Month: September 2021

The United Nations’ top humanitarian official in Yemen says that while widespread famine was averted in the country earlier this year with a surge in donor support, the situation is fragile and many essential programs remain at risk of further cuts.
“It’s not enough that we just got that one push, we need a continuous stream of support coming in over the next weeks into 2022,” David Gressly told VOA. “And until this crisis is solved politically, this situation on the ground will persist.”
Seven years of war between the Saudi-backed government of President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi and Iranian-supported Houthi rebels has pushed the Middle East’s poorest country to the brink.
Ongoing U.N. efforts to broker a nationwide cease-fire, reopen Sana’a airport, ease restrictions on the flow of fuel and other imports through Hodeidah port, and get direct talks going again have been unsuccessful.
More than 20 million Yemenis – in a population of around 30 million – need humanitarian assistance. The World Food Program says 16 million of them are “marching towards starvation,” due to a combination of conflict and a crippling economic crisis.
The situation of children is especially critical: the U.N. says one child dies every 10 minutes from preventable causes, including malnutrition and vaccine-preventable diseases.
The United Nations has appealed for nearly $4 billion to meet needs through December. Gressly said they have received about $2.6 billion in cash and pledges, casting uncertainty over the future of some assistance.
In March, there was a severe shortage of humanitarian funding for Yemen, which caused WFP to halve rations to people already in dire need. An injection of cash from major donors, including the United States, Germany, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, helped restore them to full rations, but Gressly said without sustained funding, his “greatest fear” is this could happen again.
WFP’s executive director, David Beasley, warned last week that without more money, his agency may have to cut rations to 3.2 million people by October, and by December that number could grow to 5 million people.
While funding to food and nutrition programs is up, Gressly said other essential sectors including health, water and sanitation are 80-85% underfunded.
Affordability crisis
Gressly, who took up his post in March, says food and other items are available in most of Yemen’s urban markets, but with rampant inflation driving up prices, unemployment, exhausted savings, and civil servants not being paid, people simply do not have the money to buy things.
“It’s an affordability crisis,” he said.
“That’s why we need to find a complementary strategy, one that addresses not only humanitarian assistance directly to those in need, but also an economic one that takes a look at what can — even in the context of a conflict — what can be done to help revive at least, in part, the economy,” he added.
Pandemic
Yemen’s already overstretched health care system is also coping with a third wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
While confirmed cases have been low compared to other countries – just over 9,000 according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center – there has been a high proportion of deaths – more than 1,700.
Gressly said vaccinations have also been very slow to roll out and it will take years to vaccinate the entire country.
“The bigger issue is probably twofold: one is getting enough vaccine in the country — we’re not getting anywhere near enough for the population, maybe between 1 and 2 percent,” he said. “So that’s not going to make a major difference on its own.”
The vaccine alliance, COVAX, has allocated nearly 3 million doses for Yemen. Only 868,000 have been shipped so far.
“Secondly, there’s a lot of hesitation in the south and denial by authorities in the north on the reality of COVID and the necessity for vaccination,” he noted of the different factions in control of Yemen’s territory.
Earlier this week, Gressly met with USAID officials in Washington, where he pressed for continued humanitarian funding into next year and support for economic initiatives.
The United States pledged an additional $290 million to humanitarian efforts in Yemen at a donors conference on the sidelines of last week’s U.N. General Assembly. It has provided nearly $806 million in humanitarian assistance since last October.

Source: Voice of America

Ms Ien is Phunoi and 21 years old. She lives in Ngapoung village, Phongsaly district, with her husband’s family composed of five people including her two children. Their main activity is tea leaves collection and selling. “Because collecting the tea leaves takes a lot of time, I gave my first child rice and powdered milk when he was three months old. But the facilitator from the EU-funded SCALING project explained what to do for pregnant women and their babies. Now I’ve got a second child and he is nine months old. I will continue to breastfeed and give him some other food. I see he is growing very well and has good health”. The Sustainable Change Achieved through Linking Improved Nutrition and Governance (SCALING) project aims to improve food and nutrition security in 420 villages in 14 districts in Huaphan, Luang Namtha, Luang Prabang and Phongsaly provinces in Northern Laos with a special focus on adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women, and children under 5 years old.
Did you know that breastfeeding within the first hour of birth (colostrum) protects new-born babies from infections and saves lives?
The means or the ends. In other words, infant formula manufacturers have a duty to elevate the sales of baby formula and convince new mothers of the benefits of their nutritional product compared to breastfeeding. Their for-profit agenda leads to adverse health impacts through misleading and faulty advertising activities.
The Government of the Lao PDR has reached an important milestone to control the damage by adopting the International Code of Marketing Breast-milk Substitutes in December 2019, locally named as “Decree on Food Products and Feeding Equipment for Infants and Toddlers”.
The decree aims to protect and promote breastfeeding by prohibiting unethical marketing activities aiming to promote breast milk substitutes. By applying international and national regulations, the detrimental effects on breastfeeding success caused by baby formula promotions could be limited, preventing the increase in misperceptions among mothers about the benefits of using infant formula.
However, despite the presence of multiple laws and international legislation safeguarding the importance of breastfeeding, poor enforcement of these regulations still exists. Therefore, the nationwide implementation and support of breastfeeding can significantly contribute to the improvement of maternal health and child health, and thus reduce the burden of morbidities and mortalities occurring within these two population groups.
The Lao PDR has shown significant improvements in the nutritional status of children under 5 over the past 10 years. Nevertheless, breastfeeding rates are still low; 45% of infants under six months are exclusively breastfed (Lao Statistics Bureau & Ministry of Health, 2016).
The European Union cooperation with the Lao PDR is very much attached to the Nutrition cause with special attention to the 1,000 days. By applying a multi-dimensional approach, EU-funded projects in the Lao PDR support the implementation of the National Nutrition Strategy (2016-2025) from national to village levels, and address nutrition through behaviour change, health systems strengthening, gender equality, water, sanitation and hygiene, nutrition-sensitive agriculture and coordination across different line ministries.
Budget support is central to European Union’s international cooperation; it involves direct financial transfers to the national treasury engaging in sustainable development reforms. In the Lao PDR, the EU cooperation supports directly the State budget to accomplish specific targets in the nutrition agenda up to 2022, including the national decree on ‘infant and young child product control’, among others (BMS decree).
The EU cooperation continues to support the nutrition community in dissemination and monitoring of the BMS Decree across the country at different levels to protect breastfeeding and promote good nutrition and wellbeing for all Lao people.

Source: Lao News Agency

Fifteen African countries have succeeded in fully vaccinating at least 10 percent of their populations against COVID-19 by September 30, a goal set by the World Health Organization in May. However, that leaves two-thirds of the continent’s 54 nations extremely vulnerable to the deadly disease.
Several countries have performed extremely well. Seychelles and Mauritius have fully vaccinated more than 60 percent of their populations and Morocco has inoculated 48 percent against the coronavirus.
Richard Mihigo is coordinator of the Vaccine-preventable Diseases Department in the WHO’s regional office for Africa. He said those countries were able to achieve and even excede the 10 percent target because they had a steady vaccine supply available.
He said most had the money to strike bilateral deals to procure vaccine in addition to the supplies delivered through the COVAX facility.
“Unfortunately, 70 percent of African countries have missed this important milestone to protect their most vulnerable, with half of the 52 countries with COVID-19 vaccination programs in Africa having inoculated less than two percent of their populations,” said Mihigo.
That compares to an inoculation rate of 50 percent or higher in wealthier countries.
The WHO reports monthly vaccine deliveries to Africa have increased 10-fold since June. However, it notes more than double that amount is needed to reach the 40 percent immunization target of Africa’s 1.3 billion people by the end of the year.
Mihigo said COVAX is identifying countries that do not have the means to procure vaccines and put them in the front of the line to get enough doses to cover their most at-risk populations. However, he said pledges of doses by wealthier countries need to materialize soon.
“Starting next week, we are sending multi-disciplinary teams of international experts to countries that are struggling to scale up their operations so that we can drill down and identify the bottlenecks so that the local authorities and their partners can remedy them as they continue to rollout the vaccines,” said Mihigo.
On a more positive note, the World Health Organization says COVID-19 infections in Africa dropped by 35 percent to just over 74,000 last week, with more than 1,700 deaths reported in 34 countries.
Despite the declining numbers, the WHO warns people must remain vigilant and continue to adhere to proven public health measures to save lives. Those include the wearing of masks, regular hand washing, and physical distancing.

Source: Voice of America

Some 358 new cases of Covid-19 have been recorded nationwide over the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 23,846 including 5,441 active cases and 19 deaths, according to Director General of the Department of Communicable Disease Control, Ministry of Health, Dr Rattanaxay Phetsouvanh.
Some 296 patients were discharged from hospital today.
“Of the new confirmed cases, 337 were classified as local infections and 21 as imported cases,” Dr Rattanaxay told a press conference today. “They were detected among 6,337 people tested for Covid-19 yesterday.”
The local infections were detected in Vientiane 128, Luang Prabang 71, Savannakhet 35, Vientiane (Province) 24, Champassak 20, Xaysomboun 16, Borikhamxay 15, Bokeo 14, Khammuan 11 and Attapeu 3.
The imported cases included 15 in Saravan, three each in Savannakhet and Borikhamxay.

Source: Lao News Agency