Africa
UN: Famine is imminent in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region
Famine is imminent in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region and in the country’s north, the U.N. humanitarian chief said, warning there’s a risk that hundreds of thousands of people or more will die.
Mark Lowcock said the economy has been destroyed along with businesses, crops and farms and there are no banking or telecommunications services.
“We are hearing of starvation-related deaths already,” he said in a statement Friday.
“People need to wake up,” Lowcock said. “The international community needs to really step up, including through the provision of money.”
Read: 'People are starving': New exodus in Ethiopia's Tigray area
No one knows how many thousands of civilians or combatants have been killed since months of political tensions between Ethiopian President Abiy Ahmed’s government and the Tigray leaders who once dominated Ethiopia’s government exploded into war last November.
Eritrea, a longtime Tigray enemy, teamed up with neighboring Ethiopia in the conflict.
In late May, Lowcock painted a grim picture of Tigray since the war began, with an estimated 2 million people displaced, civilians killed and injured, rapes and other forms of “abhorrent sexual violence” widespread and systematic, and public and private infrastructure essential for civilians destroyed, including hospitals and agricultural land.
“There are now hundreds of thousands of people in northern Ethiopia in famine conditions,” Lowcock said. “That’s the worse famine problem the world has seen for a decade, since a quarter of a million Somalis lost their lives in the famine there in 2011. This now has horrible echoes of the colossal tragedy in Ethiopia in 1984.”
In the disastrous famine of 1984-85, about 2 million Africans died of starvation or famine-related ailments, about half of them in Ethiopia.
“There is now a risk of a loss of life running into the hundreds of thousands or worse,” Lowcock said.
Read: Amnesty report describes Axum massacre in Ethiopia’s Tigray
He said getting food and other humanitarian aid to all those in need is proving very difficult for aid agencies.
The United Nations and the Ethiopian government have helped about 2 million people in recent months in northern Ethiopia, mainly in government-controlled areas, he said.
But Lowcock said there are more than 1 million people in places controlled by Tigrayan opposition forces and “there have been deliberate, repeated, sustained attempts to prevent them getting food.”
In addition, there are places controlled by the Eritreans and other places controlled by militia groups where it is extremely difficult to deliver aid, he said.
“The access for aid workers is not there because of what men with guns and bombs are doing and what their political masters are telling them to do,” the undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs said.
Read: 'Extreme urgent need': Starvation haunts Ethiopia's Tigray
Lowcock said all the blockages need to be rolled back and the Eritreans, “who are responsible for a lot of this need to withdraw,” so aid can get through to those facing famine.
“Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed needs to do what he said he was going to do and force the Eritreans to leave Ethiopia,” he said.
Lowcock said leaders of the seven major industrialized nations -- the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, Italy and Canada -- need to put the humanitarian crisis and threat of widespread famine in northern Ethiopia on the agenda of their summit from June 11-13 in Cornwall, England.
“Everyone needs to understand that were there to be a colossal tragedy of the sort that happened in 1984 the consequences would reach far and last long,” he said.
Burkina Faso says at least 100 civilians killed in attack
Gunmen killed at least 100 people in a northern Burkina Faso village, the government said Saturday, in what was the country’s deadliest attack in years.
The attack took place Friday evening in Solhan village, in the Sahel’s Yagha province, government spokesman Ousseni Tamboura said in a statement blaming jihadists. The local market and several homes were also burned down in the area toward the border of Niger, he said.
President Roch Marc Christian Kabore called the attack “barbaric.”
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This is the deadliest attack recorded in Burkina Faso since the West African country was overrun by jihadists linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State about five years ago, said Heni Nsaibia, senior researcher at the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.
“It is clear that militant groups have shifted up gears to aggravate the situation in Burkina Faso, and moved their efforts to areas outside the immediate reach of the French-led counter-terrorism coalition fighting them in the tri-state border region,” he said.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Despite the presence of more than 5,000 French troops in the Sahel, jihadist violence is increasing. In one week in April, more than 50 people were killed in Burkina Faso, including two Spanish journalists and an Irish conservationist. More than 1 million people in the country have been internally displaced.
A local who did not want to be named, fearing for his safety, was visiting relatives in a medical clinic in Sebba town, approximately 12 kilometers from where the attacks occurred. He said he saw many wounded people enter the clinic.
Read: US sanctions Myanmar military and junta leaders for attacks
“I saw 12 people in one room and about 10 in another. There were many relatives caring for the wounded. There were also many people running from Solhan to enter Sebba....People are very afraid and worried,” he told the Associated Press by phone.
The government has declared 72 hours of mourning.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was outraged by the killings and offered the world body’s full support to authorities in their efforts to overcome the threats to the peace and stability in Burkina Faso according to his spokesman, Stephane Dujarric.
“He strongly condemns the heinous attack and underscores the urgent need for the international community to redouble support to Member States in the fight against violent extremism and its unacceptable human toll,” Dujarric said in a statement.
Islamic extremists have been increasingly staging assaults in Burkina Faso, especially in the region that borders Niger and Mali.
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Last month, gunmen killed at least 30 people in eastern Burkina Faso near the border with Niger.
Burkina Faso’s ill-equipped army has been struggling to contain the spread of jihadists. The government enlisted the help of volunteer fighters last year to help the army, but the volunteers have incurred retaliation by extremists who target them and the communities they help.
Mali also is experiencing a political crisis that has led to the suspension of international support. France has said it is ceasing joint military operations with Malian forces until the West African nation’s junta complies with international demands to restore civilian rule.
Malawi destroys 20,000 expired doses of AstraZeneca vaccine
Malawi has burned nearly 20,000 expired AstraZeneca vaccines, amid conflicting advice over what to do with the doses.
Health Minister Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda put some of the vials of the expired doses into an incinerator to start the destruction Wednesday at Kamuzu Central Hospital in Lilongwe, the capital.
“We are destroying (these vaccines) because as government policy no expired health commodities are to be used,” she said. “Historically under the expanded immunization program of Malawi no expired vaccine has ever been used.”
She said burning the vaccines will build public confidence that all vaccines used in Malawi are good.
Read: US going to be largest sharer of vaccines with 80mn additional doses: Official
“We are destroying publicly in order to stay accountable to Malawians. The vaccines that expired are not being used during the vaccination campaign,” she said. “On behalf of the government, I assure all Malawians that no one will be given an expired COVID vaccine.”
The burned vaccines were the remainder of 102,000 doses that arrived in Malawi on March 26 with just 18 days until they expired on April 13. All other doses of the shipment, donated by the African Union, were successfully administered, she said.
The health minister thanked WHO, the African Union and India for donating the vaccines.
“This has made it possible for Malawi to embark on the COVID vaccination campaign currently underway,” she said.
Last month the World Health Organization urged African nations not to destroy expired doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine after several countries received doses from India with a very short shelf life. But this week, WHO reversed its position and said that the vaccines should be destroyed.
“Any vaccine that has passed its expiry date ... should not be administered,” said WHO in a statement dated May 17. “While discarding vaccines is deeply regrettable in the context of any immunization program, WHO recommends that these expired doses should be removed from the distribution chain and safely disposed.”
Read: India to begin clinical trials for Covd-19 vaccine in children
WHO said that in March, the African Union’s African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team redistributed 925,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India with an expiry date of April 13 to 13 African countries. “The bulk of these vaccine doses were administered, but some countries have unused doses remaining,” said the WHO statement.
Malawi, a small southern African country of about 20 million people, had already decided to destroy its expired vaccine doses, ministry of health spokesman Joshua Malango told The Associated Press.
“We had stopped observation of proper storage mechanisms and the vaccines would have still been damaged in one way or the other,” he said.
The destruction of the vaccines was witnessed by several top officials “in order to enhance transparency,” health secretary Charles Mwansambo said.
Malawi will still have adequate stocks of COVID-19 vaccines in both public and private health facilities, he said. The government has not said where it will get more vaccines.
Malawi’s got its first consignment of 360,000 AstraZeneca doses in early March from the U.N.-backed COVAX initiative which is providing vaccines to low- and middle-income countries. The country received another batch of 50,000 AstraZeneca doses from the Indian government. With the AU donation, Malawi had a total of 512,000 AstraZeneca doses.
So far 212,615 doses have been given in Malawi. The country has 34,216 confirmed cases, including 1,153 deaths, according to the Africa CDC.
Read:Biden boosting world vaccine sharing commitment to 80M doses
Currently, the country is seeing a decrease in the disease, with the 7-day rolling average of daily new cases in Malawi dropping from 0.07 new cases per 100,000 people on May 4 to 0.04 new cases per 100,000 people on May 18. Official deaths from COVID-19 are also declining, according to statistics from Johns Hopkins University.
Malawi, like many other African countries, has relied on the AstraZeneca vaccine that has been distributed by COVAX and the African Union. But now supplies of the vaccine have become more scarce because India, the main supplier of vaccines to COVAX, has stopped exports until it has adequately vaccinated large numbers of its population of 1.4 billion people.
The Serum Institute of India says it hopes to start delivering coronavirus vaccines to COVAX and to other countries by the end of the year. The delay will significantly set back global efforts to immunize people against COVID-19. India’s Serum Institute is the world’s biggest vaccine-maker. The company said in March that it was postponing all exports of coronavirus vaccines to deal with the explosive surge of cases on the subcontinent. At the time, the World Health Organization said it expected COVID-19 vaccine deliveries from India to resume by June and the interruption would affect about 90 million doses.
Vaccine deserts: Some countries have no COVID-19 jabs at all
At the small hospital where Dr. Oumaima Djarma works in Chad’s capital, there are no debates over which coronavirus vaccine is the best.
There are simply no vaccines at all.
Not even for the doctors and nurses like her, who care for COVID-19 patients in Chad, one of the least-developed nations in the world where about one third of the country is engulfed by the Sahara desert.
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“I find it unfair and unjust, and it is something that saddens me,” the 33-year-old infectious diseases doctor says. “I don’t even have that choice. The first vaccine that comes along that has authorization, I will take it.”
While wealthier nations have stockpiled vaccines for their citizens, many poorer countries are still scrambling to secure doses. A few, like Chad, have yet to receive any.
The World Health Organization says nearly a dozen countries — many of them in Africa — are still waiting to get vaccines. Those last in line on the continent along with Chad are Burkina Faso, Burundi, Eritrea and Tanzania.
“Delays and shortages of vaccine supplies are driving African countries to slip further behind the rest of the world in the COVID-19 vaccine rollout and the continent now accounts for only 1% of the vaccines administered worldwide,” WHO warned Thursday.
And in places where there are no vaccines, there’s also the chance that new and concerning variants could emerge, said Gian Gandhi, UNICEF’s COVAX coordinator for Supply Division.
“So we should all be concerned about any lack of coverage anywhere in the world,” Gandhi said, urging higher-income countries to donate doses to the nations that are still waiting.
While the total of confirmed COVID-19 cases among them is relatively low compared with the world’s hot spots, health officials say that figure is likely a vast undercount: The countries in Africa still waiting for vaccines are among those least equipped to track infections because of their fragile health care systems.
Chad has confirmed only 170 deaths since the pandemic began, but efforts to stop the virus entirely here have been elusive. Although the capital’s international airport was closed briefly last year, its first case came via someone who crossed one of Chad’s porous land borders illegally.
Regular flights from Paris and elsewhere have resumed, heightening the chance of increasing the 4,835 already confirmed cases.
The Farcha provincial hospital in N’Djamena is a gleaming new campus in an outlying neighborhood, where camels nibble from acacia trees nearby. Doctors Without Borders has helped supply oxygen for COVID-19 patients, and the hospital has 13 ventilators. The physicians also have plenty of Chinese-made KN95 masks and hand sanitizer. Still, not a single employee has been vaccinated and none has been told when that might be possible.
That was easier to accept at the beginning of the pandemic, Djarma said, because doctors all around the world lacked vaccines. That has changed dramatically after the development of shots in the West and by China and Russia that have gone to other poor African countries.
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“When I hear, for example, in some countries that they’ve finished with medical staff and the elderly and are now moving on to other categories, honestly, it saddens me,” Djarma said. “I ask them if they can provide us with these vaccines to at least protect the health workers.
“Everyone dies from this disease, rich or poor,” she says. “Everyone must have the opportunity, the chance to be vaccinated, especially those who are most exposed.”
COVAX, the U.N.-backed program to ship COVID-19 vaccines worldwide, is aimed at helping low- and middle-income countries get access. A few of the countries, though, including Chad, have expressed concerns about receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine through COVAX for fear it might not protect as well against a variant first seen in South Africa.
Chad is expected to get some Pfizer doses next month if it can put in place the cold storage facilities needed to keep that vaccine safe in a country where temperatures soar each day to 43.5 degrees Celsius (110 degrees Fahrenheit).
Some of the last countries also took more time to meet the requirements for receiving doses, including signing indemnity waivers with manufacturers and having distribution plans in place.
Those delays, though, now mean an even longer wait for places like Burkina Faso, since a key vaccine manufacturer in India scaled back its global supply because of the catastrophic virus surge there.
“Now with global vaccine supply shortages, stemming in particular from the surge of cases in India and subsequently the Indian government’s sequestration of doses from manufacturers there, Burkina Faso risks even longer delays in receiving the doses it was slated to get,” said Donald Brooks, CEO of a U.S. aid group engaged in the COVID-19 response there known as Initiative: Eau.
Front-line health workers in Burkina Faso say they’re not sure why the government hasn’t secured vaccines.
“We would have liked to have had it like other colleagues around the world,” says Chivanot Afavi, a supervising nurse who worked on the front lines of the response until recently. “No one really knows what this disease will do to us in the future.”
In Haiti, not a single vaccine has been administered to the more than 11 million people who live in the most impoverished country of the Western hemisphere.
Haiti was slated to receive 756,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine via COVAX, but government officials said they didn’t have the infrastructure needed to conserve them and worried about having to throw them away. Haitian officials also expressed concerns over potential side effects and said they preferred a single-dose vaccine.
Also Read:India's disaster hangs over countries facing COVID-19 surges
Several small island nations in the Pacific also have yet to receive any vaccine, although the lack of outbreaks in some of those places has meant there is less urgency with inoculation campaigns. Vanuatu, with a population of 300,000, is waiting to receive its first doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine later this month, but it has recorded only three cases of coronavirus, all of them in quarantine.
At the Farcha hospital in Chad, nine health care workers have gotten the virus, including Dr. Mahamat Yaya Kichine, a cardiologist. The hospital now has set up pods of health care worker teams to minimize the risk of exposure for the entire staff.
“It took almost 14 days for me to be cured,” Kichine says. “There were a lot of caregivers that were infected, so I think that if there is a possibility to make a vaccine available, it will really ease us in our work.”
Woman from Mali gives birth to 9 babies in Morocco
A Malian woman has given birth to nine babies at once — after expecting seven, according to Mali’s Minister of Health and the Moroccan clinic where the nonuplets were born.
It appeared to be the first time on record that a woman had given birth to nine surviving babies at once.
The five girls and four boys, and their mother, “are all doing well,” Mali’s health minister said in a statement.
The mother, 25-year-old Halima Cisse, gave birth to the babies by cesarean section on Tuesday in Morocco after being sent there for special care, Mali’s top health official announced.
Associated Press reporters saw some of the babies wiggling their hands and feet inside incubators Wednesday in the private Ain Borja clinic in Casablanca. Medical staff checked their status regularly in the neonatal ward wallpapered with cartoon characters.
Cisse had been expecting seven babies. Malian doctors, under government orders, sent her to Morocco for the births because hospitals in Mali, one of the world’s poorest countries, are ill-equipped to provide adequate care for this exceptional multiple pregnancy.
The Casablanca clinic’s director Youssef Alaoui told Moroccan state TV that they had been contacted by Malian doctors about the case a month and a half ago. They were not expecting nine babies, he said.
Cisse gave birth prematurely at 30 weeks and is now in stable condition after heavy bleeding for which she was given a blood transfusion, he said.
Also Read:Vaccinated mother gives birth to first baby with Covid-19 antibodies
The cesarean was ordered after Cisse had “birth pains,” Alaoui, the clinic director, said. The babies weigh between 500 grams and one kilogram (1.1 and 2.2 pounds).
The Guinness Book of World Records said in an email to The AP on Wednesday that its current record for most living births at once is eight, and that it is verifying the Morocco birth.
The current holder of the Guinness record is American Nadya Suleman, who gave birth to eight premature but otherwise healthy children in 2009.
Alaoui, the clinic director, told The AP that as far as he was aware Cisse had not used fertility treatments. The Malian health ministry did not provide any other information about the pregnancy or births.
Yacoub Khalaf, a professor of reproductive medicine at King’s College London, said that such births would be extraordinarily unlikely without fertility treatment, and noted the dangers involved with such multiple births.
The mother “was at severe risk of losing her uterus or losing her life,” he said. The babies “could suffer physical and mental handicaps. The risk of cerebral palsy is astronomically higher.”
He urged more awareness worldwide about monitoring fertility treatments and about the risks and costs of having so many premature babies at one time.
Africa CDC says India vaccine woes could be 'catastrophic'
Africa is unlikely to meet its targets for vaccinating the continent against COVID-19 if supply delays from a key Indian manufacturer continue, the director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Thursday.
Dr. John Nkengasong told a press briefing that officials hope the problems at the Serum Institute of India will only be temporary otherwise “it would definitely impact our ability to continuously vaccinate people.”
"I really want to deliberately hope that it is a delay — not a ban — because that would be catastrophic,” he said.
Also read: German cities suspend AstraZeneca vaccine use for under-60s
More than half of the 29.1 million vaccine doses received by African nations so far have come through the global COVAX initiative, which aims to ensure that low- and middle-income countries have fair access to vaccines. COVAX has largely relied on distributing the AstraZeneca vaccine, because it is cheaper and only requires ordinary refrigeration.
But the Serum Institute of India recently announced that as many as 90 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine destined for COVAX worldwide will be delayed through the end of April as India’s government grapples with a spike in infections among the country's 1.4 billion people.
Nkengasong said it is not yet known what impact the uncertainty might have for scheduling second doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine in African countries.
“We are tracking that very, very closely,” he said Thursday. “I’m sure countries are still trying to finish vaccinating their first round of the vaccines that were received.”
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Nkengasong remained optimistic, though, that a deal announced on Monday for African countries to acquire the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine remains “an historic moment and a game-changer.”
The agreement with the African Union's African Vaccine Acquisition Trust calls for 220 million doses to be delivered by the third quarter of this year, with an option to acquire an additional 180 million doses through 2022.
If those 400 million people receive the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, it would represent more than half the continent's goal of 750 million, Nkengasong said.
Africa has confirmed more than 4.2 million cases and 112,000 deaths, but since most countries on the continent lack the means to track mortality data, it is not clear how many excess deaths have occurred since the pandemic began.
Also read: African expert warns of 'vaccine war' over access to jabs
Rebels leave beheaded bodies in streets of Mozambique town
Fierce fighting for control of Mozambique's strategic northern town of Palma left beheaded bodies strewn in the streets Monday, with heavily armed rebels battling army, police and a private military outfit in several locations.
Thousands were estimated to be missing from the town, which held about 70,000 people before the attack began last Wednesday.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility Monday for the attack, saying it was carried out by the Islamic State Central Africa Province, according to the SITE extremist monitoring group.
The rebel claim said the insurgents now control Palma's banks, government offices, factories and army barracks, and that more than 55 people, including Mozambican army troops, Christians and foreigners were killed. It did not provide further detail on the dead.
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Earlier this month the United States declared Mozambique's rebels to be a terrorist organization and announced it had sent military specialists to help train the Mozambican military to combat them.
Palma is the center of a multi-billion dollar investment by Total, the France-based oil and gas company, to extract liquified natural gas from offshore sites in the Indian Ocean. The gas deposits are estimated to be among the world's largest and the investment by Total and others is reported to be $20 billion, one of the largest in Africa.
The battle for Palma forced Total to evacuate its large, fortified site a few miles (kilometers) outside of the city.
The fighting spread across the town Monday, according to Lionel Dyck, director of the Dyck Advisory Group, a private military company contracted by the Mozambican police to help fight the rebels.
“There is fighting in the streets, in pockets across the town,” Dyck told The Associated Press. The Dyck group has several helicopter gunships in Palma which have been used to rescue trapped civilians and to fight the rebels.
“My guys are airborne and they've engaged several little groups and they've engaged one quite large group,” Dyck said. “They’ve landed into the fight to recover a couple of wounded policemen. ... We have also rescued many people who were trapped, 220 people at last count.”
He said those rescued were taken to Total's fortified site on the southern African country's Afungi peninsula, where chartered flights flew many south to Pemba, the capital of Cabo Delgado province.
The rebels are well-armed with AK-47 automatic rifles, RPD and PKM machine guns and heavy mortars, Dyck said.
“This attack is not a surprise. We've been expecting Palma to be whacked the moment the rains stopped and the fighting season started, which is now,” he said.
“They have been preparing for this. They've had enough time to get their ducks in a row. They have a notch up in their ability. They're more aggressive. They're using their mortars.” He said many were wearing black uniforms.
“There have been lots of beheadings. Right up on day one, our guys saw the drivers of trucks bringing rations to Palma. Their bodies were by the trucks. Their heads were off.”
Dyck said it will not be easy for the Mozambican government to regain control of Palma.
“They must get sufficient troops to sweep through the town, going house-to-house and clean each one out. That's the most difficult phase of warfare in the book,” Dyck said. “It will be very difficult unless there's a competent force put in place with good command and control to retake that town. It can be done. But it ain't going to be easy.”
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Without control of Palma, Total's operations are jeopardized, analysts say.
The battle for Palma is similar to how the rebels seized the port Mocimboa da Praia in August. The rebels infiltrated men into the town to live among residents and then launched a three-pronged attack. Fighting continued for more than a week until the rebels controlled the town center and then its port. The town, about 50 miles south of Palma, is still held by the rebels.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric condemned the violence in Palma, which he said has reportedly killed dozens of people, “including some trying to flee a hotel where they had taken shelter.”
He referred to those trapped at the Amarula Hotel who tried to escape in a convoy of 17 vehicles on Friday. Only seven vehicles made it to the beach, where seven people were killed. Some in the other vehicles fled into the dense tropical jungle and were later rescued.
“We continue to coordinate closely with the authorities on the ground to provide assistance to those affected by the violence,” Dujarric said.
The battle for Palma is expected to drastically worsen the humanitarian crisis in Mozambique's northern Cabo Delgado province, where the rebels started violent attacks in 2017. The insurgents began as a few bands of disaffected and unemployed young Muslim men. They now likely number in the thousands, according to experts.
“The attack on Palma is a game-changer in that the rebels have changed the narrative,” said one expert who returned from Palma earlier this month.
“This is no rag-tag bunch of disorganized youths. This is a trained and determined force that has captured and held one town and is now sustaining a battle for a very strategic center," said the expert, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of visiting Palma. "They have called into question the entire LNG (liquified natural gas) investment which was supposed to bring Mozambique major economic growth over many years.”
Also read: Rebel attacks in eastern Congo kill several Ebola responders
Known locally as al-Shabab, although they have no known affiliation with Somalia's jihadist rebels of the same name, the rebels' violence in Mozambique, a nation of 30 million, is blamed for the deaths of more than 2,600 people and caused an estimated 670,000 people to flee their homes.
“The attack on Palma has made a bad humanitarian situation worse," said Jonathan Whittall, director of analysis for Doctors Without Borders, which is working to help the displaced around Pemba, the provincial capital 100 miles south of Palma.
“Across Cabo Delgado, the situation was already extremely worrying for those displaced by violence and for those who are in areas that are difficult for humanitarian assistance to reach,” Whittall said. “This attack on Palma has led to more displacement and will increase the needs that have to be addressed as a matter of urgency.”
“For too long northern Mozambique has been a neglected humanitarian crisis,” Whittall said, adding that his organization is exploring ways to expand its emergency response.
Medical oxygen scarce in Africa, Latin America amid virus
A crisis over the supply of medical oxygen for coronavirus patients has struck nations in Africa and Latin America, where warnings went unheeded at the start of the pandemic and doctors say the shortage has led to unnecessary deaths.
Security Council has critical role in addressing fragility, conflict: UN chief
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has underlined the critical role of the Security Council in addressing links between fragility and conflict, two of the greatest obstacles to achieving sustainable development across the world.
Africa CDC: New virus variant appears to emerge in Nigeria
Another new variant of the coronavirus appears to have emerged in Nigeria, Africa’s top public health official said Thursday, but he added that further investigation was needed.