AFP Asia Business

At least 40 dead in Sudan’s worst cholera outbreak in years

Cholera has claimed at least 40 lives in Sudan’s Darfur region over the last week as the country weathers its worst outbreak of in years, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Thursday.At a cholera isolation tent at a Sudanese displacement camp, an AFP journalist saw women and a young girl receiving intravenous fluids, while exhausted and weak patients sprawled on camp beds.Citing rising cases of cholera which “exacerbate the worst effects of malnutrition”, the European Union called on all parties to “urgently” allow in international aid.Medical charity MSF said the vast western region, which has been a major battleground over more than two years of fighting between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, had been hardest hit by the year-old outbreak.”On top of an all-out war, people in Sudan are now experiencing the worst cholera outbreak the country has seen in years,” MSF said in a statement. “In the Darfur region alone, MSF teams treated over 2,300 patients and recorded 40 deaths in the past week.”The NGO said 2,470 cholera-related deaths had been reported in the year to August 11, out of 99,700 suspected cases.Cholera is an acute intestinal infection that spreads through food and water contaminated with bacteria, often from faeces.It causes severe diarrhoea, vomiting and muscle cramps.Cholera can kill within hours when not attended to, though it can be treated with simple oral rehydration, and antibiotics for more severe cases.There has been a global increase in cholera cases, which have also spread geographically, since 2021.MSF said mass displacements of civilians sparked by the war in Sudan had aggravated the outbreak by denying people access to clean water for essential hygiene measures, such as washing dishes and food.The delivery of humanitarian aid has become almost impossible.”This cannot continue,” the EU said, in a joint statement with several countries including Britain, Canada and Japan. “Civilians must be protected, and humanitarian access must be granted.”- No other choice -“The situation is most extreme in Tawila, North Darfur state, where 380,000 people have fled to escape ongoing fighting around the city of El-Fasher, according to the United Nations,” MSF said.”In Tawila, people survive with an average of just three litres of water per day, which is less than half the emergency minimum threshold of 7.5 litres needed per person per day for drinking, cooking, and hygiene.”At a cholera isolation centre in a tent at a Tawila displacement camp, an AFP journalist watched met patients suffering in the latest outbreak.”We mix lemon in the water when we have it and drink it as medicine,” said Mona Ibrahim, who has been living for two months in a hastily erected camp in Tawila.”We have no other choice,” she said. “We don’t have toilets — the children relieve themselves in the open,” she added.According to the World Health Organization, between January of 2023 and July of this year, Sudan had the highest number of cholera deaths of any country in the world.Sudan’s mortality rate from cholera, at 2.1 percent, is more than 2.5 times higher than the global average.- Contaminated water -Since forces loyal to the regular army recaptured the capital Khartoum in March, fighting has again focused on Darfur, where the paramilitaries have been attempting to take El-Fasher.The besieged pocket is the last major city in the western region still under the army’s control and UN agencies have spoken of appalling conditions for the remaining civilians trapped inside.”In displacement and refugee camps, families often have no choice but to drink from contaminated sources and many contract cholera,” said Sylvain Penicaud, MSF project coordinator in Tawila.”Just two weeks ago, a body was found in a well inside one of the camps. It was removed, but within two days, people were forced to drink from that same water again.”MSF said that heavy rains were worsening the crisis by contaminating water and damaging sewage systems, while the exodus of civilians seeking refuge was spreading the disease.”As people move around to flee fighting, cholera is spreading further, in Sudan and into neighbouring Chad and South Sudan,” it said.MSF’s head of mission in Sudan, Tuna Turkmen, said the situation was “beyond urgent”.”The outbreak is spreading well beyond displacement camps now, into multiple localities across Darfur states and beyond,” he said.”Survivors of war must not be left to die from a preventable disease.”burs-raz/dc

Pro-Palestinian tourist ship protests irk Greek govt

A series of pro-Palestinian protests targeting an Israeli cruise ship around Greece have irritated a conservative government walking a diplomatic tightrope with Middle Eastern powers during the Gaza war.At the crack of dawn on Thursday at the port of Piraeus outside Athens, dozens of riot police armed with truncheons, tear gas and shields sealed up a cruise terminal from hundreds of demonstrators.Their ire was directed at the “Crown Iris”, a hulking Israeli tourist ship that has attracted protests at each of its stops in the country since last month.Tourism is a pillar of the Greek economy, but pro-Palestinian activists say the visitors “whitewash” Israel’s devastating war in Gaza that was sparked by the unprecedented 2023 Hamas attack.According to the All Workers Militant Front (PAME), a communist-affiliated union that called the rally, the Crown Iris was carrying Israeli soldiers.”We cannot tolerate people who have contributed to the genocide of the Palestinian people moving amongst us,” protester Yorgos Michailidis told AFP in Piraeus.”We want people everywhere to see that we don’t only care about tourism and the money they bring,” the 43-year-old teacher said.For Katerina Patrikiou, a 48-year-old hospital worker, the visitors “are not tourists — they are the slaughterers of children and civilians in Gaza”.- ‘Useful idiots’ -Greece traditionally maintained a pro-Arab foreign policy, but governments of different political stripes have in recent years woven closer ties with Israel in defence, security and energy.Athens has carefully tried to protect both relations during the war, accusing the left-wing opposition of undermining the strategic Israel alliance aimed at counterbalancing the influence of historic rival Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean.”The useful idiots for Turkey have been in our ports, where their extreme actions seriously damage Greece’s image in Israel,” Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis wrote on X last month.”We must protect this alliance as the apple of our eye and isolate these fools… Those who exhibit antisemitic behaviour act against Greece’s interests.”Before joining the ruling conservative party in 2012, Georgiadis was a prominent member of far-right party Laos, which had a history of anti-Semitic statements. When first named health minister a year later, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) had urged the government to reconsider, noting that Georgiadis had made “troubling remarks” about Jewish people and had promoted an anti-Semitic book.In 2017, he publicly apologised for having “coexisted with and tolerated the opinions of people who showed disrespect to my Jewish compatriots”.Several protests each rallying hundreds of people attempted to prevent the Crown Iris from docking at Mediterranean islands including Rhodes, Crete and Syros last month, with occasional scuffles between demonstrators and police.According to The Times of Israel, the ship’s owners decided to skip Syros after 200 people protested as the vessel approached.Israel’s ambassador to Greece, Noam Katz, condemned an “attempt to harm the strong relations between our peoples, and to intimidate Israeli tourists” in Syros.Greece’s Minister of Citizen Protection Michalis Chrisochoidis has said that anyone who “prevents a citizen of a third country from visiting our country will be prosecuted” for racism.- ‘Whitewash crimes’ -PAME accused the government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of using antisemitism allegations “to whitewash the crimes of the murderer state, suppress any reaction, and any expression of solidarity with the Palestinian people”.”Nobody is racist, nobody has a problem with Jewish identity… Our problem is the people who support genocide,” Michailidis said at Thursday’s rally.The October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Gaza’s Hamas rulers resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.Palestinian militants also took 251 hostages that day, with 49 still held in Gaza, including 27 who the Israeli army says are dead.Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 61,000 Palestinians, mainly civilians, according to figures from Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.An Israeli aid blockade has exacerbated already dire humanitarian conditions in the devastated strip and plunged its more than two million inhabitants into the risk of famine.

At least 40 dead in Sudan’s worst cholera outbreak in years: MSF

Cholera has claimed at least 40 lives in Sudan’s Darfur region over the last week as the country weathers its worst outbreak of the illness in years, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Thursday.The medical charity said the vast western region, which has been a major battleground over more than two years of fighting between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, had been hardest hit by the year-old outbreak.”On top of an all-out war, people in Sudan are now experiencing the worst cholera outbreak the country has seen in years,” MSF said in a statement. “In the Darfur region alone, MSF teams treated over 2,300 patients and recorded 40 deaths in the past week.”The NGO said 2,470 cholera-related deaths had been reported in the year to August 11, out of 99,700 suspected cases.Cholera is an acute intestinal infection that spreads through food and water contaminated with bacteria, often from faeces.It causes severe diarrhoea, vomiting and muscle cramps.Cholera can kill within hours when not attended to, though it can be treated with simple oral rehydration, and antibiotics for more severe cases.There has been a global increase in cholera cases, which have also spread geographically, since 2021.MSF said mass displacements of civilians sparked by the war in Sudan had aggravated the outbreak by denying people access to clean water for essential hygiene measures, such as washing dishes and food.- No other choice -“The situation is most extreme in Tawila, North Darfur state, where 380,000 people have fled to escape ongoing fighting around the city of El-Fasher, according to the United Nations,” MSF said.”In Tawila, people survive with an average of just three litres of water per day, which is less than half the emergency minimum threshold of 7.5 litres needed per person per day for drinking, cooking, and hygiene.”At a cholera isolation centre in a tent at a Tawila displacement camp, an AFP journalist saw women and a young girl receiving intravenous fluids, while around them exhausted and weak patients were sprawled out on camp beds.”We mix lemon in the water when we have it and drink it as medicine,” said Mona Ibrahim, who has been living for two months in a hastily-erected camp in Tawila.”We have no other choice,” she said. “We don’t have toilets — the children relieve themselves in the open,” she added.According to the World Health Organization, between January of 2023 and July of this year, Sudan had the highest number of cholera deaths of any country in the world.Sudan’s mortality rate from cholera, at 2.1 percent, is more than 2.5 times higher than the global average.- Contaminated water -Since forces loyal to the regular army recaptured the capital Khartoum in March, fighting has again focused on Darfur, where the paramilitaries have been attempting to take El-Fasher.The besieged pocket is the last major city in the western region still under the army’s control and UN agencies have spoken of appalling conditions for the remaining civilians trapped inside.”In displacement and refugee camps, families often have no choice but to drink from contaminated sources and many contract cholera,” said Sylvain Penicaud, MSF project coordinator in Tawila.”Just two weeks ago, a body was found in a well inside one of the camps. It was removed, but within two days, people were forced to drink from that same water again.”MSF said that heavy rains were worsening the crisis by contaminating water and damaging sewage systems, while the exodus of civilians seeking refuge was spreading the disease.”As people move around to flee fighting, cholera is spreading further, in Sudan and into neighbouring Chad and South Sudan,” it said.MSF’s head of mission in Sudan, Tuna Turkmen, said the situation was “beyond urgent”.”The outbreak is spreading well beyond displacement camps now, into multiple localities across Darfur states and beyond,” he said.”Survivors of war must not be left to die from a preventable disease.”

Foreign NGOs say new Israeli rules keep them from delivering Gaza aid

New Israeli legislation regulating foreign aid groups has increasingly been used to deny their requests to bring supplies into Gaza, a joint letter signed by more than 100 groups said Thursday.Ties between foreign-backed aid groups and the Israeli government have long been tense, with Israeli officials often complaining that the organisations are biased. Those rocky relations have become even more strained since Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war. “Israeli authorities have rejected requests from dozens of NGOs to bring in lifesaving goods, citing that these organisations are ‘not authorised to deliver aid’,” the aid groups said.COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body overseeing civil affairs in the Palestinian territories, rejected what it called “false claims” made by the organisations. According to the joint letter, whose signatories include Oxfam and Doctors Without Borders (MSF), at least 60 requests to bring aid into Gaza were rejected in July alone.UK-based Oxfam said that $2.5 million worth of its supplies, including food, were barred from entering Gaza, while another charity, CARE, said it had not been authorised to bring in aid since March.Another signatory, Anera, said it had over seven million dollars’ worth of supplies, including enough rice for six million meals, waiting just outside Gaza in the Israeli port city of Ashdod.But COGAT denied Israel was blocking supplies.”Israel acts to allow and facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, while Hamas seeks to exploit the aid to strengthen its military capabilities and consolidate its control over the population,” it wrote on X.”This is sometimes done under the cover of certain international aid organisations, whether knowingly or unknowingly,” added COGAT, which said that close to 380 trucks had entered the Gaza Strip on Wednesday.- ‘Hostile activity’ -But Amjad Al-Shawa, head of the Palestinian NGOs Network in Gaza, told AFP that Israel “continues to prevent international NGOs from bringing their trucks” into the territory.”The number of trucks entering Gaza (each day) is only between 70 and 90 at best,” he said.In March, the Israeli government approved a new set of rules for foreign non-governmental organisations working with Palestinians.The law updates the framework for how aid groups must register to maintain their status within Israel.Registration can be refused if Israeli authorities deem that a group denies the democratic character of Israel or “promotes delegitimisation campaigns” against the country.”Unfortunately, many aid organisations serve as a cover for hostile and sometimes violent activity,” said Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli, whose ministry has been put in charge of NGO registrations.”Organisations that have no connection to hostile or violent activity and no ties to the boycott movement will be granted permission to operate,” he added.- Deadly distributions -The aid groups complained that the new rules were leaving Gazans without life-saving assistance.”Today, international NGOs’ fears have proven true: the registration system is now being used to further block aid and deny food and medicine in the midst of the worst-case scenario of famine”, their joint letter concluded.”Our mandate is to save lives but due to the registration restrictions, civilians are being left without the food, medicine and protection they urgently need,” said Jolien Veldwijk, Palestinian territories director for CARE.Israel has long accused Hamas of diverting aid entering the territory under the UN-led distribution system.Since May, it has distributed aid through the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an organisation that is boycotted by the UN and other aid groups over accusations it serves Israeli military objectives.According to Gaza’s civil defence agency, the GHF’s operations have been frequently marred by chaos as thousands of Gazans have scrambled daily to approach its hubs, where some have been shot, including by Israeli soldiers.In late July, the United Nations reported that at least 1,373 Palestinians had been killed in Gaza since May 27 while waiting or searching for aid.International NGOs now fear they could be barred from operating in Israel and the Palestinian territories altogether if they do not submit sensitive information about their Palestinian staff to the Israeli government.The deadline for information submission is in September, at which point “many could be forced to halt operations in Gaza and the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, and remove all international staff within 60 days.”