PANAMA CITY, 31 May 2021 – The number of children under five suffering from severe acute malnutrition in Haiti could increase by more than double this year, warned UNICEF Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, Jean Gough, who concluded a seven-day field visit to the country today.

Over 86,000 Haitian children under five are projected to suffer from severe acute malnutrition this year, compared to 41,000 children last year and could die if they don’t get urgent assistance. UNICEF is alarmed by the spike in malnutrition over the past year and concerned about the shortage of ready-to-use therapeutic food in the coming weeks.

“In just one year, more than twice the number of children are expected to suffer from severe acute malnutrition in Haiti,” said Jean Gough, UNICEF Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean. “In the hospitals, I was saddened to see so many children suffering from malnutrition. Some will not recover unless they receive treatment in time.”

Children’s lives in Haiti are increasingly under threat by the combined effect of the pandemic, the rising violence, lack of access to preventive nutrition services and clean water, and unhygienic environments, as well as extreme weather conditions exacerbated by climate change, such as hurricanes.

In times of COVID-19, disruption of health services and parental fear led to a sharp decline in child immunization rates last year, ranging from 28 per cent for some vaccine antigens to 44 per cent for others. According to UNICEF, 9.7 per cent of children in Haiti have not received any vaccination and 58 per cent are not fully vaccinated. Of those who are not fully vaccinated, 42 per cent live mostly in impoverished metropolitan areas, where there is a lack of access to essential services for children, and the most impacted by violence.

This drop in child immunization has resulted in rising numbers of diphtheria cases and a higher risk of a measles outbreak this year. These unvaccinated children are also more vulnerable to suffer and die from malnutrition.

Acute malnutrition among children under five has increased by 61 per cent during the last year in Haiti. In 2021, about 217,000 Haitian children could suffer from acute malnutrition compared to 134,000 children during the same period last year, according to humanitarian needs overview (HNO) estimates. In the first three months of this year alone, the number of admissions of severely acute malnourished children in health facilities across Haiti has significantly increased by 26 per cent compared to the past year.

One in four Haitians is currently facing acute food insecurity. From March to June 2021, about 4.4 million people are estimated to be food insecure in Haiti, including 1.9 million children, according to Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) estimates. The upcoming hurricane season is likely to worsen the access to nutritious food in the coming months.

“Severe acute malnutrition can and should be treated right now to save children’s lives in Haiti,” stressed Jean Gough. “We can’t look the other way and ignore one of the least funded humanitarian crises in the region. Without additional, urgent funding in the next few weeks, the life-saving treatment we are providing against malnutrition will be discontinued and some children will be at risk of dying.”

In 2020, UNICEF, together with government and partners, treated 33,372 acutely malnourished children across Haiti, by providing nutrition supplies and medicines. In June 2021, UNICEF will be running out of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) for treatment of acute malnutrition due to insufficient funding. UNICEF urgently needs US$3 million to purchase essential supplies and medicine and carry out preventive and treatment programmes. Without these funds, thousands of Haitian children will no longer receive this live-saving assistance.

“In an environment as precarious as Haiti, every child’s life we save today can be in danger again tomorrow. Unless we move beyond just *treating *malnutrition –to preventing it before it strikes,” said Jean Gough. “Increased family healthcare support at the community level will boost confidence in routine immunization and enable every home to access nutrition services every day. I was encouraged to see parents vaccinating their children in the health centers. Well-nourished, healthy, and vaccinated children will get better grades at school and become more productive adults. Building Haiti’s future in the long run starts by curbing chronic malnutrition now.”

For 2021, UNICEF is seeking US$48.9 million to meet the humanitarian needs of 1.5 million people in Haiti including over 700,000 children, a situation which has been significantly exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. So far, this humanitarian appeal has remained almost completely underfunded.

 

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London- Scientists have warned ministers that a third wave of coronavirus may have already begun in Britain, casting doubt on plans in England to lift all lockdown restrictions in three weeks’ time.

Experts cautioned that any rise in coronavirus hospital admissions could leave the NHS struggling to cope as it battles to clear the huge backlog in non-Covid cases.

Downing Street insisted it was too soon for speculation about whether the plan to lift all lockdown rules in England on 21 June could go ahead, prompting calls from the hospitality industry for the government to ensure it provided “advance notice” for struggling businesses of any “lingering” measures.

The vaccines minister, Nadhim Zahawi, refused to deny that some restrictions such as mask wearing and working from home might remain in place to reduce the spread of the virus. Senior scientific advisers believe that, where possible, working from home makes sense beyond June because it would cut the number of people who come into contact with each other.

Ministers are grappling with whether a rise in cases and further spread of the Covid variant first discovered in India could throw Boris Johnson’s roadmap off track. Despite the progress of the vaccination programme, advisers are unsure to what extent the new infections – which are at levels last seen at the end of March – will translate into hospitalisations and deaths.

Outbreak modellers advising Sage expected a resurgence of infections even before the new variant, called B.1.617.2, was found in the UK. That is because, as restrictions ease, the virus can spread more easily among millions of people who have not been protected by vaccines. Research by Public Health England that suggests the new variant is highly transmissible and partially resistant to vaccines has heightened concerns that a third wave could overwhelm the NHS.

Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show, Zahawi refused to rule out that the planned unlocking could be tweaked, adding that an announcement will be made on 14 June. “We have to look at the data and we will share that with the country,” he said. “It would be completely wrong for me to now speculate. There are many people watching your programme, in jobs and businesses, who want to basically follow the exact direction the government is giving them whilst taking personal responsibility.

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Mexico City (CNN) Some parts of the campaign trail in Mexico look like anywhere else — rallies, bumper stickers, candidates making lofty promises. Other parts — the threats, the assaults, the murders — are more unique.

Political violence mars every election season here and the run up to the June 6 midterm elections has been no different. But this year has been particularly gruesome, even for a country more used to it than most.

At least 88 politicians or candidates for office have been killed since last September, according to Mexican consulting firm Etellekt Consultores.

They’re part of a group of at least 565 politicians or candidates that have been targeted by some sort of crime, according to the firm.

Mexico’s government says this year’s midterm elections will be the largest ever. By the time the polls close on June 6, they might also be its deadliest.

Candidates keep being killed

Abel Murrieta was handing out campaign flyers in broad daylight two weeks ago, along a busy street in Cajeme, the municipality where he was running for local office. The former prosecutor in the northern state of Sonora was with supporters when police say two men in a vehicle gunned him down, shooting him 10 times.

As a candidate, he consistently said fighting crime was his number one issue.

“Enough with the drugs that steal our kids and destroy our families. I’m a man of the law. I’ll lay down the law. My hand isn’t shaking. I am not afraid,” Murrieta said in his final campaign ad — recorded only one day before his murder.

Social media footage showed Murrieta lying motionless after the shooting in a bloodied white button-down shirt as a supporter waved his party’s flag nearby, one hand on her heaving chest. A second video shot later showed him being put on a stretcher and into an ambulance.

Authorities say he was deliberately targeted though they don’t know by whom. An investigation is underway.

Murietta was a high-profile figure, known for his outspoken views on crime. As a private lawyer, he was also representing the LeBaron family, a family with dual US-Mexico citizenship that lost nine of its members when they were murdered by suspected cartel members in late 2019.

On Tuesday, another aspiring candidate was gunned down during a campaign event. Alma Rosa Barragán was running for mayor in the city of Moroleón in the state of Guanajuato, one of the country’s most violent regions.

“If you’d like to accompany me, come so you can listen to my proposals, come so we can coexist for a moment. Together, we can do it better,” a cheerful Barragán said during a Facebook Live she broadcast just moments before her death.

The Guanajuato Attorney General’s office condemned the assassination, and an investigation is now underway.

Alma Barragan was killed while campaigning for the mayorship of Moroleon, in violence-plagued Guanajuato state.

What’s behind the violence?

Motives behind the murders of so many candidates throughout the country are unclear, but suspected drivers are organized crime and the fight for territorial control.

Mexican security expert Ana Maria Salazar believes in many cases smaller criminal groups or larger drug cartels are targeting candidates they don’t like to boost their preferred candidate’s ascent to office. And for these groups and cartels, territorial control is key.

“There’s a lot of intimidation. It has to do with these organizations wanting to have a person [in office] that will clearly abide by their needs and that will allow them to control the territory,” Salazar said to CNN. “It has to do with territorial control.”

It’s also not unheard of for the politicians or candidates involved to be tied in with organized crime themselves.

These groups are either financing or promoting candidates — or threatening, intimidating and killing those they want out of the game, she added.

“These criminal organizations finally understood that having control over either the political parties or the political structures in your region actually allows you to use it to traffic and exercise territorial control much easier in the last three years since Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected,” said Salazar.

López Obrador has taken a different tack in combating organized crime since he took office, eschewing previous strategies of going to war with the cartels. He favors addressing the long-term root causes of poverty as a way to provide alternatives to cartel membership, commonly referred to as “hugs, not bullets.”

Salazar argues the strategy is partly to blame for the killings, as she says it allows criminal groups de facto free reign and a “right to exist.”

The López Obrador administration has consistently said its strategy needs more time for results to be truly felt.

The government response — or lack thereof

Critics have said for decades that the federal government does not do enough to protect candidates and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration is no different.

“It’s a difficult time for these campaigns,” President Obrador said recently during his daily press conference. “We’re going to keep protecting them.

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The words “keep protecting them” would imply that the government is already effectively protecting candidates, something that is obviously not the case.

Critics say the government’s ineffective response is in part due to not admitting the extent of the problem.

The government’s own tally of how many politicians or candidates have been killed, currently at just 14, is far lower than other estimates, including consulting firm Etellekt’s.

When asked about why his government’s figures were so much lower, the president would not disclose how his administration calculated their figures.

It doesn’t help that Mexico is a country where impunity reigns. Well over 90 percent of all crimes never get solved.

With less than two weeks until voters head to the polls, concerns about more killings of candidates will only grow.

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