Most residents can expect a fair to partly cloudy day
Officials from the UN children's agency, UNICEF, say stocks of hygiene kits and chlorine tablets for water purification in Yemen will last only until the end of June. The agency needs at least $18 million through the end of the year to buy more supplies for water, sanitation and hygiene services, but it appears the money will go to fight Covid-19.
"We think that the risk remains high and that cholera and acute watery diarrhea cases could easily make a strong, strong comeback," said Bismarck Swangin, a UNICEF spokesman in Yemen.
Meanwhile, Pakistan continues to suffer some of the world's worst outbreaks of infectious diseases. It has 4.3 million cases of malaria annually, and is one of the top 10 countries for new cases of tuberculosis each year. It is also one of only three countries, including Afghanistan and Nigeria, where polio is still endemic.
The fight against disease is made harder by militants who oppose vaccination. The militants in Pakistan have multiple and sometimes overlapping motives, focusing on the government, religious minorities, connections with anti-US organizations in neighboring Afghanistan and attacks on Pakistan's historic rival, India.
Militants have spread rumors that the polio vaccine is a Western conspiracy to make the next generation of Muslims infertile. Dozens of vaccinators, with heavily armed security at their side, have been targeted and killed in recent years. Just last month, a half-hour drive from Nawaz's home, masked gunmen shot and killed 40-year-old Abdul Wahab, a well-known vaccinator in the tribal regions.
Nawaz's daughter, Tuba, was vaccinated against polio at four months, but before she could receive her second of three doses, she contracted the disease.
Dr. Rana Mohammad Safdar, the country's leading immunologist and front-line warrior in Pakistan's COVID-19 battle, said that last year's testing revealed the polio virus was everywhere in the country. Now, the arrival of the coronavirus means 40 million children won't get their polio vaccination this month, Safdar said, leaving them without protection.
Late last year, Safdar had begun to hope polio could be beaten in Pakistan. He had a battle plan and everyone on board, even reluctant religious leaders. But when the coronavirus struck, Safdar ordered his army of more than 250,000 vaccinators to shelter in their homes for their own safety and to prevent a Covid-19-infected vaccinator from spreading the virus to an entire village. He worried that just one Covid-19 infection would be grist for the militant clerics' rumor mills.
"Covid has been a devastating blow to our efforts ... We are now in a position where we can't do much," said Safdar, who went into self-imposed quarantine after a staff member tested positive for Covid-19.
So far this year, 40 children have tested positive for polio, including Nawaz's daughter Tuba. Safdar fears new infections this year could surpass 150, a startling figure for a disease the WHO had hoped would have been eradicated by now.
He and three of his brothers also carry the burden of another brother who spends most of his days and nights in a drug-induced stupor. That brother, Gul, couldn't get work and found an escape in opium, and now the extended family must care for his five children. Another brother also is broke, after losing his job as a security guard to the virus lockdown, and is trying unsuccessfully to migrate to Malaysia for work.
Sitting in the brutal heat on a steel-framed bed made of knotted rope, Nawaz held his daughter close. He thinks she feels protected in his arms.
"We didn't know what to do. They gave her medicine, but there was no therapy, just medicines," he said.
"It's a scary place to be," he said.
Most residents can expect a fair to partly cloudy day
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