Tag Archives: Medicine

Drug and Food shortages already happening

Luke 21:11 There will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and pestilences. And there will be terrors and great signs from heaven.

Important Takeaways:

  • Drug And Food Shortages Are Here, And They Will Get A Lot Worse…
  • A lot of the experts didn’t think that this would happen. Once the pandemic subsided, global supply chains were supposed to return to normal.  But now “hundreds of drugs” are in short supply in the United States, and even CNN is admitting that we are in the midst of “the worst food crisis in modern history”
  • Orange County Register reports: Pfizer will run out of several doses of penicillin, which treat syphilis, strep throat, and other infections, later this year as shortages ripple across the US supply chain.
    • The company anticipates running out of the children’s dose of the syphilis drug Bicillin L-A by the end of June, according to a letter Pfizer posted Tuesday on the Food and Drug Administration’s website
  • The Hill Reports: A recent survey found that a majority of cancer centers are reporting shortages of commonly used chemotherapy drugs used to treat a wide variety of cancers.
    • Much of the current shortage stems from the temporary closure of a drug manufacturing facility in India that happened after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found issues in the plant’s quality control.
  • The New York Times Reports: Hundreds of drugs are on the list of medications in short supply in the United States, as officials grapple with an opaque and sometimes interrupted supply chain, quality and financial issues that are leading to manufacturing shutdowns.
    • The shortages are so acute that they are commanding the attention of the White House and Congress, which are examining the underlying causes of the faltering generic drug market, which accounts for about 90 percent of domestic prescriptions.

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New World Banking system emerges: Mexico’s interests grow as tensions with US rise

Mexico

Revelations 18:9-11 “The kings of the earth who committed fornication and lived luxuriously with her will weep and lament for her, when they see the smoke of her burning, 10 standing at a distance for fear of her torment, saying, ‘Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! For in one hour your judgment has come.’ 11 “And the merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her, for no one buys their merchandise anymore

Important Takeaways:

  • Mexico Plans to Join BRICS Amid Growing Tensions with US
  • Mexico has expressed its interest in joining the BRICS group of emerging economies, which currently consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The Mexican Foreign Minister, Marcelo Ebrard, said that Mexico shares the vision and values of the BRICS and hopes to deepen its cooperation with them in various fields, especially in medicine and trade.
  • Mexico’s move comes amid growing tensions with its northern neighbor, the United States, over issues such as immigration, border security, trade and human rights.
  • Mexico sees the BRICS as an alternative platform to diversify its foreign relations and increase its global influence.

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America faces shortage of Doctors specializing in infectious diseases: Experts predict this problem to grow

Doctor Medicine

Luke 21:11 “There will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and pestilences. And there will be terrors and great signs from heaven.”

Important Takeaways:

  • U.S. faces shortage of doctors specializing in infectious diseases
  • The COVID-19 pandemic. Dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The current waves of influenza and RSV ripping through schools and workplaces.
  • Despite this, the United States is facing a shortage of doctors choosing to specialize in infectious disease, according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).
  • Only 56% of adult and 49% of pediatric infectious disease training programs were filled, even though most other specialties filled all or nearly all their programs, the society said.
  • By 2035, an estimated 14,010 infectious disease docs will be scrambling in the face of a demand for 15,130 such specialists across the nation, HRSA says.
  • Currently, 4 of 5 U.S. counties don’t have a single infectious disease doctor, del Rio noted.

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Amid flu season, shortage of common medicines has parents worried what to do for children

Luke 21:11 “There will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and pestilences. And there will be terrors and great signs from heaven.”

Important Takeaways:

  • As flu season hits South Florida hard, drug shortages cause panic
  • Flu season has hit hard in South Florida, and drug shortages rippling through the country are creating nightmares for those who get sick.
  • …panicked parents of feverish children searching for everything from Children’s Tylenol to Amoxicillin to Tamiflu.
  • Experts say the country has been hit by a “tripledemic” of ongoing COVID-19, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
  • “It’s been hard for us to help the kids who are sick because we don’t [have] the medications they need and we can’t order them,” said Natasha Patel, co-owner of University Pharmacy in Coral Gables

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Sri Lanka Economic Crisis some calling “A mini Arab Spring”

Rev 6:6 NAS And I heard something like a voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not damage the oil and the wine.”

Important Takeaways:

  • Sri Lanka’s cabinet has resigned en masse during economic crisis
  • There have been new calls today for both the president and prime minister to step down after the entire Cabinet resigned on Sunday.
  • Shortages of food, medicine and fuel have sparked countrywide protests, and security forces have fired tear gas and water cannons at protesters marching on the president’s home.
  • Vandana Menon, a reporter with The Print, says “I’ve never seen total unity like this before. It’s like a mini Arab Spring in Sri Lanka.”
  • Oh, there’s a huge fuel crisis, and you can see vehicles queuing up at petrol stations. Hospitals have had to stop surgeries last week because of power cuts and shortages of medicines.

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Hyperinflation in Venezuela has prices going up 80% every month

Rev 6:6 NAS And I heard something like a voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not damage the oil and the wine.”

Important Takeaways:

  • Venezuelans Throw Worthless Money in Trash Amid Massive Inflation
  • “As Venezuela sinks deeper and deeper into the first hyperinflation the Western Hemisphere has seen in a generation, bolivar banknotes have come to be worth basically nothing,”
  • Caracas Chronicles news website said 20-bolivar bills were once worth about $2 US each but are now equal $0.0001
  • Prices on goods go up about 80 percent every month
  • “Rule No. 1 of surviving hyperinflation is simple: Get rid of your money,” The second you’re paid, you run out as fast as you can to buy something — anything — while you can still afford it. It’s better to hold almost any asset than money, because assets hold their value and money doesn’t.”
  • The country experienced an economic collapse in 2014 under its socialist government and has not rebounded. There are shortages of food, medicine, and basic necessities throughout the country.

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In Kabul children’s hospital, medics struggle with staff shortages

By Gibran Naiyyar Peshimam

KABUL (Reuters) – In Kabul’s main children’s hospital, the crumbling of Afghanistan’s health system is reflected in the eyes of exhausted staff as they eke out fast-diminishing stocks of medicines.

As crowds of mothers and sick children fill waiting rooms in the Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital, medical staff are squeezing three babies into a single incubator and doubling them up in cot-like infant warmer beds.

Nurses who once took care of three or four babies each are now having to look after 20 or more to make up for the absence of staff who fled the country when the Taliban seized power in August.

“We tell each other that we have do this work, if we don’t do it, these problems will become big, it’s a loss for ourselves, our society and for our country,” said Dr. Saifullah Abassin as he moved from bed to bed in the crowded intensive care unit.

Although the number of blast victims and war wounded have fallen since the fighting ended, Afghanistan’s hospitals are grappling with the fallout of a rapidly spreading economic crisis that has threatened millions with hunger.

U.N. agencies say as much as 95% of the population does not regularly have enough to eat and last month, the head of the World Health Organization warned the health system was on the brink of collapse as international aid has dried up.

Lack of support for the $600 million Sehatmandi health service project administered by World Bank, has left thousands of facilities unable to buy supplies and pay salaries, threatening health services at all levels from village clinics to hospitals offering caesarian sections.

STAFF NOT PAID IN MONTHS

For the medical team, it is the acute staff shortage that is causing the heaviest strain. They have not been paid in months and often struggle even to pay their car fare to work.

“We only ask from the government firstly that, they should increase our staff,” says Marwa, the nursing supervisor in the nursery ward. “Because of the changes, most of our colleagues left the country.”

Nurses who would normally be taking care of three or four babies for each nurse are now handling 23. “It is a lot of load on us,” she said.

Mohammad Latif Baher, assistant director of the Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital, said officials from the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF have given some help but more is needed quickly to fill the shortage of medicines and supplies to treat malnourished children.

“They (international organizations) have promised more aid. And we hope that they will keep their promises,” Baher says.

The hospital, built during the Soviet era in 1985 and financed by Indian aid money, has 360 beds but is operating well over capacity because of the lack of functioning clinics in the provinces around Kabul.

With a heavy flow of families coming in, the hospital has admitted 450 children and turned others away, he said.

Arzoo, who brought her eight-month-old daughter Sofia in for treatment, already lost one of her five children to malnourishment-related illness and is desperate not to lose another.

“We had a water tank at home – we sold that and used that for treatment,” she said, even though the cost means Sofia’s four siblings at home do not have much to eat.

“Their father came in the morning and told me the kids don’t have anything. When they (hospital) provide some food, I portion it out and send some home to the kids.”

(Reporting by Gibran Peshimam, Editing by William Maclean)

U.S. grants licenses for more aid flow to Afghanistan despite sanctions

By Daphne Psaledakis

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United States on Friday further paved the way for aid to flow to Afghanistan despite U.S. sanctions on the Taliban, who seized control of the country last month, issuing general licenses amid concern that Washington’s punitive measures could compound an unfolding humanitarian crisis.

The U.S. Treasury Department said it issued two general licenses, one allowing the U.S. government, NGOs and certain international organizations, including the United Nations, to engage in transactions with the Taliban or Haqqani Network – both under sanctions – that are necessary to provide humanitarian assistance.

The second license authorizes certain transactions related to the export and re-export of food, medicine and medical devices.

“Treasury is committed to facilitating the flow of humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan and other activities that support their basic human needs,” Andrea Gacki, director of the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, said in the statement.

She added that Washington will continue to work with financial institutions, NGOs and international organizations to ease the flow of agricultural goods, medicine and other resources while upholding sanctions on the Taliban, Haqqani Network and others.

The United Nations said that at the start of the year more than 18 million people – about half of Afghanistan’s population – require aid amid the second drought in four years.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said last week that Afghanistan is on “the verge of a dramatic humanitarian disaster” and has decided to engage the Taliban in order to help the country’s people.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has said it is committed to allowing humanitarian work in Afghanistan to continue despite Washington listing the Taliban as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group.

The sanctions freeze any U.S. assets of the Islamist militant group and bar Americans from dealing with them, including the contribution of funds, goods or services.

Reuters reported last month that Washington issued a license authorizing the U.S. government and its partners to continue to facilitate humanitarian aid in Afghanistan.

Friday’s move expands on that specific license, allowing international organizations and NGOs to pay taxes, fees, import duties or permits, licenses or other necessary transactions for assistance to reach the people of Afghanistan.

A Taliban offensive as foreign forces withdrew from Afghanistan after a 20-year war culminated in the capture of the capital Kabul on Aug. 15, two decades after they were driven from power by a U.S.-led campaign in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

(Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis; Editing by Mary Milliken and Grant McCool)

Charity say migrants on Polish-Belarus border seriously ill

WARSAW (Reuters) – A Polish refugee charity said on Wednesday 25 migrants camped on the Poland-Belarus border were unwell, including a mother of five who would soon die without help from the authorities.

The Ocalenie Foundation say the Polish Border Guard’s refusal to let anyone from the Polish side deliver food or medicine to the 32-strong group, who have been on the Belarus side of the border for around two weeks, is putting lives at risk. It said 12 were seriously ill.

Polish opposition lawmaker Franciszek Sterczewski was filmed trying to run past Border Guard officers with a bag he said contained food and medicine before being bundled to the ground.

The group of migrants has become embroiled in a broader dispute between the European Union and Belarus.

The European Union accuses Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko of orchestrating the arrival of thousands of people at the borders of Lithuania, Latvia and Poland in retaliation for sanctions imposed on the former Soviet republic.

The Belarusian foreign ministry on Tuesday accused Poland of provoking migrant flows from Afghanistan as part of the U.S. coalition, according to the state-run Belta news agency. It blamed the breakdown in border cooperation on the EU.

Poland, which said this week it would build a fence on the border and double the number of troops there to halt the flow, says responsibility for the migrants lies with Belarus.

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Wednesday that a convoy of humanitarian aid offered by Poland had been refused by Minsk. His deputy foreign minister said Belarusian authorities were providing the migrants with water, food and cigarettes.

Belarus authorities were not immediately available to comment.

The Ocalenie Foundation, which has been communicating with the migrants using a translator with a megaphone from a distance, said they were desperate.

“They don’t have drinking water. They have had nothing to eat since yesterday,” it said.

“Fifty-two-year-old Mrs. Gul will soon die in front of her five children. Rescue is needed NOW,” it said on Twitter.

It said the woman was from Afghanistan and she had two sons and three daughters with her, the youngest of whom was aged 15. It declined to provide further details, but said the other migrants were also from Afghanistan.

Poland’s Border Guard said on Friday it had asked Belarusian authorities three times to intervene with the group and that Belarus said it was doing so.

“We don’t know what the state of these people’s health is,” Border Guard spokeswoman Anna Michalska said. Reuters was unable to independently verify the condition of the migrants’ health.

(Reporting by Alan Charlish and Pawel Florkiewicz; Additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk and Matthias Williams; Editing by Alison Williams)

Demonstrations, defiance as Myanmar marks 4 months since coup

(Reuters) -Pro-democracy demonstrators took to the streets in towns around Myanmar on Tuesday to denounce the country’s military, marking four months since it ousted an elected government and unleashed a wave of nationwide anger.

Despite a bloody crackdown by security forces, Myanmar’s military is still struggling to impose order amid protests and strikes, and fighting on multiple fronts in border regions as civilians take up arms against the junta.

Protests took place in the south in Luang Lone, several areas of the Sagaing division including Kale and Monywa, and the commercial hub Yangon, according to images carried by mainstream and social media.

“This is not over yet. We still have our turn,” read a sign carried by one protester.

Schools officially reopened across Myanmar for the first time since the Feb. 1 coup, but turnout was low due to security concerns and a boycott over the junta’s suspension of tens of thousands of teachers opposed to its rule.

Some students held demonstrations with blood-splattered white uniforms.

Security forces have killed 840 people since the coup, according to figures from activists cited by the United Nations. The junta says about 300 people have died.

The military, known as the Tatmadaw, says it seized power because of fraud in a November election won by Aung San Suu Kyi’s ruling party.

The state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper carried a quote from junta leader Min Aung Hlaing on Tuesday saying the current crisis was caused by “dishonesty of democracy” in the election, under a large headline that said “Tatmadaw values democracy”.

The military’s use of lethal force against its own people has caused outrage among western countries, and concern among its neighbors. In April, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) announced a five-point consensus towards resolving the crisis, though no timeframe was agreed.

But four diplomatic sources have told Reuters that the chair and secretary-general of ASEAN are planning to visit Myanmar this week, to meet junta leaders, among other stakeholders.

It was not clear if they would meet detainees or members of a shadow unity government formed to challenge the junta and undercut its efforts to gain international recognition.

HEAVY TOLL

The unrest has taken a heavy toll in the countryside, where clashes between Myanmar’s well-equipped military and ethnic minority armies or newly formed People’s Defense Forces have displaced tens of thousands of people.

On Tuesday, a local aid group said 8,000 people were in camps having fled the town of Mindat in Chin State, which the army took control of last month after days of clashes with militias armed mostly with hunting rifles.

The people’s militias have stepped up ambushes in recent weeks on troops in Kayah state bordering Thailand, where witnesses said fierce fighting and retaliatory shelling and air strikes had taken place late on Monday in the town of Demoso.

A resident shared video and images with Reuters of soldiers he said were killed in Demoso late on Monday. He said he saw six bodies and residents had counted 20.

The Karenni Nationalities Defense Force said on its Facebook page that 80 army soldiers had been killed on Monday, while one of its fighters and a civilian were also casualties.

Reuters could not verify the information and a spokesman for the junta did not answer calls seeking comment.

Myanmar state television made no mention of the Demoso unrest in its nightly news bulletin.

Fighting in Kayah has displaced about 37,000 people in recent weeks, according to the United Nations. Many have fled into jungles and are in need of food and medicine.

The Elders, a group of former national leaders founded by the late Nelson Mandela, on Tuesday called on the international community, including ASEAN, to turn up pressure on the junta.

“Myanmar is currently on a dangerous path towards state failure,” its chair, Mary Robinson, said in a statement.

“Allowing the coup to succeed through inaction and disregard would further undermine the international rules-based order upon which global stability depends.”

(Reporting by Reuters Staff; Writing by Ed Davies and Martin Petty; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Mark Heinrich)