Scramble to contain a cholera crisis in Zambia

Published

10 months ago

January 15, 2024

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Zambia is dealing with one of its worst cholera outbreaks in recent years as 351 people have died and nearly 9,000 active cases have been registered.

Climate change has fuelled heavy rains which have contaminated drinking water in overpopulated and impoverished urban areas, mostly in the capital Lusaka.

Health workers are scrambling to contain a crisis that has the potential to be the worst the country has seen since the first outbreak in 1977.

The sound of crying cuts through the humid air as soil is hastily dug out by a uniformed worker and flung to the side. Among the clutches of tall grass is a burial site with clustered and shallow individual allotments – only marginally better than a mass grave.

The screams of grief are coming from 16-year-old Catherine. Her grandmother Tamara Lungu’s coffin is in one of the new mounds in the soft ground. Tamara was the matriarch of the family at 84 – both Catherine’s guardian and under her care.

She died of cholera in Zambia‘s Heroes National Stadium on 10 January and the family was informed two days later.

Her other older grandchild Nable Nyirongo stands at her grave. It is marked with tree branches so that he and his cousins can find it among the many other fresh graves when they come back to place a signpost. They will not be allowed to have a funeral.

On top of the grief, there is palpable disappointment.

“There’s nothing we can do. At least they have to respect the bodies, I think they’re not giving us respect,” says 50-year-old Nable.

Beyond the graves, Heroes National Stadium can be seen in the distance. Nable was waiting there for days with worried relatives. He was in the front gardens of the stadium reeling from shock when we first met him.

“They told us that she is OK and we were transferred to the waiting room after. Now they are telling me that she’s dead. What is this? We are not happy with what is happening here,” he told us as he waited for his grandmother’s body to be placed in the coffin he purchased.

Other concerned relatives gather beyond the metal barriers of the stadium waiting for any news. A roll call of names is read out periodically to assure them that their infected loved ones are still alive.

One man is seething with anger and sitting on the edge of a dry storm water drain. He says his nephew’s name hasn’t been called out for days and all he wants to know is if he is dead or alive.

Next to him is 59-year-old Hamlet and his daughter Agnes. She says her ageing father has made five trips from out of town to check on her brother – his son.

They said they were taken in on Wednesday to see him and found him well. The next day, they went in to see him but couldn’t find him in any of the wards.

“We will feel better if they tell us whether he is dead or alive,” says Agnes. It is clear the lack of closure is beyond frustrating.

The health minister, Sylvia Masebo, is working on capacity and communication issues as the stadium increasingly becomes a focal treatment centre.

“When we started the first 48 hours it was a challenge. But we have stabilised now and have people who have been employed specifically just to deal with that issue of making sure that from six up to midnight they are looking at issues of families.”

We speak to the minister in the paediatric ward where infants as young as five months old are being treated for cholera.

There are buckets and IV drips by every bed. The floor is wet with bleach. Pained high-pitched cries ring out from corners of the room.

Many of these children come from the highly infected area of Kanyama and nearby districts.

Impoverished neighbourhoods full of flooded streets, shallow wells, pit latrines and open-air food stalls.

Mothers and guardians have been allowed in to sit at their bedsides on the orders of Ms Masebo.

The prohibition of funerals and family burials has remained in place. More emergency rules are being brought in by her ministry that will place health restrictions on public places like bars and open-air food markets.

I ask her how she predicts Zambians will respond to these measures.

“I think what is important is for us to do what needs to be done which we have not done as a country [for] many decades mainly because sometimes politicians we are scared to do what needs to be done, that which is right because you feel you will be unpopular.”

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At least 10 dead after fire rips through retirement home in Spain

Published

4 seconds ago

November 15, 2024

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At least 10 people have been killed after a fire broke out at a retirement home in northern Spain in the early hours of this morning, officials have said.

A further two people were seriously injured in the blaze at the residence in the town of Villafranca de Ebro in Zaragoza, according to the Spanish news website Diario Sur.

They remain in a critical condition, while several others received treatment for smoke inhalation.

Firefighters were alerted to the blaze at the residence – the Jardines de Villafranca – at 5am (4am UK time) on Friday.

Those who were killed in the fire died from smoke inhalation, Spanish newspaper Heraldo reported.

The residence is home to 82 elderly residents.

The blaze started in one of the rooms, Fernando Beltran, the national government’s top official in the region, told reporters.

All of the victims were elderly residents, he added.

Fire crews, paramedics and police officers remain on site, said a spokesperson for the regional government of Aragon who confirmed the fatalities.

It took firefighters several hours to extinguish the blaze, they said.

The cause of the fire is unknown and is being investigated.

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COP29: UN climate summits ‘no longer fit for purpose’, warn leading figures

Published

2 hours ago

November 15, 2024

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UN climate talks are “no longer fit for purpose” and should only be hosted by countries who are trying to give up fossil fuels, veterans of the process have said.

An open letter to the United Nations, signed by former UN chief Ban Ki-moon, made a dramatic intervention in the 29th COP climate summit, under way in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Frustration over petrostate hosts – following last year’s summit in UAE – as well as the influence of fossil fuel lobbyists, prohibitive costs, and slow progress have been mounting in recent years.

The letter acknowledges the strides COPs have made on ramping up climate policies.

“But it is now clear that the COP is no longer fit for purpose,” the authors said.

“Its current structure simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale, which is essential to ensure a safe climate landing for humanity.”

The letter’s 22 signatories also include former Ireland President Mary Robinson and Christiana Figueres, former head of the UN climate body (UNFCCC) that runs the annual COP summits.

It called for the process to be streamlined and for countries to be held accountable for their promises.

Sky News analysis has found only “marginal” progress has been made since the “historic” pledge from COP28 last year to transition away from fossil fuels.

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The letter also called for “strict eligibility criteria” for host countries to exclude those “who do not support the phase out/transition away from fossil energy”.

This year’s host country, petrostate Azerbaijan, has been engulfed in controversy.

Its authoritarian president Ilham Aliyev used his opening address to criticise western hypocrisy and praise oil and gas as a “gift” from God. His criticism of France, with whom relations have long been tense, drove the French minister to cancel a trip to the summit.

While the government and its COP team run separate operations, host countries are supposed to smooth over disagreements and find consensus between the almost 200 countries gathered.

COP presidencies are also nominating themselves to be climate leaders and throwing their own countries under the spotlight.

Azerbaijan is a small developing country that relies significantly on oil and gas revenues. But it has made slow progress on building out clean power – getting just 1.5% of its energy from clean sources – and led a harsh crackdown on critics in the run up to the COP.

In an interview with Sky News on Sunday, its lead negotiator Yalchin Rafiyev was unable to say whether Azerbaijan preferred to extract all its oil and gas or seek another, cleaner economic pathway – hard though that would be.

In a news conference yesterday, Mr Rafiyev said the president had been “quite clear” and he would not comment further.

“We have opened our doors to everybody,” he added.

Some diplomats here have hinted that Azerbaijan’s presidency team mean well but might be a little out of their depth. They have never been out in front at previous COPs, but they also only had a year to prepare for their turn hosting the mighty summit.

“My sense of this is that they’re a little underprepared, a little overwhelmed and a little bit short,” said one, speaking anonymously, as is customary for diplomats trying to maintain good relations.

“But I’m not sure that that’s politics. It might just be bandwidth and preparation and things like that.”

Different regions in the world take turns to host a COP. This year it was up to Eastern Europe, but the selection process took longer than usual due to tensions over Russia’s war in Ukraine and between Azerbaijan and rival Armenia.

Achim Steiner of the UN Development Programme, called it “troubling” that some countries face questions over their host roles.

“Are there countries that are by definition good hosts and others are bad hosts?” he asked.

“In the United Nations, we maintain the principle of every nation, first of all, should have a right to be heard.

“Labels are not always the fairest way of describing a nation. Some of the largest oil producers have hosted this COP in the past, and seemingly this seemed to be a perfectly acceptable phenomenon.”

COP stands for “conference of the parties” and refers to countries (“parties”) who have signed the underlying climate treaty.

Azerbaijan’s COP29 team and the UN’s climate body have been contacted with a request to comment.

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Body pulled from mine after police cut off supplies to ‘smoke out’ thousands of illegal miners

Published

18 hours ago

November 14, 2024

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Body pulled from mine after police cut off supplies to 'smoke out' thousands of illegal miners

A body has been recovered from a South African mine after police cut off basic supplies in an effort to force around 4,000 illegal miners to resurface.

The body has emerged from the closed gold mine in the northwest town of Stilfontein a day after South Africa’s government said it would not help the illegal miners.

Around 20 people have surfaced from the mineshaft this week as police wait nearby to arrest all those appearing from underground.

It comes a day after a cabinet minister said the government was trying to “smoke them [the miners] out”.

The move is part of the police’s “Close the Hole” operation, whereby officers cut off supplies of food, water and other basic necessities to get those who have entered illegally to come out.

Local reports suggest the supply routes were cut off at the mine around two months ago, with relatives of the miners seen in the area as the stand-off continues.

A decomposed body was brought up on Thursday, with pathologists on the scene, police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe said.

It comes after South African cabinet minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni told reporters on Wednesday that the government would not send any help to the illegal miners, known in the country as zama zamas, because they are involved in a criminal act.

“We are not sending help to criminals. We are going to smoke them out. They will come out. Criminals are not to be helped; criminals are to be prosecuted. We didn’t send them there,” Ms Ntshavheni said.

Senior police and defence officials are expected to visit the area on Friday to “reinforce the government’s commitment to bringing this operation to a safe and lawful conclusion”, according to a media advisory from the police.

In the last few weeks, over 1,000 miners have surfaced at various mines in South Africa’s North West province, where police have cut off supplies.

Many of the miners were reported to be weak, hungry and sickly after going for weeks without basic supplies.

Illegal mining remains common in South Africa’s old gold-mining areas, with miners going into closed shafts to dig for any possible remaining deposits.

The illegal miners are often from neighbouring countries, and police say the illegal operations involve larger syndicates that employ the miners.

Their presence in closed mines has also created problems with nearby communities, which complain that the illegal miners commit crimes ranging from robberies to rape.

Illegal mining groups are known to be heavily armed and disputes between rival groups sometimes result in fatal confrontations.