September 8, 2014
Monsoon rains and flash floods across large areas of northern Pakistan and India have killed more than 300 people, while hundreds have been injured and tens of thousands have lost homes. From the AP:
Five days of incessant rains in Indian-controlled Kashmir have left at least 120 people dead in the region’s worst flooding in more than five decades, submerging hundreds of villages and triggering landslides, officials said. In neighboring Pakistan, more than 160 people have died and thousands of homes have collapsed, with an official saying the situation was becoming a “national emergency.”
Rescuers in both countries were using helicopters and boats to try to reach tens of thousands of people stranded in their homes as floodwaters rose and submerged many villages.
Rescue efforts in Srinagar, the main city in Indian Kashmir, were hampered by fast-moving floodwaters that submerged large parts of the city.
The rains had stopped on Sunday, but officials said the spreading water from the overflowed Jhelum River was moving too fast to allow boats to reach many people stranded in Srinagar. By evening, several boats had been deployed to start rescue efforts, said Omar Abdullah, Jammu and Kashmir state’s top elected official.
In many of Srinagar’s neighborhoods, the water was about 12 feet deep, submerging entire houses. Stranded residents left their homes to move in with friends or relatives in safer areas.
“I’m in my 80s and I’ve never seen floods like this,” said Ghulam Nabi, speaking through a window from the third story of his house in Srinagar’s upscale Rajbagh section. “If this is how it is in my neighborhood, I cannot imagine the devastation in other areas.”
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Global Health and Development Beat
In a city known for its vertiginous inequalities, the water shortage in New Delhi, India affects people from both upscale gated communities and dust-blown slums, as every day, the city’s supply falls more than 160 million gallons short.
Despite ongoing violence and displacements across Iraq, UN agencies and humanitarian partners are responding to the ongoing humanitarian crisis with lifesaving programs, from Basra in the southeast of the country to Anbar province west of Baghdad, to Duhok in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
An experimental Ebola vaccine is now being tested in people, according to scientists who say the drug has shown promising results when it was tested on monkeys. The small clinical trial is using healthy human volunteers in the US.
The Ebola caseload continues to grow in Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, even as more people accept the disease and try to stay safe. Yet the outbreak has paralyzed the country’s public health system, and existing Ebola treatment units are having to turn suspected cases away.
The third US medical missionary to become infected with the Ebola virus was showing signs of improvement Saturday at a Nebraska hospital but was still very ill, his wife said.
As many as 46 people have died of encephalitis in a week and seven in past 24 hours, in Gorakhpur, India. A total of 991 encephalitis cases have been reported since January this year, among which 291 have died and 184 are undergoing treatment in encephalitis ward of medical college.
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Buzzing in the Blogs
An editorial from the Guardian says a slow response and poor health systems are behind the continued spread of Ebola in West Africa. An excerpt:
A devastating report in the New York Times shows that WHO has been savagely run down in recent years, with the most eviscerating cuts made in the very departments vital for the containment of epidemics. One department was closed down entirely, another key section had its staff cut by two-thirds, and staff in the field, especially in Africa, were similarly reduced. The reasons were both financial and ideological. Countries cut contributions to WHO after the financial crisis and, at the same time, the idea took hold that the organisation should concentrate its efforts on helping nations build their own capacity to respond to emergencies rather than providing that capacity itself in the first instance.
This was theoretically reasonable, but did not happen in practice, especially in poorer parts of the world. The result was that WHO simply walked away from the lessons of its own successes, stripping itself of the means to act effectively when Ebola emerged again. Tellingly, the disease spread for three months before it was spotted, and it was an NGO, Médecins sans Frontières, that first categorised it as a major outbreak. The head of MSF, Dr Joanne Liu, told the UN last week that the battle to contain Ebola was being lost.
The weak health systems of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, she implied, have become centres for the spread of Ebola rather than its control, as carers fall ill and patients flee. Dr Liu called on wealthy countries to send military biohazard teams to west Africa, a measure worth immediate consideration. Beyond that, there must be a resolve never to let the WHO fall into such an eroded state again.
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Capital Events
Monday
10:00 AM – Death, Poverty and Tobacco Taxes – CGD
4:30 PM – Welcome Reception for US Global AIDS Coordinator Deborah Birx – 4:30 PM
Tuesday
8:30 AM – From Conflict to Reconstruction: Generating and Using Evidence to Address Short-term Health Needs and Build Long-term Capacity – SID
Wednesday
12:30 PM – Feeding the World: Is sustainable Intesification the Answer? – SAIS
Thursday
9:00 AM – Careers in Development featuring Paul Gunette: Agribusiness, Food Security and Global Development – CSIS
12:15 PM – Building Resilience in the Face of Climate Change and Weather Shocks – IFRI
Friday
9:30 AM – More Power to Her: How Empowering Girls Can Help End Child Marriage – ICRW
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By Mark Leon Goldberg and Tom Murphy
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