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Tag: RHPI:PUBLIC-HEALTH

  • WHO experts to weigh whether world ready to end COVID emergency

    WHO experts to weigh whether world ready to end COVID emergency

    LONDON, May 4 (Reuters) – A panel of global health experts will meet on Thursday to decide if COVID-19 is still an emergency under the World Health Organization’s rules, a status that helps maintain international focus on the pandemic.

    The WHO first gave COVID its highest level of alert on Jan. 30, 2020, and the panel has continued to apply the label ever since, at meetings held every three months.

    However, a number of countries, such as the United States, have recently begun lifting their domestic states of emergency. WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said he hopes to end the international emergency this year.

    A final decision by Tedros based on the panel’s advice is expected in the coming days. There is no consensus yet on which way the panel may rule, advisors to the WHO and external experts told Reuters.

    “It is possible that the emergency may end, but it is critical to communicate that COVID remains a complex public health challenge,” said Professor Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist who is on the WHO panel. She declined to speculate further ahead of the discussions, which are confidential.

    One source close to negotiations said lifting the “public health emergency of international concern,” or PHEIC, label could impact global funding or collaboration efforts. Another said that the unpredictability of the virus made it hard to call at this stage. Others said it was time to move to living with COVID as an ongoing health threat, like HIV or tuberculosis.

    “All emergencies must come to an end,” said Lawrence Gostin, a law professor at Georgetown University in the United States who follows the WHO.

    “I expect WHO to end the public health emergency of international concern. If WHO does not end it… [this time], then certainly the next time the emergency committee meets.”

    Dr. Jarbas Barbosa, director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), said he was concerned that a change in status would lead to complacency, with weaker surveillance and falling vaccination levels.

    “(The PHEIC) does not bring any kind any harm for countries but at the same time it keeps their attention,” he told journalists.

    Reporting by Jennifer Rigby in London and Emma Farge in Geneva; Editing by Alexandra Hudson

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

    Jennifer Rigby

    Thomson Reuters

    Jen reports on health issues affecting people around the world, from malaria to malnutrition. Part of the Health & Pharma team, recent notable pieces include an investigation into healthcare for young transgender people in the UK as well as stories on the rise in measles after COVID hit routine vaccination, as well as efforts to prevent the next pandemic. She previously worked at the Telegraph newspaper and Channel 4 News in the UK, as well as freelance in Myanmar and the Czech Republic.

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  • Protests break out in Iran over schoolgirl illnesses

    Protests break out in Iran over schoolgirl illnesses

    DUBAI, March 4 (Reuters) – Worried parents protested in Iran’s capital Tehran and other cities on Saturday over a wave of suspected poison attacks that have affected schoolgirls in dozens of schools, according to Iranian news agencies and social media videos.

    The so-far unexplained illnesses have affected hundreds of schoolgirls in recent months. Iranian officials believe the girls may have been poisoned and have blamed Tehran’s enemies.

    The country’s health minister has said the girls have suffered “mild poison” attacks and some politicians have suggested the girls could have been targeted by hardline Islamist groups opposed to girls’ education.

    Iran’s interior minister said on Saturday investigators had found “suspicious samples” that were being studied.

    “In field studies, suspicious samples have been found, which are being investigated… to identify the causes of the students’ illness, and the results will be published as soon as possible,” the minister, Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, said in a statement carried by the official news agency IRNA.

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    Sickness affected more than 30 schools in at least 10 of Iran’s 31 provinces on Saturday. Videos posted on social media showed parents gathered at schools to take their children home and some students being taken to hospitals by ambulance or buses.

    A gathering of parents outside an Education Ministry building in western Tehran on Saturday to protest over the illnesses turned into an anti-government demonstration, according to a video verified by Reuters.

    “Basij, Guards, you are our Daesh,” protesters chanted, likening the Revolutionary Guards and other security forces to the Islamic State group.

    Similar protests were held in two other areas in Tehran and other cities including Isfahan and Rasht, according to unverified videos.

    The outbreak of schoolgirl sickness comes at a critical time for Iran’s clerical rulers, who have faced months of anti-government protests sparked by the death of a young Iranian woman in the custody of the morality police who enforce strict dress codes.

    Social media posts in recent days have shown photos and videos of girls who have fallen ill, feeling nauseaous or suffering heart palpitations. Others complained of headaches. Reuters could not verify the posts.

    The United Nations human rights office in Geneva called on Friday for a transparent investigation into the suspected attacks and countries including Germany and the United States have voiced concern.

    Iran rejected what it views as foreign meddling and “hasty reactions” and said on Friday it was investigating the causes of the incidents.

    “It is one of the immediate priorities of Iran’s government to pursue this issue as quickly as possible and provide documented information to resolve the families’ concerns and to hold accountable the perpetrators and the causes,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani told state media.

    Schoolgirls were active in the anti-government protests that began in September. They have removed their mandatory headscarves in classrooms, torn up pictures of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and called for his death.

    Reporting by Dubai newsroom
    Editing by Frances Kerry

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • Medical staff in China’s hospitals say COVID-19 ripping through their ranks

    Medical staff in China’s hospitals say COVID-19 ripping through their ranks

    HONG KONG, Dec 14 (Reuters) – A growing number of China’s doctors and nurses are catching COVID-19 and some have been asked to keep working, as people showing mostly moderate symptoms throng hospitals and clinics, according to medical staff and dozens of posts on social media.

    China’s health authority did not immediately respond to a request for comment on infections among medical staff.

    Health experts say China’s sudden loosening of strict COVID rules is likely to trigger a surge in severe cases in coming months, and hospitals in big cities are already showing signs of strain.

    Reuters was unable to immediately get verification from hospitals on waiting times and bed utilisation rates, but photographs circulated on social media showed patients in Beijing and neighbouring Baoding waiting for hours to get treated.

    Health officials have been recommending that people with mild COVID symptoms quarantine at home and have also said most of the cases reported in the country are mild or asymptomatic.

    “Our hospital is overwhelmed with patients. There are 700, 800 people with fever coming every day,” said a doctor surnamed Li at a tertiary hospital in Sichuan province.

    “We are running out of medicine stocks for fever and cold, now waiting for delivery from our suppliers. A few nurses at the fever clinic were tested positive, there aren’t any special protective measures for hospital staff and I believe many of us will soon get infected,” Li added.

    A nurse at another hospital in Chengdu said: “I was swamped with nearly 200 patients with COVID symptoms last night.”

    Ben Cowling, an epidemiologist at Hong Kong University, said insufficient medical resources to cope with an overload of COVID cases contributed to a surge in deaths in Hong Kong when infections peaked there earlier this year, and he warned that the same was going to happen in China.

    “One of the reasons we had such a high mortality rate (in Hong Kong) is because we simply didn’t have enough hospital resources to cope in the surge. And unfortunately, that is what is going to happen in about one to two months time in the mainland,” Cowling said.

    He said a surge in severe cases coupled with a surge of mild cases among the elderly who needed monitoring overwhelmed Hong Kong’s hospitals, and recommended separate isolation facilities for the elderly with mild cases to free up hospital beds.

    State media Xinhua reported on Tuesday in capital Beijing 50 patients are currently in a serious or critical condition in hospital with COVID.

    ‘WHAT A MESS’

    The sudden loosening of restrictions has sparked long queues outside fever clinics since last week in a worrying sign that a wave of infections is building, even though official tallies of new cases have trended lower recently as authorities eased back on testing.

    Some hospitals in Beijing have up to 80% of their staff infected, but many of them are still required to work due to staff shortages, a doctor in a large public hospital in Beijing told Reuters, adding he has spoken to his peers at other big hospitals in the capital.

    All operations and surgeries have been cancelled at his hospital unless the patient is “dying tomorrow”, he said, declining to be named due to the sensitivity of the subject.

    A post on the Weibo social media platform recounted a recent experience at the emergency ward at Beijing Hospital.

    “Those who have not been to the emergency department of Beijing Hospital don’t know what a mess it has become,” wrote a Weibo user called Moshang. The post went on to say that people in serious need of surgery were being made to wait.

    Beijing Hospital did not immediately respond to a Reuters’ request for comment.

    Wan Ling, a head nurse at a hospital in Huashan in China’s Anhui province, wrote on Weibo that many of her infected colleagues were relatively serious and had high fever.

    Several doctors from Wuhan province’s top public hospital Tongji have also tested positive for COVID-19, but since Sunday have not been allowed to take leave, a pharmaceutical sales representative with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters, declining to be named, as the information is not public.

    “They have to stay at work while they are sick,” said the person who regularly visits the hospital and spoke to its doctors recently.

    Tongji hospital did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

    Reporting by the Beijing newsroom, David Stanway and the Shanghai newsroom, Julie Zhu and Selena Li in Hong Kong; Writing by Farah Master; Editing by Miyoung Kim & Simon Cameron-Moore

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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