Day: January 28, 2023

GENEVA — The U.N.’s main AIDS program says thousands of children are dying from HIV/AIDS because, unlike adults, they do not receive treatment for the deadly disease.

HIV/AIDS is no longer an automatic death sentence. People infected with the disease can live a normal lifespan, provided they receive treatment and care. Unfortunately, there is a glaring disparity between the way children and adults with HIV/AIDS are treated.

UNAIDS spokeswoman Charlotte Sector says 76 percent of adults have access to treatment but only half of children living with HIV are receiving lifesaving treatment. She says children account for 15 percent of all AIDS deaths, despite making up only four percent of all people living with the disease.

“Last year alone 160,000 children were infected with HIV,” Sector said. “So, what is happening is that 12 countries are coming together in Africa because six countries in sub-Saharan Africa represent 50 percent of those new infections.”

She says a global alliance led by UNAIDS, the World Health Organization, and UNICEF has formed to close the huge gap. She says 12 African countries have joined the alliance. Sector says health ministers from eight countries will launch the initiative next week in Tanzania.

“So, not only is it getting children on treatment, but it is mostly trying to stop vertical transmission,” Sector said. “Now what is vertical transmission? It is the mother passing on HIV during pregnancy, during delivery or during breast feeding because most of those transmissions are taking place during breastfeeding.”

Spector says efforts to contain the spread of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa mainly have been centered on getting adults on treatment, as the main transmitters of the virus. In the process, however, she says the needs of children have been overlooked.

“So, what happens is suddenly there is a realization that we have forgotten all these children, and there is a forgotten generation of children,” Sector said. “So now, there has been a scramble to kind of close that faucet, if I may say, of getting to the children before they are even born or after they are born.”

The global alliance will run for the next eight years until 2030. During that period, it aims to close the treatment gap for pregnant and breastfeeding adolescent girls and women living with HIV, prevent and detect new HIV infections, provide access to testing and treatment, and end the social barriers that hinder access to services.

Source: Voice of America

UNITED NATIONS, UN humanitarians report that recent clashes between Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) forces and M23 rebels have displaced about 90,000 people, a UN spokesman said.

The chief spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Stephane Dujarric, said that initial reports from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) centered the fighting in and around Kitchanga in North Kivu province in eastern DRC.

“Many of the displaced are seeking refuge in nearby Mweso, in schools and churches and with host families,” Dujarric said. “As more displaced people arrive in Mweso, humanitarian organizations are concerned about the spread of cholera, following an outbreak last month.”

He said the clashes also impeded road access, making it difficult to deliver humanitarian aid.

The spokesman said the UN peacekeeping mission, known as MONUSCO, provides physical security and immediate assistance, including shelter, water and medical care, to about 500 displaced civilians in and around the UN base in Kitchanga.

Dujarric said the United Nations reiterates the secretary-general’s call on all armed groups to lay down their weapons and join the national Disarmament, Demobilization, Community Recovery and Stabilization program.

Source: Nam News Network

GOMA, CONGO — When Pope Francis arrives in Congo and South Sudan next week, thousands of people will take special note of a gesture more grounded than the sign of the cross. Watching from their wheelchairs, they will relate to the way he uses his.

The pope, who began using a wheelchair last year, is visiting two countries where years of conflict have disabled many, and yet they are among the world’s most difficult places to find accessibility and understanding. His visit is heartening Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

“We know that it’s a suffering, but it also comforts us to see a grand personality like the pope using a wheelchair,” said Paul Mitemberezi, a market vendor in Goma, at the heart of the eastern Congo region threatened by dozens of armed groups. “Sometimes it gives us the courage to hope that this isn’t the end of the world and one can survive.”

Mitemberezi, a Catholic and a father, has been disabled since he was 3 because of polio. He works to support his family because he can’t imagine a life of begging. On the way to market, his three-wheeled chair crunches the stones of unpaved roads. Without a ramp at home, he must leave the brightly painted vehicle outdoors, at risk of theft.

Every morning, before he leaves for basketball practice, he makes sure the chair’s still there before crawling out his front door. “It is my legs, which helps me to live,” he said. He applies a bicycle pump to the wheels and is off, weaving through traffic of motorcycles and trucks.

Pope Francis is still adjusting to a life that Mitemberezi has long accepted. The pope was first seen publicly in a wheelchair in May, with an aide pushing it. The pope, at age 86, never propels himself. Sometimes he walks with a cane, but he uses the chair for longer distances and has a wheelchair lift to get on and off planes.

Francis has insisted that his mobility limitations don’t affect his ability to be pope, saying “You lead with your head, not your knee.” He has lamented how today’s “throwaway culture” wrongly marginalizes disabled people. He makes it a point to visit places serving the disabled during his foreign trips, and routinely spends time greeting wheelchair users at the end of his general audiences.

“No disability — temporary, acquired or permanent — can change the fact that we are all children of the one Father and enjoy the same dignity,” Francis wrote in his annual message for the U.N. International Day of Persons with Disabilities in December. He said people with different abilities enrich the church and teach it to be more humane.

Such messages are warmly awaited by wheelchair users in South Sudan, where a five-year civil war killed hundreds of thousands of people. As in Congo, data is lacking on just how many people are disabled by conflict or other means.

While the road leading to the Vatican’s embassy in the South Sudan capital, Juba, was paved by city authorities this month for ease of travel, residents who use wheelchairs said they have long gone without easy access to schools, health centers, toilets and other public facilities.

The Vatican’s ambassador to Congo, Archbishop Ettore Balestrero, said he believed the sight of a wheelchair-using pope could be a powerful teaching moment in a culture where disabilities are often viewed with suspicion and superstition.

Families often abandon their disabled children, he said.

Seeing someone like the pope suffer should make Francis more approachable for people during his visit, Balestrero said. “They identify, in a way, even more with him.”

Source: Voice of America

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PRETORIA, South Africa and India have signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in the re-introduction of Cheetah to the Asian country.

“In terms of the agreement, an initial batch of 12 cheetah are scheduled to be flown from South Africa to India in February 2023. The cats will join the eight cheetah introduced to India from Namibia during 2022,” the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment said.

Restoring cheetah populations is a priority for India and will have vital and far-reaching conservation consequences, which aim to achieve a number of ecological objectives, including re-establishing the function role of cheetah within their historical range and improving the enhancing the livelihood options and economies of the local communities.

Following the import of the 12 cheetah in January, the plan is to translocate a further 12 annually for the next eight to 10 years.

“The initiative to reintroduce cheetah to a former range state following the local extinction of this iconic species due to over hunting and loss of habitat in the last century is being carried out following the request received from the Government of the Republic of India,” the department said.

This multi-disciplinary international programme is being coordinated by the department in collaboration with the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), South African National Parks (SANParks), the Cheetah Range Expansion Project, and the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) in South Africa.

They will be working with the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the Wildlife Institute of India (WII).

“The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Reintroduction of Cheetah to India facilitates cooperation between the parties to establish a viable and secure cheetah population in India; promotes conservation and ensures that expertise is shared and exchanged, and capacity built, to promote cheetah conservation.

“This includes human-wildlife conflict resolution, capture and translocation of wildlife and community participation in conservation in the two countries.

“In terms of the MoU, the countries will collaborate and exchange best practices in large carnivore conservation through the transfer of technology, training of professionals in management, policy, and science, and to establish a bilateral custodianship arrangement for cheetah translocated between the two countries,” the department said.

The terms of the MoU will be reviewed every five years to ensure it remains relevant.

Source: Nam News Network