Day: July 21, 2022

GENEVA— The World Health Organization will reconvene its expert monkeypox committee on Thursday to decide whether the outbreak now constitutes a global health emergency — the highest alarm it can sound.

A second meeting of the WHO’s emergency committee on the virus will be held to examine the evidence on the worsening situation, with nearly 14,000 cases reported from more than 70 countries.

A surge in monkeypox infections has been reported since early May outside the West and Central African countries where the disease has long been endemic.

On June 23, the WHO convened an emergency committee of experts to decide if monkeypox constitutes a so-called Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) — the UN health agency’s highest alert level.

But a majority advised the WHO’s chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus that the situation, at that point, had not met the threshold.

Now a second meeting will be held, with case numbers rising and spreading to six more countries in the past week.

If the committee advises Tedros that the outbreak constitutes a PHEIC, it will propose temporary recommendations on how to better prevent and reduce the spread of the disease and manage the global public health response.

But there is no timetable for when the outcome will be made public.

Ninety-eight percent of reported cases “are among men who have sex with men (MSM) — and primarily those who have multiple recent anonymous or new partners,” Rosamund Lewis, the WHO’s technical lead for monkeypox, told a press conference on Wednesday.

They are typically of young age and chiefly in urban areas, according to the WHO.

The committee will look at the latest trends and data, how effective the countermeasures are and make recommendations for what countries and communities should do to tackle the outbreak.

Regardless of the committee’s PHEIC decision, the “WHO will continue to do everything we can to support countries to stop transmission and save lives,” Tedros told the press conference.

He said the WHO was validating, procuring and shipping tests to multiple countries, but said one of the most powerful tools in the fight against monkeypox was information.

“That’s why WHO is continuing to work with patients and community advocates to develop and deliver information tailored to the affected communities,” Tedros said.

WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan said the LGBTQ community was one of the most engaged and responsible, having worked hard over decades to combat HIV, “so therefore we have full confidence that this community can, and will, and is, engaging very closely”.

A viral infection resembling smallpox and first detected in humans in 1970, monkeypox is less dangerous and contagious than smallpox, which was eradicated in 1980.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said that as of Monday, 7,896 confirmed cases had been reported from 27 countries in the European Economic Area.

The worst affected were Spain (2,835), Germany (1,924), France (912), the Netherlands (656) and Portugal (515).

“Particular sexual practices are very likely to have facilitated and could further facilitate the transmission of monkeypox among MSM groups,” it said.

Danish company Bavarian Nordic is the lone laboratory manufacturing a licensed vaccine against monkeypox and jabs are currently in scarce supply.

New York, the epicentre of the US outbreak with more than 460 cases, had either administered or scheduled 21,500 vaccines by Sunday, with long lines of men aged 20 to 40 queueing to get a shot.

Loyce Pace, the US assistant secretary of state for global public affairs, said it was “very hard” for the world to handle monkeypox on top of Covid-19 and other health crises.

“I know it can be scary… and, frankly, exhausting,” she told reporters at the US mission in Geneva.

However, “we know a lot more about this disease, we’ve been able to stop outbreaks previously and we, importantly, have medical counter-measures and other tools available.”

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

Police in Malawi said about 76 protesters are expected to appear in court Friday to face charges of unlawful assembly and inciting violence. This follows their arrest Wednesday when protests against the high cost of living led to clashes with police and the looting of shops in the capital, Lilongwe.

The clashes started after the High Court of Malawi granted an injunction to business owners who wanted to block the protesters, fearing property damage.

“So we understand they did not agree with that and they wanted to proceed despite the injunction,” said Harry Namwaza, the deputy spokesperson for the Malawi Police Service. “Now, you will understand that where there is an injunction as law enforcers, we cannot allow an action to proceed. That is contempt of court. So we reasoned with them, but it seems they did not want to listen.”

Namwaza also said the protesters started marching anyway, resulting in clashes with police who tried to stop them.

“They now started blocking the road, they started damaging other people’s shops, stoning cars and causing all sorts of damages in other areas,” he said. “And we fired tear gas and in the course we arrested 76 people who were perpetrating the violence.”

Those arrested include four leaders of the Human Rights Ambassadors group, which organized the demonstrations.

Some rights campaigners accused the police of using excessive force in trying to stop the protest.

“Actually, the mandate of Malawi Police Service is to ensure that they protect the rights and property of Malawians, not to fight them,” said Sylvester Namiwa, executive director of the Center for Democracy and Economic Development Initiatives. “Police should have been there just to provide that necessary security. A lot of those things could have been avoided. So it’s the careless approach in the way we handle the issue, nothing else.”

Namwaza said tear gas was the best weapon available to stop the violence.

“We have rifles, we have tear gas, and we have rubber bullets,” he said. “We assessed each and every situation. So people may give all sorts of comments but what we are saying is that before we start firing tear gas, we assess situations.”

Government spokesperson Gospel Kazako said as much as the government respects people’s rights to hold peaceful demonstrations, it is unfortunate that organizers of Wednesday’s protests defied a court order to stop the planned protests.

“If a court issued an injunction, I think it was very important for those that had organized these demonstrations to comply,” he said. “You cannot be above the law, regardless of who you are.”

Police spokesperson Namwaza said those arrested Wednesday have been charged with inciting violence, unlawful assembly and contempt of court.

Rights campaigner Namiwa said similar nationwide demonstrations are planned for next week Thursday.

Source: Voice of America

An unvaccinated young adult from New York recently contracted polio, the first U.S. case in nearly a decade, health officials said Thursday.

Officials said the patient, who lives in Rockland County, had developed paralysis. The person developed symptoms a month ago and did not recently travel outside the country, county health officials said.

It appears the patient had a vaccine-derived strain of the virus, perhaps from someone who got live vaccine — available in other countries, but not the U.S. — and spread it, officials said.

The person is no longer deemed contagious, but investigators are trying to figure out how the infection occurred and whether other people may have been exposed to the virus.

Most Americans are vaccinated against polio, but unvaccinated people may be at risk, said Rockland County Health Commissioner Dr. Patricia Schnabel Ruppert. Health officials scheduled vaccination clinics nearby soon and encouraged anyone who has not been vaccinated to get the shots.

“We want shots in the arms of those who need it,” she said at a Thursday press conference announcing the case.

Feared disease

Polio was once one of the nation’s most feared diseases, with annual outbreaks causing thousands of cases of paralysis, many of them in children.

Vaccines became available starting in 1955, and a national vaccination campaign cut the annual number of U.S. cases to fewer than 100 in the 1960s and fewer than 10 in the 1970s, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Source: Voice of America