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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 2-Dec-2019
2-Dec-19 World View -- Massive measles epidemic joins Ebola as health crises in DR Congo

Web Log - December, 2019

2-Dec-19 World View -- Massive measles epidemic joins Ebola as health crises in DR Congo

Civilians attack UN peacekeeping missions in DR Congo for failure to protect them

by John J. Xenakis

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

Measles spreads like wildfire across DR Congo, and spikes globally
WHO closing Ebola health clinics in DR Congo, after attacks by tribal militias
Civilians attack UN peacekeeping missions in DR Congo for failure to protect them

Measles spreads like wildfire across DR Congo, and spikes globally

Graphic showing huge global spike in measles cases in 2019. AFR=Africa, AMR=Americas, EMR=Eastern Mediterranean, EUR=Europe, SEAR=Southeast Asia, WPR=Western Pacific (WHO)

Graphic showing huge global spike in measles cases in 2019. AFR=Africa, AMR=Americas, EMR=Eastern Mediterranean, EUR=Europe, SEAR=Southeast Asia, WPR=Western Pacific (WHO)

Measles is spreading like wildfire in the Democratic Republic of Congo (CRC). It's believed that 250,000 people have been infected this year alone, more than three times the number in all of 2018, and has spread to all 26 provinces of the country.

More than 5,000 people have been killed. Of those, 4,500 are children.

Measles can be controlled with vaccines, but DRC has a weak health infrastructure, regional wars, escalating violence, and widespread suspicion of health workers. There have been more than 300 attacks on health care facilities in the country this year, with six deaths.

There's a shortage of vaccines, so not all parents who want their children vaccinated can obtain them. Many people live in hard to reach rural areas. Furthermore children require two vaccine jabs to be protected against measles, making the vaccination problem even more difficult.

Although DRC has the biggest measles outbreak in the world today, they are far from alone. There are large measles outbreaks in other countries, particularly in Africa, eastern Mediterranean, and eastern Europe.

Even Western countries in Europe and North America are seeing surges in measles cases. This is blamed on parents in political "anti-vaxxer" movements who refuse to allow their children to be vaccinated. This puts the children and the entire community at risk of measles.

WHO closing Ebola health clinics in DR Congo, after attacks by tribal militias

In the past couple of months, the Ebola outbreak in North Kivu province in eastern DRC had appeared to be well-contained, as the number of new cases has been falling substantially. Health workers have achieved this by means of aggressive contract tracing of new cases, followed by providing vaccines to people considered vulnerable.

At the beginning of this year, it appeared that Ebola would continue to spread exponentially faster, but since then, the World Health Organization has effectively used new vaccines that have become available to slow the spread considerably.

However, North Kivu is still a tribal war zone, where a Uganda-based group of rebels known as "Allied Democratic Forces" (ADF) have been fighting in eastern DRC against the Congolese army and other rebel groups, to take advantage of the rich mineral resources of the region.

ADF militias and Maï-Maï militias have been attacking Ebola health centers, forcing the World Health Organization (WHO) to close some of them down. This has raised fears that Ebola will once again begin to spread.

Civilians attack UN peacekeeping missions in DR Congo for failure to protect them

As a separate issue, civilian protesters stormed the facilities of the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo (MONUSCO). MONUSCO is the largest UN peacekeeping force in the world, with some 15,000 personnel, but has failed to bring peace. The attackers were protesting the fact that MONUSCO had failed to protect them from violence, after ADF terrorists had killed eight civilians last weekend.

Monusco was formed in 1999, and has been so unsuccessful at keeping peace that there are actually calls for it to be disbanded.

A lot of people like peacekeeping forces, even when they do nothing to keep the peace. The UN likes them, because they allow the UN to collect money from Western countries to pay for them. They use that money to increase the sizes of their budgets and staffs. Most of the money is supposed to pay for the soldiers who are sent by member countries to form the peacekeeping operation. However, the governments of the member countries confiscate the salary money, so little of it reaches the peacekeeping soldiers. So a lot of people are making money from peacekeeping operations, even when they do not keep the peace, which is why it's almost impossible to end a peacekeeping operation.

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 2-Dec-2019 2-Dec-19 World View -- Massive measles epidemic joins Ebola as health crises in DR Congo

Measles spreads like wildfire across DR Congo, and spikes globally

WHO closing Ebola health clinics in DR Congo, after attacks by tribal militias

Civilians attack UN peacekeeping missions in DR Congo for failure to protect them

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 2-Dec-2019
2-Dec-19 World View -- Massive measles epidemic joins Ebola as health crises in DR Congo