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4 Indian doctors want to return home from Ebola-hit Nigeria

[email protected] (PTI)
August 13, 2014

Indian doctorsNew Delhi, Aug 13: Four Indian doctors, who claim they are being forced to treat Ebola patients against their will in Nigeria, want to return home and appealed to the Indian government to facilitate this.

The Abuja-based Indian private hospital Primus where they are working, meanwhile, appealed to them not to abandon their duties.

The Indian High Commission in Nigeria is also in touch with the four doctors and Primus hospital so that both sides could arrive at an amicable solution.

The doctors claim that their passports have been taken away and they are being threatened against leaving the country, a charge denied by the Primus hospital in the Nigerian capital Abuja.

"The Indian High Commissioner is in touch with the doctors. Both the hospital and the doctors have agreed to come to an amicable solution," sources in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said.

The sources said there was no major issue as the hospital is also owned by Indians.

They said the hospital is also correct when they say that there are no cases of Ebola in Abuja.

The MEA Spokesperson Syed Akbarudin said the Indian High Commissioner A R Ghanshyam had explained to him that the four doctors are not inclined to stay back in Nigeria and would like to return.

The Spokesperson appealed to the doctors to have patience, saying the High Commissioner is focusing to resolve the matter as early as possible.

"We are waiting outside the High Commission premises for the past 34 hours," said Dr Dinesh, one of the doctors. "We want our passports back. I cannot live here," Dr Yogesh said in a voice choked with emotion.

The Primus hospital has issued an advisory to all its doctors working in Abuja to continue offering medical services "in the best interest of humanity". "Unfortunately, in a state of panic, one orthopedic surgeon working at Primus hospital, Abuja, Nigeria abandoned his services and is alleged to have left Abuja committing medical negligence though he was bound by the medical ethics to provide care to patients admitted under him.

"Another four doctors (general surgeon, intensivist, anesthetist and physician) want to leave the hospital on the pretext of Ebola Virus Alert after admitting patients requiring intense medical and surgical management," said Dr ND Khurana, Chief Operating Officer of Primus hospital here.

"This will bring bad name to India. Ethically and legally, they are duty bound to render their services uninterruptedly but they are shirking their duty in this hour of need," he said. Khurana said as per his knowledge, no such type of virus (Ebola) has been yet detected nor any patient admitted in any hospital in Abuja. The information circulated by WHO is of preventive nature and the public healthcare workers are required to observe safety measures as per standard guidelines, he added.

As per the hospital, only two patients were detected to be affected by Ebola at Lagos several days ago and till date no fresh case has been reported. Lagos is at a distance of over 800 km from our hospital in Abuja, Khurana said.

The current outbreak, described as the worst since Ebola was first discovered four decades ago, has now killed 1,013 people. Cases have so far been limited to Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, all in west Africa.

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News Network
February 18,2020

Washington, Feb 18: The upcoming visit of President Donald Trump to India later this month has the potential to usher in a new era of bilateral ties between the two countries, a top American business advocacy group has said.

President Trump will pay a state visit to India on February 24 and 25 at the invitation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He would be accompanied by First Lady Melania Trump.

This would be the president's first bilateral visit in the third decade of the 21st century and also the first after his acquittal by the Senate in the impeachment trial.

"I believe President Trump's upcoming visit to India has the potential to usher in a new era of our bilateral ties," Mukesh Aghi, President of the US India Strategic and Partnership Forum (USISPF) said in a statement on Monday.

On the sidelines of the visit, the USISPF, in collaboration with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and the ORF, has announced to organise a program entitled "US-India Forum: Partners for Growth".

The full-day discussion will focus on the key pillars defining India and the US' strategic, economic, and cultural partnership over the next decade.

"We have an opportunity before us to make real progress on multiple aspects of the relationship— whether it is upholding peace and security in the Indo-Pacific region; building upon an already strong energy partnership; developing co-production and co-development opportunities in the defense space; or strengthening bilateral trade," Aghi said.

"We look forward to an extremely successful visit and some concrete outcomes from the visit," he said.

The day-long programme on February 25 in New Delhi, will bring together over 500 senior business executives, members of the US-India think tank community and leading figures of the Indian diaspora to set the agenda for this strategic partnership.

Discussions during the day will touch upon areas, including the Indo-Pacific Strategy and Maritime Security; the US-India Defence Partnership, the US-India Energy Partnership, Elevating US-India Trade and Investment and Role of the Indian Diaspora in US-India Relations.

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Agencies
July 28,2020

Sydney, Jul 28: Nearly 3 billion koalas, kangaroos and other native Australian animals were killed or displaced by bushfires in 2019 and 2020, a study by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said on Tuesday, triple the group's earlier estimates.

Some 143 million mammals, 2.46 billion reptiles, 180 million birds and 51 million frogs were impacted by the country's worst bushfires in decades, the WWF said.

When the fires were still blazing, the WWF estimated the number of affected animals at 1.25 billion. The fires destroyed more than 11 million hectares (37 million acres) across the Australian southeast, equal to about half the area of the United Kingdom.

"This ranks as one of the worst wildlife disasters in modern history," said WWF-Australia Chief Executive Officer Dermot O'Gorman in a statement.

The project leader Lily Van Eeden, from the University of Sydney, said the research was the first continent-wide analysis of animals impacted by the bushfires, and "other nations can build upon this research to improve understanding of bushfire impacts everywhere".

The total number included animals which were displaced because of destroyed habitats and now faced lack of food and shelter or the prospect of moving to habitat that was already occupied.

The main reason for raising the number of animal casualties was that researchers had now assessed the total affected area, rather than focusing on the most affected states, they said.

After years of drought made the Australian bush unusually dry, the country battled one of its worst bushfire seasons ever from September 2019 to March 2020, resulting in 34 human deaths and nearly 3,000 homes lost.

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Agencies
July 7,2020

Washington DC, Jul 7: With US President Donald Trump promoting re-opening the economy, the country has now four epicentres of coronavirus instead of one -- Los Angeles, cities in Texas, cities in Florida and Arizona. This has led to the governors fearing that their hospitals could be overrun with patients.

"We are right back where we were at the peak of the epidemic during the New York outbreak...The difference now is that we really had one epicentre of spread when New York was going through its hardship. Now, we really have four major epicentres of spread -- Los Angeles, cities in Texas, cities in Florida and Arizona. Florida looks to be in the worst shape," Scott Gottlieb, former Food and Drug Administration commissioner was quoted by The Washington Post as saying in an interview.

As per the latest data, Florida, New York and California have crossed the 200,000 mark of coronavirus cases.

After Texas continued to break its own record of registering the highest number of coronavirus cases, Austin Mayor Steve Adler (D) was quoted as saying in an interview, "If we do not change this trajectory, then I am within two weeks of having our hospitals overrun."

He further said that intensive care units in the city will start overflowing within 10 days.

Echoing similar sentiments, Judge Lina Hidalgo, the top elected official in Harris County, said, "As long as we're doing as little as possible and hoping for the best, we are always going to be chasing this thing. We are always going to be behind and the virus will always outrun us...And so what we need right now is to do what works, which is a stay-home order."

She was stripped of authority to issue stay-at-home orders after Governor Greg Abbott decided to move forward with the reopening plan.

"It is clear that the (coronavirus) growth is exponential at this point...We have been breaking record after record after record... the last couple of weeks," Miami Mayor Francis Suarez was quoted as saying in an interview.

"The city of Miami was the last city in the entire state of Florida to open. I was criticized for waiting so long. But there is no doubt that the fact that when we reopened, people started socialising as if... the virus didn't exist."

He further said that if the numbers do not begin to fall "more drastic measures" will be taken in the coming week.

As per the latest update by the Johns Hopkins University, a total of 2,938,625 people in the US have tested coronavirus positive and 130,306 deaths have been reported so far.

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