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"We all—all the nations—have to sit down at the table and see what we can do so that we don't lose any more lives at sea," said Cabo Verde's health minister.
Human rights defenders on Thursday called on the international community to work together to better protect migrants making the perilous journey from Africa to Europe amid reports that scores of people likely drowned after the boat on which they were traveling was found adfrit in the Atlantic Ocean near Cabo Verde.
At least 63 migrants are believed to have died at sea after their pirogue, or wooden Senegalese fishing boat, was found floating approximately 150 nautical miles off the island of Sala in the West African archipelago nation, the United Nations' International Office for Migration (IOM) said Wednesday. Seven bodies were found aboard the boat, while an estimated 56 people are missing.
"Generally, when people are reported missing following a shipwreck, they are presumed dead," IOM spokesperson Safa Msehli toldAgence France-Presse.
Msehli said that 38 survivors from the boat, including four children, were rescued earlier this week by a Spanish fishing boat near Cabo Verde. Almost all of the rescued migrants were from Senegal, where the boat reportedly set sail more than a month ago. Others hailed from Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone.
Cabo Verde, located nearly 400 miles off the West African coast, lies along a major migration route to the Spanish Canary Islands, considered a gateway to mainland Europe. At least 67,000 migrants landed in the Canary Islands between 2020 and 2023, according to BBC News.
Over that same period, nearly 2,500 people are known to have died trying to reach the islands—although experts say many migrant deaths are not registered, so the actual toll is likely much higher. In June, the IOM said that nearly 3,800 people died on all Middle East and North Africa migration routes last year, the highest annual total since 2017, when 4,255 deaths were recorded.
"It's absolutely devastating what's happened, because we know that these deaths are entirely avoidable," Natasha Tsangarides, associated director of advocacy at the U.K.-based advocacy group Freedom From Torture, toldBBC News in response to the Cabo Verde tragedy. "No one gets in a boat like that unless they're absolutely desperate."
Cabo Verdean Health Minister Filomena Gonçalves said that "we know that migration issues are global issues, which require international cooperation, a lot of discussions, and global strategy."
"We all—all the nations—have to sit down at the table and see what we can do so that we don't lose any more lives at sea, above all," she added.
As the White House on Monday announced the convening of a Second Global Covid-19 Summit next month, a leading public health advocate called U.S. President Joe Biden's response to the crisis "late and anemic," while urging his administration to "fight like hell" for congressionally imperiled funding to combat the ongoing pandemic.
"Five billion dollars is the bare minimum; far less than what is needed. The White House needs to fight like hell for that money and much more."
The governments hosting the summit--the United States, Belize, Germany, Indonesia, and Senegal--said in a joint statement that the May 12 virtual conference "will redouble our collective efforts to end the acute phase of the Covid-19 pandemic and prepare for future health threats."
The co-hosts said the conference will "build on the themes and commitments" made at the first Global Covid-19 Summit, which was hosted virtually by Biden last September. Top agenda items include "getting shots in arms," as well as increasing testing and treatment, expanding and protecting health workers, boosting local manufacturing of "medical countermeasures," and funding preparedness for future pandemics.
At last year's summit, Biden promised the United States would become the world's "arsenal for vaccines" and would donate 1.1 billion Covid-19 doses of the inoculations to the developing world by 2023. An analysis published last month by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen warned that the administration was likely to miss even that modest goal unless it increased donations by 50%.
Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen's Access to Medicines program, asserted Monday that the summit is "late and necessary."
\u201cThe White House\u2019s response to the global pandemic was late & anemic. \n\nThis 2nd Covid summit is late & necessary.\n\u00a0\nBut U.S. could show up empty-handed to its own summit, making it harder to summon commitments, unless Congress funds the global fight.\n\u00a0\nhttps://t.co/SwFdUAMVKh\u201d— Peter Maybarduk (@Peter Maybarduk) 1650284364
"The U.S. could show up empty-handed to its own summit, making it harder to summon commitments, unless Congress funds the global fight," he warned.
Last month, the House of Representatives slashed $5 billion in proposed global pandemic response funding from an omnibus spending bill, money the administration had requested to carry out its National Covid-19 Preparedness Plan. Without that funding, the administration's program to combat the pandemic around the world is in danger of stalling.
At the time Maybarduk called the cut "a choice to extend the pandemic."
"Five billion dollars is the bare minimum; far less than what is needed," he warned on Monday. "The White House needs to fight like hell for that money and much more."
News of the second summit comes as the World Health Organization reportedly prepares to release an estimate based on more than a year of research that around 15 million people worldwide have died during the pandemic.
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At last year's summit, Biden called upon the world's nations to work toward vaccinating 70% of the world's population within a year. Experts warned that the summit's goals fell far short of what was needed to end the pandemic and downplayed the obligations of wealthy nations to end vaccine, testing, and treatment apartheid caused by government policies more aligned with the interests of the pharmaceutical industry than with global public health.
According to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center, 4.4 billion people, or 57.8% of the world's population, have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. However, inoculation rates are far lower in much of the Global South. In 16 nations--13 of them in sub-Saharan Africa--less than 10% of the population has been fully vaccinated. In Haiti, the rate is 1.02%. In Burundi, it's less than one-tenth of one percent.
\u201cAt the time of writing this tweet, only 15.2% of people in low-income countries have received at least one #COVID19 vaccine dose.*\n \n@askdrfatima and colleagues address this "vaccine apartheid" and the stakes to global health. https://t.co/aGFWRgQded\u201d— The Lancet (@The Lancet) 1650037213
A February 22 Lancet article noted:
Widening gaps in global vaccine equity have led to a two-track pandemic with booster Covid-19 vaccinations proliferating in high-income countries... and first doses not yet reaching all populations in low-income countries. Early in the pandemic, the Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility (COVAX) promised equitable vaccine supplies for all countries. However, with insufficient funds and donations, COVAX has faltered, failing to meet even half of its 2021 target of delivering two billion doses.
"As we enter the third year of the pandemic and the new Omicron variant emerges, we recognize that the pandemic has been prolonged by corporate greed and vaccine inequity endorsed by many of our world leaders," Rhiannon Osborne and Dr. Marie-Claire Wangari wrote in a report published last month.
"The pandemic has been prolonged by corporate greed and vaccine inequity endorsed by many of our world leaders."
"To date, the insufficient vaccine supply to countries in the Global South has led to many preventable deaths," they continued." Rich countries have hoarded vaccine doses, leaving other countries without the protection they need and having to rely on donations. Despite public funding of vaccine research and development, pharma monopolies are still not waiving intellectual property rights for the Covid-19 vaccine, which would save lives."
While more than 100 countries--including a handful of wealthy nations like the United States and France--support a proposal by India and South Africa to waive parts of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), the European Union, as well as rich countries such as the United Kingdom, Norway, Singapore, and Switzerland, have fought to block its adoption.
Every morning for the last two months, I've checked the news in my home state of Florida with growing concern.
First came the photos of unemployed people lining up to file for benefits in person, denied access to an overburdened system. Then came the news that only a tiny percentage of unemployment claims were paid out by late April.
Now, barber shops and nail salons are reopening, even as the state saw its deadliest week yet. Altogether, the news paints a horrifying picture of a government cruelly uninterested in protecting human life.
The overwhelming majority of Americans continue to support social distancing and stay at home orders. But right-wing forces across the country are demanding an end to life-saving lockdowns, cheered on by a White House well aware of how devastating the loss of life could be.
The government estimates a death count as high as 3,000 people a day. Despite those horrifying numbers, some states are encouraging employers to report workers who are afraid that returning to their jobs could amount to a death sentence, kicking them off unemployment.
As other countries have shown with far more grace, the alternative isn't shutting down forever -- it's investing in testing and social safety nets.
Every level of the U.S. government has shown, time and again, that the default setting is to leave the vulnerable behind. But Americans themselves are challenging that approach.
Senegal, which has 50 ventilators for its population of 16 million, is building more through 3D printing, all while it trials a $1 testing kit. The world took note of South Korea's quick and vigorous testing system. Countries across Europe have relied on existing social safety nets to prevent the mass layoffs we've seen here in the U.S.
Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo provided necessary perspective: "We know how to bring the economy back to life," he said. "What we do not know is how to bring people back to life."
By contrast, the Trump administration's callousness has become more evident than ever.
Experts have been sidelined in favor of fumbling volunteers from private equity and venture capital firms, who botched the procurement of medical supplies. And when Trump finally invoked the Defense Production Act, it was to force meatpacking workers -- who are mostly Latinx and Black -- to work through unsafe conditions at the very plants that have emerged as outbreak hotspots.
Indeed, those demographics may help explain the government's willingness to risk lives.
It seems like no coincidence that the far-right pushback became stronger as evidence mounted showing the virus disproportionately killing already marginalized people of color, especially black Americans. And it was hard to miss the Nazi slogan prominently displayed at a "re-open" protest in Illinois, or the Confederate flags featured as far north as Wisconsin.
Government disregard for vulnerable lives is hardly new. Who can forget the New Orleans residents stranded on their rooftops after Hurricane Katrina? Or the disabled New Yorkers left stranded for days after Hurricane Sandy?
Every level of the U.S. government has shown, time and again, that the default setting is to leave the vulnerable behind. But Americans themselves are challenging that approach.
Workers at General Electric protested to switch production to ventilators, a move that could save jobs and lives. Teachers have promised more strikes if schools open against medical advice.
Nurses, in addition to treating the sick, have faced "re-open" protesters head on. And they've stood outside the White House, reading the names of their colleagues killed by government inaction and demanding more protections.
Add these actions to the wave of strikes and sickouts from essential workers across the country, and a clear picture emerges: The wealthy may be fine with sacrificing the vulnerable. But workers understand the sanctity of human life, and will fight for it.