Day: August 19, 2022

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Horn of Africa ‘Cannot wait’: WFP scales up assistance as historic drought raises famine threat

AIROBI – The UN World Food Programme (WFP) is expanding assistance in the Horn of Africa as levels of hunger soar after back-to-back droughts and the threat of famine looms. Since the start of the year, nine million more people have slipped into severe food insecurity across Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, leaving 22 million people struggling to find enough food to eat.

WFP Executive Director David Beasley on Thursday wrapped up a visit to drought-ravaged Somalia, where over seven million people – close to half the population – are acutely food insecure and 213,000 are already facing famine-like conditions. Beasley visited the southern city of Baardheere and met families – including malnourished children and their mothers - forced to leave their homes and travel long distances through conflict-wracked areas in search of humanitarian assistance.

“People here have been waiting years for rain - but they cannot wait any longer for life-saving food assistance. The world needs to act now to protect the most vulnerable communities from the threat of widespread famine in the Horn of Africa,” said Beasley. “There is still no end in sight to this drought crisis, so we must get the resources needed to save lives and stop people plunging into catastrophic levels of hunger and starvation.”

WFP is tripling the number of people reached with life-saving food assistance in the Baardheere area, which hosts tens of thousands of people driven from their homes by drought and conflict,

Across the Horn of Africa, the drought is expected to continue in coming months, with a fifth poor rainy season forecast later this year. WFP has focused available funds, including critical emergency funding from USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, on scaling up life-saving assistance in areas worst hit by the drought. WFP is targeting 8.5 million people across the Horn of Africa, up from 6.3 million at the start of the year.

Across the three drought-affected countries, WFP is providing food and cash assistance to families and distributing fortified foods to women and young children to treat spiralling rates of malnutrition and prevent more people among some of the most vulnerable communities slipping closer towards famine. WFP cash grants and insurance schemes are also helping families to buy food to keep livestock alive or to compensate them when their animals die.

At the start of the year, WFP warned that 13 million people in the Horn of Africa were facing acute food insecurity due to the drought. By mid-year, with the fourth consecutive failure of rains, that number increased to 20 million. Now, the number is projected to rise again to at least 22 million by September. This number will continue to climb, and the severity of hunger will deepen if the next rainy season (October to December) fails and the most vulnerable people do not receive humanitarian relief. Needs will remain high into 2023 and famine is now a serious risk, particularly in Somalia.

Across the Horn, livestock are dying and there are acute shortages of water and food. So far 1.1 million people have been forced from their homes by the drought, ending up in crowded camps where the humanitarian community is struggling to keep pace with the demand for food, shelter, and healthcare.

During the 2016/17 drought in the Horn of Africa, catastrophe was avoided through early action. Humanitarian assistance was scaled up before there was widespread hunger, saving lives and averting a devastating famine. WFP is doing everything possible to support those most in need, but with no end in sight to this drought, some US$418 millionisurgently neededover the next six monthsto meet these increasing needs.

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In** Ethiopia,** WFP aims to provide food and cash relief assistance to 3.3 million people in the drought-hit Somali Region (59% of the population) but is currently only able to reach 2.4 million due to funding shortages. WFP’s malnutrition treatment programmes are targeting almost 850,000 women and children in drought-affected areas. WFP’s first humanitarian shipment of grain from Ukraine is on route to Ethiopia, where it will go towards feeding 1.53 million people for a month.

In Kenya, WFP is rapidly scaling up to reach 535,000 drought-affected people by the end of August – up from 108,000 reached in the first half of 2022. WFP is also expanding its malnutrition treatment programmes to reach 210,000 malnourished children and 105,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women in 15 drought-affected counties – up from 8 counties.

In Somalia, WFP is continuing to scale up emergency food support to reach 4.5 million people in the coming months. In July, WFP reached a record 3.7 million people with life-saving food assistance, the highest ever reached in a single month, and a significant increase from 1.7 million people supported in April. WFP has also nearly doubled targets for its malnutrition treatment programme, aiming to provide 444,000 young children and mothers with nutrition support.

Source: World Food Programme

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Covid-19: WHO experts back second booster for most at risk

GENEVA— The World Health Organization’s vaccine advisers recommended that people most at risk from Covid-19 should be offered a second booster dose to increase their immunity.

The Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunisation (SAGE) said following initial vaccination, typically consisting of two doses, and an already recommended first booster dose, specific groups of people should be offered an additional jab.

“We are doing this on the basis obviously of observations in relation to waning immunity and particularly in the context of Omicron,” WHO senior health advisor Joachim Hornbach told reporters via video link.

The UN health agency has already recommended that all adults receive a booster shot four to six months after an initial round of vaccination, typically consisting of two jabs.

But SAGE chairman Alejandro Cravioto stressed that Thursday’s recommendation for a second booster after another four to six months had passed was only meant for the “populations at the highest risk.”

It “does not constitute a general recommendation of vaccinating all adults after the first booster”, he told the virtual press briefing.

SAGE said second boosters should be offered to the elderly and all immunocompromised people, pregnant women, as well as those with conditions like diabetes, hypertension and cardiac, lung and kidney disease that put them at higher risk.

Health workers of all ages should also get the additional jab, Cravioto said, insisting on the need to “protect our health systems from the devastation of having its personnel sick and not at work.”

Looking forward, the SAGE experts pointed to “significant uncertainties related to the evolution of the virus, the characteristics of future variants, and the trajectory of the epidemic given increasing vaccine- and infection-induced immunity globally.”

“It is likely that additional doses may be needed within 4-12 months after the second booster, especially in persons most vulnerable to severe disease and death,” they said.

For now, the booster recommendations are for the available vaccines developed to tackle the initial Covid-19 strain.

WHO has said it will evaluate new jabs being developed by vaccine makers like Moderna and Pfizer that are adapted to target new, fast-spreading Omicron variants.

But SAGE stressed that current vaccines appeared to continue providing high protection “against severe disease in the context of the Omicron variant and its sub-lineages.”

Second boosters for at-risk populations “should not be delayed in anticipation of future variant-containing vaccines”, they said.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

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Horn of Africa – Complex Emergency Fact Sheet #2, Fiscal Year (FY) 2022

Situation at a Glance

• An estimated 18.6 to 21.1 million people required emergency food assistance to meet basic needs across Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia as of July, with the number projected to rise in the event of a fifth consecutive poor rainy season in late 2022.

• High levels of acute food and nutrition insecurity in areas of Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia are likely to persist through at least January 2023 due to drought.

• Drought has displaced more than one million people across Somalia since January 2021.

Source: US Agency for International Development

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WHO Approves Lifesaving Ebola Drugs

The World Health Organization says clinical evidence shows two monoclonal antibody treatments are effective at saving the lives of many people stricken with the deadly Ebola virus.

The action follows a systematic review and analysis of randomized clinical trials of therapeutics for the disease.

WHO Team Lead for Clinical Care Janet Diaz says the evidence underpinning the recommendations comes from two clinical trials. The largest was done in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2018 and 2019.

She says the trials were conducted during Ebola outbreaks, demonstrating quality control trials can be done even under the most difficult circumstances.

“The evidence synthesis that informs this guideline shows that mAb114 and Regeneron-EB3 reduced mortality. The relative risk reduction was about 60 percent…Between 230 to 400 lives saved per 1,000 patients. Translate that into the number needed to treat, you treat two to four patients, and you save one life.”

Ebola hemorrhagic fever is spread through blood or body fluids of a person who is sick with or has died of the disease. The worst Ebola outbreak occurred in West Africa between 2014 and 2016. Of the nearly 29,000 reported cases, more than 11,300 people died.

Diaz calls the development of monoclonal antibody therapeutics a very important advancement. However, she notes the drug itself is not the only solution. She says it must be given in a comprehensive, clinical setting along with other treatments.

“That includes early diagnosis so that treatments can be given as soon as possible and also the implementation of appropriate infection prevention and control to stop transmission…and treatment of co-infections and access to nutrition, psycho-social support, and, of course, access to care after discharge.”

Diaz says the two recommended therapeutics have shown clear benefits for people of all ages. She says they can be used on all patients confirmed positive for Ebola virus disease. That, she says, includes older people, pregnant and breastfeeding women, children, and babies born to mothers with confirmed Ebola within the first seven days after birth.

Source: Voice of America