Day: March 17, 2022

WASHINGTON— The United States has given more than 500 million coronavirus vaccines to other countries since the jabs were developed, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

 

“The United States has now shared over 500 million safe and effective Covid-19 vaccine doses, free of cost, to more than 110 countries and economies around the world — for the sole purpose of saving lives,” Blinken said.

 

Washington aims to more than double that amount to 1.1 billion doses, as the Covid pandemic persists around the globe.

 

Blinken also said that since Covid-19 broke out more than two years ago, the United States has provided close to $20 billion in health, humanitarian and economic assistance to more than 120 countries to address the pandemic and its impacts.

 

Blinken cited examples of US-backed vaccination programs in Paraguay, Zambia, Malawi and Thailand.

 

In one, a US-supported program in northern Thailand produced educational media and workshops in seven local languages to teach people how to protect against coronavirus, Blinken said.

 

“We have also invested and supported the expansion of regional Covid-19 vaccine manufacturing in Africa and Asia,” he said.

 

“This work is critical because this pandemic is not over. Many lives are still at risk globally as countries contend with Omicron and we face the possibility of new variants.”

 

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

GENEVA— The World Trade Organization chief hailed a breakthrough between the EU, the United States, India and South Africa on waiving intellectual property rights on Covid-19 vaccines.

 

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said the compromise was a big step forward in a bid to end the logjam at the global trade body.

 

However, she cautioned that some of the details on waiving WTO rules on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) still needed to be fleshed out — and it would need the backing of all WTO members to come

into force.

 

“This is a major step forward and this compromise is the result of many long and difficult hours of negotiations,” Okonjo-Iweala said.

 

“But we are not there yet. We have more work to do to ensure that we have the support of the entire WTO membership.”

 

Since October 2020, South Africa and India have called for IP rights to be temporarily lifted for coronavirus vaccines during the pandemic in order to boost production and address the gaping inequality in access between rich and

poor nations.

 

But the idea has met with fierce opposition from pharmaceutical giants and many of their host countries.

 

They have argued that patents are not the main roadblocks to scaling up production and warn the move could hamper innovation.

 

Okonjo-Iweala’s statement came hours after Adam Hodge, spokesman for the US Trade Representative Katherine Tai, announced that lengthy talks had resulted in a “compromise outcome that offers the most promising path toward

achieving a concrete and meaningful” result.

 

“No agreement on text has been reached and we are in the process of consulting on the outcome,” he added.

 

Okonjo-Iweala, a former Nigerian finance minister, said steps to widen the discussion to all 164 WTO members should start immediately.

 

Switzerland, home to several major pharmaceutical companies, has notably repeatedly voiced its unwillingness to budge.

 

A source close to France’s foreign trade minister Franck Riester said the agreement had been struck at a technical level but now needed a green light at the political level.

 

He said the compromise would only apply to developing countries accounting for less than 10 percent of global Covid-19 vaccine exports, excluding China.

 

He added the plan was intended to facilitate the granting of compulsory licensing deals, a provision already within the TRIPS system.

 

Compulsory licences give companies other than the patent holder authorisation to make a product, without the consent of the patent owner, subject to certain procedures and conditions being respected.

 

The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, a big pharma lobby group, slammed the compromise, saying that weakening patents when supply constraints had eased was a mistake.

 

The IFPMA said 12 billion vaccine doses had been produced within a year of the first jab being authorised, and the industry was now pumping out more than a billion doses per month.

 

“The challenge now is how to get the vaccines into the arms of people who need them, rather than vaccine supply,” the group said.

 

“The TRIPS waiver is not only the wrong solution, it is also an outdated proposal, that has been overtaken by events.”

 

Max Lawson, co-chair of the People’s Vaccine Alliance coalition campaigning for wider access to Covid vaccines, said the TRIPS waiver proposal was a half-measure that did not address IP rights on Covid-19 treatments.

 

“Every barrier to accessing these crucial vaccines and treatments must be cleared away,” he said.

 

Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) welcomed the compromise, but stressed there were “key limitations” in the leaked text, saying it covered only vaccines and was geographically limited.

 

“(It) covers only patents and does not address other intellectual property barriers, such as trade secrets, which may cover critical information needed to facilitate manufacturing,” MSF said.

 

“WTO members should work together to ensure that any agreement tackles the current barriers to accessing all COVID-19 medical tools, including treatments and diagnostics.”

 

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

GENEVA— The overall number of confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide has exceeded 460 million and the number of fatalities has exceeded 6.05 million, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.

 

As of March 16, as many as 460,280,168 novel coronavirus cases and 6,050,018 coronavirus-associated deaths were registered across the globe. The number of confirmed cases grew by 679,216 over the past day and the number of fatalities increased by 1,751.

 

The WHO statistics is based on officially confirmed data from the countries.

 

The biggest number of coronavirus cases was reported from the United States (78,865,157), India (42,998,938), Brazil (29,380,063), France (22,938,532), and the United Kingdom (19,820,185).

 

The biggest number of fatalities was reported from the United States (958,609), Brazil (655,249), India (516,072), Russia (362,478), and Mexico (321,115).

 

 

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

African health groups have warned that the COVID pandemic has led to a rise in drug and alcohol abuse on the continent, but a gap in data is making it hard to monitor. In South Africa, a Soweto-based nonprofit is scrambling to help youth to stay clean and sober.

Substance abuse — particularly alcohol consumption — has been on the rise in Africa for years, according to the World Health Organization.

The coronavirus pandemic that resulted in job losses and school closures has now amplified the problem.

The Ikageng children’s charity in Soweto says as many as 10 young people contact them daily suffering from addiction. Lydia Motloung, the acting program manager says that “during the lockdowns, they used to go and drink and some they were left in the houses alone, the parents are at work. And they start having the house parties and introduced to the alcohol, end up into crystal meth, which is very common around here, especially with schoolchildren.”

While Ikageng monitors the rise of addiction in the young people they’re helping, Motloung says national statistics on drug and alcohol abuse are sorely lacking.

“We normally get the statistics for COVID, you get the statistics for HIV, but we will never had any statistics for drugs and substance. I think if we can have that plan, the government can have that plan. … And then start funding the organization that are working with drugs and substance so that they fight it as they’re fighting for HIV and AIDS as they’re fighting for COVID,” she noted.

It’s not just South Africa that is lacking data on substance abuse, but the continent as a whole.

Florence Baingana is the African regional advisor on substance abuse for the World Health Organization.

“We may not count the exact numbers in each and every country. We know we have a problem. We also know that the services are inadequate, that one we know for a fact. Very often the alcohol treatment centers in the government facilities are underfunded. But I think if we were to begin by investing resources into building up the services, then we would be able to collect the data,” Baingana expressed.

She says investing in prevention would also be beneficial and less costly than treating addiction later on.

Ikageng’s caregivers like Nomali Monareng look for warning signs among the children they support.

She knows them first-hand, having struggled with addiction herself.

“Sometimes we need to start with parents. Most of children don’t, you don’t know how to talk about their feelings, don’t know how to express. Children need to be, to be taking care in all of their life, in all areas, like talking, having the conversation, even if it’s deep, even if it’s uncomfortable, you need to give the child a chance to talk,” she pointed out.

For those looking to get clean, the organization refers them to support groups that help people transition in and out of rehab.

They’re trying to offer skills training as well, so recoverees can find jobs and a purpose.

Vusi Nzimande is a project manager for the support program called Still We Rise.

“Where you find people idling, they don’t do nothing with their lives. That’s one of those things that causes us because of the mind is playing around. You started thinking too much. You don’t have a job; you don’t have anything to do. And then suddenly you see yourself going back to your old ways,” Nzimande said.

For the young people he’s helped, getting clean has been the first step. But experts say they’ll need opportunities and jobs to give them hope and keep them out of trouble in the long run.

 

 

 

Source: Voice of America