UN warns of global mental health crisis

PANDEMIC HAS NOW KILLED OVER 300,000 WORLDWIDE

Amental illness crisis is looming as millions of people worldwide are surrounded by death and disease and forced into isolation, poverty and anxiety by the pandemic, UN health experts said yesterday.

“The isolation, the fear, the uncertainty, the economic turmoil — they all cause or could cause psychological distress,” said Devora Kestel, director of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) mental health department.

The global death toll rose to 302,181 yesterday with cases crossing the 4.5 million mark.

The UN report highlighted several sections of society as vulnerable, including children and youth isolated from friends and school, and health care workers who are seeing thousands infected and dying.

India provides free food grains to migrant workers as cases cross 80,000

Meanwhile, cases in India crossed the 80,000 mark and the death toll rose to 2,644 as the country reported 3,650 new cases and 93 deaths yesterday.

India will provide free food grains to millions of migrant workers hardest hit by a weeks-long lockdown as well as offer employment under a rural jobs programme, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said yesterday.

India will spend $463.06 million on food for nearly 80 million migrant workers over the next two months.

US government has no ‘master plan’ to fight virus

An ousted US health official warned Congress yesterday that President Donald Trump’s administration has no “master plan” to fight the pandemic and is unprepared to distribute enough vaccines.

Rick Bright, who was last month removed as head of the agency charged with developing a vaccine, told a House panel that “2020 could be the darkest winter” in decades for Americans.

Daily deaths spike in Italy

Italy registered an increase of new cases and the most daily deaths in seven days as the government prepared to further ease a lockdown on May 18.

The coronavirus outbreak risks sparking a major global mental health crisis, the United Nations warned yesterday, calling for urgent action to address the psychological suffering brought on by the pandemic. While protecting physical health has been the main concern during the first months of the crisis, it is also placing huge mental strains on large swathes of

the global population, the UN said in policy brief. “After decades of neglect and underinvestment in mental health services, the Covid-19 pandemic is now hitting families and communities with additional mental stress,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned in a video message.

The European Union’s medicines agency suggested yesterday that a vaccine for the coronavirus could be ready in year, even as the WHO warned that the disease may never go away.

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World leaders past and present have insisted that any eventual vaccines and treatments should be made available to everyone free of charge. After months leading his city through one of Europe’s worst Covid-19 outbreaks, Giorgio Gori, mayor of the Italian town of Bergamo, says the worst of the health crisis may be past. Once best known for the Renaissance-era architecture of its historic old town, Bergamo quickly found itself at the what Gori described as the epicentre of an earthquake.