Day: June 20, 2022

Little Fletcher Pack woke up Monday morning and asked: “Is today vaccine day?”

For the 3-year-old from Lexington, South Carolina, the answer was yes.

The nation’s infants, toddlers and preschoolers are finally getting their chance at COVID-19 vaccination as the U.S. rolls out shots for tots this week. Shipments arrived in some locations over the weekend and some spots, including a Walgreens in South Carolina and another in New York City, opened appointments for Monday.

Fletcher’s mother said that once her son is fully vaccinated, he can finally go bowling and visit the nearby children’s museum.

“He’s never really played with another kid inside before,” McKenzie Pack said. “This will be a really big change for our family.”

She began seeking an appointment last week as U.S. regulators took steps to OK the vaccines for kids 6 months to 5 years old.

“It’s just a relief,” said Pack. “With this vaccine, that’ll be his best shot at going back to normal and having a normal childhood.”

The Food and Drug Administration greenlighted the Moderna and Pfizer kid shots Friday and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended them Saturday. In the U.S., COVID-19 vaccines were first tested and given in late 2020 to health care workers and older adults. Teens and school-age kids were added last year.

“This is certainly an exciting moment in what has become a very long campaign to vaccinate people against COVID-19,” said Dr. Matthew Harris, an emergency room pediatrician at Northwell Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New York.

Many parents have been anxiously awaiting the rollout, and Harris said shots for his own 9-month-old are a “matter of when, not if.”

Roughly 18 million youngsters under 5 are eligible.

“It’s just a huge step toward normalcy,” said Dr. Debra Langlois, pediatrician at University of Michigan Health C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital.

“We’re two-plus years into this pandemic and there’s things that my 4-year-old has never been able to do,” Langlois said.

The family skipped a trip to Disneyland and a popular Michigan vacation island because the ferry ride to Mackinac Island would mean mingling with unmasked passengers.

President Joe Biden, public health authorities and pediatricians hailed the moment. But they also acknowledged that getting some parents on board may be a challenge given disappointing vaccination rates — about 30% — in school-age kids.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and American Medical Association were among physician groups that encouraged doctors and families to get young children vaccinated.

The CDC advises vaccination even for those who already had COVID-19 to protect against reinfection, and says it is OK to get other vaccines at the same time. For the littlest kids, there’s Pfizer’s three-shot series or Moderna’s two shots.

In New York’s largely Latino neighborhood of Washington Heights, Dr. Juan Tapia Mendoza’s clinic has ordered 300 doses of the tot-sized vaccines. He said he needs educational materials that directly address misinformation spreading among parents.

His approach will be to tell parents “If they were my kids, I would vaccinate them.”

“Because the virus is still around. A lot of people are still dying because of coronavirus Kids do get infected and some kids get severely affected and nobody wants to see a child very sick.”

Some hospitals planned vaccination events later this week.

Chicago is among locations that offer COVID-19 shots in people’s homes and planned to open registration this week for home appointments for infants and other young children, said Maribel Chavez-Torres, a deputy commission for the city’s department of public health.

Dr. Pam Zeitlin, director of pediatric medicine at National Jewish Health in Denver, recommends parents get their kids vaccinated as soon as possible.

“Some parents are afraid that the younger the child, the more vulnerable they might be to vaccine side effects,” Zeitlin said, but that’s not what Pfizer and Moderna studies found. Side effects were like what is seen with other childhood vaccines — fever, irritability and fatigue.

Source: Voice of America

In honor of World Refugee Day, we are publishing this story from the Water Mission 2022 Summer Newsletter on June 20. This year, World Refugee Day focuses on every person’s right to seek safety. We are honored to provide those seeking safety with one of life’s most important resources, safe water.

“World Refugee Day is an international day designated by the United Nations to honour refugees around the globe. It falls each year on June 20 and celebrates the strength and courage of people who have been forced to flee their home country to escape conflict or persecution. World Refugee Day is an occasion to build empathy and understanding for their plight and to recognize their resilience in rebuilding their lives.” —UNHCR

Dzaleka refugee camp lies just north of Water Mission’s office in Lilongwe, Malawi. Built in the late-1990s, the settlement provided refuge to thousands of people fleeing violence in Burundi, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. At the time, its capacity was between 10,000 and 14,000 people. With a recent influx of refugees, Dzaleka now houses more than four times that number of people. Because of this, the camp infrastructure is stretched beyond capacity.

With the steadily rising population in Dzaleka, one of the biggest concerns was access to safe water. Safe, treated water is essential to prevent the spread of waterborne illnesses in refugee camps. It also provides the foundation for supporting other critical services, such as food distribution and medical-related needs.

Because of our proven track record of building best-in-class safe water solutions in other refugee settings, we were invited to assess the situation in Dzaleka. We then provided our recommendations to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

“As part of our initial assessment, we identified that there was no water treatment happening in the camp,” shared Nathan Schneider, Water Mission’s project manager for East Africa.

Because of our proven track record of building best-in-class safe water solutions in other refugee settings, we were invited to assess the situation in Dzaleka. We then provided our recommendations to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

“It was a short time to execute,” Nathan said, “but the Malawi team worked through the Christmas holiday to ensure this project was done well.”

Our team retrofitted existing water systems with erosion chlorinators to treat the water. The safe, treated water is then distributed to men, women, and children in the settlement. This project serves more than 25,000 people and is the first verified safe water solution in Dzaleka.

Appropriate engineering design takes into account geographical and cultural context, as well as supply chain limitations. The chlorination systems we installed in Dzaleka are ideal for rural settings because they do not require electricity, are easily transported, and are simple to operate.

Water Mission first started working with refugees in 2013, and today has major initiatives supporting refugees in Western Tanzania and Northern Uganda. With the Lord’s provision and because of faithful partners who come alongside us, we have provided safe water, sanitation, and hygiene solutions for hundreds of thousands of refugees.

Water Mission is honored to work with UNHCR and Welthungerhilfe to fight the global water crisis and serve refugees. According to UNHCR, there are more than 84 million forcibly displaced people worldwide—a devastating statistic that continues to grow each year.

Serving in vulnerable communities like Dzaleka is an incredible opportunity to show God’s love to our neighbors. By providing one of life’s most important resources, safe water, we can help refugees have a chance to lead healthier and more prosperous lives.

Source: Water Mission International

Hazmat-suited workers poke plastic swabs down millions of throats in China each day, leaving bins bursting with medical waste that has become the environmental and economic levy of a zero-COVID strategy.

China is the last major economy wedded to stamping out infections no matter the cost.

Near-daily testing is the most commonly used weapon in an anti-virus arsenal that includes snap lockdowns and forced quarantines when just a few cases are detected.

From Beijing to Shanghai, Shenzhen to Tianjin, cities are now home to an archipelago of temporary testing kiosks, while authorities order hundreds of millions of people to get swabbed every two or three days.

Mass testing appears set to stay as Chinese authorities insist zero-COVID has allowed the world’s most populous nation to avoid a public health catastrophe.

But experts say the approach — a source of political legitimacy for the ruling Communist Party — creates a sea of hazardous waste and a mounting economic burden for local governments who must plough tens of billions of dollars into funding the system.

“The sheer amount of medical waste that is being generated on a routine basis (is) at a scale that is practically unseen in human history,” said Yifei Li, an environmental studies expert at New York University Shanghai.

“The problems are already becoming astronomical, and they will continue to grow even bigger,” he told AFP.

Beijing has positioned itself as an environmental leader, cracking down on air and water pollution while setting the goal of making its economy carbon-neutral by 2060, a target experts say is untenable given the current trajectory of investments in coal.

Blanket-testing is now posing a new trash challenge.

Each positive case — typically a few dozen a day nationwide — unspools a trail of used test kits, face masks and personal protective gear.

If not disposed of properly, biomedical waste can contaminate soil and waterways, posing threats to the environment and human health.

Cities and provinces, home to a total of around 600 million people, have announced some form of routine testing in recent weeks, according to an Agence France-Presse analysis of government notices and Chinese media reports.

Different regions have imposed different restrictions, and some areas have suspended the policy in step with falling cases.

Nationwide data on the waste footprint has not been disclosed. But Shanghai officials said last month the city produced 68,500 tons of medical waste during its recent COVID lockdown, with daily output up to six times higher than normal.

Under Chinese regulations, local authorities are tasked with separating, disinfecting, transporting and storing COVID waste before finally disposing of it — usually by incineration.

But disposal systems in the poorer rural parts of the country have long been overburdened.

“I’m not sure that … the countryside really has the capacity to deal with a significant increase in the amount of medical waste,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The spike in waste may prompt some local governments to process it improperly or simply “dump it on the ground” in temporary landfills, said Benjamin Steuer of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

In a statement to AFP, China’s Health Ministry said it had made “specific demands for medical waste management” as part of national COVID protocols.

Waste of money?

Beijing has urged provincial capitals and cities with at least 10 million people to set up a test site within a 15-minute walk of every resident.

Top leaders also expect local governments to foot the bill for testing at a time when many are struggling to balance the books.

Expanding the model to the whole of the country could cost between 0.9% and 2.3% of China’s gross domestic product, Nomura financial analysts said last month.

“The economics of that is tricky,” said Li of NYU Shanghai. “You don’t want to invest in permanent infrastructure to process what is perceived as a short-term surge of medical waste.”

Jin Dong-Yan, a professor at Hong Kong University’s School of Biomedical Sciences, said “very ineffective and costly” routine testing would force governments to back away from other much-needed health care investments.

Authorities are also likely to miss positive cases as the omicron variant spreads rapidly and is harder to detect than other strains, he told AFP.

“This will not work,” he said. “It will just wash down millions of dollars into the sea.”

Source: Voice of America

Luanda – The team from the Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group (ESAAMLG) is due to arrive in the country Thursday, 23 April, as part of the mutual assessment that Angola has been undergoing since October 2021.

The group of experts, expected in the country’s capital, Luanda, is made up of 15 specialists from the USA, Portugal, Botswana, Mozambique, Malawi, Lesotho, Namibia and Ethiopia.

The delegation also includes experts from Zimbabwe, South Africa, Tanzania and Kenya, according to the document made available to ANGOP.

The mutual assessment “in loco” of the Angolan financial system will take place from 27 June to 15 July, after the “draft” with 500 pages of responses about the country’s financial system was sent to ESSAMLG.

The assessment, for the next few days, will be based on meetings with representatives of the sectors and various institutions, including the financial system’s supervisory and regulatory bodies, as well as the Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF).

Source: Angola Press News Agency