If you’re an avid follower of COVID-19 developments, you may have wondered what the phrase, “PCR equipment” means.
It stands for polymerase chain reaction, which is the process that labs use to check whether someone with COVID-19 symptoms has the new coronavirus, after taking a medical swab, usually from both nostrils.
The COVID-19 pandemic is adversely affecting everyone, everywhere, with lockdown restrictions hitting the development and humanitarian relief sectors especially hard.
Aid deliveries across national borders are being hampered, posing an immediate threat to the United Nations’ efforts to provide vital assistance to end hunger and malnutrition.
The cultivation of traditional but now largely overlooked food stuffs could help to sustain populations in the modern world, according to a research technician at the Breadfruit Institute at Hawaii’s National Tropical Botanical Gardens.
The Institute is promoting the local foodstuff as a response to “critical global food security issues,” especially for developing island states.
Young, creative and bold minds, who are helping redefine their own areas of expertise, are highlighted every year by the US business publication, Forbes.
This year, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) youthful health economist Swathi Bhargav Iyengar, made the “30 under 30” list, for developing the WHO’s MedMon mobile application.
The app is the first low-cost, rapid data collection and analysis tool to determine price, availability and safety risks of medicines worldwide.
Facemasks – a million of them - are just some of the precious cargo being dispatched to all corners of Africa by the UN, as the continent braces for the spread of COVID-19. Managing this huge task is Amer Daoudi, Senior Director of Operations for the World Food Programme.
In an online interview with UN News’s Daniel Johnson, Jordanian national, Mr. Daoudi, takes us behind the scenes at the agency’s humanitarian hub in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, where a UN-wide supply chain operation is now in full swing.
While the COVID-19 pandemic is wreaking havoc around the globe, the remoteness of the Pacific Islands has left people living there vulnerable in many different ways.
UN Resident Coordinator Sanaka Samarasinha said in an interview with UN News, that with borders and airports shut down, protection gear, specialist personnel, and life-saving medical supplies have been unable to reach many areas in need.
And the crisis has only been heightened by the devastation inflicted by category 5 Cyclone Harold, which ripped through Vanuatu.
Making sure that information about COVID-19 is accurate, and how to stay protected, is crucial to getting the pandemic under control.
UNESCO, the UN agency responsible for science and education, has a key role in combating the widespread disinformation that is spreading around the world, and promoting the facts.
Conor Lennon from UN News spoke to Moez Chackchouk, Assistant Director-General of UNESCO, and started by asked him how to describe the scale of the so-called “disinfodemic”
Even in the overcrowded places like refugee camps, the UN is working towards potentially life-saving behavior change, asking people to stay ‘home’, because social distancing will mean at least some “family protection”.
Referring to the low number of cases in Gaza so far as “good news”, Matthias Schmale, director of the UN relief agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) has warned in an interview with UN News, that local hospitals would not have the capacity to deal with coronavirus and there are not enough tests to go round.
While performing their mandated duties “24/7” on land, in the air, and at sea, UN peacekeepers in Lebanon are also supporting local communities in preventing the spread of COVID-19, according to their Force Commander.
Major General Stefano Del Col reported that blue helmets with the UN mission in the country, UNIFIL, have so far donated essential supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) to hospitals and other health facilities.
Supplies of personal protection equipment (PPE), masks and other medical items made in China are being sent to developing countries to support health workers on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Representative of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in the country has said.
Beate Trankmann reported that her office has been supporting China’s response to the disease from the beginning, which first emerged there in late December.
