shortages in urban areas on logistical challenges.
Long lines form at centers such as Parirenyatwa Hospital, unlike months ago, when authorities were begging people to get vaccinated. Many are alarmed as winter sets in and the variant first identified in South Africa spreads in Harare, where young people crowd into betting houses, some with masks dangling from their chins and others without.
Also read: G-7 leaders agree on vaccines, China and taxing corporations
“Most people are not wearing masks. There is no social distancing. The only answer is a vaccine, but I can’t get it,” Maronjei said.
At the start of the pandemic, many deeply impoverished countries with weak health care systems appeared to have avoided the worst. That is changing.
“The sobering trajectory of surging cases should rouse everyone to urgent action,” said Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, Africa director of the World Health Organization. “Public health measures must be scaled up fast to find, test, isolate and care for patients, and to quickly trace and isolate their contacts.”
New cases on the continent rose by nearly 30% in the past week, she said Thursday.
In Zambia, where a vaccination campaign has stalled, authorities reported that the country is running out of bottled oxygen. Sick people whose symptoms are not severe are being turned away by hospitals in Lusaka, the capital.
“When we reached the hospital, we were told there was no bed space for her,” Jane Bwalya said of her 70-year-old grandmother. “They told us to manage the disease from home. So we just went back home, and we are trying to give her whatever medicine can reduce the symptoms.”
Uganda is likewise fighting a sharp rise in cases and is seeing an array of variants. Authorities report that the surge is infecting more people in their 20s and 30s.
Intensive care units in and around the capital, Kampala, are almost full, and Misaki Wayengera, a doctor who heads a committee advising Uganda’s government, said some patients are “praying for someone to pass on” so that they can get an ICU bed.
Many Ugandans feel hopeless when they see the astronomical medical bills of patients emerging from intensive care. Some have turned to concoctions of boiled herbs for protection. On social media, suggestions include lemongrass and small flowering plants. That has raised fears of poisoning.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni imposed new restrictions this month that included closing all schools. But he avoided the extreme lockdown measures of last year, saying he didn’t want to hurt people’s livelihoods in a country with a vast informal sector.
Also read: S Korea pledges $200mn to provide vaccines in lower-income countries
For beauticians, restaurant workers and vendors in crowded open-air markets struggling to put food on the table, the threat from COVID-19 may be high, but taking even a day off when sick is a hardship. Testing costs $22 to $65, prohibitive for the working class.
“Unless I am feeling very sick, I wouldn’t waste all my money to go and test for COVID,” said Aisha Mbabazi, a waiter in a restaurant just outside Kampala.
The 28-year-old had a scare weeks ago, she said, noting that a COVID-19 infection could cost her the job if her employer found out. But she has been unable to get a shot.
“I really wanted the vaccine because for us, any time you can get COVID,” she said. “Even just touching the menu.”
Dr. Ian Clarke, who founded a hospital in Uganda, said that while vaccine demand is growing among the previously hesitant, “the downside is that we do not know when, or from where, we will get the next batch” of shots.
Africa has recorded more than 5 million confirmed COVID-19 cases, including 135,000 deaths. That is a small fraction of the world’s caseload, but many fear the crisis could get much worse.
Nearly 90% of African countries are set to miss the global target of vaccinating 10% of their people by September, according to the World Health Organization.
One major problem is that COVAX, the U.N.-backed project to supply vaccine to poor corners of the world, is itself facing a serious shortage of vaccine.
Amid a global outcry over the gap between the haves and the have-nots, the U.S., Britain and the other Group of Seven wealthy nations agreed last week to share at least 1 billion doses with struggling countries over the next year, with deliveries starting in August.
Also read: UK to donate 100 mn coronavirus vaccine doses
In the meantime, many of the world’s poor wait and worry.
In Afghanistan, where a surge threatens to overwhelm a war-battered health system, 700,000 doses donated by China arrived over the weekend, and within hours, “people were fighting with each other to get to the front of the line,” said Health Ministry spokesman Dr. Ghulam Dastigir Nazari.
The vaccine rush is notable in a country where many question the reality of the virus and rarely wear masks or social distance, often mocking those who do.
At the end of May, approximately 600,000 Afghans had received at least one dose, or less than 2% of the population of 36 million. But the number of those fully vaccinated is minute — “so few I couldn’t even say any percentage,” according to Nazari.
In Haiti, hospitals are turning away patients as the country awaits its first shipment of vaccines. A major delivery via COVAX was delayed amid government concern over side effects and a lack of infrastructure to keep the doses properly refrigerated.
“I’m at risk every single day,” said Nacheline Nazon, a 22-year-old salesperson who takes a colorful, crowded bus known as a tap-tap to work at a clothing store in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, because that is all she can afford.
She said she wears a mask and washes her hands. If the vaccine becomes available, she said, “I’ll probably be the first one in line to get it.”
Billionaire philanthropist: vaccine hoarding hurts Africa
Billionaire philanthropist Mo Ibrahim is sharply criticizing the hoarding of COVID-19 vaccines by wealthy nations, urging the international community to “walk the talk” of equitable distribution as Africa desperately lags behind.
Ibrahim, a British mobile phone magnate who was born in Sudan, is hailed as a voice of moral authority across Africa. The 75-year-old earned his fortune by establishing the Celtel mobile phone network across Africa in the 1990s.
He is now using that fortune to promote democracy and political accountability on the continent, including through his sponsorship of the $5 million Ibrahim Prize for African leaders who govern responsibly and who give up their power peacefully.
He lamented the global “competition” for vaccines in an interview with The Associated Press. He said he views the the pandemic-era phrase “nobody is safe until everybody is safe” as a meaningless slogan until there is an equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines around the world.
Read:‘This IS INSANE’: Africa desperately short of COVID vaccine
“They say that while they are hoarding the vaccine. Can you walk the talk? Stop just talking like parrots, you know, and do you really mean what you said?” Ibrahim said late Tuesday in a Zoom call from London, where he is based.
He argued that “at least a reasonable portion” of the vaccines should go to frontline workers in Africa.
The World Health Organization reported last week that COVID-19 vaccine shipments have ground to “a near halt” in Africa at a time when some countries face a spike in cases.
Africa has administered vaccine doses to 31 million of its 1.3 billion people. But only 7 million people are fully vaccinated, according to World Health Organization Africa director Matshidiso Moeti.
Read:UN: Famine is imminent in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region
Sub-Saharan Africa has on average administered only one vaccine dose per 100 people, compared to a global average of 23 doses per 100 people, she said, reiterating Africa’s ongoing plea for richer countries with significant vaccination coverage to share some of their remaining doses.
President Joe Biden has said the United States would share some of its vaccines.
Ibrahim warned also that Africa cannot afford to sit back, citing a need for greater accountability by governments which pledged in 2001 to spend at least 15% of their national budgets on public health. Economic integration that widens trade among nations is key, he said.
While support from abroad is welcome, he said, “we should rely much more on ourselves. I always thought self-reliance is something important in Africa.”
“We really need to build resilient health service in our countries,” he said.
Read:South Africa returns to stricter lockdown, virus 'surging'
Citing Tanzania under former leader John Magufuli, who died in March, Ibrahim said he was disappointed that some presidents appeared to dismiss the threat from COVID-19.
“We need to hold our leaders accountable,” he said. “You deny and you pay the price... Unfortunately, your people also pay the price. So we need to hold our people accountable for their behavior, for the way they allocate resources. And it is for us in civil society to keep raising this issue.”
Africa has confirmed more than 4.9 million COVID-19 cases, including 132,000 deaths, representing a tiny fraction of the global caseload. But some experts worry that the continent will suffer greatly in the long term if more of its people are not vaccinated in efforts to achieve herd immunity, when enough people are protected through infection or vaccination to make it difficult for a virus to continue to spread.
Achieving that goal will require about 1.5 billion vaccine doses for Africa if there is widespread use of the two-shot AstraZeneca vaccine, often the main shot available under the donor-backed COVAX program to ensure access for developing countries.
‘This IS INSANE’: Africa desperately short of COVID vaccine
In the global race to vaccinate people against COVID-19, Africa is tragically at the back of the pack.
In fact, it has barely gotten out of the starting blocks.
In South Africa, which has the continent’s most robust economy and its biggest coronavirus caseload, just 0.8% of the population is fully vaccinated, according to a worldwide tracker kept by Johns Hopkins University. And hundreds of thousands of the country’s health workers, many of whom come face-to-face with the virus every day, are still waiting for their shots.
In Nigeria, Africa’s biggest country with more than 200 million people, only 0.1% are fully protected. Kenya, with 50 million people, is even lower. Uganda has recalled doses from rural areas because it doesn’t have nearly enough to fight outbreaks in big cities.
Read:UN: Famine is imminent in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region
Chad didn’t administer its first vaccine shots until this past weekend. And there are at least five other countries in Africa where not one dose has been put into an arm, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The World Health Organization says the continent of 1.3 billion people is facing a severe shortage of vaccine at the same time a new wave of infections is rising across Africa. Vaccine shipments into Africa have ground to a “near halt,” WHO said last week.
“It is extremely concerning and at times frustrating,” said Africa CDC Director Dr. John Nkengasong, a Cameroonian virologist who is trying to ensure some of the world’s poorest nations get a fair share of vaccines in a marketplace where they can’t possibly compete.
The United States and Britain, in contrast, have fully vaccinated more than 40% of their populations, with higher rates for adults and high-risk people. Countries in Europe are near or past 20% coverage, and their citizens are starting to think about where their vaccine certificates might take them on their summer vacations. The U.S., France and Germany are even offering shots to youngsters, who are at very low risk of serious illness from COVID-19.
Poorer countries had warned as far back as last year of this impending vaccine inequality, fearful that rich nations would hoard doses.
In an interview, Nkengasong called on the leaders of wealthy nations meeting this week at the G-7 summit to share spare vaccines — something the United States has already agreed to do — and avert a “moral catastrophe.”
“I’d like to believe that the G-7 countries, most of them having kept excess doses of vaccines, want to be on the right side of history,” Nkengasong said. “Distribute those vaccines. We need to actually see these vaccines, not just ... promises and goodwill.”
Others are not so patient, nor so diplomatic.
“People are dying. Time is against us. This IS INSANE,” South African human rights lawyer Fatima Hasan, an activist for equal access to health care, wrote in a series of text messages.
The Biden administration made its first major move to ease the crisis last week, announcing it would share an initial batch of 25 million spare doses with desperate countries in South and Central America, Asia and Africa.
Read:Burkina Faso says at least 100 civilians killed in attack
Nkengasong and his team were in contact with White House officials a day later, he said, with a list of countries where the 5 million doses earmarked for Africa could go to immediately.
Still, the U.S. offer is only a “trickle” of what’s needed, Hasan wrote.
Africa alone is facing a shortfall of around 700 million doses, even after taking into account those secured through WHO’s vaccine program for poorer countries, COVAX, and a deal with Johnson & Johnson, which comes through in August, two long months away.
Uganda just released a batch of 3,000 vaccine doses in the capital, Kampala — a minuscule amount for a city of 2 million — to keep its program barely alive.
There and elsewhere, the fear is that the luck that somehow enabled parts of Africa to escape the worst of previous waves of COVID-19 infections and deaths might not hold this time.
“The first COVID was a joke, but this one is for real. It kills,” said Danstan Nsamba, a taxi driver in Uganda who has lost numerous people he knew to the virus.
In Zimbabwe, Chipo Dzimba embarked on a quest for a vaccine after witnessing COVID-19 deaths in her community. She walked miles to a church mission hospital, where there were none, and miles again to a district hospital, where nurses also had nothing and told her to go to the region’s main government hospital. That was too far away.
“I am giving up,” Dzimba said. “I don’t have the bus fare.”
South African health workers faced similar disappointment when they crowded into a parking garage last month, hoping for vaccinations and ignoring in their desperation the social distancing protocols. Many came away without a shot.
Read:South Africa returns to stricter lockdown, virus 'surging'
Femada Shamam, who is in charge of a group of old-age homes in the South African city of Durban, has seen only around half of the 1,600 elderly and frail people she looks after vaccinated. It is six months, almost to the day, since Britain began the global vaccination drive.
“They do feel very despondent and they do feel let down,” Shamam said of her unvaccinated residents, who are experiencing “huge anxiety” as they hunker down in their sealed-off homes 18 months into the outbreak. Twenty-two of her residents have died of COVID-19.
“It really highlights the biggest problem ... the haves and the have-nots,” Shamam said.
As for whether wealthy countries with a surplus of vaccine have gotten the message, Nkengasong said: “I am hopeful, but not necessarily confident.”