World
Sickle cell patient offers hope to Ugandan community where disease is prevalent
- Barbara Nabulo, a sickle cell disease patient, has emerged as a dedicated advocate for others facing the same condition in rural Uganda.
- Despite her own challenges with the disease, Nabulo serves as a counselor to fellow patients, offering them encouragement and hope.
- Nabulo regularly visits sickle cell patients in the hospital ward, providing them with guidance and reassurance.
Barbara Nabulo was one of three girls in her family. But when a sister died, her mother wailed at the funeral that she was left with just one and a half daughters.
The half was the ailing Nabulo, who at age 12 grasped her mother’s meaning.
“I hated myself so much,” Nabulo said recently, recalling the words that preceded a period of sickness that left her hospitalized and feeding through a tube.
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The scene underscores the lifelong challenges for some people with sickle cell disease in rural Uganda, where it remains poorly understood. Even Nabulo, despite her knowledge of how the disease weakens the body, spoke repeatedly of “the germ I was born with.”
Barbara Nabulo cleans clothes at her home in Busamaga-Mutukula village in Mbale, Uganda, on April 25, 2024. Nabulo, a sickle cell disease patient, has emerged as a dedicated advocate for others facing the same condition. (AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda)
Sickle cell disease is a group of inherited disorders in which red blood cells — normally round — become hard, sticky and crescent shaped. The misshapen cells clog the flow of blood, which can lead to infections, excruciating pain, organ damage and other complications.
The disease, which can stunt physical growth, is more common in malaria-prone regions, notably Africa and India, because carrying the sickle cell trait helps protect against severe malaria. Global estimates of how many people have the disease vary, but some researchers put the number between 6 million and 8 million, with more than 5 million living in sub-Saharan Africa.
The only cure for the pain sickle cell disease can cause is a bone marrow transplant or gene therapies like the one commercially approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in December. A 12-year-old boy last week became the first person to begin the therapy.
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Those options are beyond the reach of most patients in this East African nation where sickle cell disease is not a public health priority despite the burden it places on communities. There isn’t a national database of sickle cell patients. Funding for treatment often comes from donor organizations.
In a hilly part of eastern Uganda that’s a sickle cell hot spot, the main referral hospital looks after hundreds of patients arriving from nearby villages to collect medication. Many receive doses of hydroxyurea, a drug that can reduce periods of severe pain and other complications, and researchers there are studying its effectiveness in Ugandan children.
Nabulo, now 37, is one of the hospital’s patients. But she approaches others like her as a caregiver, too.
After dropping out in primary school, she has emerged in recent years as a counselor to fellow patients, speaking to them about her survival. Encouraged by hospital authorities, she makes weekly visits to the ward that has many children watched over by exhausted-looking parents.
Nabulo tells them she was diagnosed with sickle cell disease at two weeks old, but now she is the mother of three children, including twins.
Such a message gives hope to those who feel discouraged or worry that sickle cell disease is a death sentence, said Dr. Julian Abeso, head of pediatrics at Mbale Regional Referral Hospital.
Some men have been known to divorce their wives — or neglect them in search of new partners — when they learn that their children have sickle cell disease. Frequent community deaths from disease complications reinforce perceptions of it as a scourge.
BONE MARROW TRANSPLANTS CAN REVERSE ADULT SICKLE CELL DISEASE
Nabulo and health workers urge openness and the testing of children for sickle cell as early as possible.
Abeso and Nabulo grew close after Nabulo lost her first baby hours after childbirth in 2015. She cried in the doctor’s office as she spoke of her wish “to have a relative I can call mine, a descendant who can help me,” Abeso recalled.
“At that time, people here were so negative about patients with sickle cell disease having children because the complications would be so many,” the doctor said.
Nabulo’s second attempt to have a child was difficult, with some time in intensive care. But her baby is now a 7-year-old boy who sometimes accompanies her to the hospital. The twin girls came last year.
Speaking outside the one-room home she shares with her husband and children, Nabulo said many people appreciate her work despite the countless indignities she faces, including unwanted stares from people in the streets who point to the woman with “a big head,” one manifestation in her of the disease. Her brothers often behave as if they are ashamed of her, she said.
Once, she heard of a girl in her neighborhood whose grandmother was making frequent trips to the clinic over an undiagnosed illness in the child. The grandmother was hesitant to have the girl tested for sickle cell when Nabulo first asked her. But tests later revealed the disease, and now the girl receives treatment.
“I go to Nabulo for help because I can’t manage the illness affecting my grandchild,” Kelemesiya Musuya said. “She can feel pain, and she starts crying, saying, ‘It is here and it is rising and it is paining here and here.’”
Musuya sometimes seeks reassurance. “She would be asking me, ‘Even you, when you are sick, does it hurt in the legs, in the chest, in the head?’ I tell her that, yes, it’s painful like that,” Nabulo said.
Nabulo said she was glad that the girl, who is 11, still goes to school.
The lack of formal education is hurtful for Nabulo, who struggles to write her name, and a source of shame for her parents, who repeatedly apologize for letting her drop out while her siblings studied. One brother is now a medical worker who operates a clinic in a town not far away from Nabulo’s home
“I am very happy to see her,” said her mother, Agatha Nambuya.
She recalled Nabulo’s swelling head and limbs as a baby, and how “these children used to die so soon.”
But now she knows of others with sickle cell disease who grew to become doctors or whatever they wanted to be. She expressed pride in Nabulo’s work as a counselor and said her grandchildren make her feel happy.
“At that time,” she said, recalling Nabulo as a child, “we didn’t know.”
World
Hamas used sexual violence ‘deliberately and systematically’ on Oct 7, commission report finds
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WARNING: This article includes graphic and disturbing accounts from the October 7 massacre in Israel.
Hamas and its Palestinian collaborators used sexual and gender-based violence “deliberately and systematically” as an inherent part of a wider strategy of the 2023 massacres in southern Israel, according to a report released Tuesday by the Civil Commission on Oct. 7 Crimes Against Women and Children.
The Israeli nonprofit said its investigation documented evidence of abuse at multiple sites during the Oct. 7 terror invasion, including the Nova Music Festival, kibbutzim near the Gaza border, Israel Defense Forces bases, among hostages in captivity and in the condition of recovered bodies showing signs consistent with sexual violence.
According to the report, investigators identified at least 13 recurring forms of abuse, including rape, sexual torture, shootings directed at victims’ genital areas and abuse carried out after death.
ISRAEL’S QUEST FOR JUSTICE EXPOSES HAMAS’ SYSTEMATIC SEXUAL VIOLENCE CAMPAIGN DURING OCTOBER 7 MASSACRE
A Hamas terrorist is seen walking around a residential neighborhood in southern Israel in undated bodycam footage released by the Israel Defense Forces. The footage was shown to foreign correspondents on Oct. 16, 2023, as part of a 40-minute reel compiled from the Hamas attack on Oct. 7. (Israel Defense Forces/AP)
Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, founder and chair of the Civil Commission and a principal co-author of the report, told Fox News Digital that the greatest challenge in compiling the findings was the team’s repeated exposure to graphic material and the trauma associated with reviewing it on a regular basis.
“We had to not only collect materials, but also review and analyze it alongside forensic experts while witnessing human suffering at its worst,” Elkayam-Levy said. “What motivated us was the denial, the hesitation and the questioning. We wanted to ensure that the world knows what happened to the victims.
“For us, it is a final act of justice for the victims,” she added.
The report also detailed cases in which sexual violence was inflicted in front of or involving family members, including one incident in which relatives were allegedly forced to carry out acts on each other.
FREED HOSTAGE ROM BRASLAVSKI DETAILS ABUSE, STARVATION DURING 738 DAYS IN GAZA CAPTIVITY
People visit the site of the Nova music festival in Re’im, southern Israel, where revelers were killed in a cross-border attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. The visit took place on Jan. 14, 2024, marking 100 days since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas. (Leo Correa/AP)
It further accused Hamas and allied perpetrators of using videos, digital platforms and social media as tools to magnify psychological harm, spread fear and publicize the attacks, including by distributing sexualized material.
Elkayam-Levy said she hopes the findings will not remain confined to academics, human rights organizations or activists, but will also be studied by counterterrorism and national security experts to better understand and confront such atrocities.
“We cannot prevent what we do not fully understand,” Elkayam-Levy said. “No single prosecution could ever capture the full magnitude of these crimes in the way this report does. It is therefore critical that policymakers, decision-makers, members of Congress and senators find ways to formally recognize these findings and hold hearings so we can begin addressing this issue. We want the findings of this report to receive formal institutional recognition.”
The report, Elkayam-Levy noted, underscores that victims of the Oct. 7 atrocities came from 52 countries, highlighting the global scope and impact of the attack.
Witness testimony cited in the report included an account of a woman being sexually assaulted before being beheaded. Another witness described seeing a woman dragged from a vehicle, pinned against a wall, repeatedly raped and then stabbed, with the assault allegedly continuing after her death.
In another case, a witness described discovering the body of a man whose genitals had been severed, lying beside the body of a woman holding them, in what the report described as an apparent effort to degrade and humiliate the victims.
A Hamas terrorist is seen walking around a residential neighborhood in southern Israel in undated bodycam footage released by the Israel Defense Forces amid the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. (Israel Defense Forces/AP)
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Investigators said some female victims were found naked or partially unclothed, with evidence of severe mutilation and objects including grenades, nails and household tools inserted into their bodies. The report also cited gunshot wounds, cuts and burn injuries concentrated on intimate areas.
The report said some female bodies brought to morgues showed broken pelvises or legs, bloodied underwear and additional trauma to the abdomen or groin.
Former hostages, both women and men, have also testified to rape, sexual torture and other forms of abuse during abduction or captivity, according to the report. It said some female captives reported sexual assaults while receiving treatment in Gaza hospitals for injuries sustained during the attacks.
A bloodied handprint stains a wall inside a house in the Nir Oz kibbutz near the Gaza border after a Hamas attack days earlier. (Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images)
Male hostages likewise described sexual abuse while in captivity, including assaults in showers and incidents carried out under armed threat while victims were naked, the report said. One former hostage recounted being sexually assaulted when a captor forcibly rubbed his genitals against the victim’s anus.
Last month, former hostage Rom Braslavski recounted the abuse he said he endured during captivity in an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital.
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“They would hit me with whatever they had on hand. I underwent severe torture, bondage and sexual abuse. Everything they could do to me, they did. My body is still covered in scars. After four months of torture, I was clinically dead, rolling my eyes and passing out. They decided to stop the violence and brought doctors to treat me with injections and gave me food again,” he said.
The report said sexual and gender-based violence was “widespread and systematic” and constituted an “integral component” of both the Oct. 7 attacks and the subsequent treatment of captives, while calling the prosecution of such crimes an “urgent” priority to be pursued through international accountability mechanisms.
A soldier of the Military Rabbinate unit opens a container holding bodies killed during the Hamas attack on Israel’s southern border as identification continues at the Shura army base in Ramle, Israel, on Oct. 24, 2023. (Amir Levy/Getty Images)
Among its recommendations, the commission called for targeted sanctions against individuals and entities accused of carrying out or materially supporting the Oct. 7 attack and its aftermath. It also urged action against what it described as denial, minimization or politicization of the sexual crimes committed during the massacre and in captivity.
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“The Commission further recommends that Israel adopt a comprehensive gender strategy within its prosecutorial framework and establish a specialized chamber or panel of judges dedicated to the prosecution of sexual and gender-based crimes committed on October 7th and during captivity,” the report said.
Elkayam-Levy said the report has received widespread international attention, including front-page coverage in U.S. and global media outlets. “We feel the discussion has shifted from questioning whether these crimes occurred to examining their consequences,” she said. “There is now a substantial legal evidentiary foundation preserved in a secure archive that cannot be denied.”
The Spanish government is seeking to contain a scandal linked to EU pandemic funds, categorically denying that it used European money to pay pensions, as member states prepare for tough budget talks amid deep divisions over how funding should be allocated.
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An official in Madrid with direct knowledge of how EU funds are structured told Euronews that a technical matter is being instrumentalised in a way that is “simply false”, accusing the opposition of playing politics over what it describes as an accounting issue.
A Spanish budget watchdog reported earlier this month that the government of Pedro Sánchez used budget credits linked to the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), an economic plan partly funded through common debt designed to revitalise the bloc’s economy after Covid, to partly finance Spanish pensions in November 2024.
Madrid insists it did not breach the rules.
The European Commission asked Madrid for clarification after initial newspaper reports, according to a person familiar with the matter. It did not issue a follow-up request once Madrid provided an explanation, and Spanish authorities consider the issue closed.
However, the political scandal lingers, even as Madrid insists that “not a single euro” of EU money has been misused, amid backlash in so-called frugal countries. Spain and Italy were the biggest beneficiaries of the €750 billion recovery fund approved in summer 2020 after difficult talks.
In Madrid, the opposition People’s Party has demanded that Sánchez appear before Congress to explain the matter. The issue is also making waves in the European Parliament, with strong reactions from conservative lawmakers.
“If these allegations are confirmed, we are facing a serious abuse of European taxpayers’ money,” wrote Tomáš Zdechovský (Czechia/EPP), an influential centre-right member of the European Parliament’s budgetary committee, on X. “Europe cannot tolerate any misuse of recovery funds.”
“Is €10 billion in EU funds, intended for recovery after the pandemic, quietly being used to help pay Spanish pensions? It would confirm our worst fears about these funds,” said Dirk Gotink (The Netherlands/EPP).
Madrid sources insist the issue is being overblown for political purposes.
A government official pointed to the country’s economic performance and pushed back against the frugal-versus-south narrative, which often presents the wealthier north subsidising the weaker south. “Spain is the fastest growing economy in Europe, Germany is not paying our pensions,” said a second Madrid official.
The incident does, however, underscore the additional complications the country is facing due to its inability to approve a budget in a fragmented parliament. After failing to deliver a fresh budget for 2025, Madrid was forced to roll over a plan approved in 2023.
A fight over the EU’s financial future
The timing of the controversy is particularly sensitive.
Brussels is preparing to launch negotiations on the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), the EU’s seven-year budget for 2028–2034, and a central question will be what to do with the roughly €750 billion in joint debt accumulated through the recovery plan.
That programme was the largest and most politically consequential collective borrowing exercise in EU history. Whether it is ultimately seen as a success or a cautionary tale will inevitably shape how member states approach future proposals for shared financing.
Spain, the second-largest recipient of the initiative’s funding with a total of around €60 billion already received, has been among the most vocal advocates for an ambitious European budget and a permanent mechanism to pool financing needs.
Spanish Finance Minister Carlos Cuerpo has argued that pooling national debt at the EU level could generate annual savings of up to €25 billion.
Cuerpo, who is now Sánchez’s number two in government, echoed remarks made by France, Mario Draghi and a number of European intellectuals calling for a more efficient borrowing mechanism that would allow the EU to tap into the European Commission’s triple-A rating and lower financing costs for all 27 member states.
While the European Commission’s current budget proposal does not include new borrowing, contentious debate lies ahead over how to finance the repayment of existing recovery debt. Frugal northern countries like the Netherlands and Germany favour strict repayment schedules, even if that means cuts to other spending programmes.
On Thursday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz reiterated his country’s opposition, even if the German central bank has been more nuanced about the benefits and risks of pooling debt.
Southern member states, including France and Greece, are pushing to roll over the debt accumulated during the pandemic, with President Emmanuel Macron describing calls for early repayments as “idiotic”. Paris is an advocate of a European safe-asset mechanism.
A European official supportive of the plan said the Spanish controversy is being weaponised not so much against Madrid, but against proposals put forward by southern countries ahead of the budget talks.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if this is used to kill rollover proposal,” the diplomat said.
The issue of the next European budget will feature in an EU summit scheduled in June.
The United States and China will discuss guardrails on artificial intelligence, including establishing a protocol for keeping powerful A.I. models out of the hands of nonstate actors, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Thursday.
Mr. Bessent, who was speaking from Beijing in an interview with CNBC, did not give more details, including when these discussions would take place. But Xi Jinping, China’s leader, and President Trump had been expected to discuss A.I. during their summit in the Chinese capital.
If these talks happen, it would be the first time the two countries formally take up the issue during Mr. Trump’s second term. The capabilities and usage of A.I. have grown rapidly, and so have concerns that this technology could be weaponized by hackers and terrorists, or spiral out of human control.
“The two A.I. superpowers are going to start talking,” Mr. Bessent said. “We’re going to set up a protocol in terms of, how do we go forward with best practices for A.I. to make sure nonstate actors don’t get ahold of these models.”
Still, Mr. Bessent made clear that the fierce competition between the United States and China for supremacy in A.I. — which has been a major hurdle to cooperation on safety — remained front of mind for U.S. policymakers. Officials and experts in both countries have argued that they cannot slow technological development and risk losing out to their rivals.
Mr. Bessent said that the United States was willing to cooperate with China on A.I. safety because “the Chinese are substantially behind us” in terms of the technology’s development.
“I do not think we would be having the same discussions if they were this far ahead of us. So we’re going to put in U.S. best practices, U.S. values, on this, and then roll those out to the world,” Mr. Bessent said.
Experts have suggested that China’s A.I. models may be a few months behind the leading U.S. models.
Another hurdle to the United States and China working together on A.I. safety is that they have generally focused on different potential threats.
American experts have generally highlighted existential risks, such as the possibility of artificial general intelligence, or super-intelligence that exceeds that of humans. Chinese researchers and officials have more often highlighted risks related to social stability and information control, such as the possibility of chatbots producing content that challenges China’s leadership and policies.
Still, researchers in both countries have highlighted some shared risks, such as the possibility of A.I. being used to develop new biological weapons.
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