A new report on April 25 by a respected think tank has estimated that US sanctions imposed on Venezuela in August 2017 have caused around 40,000 deaths. This atrocity has been almost entirely blanked by the ‘mainstream’ media. Additional sanctions imposed in January 2019 are likely to lead to tens of thousands of further deaths.
8 May 2019 — Now in its tenth month, the Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has claimed more than a thousand lives, prompting Secretary-General António Guterres to throw the support of “the whole United Nations system” into stemming the spread of the deadly virus.
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International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies | Clinic in Mbandaka, Democratic Republic of the Congo, where health care workers treat Ebola patients.
“When people hear it from their peers who say ‘we’re fucked,’ that will be really powerful.”
Extinction Rebellion Tell the Truth Protest, London February 22 2019. | David Holt via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 2.0.
7 May 2019 (openDemocracy)* — In one mad sunny week over the Easter weekend, Extinction Rebellion brought public attention to the problem of climate change in a way that had rarely been achieved before. The group’s most ambitious demand – to cut greenhouse gas emissions completely by 2025 – is unlikely to be met.
Inflation historical data demonstrate that the elderly have experienced a gradual loss of their economic rights since Mauricio Macri became president in 2015.
Argentines protest in front of the Health Ministry to request the regularization of medicine purchases in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Jan. 26, 2018. The right sign reads “I died without medicines”. The left sing reads “You cut off my retirement and now you go for the medicines.” | Photo: EFE | Photo fromteleSUR.
8 May 2019 (teleSUR)* — In Argentina, the essential drugs average price increased by 710 percent between May 2015 and April 2019, an inflation process which mainly affected 6,983,377 people over 60 years of age.
Repeated and increasingly sophisticated armed attacks in the Sahel and food shortages linked to last year’s severe drought, have reached unprecedented levels, putting the future of a “whole generation” at stake, three top UN humanitarian officials said on Wednesday [8 May 2019].
WFP/Justin Smith | Drought has affected residents of the Mbera refugee camp, Mauritania, in the Sahel region of Africa.
In an appeal for increased funding to support millions of people affected by spreading violence in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinators for the three countries warned that the instability risked spilling over into other West African countries.
Needs are growing, they maintained, amid a five-fold rise in displacement in the last 12 months which has seen more than 330,000 people leave their homes, in addition to 100,000 refugees.
A new European Union-funded FAO, IFAD and WFP initiative seeks to empower rural women and men, boys and girls for food security, better nutrition and sustainable agriculture.
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Women working in a vegetable garden in the village of Ndiama Peulh, Senegal.
ROME (FAO)* — Three United Nations agencies on 8 May 2019 launched a new European Union-supported global initiative to address the root causes of rural gender inequalities and thus strengthen efforts to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.
9 May 2019 (UN Environment)* — From Lagos and Lahore to London, it’s the poorest people who are most affected by air pollution. The poor tend to be priced out of the leafy suburbs where there are fewer highways and air quality is better.
Photo by Joshua Okunfolami, Wikimedia Commons
Air pollution is caused by harmful particulates and gases released into the air. It leads to premature death from heart disease, stroke, and cancer, as well as acute lower respiratory infections. Indoor and outdoor (ambient) air pollution caused an estimated 7 million deaths globally in 2016, according to the World Health Organization.
Millions of dollars in emergency funding is needed in Gaza to save the shattered limbs of some 1,700 people who have been seriously injured in demonstrations against Israel along the border fence, a top UN humanitarian official said on Wednesday [8 May 2019].
UNRWA/Khalil Adwan | UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Jamie McGoldrick (centre), visits patients in Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, along with doctors and WHO’s representative.
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In an appeal for $20 million to help victims hurt during protests dubbed the Great March of Return – weekly rallies on Fridays by Gazans that began a year ago, leaving 29,000 people injured, many by live ammunition – Jamie McGoldrick, Humanitarian Coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), said that more resources were urgently required.
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