A mural featuring portraits including many women in Mosul, Iraq, including celebrities like Billie Eilish and Ariana Grande. The artwork is on a wall where ISIS used to list its extremely strict rules, including that women’s faces had to be covered, and the punishment for breaking them. Jason Beaubien/NPR hide caption toggle caption Jason Beaubien/NPR MOSUL, Iraq — After ISIS took over this northern Iraqi city in 2014, women weren’t allowed to show their faces in public. They had to wear black veils with just slits for their eyes and long black robes. They could be whipped, and their husbands fined, […]
Jason Beaubien
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A farmer harvests a wheat field about 130 miles north of Kyiv, in 2009. Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images A farmer harvests a wheat field about 130 miles north of Kyiv, in 2009. Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images BAGHDAD — Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could cause havoc for wheat-importing nations in the Mideast. Bread is more than just a staple of the Egyptian diet. In Cairo, the small round loaves are called aish or “life.” Egyptians consume bread at twice the global average. To support this love of aish, they import more […]
The vaccination rate is only 17%. People are scared and skeptical for many reasons. Now government health workers are trying to up the numbers. One strategy: vaccination booths in the mall. (Image credit: Ahmed Kusy Mostafa) Source link
Cuba has one of the world’s highest COVID vaccination rates, with more than 85% of the nation fully immunized and kids as young as 2 getting inoculated. And it’s done so using homegrown vaccines. (Image credit: Yander Zamora/Pool/AFP via Getty Images) Source link
Peruvian health officials face many obstacles as they try to get everyone vaccinated, including those who live in remote and rural areas. (Image credit: Angela Ponce for NPR) Source link
More than 400 people who died of COVID were secretly interred in a mass grave on the outskirts of the city of Iquitos. Families are demanding a proper burial for their loved ones. (Image credit: Angela Ponce for NPR) Source link
At a special session this week, the World Health Organization hopes to start sketching out a new world order. “We don’t have rules of the game,” says WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. (Image credit: Sean Gallup/Getty Images) Source link
An isolated city on the Amazon illustrates why Peru has the highest COVID death rate in the world. One infectious disease expert called the country’s awful record the result of a “perfect storm.” (Image credit: NPR) Source link
After years of progress in reducing the number of annual deaths from tuberculosis, the number of cases of the infectious respiratory disease went up in 2020. (Image credit: Michele Spatari /AFP via Getty Images) Source link
Of 12 sitting heads-of-state implicated in the Pandora Papers, most are from low- and middle-income countries. So are many other politicians and elites named in the leaked documents. (Image credit: Anadolu Agency via Getty Images, Bloomberg, Ludovic Marin/Gettty Images) Source link
It was during the Ebola crisis and was first reported in 2020 by The New Humanitarian. Now WHO has issued its own report, citing 83 allegations. And it’s drawing criticism for investigating itself. (Image credit: Fabrice Coffrini /AFP via Getty Images) Source link
Hundreds of people are living in a makeshift tent city inside the main soccer stadium in Les Cayes, Haiti, following the 7.2 magnitude earthquake. Octavio Jones for NPR hide caption toggle caption Octavio Jones for NPR The field at the main soccer stadium in Haiti’s third-largest city has turned into an expanse of mud. Last night in Les Cayes, as a thunderstorm drenched Haiti’s south coast, hundreds of people slept in flimsy shelters on the athletic pitch. Some had only a bedsheet or sheet of plastic tied over sticks to protect themselves from the elements. Others slept in tents and under […]
The director general is asking for a halt for at least two months. His hope is to use all available doses to vaccinate 10% of the population in every country by the end of September. (Image credit: Kobi Wolf/Bloomberg via Getty Images) Source link
Haiti received its first shipment of doses in July, just days after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse — and amid rising violence and poverty and hurricane season. (Image credit: Ricardo Arduengo/Reuters) Source link
Soccer on the sand of Lumley Beach is a big Sunday pastime in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Pick-up games run up and down the shoreline. Jason Beaubien/NPR hide caption toggle caption Jason Beaubien/NPR Soccer on the sand of Lumley Beach is a big Sunday pastime in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Pick-up games run up and down the shoreline. Jason Beaubien/NPR In cities around the world, there are certain traditions on Sunday mornings. Strolling in Central Park in New York. Sitting at an outdoor café in Paris. In Freetown, Sierra Leone, it’s soccer on the beach. Lumley Beach is a long strip of sand […]
Sierra Leone’s education minister and MIT graduate David Moinina Sengeh is shooting for the moon when it comes to his country’s future, from schools to health-care to … space travel. (Image credit: Jason Beaubien/NPR) Source link
The challenge of refrigerating COVID-19 vaccines is acute in sub-Saharan Africa, where only 28% of health care facilities have reliable power. One solution? A new kind of freezer powered by the sun. (Image credit: Jason Beaubien/NPR) Source link
As COVID surges, so does demand for oxygen. And oxygen manufacturing plants simply can’t keep up. That’s bad news not only for severely ill COVID-19 patients but others in need, including newborns. (Image credit: Nicholas Kajoba/Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images) Source link
Oxford-AstraZeneca promised its COVID-19 vaccine would be effective, cheap and available worldwide. Five months after its launch, the path forward has been anything but smooth. (Image credit: From left: Prakash Singh, Aaron Chown, Robert Bonet/ Getty Images) Source link
President Biden said the U.S. is distributing them not to curry favor with allies, but to end the pandemic everywhere. And he’s doing it through COVAX. (Image credit: Daniel Mihailescu /AFP via Getty Images) Source link
As of the end of April, only 254 deaths were attributed to COVID in Haiti over the course of the entire pandemic. Why has the death rate been so low? (Image credit: Valerie Baeriswyl /AFP via Getty Images) Source link
Earlier this month, Namibia’s president Hage Geingob was invited to join the WHO’s weekly press briefing to talk about World Health Day. The idea was for him to help explain to the hundreds of reporters from around the world what was happening with COVID immunization efforts in his southern African nation. In what has become all too common during the pandemic, the video connection was unstable. The Namibian president kept freezing on the screen. The audio would become muffled and incomprehensible, or the sound would drop out entirely. Then at times there would be bursts of clarity. “It is COVID apartheid!” […]
Soon after U.S. regulators paused the use of the J&J single-dose vaccine, health authorities in many European countries and in South Africa announced that they were also putting it on hold. (Image credit: Phill Magakoe/AFP via Getty Images) Source link
Cuba is going it alone. No contracts with big drug makers, no support from WHO’s vaccine program. If successful, Cuba will be producer of the first vaccine developed in Latin America. (Image credit: Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images) Source link
Researchers say they may have found a reason for a rare blood clotting condition that has occurred in some people who received the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images Researchers say they may have found a reason for a rare blood clotting condition that has occurred in some people who received the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images Two teams of European scientists, working independently, say they believe they’ve identified the cause of a rare blood clotting condition that has occurred in some people after receiving the AstraZeneca […]
A life guard calls to swimmers at a beach in Miami on March 5, 2021. Amid fears of fueling a new surge in virus cases, the city of Miami Beach on Saturday announced an abrupt curfew to curb swelling crowds of spring breakers. Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images A life guard calls to swimmers at a beach in Miami on March 5, 2021. Amid fears of fueling a new surge in virus cases, the city of Miami Beach on Saturday announced an abrupt curfew to curb swelling crowds of spring breakers. Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty […]
The Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago gave an impassioned speech about the vaccine rollout, warning of hoarding and price gouging. Here’s what we could find out about the cost of a dose. (Image credit: NPR) Source link
For low- and middle-income countries, just obtaining doses has been a challenge. And now concerns are being raised about the effectiveness of the more affordable AstraZeneca option. (Image credit: Michael Dantas/AFP via Getty Images) Source link
A man holds a desert locust in his hand in Kenya’s Rift Valley. Farmers in central Kenya fear the locusts will strip vegetation from the rangeland where their livestock graze. Fredrik Lerneryd/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Fredrik Lerneryd/Getty Images A man holds a desert locust in his hand in Kenya’s Rift Valley. Farmers in central Kenya fear the locusts will strip vegetation from the rangeland where their livestock graze. Fredrik Lerneryd/Getty Images Aid agencies report swarms of locu25sts have been descending on farms in northern Kenya, destroying crops and even leaving pastures bare of vegetation. The UN’s Food and Agriculture […]
This screen grab from a December Zoom call shows New York Mets general manager Jared Porter. Porter sent graphic, uninvited text messages and images to a female reporter in 2016 when he was working for the Chicago Cubs in their front office, ESPN reported Monday night. Zoom via AP hide caption toggle caption Zoom via AP This screen grab from a December Zoom call shows New York Mets general manager Jared Porter. Porter sent graphic, uninvited text messages and images to a female reporter in 2016 when he was working for the Chicago Cubs in their front office, ESPN reported Monday […]
A Honduran migrant woman carries a child on her back as they travel with other migrants by foot along a highway in Chiquimula, Guatemala, on Saturday, in hopes of reaching the U.S. border. Sandra Sebastian/AP hide caption toggle caption Sandra Sebastian/AP A Honduran migrant woman carries a child on her back as they travel with other migrants by foot along a highway in Chiquimula, Guatemala, on Saturday, in hopes of reaching the U.S. border. Sandra Sebastian/AP Guatemala security forces are attempting to block thousands of Honduran migrants from heading north towards Mexico and the U.S. border. On Sunday, police and soldiers […]
The vaccination center of the Hospital Garrahan in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Anita Pouchard Serra for NPR hide caption toggle caption Anita Pouchard Serra for NPR As nations around the world scramble to start vaccinating against COVID-19, many countries are finding it difficult if not impossible to get the vaccines they want. Case in point — Argentina. President Alberto Fernández promised to start vaccination campaigns in the South American nation before the end of 2020. They managed to hit that goal but just days before the New Year dawned — and not exactly as they’d hoped. Argentina tried to position itself to […]
A worker wearing personal protective equipment disinfects the Holy Redeemer Church in Bangkok after a Christmas Eve mass. Thailand is one of many countries now seeing a surge in cases. Romeo Gacad/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Romeo Gacad/AFP via Getty Images A worker wearing personal protective equipment disinfects the Holy Redeemer Church in Bangkok after a Christmas Eve mass. Thailand is one of many countries now seeing a surge in cases. Romeo Gacad/AFP via Getty Images The last Sunday of 2020 was ushered in with both promise and apprehension on the global pandemic front. The European Union began […]
Why are numbers so high in the region? Public health officials point to a number of underlying problems that let the coronavirus run amok. (Image credit: Ruth Talbot/NPR) Source link
Back-to-back hurricanes have taken an unprecedented toll on the Central American nation and its neighbors. (Image credit: Edison Umanzur/AFP via Getty Images) Source link
A new report describes a region where hunger and malnutrition is sharply increasing — and only likely to get worse as COVID-19 pushes more people into poverty. (Image credit: NPR) Source link
The medicine is one of the few to win regulatory approval as a treatment for the disease, but has fallen out of favor with the health authority. (Image credit: Fadel Dawood/DPA/Picture Alliance via Getty Images) Source link
A single injection of a drug called cabotegravir given every two months has been shown to be more effective than a daily oral dose of Truvada. (Image credit: Bram Janssen/AP) Source link
The multibillion dollar global effort to eradicate polio hasn’t just stalled. It’s moving backward. When the Global Polio Eradication Initiative began in 1988, roughly 350,000 kids a year were paralyzed by the virus. By 2016 that number had been driven down to just 42 cases of any type of polio anywhere in the world. But now cases are on the rise and expected to climb even further in the coming months. So far this year officials have tallied more than 200 cases of wild polio and nearly 600 cases of the vaccine-derived form of the disease. Most of the vaccine-derived strains […]
Regeneron — the pharmaceutical company developing COVID-19 treatments — has received FDA approval for the first drug aimed at another infectious disease that’s been in the headlines. (Image credit: John Wessels/AFP via Getty Images) Source link
The number of people dying from COVID-19 since May 10th, is on average 50% higher than every other country in the study, adjusting for population size. Spencer Platt/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Spencer Platt/Getty Images The number of people dying from COVID-19 since May 10th, is on average 50% higher than every other country in the study, adjusting for population size. Spencer Platt/Getty Images During this pandemic, people in the United States are currently dying at rates unparalleled elsewhere in the world. A new report in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds that over the last 5 months […]
Flight crew walk past thermal cameras that check passengers’ body temperatures at Los Angeles International Airport on June 23. As businesses look to reopen, technology firms are offering an array of monitoring systems to try to control the coronavirus. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images Flight crew walk past thermal cameras that check passengers’ body temperatures at Los Angeles International Airport on June 23. As businesses look to reopen, technology firms are offering an array of monitoring systems to try to control the coronavirus. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images In […]
The U.N. World Food Programme has a canine mascot named Foxtrot. Reports are that the pooch is rolling over with joy at the news of the prize. (Image credit: Jason Beaubien/NPR) Source link
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, shown here at a meeting on Monday, has said that the coronavirus death toll is likely higher than the more than 1 million fatalities officially reported. Christopher Black/AP hide caption toggle caption Christopher Black/AP WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, shown here at a meeting on Monday, has said that the coronavirus death toll is likely higher than the more than 1 million fatalities officially reported. Christopher Black/AP About 10% of the global population may have been infected by the coronavirus, according to a senior World Health Organization official. It’s an estimate that’s far higher than the […]
Camp Robin Hood in in Freedom, N.H., was one of the few around the country to offer a summer sleepover camp. This fall, it’s offering a program where students can live and attend classes remotely. Jacob Spiers/Camp Robin Hood hide caption toggle caption Jacob Spiers/Camp Robin Hood Camp Robin Hood in in Freedom, N.H., was one of the few around the country to offer a summer sleepover camp. This fall, it’s offering a program where students can live and attend classes remotely. Jacob Spiers/Camp Robin Hood As millions of students return to virtual classes at their dining room tables, some parents […]
Farmers check coffee beans handpicked at their farm located in Forquilha do Rio, municipality of Dores do Rio Preto, Espirito Santo, Brazil. Mauro Pimentel/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Mauro Pimentel/AFP via Getty Images Farmers check coffee beans handpicked at their farm located in Forquilha do Rio, municipality of Dores do Rio Preto, Espirito Santo, Brazil. Mauro Pimentel/AFP via Getty Images Coffee lovers, here’s something to be grateful about. Unlike paper towels, disinfectant or yeast, coffee has never been hard to find during the pandemic. It has remained widely available on supermarket shelves even though COVID-19 has been particularly […]
They’re up-and-coming countries. They’re at the top of the list of places with the most cases. And they’re especially vulnerable to the impact of the pandemic. (Image credit: NPR) Source link
A robot introduces itself to patients in Kigali, Rwanda. The robots, used in Rwanda’s treatment centers, can screen people for COVID-19 and deliver food and medication, among other tasks. The robots were donated by the United Nations Development Program and the Rwanda Ministry of ICT and Innovation. Cyril Ndegeya/Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Cyril Ndegeya/Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images In some places in the world right now getting tested for COVID-19 remains difficult or nearly impossible. In Rwanda you might just get tested randomly as you’re going down the street. “So whenever someone is driving a vehicle, bicycle, motorcycle […]
It’s a wealthy nation with a robust health care system. So why does Chile have one of the highest coronavirus infection rates per capita of any country in the world? (Image credit: Marcelo Hernandez/Getty Images) Source link
A boy wearing a facemask amid concerns over the spread of the COVID-19, flies a kite at a park in Beijing. Researchers are studying the response of children to the novel coronavirus. Wang Zhao /AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Wang Zhao /AFP via Getty Images A boy wearing a facemask amid concerns over the spread of the COVID-19, flies a kite at a park in Beijing. Researchers are studying the response of children to the novel coronavirus. Wang Zhao /AFP via Getty Images Why the coronavirus appears to affect children differently than it affects adults is one of […]
A pharmacy tech pours out pills of hydroxychloroquine May 20 at Rock Canyon Pharmacy in Provo, Utah, on May 20, 2020. After a study found COVID-19 patients using the drug were dying at higher rates, the World Health Organization announced it would suspend its clinical trial. George Frey/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption George Frey/AFP via Getty Images A pharmacy tech pours out pills of hydroxychloroquine May 20 at Rock Canyon Pharmacy in Provo, Utah, on May 20, 2020. After a study found COVID-19 patients using the drug were dying at higher rates, the World Health Organization announced it […]
The 73rd annual World Health Assembly, which begins Monday, will be held virtually for the first-time ever. It will also be focused on the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. (Image credit: Fabrice Coffrini /AFP via Getty Images) Source link
NPR YouTube You may have never heard the phrase “contact tracing” before. Now it’s a part of the daily conversation about the coronavirus pandemic. Dr. Robert Redfield, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has said contact tracing is key to halting the spread of the disease. It’s not a new idea. In fact, contact tracing is used all over the world. It’s based on the knowledge that someone with a contagious disease will infect a certain number of people. With coronavirus, it’s likely two or three. So the goal is to track down anyone in recent […]
A major health agency fears a humanitarian crisis. Migrant workers are returning home from the hard-hit Dominican Republic. Medical equipment is in short supply. And social distancing is improbable. (Image credit: Pierre Michel Jean /AFP via Getty Images) Source link