Day: February 23, 2022

A report by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) says climate change will fuel an increase in wildfires in coming decades. The report warns that if preventive measures are not taken, the fires will damage environments, human health, and economies.

The report, released Wednesday ahead of the 5th session of the United Nations Environment Assembly to be held in Nairobi next week, says climate change and how people use land are expected to increase wildfires globally by 50 percent by 2100.

"Most regions experience weather conditions that are conducive to the outbreak of a wildfire at some point in the year," said Andrew Sullivan, a bushfire researcher at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.

"Uncontrollable and devastating wildfires are becoming an expected part of the seasonal calendars in many parts of the world. The risk that wildfire poses to people and the environment is changing due to numerous factors, including but not limited to climate change. Other factors include land-use changes and demographic changes."

Research analysis shows the risk of wildfires has become more frequent in some areas and there is more risk in areas that have been unaffected by fires.

A recent study published in the medical journal The Lancet said more than 30,000 people in 43 countries have died due to exposure to wildfire smoke.

Glynis Humphrey of the Plant conservation unit at the University of Cape Town says fire affects U.N. development goals intended to reduce poverty, improve health and spur economic development.

"It affects food systems," she said. "If a large fire wipes out crops or it impacts on an urban area, it still affects food resources and typically it impacts the poorest of the poor. Fire interacts closely with climate in terms of carbon emissions and rainfall patterns and it impacts human and ecosystem health and it impacts people’s jobs and the economic situation that people find them in. So it's essential that fire is actually incorporated and acknowledged within the sustainable development goals and put on the agenda."

Sullivan says the world needs to learn to manage and mitigate the risks of wildfires.

"Eliminating the risk of wildfires is not possible, but much can be done to manage and reduce the risks that they pose," he saiad. "When it comes to fighting wildfires, we know that technology has very clear limitations, particularly when the wildfire behavior is extreme. Managing the available fuel before a wildfire breaks out through a plant, that is prescribed for hazard reduction burning or other hazard mitigation actions, can reduce the intensity and thus the likely impact of a wildfire. Fuel management will increase the window of effectiveness of suppression actions and also increase firefighters’ safety."

Environmental experts are calling for the use of data and science-based monitoring systems with indigenous knowledge to achieve robust regional and international cooperation.

The report also calls for international safety standards and asks countries to work on policies and laws that encourage good land and fire use.

Source: Voice of America

Experts are calling for increased investment in Africa’s health care infrastructure to support data collection, research and development related to the COVID-19 pandemic and its subsequent impact on African economies.

In a recent discussion on VOA's Straight Talk Africa program titled COVID-19 in Africa: Virus, Variants and Vaccines, experts pointed out that the global health crisis exposed poor health infrastructure on the continent.

Mo Ibrahim, the billionaire founder and chair of the London-based foundation that bears his name, spoke about inequality in vaccine distribution at the height of the pandemic.

“The vaccine apartheid did not help the situation for Africa,'' Ibrahim said. However, he said he remains "quite optimistic that the pandemic in a strange way will help us move forward."

"Going forward, we need to manufacture our own vaccines," he said. "We should not rely on the goodwill or the sensible behavior of others."

Last Friday, the World Health Organization announced that six African nations would be the first on the continent to receive the technology necessary to produce mRNA vaccines. The countries are Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia.

Health experts around the world have raised concerns over the unequal distribution of vaccines. More than 80% of the African continent’s population has yet to receive a single dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to WHO.

"Much of this inequity has been driven by the fact that globally, vaccine production is concentrated in a few mostly high-income countries," WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a European Union-African Union summit last week.

On the panel, Ibrahim highlighted Africa’s weak and overstretched health care system while stressing the lack of adequate investments and the effects of brain drain on health care.

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, more affluent countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development have lured migrant doctors and nurses with measures such as higher pay, temporary licensing and eased entry, the OECD has reported.

WHO recommends at least one physician for every thousand people. Some African countries, such as Ghana and Chad, had as few as 0.1 medical doctors per thousand in 2019, according to World Bank data.

Panelist Aloysius Uche Ordu dispelled the assumption that infectious diseases always come from poor countries.

"We tend to look at Africa as the place where infectious diseases start. Well, that did not happen with COVID," said Ordu, who directs the Africa Growth Initiative at Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank. "COVID started with a rich country and spread to other rich countries. In fact, Africa came into the picture later on."

An official with the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the continent has done a laudable job of dealing with the virus.

"We have kept the numbers low. We have mobilized our political leadership from the very top all the way down to our technical teams," said Dr. Ahmed Ogwell Ouma, deputy director of the Africa CDC. "We have mobilized the public, and Africa has largely addressed this pandemic as a group. And this is unprecedented, and I will give us a very, very good mark."

But the dean of health sciences at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa disagrees.

Professor Sabir Madhi noted that his country's disproportionately high COVID-19 death toll is largely due to "much more robust" contact tracing and data collation tools than other African nations.

South Africans "constitute less than 5% of the African population yet have contributed 45% of all (COVID-19-related) deaths on the African continent," he said.

The country of nearly 60 million people has Africa’s highest number of recorded infections and deaths — a total of 3.6 million cases and nearly 99,000 deaths as of this week, according to the Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center. The center has recorded more than 420 million COVID-19 cases globally and nearly 6 million deaths.

South Africa is emerging from a fourth wave of the pandemic, largely driven by the omicron variant. According to local scientists, the variant no longer leads to high hospitalization rates and deaths in the country, a huge relief for a population reeling under lockdown fatigue.

Madhi told VOA the continent has failed to learn from experiences with the 2009 swine flu, which emphasized the need for good data collection.

He added that "the impact of the pandemic on Africa will, unfortunately, be realized only after the pandemic has passed."

US support

The United States has committed to helping the world combat the virus. President Joe Biden pledged to donate over 1.2 billion doses through COVAX, the international vaccine-sharing initiative supported by the U.N. and the health organizations Gavi and CEPI. The initiative aims to ensure the equitable distribution of vaccines to developing countries.

So far, the U.S. has donated more than 450 million doses globally, with more than 120 million doses going to 43 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the State Department.

Ordu said it has become imperative to strengthen STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) in Africa. This, he contended, would be a sure way to overcome any future health crisis.

"Because of the growing youthful population in Africa, it is important that STEM education is an area of focus, particularly for women and girls," he said.

Source: Voice of America

The U.N. peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic has rejected accusations that four of its personnel who were arrested Monday were engaged in suspicious activity. The C.A.R.’s public prosecutor said the four men, arrested at the airport shortly before the arrival of the country’s president, were heavily armed.

The U.N. peacekeeping mission, known as MINUSCA, is demanding the release of the four peacekeepers, all French soldiers.

C.A.R. authorities have not filed any charges against the men, but the country’s public prosecutor said on national radio that an investigation is open on the case.

He said the four men “were arrested aboard a suspicious vehicle… carrying a heavy military arsenal.”

Right after the arrest, messages on social media accused the peacekeepers of planning to assassinate C.A.R. President Faustin-Archange Touadéra, whose plane was about to land at the airport.

MINUSCA spokesperson Vladimir Monteiro dismissed the accusations during a press conference on Wednesday.

"We have nothing to hide, he said. MINUSCA is here as a partner, as a friend. What’s said on social media is disinformation," he said. "MINUSCA regrets the incident of Monday, February 21st and condemns again the intent to manipulate public opinion and firmly rejects the accusations of attacking state security."

The four military personnel remain in police custody, but they are being treated well, says a source at the U.N. peacekeeping mission.

The C.A.R. government has refused to comment the case.

Source: Voice of America