World

A German State Is Last in Almost Everything. But It’s No. 1 in Vaccines.

Published

3 years ago

April 12, 2022

A German State Is Last in Almost Everything. But It’s No. 1 in Vaccines.

BREMEN, Germany — This northern port metropolis, mixed with neighboring Bremerhaven, makes up the smallest and by many measures the poorest state in Germany’s federal system. In state comparisons of training or addressing baby poverty, it persistently ranks lifeless final.

However relating to vaccines, Bremen is No. 1, with greater than 90 % of its inhabitants totally vaccinated. It has achieved its success in a rustic that has managed to vaccinate solely barely greater than three-quarters of its individuals, and that voted final week in opposition to a invoice that might have made vaccinations necessary for individuals 60 and over.

“Bremen was so profitable as a result of they realized fairly early on that you simply’ve obtained to enter the neighborhoods, that you could’t simply have one central vaccination heart, however that it’s important to go into communities and strategy individuals,” stated Marieke Gerstmann, who runs a neighborhood well being mediation heart that advocates for vaccinations in one in every of Bremen’s poorer neighborhoods.

What makes Bremen’s elite vaccination standing all of the extra placing is that immigrants — who make up one-third of Bremen’s inhabitants, probably the most of any German state — are much less more likely to get vaccinated than individuals born in Germany, in accordance with latest research by the Robert Koch Institute, the nationwide well being authority.

“Our strategy was, get to the individuals and join with the neighborhood,” stated Andreas Bovenschulte, who’s Bremen’s mayor and likewise acts because the city-state’s governor.

Mr. Bovenschulte credit a good community of neighborhood elders, non secular leaders, civic activists and metropolis staff that was robust in Bremen even earlier than the pandemic hit. Bremen’s social ties are a necessity particularly in underprivileged neighborhoods, he stated.

Bremen’s chapter of the German Pink Cross rapidly put collectively cellular vaccination groups, two brand-new vaccination vans and 9 previous metropolis buses — which may function cellular vaccination clinics or post-shot restoration rooms.

“I’ve been preaching this for some time: It’s a must to go and proactively strategy individuals, it’s important to meet them and clarify it to them,” stated Melanie Brinkmann, a virologist on the Technische Universität Braunschweig and a member of the knowledgeable fee advising the federal authorities on the coronavirus pandemic.

As a result of a lot focus initially was on securing adequate vaccine doses to cowl the inhabitants, Germany’s vaccination technique initially ignored those that could be more durable to achieve, Professor Brinkmann stated in an interview.

“The final proportion factors are probably the most tough,” she stated. “However some states actually invested in consultations and did it nicely.”

On a latest sunny however bone-chillingly windy morning, one of many colourful vaccination vans pulled right into a desolate car parking zone in entrance of a mall within the hardscrabble neighborhood of Gröpelingen. The truck, furnished with a heater and a loud espresso maker, was parked subsequent to one of many decommissioned buses that provided a spot for the lately vaccinated to relaxation.

Bülent Aksakal, a neighborhood well being employee fluent in Turkish and German, had made the rounds within the space the week earlier than, telling individuals to circle the day on their calendar. Curiosity was low, as a result of many individuals had already gotten their pictures.

Najlaa Kanbar, 21, who’s from Idlib, Syria, had missed Mr. Aksakal’s entreaties however noticed the truck with presents of vaccination written in seven totally different languages on its aspect as she walked by together with her three younger kids. She additionally observed that there was no line and thought it was the proper time to get her second shot.

In contrast to different states that did little greater than make the vaccines out there, a number of devoted neighborhood organizations in Bremen defined the vaccines and persuaded individuals to get them.

A caveat on Bremen’s official 90-percent-plus-coverage determine: Its numbers, like these of different inhabitants facilities, could also be skewed by residents of surrounding communities coming and benefiting from Bremen’s vaccination presents. As a result of no nationwide vaccination database exists, its exhausting to know to what extent this added to the numbers in Bremen, for instance, or second-place Hamburg.

Mr. Aksakal, the neighborhood well being employee, stated he had spent the final 11 months visiting day care facilities, stitching circles, language colleges and integration programs, explaining how the vaccine works, why it was necessary and what unintended effects may very well be anticipated. “Honesty is at all times the most effective coverage,” he stated.

Versus conspiracy theories, individuals in immigrant communities “fear extra about sensible concerns, unintended effects and paperwork,” stated Mr. Aksakal.

In Bremen-Osterholz, one other working-class neighborhood within the japanese a part of town, a workforce of eight girls, all of whom converse at the very least two languages, attempt to persuade individuals to get vaccinated. The neighborhood well being staff — who’re funded by a college — are only a small a part of the warren of social staff, nonprofit teams, unbiased neighborhood tasks and personal individuals which have been activated to assist promote vaccines.

“There was already a powerful community, with many energetic individuals raring to go,” stated Ms. Gerstmann, who runs the workforce.

Endurance Bonsu, who was born in Ghana and is likely one of the counselors, says that relating to the usually delicate matter of vaccinations, a connection to the related migrant neighborhood is invaluable.

As a counselor at a girls’s heart, Ms. Bonsu, who speaks English and Twi, a language spoken in Ghana, along with German, makes use of her place to convey up vaccines when speaking to the moms about different points.

“The belief challenge could be very, essential at this second,” she stated.

With entry to their residence communities by social media, many migrants are additionally uncovered to disinformation that results in fears and questions on vaccination.

“Many within the African neighborhood initially thought the virus wouldn’t have an effect on them as a result of there have been so few reported instances in Africa,” stated Ms. Bonsu. “However then individuals from the neighborhood right here began getting sick.

“I believe that lots of people, particularly from the African neighborhood, really feel extra comfy asking me questions,” stated Ms. Bonsu about her work over the previous 12 months.

The town’s outreach has gone past simply explaining vaccinations. Ilker Kabadayi, a mosque elder on the Fatih mosque in Gröpelingen, stated he has had local people well being staff are available in to assist clarify the Covid social distancing guidelines.

None of it may be taken with no consideration. 5 months after Chancellor Olaf Scholz began pushing for a common vaccine mandate for all adults, lawmakers rejected a watered-down proposal final week. The parliamentary vote was a setback for a rustic that when prided itself on sound pandemic administration, however Bremen is forward of the sport.

Clutching a pack of brochures and smiling at potential vaccine recipients, Sabrine Rehifi stood outdoors the vaccine truck in Gröpelingen. When it will get busy, it’s Ms. Rehifi’s job to assist hold the road orderly and ensure everybody has the correct varieties; when it’s gradual she tries to have interaction passers-by, which as a speaker of 5 languages — together with Arabic and Swahili — she is nicely positioned to do.

When Ms. Kanbar approached, Ms. Rehifi greeted her in Arabic. As soon as she realized that Ms. Kanbar’s German wouldn’t suffice to fill out the varieties required to get the shot, she accompanied her onboard to translate.

“By the point they arrive right here, they’ve often already made up their thoughts to get their vaccines,” Ms. Rehifi stated.

However regardless of the workers’s greatest effort, Ms. Kanbar’s 2-year-old son began to cry after which wail because the registration went on, which in flip brought on his older sister to affix in earlier than the workers may convey cookies to to console them.

“To get downtown with three children with public transport, that’s truly fairly a problem,” stated Peter Zeugträger, who runs the native vaccine operation, over the din. With out the outreach program, Ms. Kanbar may need spent hours touring to the vaccine heart within the central a part of town.

Unfazed by the wailing, Ms. Kanbar stated she was glad to have the ability to get the shot so simply.

“My husband will come by as quickly as he’s off work,” she stated earlier than rolling up her sleeve.

World

India kicks off a massive Hindu festival touted as the world's largest religious gathering

Published

5 hours ago

January 12, 2025

Press Room

India kicks off a massive Hindu festival touted as the world's largest religious gathering

PRAYAGRAJ, India (AP) — Millions of Hindu devotees, mystics and holy men and women from all across India flocked to the northern city of Prayagraj on Monday to kickstart the Maha Kumbh festival, which is being touted as the world’s largest religious gathering.

Over about the next six weeks, Hindu pilgrims with gather at the confluence of three sacred rivers — the Ganges, the Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati — where they will take part in elaborate rituals, hoping to begin a journey to achieve Hindu philosophy’s ultimate goal: the release from the cycle of rebirth.

Here’s what to know about the festival:

A religious gathering at the confluence of three sacred rivers

Hindus venerate rivers, and none more so than the Ganges and the Yamuna. The faithful believe that a dip in their waters will cleanse them of their past sins and end their process of reincarnation, particularly on auspicious days. The most propitious of these days occur in cycles of 12 years during a festival called the Maha Kumbh Mela, or pitcher festival.

The festival is a series of ritual baths by Hindu sadhus, or holy men, and other pilgrims at the confluence of three sacred rivers that dates to at least medieval times. Hindus believe that the mythical Saraswati river once flowed from the Himalayas through Prayagraj, meeting there with the Ganges and the Yamuna.

Bathing takes place every day, but on the most auspicious dates, naked, ash-smeared monks charge toward the holy rivers at dawn. Many pilgrims stay for the entire festival, observing austerity, giving alms and bathing at sunrise every day.

“We feel peaceful here and attain salvation from the cycles of life and death,” said Bhagwat Prasad Tiwari, a pilgrim.

The festival has its roots in a Hindu tradition that says the god Vishnu wrested a golden pitcher containing the nectar of immortality from demons. Hindus believe that a few drops fell in the cities of Prayagraj, Nasik, Ujjain and Haridwar — the four places where the Kumbh festival has been held for centuries.

The Kumbh rotates among these four pilgrimage sites about every three years on a date prescribed by astrology. This year’s festival is the biggest and grandest of them all. A smaller version of the festival, called Ardh Kumbh, or Half Kumbh, was organized in 2019, when 240 million visitors were recorded, with about 50 million taking a ritual bath on the busiest day.

Maha Kumb is the world’s largest such gathering

At least 400 million people — more than the population of the United States — are expected in Prayagraj over the next 45 days, according to officials. That is around 200 times the 2 million pilgrims that arrived in the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia for the annual Hajj pilgrimage last year.

The festival is a big test for Indian authorities to showcase the Hindu religion, tourism and crowd management.

A vast ground along the banks of the rivers has been converted into a sprawling tent city equipped with more 3,000 kitchens and 150,000 restrooms. Divided into 25 sections and spreading over 40 square kilometers (15 square miles), the tent city also has housing, roads, electricity and water, communication towers and 11 hospitals. Murals depicting stories from Hindu scriptures are painted on the city walls.

Indian Railways has also introduced more than 90 special trains that will make nearly 3,300 trips during the festival to transport devotees, beside regular trains.

About 50,000 security personnel — a 50% increase from 2019 — are also stationed in the city to maintain law and order and crowd management. More than 2,500 cameras, some powered by AI, will send crowd movement and density information to four central control rooms, where officials can quickly deploy personnel to avoid stampedes.

The festival will boost Modi’s support base

India’s past leaders have capitalized on the festival to strengthen their relationship with the country’s Hindus, who make up nearly 80% of India’s more than 1.4 billion people. But under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the festival has become an integral part of its advocacy of Hindu nationalism. For Modi and his party, Indian civilization is inseparable from Hinduism, although critics say the party’s philosophy is rooted in Hindu supremacy.

The Uttar Pradesh state, headed by Adityanath — a powerful Hindu monk and a popular hard-line Hindu politician in Modi’s party — has allocated more than $765 million for this year’s event. It has also used the festival to boost his and the prime minister’s image, with giant billboards and posters all over the city showing them both, alongside slogans touting their government welfare policies.

The festival is expected to boost the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party’s past record of promoting Hindu cultural symbols for its support base. But recent Kumbh gatherings have also been caught in controversies.

Modi’s government changed the city’s Mughal-era name from Allahabad to Prayagraj as part of its Muslim-to-Hindu name-changing effort nationwide ahead of the 2019 festival and the national election that his party won. In 2021, his government refused to call off the festival in Haridwar despite a surge in coronavirus cases, fearing a backlash from religious leaders in the Hindu-majority country.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

World

Ukraine has captured 2 North Korean soldiers, South Korea's intelligence service says

Published

6 hours ago

January 12, 2025

Press Room

Ukraine has captured 2 North Korean soldiers, South Korea's intelligence service says

Ukraine captured two wounded North Korean soldiers who were fighting on behalf of Russia in a Russian border region, South Korea’s intelligence service said, confirming an account from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday.

Seoul’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) told AFP it has “confirmed that the Ukrainian military captured two North Korean soldiers on January 9 in the Kursk battlefield in Russia.”

The confirmation comes after Zelenskyy said in a post on the Telegram messaging app that the two captured North Korean soldiers were wounded and taken to Kyiv, where they are communicating with Ukrainian security services SBU.

SBU released video that appears to show the two prisoners on beds inside jail cells. The authenticity of the video could not be independently verified.

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In this unverified photo shared by the Ukrainian military, an apparent captured North Korean soldier with injuries is sitting in a bed inside a cell. (Ukraine Military handout)

A doctor interviewed in the SBU video said one soldier suffered a facial wound while the other soldier had an open wound and a lower leg fracture. Both men were receiving medical treatment.

In this unverified photo shared by the Ukrainian military, an apparent captured North Korean soldier with injuries is lying in a bed inside a cell. (Ukraine Military handout)

SBU also said one of the soldiers had no documents at all, while the other had been carrying a Russian military ID card in the name of a man from Tuva, a Russian region bordering Mongolia.

Ukraine’s military says North Korean soldiers are outfitted in Russian military uniforms and carry fake military IDs in their pockets, a scheme that Andrii Yusov, spokesperson for Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, says could mean Moscow and “its representatives at the U.N. can deny the facts.”

Despite Ukrainian, U.S. and South Korean assertions that Pyongyang has sent 10,000 – 12,000 troops to fight alongside Russia in the Kursk border region, Moscow has never publicly acknowledged the North Korean forces.

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While reports of their presence first emerged in October, Ukrainian troops only confirmed engagement on the ground in December.

On Thursday, Zelenskyy put the number of killed or wounded North Koreans at 4,000, though U.S. estimates are lower, at around 1,200.

Soldiers are seen at Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea, on Oct. 12, 2020. (AP Photo/Jon Chol Jin, File)

Despite North Korea’s suffering losses and initial inexperience on the battlefield, Ukrainian soldiers, military intelligence and experts suggest first-hand experience will only help them develop further as a fighting force.

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“For the first time in decades, the North Korean army is gaining real military experience,” Yusov said. “This is a global challenge — not just for Ukraine and Europe, but for the entire world.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

World

Three people killed in an avalanche in Italy's Leopontine Alps

Published

7 hours ago

January 12, 2025

Press Room

Three people killed in an avalanche in Italy's Leopontine Alps

A group of five skiers was hit by the avalanche above the village of Trasquera in the Piedmont region. Two survived and were helicoptered to hospital.

The avalanche broke away around 12.30pm on the eastern face of Punta Valgrande, a summit in the Leopontine Alps, on the border between Italy and Switzerland.

The skiers who died were dragged down the snowy mountain for several hundred metres from where they had been skiing at over 2,800 metres. The bodies have not yet been recovered because they are awaiting authorisation from the local magistrate.

An alert had been issued in the area above 2,100 metres, which warned of “considerable danger of avalanches.” The alert was at level 3, with 5 being the most dangerous.

It is not yet clear whether the rescuers were alerted by a skier who saw the avalanche sweeping away three people, or by the other two people who managed to save themselves. According to reports, the group was going uphill with crampons and then descending with skis.