At #AIWA! NO! News, we focus on people and events that affect people's lives. We bring topics to light that often go under-reported, listening to all sides of the story and giving a 'voice to the voiceless'.
The Head of Paediatrics at Parirenyatwa Hospital Dr Azza Mashumba broke down on Wednesday whilst explaining the dire situation at the hospital., 13 March 2019
Zimbabwean Diaspora Health Alliance (ZDHA) is an organisation that represents over 35 charities) and is happy to inform you that we are working together with the Core Group that will help as guardians of the Save Our Hospitals initiative that has been set up through the initiative of Hopewell Chin’ono
Senior doctors at Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals yesterday narrated to the minister of Health Obadiah Moyo, of the horrors and deaths occurring everyday at major hospitals because of acute shortages of drugs and hospital consumables.
May we take this opportunity to advise everyone to wait while the structures are being put in place. We hope the new committee in Zimbabwe will be able to put the structures within a week or so .
We need to know the amount of resources that are needed and how they will be accounted for as well as the channels of getting them to Zimbabwe.
Nehanda Radio//Hopewell Chin’ono with the founder owner of CNN, Ted Turner in Atlanta
Once this is put in place we will make an appeal to you to make your donations through a transparent and accountable process. We are working as a community and not individuals.
No one is above this cause . We are calling on all charities and individuals who want to help our hospitals to be in touch with Zimbabwean Diaspora Health Alliance at: zdha2018@gmail.com
In every bit of honest writing in the world, there is a base theme.
Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love. There are shorter means, many of them. There is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme.
New Delhi was the world’s most polluted capital city in 2018, two groups monitoring air pollution said on Tuesday in a study of the amount of fine particulate matter known as PM2.5 in 61 capital cities around the world.
The Indian capital, home to more than 20 million people, was followed by the Bangladesh capital of Dhaka and Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, according to the study by IQ AirVisual, a Swiss-based group that gathers air-quality data globally, and Greenpeace.
PHOTO: Men walk in front of the India Gate shrouded in smog in New Delhi, India, December 26, 2018. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi
The Indian capital, home to more than 20 million people, was followed by the Bangladesh capital of Dhaka and Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, according to the study by IQ AirVisual, a Swiss-based group that gathers air-quality data globally, and Greenpeace.
New Delhi’s toxic air is caused by vehicle and industrial emissions, dust from building sites, smoke from the burning of rubbish and crop residue in nearby fields.
The city’s average annual concentration of PM2.5 in a cubic meter of air was 113.5 in 2018, the groups said in their report, more than double the level of Beijing, which averaged 50.9 during the year, making it the eighth most polluted in the world.
FILE PHOTO: A man rides his bicycle in front of the India Gate shrouded in smog in New Delhi, India, December 26, 2018. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi
PM2.5, or particles of 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter, is so dangerous because it lodges deep in the lungs.
The World Health Organization sets a daily mean air quality guideline of 25 micrograms of PM2.5 per cubic meter of air.
China struggled for years to enforce environment rules and crack down on polluting industries, but it has benefited in recent years from vastly improved legislation and greater political will to combat poor air quality.
“In mainland China, in particular, this has led to significant improvements in year-on-year reductions in PM2.5 levels,” the groups said in their joint study.
India is home to 15 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world, they said.
“The question which remains to be answered is whether there is enough political will to aggressively fight the health emergency India faces today and move away from polluting fuels and practices,” said Pujarini Sen, spokeswoman for Greenpeace India.
Reporting by Mayank Bhardwaj; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani
But investment still falls short of the US$2 billion needed each year to eliminate the disease by 2030.
Scientists say we are at a promising moment in TB research globally.Credit: Denis Balibouse/Reuters
Munyaradzi Makoni, nature|AIWA! NO!|Global spending on tuberculosis research hit a high in 2017, according to a report released on 3 December1.
Investment reached US$772 million, up from $726 million in 2016, says the report, from the activist organization Treatment Action Group (TAG) in New York City.
The report, which tracked funding since 2005, shows that investment has gone up and down over the years, with a general upward trend.
The 2017 total is the most spent on research into tuberculosis (TB) in a year, according to the data, but it still falls short of the $2 billion a year that the TB research community says is needed to end the disease by 2030 (see ‘Tuberculosis funding shortfall’). That target is one of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and part of the World Health Organization Global Plan to End TB.
The rise in funding comes at a time when the disease remains prevalent but science is generating new hope. “We’re at an incredibly promising moment in TB research globally,” says Mike Frick, TB project co-director for TAG.
Source: Treatment Action Group
Around 25% of the world’s population — 1.8 billion people — is infected with TB, the World Health Organization estimates. In 2017 alone, some 10 million people fell ill with the disease, and 1.6 million died.
TB is treated with antibiotics, but health officials say that new treatments are urgently needed for children, as are better and shorter treatments for drug-resistant strains of TB and improved drugs for people living with both HIV and TB.
These treatments might be on the horizon. “Our understanding of the basic biology of TB has also advanced considerably thanks to investments in TB basic science,” says Frick.
For example, Frick notes that last year saw promising results from a vaccine trial and from trials of drugs intended to tackle drug-resistant TB and prevent the disease in people with HIV. And there has been progress in the development of simple tools to diagnose TB, including one that uses a urine dipstick, he says.
Poor market interest
Most of the $46-million increase in 2017 was driven by funding from the public sector. The US government was the largest investor, putting in $312 million. Unitaid, an global initiative that raises money for innovations in health diagnoses and treatments, nearly doubled its investment from $15 million in 2016 to $29 million in 2017.
Private-sector funding has risen slightly, but is at its lowest level since 2009. “We continued to see low funding from private industry, which collectively has spent less than $100 million on TB research each year since 2013,” Frick says.
This shows that there is a need for innovative ways of financing to reach the necessary funding levels. “We need to make sure that a commitment to provide more money for research comes with a commitment to doing research differently — moving beyond the market-based system that hasn’t worked for TB,” he says.
More funding could lead to improved vaccination, diagnosis and treatments, says Adrie Steyn, a molecular geneticist at the Africa Health Research Institute in Durban, South Africa.
Christoph Grundner, a biologist at the Center for Infectious Disease Research at the University of Washington in Seattle, agrees. “TB research is still vastly underfunded,” he says. “A lot of really good and promising TB research is not being done or is done too slowly just because of lack of funding.” He thinks that the public sector should step in to plug the gap.
An earlier version of the TAG report was released in September to inform the first ever high-level meeting of the UN on TB, where UN member states committed to closing the $1.3-billion annual gap in funding.
Yemen’s internally displaced have no meal times because there is no meal in the first place.
In this Oct. 1, 2018, photo, a malnourished boy sits on a hospital bed at the Aslam Health Center, Hajjah, Yemen.
/HANI MOHAMMED, AP/ABS/AIWA! NO!/ Yemen — Yahia Hussein has already lost a 5-month-old son who wasted away and died as they fled their village in northern Yemen. Now living in a camp for the displaced, he is running out of ways to feed his other four children.
Jobless, he has no way to afford food, and he says he hasn’t received international aid for several months. His wife gives their children moldy bread crumbs mixed with water and salt. Some days she feeds them a paste made of boiled leaves from a vine called “halas.”
In this Oct. 1, 2018, photo, a man holds Halas before cooking for his children, a climbing vine of green leaves, in Aslam, Hajjah, Yemen. The leaves are made into green paste and used to be a traditional side dish, but at times of extreme poverty, it becomes the main meal. HANI MOHAMMED / AP
“We left everything behind. We walked for hours on foot, carrying nothing, not even one rial/penny, no food or water,” he told The Associated Press at the camp in the northern province of Hajjah.
They are among millions of Yemenis who lost everything – homes, jobs, loved ones – in nearly four years of civil war. The conflict has pushed the country of 29 million people to the brink of famine. At least 8 million have no food other than what aid agencies provide.
In this Oct. 1, 2018, photo, a severely malnourished boy rests on a hospital bed at the Aslam Health Center, Hajjah, Yemen. Malnutrition, cholera, and other epidemic diseases like diphtheria ravaged through the displaced and the impoverished communities.HANI MOHAMMED / AP
The figure is likely to rise to 11.5 million as more people become unable to afford food because the worsening economic crisis caused by the war, U.N. agencies warn. The currency is crumbling in value, sending prices soaring.
The humanitarian disaster has come as the U.S.-backed Saudi-led coalition since 2015 has waged a relentless campaign of airstrikes and imposed a blockade, aiming to uproot Shiite rebels known as Houthis, who took over northern and central Yemen. Both sides in the fight are accused of war crimes, but with weapons supplied by the U.S., Saudi Arabia is capable of much greater damage.
Besides airstrikes, northern Yemen has also seen heavy barrages back and forth across the border with Saudi Arabia as Saudi forces battle rebels.
Hussein and his family had to flee their border village of al-Shada because of non-stop strikes and shelling. As they fled, the 5-month-old died in his mother’s arms. Hussein is not sure if it was from dehydration or malnutrition.
For the past four months, they have lived in a shack made of sticks, blankets and plastic sheets in a camp in Aslam district near the city of Abs.
In this Oct. 1, 2018 photo, a man feeds his children Halas, a climbing vine of green leaves, in Aslam, Hajjah, Yemen. HANI MOHAMMED / AP
The 46-year-old Hussein once grew grapes and pomegranates and thrived off trade in markets across the border in Saudi Arabia. He lost his livelihood, sold all his goats but one and cut down on meals to one a day.
The numbers of displaced are only growing.
In this Oct. 1, 2018, photo, a severely malnourished boy rests on a hospital bed at the Aslam Health Center, Hajjah, Yemen. HANI MOHAMMED / AP
In August-September, 20,000 people fleeing the border town of Bani Hassan flowed into Abs, Doctors Without Borders reported. The aid organization, which operates in the main hospital in Abs, said it treated more than 300 people wounded the fighting.
A number of women and children in late stages of malnutrition or cholera or with complications from giving birth have died, the group said, without giving figures.
Doctors Without Borders said it is ready to deploy mobile medical teams around the area every day but has only received permission from Houthi authorities for seven days the past month.
/HANI MOHAMMED, AP/ABS/
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