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The 100 greatest UK No 1s: No 18, Ian Dury and the Blockheads – Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick | The Guardian.

[Wed 13 May 2020 09.00 BST]

The band's signature hit throws in funk and disco to create an oddly disorienting, almost stoned groove.

Read our 100 greatest list as it counts down

‘A mischievous celebration of (ahem) physical activity’ ... Ian Dury and the Blockheads in 1979.

‘A mischievous celebration of (ahem) physical activity’ ... Ian Dury and the Blockheads in 1979. Photograph: Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy

Dave Simpson writes:

With its distinctive 16-notes-to-the-bar bassline and unashamedly honky sax solo (played on two saxes at once), Ian Dury and the Blockheads’ signature hit was certainly one of the more idiosyncratic No 1s of the 1970s. The same could be said of their inimitable frontman, who exemplified the post-punk era’s particular ability to allow unlikely and extraordinary characters to infiltrate the mainstream.

Just three years prior to reaching the top spot in January 1979, the edgy, twitchy singer-narrator-wordsmith dubbed “the Count Dracula of vernacular” had been the thirtysomething, struggling frontman of Kilburn and the High Roads, a seemingly washed-up, chaotic, bedraggled bunch of misfits and miscreants. Left with a severely withered arm and leg following a childhood bout of polio, Dury had already overcome disability, taunts and school days he described as “heavy-duty sadism” and “unmitigated hell” to become an unconventional but riveting live performer.

Then he met Chaz Jankel after a Kilburns gig. The latter disbanded, and the pianist-guitarist’s tunes and Dury’s words provided the foundation for a new group, the Blockheads (including Kilburns saxophonist Davey Payne). Dury’s fortunes were transformed: they produced such classic singles as Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll and What a Waste, along with the 1977 Top 5 album, New Boots and Panties!!

YouTube Video: Ian Dury - Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick [Official Video] [3:47] https://youtu.be/0WGVgfjnLqc

Released in November 1978, Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick typifies their ability to draw on everything from music hall to reggae to rock’n’roll to create what Jankel dubbed “punk jazz”. Rhythm Stick throws in funk and disco to create an oddly disorienting, almost stoned groove. Dury had the lyrics up his sleeve for years before the song was written in a jam session. Biographer Richard Balls suggests that the line “It’s nice to be a lunatic” was probably inspired by a caustic remark from one of Dury’s teachers.

The title is generally thought to refer to the singer’s walking stick and disability. Otherwise, the song is a mischievous celebration of (ahem) physical activity. Dury envisages this in all manner of locations and takes audible relish as he joins French and German (“Je t’adore, ich liebe dich!”) and takes the listener on an exotic tour of getting it on (“In the deserts of Sudan / And the gardens of Japan / From Milan to Yucatan / Every woman, every man ...”), the violently yelled “Hit me! Hit me!” subverting the woozily seductive groove. NME named it the 12th best single of 1978; when it charted in the US a year later, the Village Voice named it single of the year. With 1.29m sales it is the 114th bestselling British single of all time.

Dury told chatshow host Michael Parkinson that he wanted his success to dispel society’s discomfort with and patronising attitudes to disability and provide hope to those for whom things hadn’t turned out so well. Today, his best-known tune still sounds fresh and wonderfully off-kilter, a beacon of pop’s ability to embrace oddity and celebrate the other.


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Cameroon: North-West and South-West, Health Cluster Update, 05 -12 May 2020 - Bulletin # 03 (13 May, 2020) | ReliefWeb.

[Sources: Health Cluster WHO] [Posted: 13 May 2020] [Originally Published: 13 May 2020] [Origin: View original]

KEY HIGHLIGHTS:

The Laboratory for Emerging Infectious Diseases of the University of Buea is operational for COVID-19 cases testing in SouthWest (SW) region.

• The Secretary of State for the Ministry of the Health paid a visit in SW Region to appreciate the COVID-19 response on 07 May 2020.

• The WHO is supporting the Cholera programme for Toki Health district, in SW region.

• The WHO Incident Manager from AFRO region and Polio Programme Coordinator from Yaoundé on mission to SW region to support the COVID-19 response.

• The Health Cluster and SW regional delegation for health rolled-out a Rapid assessment of all health facilities capacity for COVID-19 response.

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Pakistan: National Emergency Action Plan for Polio Eradication 2020 | ReliefWeb.

[Source: Govt. Pakistan] [Posted: 8 May 2020] [Originally Published: 7 May 2020] [Origin: View original]

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.

In recent years, Pakistan has made considerable progress in reducing wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) transmission. Following an explosive outbreak in 2014, the Pakistan Polio Eradication Initiative (PEI) shifted to a government-led, ‘one team’ approach, aligning partner support within the multidisciplinary, multi-agency initiative to transform it into a truly data-driven programme. What followed was a steady and successful reduction in the number of children paralysed by polio – from 306 in 2014 to just 12 in 2018.

However, in 2019 the programme witnessed a significant spread of the virus. In 2019, 147 polio cases across all provinces were reported. In addition, circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 (cVDPV2) was detected in the country for the first time since 2016, with the number of children it has paralysed in 2019 were 22.

In light of this recent upsurge, the programme faces critical, often interrelated challenges. At a fundamental level, there is a lack of trust in vaccination and the polio eradication programme by families and communities in Pakistan, many of whom are impoverished and underserved. Lacking basic needs, they view frequent visits from polio eradication workers with suspicion. Because immunity against poliovirus is built up through repeated rounds, and since vaccination must be coordinated across the entire country to ensure no child is left unprotected, frequent campaigns can produce ‘polio fatigue’ among caregivers and frontline workers (FLWs) alike. Additionally, many caregivers don’t understand the risks of refusing the vaccine for their children, as the eradication effort’s success at reducing cases is misunderstood and poliovirus is mistakenly deemed a low risk. Mistrust in vaccination from polio campaigns, combined with misperceptions around the true risk of polio to Pakistan, have unfortunately provided fertile ground for misinformation and propaganda, which in recent years have also been fuelled by social media. In April 2019, propaganda against vaccines and the polio programme spread quickly and widely through social media in Peshawar, ultimately leading to the immediate interruption of the April National Immunisation Day (NID).

The eradication effort is further challenged by weakened essential immunisation (EI) services, poor water and sanitation (WASH), and a high prevalence of malnutrition. These contribute to a natural environment rife for virus circulation, which can be tied to the outbreak of cVDPV2 as well as lowered immunity to WPV1. Massive population movement within the country and across the border with Afghanistan continues to play a leading role in virus transmission. Added to these challenges, leadership transitions in government at all levels (federal, provincial, divisional, and districts) can also present difficulties, as a potential lack of unity on the importance of eradication cast polio immunisation as a partisan or political issue that can divide communities – and further vex the encounter on the doorstep between vaccinators and caregivers.

To face these challenges, the programme must re-strategize. A management review performed by McKinsey, alongside meetings convened by the Prime Minister, the President of Pakistan, and Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) advisory groups, have all helped to identify key transformations in the delivery of life-saving vaccines that, alongside improvements in core objectives and activities, will once again place Pakistan firmly on the path toward becoming polio-free.

This National Emergency Action Plan (NEAP) for Polio Eradication 2020 outlines bold strategies to ensure poliovirus transmission is interrupted. The Pakistan programme has aligned the 2020 NEAP with GPEI goals outlined in the Polio Endgame Strategy, 2019 – 2023, with a particular emphasis on building synergy with the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) and Integrated Service Delivery (ISD).

Overall, the 2020 NEAP introduces a number of interventions, innovations and modifications to respond to both persistent challenges and new or unfolding epidemiological risks.

The following strategic decisions are offered as course corrections for the 2020 calendar year:

  • The Pakistan programme has shifted to a more comprehensive approach. The structure of the Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) reflects an increased focus on communications to address community resistance and generate vaccine demand. New Communication for Eradication (C4E) activities have been developed to improve trust in the PEI and in vaccines. Strategies have been devised to engage stakeholders and influencers, dispel misconceptions around vaccine safety and efficacy, and address the root causes for refusals.

  • The programme has added a dedicated area of work for building synergy with EPI to increase EI coverage across Pakistan, as well as building ISD capacities to address broader health needs through an expanded package of health, nutrition, and WASH services. These interventions will increase access to and utilisation of health services in communities affected by many types of deprivations.

  • Modifications to the schedule, structure and spacing of supplementary immunisation activities (SIAs) will address community concerns about repeated campaigns; relieve FLW fatigue; ensure sufficient time for campaign preparation, including social mobilisation and community engagement (CE); and improve implementation through concerted capacity building.

    • Specifically, there will be three (3) NIDs and three (3) Subnational Immunisation Days (SNIDs) in 2020.
      Campaign duration for mobile teams (MT) will be a three-day campaign with a two-day catch-up (3+2). Campaign duration will remain the same for community-based vaccination (CBV) and special mobile team (SMT) areas, which is a five-day campaign with two-day catch-up (5+2). There will be no extended catch-up activities anywhere in the country.

    • Additionally, Pakistan’s SIA schedule has been aligned with the SIA schedule in Afghanistan, as coordination between these two countries is critical to interrupting poliovirus within and across the epidemiological block.

  • To refocus frontline efforts for maximum impact, a new district risk category has been introduced: super high-risk Union Councils (SHRUCs), those Union Councils (UCs) that have a dense and dynamic population where poliovirus circulates persistently. The programme has identified 40 SHRUCs in Tier 1 districts which will receive ’laser-focused’ interventions.

  • Additionally, the programme has refined the scope of CBV areas. To maximize vaccinator efficiency in SHRUCs and Tier 1 districts, the CBV model will be scaled down: the current 595 CBV UCs in Tier 1 and 2 will be reduced to 374 UCs in Tier 1 only. This will enable management teams to oversee the CBV workforce more efficiently and maintain focus on SHRUCs and core reservoir districts.

The 2020 NEAP also introduces transformations in structure, data, processes and human resources which have resulted from a comprehensive review of management and communication undertaken in 2019. The management review identified several challenges that included: human resource and accountability issues (multiple parallel lines of authority, overlaps and gaps in performance of roles, lack of clear ownership, evidence of overstaffing in some areas, ineffective performance management, lack of motivation); lack of critical thinking in campaign planning and execution (campaign processes follow a formulaic procedure rather than problem solving); inefficient data collection, reporting and use, as well as data misuse (used punitively to criticize lower management); and challenges in ensuring appropriate training delivery. The management review called for a revision of roles and responsibilities, organisational structures, operational processes, and data collection and use – and a realignment of the programme at all levels, particularly at the district and UC levels. All actions to address these challenges have been incorporated in this NEAP.


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Somalia’s polio teams help combat COVID-19 | ReliefWeb.

[Source: WHO] [Posted: 12 May 2020] [Originally Published: 4 May 2020] [Origin: View original]

In Somalia, staff and volunteers from the country’s long-running polio programme have been trained to detect COVID-19 cases. Here, a trainee learns how to use a COVID-19 tracking database on her phone © WHO
In Somalia, staff and volunteers from the country’s long-running polio programme have been trained to detect COVID-19 cases. Here, a trainee learns how to use a COVID-19 tracking database on her phone © WHO

4 May 2020 – “The road to the mountain village was rough. It’s only 50 kilometres, but it took more than 3 hours,” says Dr Fatima Ismail, a disease surveillance officer working in Somaliland. “We were bouncing in the car.”

In early 2020, Dr Fatima’s team headed to a remote village near Djibouti to check on a small boy. The boy’s right arm and leg showed a kind of paralysis that sometimes indicates polio. “The village polio volunteer in this mountainous area, geographically inaccessible, found an acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) case,” Dr Fatima remembers.

When children show signs of this paralysis, it’s critical to get stool samples to a laboratory to determine whether they have polio. Polio teams ride camels in the desert or donkeys in the mountains when they have to. They brave bombs to get samples out of conflict zones to laboratories. In brutally hot climates, they plug mini-freezers into car dashboards to keep samples cool.

All over the world, polio surveillance systems that have been built up over decades track infection sources, evaluate symptoms and transport samples to the laboratory — despite distance, natural disasters, and sometimes war. Now, this network of disease surveillance — reaching into the most far-flung corners of the globe — is being tapped to address the COVID-19 pandemic.

“In Somalia, the polio programme pivoted its workforce of thousands of frontline staff to support the effort as the cases of COVID-19 spread. Rapid response teams — made up of disease surveillance officers, community health care workers and volunteers — were trained to educate people about the virus and to test suspected cases. By April 2020, the teams were deployed in the field,” said Dr Mamunur Malik, WHO Representative in Somalia.

"In Somalia’s remote villages, they know us as their polio teams, and once they see us, what comes to their minds is that we’re giving them information about polio,” says Mohamed* , a surveillance officer. “So we also give them information about COVID-19. Social mobilisers tell them about COVID-19 symptoms, how to prevent getting infected, physical distancing, cleaning their hands very well with running water and soap.”

The careful procedures that the teams learned for polio surveillance have been adapted for COVID-19, where the required sample is a naso-pharyngeal swab. “We’ve trained our surveillance people on the case definition and how to collect the samples correctly, from cases that meet the case definition of a suspected case of COVID-19,” says Dr Fatima. “It’s the same infrastructure. After, when we collect the samples from the patient, we send it to the laboratory in Hargeisa.”WHO has given the laboratory equipment and supplies to test samples for COVID-19".

"As with polio samples, the samples of COVID-19 have to be refrigerated, the ice packs should be VERY cold,” says Mohamed. Teams are used to monitoring the packs’ temperature, even in Somalia’s hot weather.

“The logistical challenges we face with AFP/polio surveillance are still the same. This is the rainy season and the roads tend to be terrible,” says Mohamed. “You can’t get to certain places you normally get to, because of the situation on the road. Most of our vehicles can’t make it through the mud.” In those situations, teams work with other United Nations agencies to arrange special humanitarian flights to ship samples.

Frontline staff put their own lives on the line. In April 2020, the polio team lost a colleague due to COVID-19-related infection. Ibrahim Elmi Mohamed, who joined WHO in 2001, was working as a district polio officer in Lower Shabelle. His tragic death, one of many frontline staff around the world due to COVID-19, reminds us of the risks they face every day they go to work.

“Despite overwhelming challenges, teams are committed to continuing their polio work in tandem with the COVID-19 response. It is critical that polio surveillance continues during the pandemic, as Somalia is also fighting outbreaks of vaccine-derived polio type 2 and 3. With polio vaccination campaigns temporarily paused, the teams must be able to track any resulting spread of poliovirus and get ready to respond as soon as it is safe to do so,” says Dr Malik.

“All of us are still doing polio surveillance at the same time as we do surveillance for COVID-19," says Dr Fatima. “I used to hear from my colleagues that the polio surveillance system is the strongest disease surveillance system. Any polio surveillance team can work in the detection of COVID-19 cases because of the system’s structure, the capacity and experience of the teams.”

Mohamed agrees. “My surveillance coordinator said don’t leave the AFP surveillance behind, follow that normal routine, don’t forget it and leave it aside.’”

As Somalia grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic, its trained teams are working quickly to prevent the spread of both COVID-19 and polioviruses. “What gives me hope in the COVID-19 response is when I look behind and I see what we have done with the polio teams, the impact we’ve had on so many lives,” says Mohamed. “We face everything and we overcome it.”

  • Family name withheld for security reasons

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Conflict in the Time of Coronavirus: Why a global ceasefire could offer a window of opportunity for inclusive, locally-led peace | ReliefWeb.

[Source: Oxfam] [Posted: 12 May 2020] [Originally Published: 12 May 2020] [Origin: View original]

1 INTRODUCTION

‘If the conflict in Yemen continues while the coronavirus pandemic keeps spreading, this will only bring more destruction and devastation.’ – Civil society activist (anonymous), Yemen

‘[A] ceasefire is not enough. It must be combined with inclusive dialogue that will make it possible to reach genuine peace and true reconciliation.’ – Naomie Ouedraogo, Network of Faith Women for Peace in Burkina Faso

The coronavirus pandemic is making the human and economic cost of conflict clear. At the very moment where we need all of our resources to overcome the virus, wars continue to increase food insecurity, destroy healthcare systems, drive displacement and deny people their livelihoods. To compound this, the global economic devastation caused by coronavirus is going to be felt most acutely by the people already living in the margins,3 including the two billion people living in fragile and conflict-affected states.4 We simply cannot afford to waste the valuable resources needed to build back better on fuelling wars. Even with vaccines, diseases are often hardest to eradicate in conflict zones; as UNICEF noted, ‘In many ways, the map of polio mirrors the conflict in Afghanistan.’ 5 We need to properly address the coronavirus pandemic in conflictaffected states, as none of us are safe until all of us are safe.

The international community needs to work collectively, channel appropriate funding to address the root causes of crisis and conflict resolution, and show the necessary political will to address the highly toxic and dangerous interplay between coronavirus and conflict.


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What FDR’s polio crusade teaches us about presidential leadership amid crisis | The Conversation.

[May 12, 2020 1.33pm BST] Thomas Doherty, Professor of American Studies, Brandeis University, writes:

Throughout much of the last century, a lethal and terrifying virus besieged America. Then, as now, the fear of contagion gripped ordinary Americans. And then — unlike now — a president displayed decisive leadership in fighting the virus, maintaining an unfailingly good humor and leaving the immunology to the experts.

The scourge was infantile paralysis, or polio, and the president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was its most famous victim. First clinically described in the late 19th century and persisting deep into the 20th century, the virus invaded the nervous system and destroyed the nerve cells that stimulate muscle fibers, resulting in irreversible paralysis and sometimes death.

The tally in heartbreak and death was staggering. In “Polio: An American Story,” the historian David M. Oshinsky chronicles the loss. In 1949, of the 428 cases recorded during an outbreak in San Angela, Texas, 84 victims — most of them children — were left paralyzed and 28 died.

In 1946, there were 25,000 reported cases across the country. By 1952, the figure had jumped to 58,000. Unlike the Spanish flu, whose special horror was to strike down the healthy in the prime of life, and COVID-19, which places the elderly at greatest risk, polio targeted children mainly, crippling and killing with what seemed an almost premeditated malice. Always on the alert for symptoms, generations of parents felt a chill of their own when a child contracted a cold, complained of a headache or had a stiff neck.

In this sense, FDR was both a statistical anomaly and cautionary lesson. He was stricken with the disease in 1921, at the age of 39, grim proof that wealth and privilege granted no immunity. Against long odds, he was elected governor of New York in 1928 and, in 1932, to the first of four terms as president. During his first presidential campaign, Republicans whispered that a wheelchair-bound “cripple” was unfit for the duties of the presidency.

“It is perfectly evident that you don’t have to be an acrobat to be president,” snarled Al Smith, the former New York governor.

FDR’s personal crusade.

As president, FDR made the eradication of polio his personal business. For media historians like myself, FDR has always been a towering figure for his prescient orchestration of electronic media — in this case, the radio — to forge his persona and further his policies. “My friends,” he would begin intimately, in his calming, conversational “fireside chats.” Less well known perhaps is his pioneering role as executive producer of a programming evergreen: the celebrity-driven fundraiser.

Beginning in 1934, he dedicated his birthday, Jan. 30, to a nationwide series of charity galas and “birthday balls” held to benefit the Warm Springs Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, named for the polio treatment site in Georgia he had been visiting since 1924. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt — not just FDR’s strong right arm but his legs as well — typically took on hostess duties, circulating among the guests and hustling back and forth among ballrooms around the capital.

And what swell parties they were. The 1937 bash attracted 15,000 donors and lookie-loos angling to get a glimpse of the main attractions, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer stars Jean Harlow and Robert Taylor. FDR called the money raised from the annual events his “finest birthday presents,” but he was not loath to accept other party favors. “Surround me with pretty girls at the luncheon,” he instructed the organizers of the 1941 celebration — and he was seated between Lana Turner and Maureen O’Hara, as a bemused article in Variety magazine recalled in 1945.

In 1937, FDR announced the establishment of a new charity created expressly “to lead, direct and unify the fight on every phase of this sickness.” It was called the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, but everyone knew it as the March of Dimes.

Eleanor Roosevelt on the portico of the White House with celebrities taking part in the 1937 president’s birthday ball. Library of Congress/Harris & Ewing

Radio and motion picture superstar Eddie Cantor coined the phrase in 1938. He reasoned that even Depression-battered Americans wouldn’t begrudge a dime to a good cause. Cantor’s annual March of Dimes variety shows were simulcast by all the major radio networks, featured the biggest entertainers of the day and set a template for every all-star telethon broadcast by radio’s successor.

“A little change from big people will mean a big change in little people!” chirped Molly of the radio duo Fibber McGee and Molly, the Hollywood Reporter reported in January 1942. Dime by dime, the campaigns raked in millions.

However, as with the victory over Japan and Germany in World War II, the conquest of polio was a surrender ceremony FDR did not live to witness. On April 12, 1945, he died of a stroke while visiting the Warm Springs spa.

Repurposed now as a fitting memorial to the late president, the March of Dimes campaign soldiered on. And, eventually, the medical research it supported paid off. On April 12, 1955, on the 10th anniversary of FDR’s death, the field trials for the oral vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk were declared a success. A wave of nationwide jubilation ensued.

In those days, there was no such thing as an anti-vaxxer: Almost every American knew someone who had been stricken. By the mid-1960s, together with a more easily administered oral vaccine introduced by Dr. Albert Sabin in 1961, polio had been effectively eliminated as a public health menace in the U.S. It exists now only in isolated pockets in the poorest regions of developing nations.

A sorrowful salute.

Shortly after the success of the Salk vaccine, FDR’s fight against polio was given an elegiac salute in Dore Schary’s play “Sunrise at Campobello,” named after the island off the coast of New Brunswick where FDR was first stricken. It showed the late president as Americans never saw him — flat on his back, carried on a stretcher, falling on his face and crawling backwards up the stairs — before he reemerges to public life, in braces and crutches, at the 1924 Democratic Convention.

A generation of hard-boiled theater critics waxed sentimental at the portrait of a president many had voted for four times. A “deeply moving chronicle … of a vigorous man struck down by a terrible illness,” wrote Brooks Atkinson in The New York Times. “What rose from the invalid’s chair was greater than what had climbed into it.”

“Sunrise at Campobello” opened on Broadway on Jan. 30, 1958 — the president’s birthday — and the film version premiered in New York on Sept. 23, 1960, in time to give another patrician Democrat with liberal credentials then running for president a vicarious boost. The opening night’s proceeds from both the stage and screen versions were donated, of course, to the March of Dimes. It was a reminder of the other great battle that FDR waged, in public and in private.


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