A WHO expert committee declined on three previous occasions to advise the United Nations health agency to make the declaration for this outbreak, even though other experts say it has long met the required conditions. More than 1,600 people have died since August in the second-deadliest Ebola outbreak in history, which is unfolding in a region described as a war zone.

A declaration of a global health emergency often brings greater international attention and aid, along with concerns that nervous governments might overreact with border closures.

The declaration comes days after a single case was confirmed in Goma, a major regional crossroads in northeastern Congo on the Rwandan border, with an international airport. Also, a sick Congolese fish trader traveled to Uganda and back while symptomatic — and later died of Ebola.

While the risk of regional spread remains high, the risk outside the region remains low, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said after the announcement in Geneva.

The international emergency “should not be used to stigmatize or penalize the very people who are most in need of our help,” he said. Tedros insisted that the declaration was not made to raise more money — even though WHO estimated “hundreds of millions” of dollars would be needed to stop the epidemic.

Dr. Joanne Liu, president of Doctors Without Borders, said she hoped the emergency designation would prompt a radical reset of Ebola response efforts.

“The reality check is that a year into the epidemic, it’s still not under control, and we are not where we should be,” she said. “We cannot keep doing the same thing and expect different results.”

Liu said vaccination strategies should be broadened and that more efforts should be made to build trust within communities.

The U.S. Agency for International Development applauded the WHO decision and said USAID officials would “continue to scale up life-saving support” to end the outbreak.

This is the fifth such declaration in history. Previous emergencies were declared for the devastating 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa that killed more than 11,000 people, the emergence of Zika in the Americas, the swine flu pandemic and polio.

WHO defines a global emergency as an “extraordinary event” that constitutes a risk to other countries and requires a coordinated international response. Last month, the outbreak spilled across the border for the first time when a family brought the virus into Uganda after attending the burial in Congo of an infected relative. Even then, the expert committee advised against a declaration.

Alexandra Phelan, a global health expert at Georgetown University Law Center, said Wednesday’s declaration was long overdue.

“This essentially serves as a call to the international community that they have to step up appropriate financial and technical support,” she said but warned that countries should be wary of imposing travel or trade restrictions.

Such restrictions “would actually restrict the flow of goods and health care workers into affected countries so they are counterproductive,” she said. Future emergency declarations might be perceived as punishment and “might result in other countries not reporting outbreaks in the future, which puts us all at greater risk.”

WHO had been heavily criticized for its sluggish response to the West Africa outbreak, which it repeatedly declined to declare a global emergency until the virus was spreading explosively in three countries and nearly 1,000 people were dead. Internal documents later showed WHO held off partly out of fear a declaration would anger the countries involved and hurt their economies.

The organization’s emergency committee will meet again within three months to assess the situation. Committee members will review whether the outbreak is still a global emergency and whether other measures are needed.

Wednesday’s announcement prompted fear in eastern Congo, where many do business across borders and travel overseas.

“I am vaccinated and I protect myself against Ebola,” said Zoe Kibwana, a 46-year-old shoe salesman who does business in Uganda, just 70 kilometers (40 miles) from Beni. “Closing the borders would handicap our economy. The health ministry and WHO need to end this epidemic as soon as possible.”

The current outbreak is spreading in a turbulent Congo border region where dozens of rebel groups are active and where Ebola had not been experienced before. Efforts to contain the virus have been hurt by mistrust among wary locals that has prompted deadly attacks on health workers. Some infected people have deliberately evaded health authorities.

The pastor who brought Ebola to Goma used several fake names to conceal his identity on his way to the city, Congolese officials said. WHO on Tuesday said the man had died and health workers were scrambling to trace dozens of his contacts, including those who had traveled on the same bus.

Congo’s minister of health resisted the characterization of the outbreak as a health emergency.

“We accept the decision of the committee of experts but one hopes that it’s a decision that wasn’t made under pressure of certain groups that want to use this as a way to raise funds for certain humanitarian actors,” said Dr. Oly Ilunga.

Those working in the field say the outbreak is clearly taking a turn for the worse despite advances that include the widespread use of an experimental but effective Ebola vaccine.

Dr. Maurice Kakule was one of the first people to survive the current outbreak after he fell ill while treating a woman last July before the outbreak had even been declared.

“What is clear is that Ebola is an emergency because the epidemic persists despite every possible effort to educate people,” he told the Geneva meeting.

___

Cheng reported from London. Associated Press writers Krista Larson and Al-Hadji Kudra Maliro in Beni, Congo, and Saleh Mwanamilongo in Kinshasa, Congo, also contributed to this report.

___

Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP_Africa

Source: https://wtop.com/national/2019/07/ebola-outbreak-in-congo-declared-a-global-health-emergency/

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Justin Waggoner swings his combine into wheat growing outside Condon, Oregon, last August. Seven ships loaded with wheat grown in the Pacific Northwest are sailing for Yemen, where civil war has pushed over 8 million people to the brink of starvation. The U.S. Agency for International Development purchased the wheat to benefit America’s wheat farmers and people in crisis. | ERIC MORTENSON / THE CAPITAL PRESS / VIA AP

PORTLAND, OREGON – Seven ships loaded with wheat grown in America’s Pacific Northwest are sailing for Yemen, where a stalemated civil war has pushed more than 8 million people to the brink of starvation.

The U.S. Agency for International Development, which administers the Food for Peace program, purchased the wheat to benefit America’s wheat farmers and people in crisis. It was then handed over to the U.N.’s World Food Program to be shipped and distributed in Yemen.

Stephen Anderson, the WFP’s Yemen country director, told a Friday news conference in Portland that the wheat will provide much-needed relief.

“We’re doing our best to get food assistance to those people who need it most,” Anderson said, according to the Capital Press, an agricultural publication.

Over the past two weeks, seven ships filled with 176,000 tons (159,665 metric tons) of wheat have left Portland for Yemen, two Oregon politicians said.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley and Republican state Rep. Mike McLane said in a joint statement they’re proud to see Oregon wheat being used in one of America’s “most effective peacebuilding tools,” its Food for Peace program.

“We see these agricultural programs representing the best of American values, culture and policy,” Merkley and McLane said in their statement published in The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Darren Padget, a wheat farmer from Grass Valley, Oregon, told the Capital Press he’s pleased the wheat is going to the needy.

Aid workers in Yemen are worried that fighting that is nearing a port where most food aid arrives could force its shutdown and potentially tip millions into starvation. WFP Executive Director David Beasley has called Hodeida Port “a humanitarian lifeline for millions who are on the brink of famine.”

Yemeni government forces, backed by a Saudi-led coalition, have been trying to retake Hodeida as they battle Iran-allied rebels known as Houthis.

The Houthis seized control of Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, in September 2014, and later pushed south toward the port city of Aden. The Saudi-led coalition entered the conflict in March 2015 and has faced criticism for a campaign of airstrikes that has killed civilians and destroyed hospitals and markets.

The Houthis have laid land mines, killing and wounding civilians. They also have targeted religious minorities and imprisoned opponents. The stalemate war has killed more than 10,000 people.

Around two-thirds of the country’s population of 27 million relies on aid and 8.4 million are at risk of starving.

Source: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/08/14/world/social-issues-world/seven-ships-loaded-oregon-wheat-bound-starving-yemens-hodeida-port/#.W3JDJuhKhGM

The post Seven ships loaded with Oregon wheat bound for starving Yemen’s Hodeida port first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The 27-year-old singer-songwriter fled Syria’s civil war and landed on the Greek island of Lesbos in September 2015, at the peak of Europe’s migrant crisis.

His post-rock band made its way north to Germany, handing out CDs and holding impromptu gigs along the way.

Maghrebi now enjoys his new life in Berlin, a diverse city that he described as the “mecca for artists” in Europe. And for the most part, he feels at home here.

But not everything is rosy for Maghrebi. More than 18 months after arriving, he is only now beginning to learn German.

“It’s not like I come here and all of a sudden I’m a free bird,” he explained.

As for integration “it’s a really tricky term,” he mused, fidgeting with the tools of his trade. “I really don’t know if I even understand the term.”

Maghrebi’s arrival in Europe coincided with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to open Germany’s borders to tens of thousands of exhausted asylum-seekers and migrants waiting at crossings from Hungary. Many were Syrians fleeing a conflict that has killed more than 400,000 and displaced millions.

“We can do this,” Merkel said at the time in an uncharacteristically decisive move that had repercussions in the federal election held in September.

Life in Germany remains a struggle for many of Maghrebi’s fellow recent arrivals. Around 1 million asylum-seekers reached the country — which had a population of 81 million — in 2015. At times more than 10,000 people were arriving daily.

But only around 16 percent of refugees are employed, according to official data published in September.

And while most of the asylum-seekers and refugees who spoke to NBC News said they felt their future lies in Germany, the majority admitted they did not yet feel a sense of belonging.

The issue of integration is a thorny one. Merkel’s government says the goal is neither multiculturalism nor assimilation.

“Integration is successful if immigrants are equal members of our society and can participate equally in social, cultural and political life,” a spokesman for Germany’s interior ministry said.

Maghrebi says he feels lucky. With his four-member band Khebez Dawle — which means “Government Bread” in Arabic — on hiatus, he is working on his first solo album.

And thanks to an anonymous donor, he recently received a scholarship to study at Bard College Berlin, a liberal arts school.

But it’s also clear that Maghrebi has still not entirely escaped Syria.

His lyrics are filled with existential questions and deal with the experience of being away from home but also — more universally — of “being an outsider in the world itself.”

“She proudly displays her fur as feathers, yet her face is smothered with alienation,” reads the English translation of a line from one new song in Arabic.

‘Rules of German life’

Ahmed Abdelkhader and his family are trying to get by in Hassloch, a town of 21,000 some 350 miles southwest of Berlin that is considered so broadly representative of Germany’s population that the consumer research industry tries out new products there.

Abdelkhader, a Kurdish barber, arrived in Germany from Syria with his wife and six daughters in the fall of 2015.

His children were all 10 or younger when they made the treacherous journey across the Mediterranean Sea. The youngest, Alfa, was just 8 months old. After spending three months in a shelter, the family was relocated to Hassloch.

After more than 18 months in the town, Abdelkhader still speaks very little German, and his search for work has proved difficult.

Abdelkhader, 37, has little formal education and relies on the help of fellow Syrian Ghivara Mohamad to translate from Arabic to German.

“It’s hard to teach him German when he asks, ‘What does a verb mean?’” said Mohamad, trying to explain the challenges his friend faces.

Abdelkhader’s daughters seem to be faring better. The eldest, Amal, now 12, attends school and speaks passable German — though she says she doesn’t have many friends.

While Amal’s parents are happy she is attending classes, they find the emphasis on sexual education disturbing and say it jars with their Muslim faith.

Some 150 refugees and 32 asylum-seekers live in the town, according to officials. That number has fluctuated over the past two years, with as many as 260 asylum-seekers calling it home at one point.

“The fact that you don’t really feel refugees in the village shows that integration is working,” said Ralf Trösch, the local official in charge of social affairs.

But it hasn’t all been easy. A homeless man was killed by an asylum-seeker, and there have been allegations of drug abuse, officials said.

Today’s challenges are more mundane. Trösch said one difficulty newcomers faced was neighbors’ complaints that they’re too loud after 10 p.m. Others included explaining the importance Germans place on punctuality and recycling.

“We’re now trying to teach refugees some rules of German life to limit problems,” Trösch said.

Many residents of Hassloch said they were proud of Merkel’s decision to take in refugees, but others said they knew people who were resentful.

A single asylum-seeker who no longer lives in a shelter officially receives 354 euros ($416) a month from the government, while a person formally given refugee status gets 409 euros ($480), according to local officials.

But Trösch cautioned that once you have accounted for rent, health insurance and administrative costs, the figure was more like 1,000 euros ($1,175).

“There is antipathy among some people. I listen to it everyday,” said Harald Sauer, who runs a bar off the town’s market square. “They see refugees walking past with Nike shoes and complain that they’re getting free money from the state.”

The far-right and anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, harnessing hostility toward foreigners, surged to third place in September’s federal election, winning 13 percent of the vote. The World Jewish Congress has called the AfD “a disgraceful reactionary movement which recalls the worst of Germany’s past.”

AfD campaign posters played heavily on the influx of refugees and migrants.

“Burqas?” read one poster picturing German girls frolicking on the beach. “We prefer bikinis.”

Another showed a picture of a pregnant woman. “New Germans? We will make them ourselves,” it read.

The party has also capitalized on incidents of violence involving newcomers, like one in Cologne on New Year’s Eve 2015 in which gangs of mostly foreign men sexually assaulted women out celebrating. Some of the men were asylum-seekers.

Islamist terror — such as a deadly truck attack last December by a Tunisian national who targeted a Christmas market in Berlin — has also provided fodder to far-right nationalists.

While Merkel won her fourth term as chancellor in September, the AfD’s showing has prompted critics to argue that her so-called willkommenskultur — or welcome culture toward refugees — had inadvertently reopened the door to the far-right in Germany.

Some residents in Hassloch, however, have taken it upon themselves to shepherd refugees through the integration process.

Elisabeth Heine, 66, a retiree who had bumped into Abdelkhader in the market square and asked about the progress of his job search, said that she and her husband had somewhat adopted his family.

“The children call us ‘Grandma’ and ‘Grandpa,’” she said.

Heine said Germans can’t expect refugees to immediately understand the intricacies of German life. “We help him navigate all the bureaucracy,” she said of Abdelkhader.

Reunited

Feras Rashid is all too familiar with the frustrations of German bureaucracy.

A 25-year-old Syrian Kurd, Rashid said he was forced to sleep on the floor of a Munich registration center for three days after arriving in August 2015. An economics graduate, Rashid had left his wife behind in Syria, and he was moved through several camps before landing in one outside the industrial town of Kassel.

“The first year was so difficult because I didn’t have anything to do other than waiting for asylum,” Rashid said. “I was always thinking about my wife, about family, about the situation in Aleppo.”

Rashid said the camps were generally comfortable and the staff polite, but not always. He recalled that on one occasion, having asked for a pillow, he was quickly rebuffed. “They told me that the only pillow I could have was my ass,” he said.

Now living with his pregnant wife, Nazly, who joined him in Germany last November, Rashid works part time in a supermarket while studying for his master’s degree.

Marco Wenzel, the store’s owner, said he was pleased with Rashid’s work.

“It’s about qualifications, not background,” said Wenzel, explaining that he never would have hired Rashid simply because he was a refugee. “To me he is a Syrian student, not a refugee.”

Rashid said he now has friends and feels at home in Germany — though he still marvels at the variety of vegetables and bread.

In August, he published an open letter in the German newspaper Bild appealing to refugees to “be thankful and behave.”

“We have to show them that we’re good people, that we will integrate with you and that we will be one society,” Rashid said.

‘We have kind German friends’

Afghan teen Narges Tavakkoli stood stretching with a group of other asylum-seekers before a three-mile run around the open expanse of Berlin’s former Tempelhof Airport.

A sea of Germans wearing fluorescent sports gear chatted outside the Nazi-built facility, which closed about a decade ago.

Once used to house prisoners of war, the site became one of the country’s largest emergency shelters for new arrivals in the fall of 2015.

At its peak, some 2,700 asylum-seekers lived there. Now there are 170 residents remaining, most of them refugees.

The dormitories inside the hangars are about to close and those still living there are set to move to new temporary housing on the former airfield.

Narges readied herself. “Drei, zwei, eins …” called the starter, and she was off. Whoosh.

Narges, 16, is training to be a sports instructor, but she says she really wants to be an astronaut.

She is part of a program for asylum-seekers that aims to help them meet Germans, establish a foothold in the community and make a small amount of money on the side.

Narges said she was generally happy in Berlin and was particularly pleased that girls and boys had equal rights in Germany. In Afghanistan, she “did not do sports — here I do lots of sport. I’m proud of myself.”

But she said life in the Tempelhof camp was difficult.

On the day NBC News met her parents, they were moving from the shelter to one farther out of the city.

“Life is very difficult for us here,” said Narges’ mother, Zeinab, adding that the situation was not suitable for a family of six. “There’s no door on the room, we have no privacy, and now that the cold is coming, mice and birds are coming into the hangars.”

Back in the Afghan city of Herat, the family owned a carpet factory that was helped by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

But the American assistance caused the Taliban to start asking questions, said Narges’ father, Hashim Tavakkoli. The family was forced to leave after the Taliban accused them of colluding with the U.S.

“They said they would kill me because they thought I was helping the Americans,” the 36-year-old father of four said.

The family left everything behind. Hashim now volunteers as a mechanic every morning in an effort to meet Germans and simply to have something to do, he said.

But it is clear his mind is restless.

“Wherever I walk in Berlin I measure how much time, how much work it would take to carpet the street,” he said, using his hands to simulate measuring. “I work as a mechanic, but really I’m a carpet maker.”

His wife said they were lucky to be in Germany. “My children are in school, they are learning,” Zeinab said. “We have kind German friends.”

As she spoke, a German couple arrived in a van to help the family move to their new home.

Now what worries Zeinab the most is not being able to stay. The family has already been rejected from Norway, fleeing to Germany days before they were due to be deported.

Their situation here is no less precarious. In recent months, Merkel has targeted Afghans for deportation to discourage migrants from making the dangerous journey, and in an effort to be seen as clamping down on immigration.

The family has been waiting more than six months to hear if their asylum request will be granted.

“I don’t want to have to tell my children they can’t stay again,” Zeinab said.

A high-wire act

Merkel finds herself walking a tightrope on immigration.

On one side sit the Bahnhofsklatscher — or station clappers — who welcomed asylum-seekers and migrants as they arrived in train stations across the country in the fall of 2015 and who have since rallied to help them get back on their feet.

On the other side stand the Wutbürger, or angry citizens, who are concerned that the sheer numbers of newcomers will have a negative impact on their daily lives.

Pressure from them — and the AfD’s strong showing at the ballot box — has forced Merkel to concede groundto the more right-wing factions of her conservative alliance.

Last month, her party agreed that Germany would not let in more than 200,000 people a year on humanitarian grounds in an effort to unify her conservative bloc ahead of negotiations to form a new coalition government.

Last week, those coalition talks broke down over policy disagreements on migration controls and the environment.

But as Germany considers how many more refugees the world’s fourth-biggest economy can handle, it is also confronting how it treats those already here.

So is integration happening? Maghrebi, the Syrian musician, isn’t certain.

“Everyone says ‘integration,’ but everyone has their subjective meaning for the word,” he said.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/germany-grapples-integration-after-its-opening-borders-n810361

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