Biggest challenge in 2021 is to ensure people in all countries get access to COVID-19 vaccine: WHO
Thiruvananthapuram: The single biggest challenge in 2021 would be ensuring that people in all the countries, both rich and poor, get access to the COVID-19 vaccine, World Health Organisation's Assistant Director General Dr Peter Singer said on Wednesday.
Singer pointed out that WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had observed that the "world is on the brink of a moral catastrophe" as the vaccine distribution had so far been skewed in favour of high income countries.
He commended the role of Kerala and India in checking the spread of COVID-19 in the face of several difficulties and said "what we saw was a test of global solidarity" in 2020.
He said there were clear signs of the pandemic receding as the number of recoveries had far exceeded the number of people still affected.
Also, the vaccination process was gaining momentum.
Overcoming the pandemic was crucial to achieving the other UN goals such as reduction of poverty, hunger, illiteracy, gender inequality and air pollution, besides ensuring availability of clean water and sanitation, he said.
According to a state government release, Singer was addressing a virtual international conference on 'Kerala Health : Making the SDG A Reality', organised by the Health and Family Welfare Department of Kerala government.
Singerexpressed hope that the situation was "quickly correcting now" following the approval of more and more vaccine candidates, including that of AstraZeneca and of Serum Institute of India.
The Special Advisor to the WHO Director General said 2021 would turn out to be the year of "vaccine equity."
WHO was keen on ensuring equity "among countries and within individual countries" so that COVID-19 vaccines were available to all sections of people as this was crucial to achieving United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including Universal Health Coverage, he said.
Singer acknowledged that all the countries were lagging behind in the matter of SDGs even before the outbreak of Covid-19.
The pandemic had thrown the SDG goals further off-track and it would require a great deal of effort to cover the lost ground and restore and accelerate the momentum on health targets so that the goals could be achieved by 2030 as originally envisaged.
"2022 is hopefully going to be primary healthcare- based recovery, for achieving SDGs," he said.
As for Kerala, he said tackling the high prevalence of hypertension and diabetes was the challenge in meeting social health parameters.
Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) accounted for most of the deaths across the globe, he pointed out.
Former Union Health and Family Welfare Secretary Sujatha Rao said Universal Health Coverage (UHC) can be achieved only through a system anchored on primary health care (PHC), which requires micro-level planning and deliberate institutional reform.
Rajeev Sadanandan, Former state Additional Chief Secretary of Health and Family Welfare, said the huge prevalence of Non-Communicable Diseases in Kerala will be a real burden for the state.
"To tackle it conventional strategies won't work.
It is time the state turned to Artificial Intelligence and digitisation to counter the problem," he said.
The speakers were part of a panel discussion on the inaugural day of the five-day Kerala Health Conference focusing on various aspects of health system development centered on the Sustainable Development Goals.
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South African police arrest suspect in mass shooting that killed 12, including 3 children
Johannesburg (AP): A 32-year-old suspect has been arrested in connection with a mass shooting which claimed the lives of 12 people including three children at an unlicensed pub earlier this month, South African police said on Monday.
The man is suspected of being one of the three people who opened fire on patrons in a pub at Saulsville township, west of South Africa's capital Pretoria, killing 12 people including three children aged 3, 12 and 16.
At least 13 people were also injured during the attack, whose motive remains unknown.
According to the police, the suspect was arrested on Sunday while traveling to Botlokwa in Limpopo province, more than 340 km from where the mass shooting took place on Dec 6.
An unlicensed firearm believed to have been used during the attack was recovered from the suspect's vehicle.
“The 32-year-old suspect was intercepted by Limpopo Tracking Team on the R101 Road in Westenburg precinct. During the arrest, the team recovered an unlicensed firearm, a hand gun, believed to have been used in the commission of the multiple murders. The firearm will be taken to the Forensic Science Laboratory for ballistic analysis,” police said in statement.
The suspect was arrested on the same day that another mass shooting at a pub took place in the Bekkersdal township, west of Johannesburg, in which nine people were killed and 10 wounded when unknown gunmen opened fire on patrons.
Police have since launched a search for the suspects.
South Africa has one of the highest homicide rates in the world and recorded more than 26,000 homicides in 2024 — an average of more than 70 a day. Firearms are by far the leading cause of death in homicides.
The country of 62 million people has relatively strict gun ownership laws, but many killings are committed with illegal guns, according to authorities.
According to police, mass shootings at unlicensed bars are becoming a serious problem. Police shut down more than 11,000 illegal taverns between April and September this year and arrested more than 18,000 people for involvement in illegal liquor sales.
