WORLD - The African Mirror

Apr

29

2021

Fear of COVID-19 stalks Delhi slum dwellers with no safety net

WORLD

MUKESH SHARMA KNEELING on the ground to knead dough in the tiny shanty he shares with six other people in a New Delhi slum, Udayshankar Kumar knows that he and everyone around him are in grave danger from the COVID-19 outbreak ripping through the city. In Kirti Nagar, a ramshackle settlement by a railway track where Kumar lives, social distancing is not an option for residents who share single rooms with large families, navigate narrow alleyways and use the same toilets as their neighbours. "God forbid, if any one of us gets infected then they say he or she can…

Syrian refugee who lost leg targets Paralympics

WORLD

KAROLINA TAGARIS AS a teenager in Syria, Ibrahim al-Hussein dreamt of becoming an Olympic swimmer before he lost a leg in the war. Now a refugee in Greece, he is training for a place at the Tokyo Paralympics. The son of a swimming coach, Hussein, 33, began swimming aged five in the Euphrates river, which passes by his hometown of Deir al-Zor in eastern Syria. He used a bridge as a diving board until it was destroyed in his country's civil war. In 2012, Hussein ran outside to help a friend hurt in a bomb blast, only to be injured…

Medical supplies flow into India as COVID-19 deaths near 200,000

WORLD

SHILPA JAMKHANDIKAR, RUPAM JAIN and SANJEEV MIGLANI VITAL medical supplies poured into India yesterday as hospitals starved of oxygen supplies and beds turned away coronavirus patients, while a surge in infections pushed the death toll towards 200,000. Supplies from Britain, including 100 ventilators and 95 oxygen concentrators, arrived in Delhi, said Reuters partner ANI, while France is sending oxygen generators able to provide 250 patients with a year's supply of the gas, its embassy said. Even China, locked in a year-long military standoff with India on their disputed Himalayan border, said it was trying to get medical supplies to its…