Africa to be declared polio-free

Yahoo - AFP, Sophie Bouillon with Aminu Abubakar in Kano, August 25, 2020

A child in Kano, northwest Nigeria receives the vaccine in 2017

The World Health Organization (WHO) is set to certify on Tuesday that the African continent is free from wild polio, four years after the last cases appeared in northeastern Nigeria.

"Thanks to the relentless efforts by governments, donors, frontline health workers and communities, up to 1.8 million children have been saved from the crippling life-long paralysis," the WHO said in a statement.

The official announcement is due at 1500 GMT in a videoconference with WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and key figures including philanthropist and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

"Happiness is an understatement. We've been on this marathon for over 30 years," said Tunji Funsho, a Nigerian doctor and local anti-polio coordinator for Rotary International.

He said it marked a crucial step in the total eradication of the illness at the global level.

"It's a real achievement, I feel joy and relief at the same time," he added.

Poliomyelitis, or "wild polio" is an acutely infectious and contagious disease which attacks the spinal cord and causes irreversible paralysis in children.

It was endemic around the world until a vaccine was found in the 1950s, though this remained out of reach for many poorer countries in Asia and Africa.

As late as 1988, the WHO counted 350,000 cases globally, and in 1996 said there were more than 70,000 cases in Africa alone.

Thanks to a rare instance of collective global effort and financial backing -- some $19 billion over 30 years -- only Afghanistan and Pakistan have recorded cases this year: 87 in total.

Trust

Nigeria, a country with 200 million inhabitants, was still among the trouble-spots in the early 2000s.

In its northern Muslim-majority areas, authorities were forced to stop vaccination campaigns in 2003 and 2004 by Islamic extremists who claimed it was a vast conspiracy to sterilise young Muslims.

It took a huge effort in tandem with traditional chiefs and religious leaders to convince populations that the vaccine was safe. 

"People trust their local traditional leaders who live with them more than the political leaders," said Grema Mundube, a community leader in the town of Monguno, in the far north of Nigeria.

"Once we spoke to them and they saw us immunising our children they gradually accepted the vaccine," he told AFP.

However, the emergence of violent Islamist group Boko Haram in 2009 caused another rupture in the programme. In 2016, four new cases were discovered in Borno state in the northeast in the heart of the conflict.

"At the time, we couldn't reach two-thirds of the children of Borno state -- 400,000 children couldn't access the vaccine," said Dr Funsho.

Inaccessible children

The security situation remains highly volatile in the region, with the jihadists of Boko Haram and a local Islamic State affiliate controlling vast areas around Lake Chad and the border with Niger.

"International agencies, local governments, donors -- all partners took the bull by the horns to find new strategies to manage to reach these children," said Dr Musa Idowu Audu, coordinator for the WHO in Borno.

In these "partially accessible" areas, vaccination teams worked under the protection of the Nigerian army and local self-defence militias.

For areas fully controlled by the jihadists, the WHO and its partners sought to intercept people coming in and out along market and transport routes in a bid to spread medical information and recruit "health informants" who could tell them about any polio cases.

"We built a pact of trust with these populations, for instance by giving them free medical supplies," said Dr Audu.

Today, it is estimated that only 30,000 children are still "inaccessible": a number considered too low by scientists to allow for an epidemic to break out.

Despite the "extreme happiness and pride" felt by Dr Audu, he never fails to remember the 20 or more medical staff and volunteers killed for the cause in northeast Nigeria in recent years.

The challenge now is to ensure that no new polio cases arrive from Afghanistan or Pakistan and that vaccinations continue to ensure that children across the continent are protected from this vicious disease.

"Before we couldn't sleep at all. Now we will sleep with one eye open," said Dr Funsho.

Pakistan hanging cancelled after convict receives last minute pardon

Firstpost – AFP, Jan 8, 2015

Authorities in Pakistan's central Punjab province on Thursday cancelled the hanging of a convicted sectarian militant after the victim's family pardoned him, officials and a family member said. The case is seen as a test of the government's plan to execute convicted terrorists in the aftermath of a school massacre that claimed 150 lives in the country's deadliest terror attack

Ikramul Haq, a member of banned Sunni militant outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, was sentenced to death by an anti-terror court in 2004 for killing a Shiite Muslim in 2001.

He was set to be hanged in the eastern city of Lahore early Thursday but his family came to a deal with the victim's relatives on Wednesday night, Haq's lawyer, Ghulam Mustafa Mangan, told AFP.

"The hanging was cancelled after we reached a compromise with the complainant's family. They have pardoned my client," Mangan said, without giving further details of the deal.

Murder can be forgiven under Pakistani law in exchange for blood money, while rival militant groups may chose to pardon each others' convicted killers. Ehsanul Haq, brother of Ikramul Haq, confirmed the cancellation of hanging.

A senior prison official also confirmed the move, adding: "A magistrate has recorded the statements and the execution has been stayed. Now the court will decide whether the person (should) be acquitted or not."

Pakistan last month lifted a six-year moratorium on the death penalty in terror cases in the wake of the Taliban's horrific massacre at an army-run school in the city of Peshawar, and has so far executed nine people.

The attack on December 16 left 150 people dead, the vast majority of them children.

Pakistani officials have said they plan to hang 500 convicts in the coming weeks, drawing protest from international human rights campaigners.

Related Article:

Iranian mother who spared her son's killer: 'Vengeance has left my heart'

Samereh Alinejad, right, slapping blindfolded Balal, who was convicted
of murdering her son Abdollah. Photograph: Arash Khamoushi/AP

Malala Yousafzai backs campaign against FGM

Pakistani schoolgirl shot by Taliban praises campaign calling for better education on female genital mutilation in UK schools

• Click here to sign the FGM petition to Michael Gove

theguardian.com, Alexandra Topping, Monday 24 February 2014

Malala Yousafzai with the anti-FGM campaigner Muna Hasan.
Photograph: David Levene

MalalaYousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl who has spearheaded the campaign for universal education for children, has backed a campaign led by the 17-year-old British student Fahma Mohamed to get education about female genital mutilation into all schools in the UK.

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Malala praised Fahma's campaign, and joined her in calling for better education in schools about FGM. "I've watched every step of Fahma's campaign and I think she is on the edge of something huge," she said. "Over 140 million girls and women are mutilated – but like keeping girls out of school in Pakistan, we can come out together and be strong and change things for the next generation. I am her sister and I am at her side and I want her to be listened to I as I was."

Fahma is to meet the education secretary, Michael Gove, on Tuesday in an attempt to convince him to play a role in ending the practice of FGM in the UK. Gove agreed to a meeting after a Guardian-backed petition – which is supported by a range of FGM campaigners and groups – attracted hundreds of thousands of signatures since launching at the beginning of February.

Malala – who was shot at close range by the Taliban for her campaign for girls' education and went on to become the youngest ever nominee for the Nobel peace prize – urged Fahma to keep up pressure on the education secretary to write to every school in the UK telling them to train teachers and parents about the risks and impact of FGM on women and girls.

"I think it is very important that we make people aware of this issue because if no one knows, if no one wants to know, then we can never highlight it in front of responsible people and we can never find a solution," said Malala, who is 16. "It's good that … girls like Fahma – so active and with a passion – are continuing this campaign. I truly support you."

Fahma Mohamed is to meet Michael Gove on Tuesday. Photograph:
Patrick Hoeschler

Following sustained public pressure which has seen the Guardian petition attract almost a quarter of a million signatures on Change.org, the Scottish government has agreed to write to every teacher in Scotland about FGM, while an early day motion led by the Liberal Democrat MP Tim Farron in support of the campaign has received the backing of 33 MPs.

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, supported the campaign, calling it "deeply inspiring" and praising Mohamed.

The Kent police and crime commissioner, Ann Barnes, also signed the petition and, with the backing of the not-for-profit lobbying group Policing for All, urged all 41 PCCs to sign the campaign before Fahma meets Gove.

Malala, who has recovered well in the UK after receiving specialised treatment at the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham, compared the work done by Fahma and other members of the anti-FGM charity Integrate Bristol to her own battle for universal education. "I'm also trying to work for women's rights and girls' education and I think the campaign that you are doing is a part of my campaign as well," she said. "[W]hen you talk about education you talk about quality education and it should be [known] all over the world about FGM – what it is and how can it affect the life of a girl. So I think it should be a part of education and we both will struggle for this. Because we can never achieve our goals unless we struggle for it, so I think this is the time to start it."

Malala, who now lives in Birmingham with her family, took time from revising for her GCSEs to meet representatives of Integrate Bristol, including Lisa Zimmermann, a teacher at City Academy Bristol who set up the project seven years ago, and 20-year-old Muna Hasan, one of the group's original members. City Academy Bristol is one of only two schools in the country to have a dedicated project on the practice, which is thought to affect 140 million women and girls worldwide, and is practiced in 28 African countries as well as some parts of Asia and the Middle East.

Hasan said when she joined the campaign the group had to overcome prejudice and opposition from those who did not want FGM to be discussed. "I faced, and quite a few of the girls in the community faced, hardship," she said. "It wasn't just certain people in our communities who didn't want to know – teachers didn't, politicians didn't want to know, some doctors didn't know what it was."

She said it was now time for politicians such as Gove to play their part in eradicating the practice of FGM, which is believed to affect 66,000 women in England and Wales, while 24,000 girls under the age of 15 are thought to be at risk. "For this to have got so big and to have so many signatures shows people do care, but it is politicians' time – it's their turn to start caring and do something active to stop FGM in this country," she said.

Malala, who will share a platform with other women's rights campaigners, including FGM activists, at the Southbank centre in London next month as part of the Women of the World festival, said the struggle for women's and girls' right must continue. "I totally support you in your campaign for girls' rights because it should be the right of a girl how she wants her body," she said. "I'm truly surprised to hear that 140 million women are affected by FGM. I think we should start a campaign and we should struggle for it because if we remain silent we will never achieve our goals and we will never achieve change. The only way to fight against it is to speak."

Related Articles:

Michael Gove agrees to write to schools over female genital mutilation

British girl leads Guardian campaign to end female genital mutilation

Kryon Q&A

Question: Dear and beloved Kryon: What should we know about "Brit-Mila" (Jewish circumcision)?

Answer: All circumcision was based on commonsense health issues of the day, which manifested itself in religious-based teaching. That basically is what made people keep doing it. This eighth-day-from-birth ritual is no more religious today than trimming your fingernails (except that Brit-Mila is only done once, and it hurts a bit more).

It's time to start seeing these things for what they are. Common sense is not static. It's dynamic, and related to the culture of the time. Yesterday's common sense about health changed greatly with the discovery of germs. It changed again with practices of cleanliness due to the discovery of germs, and so on. Therefore, we would say that it really doesn't make a lot of difference in today's health practices. It's done almost totally for cultural historic and traditional purposes and holds no energy around it other than the obvious intent of the tradition.

This is also true for a great deal of the admonishments of the Old Testament regarding food and cleanliness, and even the rules of the neighborhood (such as taking your neighbor's life if he steals your goat, or selling your daughter in slavery if you really need the money... all found in scripture). The times are gone where these things matter anymore, yet they're still treated with reverence and even practiced religiously in some places. They're now only relics of tradition, and that's all. If you feel that you should honor a tradition, then do it. If not, then don't. It's not a spiritual or health issue any longer.

Be the boss of your own body and your own traditions. Follow what your spiritual intuition tells you is appropriate for your own spiritual path and health.

20 mn kids to get polio vaccine after Syria outbreak

Google – AFP, 8 November 2013

Syrian refugee children walk in the Bab al-Salam refugee camp in Syria's

northern city of Azaz on July 15, 2013 (Jm Lopez/AFP/File, Jm Lopez)

Geneva — Emergency plans are under way to vaccinate more than 20 million children in the Middle East after polio resurfaced in war-torn Syria, the United Nations said on Friday.

Unveiling the region's largest-ever polio campaign, the UN Children's Fund (Unicef) and World Health Organisation (WHO) said vaccinations would be carried out over six months in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Syria and Turkey.

The initiative was announced 10 days after the WHO reported that polio had re-emerged in Syria for the first time in 14 years, leaving 10 children paralysed.

Syrian refugees fleeing the civil war in

 their country stand at a makeshift camp

 in Ankara on October 4, 2013 (AFP/File,

Adem Altan)

Preliminary evidence suggests the virus in this outbreak -- and also polio samples found in sewage in Egypt, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- came from Pakistan, one of the disease's last bastions, the agencies added.

"The polio outbreak in Syria is not just a tragedy for children; it is an urgent alarm -- and a crucial opportunity to reach all under-immunised children wherever they are," said Peter Crowley, who heads Unicef's polio division.

Inside Syria, the campaign is targeting 1.6 million children with vaccines against polio, measles, mumps and rubella, the agencies said.

More than 650,000 children in Syria, including 116,000 in war-ravaged Deir Ezzor province where the polio outbreak was confirmed, have already been immunised.

"In Jordan, over 18,800 children under the age of five were vaccinated against polio in a campaign in the past few days targeting all children at Za?atari camp, and a nationwide campaign is currently under way to reach 3.5 million people with polio, measles and rubella," the statement said.

"In Iraq, a vaccination campaign has started in the west of the country, with another campaign planned in the Kurdistan region in the coming days.

"Lebanon?s nationwide campaign begins later this week and Turkey and Egypt by mid-November."

Polio immunisation hit by war

A child receives a polio vaccine at a health

 center on June 2, 2013 in the Yemeni

 capital, Sanaa (AFP/File, Mohammed

Huwais)

Polio is caused by a highly infectious virus that invades the nervous system through the mouth and can cause irreversible paralysis within a matter of hours.

Among those paralysed, between five and 10 percent die when their breathing muscles fail to work.

Children under the age of five are those most at risk.

Infection typically occurs through water that carries the virus.

There is no cure for the disease, but there are highly effective vaccines to prevent it.

The 10 polio cases in Syria involved children who had either not been immunised or not received all three doses of the vaccine.

Syria has seen its immunisation rate plummet from more than 90 percent before the conflict began in March 2011 to 68 percent today.

In March this year, health watchdogs celebrated the 60th anniversary of the first successful polio vaccination trial.

But they warned that vaccinations would have to continue so long as a single person still had the virus.

According to WHO figures, polio cases fell by more than 99 percent from 1988 to 2012, from around 350,000 cases to a known 223 cases.

In 1988, polio was endemic in 125 countries, but by 2012, this was reduced to three countries -- Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan -- where health systems are poor and vaccination campaigns have been disrupted by Islamists.

A rebel fighter is pictured on November 7,

2013, in the northern Syrian city of 

Aleppo (AFP, Karam al-Masri)

Experts say polio can spread through so-called asymptomatic carriers.

These are people who have been infected by the virus but do not develop any symptoms of disease. Only around one in 200 people who are infected by the virus become paralysed.

Asymptomatic carriers shed the virus in their faeces, which enters the sewage system, posing a risk for those who are not innoculated or are under-innoculated, especially in areas where sanitation is makeshift.

The European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC) has urged European countries to beef up sewage surveillance for polio and to be vigilant about vaccinating Syrian refugees and analysing stool samples.

Since the start of the Syrian uprising in March 2011 some seven million people have been displaced, with two million of them fleeing across the border, according to UN figures.

Related Articles:

“To vaccinate or not to vaccinate, that is the question”

Kryon Q&A

Question: Dear Kryon, I have a new grandson. He's going for his first vaccination in the next few weeks. If we're beginning to transmute toxins with reconnections to our endocrine system through our DNA, then what happens to our babies, who by law have to be vaccinated? What are your thoughts on this subject?

Answer: First, know that vaccinations are a God-given science that humanity earned. They're a tried and proven homeopathic method that have been with you for years. You were probably vaccinated yourself, and it worked.

We have three answers: (1) God is not in a vacuum. Even the vaccinated Human Being who's older can modify and rework their DNA. So there's no time limit, and there are no rules that say "Once vaccinated, you're ruined." (2) The Human who is of the age of awareness can say, even as they are vaccinated, "Let nothing inappropriate enter my chemistry." This is a conscious instruction given to your "intelligent cellular structure" (the same one responsible for kinesiology and homeopathic results). This will result in your cells only using what they need and casting away everything else. (3) Finally, about babies: There has been a push by your science lately to vaccinate against many things at the same time. You'd be advised to seek out a doctor who will only vaccinate your child for only the basic diseases that have been known in the last 40 years. Eliminate the vaccinations for the new ones. This leaves you with approximately seven or eight - the very ones that have been used for years. What your science is not appreciating yet is the results of combining all the vaccination substances together. There's a problem that will show itself in time. Stick with the basic ones.

Toxic cough syrup kills 24 in Pakistan

Google – AFP, 29 December 2012 

Patients who consumed toxic cough syrup receive treatment in a hospital

in Gujranwala on December 29, 2012 (AFP, Arif Ali)

LAHORE, Pakistan — At least 24 people, mostly drug addicts seeking a fix, have died after drinking toxic cough syrup in an eastern Pakistani city, officials said on Saturday.

The deaths started occurring Wednesday in the industrial city of Gujranwala, some 70 kilometres (43 miles) north of Lahore, with most of the victims drug addicts who took the syrup for intoxication, police and doctors said.

"At least 24 people have died after taking an unknown cough syrup," local health department official doctor Mah Jabeen told AFP.

"Seventeen people died at hospital, while seven others were brought dead," she said, adding that only five affected by syrup were now under treatment at hospital.

Local hospital chief doctor Anwar Aman said some 54 patients were earlier brought to hospital who said their condition deteriorated after taking cough syrups.

A man who consumed toxic cough syrup receives treatment in a hospital

in Gujranwala on December 29, 2012 (AFP, Arif Ali)

The victims were between 20 and 40 years old and a majority had a history of drug addiction, Aman said, adding that so far the culprit syrup has not been identified.

Senior police official Azam Mehr confirmed the toll and said samples of cough syrups available at local pharmacies have been collected and sent to laboratories.

"Police and health department have started inquiries and investigations into the deaths," he added.

Last month at least 19 people were killed in Lahore after drinking toxic cough syrup.

In January around 100 heart patients died in Lahore, Pakistan's second largest city, after taking locally-made tainted medicine.

Pakistan Doctors Save Life of Baby with Six Legs

Jakarta Globe, April 20, 2012

Doctors in Pakistan say they have successfully operated to save the life
 of a baby born with six legs due to a rare genetic condition, hospital officials
said on Thursday. (AFP Photo)

         

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Karachi. Doctors in Pakistan say they have successfully operated to save the life of a baby born with six legs due to a rare genetic condition, hospital officials said on Thursday.

“A team of five experienced doctors have successfully separated the extra legs and limbs from the baby today. He is very much safe and secure,” said Dr Jamal Raza, the director of National Institute of the Child Health in Karachi.

Raza said it was a case of parasitic conjunction — more than one baby joined together but only one of them fully formed.

The boy was born to the wife of an X-ray technician a couple of weeks ago in Sukkur city, around 450km north of Karachi, and was moved to Karachi for treatment early this week.

“The extra limbs and legs were the result of a genetic disease which would affect only one in a million or more babies,” the doctor said.

Imran Shaikh, the baby’s father, was thrilled.

“It is great news for us. What the parents want is to see their kids healthy and strong. We pray his life remains normal and joyful,” he told reporters.