Africa
Witnesses say airstrike in Ethiopia’s Tigray kills dozens
An airstrike hit a busy market in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray village of Togoga on Tuesday, according to health workers who said soldiers blocked medical teams from traveling to the scene. Dozens of people were killed, they and a former resident said, citing witnesses.
Two doctors and a nurse in Tigray’s regional capital, Mekele, told The Associated Press they were unable to confirm how many people were killed, but one doctor said health workers at the scene reported “more than 80 civilian deaths.” The health workers spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
The alleged airstrike comes amid some of the fiercest fighting in the Tigray region since the conflict began in November as Ethiopian forces supported by those from neighboring Eritrea pursue Tigray’s former leaders. A spokeswoman for Ethiopia’s prime minister did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Wounded patients being treated at Mekele’s Ayder hospital told health workers that a plane dropped a bomb on Togoga’s marketplace. The six patients included a 2-year-old child with “abdominal trauma” and a 6-year-old, the nurse said. An ambulance carrying a wounded baby to Mekele was blocked for two hours and the baby died on the way, the nurse added.
Read:UN: Famine is imminent in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region
Hailu Kebede, foreign affairs head for the Salsay Woyane Tigray opposition party and who comes from Togoga, told the AP that one fleeing witness to the attack had counted more than 30 bodies and other witnesses were reporting more than 50 people killed.
“It was horrific,” said a staffer with an international aid group who told the AP he had spoken with a colleague and others at the scene. “We don’t know if the jets were coming from Ethiopia or Eritrea. They are still looking for bodies by hand. More than 50 people were killed, maybe more.”
On Tuesday afternoon, a convoy of ambulances attempting to reach Togoga, about 25 kilometers (15 miles) west of Mekele, was turned back by soldiers near Tukul, the health workers said. Several more ambulances were turned back later in the day and on Wednesday morning, but one group of medical workers reached the site on Tuesday evening via a different route.
Those medical workers were treating 40 wounded people but told colleagues in Mekele that the number of wounded is likely higher as some people fled after the attack. Five of the wounded patients were said to need emergency operations but the health workers were unable to evacuate them.
“We have been asking, but until now we didn’t get permission to go, so we don’t know how many people are dead,” said one of the doctors in Mekele.
Another doctor said the Red Cross ambulance he was traveling in on Tuesday while trying to reach the scene was shot at twice by Ethiopian soldiers, who held his team for 45 minutes before ordering them back to Mekele.
Read: 'People are starving': New exodus in Ethiopia's Tigray area
“We are not allowed to go,” he said. “They told us whoever goes, they are helping the troops of the TPLF.”
The TPLF refers to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which governed Tigray until it was ousted by a federal government offensive in November. The subsequent fighting has killed thousands and forced more than 2 million people from their homes.
While the United Nations has said all sides have been accused of abuses, Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers have been repeatedly accused by witnesses of looting and destroying health centers across the Tigray region and denying civilians access to care.
This month, humanitarian agencies warned that 350,00 people in Tigray are facing famine. Aid workers have said they have been repeatedly denied access to several parts of the region by soldiers.
The government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed says it has nearly defeated the rebels. But forces loyal to the TPLF recently announced an offensive in parts of Tigray and have claimed a string of victories.
A resident in Adigrat, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of Mekele, said a group of Tigrayan fighters briefly entered the town on Tuesday, although he said it had since been retaken by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces. He said federal police had since been seen beating people in the center of the town.
Read:Amnesty report describes Axum massacre in Ethiopia’s Tigray
“Everybody is staying at home, there is no movement in the town,” he said.
Renewed fighting was also reported in Edaga Hamus and Wukro, two towns that sit on the main road to Mekele.
The reports came as Ethiopia held federal and regional elections on Monday. The vote was peaceful in most parts of the country, although there was no voting in Tigray.
The vote was delayed last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, heightening tensions between the federal government and the TPLF, which went ahead with its own regional election in September.
In poorest countries, surges worsen shortages of vaccines
Hati Maronjei once swore he would never get a COVID-19 shot, after a pastor warned that vaccines aren’t safe.
Now, four months after the first batch of vaccines arrived in Zimbabwe, the 44-year-old street hawker of electronic items is desperate for the shot he can’t get. Whenever he visits a clinic in the capital, Harare, he is told to try again the next day.
“I am getting frustrated and afraid,” he said. “I am always in crowded places, talking, selling to different people. I can’t lock myself in the house.”
A sense of dread is growing in some of the very poorest countries in the world as virus cases surge and more contagious variants take hold amid a crippling shortage of vaccine.
The crisis has alarmed public health officials along with the millions of unvaccinated, especially those who toil in the informal, off-the-books economy, live hand-to-mouth and pay cash in health emergencies. With intensive care units filling up in cities overwhelmed by the pandemic, severe disease can be a death sentence.
Africa is especially vulnerable. Its 1.3 billion people account for 18% of the world’s population, but the continent has received only 2% of all vaccine doses administered globally. And some African countries have yet to dispense a single shot.
Health experts and world leaders have repeatedly warned that even if rich nations immunize all their people, the pandemic will not be defeated if the virus is allowed to spread in countries starved of vaccine.
“We’ve said all through this pandemic that we are not safe unless we are all safe,” said John Nkengasong, a Cameroonian virologist who heads the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We are only as strong as the weakest link.”
Zimbabwe, which has imposed new lockdown measures because of a sharp rise in deaths and cases in the country of over 15 million people, has used just over a million of 1.7 million doses, blaming shortages in urban areas on logistical challenges.
Long lines form at centers such as Parirenyatwa Hospital, unlike months ago, when authorities were begging people to get vaccinated. Many are alarmed as winter sets in and the variant first identified in South Africa spreads in Harare, where young people crowd into betting houses, some with masks dangling from their chins and others without.
Also read: G-7 leaders agree on vaccines, China and taxing corporations
“Most people are not wearing masks. There is no social distancing. The only answer is a vaccine, but I can’t get it,” Maronjei said.
At the start of the pandemic, many deeply impoverished countries with weak health care systems appeared to have avoided the worst. That is changing.
“The sobering trajectory of surging cases should rouse everyone to urgent action,” said Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, Africa director of the World Health Organization. “Public health measures must be scaled up fast to find, test, isolate and care for patients, and to quickly trace and isolate their contacts.”
New cases on the continent rose by nearly 30% in the past week, she said Thursday.
In Zambia, where a vaccination campaign has stalled, authorities reported that the country is running out of bottled oxygen. Sick people whose symptoms are not severe are being turned away by hospitals in Lusaka, the capital.
“When we reached the hospital, we were told there was no bed space for her,” Jane Bwalya said of her 70-year-old grandmother. “They told us to manage the disease from home. So we just went back home, and we are trying to give her whatever medicine can reduce the symptoms.”
Uganda is likewise fighting a sharp rise in cases and is seeing an array of variants. Authorities report that the surge is infecting more people in their 20s and 30s.
Intensive care units in and around the capital, Kampala, are almost full, and Misaki Wayengera, a doctor who heads a committee advising Uganda’s government, said some patients are “praying for someone to pass on” so that they can get an ICU bed.
Many Ugandans feel hopeless when they see the astronomical medical bills of patients emerging from intensive care. Some have turned to concoctions of boiled herbs for protection. On social media, suggestions include lemongrass and small flowering plants. That has raised fears of poisoning.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni imposed new restrictions this month that included closing all schools. But he avoided the extreme lockdown measures of last year, saying he didn’t want to hurt people’s livelihoods in a country with a vast informal sector.
Also read: S Korea pledges $200mn to provide vaccines in lower-income countries
For beauticians, restaurant workers and vendors in crowded open-air markets struggling to put food on the table, the threat from COVID-19 may be high, but taking even a day off when sick is a hardship. Testing costs $22 to $65, prohibitive for the working class.
“Unless I am feeling very sick, I wouldn’t waste all my money to go and test for COVID,” said Aisha Mbabazi, a waiter in a restaurant just outside Kampala.
The 28-year-old had a scare weeks ago, she said, noting that a COVID-19 infection could cost her the job if her employer found out. But she has been unable to get a shot.
“I really wanted the vaccine because for us, any time you can get COVID,” she said. “Even just touching the menu.”
Dr. Ian Clarke, who founded a hospital in Uganda, said that while vaccine demand is growing among the previously hesitant, “the downside is that we do not know when, or from where, we will get the next batch” of shots.
Africa has recorded more than 5 million confirmed COVID-19 cases, including 135,000 deaths. That is a small fraction of the world’s caseload, but many fear the crisis could get much worse.
Nearly 90% of African countries are set to miss the global target of vaccinating 10% of their people by September, according to the World Health Organization.
One major problem is that COVAX, the U.N.-backed project to supply vaccine to poor corners of the world, is itself facing a serious shortage of vaccine.
Amid a global outcry over the gap between the haves and the have-nots, the U.S., Britain and the other Group of Seven wealthy nations agreed last week to share at least 1 billion doses with struggling countries over the next year, with deliveries starting in August.
Also read: UK to donate 100 mn coronavirus vaccine doses
In the meantime, many of the world’s poor wait and worry.
In Afghanistan, where a surge threatens to overwhelm a war-battered health system, 700,000 doses donated by China arrived over the weekend, and within hours, “people were fighting with each other to get to the front of the line,” said Health Ministry spokesman Dr. Ghulam Dastigir Nazari.
The vaccine rush is notable in a country where many question the reality of the virus and rarely wear masks or social distance, often mocking those who do.
At the end of May, approximately 600,000 Afghans had received at least one dose, or less than 2% of the population of 36 million. But the number of those fully vaccinated is minute — “so few I couldn’t even say any percentage,” according to Nazari.
In Haiti, hospitals are turning away patients as the country awaits its first shipment of vaccines. A major delivery via COVAX was delayed amid government concern over side effects and a lack of infrastructure to keep the doses properly refrigerated.
“I’m at risk every single day,” said Nacheline Nazon, a 22-year-old salesperson who takes a colorful, crowded bus known as a tap-tap to work at a clothing store in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, because that is all she can afford.
She said she wears a mask and washes her hands. If the vaccine becomes available, she said, “I’ll probably be the first one in line to get it.”
Mystery over claim world’s 1st ‘decuplets’ born in S. Africa
South Africa has been gripped by the mystery of whether a woman has, as has been claimed, actually given birth to 10 babies, in what would then be the world’s first recorded case of decuplets.
Gosiame Thamara Sithole from the Tembisa township near Johannesburg gave birth to the babies on Monday, according to the Pretoria News newspaper which quoted the parents. The babies — seven boys and three girls — have not made a public appearance or been captured on camera, although they were born prematurely, the newspaper reported.
The South African government said it is still trying to verify the claim.
That’s led to South Africans obsessing on social media over whether the story of the “Tembisa 10” is indeed true.
The father, Teboho Tsotetsi, told the paper his wife had given birth in a hospital in the capital Pretoria. He said it was a big surprise for the parents after doctors only detected eight babies in pre-natal scans.
“It’s seven boys and three girls. She was seven months and seven days pregnant. I am happy. I am emotional,” the newspaper quoted Tsotetsi as saying.
The couple already have 6-year-old twins, which would make the total an even dozen kids, if the claim is true.
South Africans are eagerly waiting for proof of what would be a world record. Relatives and neighbors of the couple have insisted the news is true.
“For her to receive 10 blessings at one given time, we thank God for that,” Wilson Machaya, a neighbor of the family in Tembisa, told The Associated Press. “And because we are neighbors we will have to assist in any way possible.”
A Malian woman gave birth to nine babies only last month in Morocco, in what was hailed as the world’s first case of nonuplets.
The Department of Social Development in South Africa’s Gauteng province confirmed tracing Sithole and spokeswoman Feziwe Ndwayana said they would make an announcement after meeting with the family. Another local government department said earlier this week that it had no record of the babies’ births in any of the province’s hospitals.
The Pretoria News initially broke the story with an interview with Sithole and her husband Tsotetsi at their home, which was conducted nearly a month ago and when they thought they were having eight babies. They requested that the story only be published after the babies were born for safety and cultural reasons, the newspaper said.
According to the report, Sithole went on leave earlier than expected from her job as a retail store manager because she could no longer cope. Tsotetsi is unemployed.
One organization has given $70,000 to the couple to help and other South Africans are being encouraged to donate.
Alongside #Tembisa10, the term #NationalBabyShower has been trending on Twitter.
Celebrations (and questions) greet US vaccine donation plan
Health officials and experts around the world on Thursday welcomed a U.S. plan to donate 500 million more COVID-19 vaccines to developing countries, but the celebrations came with hesitation.
For instance, when exactly will those vaccines reach regions left behind in the global race and that are feeling the bite right now with deadly new waves of virus infections? And how many other wealthy nations will follow the lead of the U.S. to fill the gaping need?
The Biden administration’s promise to purchase and share Pfizer vaccines was “clearly a cause for celebration,” said Dr. John Nkengasong, the director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, particularly at a time when virus infections are aggressively increasing on the continent, and there are still countries that haven’t administered a single dose.
“Absolutely, it’s going to be a big help,” Nkengasong said, although he added he was eager to understand the exact timeline for the shots hopefully heading to his continent.
Two hundred million doses — enough to fully protect 100 million people — will be provided this year, with the balance donated in the first half of 2022, according to the White House. The U.S. will work with the U.N.-backed COVAX alliance to deliver the shots. Some have noted that since the Pfizer vaccines require extremely cold storage, they present an extra logistical challenge for countries with struggling health systems and poor infrastructure.
U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to talk about the plan later Thursday in a speech on the eve of the Group of Seven summit in Britain.
That summit might also give a crucial indication of whether and how far other nations in the elite club are willing to follow the U.S on vaccine sharing amid widespread criticism that richer countries have fallen woefully short so far, despite lofty promises of fairness when the vaccines were being developed.
Also read: WTO to start Covid-19 vaccine supply negotiations amid clash on patents
Inequities in vaccine supplies around the world have become alarmingly pronounced in recent months, as richer countries have rushed to vaccinate wide swaths of their populations while poorer nations have struggled to secure doses. The inequality is not just a matter of fairness: There is also increasing concern over newer virus variants emerging from areas with consistently high COVID-19 circulation.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson wrote in The Times of London newspaper that it was now time for wealthy countries to “shoulder their responsibilities” and “vaccinate the world,” although his own country has yet to announce any solid plan to share vaccines with countries in need.
France has been insisting on the importance of helping Africa, in particular, with vaccines since last year and President Emmanuel Macron said he brought 100,000 vaccine doses with him on a trip to Rwanda last month. Macron has promised France will donate 30 million doses through COVAX by the end of the year, with half a million by mid-June.
Promises by wealthy nations, some of whom have excess vaccines, have often been criticized as too little or too late — or both.
“While Biden’s plan is welcome, it is a small piece of the puzzle, and it doesn’t help countries that are struggling now,” said Fifa Rahman, who is a civil society representative on a World Health Organization body focused on increasing access to COVID-19 vaccines, among other issues.
She cited the East African nation of Uganda as an example, saying the country’s intensive care units are already full, and it has only small numbers of vaccines left.
“This is just one example of a country that needs vaccines now,” Rahman said. “Later this year is too late and comes at the expense of lives.”
Also read: AP source: US to buy 500M Pfizer vaccines to share globally
There are many examples of dire need across the world, like Haiti, on America’s doorstep, and which still awaits its first shipment of vaccines six months after some rich countries started their programs.
“It’s precisely the actions of the G-7 governments, among others, that have led to the grave global inequities we see in access to COVID-19 medical tools now,” the Doctors Without Borders organization said.
As countries around the world struggled to access vaccines, unable to secure their own deals with companies like Pfizer, many have turned to China, which has exported 350 million doses of its vaccines to dozens of countries, according to its Foreign Ministry.
While Chinese vaccines have faced scrutiny because of a lack of transparency in sharing clinical trial data, many countries were eager to receive anything at all.
China, which has been vying for influence with the U.S. in the realm of “vaccine diplomacy,” reacted to the U.S. plan through Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin, who said China has always supported using vaccines as a “global public good.”
The shots promised by the Biden administration will go to 92 lower income countries and the African Union over the next. Pfizer said the doses are part of a previous pledge, with its partner BioNTech, to provide 2 billion doses to developing countries over the next 18 months.
The White House had earlier announced plans to share 80 million doses globally by the end of June, most through COVAX.
Also read: G7 must ensure vaccine access in developing countries: UN experts
The additional donation of the Pfizer shots is crucial because the global disparity in vaccination has become a multidimensional threat: a human catastrophe, a $5 trillion economic loss for advanced economies, and a contributor to the generation of mutant viruses, said Jerome Kim, the head of the International Vaccine Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to making vaccines available to developing countries.
Jeong Eun-kyeong, director of South Korea’s Disease Control and Prevention Agency, said the success of Biden’s vaccine-sharing plan would depend mainly on how fast the shots could be produced and sent to countries in need. The White House has said all the doses will be manufactured in the U.S.
Some experts said donations alone wouldn’t be enough to close the huge gaps in supplies and called for allowing qualified companies around the world to manufacture vaccines without intellectual property constraints.
The U.S. has expressed support for suspending IP protections on vaccines — and some other countries have agreed it should be explored — but, in an indication of the disjointed response from the G-7, Germany repeated its opposition to an IP waiver on Thursday.
“We don’t think a waiver is helpful or is actually the problem,” said a senior German official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity in line with department rules. “And nothing has changed about that.”
Billionaire philanthropist: vaccine hoarding hurts Africa
Billionaire philanthropist Mo Ibrahim is sharply criticizing the hoarding of COVID-19 vaccines by wealthy nations, urging the international community to “walk the talk” of equitable distribution as Africa desperately lags behind.
Ibrahim, a British mobile phone magnate who was born in Sudan, is hailed as a voice of moral authority across Africa. The 75-year-old earned his fortune by establishing the Celtel mobile phone network across Africa in the 1990s.
He is now using that fortune to promote democracy and political accountability on the continent, including through his sponsorship of the $5 million Ibrahim Prize for African leaders who govern responsibly and who give up their power peacefully.
He lamented the global “competition” for vaccines in an interview with The Associated Press. He said he views the the pandemic-era phrase “nobody is safe until everybody is safe” as a meaningless slogan until there is an equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines around the world.
Read:‘This IS INSANE’: Africa desperately short of COVID vaccine
“They say that while they are hoarding the vaccine. Can you walk the talk? Stop just talking like parrots, you know, and do you really mean what you said?” Ibrahim said late Tuesday in a Zoom call from London, where he is based.
He argued that “at least a reasonable portion” of the vaccines should go to frontline workers in Africa.
The World Health Organization reported last week that COVID-19 vaccine shipments have ground to “a near halt” in Africa at a time when some countries face a spike in cases.
Africa has administered vaccine doses to 31 million of its 1.3 billion people. But only 7 million people are fully vaccinated, according to World Health Organization Africa director Matshidiso Moeti.
Read:UN: Famine is imminent in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region
Sub-Saharan Africa has on average administered only one vaccine dose per 100 people, compared to a global average of 23 doses per 100 people, she said, reiterating Africa’s ongoing plea for richer countries with significant vaccination coverage to share some of their remaining doses.
President Joe Biden has said the United States would share some of its vaccines.
Ibrahim warned also that Africa cannot afford to sit back, citing a need for greater accountability by governments which pledged in 2001 to spend at least 15% of their national budgets on public health. Economic integration that widens trade among nations is key, he said.
While support from abroad is welcome, he said, “we should rely much more on ourselves. I always thought self-reliance is something important in Africa.”
“We really need to build resilient health service in our countries,” he said.
Read:South Africa returns to stricter lockdown, virus 'surging'
Citing Tanzania under former leader John Magufuli, who died in March, Ibrahim said he was disappointed that some presidents appeared to dismiss the threat from COVID-19.
“We need to hold our leaders accountable,” he said. “You deny and you pay the price... Unfortunately, your people also pay the price. So we need to hold our people accountable for their behavior, for the way they allocate resources. And it is for us in civil society to keep raising this issue.”
Africa has confirmed more than 4.9 million COVID-19 cases, including 132,000 deaths, representing a tiny fraction of the global caseload. But some experts worry that the continent will suffer greatly in the long term if more of its people are not vaccinated in efforts to achieve herd immunity, when enough people are protected through infection or vaccination to make it difficult for a virus to continue to spread.
Achieving that goal will require about 1.5 billion vaccine doses for Africa if there is widespread use of the two-shot AstraZeneca vaccine, often the main shot available under the donor-backed COVAX program to ensure access for developing countries.
‘This IS INSANE’: Africa desperately short of COVID vaccine
In the global race to vaccinate people against COVID-19, Africa is tragically at the back of the pack.
In fact, it has barely gotten out of the starting blocks.
In South Africa, which has the continent’s most robust economy and its biggest coronavirus caseload, just 0.8% of the population is fully vaccinated, according to a worldwide tracker kept by Johns Hopkins University. And hundreds of thousands of the country’s health workers, many of whom come face-to-face with the virus every day, are still waiting for their shots.
In Nigeria, Africa’s biggest country with more than 200 million people, only 0.1% are fully protected. Kenya, with 50 million people, is even lower. Uganda has recalled doses from rural areas because it doesn’t have nearly enough to fight outbreaks in big cities.
Read:UN: Famine is imminent in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region
Chad didn’t administer its first vaccine shots until this past weekend. And there are at least five other countries in Africa where not one dose has been put into an arm, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The World Health Organization says the continent of 1.3 billion people is facing a severe shortage of vaccine at the same time a new wave of infections is rising across Africa. Vaccine shipments into Africa have ground to a “near halt,” WHO said last week.
“It is extremely concerning and at times frustrating,” said Africa CDC Director Dr. John Nkengasong, a Cameroonian virologist who is trying to ensure some of the world’s poorest nations get a fair share of vaccines in a marketplace where they can’t possibly compete.
The United States and Britain, in contrast, have fully vaccinated more than 40% of their populations, with higher rates for adults and high-risk people. Countries in Europe are near or past 20% coverage, and their citizens are starting to think about where their vaccine certificates might take them on their summer vacations. The U.S., France and Germany are even offering shots to youngsters, who are at very low risk of serious illness from COVID-19.
Poorer countries had warned as far back as last year of this impending vaccine inequality, fearful that rich nations would hoard doses.
In an interview, Nkengasong called on the leaders of wealthy nations meeting this week at the G-7 summit to share spare vaccines — something the United States has already agreed to do — and avert a “moral catastrophe.”
“I’d like to believe that the G-7 countries, most of them having kept excess doses of vaccines, want to be on the right side of history,” Nkengasong said. “Distribute those vaccines. We need to actually see these vaccines, not just ... promises and goodwill.”
Others are not so patient, nor so diplomatic.
“People are dying. Time is against us. This IS INSANE,” South African human rights lawyer Fatima Hasan, an activist for equal access to health care, wrote in a series of text messages.
The Biden administration made its first major move to ease the crisis last week, announcing it would share an initial batch of 25 million spare doses with desperate countries in South and Central America, Asia and Africa.
Read:Burkina Faso says at least 100 civilians killed in attack
Nkengasong and his team were in contact with White House officials a day later, he said, with a list of countries where the 5 million doses earmarked for Africa could go to immediately.
Still, the U.S. offer is only a “trickle” of what’s needed, Hasan wrote.
Africa alone is facing a shortfall of around 700 million doses, even after taking into account those secured through WHO’s vaccine program for poorer countries, COVAX, and a deal with Johnson & Johnson, which comes through in August, two long months away.
Uganda just released a batch of 3,000 vaccine doses in the capital, Kampala — a minuscule amount for a city of 2 million — to keep its program barely alive.
There and elsewhere, the fear is that the luck that somehow enabled parts of Africa to escape the worst of previous waves of COVID-19 infections and deaths might not hold this time.
“The first COVID was a joke, but this one is for real. It kills,” said Danstan Nsamba, a taxi driver in Uganda who has lost numerous people he knew to the virus.
In Zimbabwe, Chipo Dzimba embarked on a quest for a vaccine after witnessing COVID-19 deaths in her community. She walked miles to a church mission hospital, where there were none, and miles again to a district hospital, where nurses also had nothing and told her to go to the region’s main government hospital. That was too far away.
“I am giving up,” Dzimba said. “I don’t have the bus fare.”
South African health workers faced similar disappointment when they crowded into a parking garage last month, hoping for vaccinations and ignoring in their desperation the social distancing protocols. Many came away without a shot.
Read:South Africa returns to stricter lockdown, virus 'surging'
Femada Shamam, who is in charge of a group of old-age homes in the South African city of Durban, has seen only around half of the 1,600 elderly and frail people she looks after vaccinated. It is six months, almost to the day, since Britain began the global vaccination drive.
“They do feel very despondent and they do feel let down,” Shamam said of her unvaccinated residents, who are experiencing “huge anxiety” as they hunker down in their sealed-off homes 18 months into the outbreak. Twenty-two of her residents have died of COVID-19.
“It really highlights the biggest problem ... the haves and the have-nots,” Shamam said.
As for whether wealthy countries with a surplus of vaccine have gotten the message, Nkengasong said: “I am hopeful, but not necessarily confident.”
UN: Famine is imminent in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region
Famine is imminent in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region and in the country’s north, the U.N. humanitarian chief said, warning there’s a risk that hundreds of thousands of people or more will die.
Mark Lowcock said the economy has been destroyed along with businesses, crops and farms and there are no banking or telecommunications services.
“We are hearing of starvation-related deaths already,” he said in a statement Friday.
“People need to wake up,” Lowcock said. “The international community needs to really step up, including through the provision of money.”
Read: 'People are starving': New exodus in Ethiopia's Tigray area
No one knows how many thousands of civilians or combatants have been killed since months of political tensions between Ethiopian President Abiy Ahmed’s government and the Tigray leaders who once dominated Ethiopia’s government exploded into war last November.
Eritrea, a longtime Tigray enemy, teamed up with neighboring Ethiopia in the conflict.
In late May, Lowcock painted a grim picture of Tigray since the war began, with an estimated 2 million people displaced, civilians killed and injured, rapes and other forms of “abhorrent sexual violence” widespread and systematic, and public and private infrastructure essential for civilians destroyed, including hospitals and agricultural land.
“There are now hundreds of thousands of people in northern Ethiopia in famine conditions,” Lowcock said. “That’s the worse famine problem the world has seen for a decade, since a quarter of a million Somalis lost their lives in the famine there in 2011. This now has horrible echoes of the colossal tragedy in Ethiopia in 1984.”
In the disastrous famine of 1984-85, about 2 million Africans died of starvation or famine-related ailments, about half of them in Ethiopia.
“There is now a risk of a loss of life running into the hundreds of thousands or worse,” Lowcock said.
Read: Amnesty report describes Axum massacre in Ethiopia’s Tigray
He said getting food and other humanitarian aid to all those in need is proving very difficult for aid agencies.
The United Nations and the Ethiopian government have helped about 2 million people in recent months in northern Ethiopia, mainly in government-controlled areas, he said.
But Lowcock said there are more than 1 million people in places controlled by Tigrayan opposition forces and “there have been deliberate, repeated, sustained attempts to prevent them getting food.”
In addition, there are places controlled by the Eritreans and other places controlled by militia groups where it is extremely difficult to deliver aid, he said.
“The access for aid workers is not there because of what men with guns and bombs are doing and what their political masters are telling them to do,” the undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs said.
Read: 'Extreme urgent need': Starvation haunts Ethiopia's Tigray
Lowcock said all the blockages need to be rolled back and the Eritreans, “who are responsible for a lot of this need to withdraw,” so aid can get through to those facing famine.
“Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed needs to do what he said he was going to do and force the Eritreans to leave Ethiopia,” he said.
Lowcock said leaders of the seven major industrialized nations -- the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, Italy and Canada -- need to put the humanitarian crisis and threat of widespread famine in northern Ethiopia on the agenda of their summit from June 11-13 in Cornwall, England.
“Everyone needs to understand that were there to be a colossal tragedy of the sort that happened in 1984 the consequences would reach far and last long,” he said.
Burkina Faso says at least 100 civilians killed in attack
Gunmen killed at least 100 people in a northern Burkina Faso village, the government said Saturday, in what was the country’s deadliest attack in years.
The attack took place Friday evening in Solhan village, in the Sahel’s Yagha province, government spokesman Ousseni Tamboura said in a statement blaming jihadists. The local market and several homes were also burned down in the area toward the border of Niger, he said.
President Roch Marc Christian Kabore called the attack “barbaric.”
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This is the deadliest attack recorded in Burkina Faso since the West African country was overrun by jihadists linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State about five years ago, said Heni Nsaibia, senior researcher at the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.
“It is clear that militant groups have shifted up gears to aggravate the situation in Burkina Faso, and moved their efforts to areas outside the immediate reach of the French-led counter-terrorism coalition fighting them in the tri-state border region,” he said.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Despite the presence of more than 5,000 French troops in the Sahel, jihadist violence is increasing. In one week in April, more than 50 people were killed in Burkina Faso, including two Spanish journalists and an Irish conservationist. More than 1 million people in the country have been internally displaced.
A local who did not want to be named, fearing for his safety, was visiting relatives in a medical clinic in Sebba town, approximately 12 kilometers from where the attacks occurred. He said he saw many wounded people enter the clinic.
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“I saw 12 people in one room and about 10 in another. There were many relatives caring for the wounded. There were also many people running from Solhan to enter Sebba....People are very afraid and worried,” he told the Associated Press by phone.
The government has declared 72 hours of mourning.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was outraged by the killings and offered the world body’s full support to authorities in their efforts to overcome the threats to the peace and stability in Burkina Faso according to his spokesman, Stephane Dujarric.
“He strongly condemns the heinous attack and underscores the urgent need for the international community to redouble support to Member States in the fight against violent extremism and its unacceptable human toll,” Dujarric said in a statement.
Islamic extremists have been increasingly staging assaults in Burkina Faso, especially in the region that borders Niger and Mali.
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Last month, gunmen killed at least 30 people in eastern Burkina Faso near the border with Niger.
Burkina Faso’s ill-equipped army has been struggling to contain the spread of jihadists. The government enlisted the help of volunteer fighters last year to help the army, but the volunteers have incurred retaliation by extremists who target them and the communities they help.
Mali also is experiencing a political crisis that has led to the suspension of international support. France has said it is ceasing joint military operations with Malian forces until the West African nation’s junta complies with international demands to restore civilian rule.
South Africa returns to stricter lockdown, virus 'surging'
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced Sunday that his country will return to stricter lockdown measures in the face of a sharp rise in COVID-19 cases that indicate the virus is “surging again” in Africa’s worst-affected nation.
Positive cases in South Africa in the past seven days were 31% higher than the week before, and 66% higher than the week before that, Ramaphosa said in a live TV address. He said some parts of the country, including the commercial hub Johannesburg and the capital city Pretoria, were now in “a third wave.”
“We do not yet know how severe this wave will be or for how long it will last,” Ramaphosa said.
In response, Ramaphosa said that from Monday the nighttime curfew would be extended by an hour to start at 11 p.m. until 4 a.m. A maximum of 100 people would be allowed at indoor social gatherings and no more than 250 at an outdoors gathering. The number of people attending funerals will be limited to 100 people and after-funeral gatherings were banned completely, Ramaphosa said. Nonessential businesses must close by 10 p.m.
“We have tended to become complacent,” Ramaphosa said, warning virus infections were “surging again” at a time when the country moves into its winter months and people were more likely to gather together indoors, likely further increasing infections.
South Africa’s decision to go back to a stricter lockdown reinforces — as the crisis in India has already done so starkly — how the global pandemic is far from over.
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“We have seen in other countries the tragic consequences of leaving the virus to spread unchecked,” Ramaphosa said. “We cannot let our guard down.”
South Africa has more than 1.6 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and more than 56,000 deaths, more than 30% of the cases and 40% of the deaths recorded by all of Africa’s 54 countries, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. South Africa recorded 4,515 new cases over the past 24 hours and Ramaphosa said the “positivity rate” among tests conducted was now “a cause for concern.”
South Africa had been under lockdown level one, the lowest of its five levels, but was now reverting to an “adjusted level two,” Ramaphosa announced. Authorities did stop short of reimposing the strict measures like limits on people’s movements during the day and a ban on the sales of alcohol and tobacco products that were in place at times last year.
South Africa has seen two previous surges in infections, the first in the middle of last year and a second, much worse wave in December and January, when the emergence of a variant pushed infections and deaths to higher levels than the first surge. The virus was currently following “the same trajectory” as those waves, Ramaphosa said.
Experts have warned that this wave, arriving with the Southern Hemisphere winter, might be even worse.
The surge in cases also cast more attention on South Africa’s lagging vaccine rollout. Only around 1.5% of the country’s 60 million people have received a vaccine. Health workers were the No. 1 priority but less than 500,000 of the 1.2 million health workers have been vaccinated with the Johnson & Johnson one-dose shot. South Africa only began vaccinating its elderly citizens two weeks ago. In total, 963,000 South Africans had received a vaccine by Sunday, the government said, although half of those have only received the first of two required doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
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South Africa has “secured” more than 50 million vaccines, Ramaphosa said, but currently has only 1.3 million in the country. More Pfizer-BioNTech doses are expected to arrive next week, and weekly after that, he said. South Africa hopes to vaccinate around 40 million people by the end of the year, a target that looks increasingly unlikely.
Malawi destroys 20,000 expired doses of AstraZeneca vaccine
Malawi has burned nearly 20,000 expired AstraZeneca vaccines, amid conflicting advice over what to do with the doses.
Health Minister Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda put some of the vials of the expired doses into an incinerator to start the destruction Wednesday at Kamuzu Central Hospital in Lilongwe, the capital.
“We are destroying (these vaccines) because as government policy no expired health commodities are to be used,” she said. “Historically under the expanded immunization program of Malawi no expired vaccine has ever been used.”
She said burning the vaccines will build public confidence that all vaccines used in Malawi are good.
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“We are destroying publicly in order to stay accountable to Malawians. The vaccines that expired are not being used during the vaccination campaign,” she said. “On behalf of the government, I assure all Malawians that no one will be given an expired COVID vaccine.”
The burned vaccines were the remainder of 102,000 doses that arrived in Malawi on March 26 with just 18 days until they expired on April 13. All other doses of the shipment, donated by the African Union, were successfully administered, she said.
The health minister thanked WHO, the African Union and India for donating the vaccines.
“This has made it possible for Malawi to embark on the COVID vaccination campaign currently underway,” she said.
Last month the World Health Organization urged African nations not to destroy expired doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine after several countries received doses from India with a very short shelf life. But this week, WHO reversed its position and said that the vaccines should be destroyed.
“Any vaccine that has passed its expiry date ... should not be administered,” said WHO in a statement dated May 17. “While discarding vaccines is deeply regrettable in the context of any immunization program, WHO recommends that these expired doses should be removed from the distribution chain and safely disposed.”
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WHO said that in March, the African Union’s African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team redistributed 925,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India with an expiry date of April 13 to 13 African countries. “The bulk of these vaccine doses were administered, but some countries have unused doses remaining,” said the WHO statement.
Malawi, a small southern African country of about 20 million people, had already decided to destroy its expired vaccine doses, ministry of health spokesman Joshua Malango told The Associated Press.
“We had stopped observation of proper storage mechanisms and the vaccines would have still been damaged in one way or the other,” he said.
The destruction of the vaccines was witnessed by several top officials “in order to enhance transparency,” health secretary Charles Mwansambo said.
Malawi will still have adequate stocks of COVID-19 vaccines in both public and private health facilities, he said. The government has not said where it will get more vaccines.
Malawi’s got its first consignment of 360,000 AstraZeneca doses in early March from the U.N.-backed COVAX initiative which is providing vaccines to low- and middle-income countries. The country received another batch of 50,000 AstraZeneca doses from the Indian government. With the AU donation, Malawi had a total of 512,000 AstraZeneca doses.
So far 212,615 doses have been given in Malawi. The country has 34,216 confirmed cases, including 1,153 deaths, according to the Africa CDC.
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Currently, the country is seeing a decrease in the disease, with the 7-day rolling average of daily new cases in Malawi dropping from 0.07 new cases per 100,000 people on May 4 to 0.04 new cases per 100,000 people on May 18. Official deaths from COVID-19 are also declining, according to statistics from Johns Hopkins University.
Malawi, like many other African countries, has relied on the AstraZeneca vaccine that has been distributed by COVAX and the African Union. But now supplies of the vaccine have become more scarce because India, the main supplier of vaccines to COVAX, has stopped exports until it has adequately vaccinated large numbers of its population of 1.4 billion people.
The Serum Institute of India says it hopes to start delivering coronavirus vaccines to COVAX and to other countries by the end of the year. The delay will significantly set back global efforts to immunize people against COVID-19. India’s Serum Institute is the world’s biggest vaccine-maker. The company said in March that it was postponing all exports of coronavirus vaccines to deal with the explosive surge of cases on the subcontinent. At the time, the World Health Organization said it expected COVID-19 vaccine deliveries from India to resume by June and the interruption would affect about 90 million doses.