“Since the return of the Sandinista government in 2007, the difference in medical care is stark. Today, the Hospitalito is a fully equipped hospital with emergency care and admitted patient beds. There is outpatient care – general medicine, pediatrics, gynecology, psychology, natural medicine, a rehabilitation center, and a maternal wait home.”
The post What Does Health Care For All Look Like? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Activists gathered outside the homes of the White House chief of staff and the CEO of Moderna to demand the Biden administration and private drug companies do more to address the global vaccine shortage.
The post Global Health Advocates Bring Pile Of Bones To Biden Chief Of Staff, Moderna CEO appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
The term “race norming ” ought to be immediately suspected as having a nefarious intent. Anything referred to as norming in a racist society invariably ends with Black people getting the short end of the stick. The concept that Black bodies are anatomically different may be known as “race correction”, “ethnic adjustment”, or “race adjustment” and causes Black people to be undertreated for pain, undiagnosed for serious illness, and denied life saving treatments because of an idea which is inherently white supremacist and very much unscientific.
The post “Race Norming” and Health Care Jim Crow appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
“Dear Mr. Ramalho, we are writing to you to urge Novo Banco to execute the transfer of a modest portion of the now technically unfrozen assets belonging to Bandes, the Venezuelan economic and social development bank, so they may be transferred directly to the Brazil-based Pan-American Health Organisation to pay for vaccines and medicines for infants in Venezuela.”
The post appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Rural health care leaders have begun offering sign-on bonuses and benefit packages to combat shortages during the pandemic. But they’ve found that even those perks aren’t enough to keep or attract skilled health professionals. Instead, they say, the focus needs to shift to boosting nursing school enrollment and getting workers into the field faster. “It’s just very difficult to compete with some of the size and scale that bigger systems have,” Pratt said.
The post Rural Hospitals Can’t Find The Nurses They Need To Fight COVID appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Ask your liberal friends about Danny Glover. They will say – superstar actor featured in the Lethal Weapon film series. Civil rights activist. Democracy Now regular. Supporter of Bernie Sanders for President and for single payer national health insurance. But ask older Americans who watch a lot of cable television about Danny Glover, and they will tell you about Danny Glover – paid actor for big pharma and the insurance industry.
The post Danny Glover Under Cover For Big Pharma And Insurance Companies appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Organizations across the United States organized protests, cultural activities, community kitchens, teach-ins, and other actions about the issue of healthcare access in the US from September 13-20 as part of the Nonviolent Medicaid Army Week of Action. The diverse actions had the goal of uniting people directly impacted by healthcare denial and linking the different issues related to healthcare such as housing, police violence, access to clean water, and economic inequality.
The post Movements In The US Call To Expand Healthcare Access appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
The report released this week, which was conducted by advocacy group Worker’s Justice Project in partnership with Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, is a four-month-long survey (December 2020-April 2021) of 500 app-based workers throughout the five boroughs, many of whom work for the likes of Grubhub, Doordash and UberEats.
The post Report: NYC Food Delivery Workers Face Low Pay, High Risks appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
The WHO/ILO Joint Estimates of the Work-Related Burden of Disease and Injury, 2000-2016, conducted before the outbreak of the global COVID-19 pandemic, gives a glimpse of the terrible toll taken on the international working class by the insatiable profit drive of the corporations. Globally, 34.3 out of every 100,000 people over age 15 die each year from work-related causes.
The post WHO/ILO Study Says Nearly 2 Million Workers Globally Die From Work-Related Issues Each Year appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
A Texas doctor has revealed that he recently performed an abortion in violation of the state’s new controversial law that prohibits nearly all abortions after roughly six weeks into a pregnancy, arguing that he “had a duty of care to this patient.” Alan Braid, a San Antonio-based physician, wrote in an op-ed published by The Washington Post Saturday that on Sept. 6, just five days after the Texas abortion ban went into effect, that he “provided an abortion to a woman who, though still in her first trimester, was beyond the state’s new limit.”
The post Texas Doctor Who Provided Abortion In Violation Of New Law appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Republican legislators in more than half of U.S. states, spurred on by voters angry about lockdowns and mask mandates, are taking away the powers state and local officials use to protect the public against infectious diseases.
A KHN review of hundreds of pieces of legislation found that, in all 50 states, legislators have proposed bills to curb such public health powers since the covid-19 pandemic began. While some governors vetoed bills that passed, at least 26 states pushed through laws that permanently weaken government authority to protect public health. In three additional states, an executive order, ballot initiative or state Supreme Court ruling limited long-held public health powers. More bills are pending in a handful of states whose legislatures are still in session.
In Arkansas, legislators banned mask mandates except in private businesses or state-run health care settings, calling them “a burden on the public peace, health, and safety of the citizens of this state.” In Idaho, county commissioners, who typically have no public health expertise, can veto countywide public health orders. And in Kansas and Tennessee, school boards, rather than health officials, have the power to close schools.
President Joe Biden last Thursday announced sweeping vaccination mandates and other covid measures, saying he was forced to act partly because of such legislation: “My plan also takes on elected officials in states that are undermining you and these lifesaving actions.”
All told:
Much of this legislation takes effect as covid hospitalizations in some areas are climbing to the highest numbers at any point in the pandemic, and children are back in school.
“We really could see more people sick, hurt, hospitalized or even die, depending on the extremity of the legislation and curtailing of the authority,” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, head of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.
Public health academics and officials are frustrated that they, instead of the virus, have become the enemy. They argue this will have consequences that last long beyond this pandemic, diminishing their ability to fight the latest covid surge and future disease outbreaks, such as being able to quarantine people during a measles outbreak.
“It’s kind of like having your hands tied in the middle of a boxing match,” said Kelley Vollmar, executive director of the Jefferson County Health Department in Missouri.
But proponents of the new limits say they are a necessary check on executive powers and give lawmakers a voice in prolonged emergencies. Arkansas state Sen. Trent Garner, a Republican who co-sponsored his state’s successful bill to ban mask mandates, said he was trying to reflect the will of the people.
“What the people of Arkansas want is the decision to be left in their hands, to them and their family,” Garner said. “It’s time to take the power away from the so-called experts, whose ideas have been woefully inadequate.”
After initially signing the bill, Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson expressed regret, calling a special legislative session in early August to ask lawmakers to carve out an exception for schools. They declined. The law is currently blocked by an Arkansas judge who deemed it unconstitutional. Legal battles are ongoing in other states as well.
In Ohio, legislators gave themselves the power to overturn health orders and weakened school vaccine mandates. In Utah and Iowa, schools cannot require masks. In Alabama, state and local governments cannot issue vaccine passports and schools cannot require covid vaccinations.
Montana’s legislature passed some of the most restrictive laws of all, severely curbing public health’s quarantine and isolation powers, increasing local elected officials’ power over local health boards, preventing limits on religious gatherings and banning employers — including in health care settings — from requiring vaccinations for covid, the flu or anything else.
Legislators there also passed limits on local officials: If jurisdictions add public health rules stronger than state public health measures, they could lose 20% of some grants.
Losing the ability to order quarantines has left Karen Sullivan, health officer for Montana’s Butte-Silver Bow department, terrified about what’s to come — not only during the covid pandemic but for future measles and whooping cough outbreaks.
“In the midst of delta and other variants that are out there, we’re quite frankly a nervous wreck about it,” Sullivan said. “Relying on morality and goodwill is not a good public health practice.”
While some public health officials tried to fight the national wave of legislation, the underfunded public health workforce was consumed by trying to implement the largest vaccination campaign in U.S. history and had little time for political action.
Freeman said her city and county health officials’ group has meager influence and resources, especially in comparison with the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-backed conservative group that promoted a model bill to restrict the emergency powers of governors and other officials. The draft legislation appears to have inspired dozens of state-level bills, according to the KHN review. At least 15 states passed laws limiting emergency powers. In some states, governors can no longer institute mask mandates or close businesses, and their executive orders can be overturned by legislators.
When North Dakota’s legislative session began in January, a long slate of bills sought to rein in public health powers, including one with language similar to ALEC’s. The state didn’t have a health director to argue against the new limits because three had resigned in 2020.
Fighting the bills not only took time, but also seemed dangerous, said Renae Moch, public health director for Bismarck, who testified against a measure prohibiting mask mandates. She then received an onslaught of hate mail and demands for her to be fired.
Lawmakers overrode the governor’s veto to pass the bill into law. The North Dakota legislature also banned businesses from asking whether patrons are vaccinated against or infected with the coronavirus and curbed the governor’s emergency powers.
The new laws are meant to reduce the power of governors and restore the balance of power between states’ executive branches and legislatures, said Jonathon Hauenschild, director of the ALEC task force on communications and technology. “Governors are elected, but they were delegating a lot of authority to the public health official, often that they had appointed,” Hauenschild said.
When the Indiana legislature overrode the governor’s veto to pass a bill that gave county commissioners the power to review public health orders, it was devastating for Dr. David Welsh, the public health officer in rural Ripley County.
People immediately stopped calling him to report covid violations, because they knew the county commissioners could overturn his authority. It was “like turning off a light switch,” Welsh said.
Another county in Indiana has already seen its health department’s mask mandate overridden by the local commissioners, Welsh said.
He’s considering stepping down after more than a quarter century in the role. If he does, he’ll join at least 303 public health leaders who have retired, resigned or been fired since the pandemic began, according to an ongoing KHN and AP analysis. That means 1 in 5 Americans have lost a local health leader during the pandemic.
“This is a deathblow,” said Brian Castrucci, CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation, which advocates for public health. He called the legislative assault the last straw for many seasoned public health officials who have battled the pandemic without sufficient resources, while also being vilified.
Public health groups expect further combative legislation. ALEC’s Hauenschild said the group is looking into a Michigan law that allowed the legislature to limit the governor’s emergency powers without Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s signature.
Curbing the authority of public health officials has also become campaign fodder, particularly among Republican candidates running further on the right. While Republican Idaho Gov. Brad Little was traveling out of state, Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin signed a surprise executive order banning mask mandates that she later promoted for her upcoming campaign against him. He later reversed the ban, tweeting, “I do not like petty politics. I do not like political stunts over the rule of law.”
At least one former lawmaker — former Oregon Democratic state Sen. Wayne Fawbush — said some of today’s politicians may come to regret these laws.
Fawbush was a sponsor of 1989 legislation during the AIDS crisis. It banned employers from requiring health care workers, as a condition of employment, to get an HIV vaccine, if one became available.
But 32 years later, that means Oregon cannot require health care workers to be vaccinated against covid. Calling lawmaking a “messy business,” Fawbush said he certainly wouldn’t have pushed the bill through if he had known then what he does now.
“Legislators need to obviously deal with immediate situations,” Fawbush said. “But we have to look over the horizon. It’s part of the job responsibility to look at consequences.”
KHN data reporter Hannah Recht, Montana correspondent Katheryn Houghton and Associated Press writer Michelle R. Smith contributed to this report.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The U.S. health care system ranked last among 11 wealthy countries despite spending the highest percentage of its gross domestic product on health care, according to an analysis by the Commonwealth Fund. Researchers behind the report surveyed tens of thousands of patients and doctors in each country and used data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the World Health Organization (WHO). The report considered 71 performance measures that fell under five categories: access to care, the care process, administrative efficiency, equity and health care outcomes.
The post Report: Among Richest Countries, U.S. Last in Healthcare, Despite Spending the Most appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
On Sept. 1, the Supreme Court, without so much as a hearing on its constitutionality, let the most restrictive ban on abortion in the United States go into effect in Texas. Texas SB8 is a six-week abortion ban that will prevent legal abortions for almost all people seeking them. This ban is also well before the so-called viability test that Roe v. Wade has held in place since 1973, wherein abortions cannot be prohibited if they occur before the fetus could be considered viable.
Abortion advocates have been bracing for the worst since the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to the court after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which the court agreed to hear last May, has long been considered the case that the court would likely use to overturn Roe. However, the actions of the Court last week regarding SB84 surprised many due to its willingness to ignore precedent and allow a law to stand that clearly violates previous rulings. Chief Justice Roberts, a reliable conservative, even joined the liberal justices in dissent, stating that he would “would grant preliminary relief to preserve the status quo ante—before the law went into effect.”
“For the people who want to abortions in Texas, they need to understand that they are not the target of this law, it is the people around them, and that there are resources online to help them, like needabortion.org, which will help them understand how they can continue to still get their needs met, because abortion is not a crime in Texas, or anywhere else.”
Sara Ainsworth, senior legal and policy director at If, When, How
The Texas law is different than many other laws which have been enacted around the country to challenge abortion rights because, while it bans abortion prior to six weeks, it does not create criminal penalties, and instead creates a civil liability of $10,000 for abortion providers or anyone who assists abortion providers. As has been pointed out, the law is so broad that it could even be used to sue Uber drivers who take a woman to a clinic.
Sara Ainsworth, senior legal and policy director at If, When, How, an organization that provides reproductive justice legal services, told TRNN that she wants people seeking abortions in Texas to understand that the law does not criminalize them.
“For the people who want to abortions in Texas, they need to understand that they are not the target of this law, it is the people around them, and that there are resources online to help them, like needabortion.org, which will help them understand how they can continue to still get their needs met, because abortion is not a crime in Texas, or anywhere else.”
While people seeking abortions are not being criminalized per se, they are are being pushed into self-managed abortions due to the lack of accessibility of other medical care.
“The definition of self-managed abortion is someone who is taking an abortion into their own hands outside of a medical setting [typically by using the most common prescribed “abortion pills” mifepristone and misoprostol]. It’s not really a medical risk; it’s very safe in the grand scheme of abortions especially. But the difference is you did that outside of a medical setting and that’s what can make it punishable,” said Rafa Kidvai, director of the Repro Legal Defense Fund, which covers bail and funds defenses for individuals who are investigated, arrested, or prosecuted for self-managed abortions.
Self-managed abortions have been prosecuted, despite Roe, for decades.
“When you pass a law like this, that just basically deeply, deeply stigmatizes abortions and makes people believe that it is illegal, … a prosecutor will then cast around to find some kind of law to fit to the crime that they perceive, even in a state like Texas where criminalization is not on the books.”
Sara Ainsworth, senior legal and policy director at If, When, How
“Despite the fact that abortion is a constitutional right and a human right we have still been seeing since the year 2000 more than two dozen, possibly many more, prosecutions of people who are prosecuted under a range of laws, usually without legal authority,” said Ainsworth. “They are nonetheless arrested, jailed, prosecuted for having ended their own pregnancy or being accused of having done so.”
Ainsworth explains that laws like the one in Texas can lead to pregnant people being criminalized, no matter what the law says. “When you pass a law like this, that just basically deeply, deeply stigmatizes abortions and makes people believe that it is illegal, it casts abortion in a light of, ‘Well, if someone did it themselves, therefore it must be a crime.’ And a prosecutor will then cast around to find some kind of law to fit to the crime that they perceive, even in a state like Texas where criminalization is not on the books,” she said. “It’s the increase in self-managed care and then the stigma that attaches to anyone that manages their own abortion that increases the risk of criminalization.”
Kidvai agrees and points out that politics often heavily influence whether or not a person will get prosecuted for a self-managed abortion. “Prosecutions are about overarching culture, so prosecutors prosecute whatever is politically beneficial to them,” she said.
While most cases of people being criminally prosecuted due to this Texas law, or any other abortion restriction, will end up in dismissal, this does not change the impact that criminalization can have on the lives of the people charged. “So much about criminalization is all the stuff that comes along with it—like being under suspicion, threat of a potential prosecution, an open case can destroy your livelihood even if that case ends up being resolved in your favor,” says Kidvai.
Kidvai also points out that this criminalization is more likely to occur when marginalized people seek abortions than anyone else. “The same people [get prosecuted for self-managed abortions] as get prosecuted for all cases, BIPOC people and poor people,” she said. “Pregnancy makes you vulnerable to prosecution.”
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
As the Delta variant continues to rage in the United States, maxing out many of the nation’s intensive care units, we face a severe deficit in direct care nurses and caregivers in our hospitals. Since 2016, hospitals have turned over an average of 90.8 percent of their staff, including registered nurses (RNs). Some hospitals have annual RN vacancy rates hovering well beyond 20 percent. But the number actually needed to provide safe care is often double or even triple the number of budgeted vacant positions.
While there’s been no shortage of students wishing to study to become nurses, nursing programs across the country are closing, even as demand for nurses continues to rise. In New York State alone, more than 170 nursing programs closed over the past 50 years, with only 65 accredited nursing schools remaining.
What are the conditions driving RN turnover and vacancy rates, and what can we do to bring on and keep more qualified nurses in the field?
While salaries and benefits in “union-dense” regions of New York State have improved, they have still remained substandard in other areas. In nonunion and even some unionized hospitals in these areas, the cost of health benefits outweighs salaries, and nurses must resort to the taxpayer-funded state government system for their dependents. Ironically, these hospitals, which receive state subsidies, are relieved of the cost of insuring their employees, while additional state funds are expended for this purpose.
Defined benefit pensions have been discarded by many hospitals and replaced with defined contribution plans that are dependent upon the stock market and offer far less protection to retirees.
Travel nurses, on the other hand, can earn over $5,000 per week plus housing, transportation and food. When hospitals run out of enough nurses to keep patients alive, they resort to paying these costs as well as travel nurses’ lucrative agency fees. Nurses often choose to leave hospital staff and opt for these assignments in various locations in order to make more money, travel and avoid the torments of staff nurse positions in uncaring facilities.
In our nation’s hospitals, 23.9 percent of all new RNs leave within a year. Each percent change in RN turnover costs the average hospital an additional $270,800 each year.
Ultimately, chronic understaffing and unacceptable working conditions are the main reason new nurses leave the bedside, senior nurses retire early and others “shop around” — or leave the profession entirely.
Nurses have been saying for years that we must have a standard of care that includes minimum nurse-to-patient ratios in order to deliver “the kind of care I would want for my mom.” Often, based on our professional judgment, we know that we can safely care for two, three or four patients, depending upon severity and complexity of illness. Yet we are told instead that we are responsible for double, triple and even quadruple that number of human beings, leading us to decompensate.
There is a mantra in the medical community: “Do no harm.” Forcing us to accept an assignment far beyond our capabilities, in volume or in competency (hospitals often demand we treat patients we’re untrained to care for) places us in a dizzying state of cognitive dissonance. We undoubtedly become accomplices in potentially harming the patients in our charge.
Yet, if we refuse to take on such an assignment, we’re threatened with termination. Adding to the stress, employers harass us with nitpicking details related to repetitive documentation via the electronic charting systems (EMR) — thus, making care of the patient secondary to its documentation. Why? The tedious checklists in the EMR generate billing, which enables the hospital to get paid.
This focus on documentation is the final straw in the pain nurses endure as we try to do our jobs. We have far less direct contact with our patients as a result, and are forced to “speed up,” and engage in rote, factory-like activities, rather than being able to develop meaningful relationships with our patients and their families, and utilize the critical thinking skills we cherish. Nurses are key in detecting and preventing complications and in creating a framework that most benefits our patients. That world is disappearing as we are dangerously understaffed and challenged without support and resources.
The SARS CoV-2 pandemic didn’t initiate the nursing shortage, but it did exacerbate the problem and made the public painfully aware of its seriousness. This “shortage” is manufactured by an inflated, top-heavy health care system built on profit-making rather than enhancing care. Dollars in hospitals are spent on consultants, marketers, information technology “streamliners,” and overpaid managers whose job it is to cut staff and work nurses beyond human capacity. That doesn’t even touch the money lining the pockets of insurers, Big Pharma, and other predators of the health care system — money that could otherwise be spent on staff, training and preventative care for our patients.
In addition, the frenzied competition and breakneck efforts of hospitals to make a buck result in overtreating the well-insured and undertreating the underinsured and the uninsured, leading to negative outcomes and complications. Nurses are pressured to reduce “length of stay” and often have to take on hospital and insurance administration to advocate for patients staying an extra day to recuperate.
As the pandemic continues to rage amid the Delta variants spread, patients in already overcrowded, understaffed and poorly prepared environments are still dying by the thousands. However, even in the face of this horrific medical nightmare, there was the potential to save so many more. The death toll and the conditions New York nurses faced in March and April 2020 left nurses numb. Many of us developed an almost collective amnesia about what occurred, just so we could continue on. Post-traumatic stress disorder is rampant among the medical community, and now, with numbers rising in intensive care units once again, it has become almost too much to bear.
What’s worse, the flip-flopping and crass abandonment of caregivers by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and our employers at the start of the pandemic resulted in a form of “trauma betrayal,” leaving people in caregiving professions skeptical about believing anything else the government promotes, including vaccines.
Without fundamentally altering the focus of the health care system away from the business model of profiteering and back to the social model of care facilitated by a Medicare for All system, our society will fail again to develop a reliable public health infrastructure. Without mandating standards for patient loads and without affording us respect as competent, thinking professionals, nurses will continue to “burn out” and abandon our beloved profession.
There are many idealistic youth who wish to give from their hearts, hands and minds to our society, but without making nursing school accessible and affordable to all, the nursing shortage will escalate — and there may not be anyone to care for you when you are most in need.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Indigenous and Chicanx/Latinx people, who comprise nearly 50% of New Mexico’s population, have been subjected to generational and current day racist reproductive policies under the United State’s federal- and state-funded legacy of forced sterilization and coercive reproductive control. Yet New Mexicans, including Indigenous people, Black people, people of color, and people of faith have built and fought for safe and legal access to reproductive health for centuries to protect our own loved ones.
The post New Mexicans Fought For Abortion Access And Won appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
On July 30, a Friday, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni partially lifted the 42-day lockdown order that had been implemented in June amid a surge of COVID-19 infections in the country.
Uganda’s total population is just over 45 million. The number of people in the target group prioritized for vaccination amounts to 21.9 million. At the time Museveni announced the partial lifting of the lockdown, less than 1.5% of those in that target group (only about 1.2 million) had received the recommended vaccines: According to Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng, minister of health, 902,293 had received the first jab, while only 232,742 people were fully vaccinated.
By the end of August, Uganda had only received roughly 2,025,280 vaccine doses, all donations: 1,725,280 through the COVAX scheme, as well as 300,000 Sinovac doses from China.
Uganda, however, has not effectively reached a state of suppressed transmission of the coronavirus, which would mean the positivity rate drops to 5% or below. Having reached a staggering 19.2% positivity rate as of June 8, Uganda was still experiencing 7-8% positivity by July 30—there was still active transmission happening at the community level.
This is the reality still facing many countries around the world, especially in Africa, due to the global vaccine apartheid and forced scarcity engendered by rich countries hoarding doses and protecting the profits and intellectual property rights of pharmaceutical companies over the lives of the world’s population.
But the government had to make a hard decision, opting to relax restrictions on trade, movement, and transport because the economy was bleeding and people had nothing to eat.
“Literally speaking, if the opening up during the first wave represented a training drill under a mixture of blank and live shots, what we have loosed Ugandans onto is an actively raging battlefield,” said Dr. Misaki Wayengera, the chair of Uganda’s Scientific Advisory Committee on COVID-19 for the Ministry of Health.
The “government of Uganda’s strategy is mass vaccination of the eligible population (22 million, representing 49.8% [of the total population]) as a means of optimal control of the pandemic and full opening up of the economy,” Dr. Aceng said.
Out of 80 million vaccine doses that the Biden administration has designated for global donations, the US government has committed to donating about 25 million doses to 49 countries in Africa. Uganda will certainly benefit from this donation, although the exact number of doses it will receive is still unknown.
“In the next coming weeks, we’ll continue to see additional deliveries to reach this 25 million,” according to Jessica Lapenn, US ambassador to the African Union.
Dr. John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said the vaccines donated by the US government will help to ensure that vaccination efforts will continue or resume in African countries that are either running out of doses or had already exhausted the doses they previously received. The fact remains, however, that only 1.7% of people in Africa have been fully immunized.
After the eighth meeting of the Emergency Committee convened by the WHO Director-General under the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR) regarding the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), which took place on Wednesday, July 14, the committee issued a call to action to have at least 10% of all countries’ populations fully vaccinated by September 2021.
But the WHO has warned that, at the current pace of vaccine distribution, nearly 70% of African countries will not reach the 10% vaccination target by the end of September. Ministry of Health officials in Uganda said they expect another 11 million doses to arrive in the country by September.
Without enough vaccines, the governments of poor countries like Uganda are unlikely to hit that target. They will have to make the decision to lift lockdown restrictions and play a deadly game of “hide and seek” (imposing lockdowns when surges arise and health systems become overwhelmed, then opening back up when the devastation subsides).
This is the reality still facing many countries around the world, especially in Africa, due to the global vaccine apartheid and forced scarcity engengered by rich countries hoarding doses and protecting the profits and intellectual property rights of pharmaceutical companies over the lives of the world’s population.
With few or no vaccines, many countries are still at peak risk and are experiencing faster and higher surges of cases. “We must all double down on prevention measures to build on these fragile gains,” said Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director for Africa.
“Vaccine inequity can fuel the epidemic through emergence of variants. It will also create social-economic impacts, particularly on education, and generate poverty—and all these will create a bad epidemic that will increase the inequity trap,” professor David Serwadda, head of the vaccine advisory committee in Uganda, told me. “We shall have a worldwide trap—if one region vaccinates and another does not …”
Vaccine inequity around the globe has resulted from a combination of factors, including rich countries hoarding vaccines, nationalist sentiments and fear overcoming global solidarity, and poorer countries relying on donations without being given a chance to purchase their own preferred vaccines (even if they are willing to purchase directly from manufacturers).
According to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, one of the gravest threats and grimmest realities exposed during this pandemic has been the lack of international solidarity and sharing: the sharing of pathogen data, epidemiological information, specimens, resources, technology, and vaccines.
“What worries us is how the virus mutates, and we can only prevent it if we take this vaccine equity and implement it truly,” said Dr. Yonas Tegegn Woldemariam, WHO Representative in Uganda.
“The problem in Africa is vaccine famine, not vaccine hesitancy,” Dr. Nkengasong recently told Reuters. “It is very unfortunate, if you recognise that we have to immunize at least up to 70% of our population. That tells you we have an incredibly long journey to go where we have to be.”
Again, as of today, less than 2% of the 1.3 billion people living on the continent have been fully vaccinated.
“We are struggling with buying vaccines. We are talking to everybody—most importantly, we are developing a vaccine,” President Museveni reassured Ugandans during a presidential address on Saturday, Aug. 14.
To date, the government has only secured around 2 million vaccine doses, all in the form of donations, but authorities are looking to acquire more vaccines as richer countries immunize more of their populations.
“We must expand our manufacturing capacity on the continent, which will help us in public health and [provide] significant economic benefits because it will create jobs and ensure that things purchased out of Africa are bought locally, which will strengthen our economies,” Dr. Ahmed Ogwell Ouma, deputy director of the Africa CDC, told me.
Africa imports 99% of the vaccines it administers. “The gap is so big that our heads of state have stepped in and told us we must change the narrative,” said Ouma. “Our vision as Africa CDC is to see that vaccine manufacturing on the continent is 60% of what we need and [that we are only] importing 40% by 2030.”
Some countries, including South Africa, Senegal, Algeria, Egypt, and Rwanda, have started to build up their COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing capabilities.
“Vaccine equity cannot be guaranteed by goodwill alone. Africa needs to and should be capable of producing its own vaccines and medical products. Rwanda commits to working with member states and partners to make vaccine equity a reality,” said President Paul Kagame of Rwanda during the joint high-level meeting on vaccine manufacturing organized by the Africa CDC on April 12.
But before vaccine manufacturing takes off on the continent, many countries are still experiencing increased cases of COVID-19, especially with the emergence of new variants that are more transmissible and ensure every subsequent wave is more severe than the previous one.
As time passes and the pandemic wears on, the public tends to become less vigilant about following social safety measures and exposure increases—vaccines remain the most vital and effective tool in the arsenal to fight the virus.
In 1986, under President Yoweri Museveni, Uganda adopted the first national AIDS control program, which featured a health education campaign to inform the public about how HIV was transmitted and how to avoid infection.
Together with local leaders at all levels, Museveni spoke openly about HIV prevention, stressing the “ABCs”—(1) Abstinence, (2) Be faithful, (3) use a Condom—and encouraging “zero grazing” (i.e., monogamy). These efforts resulted in reducing HIV prevalence from 18% to 6%.
Now, with COVID-19, Museveni is once again speaking openly and publicly about prevention, using national addresses that are broadcast live on television and radio stations to enforce safety measures; this time, however, security forces are helping with the enforcement.
The first national address occurred on March 22, 2020, and a lockdown was called into effect from March 18-30, including the closure of public places such as churches, schools, and bars. Museveni also imposed curfews, halted public transport, and stopped passenger flights by March 25 (most of the cases initially recorded were from travelers). At the time, Uganda had 126 confirmed cases and no deaths.
Thereafter, Museveni took to using national addresses to call for donations from the public—the private sector donated UGX 21 billion (about $6 million USD)—which garnered much-needed supplies in the form of cash, food, and even vehicles to be used in the fight to mitigate the spread of the virus. Museveni even used these occasions to demonstrate how much food families should eat and ration, and how to exercise in their homes to stay healthy.
Uganda made significant achievements during the first lockdown. The government distributed food to the vulnerable and even promised distribution of radios for learners who were locked out of school so they could study “on air.”
[A] lockdown was called into effect from March 18-30, including the closure of public places such as churches, schools, and bars. [President] Museveni also imposed curfews, halted public transport, and stopped passenger flights by March 25 (most of the cases initially recorded were from travelers). At the time, Uganda had 126 confirmed cases and no deaths.
Registered cases dropped, obviously, but there were unanticipated benefits, too—on the wildlife front, for instance, the number of animals increased in game parks as a result of fewer poachers. In Queen Elizabeth National Park, the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) said they recorded more than 90 mammal and 600 bird species, and the population of elephants surpassed the 3,953 mark registered before the lockdown. Records also showed increased numbers of buffaloes and kobs.
The public largely complied with the lockdown orders and stayed at home, which significantly reduced new COVID-19 cases, but there were other social catastrophes—within 14 days from the start of the national lockdown, Uganda police recorded 328 cases of domestic violence.
Other social calamities have been exacerbated during the lockdown period. Child neglect, malnutrition, and strains on mental health increased. No schools for the nation’s 15 million school-going children means a lack of access to the internet, computers, and phones. And teenage pregnancies have gone through the roof.
In the year since lockdowns were first imposed, pregnancies among teenagers in Uganda have jumped from 24% to 35%, according to Reproductive Health Uganda. One district in northern Uganda, Gulu district, has reportedly registered 4,447 teenage pregnancies in a period of 18 months.
In other districts, underage marriages and sexual abuse have been a persistent concern. In Lyantonde district, according to one report that has left many speechless, parents are allegedly colluding with sex offenders to marry off girls as young as 13 years old.
Within just 35 days of the second lockdown, the sub-county of Amuru in Amuru district registered 170 cases of teenage pregnancies, according to a survey conducted by the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF) Uganda, a non-governmental organization working in partnership with Amuru sub-county through the Village Health Team (VHT).
Albert Ladaa, the assistant community development Officer in Amuru sub-county, said the most affected were teen girls aged between 15 and 17 years. However, David Ocira, chairperson of Amuru sub-county, posited that the number of teenage pregnancies are higher than what was recorded in the AMREF survey because many more cases are neither reported nor documented.
There are also reports in regions like Karamoja that female genital mutilation is relatedly on the rise.
Across the Sub-Saharan Africa region, UNICEF reported that over 32 million children are out of school as a result of pandemic closures due to second and third COVID-19 waves in some countries. That number, as the report states, “is in addition to an estimated 37 million children who were out of school before the pandemic.”
On May 4, 2020, Museveni extended the first nationwide lockdown while easing some restrictions. Some businesses, transport services, and essential health workers were allowed to move, but Ugandans were still required to wear masks, social distance, and abide by a nationwide curfew. At the time, Uganda had 89 confirmed COVID-19 cases, according to the Ministry of Health.
The public complied with these measures, even if the deaths from COVID-19 were minimal. After the second wave prompted a second lockdown, however, this one imposed for 42 days amid increased cases and deaths, the public was not taking it anymore. The only solution was (and is) mass vaccination.
As of August 2021, a total of 904,601 Ugandans had received the first jab, representing 79.4% of the total received doses, while only 250,664 had been fully vaccinated, according to the Ministry of Health.
The Ministry of Health has reported high vaccine uptake and low hesitancy among the public. I myself had to go to the local health facility five times, waking up early in the morning, to get my second jab—most health facilities would say they were out of stock. Eventually, I was able to get the second dose of the vaccine at a different facility from where I got the first one, and after a long wait.
Some officials attribute the high uptake to the second wave, which had a steady rise in cases, reaching a peak of 1,735 on June 10, 2021. As of June 30, 2021, cases started to decrease, but mortality still occurs.
On Aug. 14, there were 137 registered new cases out of the 3,372 tests conducted, and 11 new deaths. Predictions are that if standard operating procedures are not followed, within 28 days there will be an average of around 500 cases per day, with a weekly average of around 2,000.
The Ministry of Health is seeking 9 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccines, which it hopes to procure through the pool-purchasing entity Africa Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT), before the third wave hits.
As other countries push to “get back to normal,” Africa still has a long fight ahead. There is nothing luxurious about standing out of the queue. In fact, “people are yearning for vaccines. Africans have their arms stretched out waiting for vaccines—the situation has gone from people not interested to people protesting because there are no vaccines. There is no predictable supply of vaccines,” said Strive Masiyiwa, the African Union’s special envoy on COVID-19 and coordinator of AVATT.
Masiyiwa observed that hesitancy has apparently dropped and more people now want vaccines, especially after Africans have seen the devastation COVID-19 has wrought in other countries, including the United States.
“The third wave is raging in Africa and people are staying at home and not part of the crowds. While they remain locked up in their houses, they see what is happening in other countries. Ninety-nine percent of the people in US hospitals did not get a vaccine. They had a choice but they chose not to get them. They had a choice. They can get them anywhere, even on the subway,” he said.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
Originally published by The 19th on September 1, 2021. Story by Chabeli Carrazana.
It was 8:00PM on Tuesday when Marva Sadler looked at the patients waiting in the lobby, at the list of patients waiting to return, at even more patients waiting outside in cars surrounded by protesters—and realized they might not get to everyone. In four hours, a near total ban on abortions in Texas was set to take effect, and two dozen people were still waiting for the procedure at Whole Woman’s Health in Fort Worth, one of the largest abortion care clinics in the state.
“We are not the bad guys here,” [Sadler] told them. “We are doing everything right and we’re going to help everybody that we can.”
Sadler, the director of clinical services, and her colleagues did the math. They needed to perform eight abortions an hour with only one doctor on duty, an octogenarian who had been working since 7:00AM. It felt impossible.
Outside, chants came in through a bullhorn, protesters shouting prayer verses and arguing the clinic was too full. Already the police had been called. The fire marshal would come twice over capacity issues inside the clinic. Employees could see protesters through their security cameras and through windows of the small brick building.
They are watching us, Sadler thought, and they’re winning.
Inside, she looked at her team: eight people total between the techs and the front office staff, the doctor, and three staff members from a nearby clinic they brought in to help. She asked them to take a breath.
“We are not the bad guys here,” she told them. “We are doing everything right and we’re going to help everybody that we can. If there’s someone that we can’t help, it’s not our fault.”
At midnight Wednesday, Texas’ Senate Bill 8 became law, effectively banning abortions after six weeks of gestation—a time when most people aren’t even aware they are pregnant. Republican state lawmakers had fought to claw back abortion access before: In 2013, an anti-abortion bill banned the procedure in Texas 20 weeks post-fertilization and put a series of new regulations on abortion providers. Parts of the law were ultimately overturned in 2016 by the United States Supreme Court. It was Whole Woman’s Health, an abortion provider with clinics in five states, that sued to take that case to court. Sadler had been at the center of that fight, too.
SB 8 has also been appealed to the Supreme Court, with Whole Woman’s Health as the lead plaintiff in that case. But by Tuesday evening, with a full roster of patients to serve at the clinic in Fort Worth, it became clear that the high court would not step in before the law took effect.
The staff worked without stopping to eat, shifting patients in and out of rooms. In the lobby, people who had been waiting five hours or more asked when they would be called. They had to pick up other kids. Their ride was leaving. Their family members, who were outside because of coronavirus regulations, knocked on the front door to see what was happening. Would they be seen or turned away?
One young woman arrived at her first appointment to the clinic that same night. She was a drug user, she told Sadler, and set to begin serving a five-year prison sentence in a week. She already had three children at home. She didn’t want to deliver a baby in jail.
She dropped to her knees on the cold tile floor in front of Sadler, begging her to take her, to perform the abortion.
In Texas, patients have to wait 24 hours after their first appointment to get an abortion. The woman was 12 weeks pregnant, and on Wednesday, she’d be too far along to get the procedure.
It was that woman Sadler thought about later, as she drove away from the clinic, the adrenaline of the day washed away by waves of sadness and pain. The knowledge that, no matter what she did, she couldn’t help everyone.
Just before SB 8 took effect, at 11:56PM, the doctor walked out of his last procedure. Clinic workers got to everyone they were legally allowed to treat. In 17 hours, they’d performed 67 abortion procedures. They’d seen 60 people who had taken medication to abort at home to confirm that—yes, the process was complete, and they wouldn’t be left in limbo.
For a moment they were able to savor it. Sadler looked at the doctor and told him physicians half his age wouldn’t have been able to do what he did. Even if he only had performed one abortion, it would have been a victory, she said.
When they walked out of the clinic for the night, the protesters were still there, standing in the dark on the sidewalk, watching them. As part of the Texas law, private citizens can sue anyone they believe may have “aided or abetted” someone getting an abortion outside of the six-week window—and potentially win $10,000 or more in damages.
There were 77 people on their roster for the day—some of them real, some of them, Sadler suspects, protesters who called to make fake appointments to see if they could gain intel on what the clinic was telling its patients.
Protesters were still there Wednesday before Sadler arrived at 7:00AM.
Her staff was visibly drained from the day before, shuffling through the hallways and talking in low voices. There were 77 people on their roster for the day—some of them real, some of them, Sadler suspects, protesters who called to make fake appointments to see if they could gain intel on what the clinic was telling its patients.
Sadler knew she would have to go out and say something uplifting to her team, even as she knew this would be a day where she would have to deny people care.
“How unfair,” she kept thinking, “that those women yesterday were helped, and the women today don’t have any help.”
It was only 10:00AM, but she had already turned away four people—some as early in their pregnancies as five weeks and six days.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
Donald Trump was the convenient scapegoat for the first year of the Covid-19 crisis. Austerity, low wage work, housing insecurity, and the profit driven health care system were problematic issues before anyone heard the word Covid-19 or indeed before Trump’s presidency. Every failing of the United States already in existence came into sharp relief when the pandemic struck.
Joe Biden has done nothing to alleviate these many crises. Temporary unemployment benefits end in September, and millions of people were denied these funds when republican state legislatures decreed that they wanted people back at work. The Supreme Court struck down the eviction moratorium and 90% of the funds allocated to pay for rent relief remain unspent. Millions of people face the prospect of becoming unhoused.
The post Why The US Still Suffers From COVID appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
In Indiana and across the country, self-described “pro-life” politicians and organizations are often the only thing standing in the way of medically sound policies that would increase contraception access. It has been estimated that just one year after legislation allowing a pharmacist to prescribe birth control in Indiana, 86 unintended pregnancies would be averted. Ultimately, fewer abortions would occur — a stated goal of many “pro-life” lawmakers. These estimates don’t even take into account the significant impacts on infant and maternal mortality that would occur as a result of increased access to contraception.
The post Doctor Fights To Let Pharmacists Prescribe Birth Control In Indiana appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
A draconian Texas law banning abortions beyond around six weeks of pregnancy took effect at midnight after the conservative U.S. Supreme Court did not act to block it on Tuesday, a decision that could have major implications for reproductive rights across the country.
The post Roe V. Wade In Grave Danger As Supreme Court Lets Texas Abortion Ban Take Effect appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
After a law restricting nearly all abortions went into effect in Texas on Wednesday, progressives began reigniting a call to expand the Supreme Court, saying “millions of lives are at stake.”
The law is the most restrictive abortion law in the U.S., to the point where experts have said that it essentially overturns Roe v. Wade in the state. The law went into effect after the Supreme Court didn’t act in rejecting it, as they were expected to do.
Progressives and Democrats have decried the tacit upholding of the law, ripping into the conservative-dominated Supreme Court for its inaction.
Lawmakers like Sen. Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) and Representatives Jamaal Bowman (D-New York) and Mondaire Jones (D-New York) said that the Supreme Court must be expanded in order to fight against and overturn actions by the right-wing justices to undermine abortion and voting rights.
“By refusing to take action before the clock struck midnight, the far-right Supreme Court effectively overturned Roe v. Wade. This isn’t hypothetical — our fundamental rights are being snatched away from under us. We must #ExpandTheCourt,” wrote Jones.
“Has your member of Congress signed on to the Judiciary Act of 2021, which would add four seats to the Supreme Court? If not, what are they waiting for?” Jones wrote in a follow-up tweet, urging followers to call their representatives.
“We must expand and reform the Supreme Court. Millions of lives are at stake,” wrote Bowman. He said the expansion is about several issues at once, saying “It’s abortion rights. It’s voting rights. It’s workers’ rights. It’s civil rights.” and reiterated that adding justices to the Supreme Court is “a matter of life and death” in the tweet.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez retweeted a criticism of the current Supreme Court from Mother Jones reporter Ari Berman, saying “A Supreme Court where 5 of 6 conservative justices were appointed by GOP presidents who initially lost popular vote and confirmed by senators representing minority of Americans are taking away voting rights and reproductive rights from millions of Americans. This is not democracy.”
Earlier this year, Democrats introduced legislation to add four more justices to the highest court in the land. Introduced by Jones, Markey, and others, the lawmakers and progressives argued that it’s necessary to fight back against Republicans, who have essentially rigged the court in their favor.
Congress has the authority to decide how many justices sit on the Supreme Court. However, the bill currently only has 28 cosponsors in the House and no cosponsors in the Senate.
Rescinding abortion rights, which are under threat on a national level with the current Supreme Court, would have an enormous impact on pregnant people and their families. It would also, as Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri) pointed out, be especially pernicious for Black and brown people, as well as poor people.
“I’m thinking about the Black, brown, low-income, queer, and young folks in Texas. The folks this abortion health care ban will disproportionately harm,” tweeted Bush. “Wealthy white folks will have the means to access abortion care. Our communities won’t.”
Abortion bans affect nearly everyone, but they harm people of color and poor people the most. People of color are disproportionately criminalized by abortion bans and poor people don’t have the same access to health providers or the resources to travel to places that do provide abortions legally as wealthy people do. When a pregnancy is causing harm or will cause harm to a pregnant person, abortion bans leave disadvantaged populations with nowhere to turn.
Some lawmakers called for passing legislation through Congress that would protect abortion rights. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California) called on the passage of a bill last introduced in 2019 that would prevent states from rescinding abortion access or limit access to the vital health care. “We will fight this in Congress with every tool available,” Lee vowed.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
People love the pill. As a pediatrician and a researcher who studies access to contraception, I speak to patients from all walks of life, and, even if they choose not to use the birth control pill themselves, most people support making it affordable and easy to access for everyone.
Its near-universal support is not surprising: Birth control can improve people’s lives by giving them the freedom to plan their families, allowing them to delay pregnancy until they decide they are ready. Still, for many people, getting to a doctor to get a prescription for birth control isn’t as easy as it should be.
That’s why I support and advocate for legislation that would make Indiana the 20th state to expand access to birth control by allowing pharmacists to directly prescribe and dispense the birth control pill and patch. Just last month, our neighbors in Illinois approved a measure to reduce barriers to contraceptive care by allowing pharmacists to provide birth control. States like West Virginia and Arkansas have done the same.
In Indiana and across the country, self-described “pro-life” politicians and organizations are often the only thing standing in the way of medically sound policies that would increase contraception access. It has been estimated that just one year after legislation allowing a pharmacist to prescribe birth control in Indiana, 86 unintended pregnancies would be averted. Ultimately, fewer abortions would occur — a stated goal of many “pro-life” lawmakers. These estimates don’t even take into account the significant impacts on infant and maternal mortality that would occur as a result of increased access to contraception.
Legislation increasing access to contraception should be widely hailed as “pro-life,” as birth control gives people the ability to control the trajectory of their lives, and does so by giving people the ability to decide when pregnancies will occur. Yet, certain politicians and organizations have pushed back at every turn for years on end. They are committed to blocking access for people and controlling people’s health care decisions despite mountains of evidence and economic analysis of the overall benefits, as well as the important benefit of trusting people to make decisions about their own bodies.
Expanding access to birth control is heavily supported by science and evidence, and endorsed by countless medical groups. Birth control is not only safe and highly effective at preventing pregnancy, it’s also overwhelmingly popular: More than 99 percent of sexually active women ages 15 to 44 have used at least one form of contraception. That’s more women than those who currently own a smartphone.
Unfortunately, when people try to access birth control consistently, there are many barriers that can put this basic health care out of reach. Because the law currently does not allow highly trained pharmacists to dispense birth control, people need to take time off work or school to schedule a doctor’s appointment. In addition, millions of people face high costs and lack insurance coverage or access to a health care provider. Indiana, in particular, has a shortage of primary care providers and a majority of our counties have been deemed contraceptive deserts.
Allowing pharmacists to prescribe birth control is a simple solution that can combat these obstacles quickly, increasing the locations where people can get this care, with hours that are more expansive than doctor’s offices, thereby giving people greater control over their reproductive health.
It’s clear that politicians’ opposition to this common-sense legislation is about control, not health. We have a long history of politicians negating public health and evidence and instead putting their personal ideologies ahead of the communities that they are representing. While the focus often starts with abortion, the shift to blocking access to reproductive health as a whole (including contraception) extended to the national stage when former Indiana Gov. Mike Pence became the vice president. His attacks on Title X funding for comprehensive reproductive health care still have impacts today and have set the stage for continued legal challenges.
The people of Indiana vote for politicians because we want a better, stronger state that works to make our lives easier. We want the kind of legislation that would reduce health disparities, lower our health care costs, and give us the medical and reproductive freedom we need. Yet, again and again, politicians are choosing ideology over science.
It doesn’t take a medical degree to know that we need more health care, not less — especially during a pandemic that has devastated people’s health and finances. If the anti-abortion movement truly cared about our lives and our well-being, they would join me and the millions of people across our state who use and support birth control in advocating for policies that ensure no one has to go without the health care they need.
In their silence and their opposition, it’s clear that they don’t care. Even without their support, we are still millions strong. It’s time for Indiana to follow the model of the 19 other states that have already adopted this legislation, and to lead the rest of the country in making health care more accessible.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The highly infectious Delta variant of the coronavirus is sweeping Africa in a deadly third wave of the pandemic. Over the last month, there has been an 80-percent increase in cases across the continent, with South Africa alone reporting more than 14,000 new cases in a single day. Despite the fact that fewer than 2 percent of Africans have been fully vaccinated, wealthy countries such as the United States are making plans for booster shots for their populations, continuing to hoard doses in a stunning show of vaccine imperialism and capitalist irrationality.
The post Wealthy Countries Weigh Booster Shots; Fewer Than 2% Of Africans Are Vaccinated appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
While health advocacy organizations have urged the federal government to learn from the HIV/AIDS crisis to more effectively respond to the Covid-19 pandemic, both within America and abroad, many HIV/AIDS organizers argue that the government has now failed twice in its responsibility to the nation’s — and the world’s — most vulnerable people.
The post What AIDS Activists Can Teach Us About The Covid Pandemic appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Right now, there are essentially two approaches to improving our health care system. Either we expand the Affordable Care Act, or we expand Medicare. So far, President Joe Biden has pushed for the former with his administration’s expansion of insurance subsidies in the American Rescue Plan. Neither approach, however, will get us to what we need if the privatization of Medicare and Medicaid continues unchecked.
The threat is real. Private health insurance companies, hospitals and pharmaceuticals care about one thing: making more money. Since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, these companies have worked diligently to privatize what are ostensibly public goods.
Medicare and Medicaid were created to provide health care to the elderly and poor in our country. It was designed as a public good financed and administered by the government, and as such, was a landmark expansion of our understanding of what our government could do for us.
But over the years, private interests have encroached on that early promise, turning what was once a public good into another profit-making opportunity for the health care industry. Their first big breakthrough was when former President George W. Bush passed the Medicare Advantage program (also known as Medicare Part C) in 2003. Suddenly, millions of elderly Americans — and the billions of dollars that the government was spending on their care — were now available to private companies.
By offering coverage that traditional Medicare did not, such as for nursing home and long-term care, plus hearing, vision and dental care, companies were able to increase profits by signing up elderly Americans and getting both government money to pay for the care, plus the extra premiums that Medicare Advantage charged. What had once been administered as a purely public, not-for-profit program by the government has now become an increasingly corporate-controlled system. In 2020, 42 percent of Medicare beneficiaries were enrolled in a Medicare Advantage program.
The same pattern has played out with Medicaid. In the place of Medicare Advantage programs, we now have Medicaid Managed Care Organizations (MCOs). Here, states give blocks of money to private, for-profit organizations to provide coverage to Medicaid beneficiaries. With the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, Medicaid was expanded to all adults with incomes up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level in states that didn’t opt out. By 2018, 69 percent of Medicaid beneficiaries were enrolled in MCOs.
With the privatization of Medicare and Medicaid, the government has ceded decisions over who gets care and for what to private companies whose driving interest is increasing their bottom line. This inevitably leads to narrowed networks, refusal of care and curtailed benefits. Meanwhile, the government is paying for both the health care of its elderly and poor — and covering whatever profits health insurance companies can skim off the top.
Meanwhile, health insurance companies know that Medicare for All is an increasingly popular policy. In theory, this could wipe out their very existence. Instead, they are trying to dismantle Medicare and Medicaid piece by piece, and turn a public good into another cash cow for the industry.
The immediate solutions are not complicated. First, we can eliminate Medicare Advantage programs and MCOs. Furthermore, we can stop underfunding Medicaid; fill in the gaps in Medicare, so that the elderly can get hearing, vision and dental care; close Medicaid coverage gaps; and allow Medicare to bargain down drug prices. Finally, we can lower the Medicare eligibility age and create a public option. Ultimately, though, all Americans should be able to get the health care they need, free of narrow networks, cost barriers and a system that incentivizes denial of care.
When Americans push for Medicare for All, they must also push back against the insurance industry’s relentless infiltration of Medicare and Medicaid, or we will be back where we started — health care meted out by private corporations, always looking at their bottom line.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
“As for me, though, I’ve been seeking out as many of those voices as I could for a long, long time. And here’s what I’ve learned: the truths so many of them tell sharply conflict with the remarkably light-hearted and unthinking celebrations of war we experienced this July and so many Julys before it. I keep wondering why so few of us are focusing on one urgent question: Why are so many of our military brothers and sisters taking their own lives?”
The post Moral Injury And The Forever Wars appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
A Missouri judge has ruled that state lawmakers, including Missouri’s Republican Gov. Mike Parson, can no longer deny adults who are newly eligible for Medicaid from accessing the program.
Cole County Judge Jon Beetem, who had initially ruled in favor of allowing Parson and other Republicans the ability to restrict eligible participants earlier this year, changed his ruling after the state Supreme Court had found the legal arguments he had favored were improperly accepted. In his opinion published on Tuesday, Beetem said he was changing his initial finding “in accordance with the Mandate of the Supreme Court of Missouri.”
The state Supreme Court’s ruling had been a unanimous one.
Beetem’s new ruling also requires the state to treat newly eligible Medicaid participants similarly to those who are already in the program, and forbids the state from offering different tiers of benefits to Medicaid recipients.
The ruling on Tuesday affirms a referendum outcome from August 2020, which saw more than 53 percent of Missourians vote in favor of expanding the state’s Medicaid program in accordance with the Affordable Care Act (ACA). While the outcome of that vote was hailed at the time by health advocates as a promising step forward, Republicans in the state have since tried to block the expansion, through court challenges and legislative actions.
But those challenges would no longer remain obstacles to individuals getting Medicaid coverage.
“People who make up to 138 percent of [the] federal poverty level [in Missouri] can start applying now,” wrote St. Louis Public Radio correspondent Jason Rosenbaum. “It will take some time to get enrolled, but they can’t be denied coverage. Medicaid expansion in Missouri has arrived.”
Parson, reacting to the order on Tuesday, said he would “follow the law.” But he also expressed doubts over his and other lawmakers’ ability to find funding for the program, stating that one of the ways he could do so might be to lessen the benefits that Medicaid recipients in his state receive.
“We don’t have the funding to support it right now. So we’ve got to figure out how we’re going to do that, you know, whether we’re going to dilute the pool of money that we have now for the people that’s on the program, and just how we’re going to move forward,” Parson said.
Those comments from Parson suggest that the slashing of Medicaid benefits may become the next major political battle on health care in the state.
With Missouri now officially legally bound to expand access to Medicaid, 38 states plus Washington, D.C. have now adopted Medicaid expansions. Twelve states, however, have opted out of doing so since the ACA became law more than 10 years ago. (States were given the opportunity to opt out of the expansion because of a federal Supreme Court ruling on the law in 2012.)
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, hundreds of studies have shown positive outcomes from states’ Medicaid expansion, including greater access and utilization of care, healthcare affordability, and even improvements to states’ economies. One study from the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2019 suggested that thousands of lives — around 19,000 in total — have been saved due to states deciding to opt into expanding their Medicaid programs through the ACA. Conversely, around 15,000 lives have been lost because states have refused to accept funding to expand their programs, that same study found.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
A child of refugees who fled war-torn Uganda in the 1970s, a young Naheed Dosani grew up having conversations about social injustice, inequity and poverty at the family’s Scarborough home. “I have always pondered what a life is worth,” he says, “and why our health and social systems are designed to value some lives over those of others.”
This was especially the case after the challenges of the last year. A palliative care physician who works with some of the city’s most vulnerable, Dosani said that “COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted people who experience structural vulnerabilities. Pandemics are like guided missiles. They target the most vulnerable. The disproportionate effects of COVID-19 on three groups — racialized communities, essential workers and people who experience homelessness — are all textbook examples of its devastating impact.”
The post PEACH Provides Palliative Care For Homeless And Vulnerably Housed appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Health care activists were uniformly disappointed, albeit not surprised, when President Joe Biden, in initially proposing the American Families Plan, failed to include in the legislation his major campaign promise to prioritize expanding Medicare. Instead of fighting for real health care reform, the House and Senate wrote letters respectfully requesting the administration to tweak the plan around the edges: lower the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 60; decrease prescription drug costs; place an out-of-pocket cap on health care costs; and expand coverage to include dental, vision and hearing.
The post Democrats Propose Medicare For A Few More Instead Of Demanding Medicare For All appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
The March for Medicare for All Movement released a statement today that the group is filing a human rights violation complaint with the United Nations and will hold a public UN panel discussion later this month. On July 24, thousands of people across the United States in 56 marches and vigils demanded the United States Federal Government to take immediate action on three (3) demands by August 6, 2021. The demands 1) Pass Improved & Expanded Medicare for All Immediately; 2) Recognize Healthcare as a Human Right for all people Regardless of sex, age, creed, race, religion, gender identity, citizenship, disability, geographic location, income, and employment status; and 3) Prioritize Healthcare First in the Federal budget. The failure of the United States to fully protect the health of its population during a pandemic is a violation of basic human rights and dignity.
The post Medicare For All Movement To File Human Rights Violation Complaint appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.