Africa lacks preparedness for virus vaccine roll-out : WHO

Issued on: 26/11/2020 -

The African region is so far only 33 percent ready to roll out Covid-19 vaccines, the World Health Organization (WHO) said

 SIPHIWE SIBEKO POOL/AFP

Johannesburg (AFP)

The World Health Organization on Thursday urged African countries to improve their capacity to vaccinate populations against Covid-19, warning the continent was still "far from ready" for mass immunisation.

With three coronavirus vaccines now showing efficacy rates of 70 percent or more, the UN body called on Africa to "ramp up" preparations for "the continent's largest ever immunisation drive".

The African region is so far only 33 percent ready to roll out Covid-19 vaccines, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a statement.

That figure, based on data provided by 40 countries on a series of "readiness criteria", is well below a desired 80 percent benchmark.

"Planning and preparation will make or break this unprecedented endeavour," WHO Africa Director Matshidiso Moeti said during a virtual press briefing.

The main concerns are a lack of adequate funding plans, monitoring tools and community outreach.

"There are key logistical and financing gaps where international solidarity will be imperative," Moeti said.

The WHO estimates that rolling out a Covid-19 vaccine to just priority populations in Africa will cost around $5.7 billion (4.8 billion euros).

African countries will be partially subsidised by the COVAX global Covid-19 distribution scheme.

The World Bank has also set aside $12 billion (10.1 billion euros) to help developing countries finance their immunisation programs.

Moeti said the aim was to vaccinate three percent of Africa's population by March 2021, and 20 percent by the end of the year.

- Africa-based research -

Other health experts at the briefing said additional research was needed to develop vaccines more suitable to the continent.

They noted that a promising vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, which tested at a 95 percent success rate at its latest trial, must be kept at -70 degrees celsius -- all but impossible for most hospitals in Africa.

"We really should be doing some of this vaccine research in the African region," said Helen Rees, chair of the WHO's Africa immunisation advisory group.

So far only Egypt, Morocco, Kenya and South Africa have active Covid-19 vaccine trials.

Moeti said it was important for the continent not to fall behind on global preparations for Covid-19 vaccinations even though coronavirus infections had somewhat plateaued.

She noted that Africa has been relatively spared compared to the rest of the world, with over 2.1 million cases and 50,000 deaths recorded to date.

But some countries are beginning to see localised infection surges, particularly in South Africa and the Maghreb.

"We are starting to see an uptick and that gives us a lot of concern," Moeti warned. "The curve is once again trending upwards a little bit."

sch/pma

© 2020 AFP

LatAm governments facing vaccine distribution challenges

Issued on: 26/11/2020 - 

Getting vaccines to Amazon rainforest residents poses a special challenge for Brazilian healthworkers, who performed a rapid Covid test on Chief Domingos from the Arapuim tribe in July in Para state TARSO SARRAF AFP

Montevideo (AFP)

Cash-strapped Latin American governments face severe geographical, economic and social challenges in trying to ensure life-saving Covid-19 vaccines are made available to vulnerable populations, experts say.

Megacities like Sao Paulo, mountain ranges like the Andes as well as the vast Amazon basin pose just a few of the geographical problems for distributors, given the vital need to maintain the cold chain to preserve the vaccines.

Transporting vaccines "to the most distant parts of the big cities and to peripheral neighborhoods, with the need to conserve the cold chain, will be the first major challenge," Colombian epidemiologist Carlos Trillos told AFP.

Governments also face a race against time to provide training to those handling the doses throughout the cold chain, he said.

Amazon basin countries had an early taste of the geographical challenges ahead for their vaccination campaigns, after health workers struggled to provide care for three million indigenous people scattered throughout the rainforest, an area almost seven times the size of Spain.

Vaccine campaigners also worry about rampant disinformation in the continent worst-affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

Some 12.5 million of the 630 million Latin Americans have been infected with the coronavirus and at least 435,000 have died, a third of the total number of deaths worldwide, according to AFP figures based on official data.

- Challenging and costly' -

The process will be "challenging and costly" said Jarbas Barbosa, deputy director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).

The organization expects to distribute vaccines in the region between March and May 2021 through Covax, a World Health Organization initiative to guarantee equal access for impoverished countries.

All Latin American and Caribbean countries have joined Covax, although some lack funds to purchase vaccines themselves, Barbosa said.

In any case Covax will only provide enough vaccines for 10 to 20 percent of the population, forcing many governments to sign separate bilateral agreements with laboratories and biotechnology companies.

Countries in the region are having to spend significant amounts of money on these pre-purchases just as they are experiencing historic economic contractions from the impact of the pandemic.

Lower-income countries like Bolivia, Haiti, Guyana and several Caribbean island states are betting on the Covax-eligible status to receive vaccines without contributing funds. So is El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, recently battered by Hurricanes Iota and Eta.

Covax's latest projections estimate that vaccinating just 20 percent of the region's population will cost more than $2 billion.

The vaccine will be free of charge, rolled out in a first phase for health professionals, essential workers and, in some cases, older people or those with conditions that put them at risk of developing a serious case of Covid-19.

- Complex logistics -

Storing and distributing the vaccines is emerging as the main obstacle.

Among the companies leading the vaccine race, Pfizer/BioNTech require their doses being stored at temperatures around -70 degrees Celsius -- meaning they can only be distributed in large cities, experts said.

Maintaining the cold chain "is a challenge for all countries" said Barbosa.

One positive is that "there are more than 100 vaccines in development ... the others that are closer to concluding clinical trials use the same cold chain that countries already use," he said, in ranges of - 15 to -25 Celsius and 2 to 8 degrees Celsius.

Argentina, which has signed agreements that so far guarantee vaccines for 28 of its 44 million inhabitants, will deploy the army to ensure doses are distributed.

- Crisis and disinformation -

Peru, the Latin American country with the most deaths per million inhabitants (1,081), has so far secured 9.5 million vaccines and is negotiating with laboratories to cover 24.5 million of its 31 million inhabitants.

Venezuela signed a deal with Russia to receive 10 million Sputnik V vaccines in the first quarter of 2021, and Caracas said mass vaccinations would begin in April.

However, according to Virgilio Vasquez, head of local NGO Doctors United, the problem in Venezuela goes far beyond doubts over the infrastructure and equipment to support the cold chain.

"Vaccines have to reach not only large hospitals but also outpatient clinics in remote areas," he said.

Even if health centers were to receive the necessary equipment to ensure safe vaccine storage, health workers "will still have serious electrical problems, with regions where the power goes out for hours every day."

Vasquez, a specialist in epidemiological data processing, also said Venezuela's vaccination campaigners will lack fuel to power vehicles needed to distribute the vaccine because of a severe gasoline shortage.

Brazil's vaccine campaign was well set "to reach the most remote areas," said Natalia Pasternak, microbiology professor at the University of Sao Paulo.

However, the major obstacle there could come from pandemic skeptic President Jair Bolsonaro "and the eventual resistance of the population" to vaccination, she said.

burs-ll/db/ch

© 2020 AFP

France migrants : controversy over treatment of asylum-seekers.

Issued on: 26/11/2020 


Daniel Tostado, immigration lawyer, comments on the controversial destruction of a camp of refugees in the center of Paris on November 23rd.

#BLM

French music producer's beating sparks new anger over police violence
Issued on: 26/11/2020 - 

Accusations of police violence are multiplying in France

 THOMAS COEX AFP

Paris (AFP)

French authorities on Tuesday opened an investigation and ordered suspensions of police after they were filmed beating up a black music producer in central Paris in images that sparked new anger over the conduct of the security forces.

The images published by the online news site Loopsider showed the music producer, identified only as Michel, being repeatedly beaten as he tried to enter a music studio in the 17th district of Paris.

The incident comes after a string of high-profile probes into police violence against black and Arab citizens and as concern grows over new legislation that would restrict the right of the press to publish images of the faces of police.

The man was himself initially arrested for violence and failure to obey the police. But prosecutors threw out the probe and instead opened an investigation against the police officers themselves for committing violence while in a position of authority.

"I am asking the chief of (Paris) police to suspend on an interim basis the police officers concerned," Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on Twitter.

The man's lawyer, Hafida El Ali, told AFP that his client had been detained for 48 hours on the basis of "lies by the police who had outrageously aggressed him".

Paris prosecutor Remy Heitz told AFP that he had asked France's National Police General Inspectorate (IGPN) to shed light on what happened as quickly as possible.

"It is a very important case in my opinion and I have been following it personally," he said.

- 'Exceptionally serious' -

Loopsider, which has exposed several episodes of police brutality in recent months, said that the images "had to be seen to understand the full extent of the problem".

Loopsider said Michel had initially been stopped for not wearing a mask and subjected to racial abuse by the police.

"People who should have been protecting me attacked me. I did nothing to deserve this. I just want these three people to be punished according to the law," Michel told reporters on Thursday as he arrived at the IGPN with his lawyer to file a complaint.

Paris' Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo said she was "profoundly shocked" "by an intolerable act... that is exceptionally serious."

A close ally of President Emmanuel Macron, parliament speaker Richard Ferrand, also expressed alarm, writing on Twitter that illegitimate use of force by the police "eroded the indispensable link of confidence between citizens and those who protect us, and must be punished without weakness."

There has already been virulent criticism of the police this week after they used tear gas late Monday to remove migrants from a camp set up in central Paris.

Prosecutors have opened probes into the use of violence against both a journalist and a migrant in that incident.

The beating of the producer now piles new pressure on Paris police chief Didier Lallement who has faced stern questions from critics and media over the dispersal of the migrants.

- 'Would still be in prison' -

The lower house of parliament Tuesday evening gave initial approval to a security bill which would restrict the publication of photos or videos of police officers' faces, although it still faces further legislative hurdles.

Media unions say it could give police a green light to prevent journalists from doing their work and potentially documenting abuses.

"If we did not have the videos (of the beating of Michel), my client would be in prison," lawyer El Ali said.

Macron swept to power in 2017 as a centrist who rallied support from across the political spectrum. But critics and even some supporters accuse him of tilting to the right as he seeks re-election in 2022.

© 2020 AFP

Black Australia: Bringing Aboriginal voices to the silver screen


Issued on: 26/11/2020 - 

PERSPECTIVE © FRANCE 24
By:Haxie MEYERS-BELKIN
10 min

Australia is still grappling with the legacy of its historic subjugation of the country’s Aboriginal minority. We speak to Greta Morton Elangué about her online film festival Black Australia, an event she hopes will give the world a chance to hear hear the stories of an often marginalised community

Violence against women: How one woman in Zimbabwe decided to take a stand

Issued on: 25/11/2020 - 

PERSPECTIVE © FRANCE 24
By:Stuart Norval
10 min

Beatrice Savadye grew up in a poor mining community in northern Zimbabwe. She experienced gender violence at home: her father told her brother to beat her and her sisters up if they misbehaved. But she decided to take a stand and not accept the status quo. Seven years ago, she started a women's group for Zimbabweans called Roots Africa. It pushes for stronger laws to protect women trapped with abusers from a surge in violence and from HIV infections. She joins us as part of our special coverage to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

Honour crimes: Women in Chechnya forced to suffer in silence
Issued on: 25/11/2020 - 

By: Elena VOLOCHINE|Pavel SERGEEV|Gulliver CRAGG|Albina KIRILLOVA

7 min

Since 2007, the people of Chechnya, a small Muslim republic in southern Russia, have lived under the hardline rule of President Ramzan Kadyrov. He became notorious in 2017 when he launched a purge of homosexuals. He's also known for encouraging so-called honour crimes – crimes committed against women by members of their own families. Our team in Russia managed to meet one Chechen woman who fled the threat of an honour crime and told us her harrowing story.

Global Covid-19 lockdowns inflame violence against women
Issued on: 25/11/2020 - 

Demonstrators take part in "Las Catrinas CDMX 2020" march demanding justice for girls and women killed by femicide violence in Mexico City, on November 01, 2020. 

AFP - CLAUDIO CRUZ

Text by:FRANCE 24

No country has been spared the coronavirus, nor the scourge of domestic violence which has surged during lockdowns, as the world marks the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on Wednesday.

From a spike in rapes in Nigeria and South Africa, increased numbers of women missing in Peru, higher rates of women being killed in Brazil and Mexico and overwhelmed associations in Europe: the pandemic has aggravated the plague of sexual violence.

According to UN data released in late September, lockdowns have led to increases in complaints or calls to report domestic abuse of 25 percent in Argentina, 30 percent in Cyprus and France and 33 percent in Singapore.

Pioneering the fight against domestic violence in China

02:14   

In essentially all countries, measures to limit the spread of the coronavirus have resulted in women and children being confined at home.

"The house is the most dangerous place for women," Moroccan associations noted in April as they pressed authorities for "an emergency response".

In India, Heena -- not her real name -- a 33-year-old cook who lives in Mumbai, said she felt "trapped in my house" with a husband who did not work, consumed drugs and was violent.

As she described what she had endured, she frequently broke down in tears.

After buying drugs, "he would spend the rest of his day either hooked to his phone playing PubG (PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds) or beating me up and abusing me," she told AFP by telephone.

Insufficient measures

On August 15, her husband beat Heena worse than before, in front of their seven-year-old son, and threw her out of the house at 3:00 am.

"I had nowhere to go," she said. "I could barely move my body -- he beat me to a pulp, my body was swollen."

Instead of going to the police, she made it to a friend's home and then to her parents.

She is now fighting for custody of her son, "but courts are not working in full capacity due to Covid".

She has not seen her son in four months, though he manages to call her in secret from time to time.

It is not just the courts that are hobbled by the virus. The closure of businesses and schools, as well as cultural and athletic activities, have deprived victims already weakened by economic insecurity of ways to escape violence.

Hanaa Edwar of the Iraqi Women's Network, told AFP there had been "a dangerous deterioration in the socioeconomic situation for families following the lockdown, with more families going into poverty, which leads to violent reactions".

In Brazil, 648 murders of women were recorded in the first half of the year, a small increase from the same period in 2019 according to the Brazilian Forum for Public Security.

While the government has launched a campaign to encourage women to file complaints, the forum says that measures designed to help victims remain insufficient.

'Mask-19'

Worldwide, the United Nations says that only one country in eight has taken measures to lessen the pandemic's impact on women and children.

In Spain, victims could discreetly ask for help in pharmacies by using the code "mask-19", and some French associations established contact points in supermarkets.
Violence against women: Spain's fight against domestic abuse

03:36

"The women who came to us were in situations that had become unbearable, dangerous," said Sophie Cartron, assistant director of an association that worked in a shopping mall near Paris.

"The lockdown established a wall of silence," she said.

Mobilisation on November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women remains uncertain owing to restrictions linked to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Marches for women's rights have nevertheless taken place recently in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Liberia, Namibia and Romania.

"We will not be able to demonstrate to express our anger, or march together," said the Paris-based feminist group Family Planning.

"But we will make ourselves heard all the same, virtually and visually."

Tamara Mathebula of the South African Commission for Gender Equality described a chronic "toxic masculinity" that was "everywhere you look".

"There are gender pay gaps which are widening and continue to widen during the Covid-19 pandemic," she told AFP.

"Gender-based violence worsened" as a result, she said, and the potential consequences were very serious.

In July, the UN estimated that six months of restrictions could result in 31 million additional cases of sexual violence in the world and seven million unwanted pregnancies.

The situation was also undermining the fight against female genital mutilation and forced marriages, the UN warned.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

Thousands of Chilean women perform feminist anthem

Issued on: 26/11/2020 

Members of the feminist group Las Tesis, authors of the performance piece "A Rapist In Your Way," take part in a demonstration during the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women in Santiago, Chile, on November 25, 2020 MARTIN BERNETTI AFP

Santiago (AFP)

Thousands of women gathered in one of Santiago's main plazas on Wednesday and performed the feminist anthem "A Rapist In Your Path" to mark the UN's International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women -- before Chilean police violently dispersed them.

Created by Chilean feminist collective Las Tesis and first performed in 2019, the song condemns men who attack women and is accompanied by dance moves.

Four members of Las Tesis led the performance, which has been copied and translated into different languages by women around the world.

The crowd was able to complete the performance only once before police deployed a water cannon to disperse the demonstrators from the Plaza Italia in downtown Santiago.

Las Tesis gained worldwide fame during Chilean demonstrations against economic disparity in 2019 with the street theater performance.

Earlier Wednesday, women's groups demonstrated in Santiago demanding an end to the male violence. Barricades were set on fire and a store was looted.

"We believe that violence against women is part of a structural state violence and of the neoliberal patriarchal system to which we are subjected in this country," feminist lawyer and demonstrator Florencia Pinto told AFP.

The demo was one of dozens around the world protesting violence against women, from Istanbul to Paris to Mexico City.

The demonstrations were given new urgency by an alarming rise in violence targeting women around the world since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

Venezuela documented 228 femicides in 2020 -- 159 of which came after virus lockdowns began in mid-March, according to the Monitor de Femicidos.

"We are being murdered," a crowd of women protesting in the capital Caracas chanted.

A large crowd of women and their supporters also marched in Mexico City, including native women, trans women, and relatives of people who have been murdered or have vanished during the country's drug war.

"Let's not forget that while violence is what unites us, that violence turns into something much stronger which is dignified feminist outrage," one of the marchers, 27 year-old college student Luky Coutino told AFP.

pa-burs/st/ch

Mexican protesters decry violence against women


Issued on: 26/11/2020 - 

Mexican protesters demanded justice for victims of femicides on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women 

RODRIGO ARANGUA AFP

Mexico City (AFP)

Demonstrators marched through the Mexican capital on Wednesday and scuffled with police during an angry protest at widespread violence against women in the Latin American nation.

Around 10 women are killed every day in Mexico and activists accuse the government of not doing enough to tackle the problem.

Holding banners, flags and placards, thousands of protesters demanded justice for the many victims of femicides on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

"Although the state doesn't do its job, we support each other as women," said 22-year-old student Ana Karen Resendiz.

"We look for a way to move forward and to stay well and alive."

Protesters marched to the city's main square where some faced off with riot police trying to stop them defacing the walls of the presidential palace and the cathedral with paint.

Around 3,800 women are killed each year in Mexico, while six in 10 women have suffered some form of aggression in the past decade, Interior Minister Olga Sanchez said.

"We have a historical debt to women, especially to victims of violence, and we cannot allow impunity," she said.

"Machismo kills, destroys the lives of women and limits our country's development," Sanchez added, speaking at President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's daily press conference.

Lopez Obrador for his part said that "conditions of poverty and economic inequality have led to these phenomena of aggression and violence against women."

Only half of all femicides in Mexico lead to a convictions and in some regions impunity is as high as 98 percent, according to the report presented at the news conference.

Protests against gender violence have multiplied in the past year in the capital and other parts of the country.

Last month a police crackdown on a protest in the resort city of Cancun against the murder of a local woman left several people injured and sparked national outcry.

© 2020 AFP