Yemen: millions of children facing deadly hunger, amidst aid shortages and COVID-19 Jabra is seven years old, she lives in Sana, Yemen. She is learning the correct way to wash her hands and how to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

© UNICEF

Jabra is seven years old, she lives in Sana, Yemen. She is learning the correct way to wash her hands and how to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

    

25 June 2020

Humanitarian Aid

Millions of children in the heart of the world’s worst humanitarian disaster could be pushed to the brink of starvation, due to huge shortfalls in humanitarian aid funding amid the coronavirus pandemic, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Friday. 

Marking more than five years since conflict escalated in the country between Government forces and their allies, against Houthi rebel militias, the new UNICEF report warns the number of malnourished children could reach 2.4 million by end of year, almost half of all under-fives. 

An additional 30,000 children could develop life-threatening severe acute malnutrition over the next six months.

Yemen five years on: Children, conflict and COVID-19 warns that as Yemen’s devastated health system and infrastructure overall struggles to cope with the coronavirus pandemic, the already dire situation for children is likely to deteriorate considerably. 

Systemic failure

UNICEF reported that an additional 6,600 children under five could die from preventable causes by the end of the year. With a health system teetering closer to collapse, only half of health facilities are operational, with huge shortages in medicine, equipment and staff. 

More than eight million people, nearly half of them children, depend directly on the agency for water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), amid ongoing conflict, cholera outbreaks and the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“We cannot overstate the scale of this emergency as children, in what is already the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, battle for survival as COVID-19 takes hold”, said Sara Beysolow Nyanti, UNICEF Representative to Yemen.

“As the world’s attention focuses on the COVID-19 pandemic I fear the children of Yemen will be all but forgotten. Despite our own preoccupations right now, we all have a responsibility to act and help the children of Yemen. They have the same rights of any child, anywhere”, Ms. Nyanti added. 

In the report, the agency alerts for almost 10 million children without proper access to water and sanitation, as well as for 7.8 million children without access to education, following school closures. 

Widespread absence from class and a worsening economy could put children at greater risk of child labour, recruitment into armed groups and child marriage, the report highlights. 

© UNICEF

Volunteers teach people living in settlements, in Sana'a, Yemen, instructing them on social distancing and other preventative measure against COVID-19.

‘Brink of starvation’

 “If we do not receive urgent funding, children will be pushed to the brink of starvation and many will die. The international community will be sending a message that the lives of children in a nation devastated by conflict, disease and economic collapse, simply do not matter”, Ms. Nyanti pointed. 

Yemen five years on: Children, conflict and COVID-19 warns that unless US$54.5 million is received for health and nutrition services by the end of August, more than 23,000 children with severe acute malnutrition will be at increased risk of dying; there will be shortages on the children’s immunization, and 19 million people will lose access to healthcare, including one million pregnant and breastfeeding mothers and their children. 

The report also highlights that crucial water and sanitation services for three million children and their communities will begin to shut down from the end of July, unless US$45 million is secured. 

“UNICEF is working around the clock in incredibly difficult situations to get aid to children in desperate need, but we only have a fraction of the funding required to do this”, conlcluded Ms. Nyanti. 

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Support Yemen or watch the country ‘fall off the cliff’ 

On Wednesday, the UN humanitarian chief warned that Yemen will “fall off the cliff” without massive financial support. 

Speaking to a closed virtual Security Council meeting on Wednesday, Mark Lowcock said that coronavirus was spreading rapidly across Yemen, and about 25 percent of the country’s confirmed cases, have died. 

“At a minimum, we can expect many more people to starve to death and to succumb to COVID-19 and to die of cholera and to watch their children die because they are not immunized for killer diseases”, he said. 

The UN relief chief warned that the coronavirus pandemic is “adding one more layer of misery upon many others”. Caling for funding, he told members that the choice was between “supporting the humanitarian response in Yemen and help to create the space for a sustainable political situation, or watch Yemen fall off the cliff.” 

Courte

COVID-19: Recovery will be slower following ‘crisis like no other’, IMF predicts

WFP/Glory Ndaka

Women queuing for food rations in Cameroon practice social distancing to help combat the spread of COVID-19.

    

24 June 2020

Economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is projected to be more gradual than previously forecast, according to a report published on Wednesday by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

It estimates growth this year at -4.9 per cent, or nearly two percentage points below projections in April, indicating that the recession will be deeper and recovery slower.

The latest World Economic Outlook is an update to data published two months ago. Subtitled A Crisis Like No Other, An Uncertain Recovery, it warns that gains made over the past two decades in driving down extreme poverty could be in peril.

A call for strong health systems

The IMF explained that the report reflects “a higher-than-usual degree of uncertainty” around the projections, which are based on key assumptions about the pandemic’s impacts.

In countries with declining COVID-19 rates, slow recovery is based on factors such as the continuation of physical distancing measures, reduced productivity due to lockdowns, and a hit to surviving businesses ramping up, to meet necessary workplace safety and hygiene practices.

The IMF further predicts that lengthier lockdowns will exert an additional toll on economic activity in countries struggling to control infections.

“All countries—including those that have seemingly passed peaks in infections—should ensure that their health care systems are adequately resourced,” the agency said.

“The international community must vastly step up its support of national initiatives, including through financial assistance to countries with limited health

care capacity and channeling of funding for vaccine production as trials advance, so that adequate, affordable doses are quickly available to all countries.”

Fiscal measures and global cooperation

The report recommends that in areas still under lockdown, authorities should continue to “cushion” household income losses, while also supporting firms forced to curtail their activities due to mandated restrictions.

“Where economies are reopening, targeted support should be gradually unwound as the recovery gets underway, and policies should provide stimulus to lift demand and ease and incentivize the reallocation of resources away from sectors likely to emerge persistently smaller after the pandemic,” the authors said.

They underlined the importance of strong global cooperation throughout the pandemic, noting that countries confronting the crisis while also facing a drop in external funding, or other financing, urgently need “liquidity assistance”.

Act now to avert future catastrophe

Looking beyond the crisis, the report urges policymakers to resolve trade and technology “tensions” that will put recovery at risk.

Additionally, they should implement climate-related commitments and scale up carbon taxation.

“The global community must act now to avoid a repeat of this catastrophe by building global stockpiles of essential supplies and protective equipment, funding research and supporting public health systems, and putting in place effective modalities for delivering relief to the neediest”, the authors stated.

Source:UN News

Asia is hurtling towards a fentanyl disaster

25 June 2020

Author: Pascal Tanguay, Bangkok

In May 2020, authorities in Myanmar seized a whopping 3700 litres of liquid fentanyl — equivalent to about 30 bathtubs’ worth — alongside other drugs, precursors and weaponry. The lethal drug is increasingly being found cut into common illicit substances as the opioid epidemic rages in North America and Europe. 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, its growing presence in Asian illicit drug markets will likely prove disastrous.

In 2017, the opioid epidemic claimed the lives of more than 70,000 Americans and close to 4000 Canadians. Opioid overdose is the leading cause of unintentional injury and death in the United States. North America accounts for around a quarter of all opioid users worldwide and just below 10 per cent of all opiate users, a subset of opioid users, globally.

Estimates place the number of people who inject drugs (generally opioids) at around 2.5 million across North America, or about 16 per cent of all injectors across the globe. But in North America, community-based harm reduction services are comprehensive and widely available and take-home naloxone programs are in place.

Asia, in contrast, is home to 55 per cent of the world’s opioid users and nearly 75 per cent of opiate users globally. The five million injectors who live in the region account for nearly a third of all injectors globally. Only two out of 25 countries — Afghanistan and India — have established take-home naloxone services. Harm reduction services are generally in place, but coverage is extremely poor, service availability is at best patchy and governments remain extremely reluctant to invest in public health measures to address drug-related issues.

Governments continue to rely on compulsory detention, often without medical support, as a solution to drug dependence in and across the region. This is a non-evidence based punitive measure that feeds repression rather than a public health intervention aiming to improve health and quality of life. The proximity to the Golden Triangle (where the borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet) and the Golden Crescent (Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran) ensure the availability, high quality and low price of opiates across the region. And while China is clamping down on fentanyl production within its borders, the country reportedly remains one of the main sources for fentanyl and its derivatives worldwide.

This implies that Asian countries are extremely vulnerable to a massive opioid overdose epidemic. The increasing spread of fentanyl could have catastrophic consequences for public health on a scale exponentially greater than that of the North American opioid crisis. Governments are ill-equipped to deal with the public health consequences of drug use and none have meaningfully scaled up effective or evidence-based measures to prevent and reduce overdoses despite the looming crisis.

Naloxone — the antidote used to reverse opioid overdoses — is rarely available across Asia in community settings. Legal restrictions prevent the distribution of naloxone to lay people who would be best positioned to intervene and administer the antidote, keeping the medicine exclusively in the hands of medical professionals. Some physicians and officials fear that people will become dependent on the antidote or risk overdose if too much is used. This shows just how drug use, dependence and overdose remain misunderstood.

Meanwhile the test kits used to detect the presence of fentanyl, a simple strip that can be used like a pregnancy test, are unavailable for public health purposes in Asia. They are instead used specifically and exclusively by law enforcement in their efforts to reduce supply.

The Canadian government, among others, is supplying these kits and training law enforcement in the region on their use. But supplying these kits for public health would be impossible due to political sensitivities. In that sense, it seems the Canadian government is comfortable facilitating prohibition but uncomfortable distributing tools that could save thousands of lives. US government agencies that provide foreign aid have even stricter policies preventing investment in harm reduction or other public health interventions to address drug-related issues abroad.

The situation is further complicated by the dearth of credible data about overdoses in Asia. ‘Overdose’ is not a recognised cause of death in most Asian countries. Overdoses are instead buried under other diagnoses such as ‘asphyxiation’ or ‘heart failure’. Drug overdose data generally comes from small community-based NGOs working with people who use drugs, but few governments lend much credibility to their reports. Without solid data, mobilising policymakers in response to opioid overdoses will remain extremely difficult. Governments instead avoid losing face by playing ostrich — no data, no problem!

The 3700 litres of fentanyl seized recently in Myanmar seemed to be intended for regional distribution. If it had not been seized, there would likely be a lot more than the 74,000 lives lost as a result of overdoses in North America across the region over the coming months. But given that supply reduction efforts intercept only a small fraction of the volume of illicit drugs, it remains likely that more fentanyl is seeping into the regional drug market.

This makes it imperative for governments, including donor governments like Canada and the United States, to flood the region with naloxone, fentanyl test kits and more funding to scale-up harm reduction and other evidence-based public health services targeting people who use drugs.

It is not a question of ‘if’ or ‘when’ there will be an overdose epidemic in Asia. The only question that matters now is what will be done to mitigate and control it.

Pascal Tanguay is an independent harm reduction and drug policy expert based in Bangkok.
Courtesy:eastasiaforum.org