Hospitals in Sri Lanka are forced to postpone life-saving procedures for their patients because they do not have the necessary drugs.

Sri Lanka imports more than 80 percent of its medical supplies but with foreign currency reserves running out because of the crisis, essential medications are disappearing from shelves and the healthcare system is close to collapse.

“It is very bad for cancer patients,” said Dr Roshan Amaratunga. “Sometimes, in the morning we plan for some surgeries but we may not be able to do on that particular day as supplies are not there.” If the situation does not improve quickly, several patients will be facing a virtual death sentence, he said.

Doctors say they are more worried than the patients or their relatives, as they are aware of the potential size of the problem and its impact on the wider population.

A government official working on procuring medical supplies said about 180 items were running out, including injections for dialysis patients, medicine for patients who have undergone transplants and certain cancer drugs.

Referring to the ubiquitous queues for petrol and cooking gas, Dr Vasan Ratnasingam, a spokesman for the Government Medical Officers’ Association, said the consequences for people awaiting treatment were so much more dire.

“If patients are in a queue for drugs, they will lose their lives,” said Ratnasingam.

‘Death sentence’: Doctors in Sri Lanka decry medicine shortage | Health News | Al Jazeera

 Buy something in a supermarket and there’s a good chance it will contain palm oil, an industry worth more than $50bn each year globally. The companies behind the country’s palm oil boom have seen their profits soar this year as global prices reached record highs. Indonesia’s super-rich list is already stacked with palm oil billionaires. The Widjaja family, who control Golden Agri-Resources, stand second place in Forbes’ rich list for Indonesia; Anthoni Salim, who is the CEO of the Salim Group, sits one below in third place. But the companies that sell it to major firms like Johnson & Johnson, Kellogg’s and Mondelēz are depriving indigenous communities of potentially millions of dollars of income. 

 420,314  children and young people in February   were being treated for mental health problems – the highest number on record – prompting warnings of an unprecedented crisis in the well-being of under-18s.

Experts say Covid-19 has seriously exacerbated problems such as anxiety, depression and self-harm among school-age children and that the “relentless and unsustainable” ongoing rise in their need for help could overwhelm already stretched NHS services.

The total has risen by 147,853 since February 2020, a 54% increase, and by 80,096 over the last year alone, a jump of 24%. January’s tally of 411,132 cases was the first time the figure had topped 400,000.

Mental health charities fear the figures are the tip of the iceberg of the true number of people who need care, and that many more under-18s in distress are being denied help by arbitrary eligibility criteria.

“Open referrals” are under-18s who are being cared for by child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) or are waiting to see a specialist, having been assessed as needing help against treatment thresholds. GPs, teachers and mental health charities believe the criteria are too strict, exclude many who are deemed not ill enough, and amount to rationing of care. A survey of GPs published last month by the youth mental health charity stem4 found that half said CAMHS were rejecting half of referrals they made of under-18s suffering from anxiety, depression, conduct disorder and self-harm because their symptoms were not seen as severe enough. 

“There is an unprecedented crisis in young people’s mental health, further evidenced by these record numbers of young people needing help from the NHS,” said Olly Parker, the head of external affairs at Young Minds. “The record high number of children and young people receiving care from the NHS tells us that the crisis in young people’s mental health is a wave that’s breaking now.” He said many young people were reaching crisis point before could get the treatment they need.

Nihara Krause, a consultant clinical psychologist and the founder of stem4, said that while more under-18s were getting help, it was unclear from the figures how many received effective treatment. “Teachers and GPs say that children and mental health in mental health distress are either being rejected in record numbers because their difficulties do not meet the high threshold for treatment, or they are stuck on long waiting lists. These latest figures also lack any real detail to warrant claiming there has been a marked improvement in accessing effective treatment. They just show greater need.” She said not just the prevalence but also the severity and complexity of youth mental health problems had increased in recent years. In addition, Covid-induced loneliness, increased time spent online, disrupted routines and exposure to family stress have increased levels of distress.

Record 420,000 children a month in England treated for mental health problems | Mental health | The Guardian

 Pets are big business in Japan.

 The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF),  Kristalina Georgieva, has said the war in Ukraine could result in a recession for more vulnerable countries.

“Since then the horizon has darkened,” she said, pointing out that the impact of the war in Ukraine was being amplified by a tightening of financial conditions, a rising US dollar and a slowdown in China. “2022 is going to be a tough year.”

Asked whether the IMF was forecasting a global recession, Georgieva replied: “Not at this point. It doesn’t mean one is out of the question…What we may see is recession in some countries that are weak to begin with. They haven’t recovered from the Covid crisis. They’re highly dependent on imports from Russia, of energy or food, and they have a somewhat weaker environment already.”

The IMF  had recently downgraded the growth prospects for 143 of its member states, which represent 80% of global output.

Georgieva said there had been a sense over the past week that the global economy was getting into rougher waters. The oil price had come down but “food prices continue to go up, up, up, up”. She said: “We can shrink the use of petrol when growth slows down but we have to eat every day. The anxiety about access to food at a reasonable price, globally, is hitting the roof.”

Jane Fraser, the chief executive of the US investment bank Citigroup, explained, “Europe is right in the middle of the storms from supply chains, from the energy crisis, and obviously just the proximity to some of the atrocities that are occurring in Ukraine,” she said.

War in Ukraine could cause recession in weaker economies, IMF boss warns | Davos | The Guardian

 Basic goods and services for a typical family with two young children are about £400 a month more expensive than they were last year. Energy prices added about £120 to families’ monthly costs as price caps rose and cheap tariffs ended. Transport costs, including petrol and parking charges, added at least £85 to families’ outgoings, while childcare costs rose by £66 a month.

 The gap between the pay of company executives and other workers is set to widen this year after falling during the height of the Covid pandemic, the High Pay Centre said.

The fortunes of food and energy billionaires have grown by $453bn over the past two years owing to soaring energy and commodity prices during the pandemic and Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, a report by Oxfam has revealed.  The charity said spiralling global food prices had helped create “62 new food billionaires” in just 24 months.

Cargill, which is one of the world’s largest food traders, now counts 12 family members as billionaires, up from eight before the pandemic. The Cargill family, along with three other companies, controls 70% of the global agricultural market.

Food prices, which are up more than 30% over the past year on average, are likely to push more than 263 million more people into acute poverty than before the pandemic. That would take the number of people living on less than $1.90 a day to 860 million by the end of the year. That is equivalent to the populations of the UK, France, Germany, and Spain combined.

A total of 573 new billionaires have emerged during the pandemic. Oxfam said the coronavirus crisis had been “the best time in recorded history for the billionaire class”.

Danny Sriskandarajah, the chief executive of Oxfam GB, said: “It is morally indefensible that people in east Africa are dying of hunger while the fortunes of the world’s super-rich are fuelled by skyrocketing food and energy prices. At a time when hundreds of millions more people are facing extreme poverty, there can be no excuse for governments not to address gargantuan profits and wealth in order to ensure that no one is left behind.”

Billionaires’ combined wealth stands at $12.7tn, according to Forbes magazine’s ranking on the super-rich. That is the equivalent to 13.9% of global GDP, and a threefold increase from 2000. The fortunes of the richest 20 billionaires are greater than the entire GDP of sub-Saharan Africa.

Food and energy billionaires $453bn richer than two years ago, finds Oxfam | The super-rich | The Guardian

  A recent report from the Poor People’s Campaign highlights a key overlooked demographic in the pandemic response: poor and low-income people. Data from over 3,200 counties across the United States show that, after the first wave of the pandemic, poor counties experienced substantially higher death rates than richer counties. 

 During the pandemic, people living in poorer counties died at nearly two times the rate of people who lived in richer counties: After grouping counties by median household income into ten groups with equal population size (deciles), the report shows that death rates in the highest income group are half the death rates in the lowest income group.

 • During the deadliest phases of the pandemic, poorer counties saw many times more deaths than wealthier counties: 

A recent Pew study that broke the pandemic up into six phases shows that the deadliest phases of the pandemic to date were in winter 2020-2021 and the Omicron period.

 Except for the first phase in March 2020, death rates were many times higher in poorer counties than in richer counties: 

 – The second phase was mostly experienced by poorer counties. 

 – During the third phase (winter 2020-2021), death rates were 4.5 times higher in counties with the lowest median income than in counties with the highest. 

– During the Delta variant phase (August-November 2021), death rates were five times higher in these low-income counties. 

– The Omicron variant phase (approx. December 2021-February+) has had a death rate nearly three times higher in counties with the lowest median incomes compared to those with the highest median incomes

ExecutiveSummary_7.pdf (poorpeoplescampaign.org)

 Of more than 7,000 edible plants worldwide, only 417 are widely grown and used for food.