 Welcome to Daily Debrief brought to you by People's Dispatch. My name is Shriya Singh and in today's episode we go to Africa where Ebola has returned after 10 years to Uganda. Meanwhile, the US Vice President has visited the Korean Peninsula, sparking a lot of discussion and some tensions. And staying on with the US, prisoners in the state of Alabama are on strike. We'll talk about this and more in today's episode. Nearly 10 years after its last appearance there is a fresh outbreak of Ebola disease in Uganda. Health authorities have confirmed 31 cases in the latest count, though these are only the official numbers. Unlike previous outbreaks of Ebola in Uganda, recent cases have been linked to the Sudan virus strain. What is of concern is that there is no approved vaccine for this strain of the virus. Health workers at the Mumbai Regional Hospital, that is the epicenter of the outbreak, went on a strike citing safety concerns. They say they are being put at undue risk because they lack appropriate safety kit, risk allowances and health insurance. We joined by Anna from People's Health Movement to update more on this story. Thank you for joining us, Anna. Can you tell us why is this outbreak so serious? And can you also tell us a little bit about what are the steps that Uganda's authorities are taking when dealing with this? Yes, of course. So the outbreak is significant because it involves a different strain of the virus that we're used to see when Ebola is concerned. So the outbreak that Ugandan health authorities have announced on September 27 is caused by the Sudan strain of the virus. And so this is important because it's the first outbreak caused by this strain in Uganda since 2012. So we've seen 10 years of outbreaks caused by other strains. And then in addition to that, we see that the mortality, the fatality of this strain of the virus is somewhat higher than compared to the others. And so in previous outbreaks, which have been caused by the Sudan strain of the virus in Sudan and Uganda was somewhere between 40% and 100%. So, you know, if the situation is not contained in an adequate manner, many, many lives could be lost. And then again, because it's rarer than the other strains, we also see that it's more complicated to diagnose and to recognize among patients. And so, you know, it requires quite a bit of diagnostics behind it. So different and multiple methods of the diagnostics. And it can also be either confused or mistaken for manifestations of other diseases which we can encounter. So for example, malaria. And then finally, what's so important is that although there are Ebola vaccines currently, they are not considered effective for this strain of the virus. And this is because although some of the vaccines have been developed having in mind that another outbreak of the Sudan strain could come up, their efficiency hasn't been actually tested. So we do know that, you know, even if they were effective, and this is not completely clear, they have to be administered in two doses and they only raise their, so they become the most effective only days after the administration of the second dose. So it's not completely, well, it's not something that you would do in an outbreak situation where you need to act very quickly. And so because of all these things, the WHO and the public health authorities in Uganda are putting a lot of a lot of effort into raising community engagement and just sharing information about the public health measures that that can control the outbreak at the moment. Anna, I mean, like you pointed out the mortality is so high, there are so many risks with this particular strain. And the health workers who are coming in contact with the patients right now in Uganda, they are also at risk. So we talked about how there's a strike going on by the medical workers. Can you tell us why are they striking and what are the demands? Yes, so essentially it's something that has come up as a concern in previous several outbreaks too. This time, it's the case with interns, so medical doctors, young medical doctors, nurses and pharmacists who are in the central region of Uganda where the outbreak is located. And they are protesting and they have announced industrial action because of a lack of proper protective equipment and bad working conditions that they are facing. So their announcement has been backed by the Uganda Medical Association. And the president, Dr. Sam Oledo said that the authorities should take into consideration that when when work is expected by health workers in such extreme circumstances that it has to be taken into account that their working conditions, their protection, their salaries have to, they have to be taken into account essentially. And he also pointed out that this hasn't been always the case in the past. So for example, he quoted the COVID-19 pandemic as something where no other remuneration was offered to the health workers who were expected to take an extra workload and to work in very precarious and quite dangerous circumstances. What's important to point out here is that this situation faced at the moment has a lot to do with the overall conditions and the shortage of health workers in Uganda. So the country itself has been struggling with the shortage of health workers for years, so it's not something that only affects the Ebola outbreak or it affects the COVID-19 pandemic. It also affects how the health system overall functions. And it has also a lot to do with how the health system, the public health system is financed and how many, how much money the government is, let's put it that way, allowed to put into the into the public health system. And research, which was done by ActionAid and Public Services International, among others, which was published only at the end of last year, showed that actually the Uganda health system has been limited and has been affected by the implementation of posterity measures which were imposed by the International Monetary Fund. And so this set of conditions that was pushed upon by international financial institutions in the case of Uganda, they involved a freeze of wages and therefore also impacting the health, the working conditions and the possibility that health workers have to sustain themselves. So at the end of 2020, or sometime in 2020, Uganda did try to get permission, let's put it again that way, to take on more health workers, because they pointed that they only had approximately seven health workers for approximately 10,000 people when the recommended, recommended ratios would be a minimum of 4.45. So it's a big gap. And of course, you know, even in spite of this quite, quite, quite bad situation, the IMF insisted on freezing the wages and not actually putting more money in the public health system. And so as I said, this is something that if it continues, it's likely to affect and to continue affecting the overall functioning of the health system, and therefore also the ability of the health system to respond to the Ebola outbreak. Thank you so much for your time today, Anna, we'll keep following this very important story. Thank you once again. Thanks. In our second story, US Vice President Kamala Harris was recently on a four day Asia trip to attend the state funeral of the former Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe. Her trip to South Korea was followed by a stop at the demilitarized zone that's DMZ, where she spoke about the threat posed about the increasingly hostile North. Now tensions have surged on the peninsula as North Korea fired three short-range ballistic missiles hours after the US Vice President flew home. Anish joins us to discuss more on this important update. Welcome back to the show, Anish. So a lot of discussion around this visit. Can you tell us what is the significance of this visit? The significance for the United States is to it was actually an attempt for them to mend relations between Japan and South Korea, because these are two nations that they that they have a huge bulk of their foreign, foreign base troops in. And also apart from that, they need these two nations to be in tandem with the US project of not just encircling North Korea, but also China. So in the larger scheme of things for the US, what matters is that its alliance partners are in line with rather than but the problem, the issue, the primary issue between South Korea and Japan has always been the historical crimes that Japan has committed during World War Two and before as an imperial power as a colonizing power on Korea on the Korean peninsula. So these are facts that Japan is yet to own up to. These are things that the US also does not want South Korea to bring up right now just so that they can actually do what they want with in the region. And so the visit was towards that purpose. But as we saw the visit also included a visit to the demilitarized zone, which included Kamla Harris's speech, very provocative speech being conducted of supposedly unbreakable alliance with South Korean government and also its steadfast support for or supposedly said steadfast support for democracy in the region, which often has always come with a lot of baggage as we have known around. Yeah, Anish. So like you who has been covering the region for a while now, can you tell us how can we understand North Korea's reaction to this? And I mean, the tensions, what does it reflect about the tensions within the Koreas itself? Well, it is as we have often covered in this show itself. It has often been a problematic thing ever since the Trump administration had scuttled the entire peace process during the time of Mojain. So now under President Yoon, it has only gone from back to worse to the point where US President, US Vice President, not the US President, but US Vice President can visit the demilitarized zone and make provocative statements that actually pushes peace under the bus. Now the whole response, apparently the US is trying to frame it as a response to missile launches that were conducted by North Korea, but North Korea's missile launches were in response to South Korea's plan to have joint military drills with Japan and the US. So that has always been a major issue and has always been a major stumbling block between the two Koreas, or peace between the two Koreas. And that is going to be aggravated now considering the fact that the current South Korean administration wants to expand the military drills and also into Japan as it has done. Now earlier today, where it conducted an anti submarine, anti, very clearly anti North Korean military exercises in the West Coast, in the East Coast, I'm sorry, in the East Coast. And that is that in fact is just as provocative as the missile launch has been conducted. And South Korea's reasoning behind this is that it is trying to prepare for the supposed launch or another test being conducted by North Korea, nuclear test to be conducted by North Korea, which is just speculative at this point, there is no real, there's no clear understanding of whether it is going to be imminent. But at the same time, there has been there has been no attempts of brokering peace, be it on the part of the United States, which is a warring party of the still de facto, you know, ongoing Korean war. And, and there has been no attempt, obviously, by the current administration to actually make, or take up actions that can actually facilitate any kind of peace process. So we have to really wait and see, we have been obviously observing a whole lot of escalation that has happened in the past few months that President Yoon has been in power. Now, in the next four years, we do not know how bad it is going to be. And considering his track record of being very anti North Korean anti communist proponent in the South Korea, this is only going to get from bad to us. For the United States, however, this is a win-win situation, because for them, they get to do what they always wanted, which is to expand its military presence in East Asia, and also to do the kind of stuff that Akamla Harris did in the demon price zone, which would not have happened in an earlier administration. Thank you so much for that update on this story. We'll keep coming back to you on this. Prisoners across major correctional facilities in Alabama went on a strike on September 26. A statement released by prisoners called it a humanitarian crisis, which has occurred due to antiquated sentencing laws that led to overcrowding numerous deaths, severe physical injury, as well as the mental anguish to incarcerated individuals. In solidarity with the prisoners, activists and family members of the incarcerated organizers participated in a rally entitled, Break Every Chain. Outside the Alabama Department of Corrections, that's ADOC or headquarters in Montgomery, to demand adoption of the prisoner's demands. Now, although prison officials attempted to dispel news of any prison action, reports have confirmed that maintenance work at the prison facilities have come to a halt. Alabama is one of the five states which forces prisoners to work under threat of punishment on no pay, and one of the seven states which does not pay prisoners at all for the vast majority of work assignments. We are joined by Natalia from People's Dispatch to talk more about this story. Welcome to the episode Natalia, glad to see you. So can you tell us why are the prisoners in Alabama they are on a strike right now? What are their demands exactly? Well, it's interesting because there is a work stoppage, you know, one would assume that the demands are on labor conditions for incarcerated workers, but actually they're around sentencing laws in Alabama. So in Alabama, you know, there's mass incarceration entire United States, and this is really due to lengthy sentencing for minor crimes. But this is especially true in Alabama, because the parole board has become notorious for denying the vast majority of parole applications. So you know, during the last year in 2021, the state's parole board fell far short of even its own standards for granting prisoners parole, and only 15% of eligible prisoners did actually end up getting paroled. And so, you know, prisoners in Alabama are trying to, you know, fight the laws that make, you know, people go to prison for a very long time for minor crimes like, you know, marijuana possession. There was recently a Black man, Michael Bettis, who has already served 12 years out of a 20 year prison sentence for marijuana possession, and he was denied parole in May. So he will not be released anytime soon. And so, you know, the prisoners in Alabama are saying that, you know, this is really an outrage, the fact that parole isn't being granted as an outrage. People are already serving really lengthy sentences. And so, yeah, that's really the main, those are really the main demands. And you talked about how Alabama is, there's a reason why Alabama is the hotspot for this. Can you also mention why incarcerated labor, what are the conditions that incarcerated labor works in? What are these work conditions that they are protesting? Yeah, so, you know, the United States has become notorious around the world for having, you know, the largest per capita prison population in the world. And also for the fact that the workers in prison, you know, a lot of prisons force people to work. As a matter of fact, a lot of these workers are, or almost all of these workers are extremely underpaid, far below the minimum wage in the US. And some are not even paid at all. And Alabama is actually especially bad, because Alabama is one and only a few states that actually forces prisoners to work. They don't have a choice in the matter. You know, they can get punished for not working. And also for the vast majority of work assignments, doesn't pay anything at all to incarcerated workers. So a lot of people have compared this to slavery, you know, the slavery in the South and in the US is, you know, a well-known historical fact. And a lot of people say that it hasn't ended because the vast majority of these incarcerated workers are black men. And if you even see the visuals from some of these prisons in the deep South and the US, it really looks very much like slavery. You have people, you know, black men stooped down picking cotton, literally just picking cotton, like the same exact crop, while, you know, correctional officers are standing over them on horseback. Like, it's an insane visual. And so, you know, this is, this is true in Alabama as well. Prisoners are not, you know, paid for working. And also prisoners, you know, the vast majority of work assignments are actually maintaining the prison itself. So doing the cleaning, doing the cooking, just maintaining the prison. That's not something that the guards are doing, right? And so this work stoppage really means that the entire prison is being shut down. All right. Thank you so much, Natalia, for that update. We'll keep following this very important news. Thank you for being with us today. And that's all we have for today, dear viewers. Thank you for watching Daily Debrief. For more such updates, keep watching www.people'sdispatch.org. You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. That's our socials. Thank you so much.