The manufacturer of one of only two cholera vaccines for use in humanitarian emergencies is to halt production at the end of this year, just as the world faces an “unprecedented” series of deadly outbreaks. 

Shantha Biotechnics, a wholly owned Indian subsidiary of the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi, will stop production of its Shanchol vaccine within months and cease supply by the end of 2023. Shanchol is one of only two oral cholera vaccines suitable for use in a global emergency stockpile used to supply countries battling outbreaks as well as for preventive vaccination campaigns. 

“To say the least, it’s a very disappointing strategy,” Philippe Barboza, the World Health Organization’s team lead for cholera, said. For a disease driven both by an excess and a scarcity of water, climate change had this year exacerbated all the usual causes of cholera, Barboza added. “What is, I would say, unprecedented is the concurrence and succession of massive outbreaks in different parts of the world,” he said.

Although easily treatable, cholera is estimated by the WHO to kill up to 143,000 people annually in the world’s poorest countries, where access to clean water and basic sanitation remains patchy. Countries including Haiti, Syria, Lebanon, Nigeria, Malawi and Ethiopia are fighting outbreaks now. 

While two doses of the oral cholera vaccine only give immunity for around three years in adults, they have come to be seen by health officials as an important tool. Although the long-term solution to cholera remains ensuring access to clean water and good sanitation, “the vaccine is the gamechanger because it allows countries to buy time to implement the rest,” Barboza said.

Of particular concern was the average fatality rate from the disease, which this year, according to the WHO’s data, was almost three times the rate of the past five years.

The increased fatality rate was also “extremely concerning”, he added, particularly as cholera was relatively simple to treat with oral or intravenous hydration and antibiotics.

“In 2022, people should not die of cholera,” Barboza said. “You don’t need a respirator or anything very complicated, but people are dying just because they don’t have access to healthcare. And this is not acceptable.”

Dismay as key oral cholera vaccine is discontinued | Cholera | The Guardian

  An analysis released today by Action Against Hunger,shows only 7% of appeals for urgent hunger-related funding through the UN humanitarian system are filled, leaving a hunger funding gap of 93%, according to “The Hunger Funding Gap: How The World Is Failing to Stop the Crisis.” The study examined 13 countries that experienced “crisis” levels of hunger or worse in 2020, and how the global community responded with funding in 2021. 

The majority (61%) of hunger-related appeals were not even funded to the halfway point.  Greater hunger levels don’t necessarily lead to greater levels of funding or media attention. In fact, countries where the hunger crisis was greatest actually received less hunger funding.

 828 million people — one in ten worldwide — are undernourished and as many as 50 million people in 45 countries are on the verge of famine. 

The climate crisis, war, and soaring inflation are impacting farmers’ ability to grow food and families’ ability to afford what little is available. These factors also are driving up the costs for humanitarian organizations to secure and transport supplies, contributing to a growing hunger crisis in many parts of the world.

The Hunger Funding Gap: How the World is Failing to Stop the Crisis – World | ReliefWeb

 The 2022 Global Hunger Index (GHI) brings us face to face with a grim reality. The toxic cocktail of conflict, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic had already left millions exposed to food price shocks and vulnerable to further crises. Now the conflict in Ukraine—with its knock-on effects on global supplies of and prices for food, fertilizer, and fuel—is turning a crisis into a catastrophe. But the speed and severity of the global food crisis reflect the fact that millions of people were already living on the precarious edge of hunger—a legacy of past failures to build more just, sustainable, and resilient food systems.

 Hunger is at alarming levels in 5 countries—Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar, and Yemen— and is provisionally considered *alarming *in 4 additional countries— Burundi, Somalia, South Sudan, and Syria. In a further 35 countries, hunger is considered serious. 

2022 Global Hunger Index: Food systems transformation and local governance [EN/DE] – World | ReliefWeb

Scientists believe we are living through the sixth mass extinction – the largest loss of life on Earth since the time of the dinosaurs.

Earth’s wildlife populations have plunged by an average of 69% in just under 50 years, according to a leading scientific assessment, as capitalism continues to clear forests, consume beyond the limits of the planet and pollute on an industrial scale.

From the open ocean to tropical rainforests, the abundance of birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles is in freefall, declining on average by more than two-thirds between 1970 and 2018, according to the WWF and Zoological Society of London’s (ZSL) biennial Living Planet Report. The Living Planet Index combines global analysis of 32,000 populations of 5,230 animal species to measure changes in the abundance of wildlife across continents and taxa, producing a graph akin to a stock index of life on Earth.

Latin America and the Caribbean region – including the Amazon – have seen the steepest decline in average wildlife population size, with a 94% drop in 48 years.

Robin Freeman, head of the indicators and assessments unit at ZSL, said,  “In order to see any bending of the curve of biodiversity loss … it’s not just about conservation it’s about changing production and consumption…”

 Tanya Steele, chief executive at WWF-UK, said: “ This report tells us that the worst declines are in the Latin America region, home to the world’s largest rainforest, the Amazon. Deforestation rates there are accelerating, stripping this unique ecosystem not just of trees but of the wildlife that depends on them and of the Amazon’s ability to act as one of our greatest allies in the fight against climate change.” Steele continued, “Despite the science, the catastrophic projections, the impassioned speeches and promises, the burning forests, submerged countries, record temperatures and displaced millions, world leaders continue to sit back and watch our world burn in front of our eyes. She added, “The climate and nature crises, their fates entwined, are not some faraway threat our grandchildren will solve with still-to-be-discovered technology.”

Africa had the second largest fall at 66%, followed by Asia and the Pacific with 55% and North America at 20%. Europe and Central Asia experienced an 18% fall. The UK has only 50% of its biodiversity richness compared with historical levels, according to the biodiversity intactness index, making it one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world.

Land use change is still the most important driver of biodiversity loss across the planet, according to the report. Mike Barrett, executive director of science and conservation at WWF-UK, said: “At a global level, primarily the declines we are seeing are driven by the loss and fragmentation of habitat driven by the global agricultural system and its expansion into intact habitat converting it to produce food.” 

Researchers describe the increased difficulty animals are having moving through terrestrial landscapes as they are blocked by infrastructure and farmland. Only 37% of rivers longer than 1,000km (600 miles) remain free-flowing along their entire length, while just 10% of the world’s protected areas on land are connected.

Almost 70% of animal populations wiped out since 1970, report reveals | Wildlife | The Guardian

Kakistocracy

Mark the rise of the Kakistocracy,

Misrulers of wherever they occur,

Prime minister here, a president there,

Or some such grandiose sobriquet.

Falsely claiming visions they don’t possess,

Being rendered myopic by vanity

They can no longer see humanity;

Making worse every problem they address.

Politicians who are vulgarly dense,

Enriching the rich, impoverishing the poor,

Slaughtering our young through their acts of war;

Gross mismanagement through incompetence.

But they only rule from their gilded towers

Because people surrender them their powers.

D. A.    

 “Time is not on our side, and our climate is changing before our eyes. We need a complete transformation of the global energy system,” 

World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Prof Petteri Taalas.

2022 State of Climate Services: Energy – World | ReliefWeb

  Education is a fundamental right for every child according to Article 28 of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child 

The report Fixing a Broken System: Transforming Education Financing by Save the Children revealed that 1 in 3 of the world’s poorest nations spends more on paying off debt to wealthy countries and investors than on educating its own children.

It shows that 21 out of 70 low- and lower-middle-income countries with available data spent more on external debt repayment than on education in 2020.

 According to the publication, interest payments are expected to account for an average of 10% of the annual budget in this category of countries by 2024, up from 7% in 2015.

“Education systems desperately need more and better funding across low- and lower-middle-income countries. Instead, they are being gutted to service unmanageable debts,” Hollie Warren, Save the Children U.K.’s head of global education policy and advocacy, said in a statement. “It is wrong that the world’s poorest children are having to suffer because of a debt crisis that was not of their making,” she continued. 

Nearly 1 in 3 children in low-income countries still do not finish primary school.

1 in 3 of World’s Poorest Countries Spend More on Debt Repayments Than Education (commondreams.org)

 United Nations experts joined people across the globe on Monday in marking the 20th World Day Against the Death Penalty by calling for an end to capital punishment. Despite more than 170 states having repealed the death penalty or adopted moratoriums, there was a reported 20% increase in the number of executions last year. At least 579 people were killed by 18 countries that used four methods: beheading, hanging, lethal injection, and shooting.

“Abolition of the death penalty is the only viable path,” asserted Alice Edwards, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.

Morris Tidball-Binz, the special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, stated, “The death row phenomenon has long been characterized as a form of inhuman treatment, as has the near total isolation of those convicted of capital crimes and often held in unlawful solitary confinement,”

UN Experts Say Abolishing Death Penalty ‘Is the Only Viable Path’ (commondreams.org)

 Research by two thinktanks, Common Wealth and the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), showed investors had benefited from a boom in dividend payouts since the Covid pandemic at a time of meagre growth in workers’ pay. The value of dividends paid to shareholders in UK-listed companies has returned to 2017-18 levels after a drop during the Covid pandemic, without an equivalent increase in wages for workers.

Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng is pushing ahead with a multimillion pound tax cut for wealthy individuals with a reduction in the rate of income tax on dividends. Dividend tax will be reduced by 1.25 percent.

Chris Hayes, a senior data analyst at Common Wealth, who wrote the report, said: “It is a shame that the chancellor’s U-turn does not extend to his tax cuts on dividends, which benefit the very wealthy and are already subject to very generous treatment. For two decades, shareholders have been enjoying ever greater payouts that could have been invested productively or paid to workers. Further tilting the balance in favour of shareholders will not unleash economic dynamism. It will only deepen our stagnation.” 

Among firms currently listed in the FTSE All Share index dividends steadily climbed in value at a faster rate than employee earnings during the decade from the 2008 financial crisis up to the Covid pandemic, up from £17.3bn in 2014 to £28bn in 2019.

Share buybacks, an alternative form of corporate payout whereby companies purchase shares from their investors to raise the price of the stock, have also risen sharply. The research showed share buybacks more than doubled from £3.4bn in 2015 to £8.2bn in 2019, and have since more than quadrupled from 2015 levels to reach £16.2bn in the second quarter of 2022.

George Dibb, head of the Centre for Economic Justice at the IPPR, said the rise in dividend payments and share buybacks since the pandemic showed companies were prioritising shareholder payouts over productivity-boosting investment and higher wages for workers.

“It raises serious concerns for the prospects of increasing the UK’s low levels of investment. Companies engage in share buybacks when they are unable to identify investment opportunities better than driving up their own share price. This is a symptom of an economy where firms don’t lack funds to invest – they lack the stable environment to invest in.”

Kwasi Kwarteng’s tax cuts will benefit richest amid dividend boom – report | Economic policy | The Guardian