Month: June 2018

The World Health Organization has expanded its Ebola vaccination campaign in the Democratic Republic of Congo to include high risk people in three areas. Latest WHO figures show 37 confirmed cases and 13 probable ones.

Since the start of the Ebola vaccination campaign in May, the World Health Organization said 682 people have been vaccinated, among them nearly 500 in Mbandaka, a city of more than one million people.

The campaign recently was expanded to include Bikoro, where Ebola was first discovered on May 8 and the Iboko health zone, which is the most remote of the three areas. Those immunized include health workers, responders and other people at high risk of falling ill from the fatal disease.

WHO officials say the vaccine, which has not been formally approved, appears to be providing protection and giving rise to hope that it can help stop the spread of the Ebola virus.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who was president of Liberia during the unprecedented Ebola epidemic in West Africa, shares that hope. Ebola broke out in West Africa in late 2013. By the time it was brought under control in 2016, the disease had killed more than 11,000 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Liberia lost 4,800 people during that outbreak.

While on a visit to Geneva earlier this week, she told VOA there has been an improvement in health care delivery systems, including infection control since the experience with Ebola.

“So the capacity to be able to address any outbreak is now improved in the affected countries, as well as in other places,” she added. “I think there is an important new dimension in the fight for Ebola and that is vaccines.

Sirleaf said vaccine trials in Guinea and now in the DRC have shown good results.

“We are hoping that DRC like others will have a capacity to deal with it, to stop the spread,” she said. “… We are hoping that DRC will come out of this without the major effect, the major results that we saw in the three countries that were not prepared for this.”

The vaccine developer, Merck, has contributed 7,500 doses of the Ebola vaccine to the DRC. The company says as many as 300,000 more doses are available in case of a serious outbreak.
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Far-right leader Marine Le Pen is announcing a name-change for her National Front party, founded by her father nearly a half-century ago. It is expected to become the National Rally in a bid to more broadly embrace French voters ahead of next year’s European elections.

The profile of Le Pen, a nationalist once at the center of the political limelight, has dimmed since she was trounced by pro-globalist Emmanuel Macron in presidential elections a year ago. She announced a refounding of the National Front at its March congress.

Members were asked to vote by mail on the proposed new name with results announced Friday at a meeting of the party leadership.

Le Pen hopes Italy’s populist government, sworn in Friday, will boost her anti-immigration party’s fortunes.
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After President Donald Trump said the United States was getting out of the Paris climate agreement because it put the U.S. at a “big economic disadvantage,” the last two holdouts said they were getting in.

Nicaragua and Syria announced late last year that they would join the global agreement to reduce emissions of planet-warming gases.

Experts said it’s one way that Trump’s decision to pull back from tackling climate change has galvanized others to step up.

But whether others will fill the gap the U.S. has left remains an open question.

No other country has followed his lead, said former lead climate negotiator Todd Stern.

“The first, most important piece of good news, and it wasn’t a foregone conclusion, is that other countries stayed in,” he said.

Stepping up

Some countries have announced plans to step up their efforts. China, France, Britain and several other countries have said they will end sales of fossil fuel-powered vehicles, though not all have set a deadline.

More than 60 countries, states, cities and companies have promised an end to coal-powered electricity generation.

In the U.S., experts note that states, cities and businesses have been taking action to fight climate change, even when the federal government has not.

Following Trump’s announcement, an alliance representing more than half of the U.S. economy pledged to meet the nation’s Paris greenhouse gas-reduction commitment anyway.

Counted among the “We Are Still In” coalition’s 2,770 members are New York, California and seven other states; 230 cities, including nine of the 10 most populous; and Unilever, Intel, Gap Inc. and other Fortune 500 companies.

Some states announced plans to do more to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Virginia and New Jersey moved to require power plants to pay for their carbon pollution, joining a nine-state cap-and-trade program.

“A lot of this work would have occurred naturally,” noted Virginia deputy secretary of commerce and trade Angela Navarro, but Trump’s decision “gave us a galvanizing point.”

More than 400 companies worldwide have promised to reduce their emissions in line with global climate goals, and 26 U.S.-based companies, including McDonald’s, Walmart and PepsiCo, have already set targets.

Market forces have also helped U.S. greenhouse gas emissions fall steadily since 2007. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has created a boom in natural gas, replacing dirtier coal in power plants. And the cost of wind and solar energy has been plummeting.

Tipping the balance

But it’s unclear whether the trend will continue. The Trump administration is working to undo regulations aimed at limiting greenhouse gases from power plants, vehicles and other sources.

“The question is, how will it all pencil out?” asked Rhodium Group climate policy analyst Kate Larsen. “Are the federal rollbacks more than enough to tip the balance?”

State, city and business action is “a really good place to start,” she added, “but over time, it’s not a great replacement for federal action.”

The world pledged in Paris to keep global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. It is currently falling far short of that goal.

All countries have to ramp up their efforts. But with the Trump administration stepping back, former U.S. climate negotiator Todd Stern said other countries may be less willing to step up.

“You see the United States — the biggest historic emitter, the second biggest emitter now — suddenly saying, ‘Never mind.’ What’s the impact of that? Obviously not good,” Stern said.

Negotiators will meet in Poland in December aiming to finalize the “rule book” for how to implement the Paris climate agreement. Experts said that will be one of the first indications of how serious countries are about increasing efforts to meet their climate goals, with or without the United States.
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