Category: Public health

  • COMMENT: By Shailendra Singh in Suva

    Perth in Australia was plunged into a three-day lockdown after community transmission was linked to a returnee from India.

    Fiji finds itself in similar situation due to a returnee, also from India.

    Australian officials say overseas travel is allowed only for “the most profound humanitarian or compassionate reasons, under strictest of circumstances”.

    What about Fiji? Under what circumstances is overseas travel allowed? Under what circumstances was the India returnee allowed to travel in the first place – do citizens have a right to know?

    Australia has recognised the risks and effectively banned international travel, even though thousands of Australians will be unable to return home for now.

    What is the Fiji response to international travel in light of the latest infections from abroad with 12 new cases yesterday? Are we tightening things up or not? The citizens need to know what the government is doing.

    Reports indicate Australia adopted varying responses with regards to high-risk countries, including North America and Europe.

    Tightening up
    Given the crisis in India, Australia has taken steps to further tighten departures after it was found people were travelling for weddings, funerals and sports.

    Critics have condemned the Australian government for what they see as its laxity, and for risking lives and dealing a potential blow to the economy.

    What about Fiji? On what grounds are people travelling? Were people allowed to travel for weddings, religious reasons and for funerals? We need answers.

    How big a risk is it to us as a nation to allow return travel from hot spots like India and the US?

    In light of the new cases, have the international travel guidelines been changed or are they still the same?

    Dr Shailendra Singh is senior lecturer and coordinator of the journalism programme at the University of the South Pacific. This comment is from Dr Singh’s social media posts and is republished with permission.

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    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • By Rebecca Kuku in Port Moresby

    Papua New Guinean Prime Minister James Marape has defended the adjournment of Parliament for four months, saying this is for the health and safety of everyone.

    He said he was not willing to “sacrifice the health of our elected leaders while at the same time, observe the parliamentary process that can pose an immediate and real danger to our MPs, their staff and families”.

    “I have rallied Members of Parliament on either of the House to consider this threat as serious and to ensure that our safety is not compromised,” Marape said.

    Parliament was adjourned to August 10 after 42 parliamentary staff and an MP tested positive to covid-19.

    This came shortly after the opposition amended its vote-of-no-confidence motion and named former prime minister Peter O’Neill as the alternative prime minister.

    Marape said it was incumbent upon the government, with its numbers, to exercise care and responsibility to ensure that MPS were protected from the potential spread of the virus.

    “I note that while the [Pandemic] Controller has classified these workers as essential workers for the purpose of the Pandemic Act 2020, the physical risk of a potential outbreak in Parliament can never be underestimated,” he said.

    ‘About us as human beings’
    “This action is in the interest of all who sit in Parliament and all who work there.

    “It is not about the government and the opposition; it is about all of us human beings, who are susceptible to the virus.

    “We have to be responsible for lives, including the lives of politicians.

    “Parliament, in its debate, confronted the loss of the former Member for Kerema to the virus.”

    Members of the media queried the necessity of a four-month adjournment, when the incubation period for the coronavirus was two weeks, to which Marape said though the incubation period ends after two weeks that did not stop the spread of the virus.

    Rebecca Kuku is a journalist with the PNG Post-Courier.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • By Rebecca Kuku in Port Moresby

    Papua New Guinean Prime Minister James Marape has defended the adjournment of Parliament for four months, saying this is for the health and safety of everyone.

    He said he was not willing to “sacrifice the health of our elected leaders while at the same time, observe the parliamentary process that can pose an immediate and real danger to our MPs, their staff and families”.

    “I have rallied Members of Parliament on either of the House to consider this threat as serious and to ensure that our safety is not compromised,” Marape said.

    Parliament was adjourned to August 10 after 42 parliamentary staff and an MP tested positive to covid-19.

    This came shortly after the opposition amended its vote-of-no-confidence motion and named former prime minister Peter O’Neill as the alternative prime minister.

    Marape said it was incumbent upon the government, with its numbers, to exercise care and responsibility to ensure that MPS were protected from the potential spread of the virus.

    “I note that while the [Pandemic] Controller has classified these workers as essential workers for the purpose of the Pandemic Act 2020, the physical risk of a potential outbreak in Parliament can never be underestimated,” he said.

    ‘About us as human beings’
    “This action is in the interest of all who sit in Parliament and all who work there.

    “It is not about the government and the opposition; it is about all of us human beings, who are susceptible to the virus.

    “We have to be responsible for lives, including the lives of politicians.

    “Parliament, in its debate, confronted the loss of the former Member for Kerema to the virus.”

    Members of the media queried the necessity of a four-month adjournment, when the incubation period for the coronavirus was two weeks, to which Marape said though the incubation period ends after two weeks that did not stop the spread of the virus.

    Rebecca Kuku is a journalist with the PNG Post-Courier.

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    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • A masked woman is administered the vaccine

    The international humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders on Wednesday implored the United States, European Union member nations, and other rich countries to immediately end their opposition to South Africa and India’s patent waiver proposal, which would enable the mass production of generic coronavirus vaccines to meet the developing world’s dire needs.

    “In this Covid-19 pandemic, we are once again faced with issues of scarcity, which can be addressed through diversification of manufacturing and supply capacity and ensuring the temporary waiver of relevant intellectual property,” Dr. Maria Guevara, international medical secretary of Doctors Without Borders, said in a statement.

    “We urge all countries in opposition to this, including the U.S. and the E.U., to stand on the right side of history and join hands with those in support,” said Guevara. “It is about saving lives at the end, not protecting systems.”

    Doctors Without Borders’ call came as a World Trade Organization (WTO) council is set to hold an informal meeting Thursday to discuss the proposed intellectual property waiver, which has garnered the support of more than 100 WTO member nations as well as hundreds of civil society organizations, former world leaders, and Nobel Prize-winning economists.

    But the U.S. and European countries have repeatedly objected, denying the WTO the consensus support necessary to move forward with the waiver and keeping vaccine production under the control of profit-driven pharmaceutical companies that have lobbied aggressively against the proposal.

    With strict intellectual property rules in place, low-income countries have been left largely without access to life-saving vaccines as infections continue to surge across the globe, leading experts to fear the emergence of vaccine-resistant strains that could prolong the global pandemic.

    Earlier this month, the head of the World Health Organization estimated that just 0.2% of the vaccine doses administered globally have gone to people in low-income nations as rich countries swallow up much of the existing supply, leaving them with massive surpluses.

    The editorial board of Nature, a leading scientific journal, recently observed that “the world needs around 11 billion doses of coronavirus vaccine to immunize 70% of the world’s population, assuming two doses per person.”

    “As of [February], orders had been confirmed for 8.6 billion doses, a remarkable achievement. But some 6 billion of these will go to high- and upper-middle-income countries,” the board noted. “Poorer nations — which account for 80% of the world’s population — so far have access to less than one-third of the available vaccines.”

    Doctors Without Borders said Wednesday that it was encouraged by U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai’s comments last week at a virtual WTO conference, where she said that “the significant inequities we are seeing in access to vaccines between developed and developing countries are completely unacceptable.”

    “Extraordinary times require extraordinary leadership, communication, and creativity,” said Tai. “Extraordinary crises challenge all of us to break out of our comfortable molds, our in-the-box thinking, our instinctive habits.”

    Tai went on to say that “there are many aspects of the institution of the WTO and its rules that have not adapted to a changed world,” but she did not provide any indication that the Biden administration plans to throw U.S. support behind India and South Africa’s proposal, which would allow generic manufacturers to replicate vaccine formulas.

    The WTO is expected to consider the waiver once again during its next general meeting in May.

    Dr. Márcio da Fonseca, infectious disease adviser for Doctors Without Borders’ Access Campaign, said in a statement Wednesday that “we have learned the hard lessons of the past of having to take a country-by-country and product-by-product approach of removing intellectual property barriers impeding access to lifesaving treatments; it is not sufficient and doesn’t provide no expeditious option for this global pandemic.”

    “At a time when more than three million lives have already been lost to Covid-19,” da Fonseca added, “we urge countries to take all possible measures, including supporting this waiver, to be able to protect everyone, everywhere during this pandemic.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • By Rowan Quinn, RNZ News health correspondent

    New Zealand is scrapping district health boards and creating a new Māori health agency in a radical “fairer and smarter” shake-up of the medical system.

    Health Minister Andrew Little announced details to health leaders at Parliament today.

    The 20 district health boards which run services for individual areas around the country will be replaced by one new body, Health NZ, which will instead plan services for the whole population.

    Health NZ will have four regional divisions but also district offices.

    It will delegate authority to local levels so regional services have a say in what they need and how they work, Little said.

    “The system must work in true partnership with Māori… Māori still suffer, on average, worse health than others.”

    There will also be a new Māori Health Authority, sitting alongside that, to both set policies for Māori health and to decide and fund those who will deliver services.

    Direct commission
    The new authority will “have the power to directly commission health services for Māori”.

    “There are other equity challenges as well … the system must listen to the voice of Pacific people, disable people, rainbow … and all other people,” Little said.

    “We can and must do better.”

    The country’s 30 primary health organisations – large regional networks of GPs and primary care – will also be ditched.

    And, on the back of covid-19, there will be a new Public Health Agency which will target widespread health problems – like smoking – and try to prepare for pandemics and epidemics.

    RNZ News video of the national health shake-up announcement.

    Little said today’s announcement was a plan to create a “truly national health service” that “draws on the best that we have now” but reduces pressure on healthcare workers and hospitals and specialist services.

    “By making the changes I am announcing today, we will have the chance to put the focus on primary health care,” he said.

    “We can start giving true effect to tino rangatiratanga and our obligations under Te Tiriti O Waitangi.

    ‘System under stress’
    “It’s a system under stress. Our health and care workers strive every day … but demand is growing … and the job is getting harder.”

    The changes being announced go further than the Health and Disability System Review, the basis for today’s plan.

    That recommended halving the DHBs, and having a Māori health authority but with fewer powers and less autonomy that the one announced today.

    The changes have been made to try to stop what is called the “post code lottery of care”, where people get different care – or have different changes of survival – depending on which DHB area they live in.

    The report released today says a lot of those problems are caused by the fact that hospitals and specialist care are often managed in isolation from each other, not in a coherent network.

    Instead of district health boards, the new Health NZ, will oversee the health needs of four regions.

    And there is an increased focused on primary – or GP-level community care.

    Primary care funding
    The report says at the moment specialist or hospital care draws away a lot of primary care funding and it wants that to stop.

    It also wants those community services – including GPs, midwives and pharmacists, to work more together

    And the Māori Health Authority is aimed at overcoming the huge health disparities for Māori as a whole, with lower life expectancy and higher rates of disease in many areas.

    Associate Health Minister (Māori Health) Peeni Henare said many Māori did not like going to the doctor because their experiences of the health system is negative.

    “This authority will drive hauroa Māori and make real change,” he said.

    It would represent Māori from all iwi.

    “This is where we make a start,” Henare said.

    Public health units
    “Regional public health units, long underfunded, will stay but under the new Health NZ entity.

    Little said he had heard calls for change, quickly.

    “The current system no longer serves our needs well. Our goal is a health system that helps all New Zealanders to live longer in good health,” he said.

    “We need a system that is not only fairer but also smarter.”

    Smarter means making the most of the money and resources available, Little said.

    He was not underestimating the challenges faced, he said.

    “Our system has become overly complex. It is too complicated for a small nation.

    ‘Operate as one system’
    “We need to operate as one system. Organisations working together should be the norm, not the exception.”

    The Ministry of Health would be strengthened, Little said.

    But it will no longer directly fund and commission health services.

    Health New Zealand – a new Crown entity – will run hospitals and commission primary health care.

    It will replace the existing 20 health boards, Little said.

    “DHBs have served their communities well.”

    But they have their failings, he said.

    ‘About doing better’
    “I want to stress this reform is about doing better with what we have. It is not about cutting services,” Little said.

    Little said the fourth element of the announcement was about public health, including “Pacific people, disabled people, rainbow … and all other people”.

    “Disability issues span the full range of issues any community faces. That’s why I have more work being done in this area,” he said.

    Little said technology would play a part in the new system.

    That would include improving access to things like virtual diagnostic tools.

    “Health NZ will work with communities … to develop the priorities for their areas, making sure people have a say in the services they get.”

    “You should be able to turn up anywhere in the health service and know the health professional has access to information relevant to you.”

    New health charter
    There will also be a new health charter.

    “We will start work on this soon.”

    Some aspects of change would take years, not months, Little said.

    He acknowledged the challenge of making change during a global pandemic.

    He was confident they could safely take place at the same time.

    “Covid-19 is not a reason to preserve a system that is not fit for purpose,” he said.

    “I am mindful we need to proceed carefully and not disrupt day-to-day services.

    “I expect the new system to come into effect in July 2022.”

    Establishing interim versions
    In coming weeks, work will begin on establishing interim versions of Health NZ and the Māori Health Authority.

    New legislation for them will be worked on and Little expects that legislation to be passed by April 2022.

    “Together we have an opportunity to make a once in a lifetime change, to put in a new system and improve the health of this, and future, generations.”

    DHBs will continue in their roles for now.

    “I want to reassure new Zealanders that the care they rely upon will still be available.”

    The changes are overdue, and “this time, it must be different”, Little said.

    During the process of the reform plan, Little said he had been thinking of those working in the system, and those who needed healthcare.

    “We are a small nation, and we can make this change working together, and we can make this change in the spirit of Te Tiriti (O Waitangi).”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    Print Friendly, PDF & Email

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • By Rowan Quinn, RNZ News health correspondent

    New Zealand is scrapping district health boards and creating a new Māori health agency in a radical “fairer and smarter” shake-up of the medical system.

    Health Minister Andrew Little announced details to health leaders at Parliament today.

    The 20 district health boards which run services for individual areas around the country will be replaced by one new body, Health NZ, which will instead plan services for the whole population.

    Health NZ will have four regional divisions but also district offices.

    It will delegate authority to local levels so regional services have a say in what they need and how they work, Little said.

    “The system must work in true partnership with Māori… Māori still suffer, on average, worse health than others.”

    There will also be a new Māori Health Authority, sitting alongside that, to both set policies for Māori health and to decide and fund those who will deliver services.

    Direct commission
    The new authority will “have the power to directly commission health services for Māori”.

    “There are other equity challenges as well … the system must listen to the voice of Pacific people, disable people, rainbow … and all other people,” Little said.

    “We can and must do better.”

    The country’s 30 primary health organisations – large regional networks of GPs and primary care – will also be ditched.

    And, on the back of covid-19, there will be a new Public Health Agency which will target widespread health problems – like smoking – and try to prepare for pandemics and epidemics.

    • WATCH:

    RNZ News video of the national health shake-up announcement.

    Little said today’s announcement was a plan to create a “truly national health service” that “draws on the best that we have now” but reduces pressure on healthcare workers and hospitals and specialist services.

    “By making the changes I am announcing today, we will have the chance to put the focus on primary health care,” he said.

    “We can start giving true effect to tino rangatiratanga and our obligations under Te Tiriti O Waitangi.

    ‘System under stress’
    “It’s a system under stress. Our health and care workers strive every day … but demand is growing … and the job is getting harder.”

    The changes being announced go further than the Health and Disability System Review, the basis for today’s plan.

    That recommended halving the DHBs, and having a Māori health authority but with fewer powers and less autonomy that the one announced today.

    The changes have been made to try to stop what is called the “post code lottery of care”, where people get different care – or have different changes of survival – depending on which DHB area they live in.

    The report released today says a lot of those problems are caused by the fact that hospitals and specialist care are often managed in isolation from each other, not in a coherent network.

    Instead of district health boards, the new Health NZ, will oversee the health needs of four regions.

    And there is an increased focused on primary – or GP-level community care.

    Primary care funding
    The report says at the moment specialist or hospital care draws away a lot of primary care funding and it wants that to stop.

    It also wants those community services – including GPs, midwives and pharmacists, to work more together

    And the Māori Health Authority is aimed at overcoming the huge health disparities for Māori as a whole, with lower life expectancy and higher rates of disease in many areas.

    Associate Health Minister (Māori Health) Peeni Henare said many Māori did not like going to the doctor because their experiences of the health system is negative.

    “This authority will drive hauroa Māori and make real change,” he said.

    It would represent Māori from all iwi.

    “This is where we make a start,” Henare said.

    Public health units
    “Regional public health units, long underfunded, will stay but under the new Health NZ entity.

    Little said he had heard calls for change, quickly.

    “The current system no longer serves our needs well. Our goal is a health system that helps all New Zealanders to live longer in good health,” he said.

    “We need a system that is not only fairer but also smarter.”

    Smarter means making the most of the money and resources available, Little said.

    He was not underestimating the challenges faced, he said.

    “Our system has become overly complex. It is too complicated for a small nation.

    ‘Operate as one system’
    “We need to operate as one system. Organisations working together should be the norm, not the exception.”

    The Ministry of Health would be strengthened, Little said.

    But it will no longer directly fund and commission health services.

    Health New Zealand – a new Crown entity – will run hospitals and commission primary health care.

    It will replace the existing 20 health boards, Little said.

    “DHBs have served their communities well.”

    But they have their failings, he said.

    ‘About doing better’
    “I want to stress this reform is about doing better with what we have. It is not about cutting services,” Little said.

    Little said the fourth element of the announcement was about public health, including “Pacific people, disabled people, rainbow … and all other people”.

    “Disability issues span the full range of issues any community faces. That’s why I have more work being done in this area,” he said.

    Little said technology would play a part in the new system.

    That would include improving access to things like virtual diagnostic tools.

    “Health NZ will work with communities … to develop the priorities for their areas, making sure people have a say in the services they get.”

    “You should be able to turn up anywhere in the health service and know the health professional has access to information relevant to you.”

    New health charter
    There will also be a new health charter.

    “We will start work on this soon.”

    Some aspects of change would take years, not months, Little said.

    He acknowledged the challenge of making change during a global pandemic.

    He was confident they could safely take place at the same time.

    “Covid-19 is not a reason to preserve a system that is not fit for purpose,” he said.

    “I am mindful we need to proceed carefully and not disrupt day-to-day services.

    “I expect the new system to come into effect in July 2022.”

    Establishing interim versions
    In coming weeks, work will begin on establishing interim versions of Health NZ and the Māori Health Authority.

    New legislation for them will be worked on and Little expects that legislation to be passed by April 2022.

    “Together we have an opportunity to make a once in a lifetime change, to put in a new system and improve the health of this, and future, generations.”

    DHBs will continue in their roles for now.

    “I want to reassure new Zealanders that the care they rely upon will still be available.”

    The changes are overdue, and “this time, it must be different”, Little said.

    During the process of the reform plan, Little said he had been thinking of those working in the system, and those who needed healthcare.

    “We are a small nation, and we can make this change working together, and we can make this change in the spirit of Te Tiriti (O Waitangi).”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Asia Pacific Report newsdesk

    Fiji Health Ministry’s Permanent Secretary Dr James Fong says the breach at the quarantine facility in Nadi was an incident waiting to happen.

    He was reported saying this by Fiji Village News as reports of random announcements of new cases were being made with journalists citing 10 active cases in Fiji.

    The quarantine facility was an operation run by human beings and no quarantine process in the world had been 100 percent full proof, Dr Fong said.

    He said that every single quarantine system in the world had been breached.

    He added adds that the ministry had got a lot of community support on the first night of operations when officials were looking for 310 people that were now in quarantine.

    Dr Fong said Rosie Holidays gave them vehicles and told them to use them while Pacific Destinations told them they would go anywhere to help the ministry reach those people.

    He said there were other people who came forward with help and this assistance allowed them to secure the 310 people in 12 hours which was a “huge achievement”.

    Containment plan
    The ministry’s biggest priority at the moment was getting the containment plan working and the exercise of going through the whole of Lautoka and Nadi was a huge logistical exercise.

    He also said there would be 19 screening locations in the Central Division by tomorrow and locations were also being set up in the Northern Division.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Asia Pacific Report newsdesk

    Fiji Health Ministry’s Permanent Secretary Dr James Fong says the breach at the quarantine facility in Nadi was an incident waiting to happen.

    He was reported saying this by Fiji Village News as reports of random announcements of new cases were being made with journalists citing 10 active cases in Fiji.

    The quarantine facility was an operation run by human beings and no quarantine process in the world had been 100 percent full proof, Dr Fong said.

    He said that every single quarantine system in the world had been breached.

    He added that the ministry had got a lot of community support on the first night of operations when officials were looking for 310 people that were now in quarantine.

    Dr Fong said Rosie Holidays gave them vehicles and told them to use them while Pacific Destinations told them they would go anywhere to help the ministry reach those people.

    He said there were other people who came forward with help and this assistance allowed them to secure the 310 people in 12 hours which was a “huge achievement”.

    Containment plan
    The ministry’s biggest priority at the moment was getting the containment plan working and the exercise of going through the whole of Lautoka and Nadi was a huge logistical exercise.

    He also said there would be 19 screening locations in the Central Division by tomorrow and locations were also being set up in the Northern Division.

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    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Water flows across a darkened landscape

    Florida workers over the weekend rushed to prevent the collapse of a reservoir wall containing hundreds of millions of gallons of wastewater from a defunct phosphate mine, a looming environmental catastrophe that prompted mandatory evacuation orders and a declaration of emergency by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

    A leak in the Piney Point reservoir was first reported late last month, sparking fears of a complete breach and possible upending of stacks of phosphogypsum, a radioactive waste product of fertilizer manufacturing. During a briefing on Saturday, a public safety official for Florida’s Manatee County warned that “structural collapse” of the storage reservoir “could occur at any time.”

    To prevent a full-fledged breach and contain spillage, local work crews on Sunday continued actively pumping tens of thousands of gallons of toxic wastewater per minute into Tampa Bay. As The Guardian reported Sunday, Manatee County officials “warned that up to 340 million gallons could engulf the area in ‘a 20-foot wall of water’ if they could not repair” the leak.

    Justin Bloom, founder of the Sarasota-based nonprofit group Suncoast Waterkeeper, said in a statement Sunday that “we hope the contamination is not as bad as we fear, but are preparing for significant damage to Tampa Bay and the communities that rely on this precious resource.”

    “It looks like this is turning out to be the ‘horror’ chapter of a long, terrible story of phosphate mining in Florida and beyond,” Bloom added.

    Aerial footage posted to YouTube by a local news outlet shows the leak at the Piney Point reservoir as of Sunday morning:

    The Environmental Protection Agency said late Sunday that it is “actively monitoring the ongoing situation at Piney Point” and has “deployed an on-scene coordinator” to work with local officials.

    Jaclyn Lopez, Florida director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said Sunday that the crisis was “entirely foreseeable and preventable” and cries out for immediate intervention by the federal government.

    “With 24 more phosphogypsum stacks storing more than one billion tons of this dangerous, radioactive waste in Florida, the EPA needs to step in right now,” Lopez said. “Federal officials need to clean up this mess the fertilizer industry has dumped on Florida communities and immediately halt further phosphogypsum production.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • We look at the urgent push to ensure equal access to COVID-19 vaccines for all nations, rich and poor, and growing calls for Big Pharma to waive their patent rights, as COVID-19 cases soar in India and the Modi government has suspended exports of coronavirus vaccines to many of the world’s poorest countries that depend on AstraZeneca vaccines it produces. “These are not India’s vaccines,” says Achal Prabhala, coordinator of the AccessIBSA project, which campaigns for equitable access to medicines. “The number of vaccine doses that have gone out to a third of humanity — 91 poor countries — is 18 million doses, or just enough to cover about 1% of the populations of these countries if they’ve even got vaccines, which some have not,” Prabhala notes. Leena Menghaney, an Indian lawyer who heads Médecins Sans Frontières’s access campaign in India, links the supply shortage to Oxford University’s decision to sign an exclusive deal with the Serum Institute in India rather than contracting several manufacturers to produce the vaccine. “The monopoly is going to cost us,” Menghaney says.

    TRANSCRIPT

    This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

    AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show with the urgent push to ensure equal access to COVID-19 vaccines for all nations, rich and poor, and growing calls for Big Pharma to waive their patent rights. As Christians around the world marked Easter Sunday, Italy moved up midnight Masses to meet a 10 p.m. curfew amidst a spike in COVID cases. And Pope Francis used his Easter Mass address at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican to warn against vaccine nationalism.

    POPE FRANCIS: [translated] In the spirit of an internationalism of vaccines, I urge the entire international community to a common commitment to overcome the delays in their distribution and to promote their distribution especially in the poorest countries.

    AMY GOODMAN: According to Oxfam, rich countries, with just 13% of the world’s population, have bought up more than 60% of vaccines even before their production. This comes as COVAX, the United Nations initiative to bring mass vaccination to poorer countries, has placed orders for more than 2 billion shots, but most of them won’t come until the second half of this year.

    Meanwhile, deliveries from the world’s biggest coronavirus vaccine manufacturer in India have been delayed as COVID-19 cases soar to record highs in India and the Modi government has suspended vaccine exports. With more than 12.6 million confirmed coronavirus cases, India has the world’s third-highest caseload, after the United States and Brazil.

    On Sunday, the head of the public-private GAVI Alliance, which works to provide vaccines to the developing world and is backed by the United Nations and the Gates Foundation, addressed the delay during an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation. This is Seth Berkley.

    DR. SETH BERKLEY: So, India is, by volume, the largest supplier of vaccines for the developing world. And because of the new wave of outbreaks in India right now, the Indian government has stepped up their vaccination programs. And that has meant that they’ve required more doses, which means that they’ve made less doses available for the rest of the world. We had expected, in March and April, about 90 million doses, and we suspect we’ll get much, much less than that. And that is a problem.

    But we’re in a race, because we also see wealthy countries beginning to cover much of their population, and our hope is that they will begin to make their vaccines available to the rest of the world, including ones that they may not use. For example, the U.S. not only has Moderna, Pfizer and J&J, but they also have vaccines from Novavax and, of course, from AstraZeneca. Those could be made available, and they would make a big difference in terms of the supply for the world.

    AMY GOODMAN: Well, our next guests write about this in a new piece for The Guardian headlined “The world’s poorest countries are at India’s mercy for vaccines. It’s unsustainable.” In it, they note that as the U.K. saw a delay in doses from India, quote, “a far more chilling reality was unfolding: about a third of all humanity, living in the poorest countries, found out that they will get almost no coronavirus vaccines in the near future because of India’s urgent need to vaccinate its own massive population.

    For more, we go to India, where we’re joined in Bangalore by Achal Prabhala. He is the coordinator of the AccessIBSA project, which campaigns for access to medicines in India, Brazil and South Africa. And in Delhi, Leena Menghaney is with us, an Indian lawyer who has worked for two decades on pharmaceutical law and policy. She is head of the Médecins Sans Frontières — that’s Doctors Without Borders — access campaign in India.

    We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Achal Prabhala, it’s great to have you back. You co-authored this piece. Elaborate further on what is taking place, this as we hear Pope Francis’s address demanding the wealthy countries ensure that the world gets these vaccines, especially the poorest countries.

    ACHAL PRABHALA: Thank you.

    What we’re seeing now is a failure that was foretold over a year ago, when vaccine manufacturing and vaccine research just began. What’s happening today is a set of cumulative failures over the last year, many of which were predicted, many of which could have been avoided.

    Of the vaccines available in the world, there are vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna which are simply not available outside rich countries. AstraZeneca is one of the few companies that has made its vaccine a little more available, primarily by signing an agreement with the largest vaccine manufacturer in the world, who happens to be located in India. Now, the problem is that what they signed over were the rights to supply vaccines to 92 poor countries around the world, including India, essentially to one vaccine manufacturer, with very, very few backups. What that’s meant is that you have these 92 countries that are dependent upon one company that operates on Indian soil.

    Now, by its share of population, India should get about 35% of these vaccines. What’s happening instead is that the Indian government is acquiring far more of those vaccines than 35%. At this moment and for the next couple of months, it’s going to be closer to 100%. The problem with this is that these are not India’s vaccines. These vaccines were always meant, contractually, for about half of humanity, including India. Now, they’re not getting there. Seth Berkley, the head of the COVAX initiative, which promised to provide a pipeline of vaccines to these poor countries last year, has said that he hoped to have 100 million doses out. The reality is so much worse, because what he has out are 28 million vaccines, 10 million of which went right back to India. So the number of vaccine doses that have gone out to a third of humanity — 91 poor countries — is 18 million doses, or just enough to cover about 1% of the populations of these countries if they’ve even got vaccines, which some have not.

    AMY GOODMAN: [inaudible] Leena Menghaney about the consequence of the contract between Oxford and AstraZeneca with the Serum Institute in India, just to explain for people to understand what is taking place and the role of these large pharmaceutical companies.

    LEENA MENGHANEY: Yeah. I’ve worked in pharmaceuticals and biopharmaceuticals for 20 years. And the rule is, you have to have at least three suppliers. If you look at India itself, it has many manufacturing sites and many manufacturers. The decision to go and have an exclusive deal with Serum Institute is going to cost lives, because that’s exactly where it all started, with Oxford granting exclusive rights to AstraZeneca, and AstraZeneca choosing to tie up with one single manufacturer.

    We all know that India is the pharmacy of the developing world. They could produce more, and they should have transferred technology and the rights to produce these vaccines to more than one company. The monopoly is going to cost us. We need to have scaled up not with just Serum Institute, but a large number of other manufacturers in India.

    So, now India is in this difficult position where it has to vaccinate its own people at a faster and faster pace to beat the epidemic, and then, at the same time, actually ensure that these vaccines go to the developing world. We’re at a very difficult point in India’s, you know, policymakers’ — I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes today.

    AMY GOODMAN: Achal, you write in the piece with Leena, “The billions of AstraZeneca doses being produced by the Serum Institute in India are not for rich countries — and, in fact, not even for India alone: they are for all 92 of the poorest countries in the world. … [T]he bulk of India’s vaccination goals will be met by just one supplier, which faces the impossible choice of either letting down the other 91 countries depending on it, or offending its own government.” Can you talk more about this and the gross vaccine inequities we’re seeing across the globe?

    ACHAL PRABHALA: Absolutely. One of the interesting things about this is how it begins. Oxford University has a research laboratory called the Jenner Institute, which shows early promise on research for a coronavirus vaccine. This is at exactly this time last year, in about March. They suggest, in public statements, that they would like to have as many manufacturers around the world make the vaccine. It’s not necessarily nonprofit or technically open source, but they have this idea of a world in which anyone can make their vaccine. The Gates Foundation steps in, advises the Jenner Institute to go with a pharmaceutical company. One month later, they sign an exclusive contract with AstraZeneca, a U.K.-based multinational pharmaceutical corporation. AstraZeneca then licenses a large number of doses to the Serum Institute in India; they license a firm in South Korea — both of which are now producing vaccines. But what they do is that they transfer one concentration of monopoly power to another manufacturer with another kind of monopoly power, the monopoly power to supply half the world’s population, including India, with a number of vaccine doses that is simply not enough.

    One of the funny things about this is that it’s as though everybody involved, from the Gates Foundation to AstraZeneca and, unfortunately, including the government of India — it’s as though they suddenly realized how many people live in India. Our population is not a secret. We have 1.3 billion people. We’ve always known that these people would require vaccines. And yet it seems to have taken the government of India until about two months ago to discover that we would have to ramp up our vaccination program, at which point they decided, through this result of colossal bad planning and cumulatively bad decisions, to essentially usurp vaccines that were meant for other poor countries, who do not have the kind of vaccine manufacturing capacity India does. And because they’re being made within Indian sovereign territory, they are actually able to do that, to the detriment of countries like Ghana or Nigeria, who have received enough doses to inoculate 1% of their population, will now have to wait at least until July this year, but possibly much longer, because India’s vaccination needs, as well, will continue to be met by this one company, where all the vaccines — where all the vaccine doses are concentrated for all of these countries for the next several months.

    AMY GOODMAN: Leena, can you talk about the need, the — what you’re calling for, with the People’s Vaccine initiative around the world, as well, calling for this, as well as countries like India and South Africa, calling for pharmaceutical — the WTO and the U.S. to support the waiving of patents by pharmaceutical companies?

    LEENA MENGHANEY: Yeah. So, this proposal is quite interesting. It shifts power from pharmaceutical corporations to government. And what it really says is that we learn from experience. In HIV/AIDS, we had to overcome patent barriers country by country, drug by drug. And instead, what they have proposed is that we waive our intellectual property automatically in one go, you know, saving a lot of time along the way in producing not just vaccines, but medicines and other medical products.

    So, in a nutshell, what India and South Africa proposed and asked the world to support them on was that we don’t have to do this the hard way. We don’t have to lose lives like we did in the HIV/AIDS epidemic. We don’t have to overcome patents country by country. And what we do is an automatic waiving of intellectual property monopolies. And that actually could result in fastening of, you know, production in many new regions and countries who are investing in sort of coming into making pharmaceuticals and vaccines.

    AMY GOODMAN: And, Achal Prabhala, can you also elaborate on this? There’s been a big push. We just spoke with the former foreign secretary of Brazil. And, of course, COVID is just exploding there. And he also expressed grave disappointment in the Biden administration for not supporting the call at the WTO to waive the intellectual rights of these corporations during the pandemic.

    ACHAL PRABHALA: There’s no choice. They must. If they wish to have a solution that works not only for the rest of the world, poor countries, but also for them, eventually, in their own selfish interests, they must find a way to waive or suspend pharmaceutical monopolies in the pandemic.

    Interestingly, one of the things that’s happening at the World Trade Organization is that this AstraZeneca access agreement, that we analyzed, which has turned out to be quite catastrophic, is being held up as the example. We’re criticizing AstraZeneca, but that’s because they’ve actually done something to make access available. Companies like Pfizer and Moderna, and even Johnson & Johnson to a certain extent, have done nothing.

    Now, AstraZeneca’s licensing agreement, however much it’s a step up from what Pfizer and Moderna have done, is, in fact, a failure. It’s not working out. It’s inadequate. It needed to have been bigger and better and taken into account the real needs of the real people who live in this world. So, the idea that you can leave it up to pharmaceutical companies to occasionally license their products and to slightly distribute the extreme concentration of power that they have, which is a proposal being actively discussed at the WTO, is foolish. And I hope that the example of how the AstraZeneca agreement has worked out will serve as caution for the fact that nothing other than a dramatic step to suspend pharmaceutical monopolies all over the world will get us out of this pandemic.

    AMY GOODMAN: Achal Prabhala, you talk about Oxford University’s original motivations for developing the vaccine, and you talk about motives being thwarted by the Gates Foundation. How?

    ACHAL PRABHALA: Oxford University had this idea that since we were in a pandemic that created this global emergency, they must do something that would step out of the norms of the kind of pharmaceutical research they do. What they wanted to have, very clearly expressed by the lead researchers, by Adrian Hill and Sarah Gilbert at that time, was to be able to license as many manufacturers as possible around the world. I don’t think they ever intended to lose money, but they didn’t intend to turn it into the kind of pharmaceutical juggernaut that coronavirus vaccines have become. This was very clearly expressed.

    But very quickly, on the advice of the Gates Foundation and a few other parties — the U.K. government was involved — the contract completely changed, and the system of licensing this vaccine was dramatically reversed. They signed an exclusive contract with AstraZeneca, that then further went out and created a handful of these access licenses, of which it’s only truly one that functions and serves for half the world’s population.

    It’s a mistake of tragic proportions that I’m not sure every party involved understands. I believe they were working with the best intentions, but they were working without an understanding of the last 20 years of human history. It’s a mistake that should definitely not be repeated, certainly not be held up as a solution, and it’s something that we need to reverse and correct at this moment.

    AMY GOODMAN: And finally, you mentioned that while you are very critical of AstraZeneca, that Moderna and Pfizer’s contracts are worse. Explain.

    ACHAL PRABHALA: Pfizer and Moderna are running on this model where they believe supplying literally between 15 and 20% of the world, which is the cumulative population of everyone who lives in rich countries, is sufficient. They will not do a thing more than that. Eighty percent of the world or 85% of the world is being left out to dry.

    The idea is that they are going to places where they have high-paying customers, usually in the form of governments, from whom they have these huge preorders. Moderna posted revenue of $18 billion this year, so they’re doing well out of this strategy. And their idea is to limit the production of vaccines to the people who can afford them, to safeguard their relatively new technology of a messenger RNA platform that they’ve deployed in this vaccine, to protect that platform against future exploitation, against future commercial use. To the extent that it is democratized and there are more people who can manufacture this around the world, even in the pandemic, I think it threatens their ability to exploit the platform in the future. So the idea is to hold this close, to serve in the pandemic those who can pay, and pay no heed and no mind to anybody who lives outside this tiny handful of countries that they’re currently serving and doing very well for them.

    AMY GOODMAN: And as we know from the pandemic, what it has taught us, if nothing else, if one person is sick somewhere, everyone has the potential to be sick. I want to thank you, Achal Prabhala, coordinator of the AccessIBSA object, which stands for India, Brazil, South Africa, and Leena Menghaney, heads up Médecins Sans Frontières, Doctors Without Borders, access campaign in India. We’ll link to your op-ed in The Guardian, “The world’s poorest countries are at India’s mercy for vaccines. It’s unsustainable.”

    When we come back, we go to Ethiopia, where rape is being used as a weapon of war in its military offensive in the Tigray region. Stay with us.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • A billionaire-backed fund is promoting a deregulation agenda critical of prevailing public health recommendations.

    DonorsTrust, the preferred donor conduit of the Koch political network, has launched a new funding stream to resist public health measures in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and use the crisis to further its broader policy goals.

    The $422 million donor advised fund often referred to as the Right’s “dark money ATM” pins the “humanitarian crisis” created by the pandemic not on the 549,000 deaths in the U.S., but on “the actions of elected officials” who have tried to limit the virus’ spread.

    Instead of funding food banks, homeless shelters, or first responders, the billionaire-backed DonorTrust’s new “Growth and Resilience Project” focuses on speeding up the reopening of the economy, reducing regulations, and countering media and government “narratives” to “ensure the American citizen sees government intrusion into our lives and livelihoods as counterproductive and harmful.”

    Operatives with deep ties to DonorsTrust decide on which organizations get funding through this new project, including Kim Dennis, Chairman of DonorsTrust and President of the Searle Freedom Trust; Tracie Sharp, President of the State Policy Network (SPN); Brad Lips, CEO of the Atlas Network; Adam Meyerson, President of the Philanthropy Roundtable; and Lawson Bader, President and CEO of DonorsTrust.

    Searle Freedom Trust, consisting of wealth inherited from pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle & Company — which created the artificial sweetener aspartame marketed as “NutraSweet” and is now part of Pfizer — is a major backer of right-wing infrastructure. Its latest IRS filing first obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) shows it distributed more than $24 million in grants in 2019, including over $1 million to SPN and another $2.9 million to SPN’s state affiliates; $663,000 to DonorsTrust; and $150,000 to Philanthropy Roundtable.

    DonorsTrust and its sister organization Donors Capital Fund doled out $165 million in grants in 2019, CMD first reported. Of this $165 million, SPN received $7.3 million, and 49 of its 64 state affiliate members received a total of $10.7 million. DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund added another $512,000 to Atlas Network and $864,000 to Philanthropy Roundtable.

    A significant amount of overlap in membership exists between SPN — a web of right-wing “think tanks” and tax-exempt organizations in 50 states, Washington, D.C., Canada, and the United Kingdom — and the Atlas Network, the Johnny Appleseed of anti-regulation whose mission is to populate the world with “free market” voices.

    Who Got Funded?

    To date, 19 organizations have received $785,100 through the Growth and Resilience Project, with grants ranging between $25,000 and $50,000 each.

    Some of the funds have been contributed to organizations that have worked to make the case that the economy is safe to reopen. The Job Creators Network Foundation (JCNF) received $50,000 for its “Get Back to Work Project,” which uses existing relationships with doctors and health care professionals to “provide reliable advice about loosening restrictions” in “radio interviews, op-eds, letters to the editor, social media, and TV appearances.”

    CMD wrote about the “Unlock Our Schools” campaign by JCNF’s sister organization, Job Creators Network (JCN), which blamed teachers unions for the shutdown of in-person schooling as well as its “Flatten the Fear” ad campaign, which featured doctors urging the reopening of economies.

    The right-wing Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the watchdog.org rebrand The Center Square, received $50,000 to produce stories that relate “an alternate perspective to legacy media’s unfair coverage of individuals who disagree with state shutdowns as radical or heartless.”

    Another right-wing media producer, Free the People, received a $50,000 grant to create a “Freedom Over Fear” video series that created videos such as “Why We Need Religious Freedom During a Crisis” and “How We Lose Our Property Rights in Crisis.”

    Other funds distributed through the Growth and Resilience Project went toward efforts to attack government regulations. Tennessee’s SPN affiliate the Beacon Center received $50,000 to produce research that would lead to a decrease in professional licensing regulations and “spur local governments to embrace permit freedom.”

    The Competitive Enterprise Institute received a grant of $50,000 for its “#NeverNeeded Campaign” to shift attention to “the social and economic harms imposed by ill-conceived rules and regulations exposed by the efforts to control the pandemic.”

    Another $50,000 went to SPN’s Florida affiliate, the Foundation for Government Accountability, for its effort “to cut down government red tape that stands in the way of a fast recovery.”

    More funds from the Growth and Resilience Project went to research and data gathering efforts to aid movement objectives. American Juris Link, a group created to be “basically like the SPN for litigators,” received $41,000 to improve Ballotpedia’s COVID-19 tracker of every court case challenging public health orders due to the pandemic, CMD reported.

    The Tax Foundation also got $50,000 for its “COVID-19 Response Center,” a resource for the media, lawmakers, and the public to follow legislative responses to the pandemic and how the Tax Foundation believes they will impact the economy.

    The following also received grants distributed through the Growth and Resilience Project:

    • California Policy Center: $50,000 for “Leveraging the Threat of Chapter 9”
    • Center for Indonesian Policy Studies: $25,000 for the “Keeping Markets Open: Fighting the Harmful Myth of Self-Sufficiency Project”
    • Fundación para el Avance de la Libertad: $25,000 for “Private Health Care Saves Lives Initiative”
    • Georgia Center for Opportunity: $30,000 for “Hiring Well, Doing Good”
    • Lincoln Network: $30,000 for its “COVID-19 Data Project”
    • Lithuanian Free Market Institute: $30,000 for “#Laissez-faire Lithuania”
    • Mercatus Center: $30,000 for its “Expanding Access to Free-Market Education”
    • National Taxpayers Union Foundation: $30,000 for its “Fighting Against Government Overreach After COVID-19 project”
    • Pioneer Institute: $44,100 for “Hard-Hit Industries: Rebuilding Restaurants, Retail, and Travel & Hospitality”
    • Reason Foundation: $50,000 for “Monetizing State and Local Transportation Assets”
    • Texas Public Policy Foundation: $50,000 for “Addressing COVID-19: Right on Healthcare”

    A full list of proposals received by the Growth and Resilience was published for DonorsTrust donors to consider. Among them are proposals from the corporate bill mill the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) for a “A Rapid Response Roadmap to Reopen America and Save Our Country,” and from FreedomWorks for an “Economic Reopening and Recovery Plan,” which it proposed to work on with ALEC’s favorite economists Art Laffer and Stephen Moore’s Committee to Unleash Prosperity.

    CMD exposed ALEC’s role in leading the “Save Our Country” coalition and the movement to reopen the country amidst the pandemic against the recommendations of public health experts and epidemiologists.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Nearly three million people have reportedly been killed by the novel coronavirus (SAR-CoV-2) and upwards of 128 million people have been infected by the virus, many with long-lasting health repercussions. Thus far, roughly 1.5% of the world’s population of 7.7 billion have been vaccinated, but 80% of them are from only ten countries. In February, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research warned about the ‘medical apartheid’ that has shaped the vaccine roll-out.

    Since 1950, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has celebrated Global Health Day on 7 April. Each year, the WHO choses a different theme for the day, with last year’s being ‘Support Nurses and Midwives’. This year, the theme is ‘Building a fairer, healthier world’, which goes to the heart of medical apartheid.

    The post The Vaccine Must Be A Common Good For Humanity appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • By Antonio Sampaio in Dili

    Hundreds of people, many of them students, mobbed exit routes out of the Timorese capital Dili on Good Friday seeking to leave the city to escape the difficulties they are experiencing over the covid lockdown.

    Citizens and the Timorese press reported large groups at the city’s main exit points east, west and south, with many cars concentrated since early Good Friday morning.

    The situation was confirmed to Lusa news agency by a government source, which spoke of at least 1000 people involved in the crush.

    The secretary-general of Fretilin, the largest party in the Timorese government, yesterday appealed for the creation of ′′urban exodus′′ corridors to allow residents in Dili to return to their home towns.

    Dr Mari Alkatiri also advocated providing ′′transport to facilitate travel and carry out health control′′ and that there each citizen and vehicle leaving the urban health barrier be clearly identified.

    “Citizens already tested in Dili should not mix with those not yet tested in the same car,” Dr Alkatiri wrote on a Facebook post.

    The lockdown situation was tense in Dili, with long rows cars packed at the outlets, Tasi Tolu (west), Manleuana (south) and Hera (east).

    ‘We can’t handle Dili living’
    “We have to travel to the municipalities. We can’t handle living conditions here in Dili,” Feliciano Mota, one of the many who tried to leave from Tasi Tolu, told the Timorese agency Tatoli.

    The lockdown affects many of Dili’s residents, especially students, who rely on regular support from their families in districts, including food, but have not had it since the beginning of the restrictions on March 8.

    The executive delivered bags of rice to higher education students, but students complain that assistance is not enough and have asked to be able to return to their families.

    Many other Dili inhabitants of experience the same problems, as their socioeconomic situation is precarious and has significantly worsened since the beginning of the lockdown.

    The government has deliberated extending the lockdown until at least April 16 due to the steady increase in cases of covid-19, a decision that has alarmed many people, due to the difficult conditions they are going through.

    Part of Good Friday’s movements were attributed to fake messages that went viral on Facebook and Whatsapp, claiming the lockdown would be lifted temporarily that day and movement would be allowed out of the capital.

    Deputy Interior Minister António Armindo told Lusa that despite the great concentration of people – ′′up to a thousand′′ – there were no problems recorded so far and that the situation was ′′controlled”.

    ‘I feel the pain’
    ′′I feel the pain people feel, but this is a universal public health issue and we all have to work together,” Armindo said.

    ′′We understand that they want to go back, they can’t afford food or pay their rent, but the government has put the lockdown in place to avoid the virus spreading and the more movement there is, the greater the risk of pandemic reaching the the municipalities.”

    Armindo recalled that there was a procedure to apply for permission for travelling to the Integrated Center for Crisis Management (IGC), demanding that some criteria be met, including a negative covid-19. test.

    ′′Some are frustrated, because we have a lot of requests, and that takes time to process, due to the limitations we have. But these measures are essential,” he explained.

    ′′We’re seeing additional possibilities to help them. They need help but we have to make sure public health is protected because the risk is currently too high. This situation has already occurred in other countries, and flexing a lot has led to many cases and even deaths.”

    Fidelis Magalhães, Minister of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, told Lusa that the rules were clear and that there was no opening of the lockdown, which would continue as a measure to stop the spread of the virus.

    ′′ The government is making every effort to meet the needs of the population and it has prepared a package of socio-economic support measures already in Parliament,” he said.

    Timor-Leste is currently experiencing the worst period since the beginning of the pandemic, with 451 active cases in the country – the highest ever, and a total of 643 accumulated cases.

    The government approved the renewal of the lockdown and quarantine measures until April 16 in Dili and until April 9 at least in Baucau and Viqueque.

    Antonio Sampaio is the Lusa News Agency bureau chief. This article is republished with permission.

    Print Friendly, PDF & Email

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • By Antonio Sampaio in Dili

    Hundreds of people, many of them students, mobbed exit routes out of the Timorese capital Dili on Good Friday seeking to leave the city to escape the difficulties they are experiencing over the covid lockdown.

    Citizens and the Timorese press reported large groups at the city’s main exit points east, west and south, with many cars concentrated since early Good Friday morning.

    The situation was confirmed to Lusa news agency by a government source, which spoke of at least 1000 people involved in the crush.

    The secretary-general of Fretilin, the largest party in the Timorese government, yesterday appealed for the creation of ′′urban exodus′′ corridors to allow residents in Dili to return to their home towns.

    Dr Mari Alkatiri also advocated providing ′′transport to facilitate travel and carry out health control′′ and that there each citizen and vehicle leaving the urban health barrier be clearly identified.

    “Citizens already tested in Dili should not mix with those not yet tested in the same car,” Dr Alkatiri wrote on a Facebook post.

    The lockdown situation was tense in Dili, with long rows cars packed at the outlets, Tasi Tolu (west), Manleuana (south) and Hera (east).

    ‘We can’t handle Dili living’
    “We have to travel to the municipalities. We can’t handle living conditions here in Dili,” Feliciano Mota, one of the many who tried to leave from Tasi Tolu, told the Timorese agency Tatoli.

    The lockdown affects many of Dili’s residents, especially students, who rely on regular support from their families in districts, including food, but have not had it since the beginning of the restrictions on March 8.

    The executive delivered bags of rice to higher education students, but students complain that assistance is not enough and have asked to be able to return to their families.

    Many other Dili inhabitants of experience the same problems, as their socioeconomic situation is precarious and has significantly worsened since the beginning of the lockdown.

    The government has deliberated extending the lockdown until at least April 16 due to the steady increase in cases of covid-19, a decision that has alarmed many people, due to the difficult conditions they are going through.

    Part of Good Friday’s movements were attributed to fake messages that went viral on Facebook and Whatsapp, claiming the lockdown would be lifted temporarily that day and movement would be allowed out of the capital.

    Deputy Interior Minister António Armindo told Lusa that despite the great concentration of people – ′′up to a thousand′′ – there were no problems recorded so far and that the situation was ′′controlled”.

    ‘I feel the pain’
    ′′I feel the pain people feel, but this is a universal public health issue and we all have to work together,” Armindo said.

    ′′We understand that they want to go back, they can’t afford food or pay their rent, but the government has put the lockdown in place to avoid the virus spreading and the more movement there is, the greater the risk of pandemic reaching the the municipalities.”

    Armindo recalled that there was a procedure to apply for permission for travelling to the Integrated Center for Crisis Management (IGC), demanding that some criteria be met, including a negative covid-19. test.

    ′′Some are frustrated, because we have a lot of requests, and that takes time to process, due to the limitations we have. But these measures are essential,” he explained.

    ′′We’re seeing additional possibilities to help them. They need help but we have to make sure public health is protected because the risk is currently too high. This situation has already occurred in other countries, and flexing a lot has led to many cases and even deaths.”

    Fidelis Magalhães, Minister of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, told Lusa that the rules were clear and that there was no opening of the lockdown, which would continue as a measure to stop the spread of the virus.

    ′′ The government is making every effort to meet the needs of the population and it has prepared a package of socio-economic support measures already in Parliament,” he said.

    Timor-Leste is currently experiencing the worst period since the beginning of the pandemic, with 451 active cases in the country – the highest ever, and a total of 643 accumulated cases.

    The government approved the renewal of the lockdown and quarantine measures until April 16 in Dili and until April 9 at least in Baucau and Viqueque.

    Antonio Sampaio is the Lusa News Agency bureau chief. This article is republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • For decades, we have been sold a myth of private health. It is a myth that our health is largely a product of individual choices and personal responsibilities. It is a myth that our healthcare is a service which private corporations can provide, and for which we must pay to survive.

    But the Covid-19 pandemic has blown up this myth. Our personal health cannot be separated from the health of our neighbors or our planet. Nor can it be separated from the structural factors and policy decisions that have determined our health outcomes long before we are born.

    The post All Health Is Public Health appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • RNZ News

    More than a thousand people have turned out for a rally in central Auckland calling for discrimination against Asians to stop.

    They claim Asians have been the target of derogatory comments since covid-19 broke out.

    They say Asian communities in New Zealand and around the world have suffered discrimination for too long.

    Organiser Steph Tan is calling on the government to do more to prevent hate crime, especially toward Asian communities.

    During an interview with RNZ Afternoons this week, she said the march yesterday was a chance to express solidarity with Asian-Americans as they grieved over the loss of six Asian women among the eight people killed by a gunman in Atlanta.

    She said that during 2020 hate crimes committed towards Asian-Americans had risen by 1900 percent during the covid-19 pandemic as they were blamed for the origin of the virus.

    It has been a deeply troubling time for the Asian community in New Zealand as well, she said.

    “Sadly in parallel we are seeing some of that in New Zealand … this peaceful march or rally is to create awareness of the pain that Asians are feeling when we see one of our people killed purely motivated by racial concerns or just based on our skin colour.”

    She said violent incidents against Asian people in this country included the beatings of some Asian people at a spa in Rotorua last year.

    Chinese people, in particular, had also been made the scapegoats for the country’s housing crisis, she said.


    Tan said that while the Black Lives Matter movement was supporting Asian protests in the US, she was not seeing the same links between ethnic minorities here.

    She is appealing to people to reach out to their Asian friends and ask if they are okay.

    “Asian hate does truly exist – it just hasn’t been brought to light as much and a huge part of the rally is doing that in a compassionate way…”

    Both in the US and New Zealand a higher number of businesses have been hit hard by the pandemic, she said.

    The aim of the rally was to support each other, encourage people to stand up for Asians when they are racially abused and it might also act as an encouragement if people felt they need mental health support.

    She is calling on politicians to introduce harsher sentences for hate crimes against people of all races.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • RNZ News

    More than a thousand people have turned out for a rally in central Auckland calling for discrimination against Asians to stop.

    They claim Asians have been the target of derogatory comments since covid-19 broke out.

    They say Asian communities in New Zealand and around the world have suffered discrimination for too long.

    Organiser Steph Tan is calling on the government to do more to prevent hate crime, especially toward Asian communities.

    During an interview with RNZ Afternoons this week, she said the march yesterday was a chance to express solidarity with Asian-Americans as they grieved over the loss of six Asian women among the eight people killed by a gunman in Atlanta.

    She said that during 2020 hate crimes committed towards Asian-Americans had risen by 1900 percent during the covid-19 pandemic as they were blamed for the origin of the virus.

    It has been a deeply troubling time for the Asian community in New Zealand as well, she said.

    “Sadly in parallel we are seeing some of that in New Zealand … this peaceful march or rally is to create awareness of the pain that Asians are feeling when we see one of our people killed purely motivated by racial concerns or just based on our skin colour.”

    She said violent incidents against Asian people in this country included the beatings of some Asian people at a spa in Rotorua last year.

    Chinese people, in particular, had also been made the scapegoats for the country’s housing crisis, she said.

    Tan said that while the Black Lives Matter movement was supporting Asian protests in the US, she was not seeing the same links between ethnic minorities here.

    She is appealing to people to reach out to their Asian friends and ask if they are okay.

    “Asian hate does truly exist – it just hasn’t been brought to light as much and a huge part of the rally is doing that in a compassionate way…”

    Both in the US and New Zealand a higher number of businesses have been hit hard by the pandemic, she said.

    The aim of the rally was to support each other, encourage people to stand up for Asians when they are racially abused and it might also act as an encouragement if people felt they need mental health support.

    She is calling on politicians to introduce harsher sentences for hate crimes against people of all races.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    Print Friendly, PDF & Email

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Before sunrise on a June morning in 2019, a section of pipe nearly five decades old ruptured at the Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery, spewing a cloud of flammable vapor that hung to the ground like a spectral fog.

    Within minutes, according to a surveillance video, a series of explosions in the refinery’s alkylation unit rained huge pieces of shrapnel across the refinery and released 5,239 pounds of hydrofluoric acid (HF), a chemical so toxic that worker-safety advocates have called for its banishment from use in refining. 

    No injuries were linked to the release. But the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, in a preliminary report four months later, noted the Philadelphia accident was the third near-miss in recent years at a refinery that used HF to produce an octane-boosting additive called alkylate.

    “The board remains concerned that the next time there is a major explosion at a refinery that uses HF for alkylation, workers and those living nearby will not be so lucky,” said Kristen Kulinowski, the CSB’s interim chief executive at the time. 

    Dr. Kristen Kulinowski answers questions on June 27, 2019, from the media.
    Dr. Kristen Kulinowski, the interim chief executive of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, answers questions at a press conference where she released a preliminary report on the board’s investigation into the Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery fire. (Michael Bryant / The Philadelphia Inquirer)

    CSB staff members who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that an early 2020 draft of the report on the accident urged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to wield its authority and phase out the use of HF in refineries. That would have represented a major escalation of alarm from the independent agency, modeled on the much bigger National Transportation Safety Board, whose recommendations can drive policy changes and put industry on notice about systemic hazards. 

    But the final report on the Philadelphia accident has yet to be released. It’s among 19 open investigations that have piled up at a weakened and understaffed agency. The Trump administration, after failing to convince Congress to eliminate the CSB, allowed all but one seat on the agency’s five-member board to go vacant. 

    “Strong safety recommendations from CSB reports can help save lives, but only if they are issued in a timely fashion,” said Rick Engler, a New Jersey worker-safety advocate who served on the board from 2015 until 2020. He said the backlog of investigations is unprecedented in the agency’s 23-year-history.

    “Former President Trump spent four years undermining the Chemical Safety Board and left office with only one member remaining on this five-person board,” Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, which oversees the CSB, said in a statement. “Without a quorum, the board is currently hampered in its ability to effectively do its job.”

    Carper, an ally of President Biden’s, said he looks forward to working with the administration to fill the CSB vacancies soon “so that the board can get back to its mission of keeping communities and workers safe.” The White House press office did not respond to questions about Biden’s plans for the board.

    But the wheels of Congress move slowly, and even if the administration nominates board members quickly, it typically takes many months to vet and approve appointments, especially for an agency as controversial as CSB, which the Trump administration complained had “frustrated both regulators and industry.” 

    The CSB has limped along for several years, buffeted by scandals and leadership disputes that predated Trump’s 2016 election. The EPA’s Office of Inspector General, in a 2018 report, said the Trump administration’s efforts to eliminate the CSB impeded its ability to hire and retain staff. The board put some of its problems behind it after Congress renewed funding with “broad bipartisan support,” the inspector general said last July. But the IG  recommended filling the four vacant board seats quickly. “Having only one member impairs the function of the CSB, as all functions rest with that one member,” he  said.

    In an emailed response to questions from the Center for Public Integrity and the Philadelphia Inquirer, CSB spokeswoman Hillary Cohen wrote that the board “is working on its 19 open investigations and continues to deploy to high consequence incidents across the country.” It recently hired two investigators and will add more throughout the year, she wrote. The CSB has 12 investigators, including supervisors. At one point it had 20.

    But worker-safety advocates and CSB staff members worry that under the leadership of a single board member — chairman Katherine Lemos, a Trump appointee — the agency’s work has suffered. The current draft of the Philadelphia report, awaiting approval by Lemos, no longer contains the recommendation to phase out HF, the staff members say.

    “That indicates to me the potential for undue influence from the industry,” said Mike Wright, director of health, safety and environment for the United Steelworkers, a union that represents more than 30,000 workers at refineries, petrochemical plants and other oil and gas facilities. 

    Lemos declined to be interviewed for this article. “The CSB does not comment on draft reports in that it is the board that does its final review and is responsible for voting on the recommendations,” Cohen wrote in her email.

    Industry representatives denied influencing the recommendation on HF. The American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, a refinery trade group, acknowledged that it does engage with the board over proposed recommendations, but said the CSB has not reached out to it about the Philadelphia report. “AFPM doesn’t have visibility into CSB’s report writing and revision process and hasn’t seen any report drafts,” it said in a statement.

    The American Petroleum Institute said it had no insight into the CSB’s decision-making, but that refiners adhere to strict operational standards designed to mitigate risk and assure safe operations. 

    “The natural gas and oil industry’s top priority is protecting the health and safety of its employees, communities in which it does business, and the environment,” API Refining Program Manager Andrew Broadbent said in an email.

    Accidents and close calls at refineries

    While refinery workers are at greatest risk from an HF release — a worker at a Valero refinery in Memphis died of exposure in 2012 — if uncontained the acid can form a ground-hugging, fast-moving cloud that can travel several miles, sickening and killing those in its path.

    The use of HF at refineries has been the target of safety advocates and community activists for more than three decades, since a tank containing the acid at a Marathon Petroleum refinery in Texas City, Texas, ruptured in 1987, forcing the evacuation of 4,000 people and sending more than 1,000 to the hospital with skin, eye, nose, throat and lung irritation. Tens of thousands of pounds of HF gushed out over 44 hours. The jet went straight up; had it gone sideways, people living nearby might have died.

    A decision to phase out HF could have a profound impact on the refining industry. Industry representatives say such a ban could force the closure of some plants, drive up fuel prices and increase the nation’s reliance on imported fuel.  

    They say HF has been used safely for decades and cannot be easily or economically replaced with the most common alternative technology, which uses sulfuric acid. A United Steelworkers report in 2013 identified two other options — a solid acid catalyst and an ionic liquid alkylation process — that would virtually eliminate the risk. The industry says those options are not commercially viable.

    Valero, in a 2019 presentation to Southern California regulators who were considering an HF ban, played down the threat to the public: “In over 50 years of HF alkylation operations, there has never been an off-site fatality.”

    That’s true. But near-misses at a Husky Energy refinery in Superior, Wisconsin, in 2018 and an ExxonMobil refinery in Torrance, California, in 2015 highlighted the potential for mass casualties.

    A view of the Refinery explosion at the ExxonMobil Refinery in Torrance, Calif., in 2015.
    A view of the explosion at the ExxonMobil Refinery in Torrance, California, in 2015. The blast sent ash and smoke in to the air. (Ted Soqui/Corbis via Getty Images)

    Those close calls moved the CSB’s Kulinowski to send a letter to Andrew Wheeler, then administrator of the EPA, in April 2019, asking the agency to update a 1993 study of HF to determine if refineries’ risk-management plans were “sufficient to prevent catastrophic releases” and if there were safer, commercially viable alternatives.

    The reply came more than five months later. The EPA “does not believe that updating the study would accomplish either of the objectives set out in your letter,” wrote then-Assistant Administrator Peter Wright.

    The EPA, which has new leadership under Biden, did not respond to a request for comment.

    After Torrance, the oil industry, teaming up with some labor representatives, successfully beat  back efforts to ban HF at the ExxonMobil  refinery — now owned by PBF Energy — and another in the Wilmington section of Los Angeles owned by Valero. Industry consultants said it would cost the companies $1.8 billion collectively to replace their HF units, which would likely lead to the closure of the refineries and shortages of specially formulated California gasoline. The companies agreed to install additional protective measures to reduce the risk of an HF release and are using a modified form of the acid that is supposed to lessen its toxicity and hinder its cloud-forming ability.

    But some are still pressing for a ban. Steven Goldsmith, president of the Torrance Refinery Action Alliance, a citizens’ group, said modified HF reduces the risk “so little it’s meaningless.” Safer ionic liquid alkylation is being used in several Chinese refineries, he said, and two U.S. refineries — in Utah and Oklahoma — are being converted to that technology from HF alkylation.

    Research conducted by the alliance shows nearly 5 million people live within six miles of the 41 U.S. refineries that use HF, Goldsmith said. These residents are disproportionately low-income and people of color, he said.

    Wright, of the Steelworkers, said the union has warned industry officials, “All it would take is one serious accident with HF that kills a significant number of people offsite and you’ll never get permitted to build a refinery in this country again, and localities will do everything they can to drive you out.’”

    A 2011 investigation by Public Integrity and ABC News found that the 50 U.S. refineries that used HF at the time put more than 16 million Americans at risk of injury or death from an offsite release. The news organizations reported that there had been three HF-related accidents in 2009 alone.

    Philadelphia City Councilwoman Helen Gym speaks outside of City Hall in response to the oil refinery fire in 2019. (David Swanson / The Philadelphia Inquirer)

    In Philadelphia, there was a public backlash following the 2019 refinery explosion. Mayor Jim Kenney and the City Council last year approved a ban on the use of HF at any refinery, a symbolic gesture by that time since Philadelphia Energy Solutions declared bankruptcy and closed after the accident, and the 1,300-acre property was sold to a developer who promised not to reopen the refinery.

    A second refinery in the Philadelphia area that uses HF, the PBF Paulsboro refinery in New Jersey, closed many of its operating units at the end of 2020 in response to a long-term slowdown in fuel demand, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The HF alkylation unit was among those retired.

    The only remaining facility in the region that uses HF is the Monroe Energy refinery in Trainer, Pennsylvania, owned by Delta Air Lines.

    Andrew Maykuth covers energy for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

    The post The U.S. chemical safety board was slashed by Trump. Its backlog is piling up. appeared first on Center for Public Integrity.

    This post was originally published on Center for Public Integrity.

  • RNZ News

    Today marks one year since Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made the call to put New Zealand into a covid-19 lockdown.

    At the time, Aotearoa had 102 confirmed cases of covid-19 and the Ministry of Health said the virus was spreading in the community.

    The borders were already shut.

    The level 4 lockdown started at 11.59pm on 25 March 2020, two days after the prime minister’s announcement, and meant non-essential businesses and schools closed.

    New Zealanders were urged to stay at home to save lives, and to leave home only for essential purposes such as grocery shopping.

    Panic buying made headlines with long queues forming at supermarkets around the country just ahead of the lockdown.

    Countdown pleaded with the public to only buy what they needed, but empty shelves and out-of-stock items, such as flour, were a common sight.

    Felt like ‘the apocalypse’
    Bella, who works in Auckland, had a glass of wine with her flatmates the night of the announcement, before jumping on a bus to Thames to spend lockdown with her family.

    She said it felt like the apocalypse, but she found the first lockdown the easiest as she was with family and out of the city.

    An empty Queen St in Auckland on lockdown 24 March 2020
    An empty Queen St, Auckland, on 24 March 2020, the morning after the prime minister announced the country would be going into a level 4 lockdown. Image: Jordan Bond/RNZ

    The successive lockdowns for Auckland were the real challenge as being stuck in the inner city took a toll on her mental health and that of her friends, she said.

    For Auckland resident Fiona Cameron, the level 4 lockdown was manageable and she considered herself lucky.

    Some of her work colleagues had to juggle many responsibilities at once during this time, including working, home-schooling and keeping the household running.

    Six, who is from Auckland, believes the lockdown helped bring people together.

    She lived in a Housing New Zealand complex where organisations delivered kai during the lockdown.

    “One lady turned up in a Porsche with a whole load of frozen chickens. People were thinking about others,” she said.

    She expected New Zealand to be in and out of lockdowns for the next year or so.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Have the New Zealand government’s covid-related messages been getting through to Pacific and non-Pacific ethnic communities in South Auckland? Justin Latif tried to find out.



    LOCAL DEMOCRACY REPORTING:
    By Justin Latif of The Spinoff

    John Pulu is one of the best-known television and radio personalities in New Zealand’s Pacific community.

    He not only fronts TVNZ’s Tagata Pasifika Saturday morning show, but also hosts a four-hour Tongan-language current affairs and talkback programme on Pacific Media Network’s 531pi radio station every Wednesday afternoon.

    Pulu says combating misinformation has been a major focus in his roles over the last year.

    Local Democracy Reporting
    LOCAL DEMOCRACY REPORTING PROJECT

    “Covid is real, it’s happening, but I’m also a believer that listeners and viewers must make their own mind up. So rather than just us saying it, we’re in a position to connect our listeners to people who have the right information.”

    The Ōtāhuhu resident not only ensures his audiences hear from Pacific epidemiologists and health clinicians, but thanks to his strong relationship with Jacinda Ardern, he’s able to ensure the prime minister can speak directly to Pacific audiences.

    “I’ve lost count how many times I’ve interviewed her. It shows she is not just focused on one community or one group. And because the current outbreak is on our side of Auckland, having her front up is so important.”

    Pulu says their relationship goes back to when Ardern was still an opposition MP.

    ‘Met her at movie screening’
    “I met her at a movie screening when she came as Carmel Sepuloni’s date for the night. We took a selfie and she asked me to add her on Instagram. I didn’t realise she would be the leader of the nation one day.

    “I wouldn’t say we’re BFFs [best friends forever], but we’re connected on social media and she’s always said I can get in touch whenever we want an interview, and she respects our community.”

    Pulu, who is regularly interviewed by Tongan-language radio shows from Tonga and Australia for updates on the situation in Aotearoa, says the pandemic has made his life much busier.

    “I consider myself very fortunate that I’m able to continue doing what I love and in a role where we can help make a difference by negating the misinformation that’s out there, and try and use our platforms wisely.”

    Brian Sagala
    One of Pacific Media Network’s programme hosts Brian Sagala. Image: PMN/531pi/Spinoff

    Pacific Media Network chief executive Don Mann says the organisation, which annually receives $4.5 million in government funding, provides shows in nine different Pacific languages and also supports the Ministry of Pacific Peoples with public information campaigns.

    “Part of our response has been to place Ministry of Health messaging on our channels and radio shows and to do that we’ve given up some of our airtime that we normally sell commercially, and we’ve been recompensed for that – not huge amounts, but it’s fair.”

    Mann says the network’s two radio stations have experienced significant audience growth over the last 12 months, which he puts down to “people wanting information from a trusted source and in their own language”.

    But Mann says people shouldn’t think Pacific and migrant communities consume their news in just one way.

    “Our people are a sophisticated audience who are used to seeking information from multiple sources, from an entity like ourselves or from other organisations, and they are able to consume information in multiple languages.”

    Commentators
    Covid news in the ethnic media: Raju Ramakrishna (from left), Dr Gaurav Sharma and Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan. Image: Spinoff

    Covid news in the ethnic media
    Gaurav Sharma was associate editor at the Indian News up until recently, when he had to return to India to be with family. He says his publication ran covid-related double-page spreads most of last year and he believes most ethnic news organisations have done an incredible job at covering the pandemic. His only complaint is that it took a while for the government to direct their advertising spend towards migrant-focused publications such as his.

    “We took the initiative [to inform people about Covid] and the government advertising did come, but it came quite a bit later, maybe around August. And the proportion of funding that ethnic media gets is quite low. It has been a struggle at times for the media with advertising being down in general, but I think our media have done a wonderful job.”

    Raju Ramakrishna lives and works in ethnically diverse Papatoetoe. He has noticed people have been much more reticent to venture outside during this latest lockdown.

    “In the first few lockdowns, people were rushing in and out of the supermarket, but this time around people are more well-behaved in many ways – more circumspect, keeping to themselves, and there’s a feeling of uncertainty and insecurity.”

    Ramakrishna helps run the Papatoetoe Food Hub and is well-known in Auckland’s Indian community as the former lead singer of a popular South Asian band. He believes his fellow Indians are keen to stay up to date with the latest covid news and comply with any restrictions.

    “Generally South Asians conform to authorities and are quite compliant. In the circles I’m familiar with, people are well-informed and they know where to go when they need some information. Radio Tarana, which is the station most people listen to, is up to date with news and any breaking news is reported.”

    Newly elected Indian-born Labour MP Dr Gaurav Sharma (who shares a name with the former Indian News associate editor mentioned above) attends numerous cultural events as well as being regularly interviewed on ethnic radio stations for his expertise as a medical doctor.

    Positive information in cultural settings
    “I think the information is out there. I know from talking to community leaders that every time there’s a level change, they have been sharing information through their networks and they’ve also been talking about it in their communal settings.

    “It’s really positive to hear that people are accessing information in their own cultural settings and in their own language.”

    According to the government’s Office for Ethnic Communities, $1.4 million has been spent on advertising for “culturally and linguistically diverse” audiences. Priyanca Radhakrishnan, who’s the minister for diversity, inclusion and ethnic communities,  says video updates in a range of languages have also been distributed through community networks.

    “Having a diverse Labour caucus has allowed us to share important messages in different languages on ethnic media channels and social media,” she says.

    “We also held a Zoom hui with Dr Ashley Bloomfield and ethnic community leaders around the South Auckland region to listen to their feedback and answer questions they had about Covid-19 and the vaccine.

    “Concerns have been raised with us about whether the vaccine will be halal, for example, and Dr Bloomfield confirmed to the group of hundred plus attendees that it is.”

    Raju Ramakrishna says if there’s any concern about people not being informed, it’s not for a lack of effort on the part of the media or the government.

    “I know people are saying the messaging hasn’t been quite right, but I really think that’s not true. The messaging has been out there, so a lot of it boils down to carelessness, rather than people not getting the information.”

    Justin Latif is the South Auckland editor at The Spinoff. This article is republished with the permission of The Spinoff and the Local Democracy Project.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Have the New Zealand government’s covid-related messages been getting through to Pacific and non-Pacific ethnic communities in South Auckland? Justin Latif tried to find out.



    LOCAL DEMOCRACY REPORTING:
    By Justin Latif of The Spinoff

    John Pulu is one of the best-known television and radio personalities in New Zealand’s Pacific community.

    He not only fronts TVNZ’s Tagata Pasifika Saturday morning show, but also hosts a four-hour Tongan-language current affairs and talkback programme on Pacific Media Network’s 531pi radio station every Wednesday afternoon.

    Pulu says combating misinformation has been a major focus in his roles over the last year.

    Local Democracy Reporting
    LOCAL DEMOCRACY REPORTING PROJECT

    “Covid is real, it’s happening, but I’m also a believer that listeners and viewers must make their own mind up. So rather than just us saying it, we’re in a position to connect our listeners to people who have the right information.”

    The Ōtāhuhu resident not only ensures his audiences hear from Pacific epidemiologists and health clinicians, but thanks to his strong relationship with Jacinda Ardern, he’s able to ensure the prime minister can speak directly to Pacific audiences.

    “I’ve lost count how many times I’ve interviewed her. It shows she is not just focused on one community or one group. And because the current outbreak is on our side of Auckland, having her front up is so important.”

    Pulu says their relationship goes back to when Ardern was still an opposition MP.

    ‘Met her at movie screening’
    “I met her at a movie screening when she came as Carmel Sepuloni’s date for the night. We took a selfie and she asked me to add her on Instagram. I didn’t realise she would be the leader of the nation one day.

    “I wouldn’t say we’re BFFs [best friends forever], but we’re connected on social media and she’s always said I can get in touch whenever we want an interview, and she respects our community.”

    Pulu, who is regularly interviewed by Tongan-language radio shows from Tonga and Australia for updates on the situation in Aotearoa, says the pandemic has made his life much busier.

    “I consider myself very fortunate that I’m able to continue doing what I love and in a role where we can help make a difference by negating the misinformation that’s out there, and try and use our platforms wisely.”

    One of Pacific Media Network’s programme hosts Brian Sagala. Image: PMN/531pi/Spinoff

    Pacific Media Network chief executive Don Mann says the organisation, which annually receives $4.5 million in government funding, provides shows in nine different Pacific languages and also supports the Ministry of Pacific Peoples with public information campaigns.

    “Part of our response has been to place Ministry of Health messaging on our channels and radio shows and to do that we’ve given up some of our airtime that we normally sell commercially, and we’ve been recompensed for that – not huge amounts, but it’s fair.”

    Mann says the network’s two radio stations have experienced significant audience growth over the last 12 months, which he puts down to “people wanting information from a trusted source and in their own language”.

    But Mann says people shouldn’t think Pacific and migrant communities consume their news in just one way.

    “Our people are a sophisticated audience who are used to seeking information from multiple sources, from an entity like ourselves or from other organisations, and they are able to consume information in multiple languages.”

    Commentators
    Covid news in the ethnic media: Raju Ramakrishna (from left), Dr Gaurav Sharma and Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan. Image: Spinoff

    Covid news in the ethnic media
    Gaurav Sharma was associate editor at the Indian News up until recently, when he had to return to India to be with family. He says his publication ran covid-related double-page spreads most of last year and he believes most ethnic news organisations have done an incredible job at covering the pandemic. His only complaint is that it took a while for the government to direct their advertising spend towards migrant-focused publications such as his.

    “We took the initiative [to inform people about Covid] and the government advertising did come, but it came quite a bit later, maybe around August. And the proportion of funding that ethnic media gets is quite low. It has been a struggle at times for the media with advertising being down in general, but I think our media have done a wonderful job.”

    Raju Ramakrishna lives and works in ethnically diverse Papatoetoe. He has noticed people have been much more reticent to venture outside during this latest lockdown.

    “In the first few lockdowns, people were rushing in and out of the supermarket, but this time around people are more well-behaved in many ways – more circumspect, keeping to themselves, and there’s a feeling of uncertainty and insecurity.”

    Ramakrishna helps run the Papatoetoe Food Hub and is well-known in Auckland’s Indian community as the former lead singer of a popular South Asian band. He believes his fellow Indians are keen to stay up to date with the latest covid news and comply with any restrictions.

    “Generally South Asians conform to authorities and are quite compliant. In the circles I’m familiar with, people are well-informed and they know where to go when they need some information. Radio Tarana, which is the station most people listen to, is up to date with news and any breaking news is reported.”

    Newly elected Indian-born Labour MP Dr Gaurav Sharma (who shares a name with the former Indian News associate editor mentioned above) attends numerous cultural events as well as being regularly interviewed on ethnic radio stations for his expertise as a medical doctor.

    Positive information in cultural settings
    “I think the information is out there. I know from talking to community leaders that every time there’s a level change, they have been sharing information through their networks and they’ve also been talking about it in their communal settings.

    “It’s really positive to hear that people are accessing information in their own cultural settings and in their own language.”

    According to the government’s Office for Ethnic Communities, $1.4 million has been spent on advertising for “culturally and linguistically diverse” audiences. Priyanca Radhakrishnan, who’s the minister for diversity, inclusion and ethnic communities,  says video updates in a range of languages have also been distributed through community networks.

    “Having a diverse Labour caucus has allowed us to share important messages in different languages on ethnic media channels and social media,” she says.

    “We also held a Zoom hui with Dr Ashley Bloomfield and ethnic community leaders around the South Auckland region to listen to their feedback and answer questions they had about Covid-19 and the vaccine.

    “Concerns have been raised with us about whether the vaccine will be halal, for example, and Dr Bloomfield confirmed to the group of hundred plus attendees that it is.”

    Raju Ramakrishna says if there’s any concern about people not being informed, it’s not for a lack of effort on the part of the media or the government.

    “I know people are saying the messaging hasn’t been quite right, but I really think that’s not true. The messaging has been out there, so a lot of it boils down to carelessness, rather than people not getting the information.”

    Justin Latif is the South Auckland editor at The Spinoff. This article is republished with the permission of The Spinoff and the Local Democracy Project.

    Print Friendly, PDF & Email

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • By Sue Ahearn, founder of The Pacific Newsroom and former editor, ABC International

    A PNG member of Parliament died from covid-19 this week but it still wasn’t enough to convince many Papua New Guineans that the virus is real and is probably out of control in their country.

    Misinformation and lack of trust in authority is so widespread in PNG that social media questions and vilifies the country’s most experienced doctors and scientists.

    Even the PNG National Pandemic Controller, David Manning, was accused of peddling a hoax when he confirmed the MP for Open Kerema, 53-year old Richard Mendani, had died from covid-19 at the weekend.

    Twenty doctors at Port Moresby Hospital have tested positive but on social media they are blamed for not properly wearing PPE gear.

    Conspiracy theories are spreading faster than covid-19 on PNG social media.

    Posts claim covid-19 is an invention of the West to control population, that Papua New Guineans are guinea pigs for vaccines and that God is protecting Melanesians from catching the disease.

    The senior consultant specialist clinician at Port Moresby General Hospital, Professor Glen Mola, called it the “bullshit of social media” in a Facebook post this week. He wrote:

    “Sorry, getting a bit frustrated here with some of my compatriots. Health workers are risking their lives to continue to provide health services and many people are just spending their time on screens accusing us of unethical practice, criminal and corrupt misuse of government funds and putting forward false, ridiculous, unfounded conspiracy theories for which there is no evidence.”

    Professor Glen Mola
    Professor Glen Mola … “Health workers [in PNG] are risking their lives to continue to provide health services and many people are just spending their time on screens … putting forward false, ridiculous, unfounded conspiracy theories for which there is no evidence.” Image: The Pacific Newsroom
    ‘Dying in hospital car park’
    Earlier in the week he warned that his hospital would not be able to keep its doors open and women “may end up dying in the hospital car park”.

    Women scientists and journalists in particular have been singled out for vile misogynistic abuse on Facebook.

    ABC Tok Pisin journalist Hilda Wayne turned off comments on her Facebook posts at the weekend. She said she was quoting direct sources on covid-19 and turning off comments to stop the toxic responses and interactions.

    She wrote “so many people on [an] emotional rollercoaster with covid-19 on Facebook. Panic and misinformation just recipes of disaster”.

    “Ignoring PNG for too long,” she added.

    Read that again, ignoring “PNG for too long”.

    If you don’t talk to your neighbours, how can you know what is going on in your own backyard? That there is endemic corruption and a breakdown in health care, education, law and order in the family.

    Our family is the term adopted by Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

    PNG covid situation not a surprise
    That the detection of covid-19 cases in PNG has tripled in the past month is not a surprise to those aware of the healthcare situation in PNG.

    Two thousand mothers die in childbirth every year. TB, pneumonia and malaria are rifle but they are diseases that can be treated.

    New restrictions, including the wearing of masks take effect this week [yesterday] but these will be almost impossible to enforce in PNG.

    The majority of the population of 9 million live closely together either at home or when they travel on public transport. Ninety percent live in rural areas and just 15 percent has access to grid electricity.

    While Australians look on in blind horror and surprise at the disaster unfolding in our nearest neighbour, we are also watching a failure in communication and education.

    Australia used to play a major role in providing independent and trusted news to the Pacific but importantly also providing news about the Pacific to Australians.

    The ABC’s international broadcasting to the Pacific was cut drastically in 2014 following the Abbott government’s decision to cancel the Australia Network contract. Around 80 staff, many of them with years of specialist experience in covering the Pacific were made redundant including members of the Tok Pisin (PNG) and French language teams.

    Media voice reduced to whisper
    Since then, Australia’s media voice in the region has been reduced to a whisper. The ABC does not have the resources by itself to provide a comprehensive international multi-platform media service.

    The small specialist Pacific team that is left, provides an excellent service but is stretched.

    The ABC’s PNG correspondent Natalie Whiting provides outstanding coverage but she is the only full-time Australian journalist based in the Pacific.

    Technology has given the Pacific a voice to the rest of the world and people are able to share information instantly. That includes misinformation.

    Mobile phones come loaded with Facebook as part of prepaid data plans in many Pacific countries. Most people cannot afford to pay for internet browsing. Affordable mobile data plans offer cheap access to Facebook.

    There are varied figures for the percentage of population on Facebook … it’s highest In French Polynesia (59 percent), Tonga 49 percent, and Cook Islands 49 pecent and lowest in PNG 7 percent, Kiribati 25 percent and Solomon Islands 11 percent.

    Aggregated site of independent news
    I noticed the gap in independent and factual information about three years ago when I founded the Pacific Newsroom on Facebook. (Also on Twitter but with a smaller presence).

    It’s an aggregated site of verified and independent news about the region – from journalists, academics, analysts, bloggers and citizen journalists.

    The Pacific Newsroom has become the town square of the Pacific where people can share stories. Facebook has allowed this to happen because it is the internet in the Pacific.

    We have more than 22,000 members, not just from the region but Fijians based in South Sudan and Afghanistan, seasonal workers in Australia and Tongans in Utah.

    We fill a role that should be publicly funded. New Zealand journalist Michael Field and I work as volunteers, sharing a long term commitment to public interest journalism.

    While traditional media, radio, TV and newspapers, retain an important role, distribution is not always reliable. We know that in the absence of accurate and trusted information, rumour, speculation and innuendo fill the vacuum.

    The Pacific had a tragic example of this in Samoa in 2019, when 83 children died because of a drop in measles vaccinations and misinformation by anti-vaxxer groups.

    Accurate and trusted news
    That is why the dissemination of accurate and trusted news is vital to countering misinformation about the covid-19 pandemic.

    Australia and New Zealand are providing support in the way of vaccines but people won’t get vaccinated if they believe conspiracy theories.

    Profossor Mola says the propagation of this misinformation has the potential to lead to thousands of deaths in PNG if people pretend covid-19 does not exist.

    Australia and New Zealand should be working with PNG on rolling out a national multi-media information campaign to help fight the “social media bullshit” as part of their assistance package.

    This pandemic has shone a light on what works and what doesn’t. Things aren’t working in Papua New Guinea and it’s time for Australia to take a closer look at its relationship with the neighbours.

    Republished from The Pacific Newsroom.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Dr. Bernard Lown

    In December 1985, a movement of doctors committed to overcoming Cold War divisions in the interest of peace, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. As doctors, they argued, they had the duty to confront the grave threat to human life posed by impending nuclear war. The movement’s co-presidents, Yevgeny Chazov from the Soviet Union and Bernard Lown from the United States, accepted the Peace Prize on behalf of the movement. In his Nobel address that evening, entitled “A Prescription for Hope,” Lown said, “Only those who see the invisible can do the impossible.” This apparently irresolvable affirmation captures the idealism and realism of Lown’s activist message. It conveys the challenge that his life poses to the rest of us. Lown died on February 16 at the age of 99.

    Bernard Lown was a person of the 20th century. When he was a youth in the 1930s, his family emigrated from Lithuania to Maine as antisemitism and Nazism took hold of Europe. Many of his relatives did not survive the onslaught of fascism. The political, technological and human horrors of modern genocide were thus a personal experience for Lown. Later, Lown became a pioneering cardiologist who used 20th-century science and technology in the service of health. He was responsible for numerous innovations in patient care, including the invention of the direct current defibrillator, which successfully used electrical shock to treat deadly heart arrythmias. He was committed, in his words, to both “mastering the science” and “practicing the art of healing.” As an activist, he organized many of his colleagues around the world to confront the enormity of the Cold War, perhaps the defining political conflict of the century in view of its global fallout. In 1961, he founded Physicians for Social Responsibility at his home near Boston, Massachusetts, and, in 1980, IPPNW, both of which addressed the crisis of the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

    As Lown later wrote in his memoir of the doctors’ movement, Prescription for Survival, “The doctors made millions of people aware of a frightening reality: medicine had nothing to offer in the case of such a war.” The aim of IPPNW, he wrote, “was to promote citizen diplomacy to cut through the fog of dehumanization that blocked awareness of our shared plight and threatened to bring about our mutual extinction.… We believed that there was no greater force in modern society than an educated public, activated and angered, to effect change.”

    In the course of the struggle against nuclear war, Lown’s perspective became globalized. The human costs of exorbitant military spending and the consequences of nuclear war were global. He recognized that growing, global inequality was a world-shaping process that yielded not only disastrous outcomes for human health but also the conditions for political morbidities propagating violence. But the globalization and interconnectivity that marked the closing decades of the 20th century shaped Lown’s vision, too. The organizations SatelLife and ProCor, founded by Lown, used satellite and internet technologies to create access to medical information for health workers in developing countries and a global forum of health workers focused on the prevention of cardiovascular disease.

    Lown’s notes for an unfinished essay read, “In my lifetime three issues have catapulted the world to a doom’s day scenario. The nuclear threat, Climate Change, and the growing inequality conflated with the morbid colonial legacy of the North South divide are the three issues that could make life unlivable on this planet.” Each issue could be called epoch-defining, each he sought to address, and they remain with us into the coming years.

    Though distinctly a person for his time, Lown was oriented towards the future. His was always a message that mingled hope with challenge. In a 2010 address, marking the launch of the Bernard Lown Scholars in Cardiovascular Health Program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Lown said, “In an epoch of quavering certitudes, we need to cultivate moral vision as well as a moral commitment. This is the categoric imperative of our age. Otherwise the barbarisms of the 20th century will spill over into this millennium.”

    A proliferation of wars and the turn of a new century in an explosion of terrorisms, the resurgence of fascism around the globe, and a worsening pandemic of inequality warn that “barbarism” has proven durable. A pandemic of a different sort ravages health and exacerbates inequality of all kinds. “What, if anything,” Lown asked in a 2013 essay on the disastrous consequences of anthropocentric climate change and the inaction surrounding this global threat, “can we learn from the nuclear brinkmanship that threatened to incinerate planet Earth a mere quarter century ago?”

    The lesson is that of the “Prescription for Hope”: of seeing and doing.

    Lown understood a courageous “new way of thinking” — that nuclear proliferation was not ordained, that the self-imposed, destructive confines of the arms race could be transgressed — as the way out of the deadly Cold War that threatened extinction. But, at the same time, the action of IPPNW and a host of other peace groups were required for the transgression of the “possible” and inauguration of the “impossible.” Lown observed in 2015, “A life time of organizing has taught me that no radical transformative change can occur without a people’s movement, fueled by an agenda, whatever else is addressed, [that] does not ignore the numerous injustices that plague their daily lives.”

    Bernard Lown’s life and example challenge us to pursue what he called a “renaissance of perception” and to affirm it through activism, which he called “a certain antidote to hopelessness by making the impossible seem achievable.” The “Prescription for Hope” remains with us 35 years later, as we contend with the trials of our time. Those who see the invisible can do the impossible. The question for our century is the same as it was in his: whether those who see will choose to do.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • ANALYSIS: By Tony Heynen, The University of Queensland; Paul Lant, The University of Queensland, and Vigya Sharma, The University of Queensland

    Australia’s nearest neighbour, Papua New Guinea, is battling an unfolding covid crisis. The Morrison government is urgently deploying 8,000 vaccine doses to the nation’s health workers – but poor electricity access means there are serious questions over PNG’s broader vaccine roll-out.

    Vaccine supplies must be stored at cold or ultra-cold temperatures along the supply chain.

    Importantly, when the vaccines reach hospitals and medical centres in PNG, stable electricity will be needed to power refrigerators to store the doses before they are administered to patients.

    Currently only about 13 percent of Papua New Guinea’s eight million people have reliable access to electricity. This is not an isolated problem.

    In 2019, about 770 million people globally lived in “energy poverty”, without access to electricity – and the problem has grown worse due to covid.

    Australia is working to provide one million doses for wider distribution in PNG. But the pandemic only truly ends when the vaccines are rolled out globally. Countries and communities without electricity access present a major barrier to this goal.

    A PNG resident cooks over a fire
    Just 13 percent of PNG’s population has reliable electricity access. Image: Shutterstock/The Conversation

    Energy poverty matters
    Australia enjoys a relatively reliable electricity network, even in remote parts of the country. There are also systems in place to keep vaccines cold in the event of a power outage, such as backup power.

    But around the world, even in our Pacific neighbourhood, energy poverty is widespread and persistent. And covid-19 has created a vicious circle for these nations.

    The pandemic has forced governments to shift priorities, leading to less funding for electricity infrastructure. In some countries, progress in electricity access has reversed for the first time in many years.

    The International Energy Agency (IEA) says this reversal is being worst felt in Sub-Saharan Africa.

    There, 580 million people lack access to electricity – three quarters of the world’s total. The IEA estimates this number grew by 6 percent in 2020.

    It cites Uganda, where public subsidies for an electricity access program have been put on hold, and South Africa where funds to expand rural electrification were redirected to health and welfare programs.

    PNG wants 70 percent of the country connected to electricity by 2030. This will require large scale investment in new generation capacity, and transmission and distribution lines to connect people to the grid. But the nation has long suffered economic instability, and the pandemic has only added to this.

    Making matters worse, the true extent and trajectory of covid-19 may be uncertain in nations suffering energy poverty. For example, there is growing evidence of under-testing in Africa and under-reporting of cases and deaths in PNG.

    Medical staff gather around a table
    The covid threat in some developing nations is under-reported. Image: Farah Abdi Warsameh/AP/The Conversation

    Vaccine refrigeration is key
    As experts have noted, efforts to end the pandemic have largely focused on developing, testing and manufacturing an effective vaccine. Less attention has been paid to distributing it rapidly at scale.

    There are exceptions. The Lancet has identified local deployment as one of four key dimensions for an effective global vaccination roll-out.

    More than 390 million vaccine doses have already been administered, mostly in high- and middle-income countries with effective financial and planning resources.

    But in countries where electricity access is poor, refrigeration of vaccines during transport and storage may prove very difficult. Some countries may not be able to vaccinate large parts of their population.

    Global vaccine distribution
    Country-level vaccine distribution – colour intensity indicates doses per capita. Image: WHO Coronavirus Dashboard

    The Pfizer vaccine must be frozen at around -70℃. The AstraZeneca vaccine must be kept at between 2℃ and 8℃.

    Ultra-cold supply chains were established for the deployment of the Ebola vaccine in Africa in 2013–14. However, the scale required for covid is enormous, and would be prohibitively expensive.

    As reported in the Lancet, as of 2018, 74 of 194 member states of the World Health Organisation had no adult vaccination programme for any disease. Fewer than 11 percent of countries in Africa and South Asia reported having such a programme. This was thought to be partly due to a lack of systems for storage and delivery.

    Alarmingly, a recent study suggested more than 85 less-developed countries will not have widespread access to covid vaccines until 2023.

    Many are relying on the World Health Organisation’s COVAX initiative, which aims to secure six billion doses of vaccine for less developed countries.

    Similarly, the Quad regional grouping – Australia, the US, Japan, and India – recently pledged to boost vaccine production and distribution for Asian and Pacific island countries.

    Somalian woman receives vaccine dose
    Many poor nations are relying on the World Health Organisation to access vaccines. Image: Farah Abdi Warsameh/AP/The Conversation

    But without access to reliable electricity, the roll-out of these vaccines will be hampered. This is particularly an issue in countries with remote and dispersed populations. There, keeping the vaccine cold over the “last mile” of distribution and storage may prove impossible.

    Energy access is key to ending the pandemic
    Communities experiencing energy poverty, such as in PNG, face other setbacks when it comes to managing the pandemic. Those populations are more likely to use solid fuels, such as wood, for cooking. This leads to indoor air pollution which can cause severe respiratory illnesses and more severe covid-19 symptoms.

    Without electricity access, such communities are unlikely to provide appropriate covid-19 health responses, leading to a higher burden of disease.

    In PNG, an “Electrification Partnership”, of which Australia is a key partner, appears on track. For instance, at a virtual summit at the height of the pandemic last August, Australia committed to financing a large-scale solar plant in Morobe Province. It would be one of the largest solar plants in the Pacific.

    But as immunisation emerges as the world’s primary weapon to combat covid-19, much more work is needed to improve electricity access to those who desperately need it. Indeed, ending the global pandemic may demand it.
    The Conversation

    Dr Tony Heynen, programme coordinator, Sustainable Energy, The University of Queensland; Dr Paul Lant, professor of chemical engineering, The University of Queensland, and Dr Vigya Sharma, senior research fellow, Sustainable Minerals Institute, The University of Queensland. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • ANALYSIS: By Tony Heynen, The University of Queensland; Paul Lant, The University of Queensland, and Vigya Sharma, The University of Queensland

    Australia’s nearest neighbour, Papua New Guinea, is battling an unfolding covid crisis. The Morrison government is urgently deploying 8,000 vaccine doses to the nation’s health workers – but poor electricity access means there are serious questions over PNG’s broader vaccine roll-out.

    Vaccine supplies must be stored at cold or ultra-cold temperatures along the supply chain.

    Importantly, when the vaccines reach hospitals and medical centres in PNG, stable electricity will be needed to power refrigerators to store the doses before they are administered to patients.

    Currently only about 13 percent of Papua New Guinea’s eight million people have reliable access to electricity. This is not an isolated problem.

    In 2019, about 770 million people globally lived in “energy poverty”, without access to electricity – and the problem has grown worse due to covid.

    Australia is working to provide one million doses for wider distribution in PNG. But the pandemic only truly ends when the vaccines are rolled out globally. Countries and communities without electricity access present a major barrier to this goal.

    Just 13 percent of PNG’s population has reliable electricity access. Image: Shutterstock/The Conversation

    Energy poverty matters
    Australia enjoys a relatively reliable electricity network, even in remote parts of the country. There are also systems in place to keep vaccines cold in the event of a power outage, such as backup power.

    But around the world, even in our Pacific neighbourhood, energy poverty is widespread and persistent. And covid-19 has created a vicious circle for these nations.

    The pandemic has forced governments to shift priorities, leading to less funding for electricity infrastructure. In some countries, progress in electricity access has reversed for the first time in many years.

    The International Energy Agency (IEA) says this reversal is being worst felt in Sub-Saharan Africa.

    There, 580 million people lack access to electricity – three quarters of the world’s total. The IEA estimates this number grew by 6 percent in 2020.

    It cites Uganda, where public subsidies for an electricity access program have been put on hold, and South Africa where funds to expand rural electrification were redirected to health and welfare programs.

    PNG wants 70 percent of the country connected to electricity by 2030. This will require large scale investment in new generation capacity, and transmission and distribution lines to connect people to the grid. But the nation has long suffered economic instability, and the pandemic has only added to this.

    Making matters worse, the true extent and trajectory of covid-19 may be uncertain in nations suffering energy poverty. For example, there is growing evidence of under-testing in Africa and under-reporting of cases and deaths in PNG.

    Medical staff gather around a table
    The covid threat in some developing nations is under-reported. Image: Farah Abdi Warsameh/AP/The Conversation

    Vaccine refrigeration is key
    As experts have noted, efforts to end the pandemic have largely focused on developing, testing and manufacturing an effective vaccine. Less attention has been paid to distributing it rapidly at scale.

    There are exceptions. The Lancet has identified local deployment as one of four key dimensions for an effective global vaccination roll-out.

    More than 390 million vaccine doses have already been administered, mostly in high- and middle-income countries with effective financial and planning resources.

    But in countries where electricity access is poor, refrigeration of vaccines during transport and storage may prove very difficult. Some countries may not be able to vaccinate large parts of their population.

    Global vaccine distribution
    Country-level vaccine distribution – colour intensity indicates doses per capita. Image: WHO Coronavirus Dashboard

    The Pfizer vaccine must be frozen at around -70℃. The AstraZeneca vaccine must be kept at between 2℃ and 8℃.

    Ultra-cold supply chains were established for the deployment of the Ebola vaccine in Africa in 2013–14. However, the scale required for covid is enormous, and would be prohibitively expensive.

    As reported in the Lancet, as of 2018, 74 of 194 member states of the World Health Organisation had no adult vaccination programme for any disease. Fewer than 11 percent of countries in Africa and South Asia reported having such a programme. This was thought to be partly due to a lack of systems for storage and delivery.

    Alarmingly, a recent study suggested more than 85 less-developed countries will not have widespread access to covid vaccines until 2023.

    Many are relying on the World Health Organisation’s COVAX initiative, which aims to secure six billion doses of vaccine for less developed countries.

    Similarly, the Quad regional grouping – Australia, the US, Japan, and India – recently pledged to boost vaccine production and distribution for Asian and Pacific island countries.

    Somalian woman receives vaccine dose
    Many poor nations are relying on the World Health Organisation to access vaccines. Image: Farah Abdi Warsameh/AP/The Conversation

    But without access to reliable electricity, the roll-out of these vaccines will be hampered. This is particularly an issue in countries with remote and dispersed populations. There, keeping the vaccine cold over the “last mile” of distribution and storage may prove impossible.

    Energy access is key to ending the pandemic
    Communities experiencing energy poverty, such as in PNG, face other setbacks when it comes to managing the pandemic. Those populations are more likely to use solid fuels, such as wood, for cooking. This leads to indoor air pollution which can cause severe respiratory illnesses and more severe covid-19 symptoms.

    Without electricity access, such communities are unlikely to provide appropriate covid-19 health responses, leading to a higher burden of disease.

    In PNG, an “Electrification Partnership”, of which Australia is a key partner, appears on track. For instance, at a virtual summit at the height of the pandemic last August, Australia committed to financing a large-scale solar plant in Morobe Province. It would be one of the largest solar plants in the Pacific.

    But as immunisation emerges as the world’s primary weapon to combat covid-19, much more work is needed to improve electricity access to those who desperately need it. Indeed, ending the global pandemic may demand it.
    The Conversation

    Dr Tony Heynen, programme coordinator, Sustainable Energy, The University of Queensland; Dr Paul Lant, professor of chemical engineering, The University of Queensland, and Dr Vigya Sharma, senior research fellow, Sustainable Minerals Institute, The University of Queensland. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    Print Friendly, PDF & Email

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • By Eleisha Foon, RNZ Pacific journalist

    The race is on to reach Pasifika communities in New Zealand to counter the spread of misinformation about the covid-19 vaccine.

    Pacific and Māori communities have the highest risk of dying from covid-19 and that has caused leaders and doctors within this group to work hard to dispel fears and misinformation about what it might mean to get the jab.

    “People can have confidence that the vaccine is effective and safe,” said Auckland University public health professor Dr Collin Tukuitonga, who has 40 years’ experience in medicine.

    The amount of research, testing and studies behind the vaccine was “phenomenal”, he said.

    People with reservations have every right to ask questions – but they can rest assured there is nothing to be worried about, he said.

    “It is highly effective. There is increasing evidence that it reduces transmission to others and protects us all as a nation and community.”

    There have also been very few side effects so far, besides a headache and sore arm and most medication and vaccines have side effects anyway, he said.

    “In Israel, where they have pretty much vaccinated everyone, they have found the vaccine to reduce hospitalisation and infection.”

    Widespread vaccination against covid-19 was an important tool in efforts to control the pandemic.

    What to know about covid-19 Pfizer vaccine

    • New Zealand has secured 10 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine – enough for 5 million people to get two doses.
    • The vaccine is for people over 16 years because it is yet to be tested on a younger age group.
    • Like all medicines, the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine may cause side effects like a headache and/or sore arm in some people. These are common, are usually mild and don’t last long.
    • Nine out of 10 people will be protected.
    • There has been at least 250m doses given around the world.
    • New Zealand’s Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Authority, Medsafe is closely monitoring the safety of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.
    • Impacts of the vaccine are monitored and reported to the World Health Organization (WHO).
    Dr Collin Tukuitonga
    Dr Collin Tukuitonga … “People can have confidence that the vaccine is effective and safe.” Image: SPC

    Cultural nuances when communicating to Island communities

    The Pacific peoples’ ethnic group is the fourth largest major ethnic group in New Zealand, behind European, Māori and Asian ethnic groups.

    The Ministry of Health has been on a mission to communicate helpful information to people about the vaccination.

    Anyone calling the Covid Healthline can speak with someone in their own language, with access to interpreters for more than 150 languages, including te reo Māori and the nine main Pacific languages.

    Māori and Pacific providers hold trusted relationships with the whānau they serve and play a crucial role to maximize uptake and achieve equity, a Ministry of Health spokesperson said.

    Dr Tukuitonga praised Associate Minister of Health ‘Aupito William Sio for organising meetings with Pacific leaders and groups about the vaccine – which sometimes included up to 500 people over Zoom.

    A Ministry of Health spokesperson said it planned to support district health boards to engage with people who may be hesitant about getting a vaccine dose.

    Otara Health chairperson Efeso Collins.
    Manukau councillor Fa’anānā Efeso Collins … a conversation approach is needed to connect with Māori and Pacific communities. Image: Jessie Chiang/RNZ

    But Manukau councillor Fa’anānā Efeso Collins was “not convinced” that the Ministry of Health had been taking the “right approach” to connect with Māori and Pacific communities – although small improvements were only just being made.

    “Those of us who were raised in the islands have an oral tradition. The Ministry of Health need to understand that just sending out information on a sheet of A4 or link on a website isn’t the way you engage with these communities.”

    He wanted “trusted community champions” to be sent into communities to have a korero and discussion around the table.

    Change could only truly happen in family homes, he said, where they can air any fears around the vaccine and address certain distrust when it comes to public institutions.

    “If we don’t take a conversation approach then we will always allow misinformation to win the battle and that’s where I believe the Ministry of Health have fallen over, because we haven’t trusted local organisations to go into the community and talk to the families,” Fa’anānā said.

    Church influence and community champions
    About 70 percent of Pacific Islanders attend church regularly, so leaders of these congregations are being reminded of the influential role they play as a vaccine messenger.

    Fa’anānā planned to help those on the fence about the vaccine in his South Auckland electorate.

    He encouraged the importance of “a conversation after church … with a coffee and a muffin to talk through distrust to make a difference”.

    Social workers and community groups who already have trusted connections with whānau would also be valuable in helping vulnerable people who had digested misinformation.

    There were still small groups across the country who did not believe in vaccines and their views had led to the spread of misinformation and wild allegations, founded on rumours and falsehoods.

    “The Tamakis of this world are a nuisance,” Dr Tukuitonga said, but believed overall that most Pacific peoples would choose the vaccine.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Asia Pacific Report newsdesk

    Papua New Guinea’s main hospital emergency chief has clarified the tragic death of a female patient dying while trying to access oxygen.

    The head of the Port Moresby General Hospital (PMGH) emergency department, Dr Sam Yockopua, said the patient died while trying to access oxygen canisters in an outdoor area of the emergency wing.

    Speaking to EMTV News, Dr Yockopua said the emergency area was in the middle of decontamination due to positive cases at the emergency department on that day.

    He said that there had been four asthmatic cases and they were put outside on oxygen-driven nebulisers.

    The patient, whose picture went viral on social media, had terminal post-TB bronchiectasis with a reactive airway that required nebulisers.

    Dr Yockopua said the unnamed patient had died while trying to retain oxygen.

    He said it was a “chaotic day”, full of patients and that many of his staff were covid-19 positive and had been isolated.

    Dr Yockopua added that while the need for health services during this time was massive, there was only a limited number of health workers on duty to cater for this huge demand.

    Asia Pacific Report publishes EMTV News articles with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Asia Pacific Report newsdesk

    Australia and New Zealand – plus other key donors – need to urgently step up and provide assistance to Papuan New Guinea as a covid surge continues to grow, says the human rights watchdog Amnesty International.

    Both Australia and New Zealand “continue to fail to support calls by around 100 countries”,  mainly in the global south for a temporary waiver of intellectual property rights that would enable increased production, affordability and accessibility of vaccines, Amnesty has declared in a statement.

    Responding to reports that Papua New Guinean Prime Minister James Marape has declared a critical “red stage” in the country due to a current surge in covid-19 cases, Amnesty International’s Pacific researcher Kate Schuetze said: “Papua New Guinea’s health crisis has now reached the level we feared it would reach a year ago with a surge in cases.

    “A combination of an ailing health system and inadequate living conditions has created a perfect storm for covid-19 to thrive in the country’s overcrowded informal settlements.”

    Schuetze said Amnesty International had received reports of inadequate amounts of personal protective equipment for health workers, and that some hospitals were full or threatening to be closed to new admissions.

    “Misinformation within the community and online about the illness is also rife, with some suggesting [it] is a government conspiracy theory. This has also been fuelled by the government at times publishing inaccurate information on the number of confirmed cases.

    “There is an absence of an effective public information campaign by the government to dispel the misinformation.”

    Pledges of assistance
    While Australia and New Zealand had made pledges of assistance to Papua New Guinea in response to the pandemic, they were “woefully inadequate”.

    Australia had sent a team of medical experts tom PNG this week and had pledged monetary support, but this would not provide immediate relief.

    “Basic health infrastructure is urgently needed in Papua New Guinea to help immediately on the diagnostic and treatment level, as well as for the distribution of vaccines once they are approved by the national authorities.”

    Schuetze said there was little prospect of vaccines coming this month in the context of a deeply unequal global rollout.

    The consequences of this meant that many poorer countries such as PNG would continue to be at the back of the queue for limited supplies of vaccines.

    Background
    According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Queensland government, between 30 and 50 percent of test results in Papua New Guinea have been returning a positive result in early March 2021.

    As of 16 March 2021, the government had reported 26 confirmed deaths and 2269 confirmed cases. The WHO has noted that severe undertesting means these numbers were likely to be significantly underestimated/under reported and that at least two provinces had widespread community transmission.

    Papua New Guinea is part of the United Nations COVAX scheme, which aims to fairly and equitably deliver vaccines to all countries.

    However, COVAX has to date not been resourced enough to ensure poorer countries are getting access to vaccines. The scheme is being severely undermined by wealthy countries buying up more vaccines than they need, significantly impacting on the ability to secure vaccines for other nations.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • A medical worker looks onward, wearily

    Since the start of the pandemic, the most terrifying task in health care was thought to be when a doctor put a breathing tube down the trachea of a critically ill covid patient.

    Those performing such “aerosol-generating” procedures, often in an intensive care unit, got the best protective gear even if there wasn’t enough to go around, per Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines. And for anyone else working with covid patients, until a month ago, a surgical mask was considered sufficient.

    A new wave of research now shows that several of those procedures were not the most hazardous. Recent studies have determined that a basic cough produces about 20 times more particles than intubation, a procedure one doctor likened to the risk of being next to a nuclear reactor.

    Other new studies show that patients with covid simply talking or breathing, even in a well-ventilated room, could make workers sick in the CDC-sanctioned surgical masks. The studies suggest that the highest overall risk of infection was among the front-line workers — many of them workers of color — who spent the most time with patients earlier in their illness and in sub-par protective gear, not those working in the covid ICU.

    “The whole thing is upside down the way it is currently framed,” said Dr. Michael Klompas, a Harvard Medical School associate professor who called aerosol-generating procedures a “misnomer” in a recent paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

    “It’s a huge mistake,” he said.

    The growing body of studies showing aerosol spread of covid-19 during choir practice, on a bus, in a restaurant and at gyms have caught the eye of the public and led to widespread interest in better masks and ventilation.

    Yet the topic has been highly controversial within the health care industry. For over a year, international and U.S. nurse union leaders have called for health workers caring for possible or confirmed covid patients to have the highest level of protection, including N95 masks.

    But a widespread group of experts have long insisted that N95s be reserved for those performing aerosol-generating procedures and that it’s safe for front-line workers to care for covid patients wearing less-protective surgical masks.

    Such skepticism about general aerosol exposure within the health care setting have driven CDC guidelines, supported by national and California hospital associations.

    The guidelines still say a worker would not be considered “exposed” to covid-19 after caring for a sick covid patient while wearing a surgical mask. Yet in recent months, Klompas and researchers in Israel have documented that workers using a surgical mask and face shield have caught covid during routine patient care.

    The CDC said in an email that N95 “respirators have remained preferred over facemasks when caring for patients or residents with suspected or confirmed” covid, “but unfortunately, respirators have not always been available to healthcare personnel due to supply shortages.”

    New research by Harvard and Tulane scientists found that people who tend to be super-spreaders of covid — the 20% of people who emit 80% of the tiny particles — tend to be obese or older, a population more likely to live in elder care or be hospitalized.

    When highly infectious, such patients emit three times more tiny aerosol particles (about a billion a day) than younger people. A sick super-spreader who is simply breathing can pose as much or more risk to health workers as a coughing patient, said David Edwards, a Harvard faculty associate in bioengineering and an author of the study.

    Chad Roy, a co-author who studied primates with covid, said the emitted aerosols shrink in size when the monkeys are most contagious at about Day Six of infection. Those particles are more likely to hang in the air longer and are easier to inhale deep into the lungs, said Roy, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Tulane University School of Medicine.

    The study clarifies the grave risks faced by nursing home workers, of whom more than 546,000 have gotten covid and 1,590 have died, per reports nursing homes filed to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid since mid-May.

    Taken together, the research suggests that health care workplace exposure was “much bigger” than what the CDC defined when it prioritized protecting those doing “aerosol-generating” procedures, said Dr. Donald Milton, who reviewed the studies but was not involved in any of them.

    “The upshot is that it’s inhalation” of tiny airborne particles that leads to infection, said Milton, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Health who studies how respiratory viruses are spread, “which means loose-fitting surgical masks are not sufficient.”

    On Feb. 10, the CDC updated its guidance to health care workers, deleting a suggestion that wearing a surgical mask while caring for covid patients was acceptable and urging workers to wear an N95 or a “well-fitting face mask,” which could include a snug cloth mask over a looser surgical mask.

    Yet the update came after most of at least 3,500 U.S. health care workers had already died of covid, as documented by KHN and The Guardian in the Lost on the Frontline project.

    The project is more comprehensive than any U.S. government tally of health worker fatalities. Current CDC data shows 1,391 health care worker deaths, which is 200 fewer than the total staff covid deaths nursing homes report to Medicare.

    More than half of the deceased workers whose occupation was known were nurses or in health care support roles. Such staffers often have the most extensive patient contact, tending to their IVs and turning them in hospital beds; brushing their hair and sponge-bathing them in nursing homes. Many of them — 2 in 3 — were workers of color.

    Two anesthetists in the United Kingdom — doctors who perform intubations in the ICU — saw data showing that non-ICU workers were dying at outsize rates and began to question the notion that “aerosol-generating” procedures were the riskiest.

    Dr. Tim Cook, an anesthetist with the Royal United Hospitals Bath, said the guidelines singling out those procedures were based on research from the first SARS outbreak in 2003. That framework includes a widely cited 2012 study that warned that those earlier studies were “very low” quality and said there was a “significant research gap” that needed to be filled.

    But the research never took place before covid-19 emerged, Cook said, and key differences emerged between SARS and covid-19. In the first SARS outbreak, patients were most contagious at the moment they arrived at a hospital needing intubation. Yet for this pandemic, he said, studies in early summer began to show that peak contagion occurred days earlier.

    Cook and his colleagues dove in and discovered in October that the dreaded practice of intubation emitted about 20 times fewer aerosols than a cough, said Dr. Jules Brown, a U.K. anesthetist and another author of the study. Extubation, also considered an “aerosol-generating” procedure, generated slightly more aerosols but only because patients sometimes cough when the tube is removed.

    Since then, researchers in Scotland and Australia have validated those findings in a paper pre-published on Feb. 10, showing that two other aerosol-generating procedures were not as hazardous as talking, heavy breathing or coughing.

    Brown said initial supply shortages of PPE led to rationing and steered the best respiratory protection to anesthetists and intensivists like himself. Now that it is known emergency room and nursing home workers are also at extreme risk, he said, he can’t understand why the old guidelines largely stand.

    “It was all a big house of cards,” he said. “The foundation was shaky and in my mind it’s all fallen down.”

    Asked about the research, a CDC spokesperson said via email: “We are encouraged by the publication of new studies aiming to address this issue and better identify which procedures in healthcare settings may be aerosol generating. As studies accumulate and findings are replicated, CDC will update its list of which procedures are considered [aerosol-generating procedures].”

    Cook also found that doctors who perform intubations and work in the ICU were at lower risk than those who worked on general medical floors and encountered patients at earlier stages of the disease.

    In Israel, doctors at a children’s hospital documented viral spread from the mother of a 3-year-old patient to six staff members, although everyone was masked and distanced. The mother was pre-symptomatic and the authors said in the Jan. 27 study that the case is possible “evidence of airborne transmission.”

    Klompas, of Harvard, made a similar finding after he led an in-depth investigation into a September outbreak among patients and staff at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

    There, a patient who was tested for covid two days in a row — with negative results — wound up developing the virus and infecting numerous staff members and patients. Among them were two patient care technicians who treated the patient while wearing surgical masks and face shields. Klompas and his team used genome sequencing to connect the sick workers and patients to the same outbreak.

    CDC guidelines don’t consider caring for a covid patient in a surgical mask to be a source of “exposure,” so the technicians’ cases and others might have been dismissed as not work-related.

    The guidelines’ heavy focus on the hazards of “aerosol-generating” procedures has meant that hospital administrators assumed that those in the ICU got sick at work and those working elsewhere were exposed in the community, said Tyler Kissinger, an organizer with the National Union of Healthcare Workers in Northern California.

    “What plays out there is there is this disparity in whose exposures get taken seriously,” he said. “A phlebotomist or environmental services worker or nursing assistant who had patient contact — just wearing a surgical mask and not an N95 — weren’t being treated as having been exposed. They had to keep coming to work.”

    Dr. Claire Rezba, an anesthesiologist, has scoured the web and tweeted out the accounts of health care workers who’ve died of covid for nearly a year. Many were workers of color. And fortunately, she said, she’s finding far fewer cases now that many workers have gotten the vaccine.

    “I think it’s pretty obvious that we did a very poor job of recommending adequate PPE standards for all health care workers,” she said. “I think we missed the boat.”

    California Healthline politics correspondent Samantha Young contributed to this report.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • By Brendan Crabb, Burnet Institute and Leanne Robinson, Burnet Institute

    The covid epidemic in Papua New Guinea has significantly accelerated, judging by the available reports of case numbers.

    Since its first case was diagnosed 12 months ago, PNG has avoided a large number of reported cases and corresponding deaths. That situation has changed dramatically over the past fortnight. A crisis is now unfolding with alarming speed and the response must quickly match it.

    Australia can be proud of its preparations to support PNG and the region in responding to covid-19, especially its preparations to support vaccination in the region. These include contributing A$80 million to COVAX, $523m to the Regional Vaccine Access and Health Security Initiative, and $100m towards a new one billion dose covid-19 vaccine initiative together with the United States, India and Japan (the “Quad” group of nations).

    As good as they are, these plans are unlikely to be fast enough to stop this current surge before enormous damage is done. There’s simply no time to waste in responding.

    Why the urgency?
    Reported covid-19 testing rates remain critically low, with just 55,000 taken from an estimated population of nine million people. This means we don’t yet have a precise picture of the scale of the epidemic.

    The reported numbers are highly concerning. In the first week of March, 17 percent of all people who were tested throughout the country were positive to covid-19, with over 350 newly confirmed cases.

    This is the highest number of cases in a single week in PNG since the start of the pandemic. Over half of PNG’s 22 provinces reported new covid-19 cases in that week.

    There are other indicators of a potential large scale outbreak, such as reports of increased cases among health-care workers. What’s more, the total number of documented covid-19 deaths in PNG has nearly doubled in the past fortnight alone.

    Low testing rates, combined with reports of high daily case numbers, means there are likely many thousands of current cases in Port Moresby and widespread seeding and spreading of infections throughout the country.

    PNG’s hospitals and front-line health-care workers remain particularly vulnerable. With limited public health controls in place and an effective vaccination program yet to be initiated, and with last week’s huge commemoration ceremonies for Grand Chief and former Prime Minister Michael Somare, there’s every chance the current outbreak will continue to grow exponentially for some time yet.

    Covid-19 posters in PNG
    These posters in PNG’s East New Britain Province help spread covid-19 public health advice. Image: Parrotfish Journey/Shutterstock.com

    The people of PNG now face dual health emergencies: death and disease from covid-19 itself, and a likely increase in existing major diseases barely held in check by the nation’s already stretched health system.

    These indirect effects, such as potential rises in malaria, tuberculosis, HIV, cervical cancer, vaccine-preventable diseases and poor maternal and newborn health, are likely to be even worse than the direct impact of covid-19.

    Australia and PNG’s vital partnership
    This health crisis should be reason enough for Australia to respond urgently in support of PNG. But there’s another reason too. High levels of circulating SARS-CoV-2 in the Asia-Pacific region are a recipe for generating mutant coronavirus variants that might spread more readily, evade immunity more easily, and/or cause more serious disease.

    A regionally coordinated effort to combat covid-19 will help ensure protection for everyone, including going a long way to help preserve Australia’s own vaccine program.

    PNG already has a coordinated national and provincial covid-19 response and a vaccine technical working group that has begun planning for deployment of the first allocation of vaccines to frontline health-care workers.

    Meanwhile, Australia is also playing a crucial role in supporting this effort, contributing generously to the COVAX vaccine access facility and to a A$500 million fund to support covid vaccination in PNG and the wider Pacific.

    However, these plans were developed on the basis there was substantially more time for planning, deployment and phased rollout than the current case numbers would suggest.

    What action is needed?
    Two considerations are now paramount. First, the response needs to be requested by — and, more importantly, led by — PNG itself. Second, the response needs to reflect the urgency and scale of the unfolding emergency.

    This “emergency package” could conceivably involve:

    1. immediate provision of masks in the community, appropriate PPE for health-care workers and increased support for widespread testing
    2. a campaign to counter covid-19 misinformation, which is rampant, and
    3. a significant ramp-up of vaccination across PNG, with an ambitious target — perhaps a million doses before the end of the year, aimed at the most at-risk groups.

    Arguably the most important element of this would be immediate vaccination for health-care workers in the most heavily impacted areas of the country. Ideally, all of PNG’s crucial health-sector workforce should be vaccinated within the next fortnight. Australia could provide around 20,000 vaccine doses for health-care workers without putting a significant dent in its own vaccine supplies, potentially making a profoundly important intervention in the course of the epidemic in PNG.

    This is the moment for dialogue to occur between the two nations, so PNG can ensure Australia’s help with such an immediate and ambitious response.

    PNG is Australia’s closest geographical neighbour, and our countries have a deep shared history of mutual support. An out-of-control COVID-19 epidemic in PNG would be a humanitarian and economic disaster for the nation itself, and a grave threat to the health of the region, particularly with shared borders to Solomon Islands in the east and Indonesia to the west.

    Given this pandemic expands at an exponential rate, and with new variants of concern arising regularly in regions of high transmission, it’s the speed of a strong response that matters the most. A rapid public health intervention, to be supported and facilitated at the highest levels of government, would go a long way to mitigating what may well become a public health catastrophe.
    The Conversation

    Dr Brendan Crabb, Director and CEO, Burnet Institute and Leanne Robinson, Professor, Program Director of Health Security and Head of Vector-borne Diseases & Tropical Public Health, Burnet Institute; Laboratory Head, Walter & Eliza Hall Institute; Adjunct Principal Research Fellow, PNG Institute of Medical Research, Burnet Institute. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.