March and April were the hottest or near-hottest months on record across South Asia. And climate change made this heat wave 100 times more likely, the U.K. Met Office says. Heat waves like these don’t just sap people’s strength; they drain people’s finances in not always obvious ways —just another example of how climate change is weighing on the economy and making poor people poorer. VOA’s Steve Baragona has more.
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The World Health Organization’s (WHO) members re-elected Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as director general by a strong majority for another five years, the president of the World Health Assembly said on Tuesday.
The vote by secret ballot, announced by Ahmed Robleh Abdilleh from Djibouti at a major annual meeting, was seen as a formality since Tedros was the only candidate running.
Ministers and delegates took turns to shake hands and hug Tedros, a former health minister from Ethiopia, who has steered the U.N. agency through a turbulent period dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The president had to use a gavel several times to interrupt the applause.
German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach tweeted on Tuesday: “Just re-elected as Director General of #WHO: @DrTedros. 155/160 votes, spectacular result. Congratulations, fully deserved.”
Germany recently overtook the United States as the U.N. health agency’s top donor.
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Malawi has rolled out a vaccination campaign to help stop an outbreak of cholera. Authorities report more than 350 cases and 17 deaths from cholera across eight districts of southern Malawi.
Malawi’s Ministry of Health declared the cholera outbreak in early March after the first case was confirmed in the Machinga district in southern Malawi.
The disease has so far spread to eight districts including Nsanje, Chikwawa and Blantyre.
In its latest report on Monday, the ministry said the country had recorded 367 cholera cases in all with 17 deaths and 19 hospital admissions.
Dr. Gertrude Chapotera represented the World Health Organization at the launch of the vaccination campaign Monday in Blantyre.
She said the campaign is running with support from various global partners, including the Gavi Vaccine Alliance and the Global Task for Cholera Control.
“We are supporting the Ministry of Health with up to 3.9 million doses that will be administered in two rounds,” she said. “So this actually is the beginning of the first round with the campaign starting from today the 23rd of May running up Friday this week the 27th of May.”
Cholera is an acute diarrheal infection caused by ingesting food or water contaminated with bacteria. The disease affects both children and adults and, if untreated, can kill within hours.
Dr. Gift Kawalazila is director of Health and Social Services in Blantyre. He says the district has so far seen nearly 100 cases of cholera, with five deaths but only three hospital admissions as of Monday.
“This means that cholera is a disease that can easily be reversed and we have treatment options with us,” said Kawalazila. “So, the general message to the general population is that they should quickly present themselves to our health workers in our different health facilities whenever they notice the signs and symptoms of cholera which is profuse diarrhea and vomiting in some cases.”
Health authorities say many people are turning up for vaccination, with some districts running short of the doses.
Alinafe Longwe is among those who received the cholera vaccine in Blantyre. Longwe says she did not get the COVID-19 vaccine, citing fears of blood clotting and other health issues.
“But with this one, I haven’t heard any issues, so I am okay with it and I have received it and I am fine,” said Longwe.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health says it has intensified public education preventing cholera infections. These include the use of clean water for domestic purposes and observing personal hygiene.
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Meta, the company that owns Facebook, is hosting its second annual Africa Day campaign to promote Africans who are making a global impact.
The content producer for the film project, South African filmmaker Tarryn Crossman, said Meta identified eight innovators, creators and businesspeople on the continent whose stories the company wanted told for the “Made by Africa, Loved by the World” campaign.
Crossman’s company, Tia Productions, teamed up with Mashoba Media to find four fellow filmmakers in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Their job was to make two- to three-minute documentaries about the subjects.
“So, for example we did Trevor Stuurman here in South Africa,” Crossman said. “He’s a visual artist and his line was, I just loved so much, he says: ‘Africa’s no longer the ghost writer.’ We’re telling our stories and owning our own narratives. That’s kind of the thread amongst all these characters. They all have that in common.”
Nairobi-based filmmaker Joan Kabangu made a movie about Black Rhino VR, a Kenyan virtual reality content producing company which has worked with international brands.
“They are the pioneers around creating VR content, 360 content, augmented mixed reality kind of content in Kenya, in the wider Africa. And it’s a company which is run by a young person and everybody who is working there is fairly young. And they are really getting into how tech is being used to elevate the way we are creating content in 2022, going forward,” Kabangu said.
Of Meta’s Africa Day campaign she said, “I feel it’s celebrating the good in Africa.”
In Ghana, Kofi Awuah’s movie making has been delayed by floods in the capital, Accra. But he is determined to finish. His innovator is designer Selina Beb, whose work can be seen on Instagram and is sold online, often to buyers in the U.S. and Britain.
“She’s very unique,” Awuah said. “Based on material she uses and even the processes she uses are kind of things that tell a Ghanian or African story. For instance, she uses a certain kind of stone that you can find only in the northern parts of Ghana.”
Awuah said being a part of the campaign is the chance of a lifetime.
“My manager called me to tell me that we gotten a contract from Meta and I almost, like I had a heart attack,” she said. “When that call came, I felt this is the moment for me to express myself to the millions or billions of people who are using Facebook, who are using social media.”
Meta will also be hosting free virtual training sessions throughout the week. These include training on monetization, cross-border business and branded content.
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Facebook parent Meta said it will start publicly providing more details about how advertisers target people with political ads just months ahead of the U.S. midterm elections.
The announcement follows years of criticism that the social media platforms withhold too much information about how campaigns, special interest groups and politicians use the platform to target small pockets of people with polarizing, divisive or misleading messages.
Meta, which also owns Instagram, said it will start releasing details in July about the demographics and interests of audiences who are targeted with ads that run on its two primary social networks. The company will also share how much advertisers spent in an effort to target people in certain states.
“By making advertiser targeting criteria available for analysis and reporting on ads run about social issues, elections and politics, we hope to help people better understand the practices used to reach potential voters on our technologies,” Jeff King wrote in a statement posted to Meta’s website.
The new details could shed more light on how politicians spread misleading or controversial political messages among certain groups of people. Advocacy groups and Democrats, for example, have argued for years that misleading political ads are overwhelming the Facebook feeds of Spanish-speaking populations.
The information will be showcased in the Facebook ad library, a public database that already shows how much companies, politicians or campaigns spend on each ad they run across Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp. Currently, anyone can see how much a page has spent running an ad and a breakdown of the ages, gender and states or countries an ad is shown in.
The information will be available across 242 countries when a social issue, political or election ad is run, Meta said in a statement.
Meta collected $86 billion in revenue during 2020, the last major U.S. election year, thanks in part to its granular ad targeting system. Facebook’s ad system is so customizable that advertisers could target a single user out of billions on the platform, if they wanted.
Meta said in its announcement Monday that it will provide researchers with new details that show the interest categories advertisers selected when they tried to target people on the platform.
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