International
Climate change will fuel diseases, warns Global Fund
| By AFP |
Climate change will end up killing people by fuelling infectious diseases, the head of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria said Tuesday.
Executive director Peter Sands said that in 2022, the fund had witnessed the “escalating impact” of climate change on health.
While upsurges in malaria had hitherto been seen due to the increasing frequency and devastation of tropical storms, “with the flooding in Pakistan it was taken to a completely different scale”, he said.
“What we are seeing is that the mechanism by which climate change will end up killing people is through its impact on infectious disease.”
Sands said that parts of Africa which previously were unaffected by malaria are now becoming at risk as temperatures rise and allow mosquitos to thrive, notably at higher altitudes.
However, the population in such areas will not have immunity, with the resulting risk of a higher mortality rate.
“It’s quite alarming,” Sands told a briefing with the UN correspondents’ association.
Other threats include tuberculosis spreading among the increasing number of displaced people around the world.
“TB is a disease that thrives on having concentrations of highly-stressed people in close confines with inadequate food and shelter,” he said.
“The more that we see climate change-driven displacement of people, the more I think that will translate into the conditions that will at least make it more likely.”
Sands also said food insecurity would make people more vulnerable to disease.
As for whether the world was better prepared for the next pandemic than it was for Covid-19, Sands said it was, but added: “That doesn’t mean we are well prepared: we’re just not as badly prepared as we were before.”
By the end of 2022, Sands said the Global Fund will have invested around $5.4 billion, which is significantly more than it has ever done before.
The Geneva-based organisation’s largest donors are G7 governments, led by the United States and France.
“For the people we serve in the poorest, most marginalised, most vulnerable communities in the world, 2022 was a brutal year,” said Sands.
“In the poorest communities in the world, HIV, TB and malaria are killing many more people than Covid-19.”
International
Football Fan Killed in Clashes After Colombian League Match
Fans of Cúcuta Deportivo and their traditional rivals Atlético Bucaramanga clashed outside the stadium following their local league match on Tuesday, leaving one supporter dead and several others injured.
The deceased fan was stabbed, according to a senior police official in Cúcuta who confirmed the cause of death in a video statement. Local media reported that the victim was a supporter of the visiting team, Atlético Bucaramanga.
The match ended in a 2-2 draw. Authorities had banned the entry of Atlético Bucaramanga’s organized supporters into the stadium in an effort to prevent disturbances.
Despite the restrictions, violence broke out in the surrounding areas after the game. Among the injured were three police officers, an institutional source told AFP.
The incident adds to a series of recent violent episodes linked to Colombian football. The most recent occurred in December, when supporters of Atlético Nacional and Independiente Medellín clashed in the stands and on the pitch, leaving 59 people injured.
International
Missing Spanish Sailor Rescued After 11 Days Adrift in Mediterranean
The man had departed from the port of Gandía, on Spain’s eastern coast, with the intention of reaching the southern Spanish town of Guardamar del Segura, a journey of about 150 kilometers, a spokesperson for Spain’s maritime rescue service told AFP.
Search boats and aircraft were deployed on January 17, but the operation was called off on January 22 after efforts proved unsuccessful. Alerts were then issued to vessels navigating the area in case they spotted any signs of the missing sailor.
As hopes were fading, a surveillance aircraft from the European Union’s border agency Frontex spotted the sailboat on Tuesday, along with a person signaling for help, approximately 53 nautical miles northeast of Bejaia, Algeria.
A nearby vessel, the Singapore-flagged bulk carrier Thor Confidence, carried out the rescue and is expected to bring the man to an end to his ordeal when it arrives on Thursday in the southern Spanish port city of Algeciras.
Maritime rescue services shared images on social media showing a small white sailboat drifting at sea and secured alongside the much larger ship.
It remains unclear how the sailboat ended up hundreds of kilometers off its intended route or how the man managed to survive for so long alone in open waters.
International
Rubio Says U.S. Could Participate in Follow-Up Russia-Ukraine Talks
The United States could join a new round of talks this week aimed at ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday.
Teams from Kyiv and Moscow met last Friday and Saturday in Abu Dhabi in their first publicly acknowledged direct negotiations to discuss the peace initiative promoted by former U.S. President Donald Trump.
“They are going to hold follow-up talks again this week,” Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “There could be U.S. participation.”
However, Rubio suggested that Washington’s role may be more limited than during last week’s discussions, which included Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy, and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.
The secretary of state indicated that progress may have already been made on security guarantees for Ukraine, one of Kyiv’s key demands in any agreement with Moscow after nearly four years of Russian invasion.
“There is one remaining issue that everyone is familiar with, and that is the territorial claim over Donetsk,” Rubio said, referring to the eastern Ukrainian region that Russia wants Ukraine to cede.
“I know that active efforts are underway to see whether the positions of both sides on this issue can be reconciled. It remains a bridge we have not yet crossed,” he added during the hearing.
Rubio acknowledged that the territorial question would be particularly difficult for Ukraine to resolve.
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