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Monkeypox infections continue to rise globally, with more than 35,000 cases across 92 countries and territories, and 12 deaths, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Wednesday.

“Almost 7,500 cases were reported last week, a 20 per cent increase over the previous week, which was also 20 per cent more than the week before,” said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, speaking during his regular press briefing from Geneva.

The majority of cases are being reported from Europe and the Americas, and mostly among men who have sex with men.

“The primary focus for all countries must be to ensure they are ready for monkeypox, and to stop transmission using effective public health tools, including enhanced disease surveillance, careful contact tracing, tailored risk communication and community engagement, and risk reduction measures,” said Tedros.

Currently, global supplies of Monkeypox vaccines are limited, as is data about their effectiveness. WHO is in contact with manufacturers, and with countries and organizations willing to share vaccine doses.

“We remain concerned that the inequitable access to vaccines we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic will be repeated, and that the poorest will continue to be left behind,” said Tedros.

COVID-19 deaths have also increased over the last four weeks, rising by 35 per cent, with 15,000 lives lost in the past week alone.

“Fifteen thousand deaths a week is completely unacceptable, when we have all the tools to prevent infections and save lives,” Tedros remarked.

Although everyone might be tired of COVID-19, “the virus is not tired of us,” he said.

Omicron remains the dominant variant, with the BA.5 sub-variant accounting for more than 90 per cent of genome sequences shared in the last month.

Tedros reported that it is becoming harder to understand how the virus might be changing.

The number of sequences shared per week has fallen by 90 per cent since the beginning of the year, and the number of countries sharing sequences has also dropped by 75 per cent.

He warned that with colder weather approaching in the northern hemisphere, and people spending more time indoors, the risk for more intense transmissions will only increase.

“But none of us is helpless please get vaccinated if you are not, and if you need a booster, get one,” he advised, in addition to measures such as wearing a mask and avoiding crowds, especially indoors.

“There is a lot of talk about learning to live with this virus. But we cannot live with 15,000 deaths a week”.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

UNITED NATIONS— British pharmaceutical company GSK has been awarded a contract to produce the world’s first malaria vaccine so that millions more children will be protected against the killer disease, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) announced.

The landmark award, valued at up to 170 million U.S. dollars, will lead to 18 million doses of the RTS,S vaccine available over the next three years, potentially saving thousands of young lives annually.

Children under five are still among the most vulnerable to malaria. In 2020, nearly half a million boys and girls died from the disease in Africa alone, a rate of one death every minute.

Etleva Kadilli, director of UNICEF’s Supply Division, said the rollout sends a clear message to malaria vaccine developers to continue their work.

“We hope this is just the beginning. Continued innovation is needed to develop new and next-generation vaccines to increase available supply, and enable a healthier vaccine market,” she said.

“This is a giant step forward in our collective efforts to save children’s lives and reduce the burden of malaria as part of wider malaria prevention and control programs,” she added.

Malaria is caused by parasites and transmitted to humans through infected female Anopheles mosquitoes. While the disease is preventable and curable, it can be fatal if left untreated.

More than 30 countries have areas with moderate to high malaria transmission, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), and the vaccine could provide added protection to more than 25 million children each year once supply ramps up.

The RTS,S malaria vaccine, a result of 35 years of research and development, is the first-ever vaccine against a parasitic disease.

It was launched in a 2019 pilot program, coordinated by WHO, in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi, and has reached more than 800,000 children.

In October last year, the UN health agency recommended its widespread use in countries with moderate to high malaria transmission.

UNICEF expects that demand for the malaria vaccine will be high among affected countries.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

HARARE— An outbreak of measles in Zimbabwe has killed at least 157 children with the death toll nearly doubling in just under a week, the government said.

The total number of suspected cases across the country has risen from 1,036 to 2,056 in the space of just four days, the information minister Monica Mutsvangwa said. The health ministry earlier blamed gatherings of religious sects for the outbreak.

The first infection was logged earlier this month. Most reported cases involve children between the ages of six months and 15 years from religious sects who do not believe in vaccination.

“It has been noted that most cases have not received vaccination to protect against measles. Government has invoked the Civil Protection Unit Act to deal with this emergency,” Mutsvangwa said.

According to Mutsvangwa, the Zimbabwean government was looking to work with traditional and religious leaders to gain their support for the vaccination campaign.

She also said the government would step up vaccinations and cited special legislation allowing it to draw money from the national disaster fund “to deal with the emergency.”

The measles virus mainly affects children with some of the more serious complications including blindness, brain swelling, diarrhea and severe respiratory infections. Once very common, the virus can now be prevented with a vaccine.

In April, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Africa was facing an explosion of preventable diseases due to delays in vaccinating children, with measles cases rising by 400 percent.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

The director-general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said Wednesday that Ethiopia's conflict-ridden province of Tigray is the worst humanitarian and man-made disaster on Earth.

The WHO chief said more than 6 million people in Tigray have been under siege by Ethiopia and Eritrea for nearly two years. He said they have been sealed off from the outside world with no electricity, no banking services, and only limited fuel supplies.

Tedros said a trickle of food aid and medicine has been reaching the beleaguered northern province since a truce between the Ethiopian government and Tigray rebel forces was declared in late March. The population is still facing multiple outbreaks of diseases, including malaria, anthrax and cholera, he added.

"Nowhere in the world would you see this level of cruelty, where ... a government punishes 6 million of its people for more than 21 months by denying them basic services," he said.

The 57-year-old Tedros is not a neutral observer of the Tigray conflict. He is a native of the region, served as a Tigray regional health official in the early 2000s, and later spent more than a decade in the Ethiopian government, first as minister of health, then as minister of foreign affairs.

Tedros noted that peace talks for the Tigray conflict are ongoing. However, he said, they are leading nowhere because powerful countries in the developed world are not using their influence to make it happen.

He said all eyes are focused on the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine, to the detriment of the tragedy playing out in Tigray.

"The humanitarian crisis in Tigray is more than Ukraine without any exaggeration," Tedros said. "And, I said this many months ago, maybe the reason is the color of the skin of the people in Tigray. … This is the worst disaster on Earth as we speak. I am from Tigray. It is not because I am from Tigray I am saying this. That is the truth."

Tedros said he is appealing to the Ethiopian government to resolve the conflict in Tigray peacefully. He said he also is appealing to the Russian government to end the war in Ukraine and choose peace.

He said both the Ethiopian and Russian governments can make peace happen if they choose to do so.

Source: Voice of America

Health officials in Zimbabwe are attempting to contain a measles outbreak that has infected more than 2,000 people and killed at least 157 children. The country’s health ministry blames the outbreak on religious sects that are against vaccinations. The government wants all children vaccinated before schools reopen in early September.

Zimbabwe’s information minister, Monica Mutsvangwa, said the infectious viral disease - which causes a fever and a red rash - was rampant in Manicaland province, which borders Mozambique.

She said 1,270 cases and 122 deaths had been recorded in the province as of Tuesday.

“All the victims had not received vaccinations against measles. Government has invoked Civil Protection Unit Act to deal with the emergency, and the Ministry of Health and Child Care is on the ground carrying out an intensive vaccination program," Mutsvangwa said. "Cabinet has directed the Ministry of Health and Child Care to engage traditional and faith leaders for their support on the vaccination program.

The government is trying to vaccinate all children between ages six and 15 with the help of U.N. agencies such as UNICEF and the World Health Organization, said July Moyo, Zimbabwe’s minister of local government.

Moyo said the goal is to finish the vaccinations as soon as possible.

“The Civil Protection Unit met to analyze what has to be done. What they are sure of is that this spread (of measles) now needs to be tackled as an emergency," Moyo said. "We have now mobilized resources to make sure that the children are vaccinated before schools open. This July and August, we have a lot of churches that assemble and we think that is the way this measles can be spread so we are targeting those, so that they can be vaccinated.”

Dr. Cleophas Chimbetete, president of Zimbabwe College of Public Health Physicians, says the government must continue talking to religious leaders of sects that do not believe in vaccination to prevent more measles outbreaks.

“This is the second one and it’s sad because measles is one of the vaccine preventable diseases of childhood... Such an outbreak shows that things really are not functioning as they should in terms of our public health system.... In this case, you realize that the majority of children that are being affected belong to a certain sect and sadly this sect does not consent to vaccination of children," Chimbetete said.

A previous measles outbreak in Manicaland province in May affected 137 people and caused about 20 deaths.

Source: Voice of America