Polio campaigns put on back burner
LONDON -- Health officials attempting to eradicate polio say they are being forced to suspend their mass immunization efforts as the coronavirus pandemic surges.
The World Health Organization and partners decided that for the next six months, all polio activities including national vaccination campaigns and house-to-house surveillance "should be suspended to avoid placing communities and front-line workers at unnecessary risk."
The announcement was made after a meeting last week of the Polio Oversight Board, an expert body coordinated by WHO and partners.
The mass vaccination campaigns -- which occur as frequently as every month -- are critical to stopping polio, as eradication requires that more than 95% of children under 5 be immunized.
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The global effort to wipe out polio began in 1988 and was intended to eliminate the disease by 2000. But the initiative has been hobbled by numerous problems including little access to conflict areas in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.
Polio is endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan and continues to be a problem in about 10 other countries worldwide.
Pot cases in 2019 set Japan record
Police nationwide reported a record 4,321 people were involved in marijuana cases in 2019, up 743 from the previous year and a record high for the third year in a row, Japan's National Police Agency announced Thursday.
Among the total, 609 were below age 20, an increase of 180 from the previous year and the most ever for minors since the agency started compiling statistics in 1959.
By age group, those in their 20s and 30s accounted for about 70% of the total. There were 1,950 in their 20s, up 429 from the previous year, followed by those in their 30s with 1,068, a drop of 33.
Cannabis use in Japan is spreading among minors, with 109 high school students, an increase of 35, marking the highest total since statistics on this group were first compiled in 1972.
According to the police agency, the street price of marijuana last year was about $56 per gram, about one-tenth the price of stimulant drugs at about $593.
S. Africa raid ousts migrants at church
CAPE TOWN, South Africa -- South African police wearing riot gear forced their way into a church in central Cape Town on Thursday to remove hundreds of foreign migrants who had been sheltering there for months.
The operation at Central Methodist Church was aimed at ending a long standoff between the foreigners and city authorities. The migrants refused to leave the church and had previously demanded that South Africa move them to other countries, including the United States and Canada, because they had been victims of xenophobic threats in South Africa last year.
Media outlets reported that police officers broke down the front and rear doors of the church in the historic Greenmarket Square to remove the migrants. The migrants were led onto buses and driven away, reportedly to a temporary camp outside the city.
South Africa is in the middle of a 21-day lockdown because of the coronavirus pandemic and people are allowed only to leave their homes to buy food, medical supplies and other essential items, or to perform essential work.
A Section on 04/03/2020