 Hello and welcome to the International Daily Roundup with People's Dispatch where we bring you some of the top stories from across the globe. Let's take a look at today's headlines. Activists of the People's Health Movement raise concerns ahead of World Health Assembly. Afghanistan's Ashraf Khan and Abdullah Abdullah arrive at a deal. Egyptian journalist detained for interviewing jailed activist's mother. Major victory for Zibabian nurses after union and government arrive at deal on working hours. We begin with a short update on the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of reported infections have gone up to over 4.8 billion as of today afternoon and the number of deaths has come up to 317,000 in the meanwhile. The United States has over 1.5 billion of these infections reported so far with close to 91,000 deaths. India has become the third most infected nation in Asia, behind Iran and Turkey overtaking China. It also stands forth in a number of new reported cases. Economic crises continue to hit nations across the world. Japan has officially fallen into recession as it recorded a consistent economic decline in the last quarter of 2019 and the first quarter of 2020. Experts have warned that the worst is yet to come. In the meanwhile, the Central Bank of the US has estimated that the nation's unemployment rates could peak up to 25% by June. The World Health Assembly begins today but public health activists have raised concerns on the inadequacy of global preparedness over COVID-19. In an article published by People's Dispatch, activists from the People's Health Movement said that governments have failed to coordinate the fight against the pandemic and ensure access to healthcare for all. The article decried the recent US attempts at promoting disinformation about China and the World Health Organization. And also its recent move to halt financial support of the UN Agency. The PHM also said that these US efforts will jeopardize global efforts to contain the coronavirus outbreak. In our InFocus section, newsclicks Pravir Purkayasar talks about the global response to the pandemic and the role of the corporate interests at this crucial point. Pravir, thank you so much for joining us. So what we see is that there is definitely a clear divide in terms of responses to COVID-19 between the developed countries and the developing countries in the global north and the global south, so to speak. But one of the key interesting aspects is that in the global north, the idea of how to respond to a pandemic itself, there's been a lot of confusion. It's like, in some senses, they've almost, it is public health in that sense, it's kind of disappeared from a lot of the perspectives of these countries. So could we start a bit by talking a bit about this? You see, if we look at the issue of what I call the problem of infectious diseases in the west, it's really that it disappeared from public view, as you said. And what took over is infectious diseases are really the problems of the poor, the people who have not developed countries, dirty, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It was essentially a colonial view of the world that infectious diseases are no longer the problem of the west or that and the colonial countries. But it is something which only bothers those who are colonized, the poor countries, and who live in all kinds of filth. Now, if I take the racist part of it out, which of course it was, the underlying issue is that in advanced countries, they have actually been able to control infectious diseases, even before we have the quote unquote arrival of the modern medicines in the shape of antibiotics, the sulfur drugs and all of that, which really did, of course, have a huge effect on the infectious diseases. So before that itself, if you see the plague, for instance, which as you know, probably killed about 20 to 30% population in Europe. Those infections were a real cause for concern. And you have this plague picture, which was on basically of London and how it really decimated the people over there. Now I'm not going to talk about how much it affected different sections of the people, because we have now figures of different kinds to show it of course affected as it is doing now. Also the poor much more than it did the well off, but it also did affect the rich then too, as it is affecting now, even if it is less than the, you know, what's affecting the poor. So this really spread over Eurasia. This is what's known as the second plague where the first one happened in about 600 odd AD, what's called the Justinian plague. But if you leave that out, there is also a third plague, which people seem to have forgotten. And that also took place in Eurasia. If you see, it really took place in countries like India, in countries like Southeast Asia, in, of course, China. And the total was something like 10, about 12 to 15 million people, 10 million died in India alone. Our memories are quite live to this picture of the plague. And when we had the Surat plague, if you remember, in India, there was an instant and immediate reaction. That is a part of our historical memory. But this did not happen in Europe. In fact, Europe saw only about 1700 plague deaths in the third plague. So therefore they thought that this is not their problem. And of course, we are not going to talk about the impact of all of this in terms of inequality. It's also interesting. Once you have the plagues in Europe, it, in fact, you had a labor shortage economy and the distribution of wealth actually improved, not because of the plague, but because of the consequence of the plague, the short much less population. Now people have tried to bring it about the influenza epidemic also, the loss of the wealthy losing part of their wealth, being a less divided, less unequal society. But I think they forget it was really the socialist revolution of 1918, 1917, which coincided with the influenza epidemic. So you see continuous reference to influenza epidemic being the last known epidemic. And what happens is we have a whole set of diseases which get forgotten. But as I said here, the third plague was not considered a major one by the West, they considered it that the last pandemic, therefore, not the third plague, which continue up to about 1950, that they consider it only the last pandemic only being the Spanish flu, which of course, as we know now did not come from Spain, but came from Kansas probably. So look at this, what happens is a whole bunch of infectious diseases become what's called forgotten diseases. Peter Hotez has written a book on this, forgotten people forgotten diseases. And the question is, if you take the population today, about 65% of the global population, if you also include in this forgotten diseases, TB, malaria and dengue. If we include that 65% of the global population really suffers from the so called forgotten diseases, or what I would call is the diseases which are forgotten by the pharma companies and the advanced countries, the quote unquote advanced countries of the West. So here is the issue, these are forgotten diseases, but not by the people who are suffering from that, but really by those who do not see the effects of in that on them. And that's where we come to the chart that I quite often show that here you have what the Forbes magazine Forbes publication quotes as the best prepared countries. Of course, it's not their preparation is really a global health security index prepared by john Hopkins and john Hopkins and I think nuclear, some nuclear body, which looks at all of these kinds of issues, nuclear threat index, I think that's what came from. And now they can also join with john Hopkins for a global health security index, then you will see these figures are a couple of days old, you will see that those countries which are supposed to be the ones which are best prepared have fallen really victim to COVID-19 is a big way. I'm not going to make this a theoretical point that that is why because they did not look at infectious diseases. Therefore, they were, they have suffered the most. The reality is, of course, they're also the most well connected countries, and therefore start surprising that it has spread to them so fast. The real issue is that how unprepared they have been for the reemergence of an infectious disease, and the fact that people in the United States, for instance, the first thing they did with the lockdown was imminent for stock up on guns and ammunition. So that is their collective memory that they don't remember the infectious diseases, and they don't know as a society, how to respond to it. And of course, the fact that CDC has been gutted under Trump, the fact that we have a person heading CDC, who essentially represents the American right. All of that meant that CDC, which probably has a much bigger budget than the WHO was completely unprepared for the epidemic, could not even prepare a test kit, which a number of countries did, even after a month after they had put out the kit and it had failed. They still could not develop from producer kit which was working. So from the time they launched the kit, which is somewhere in February, they took one more month because the testing could start in the United States. And as you know now, that one month is what made all the difference. So I think this is the first issue that we really need to look at, that essentially what we have is the fact that there is no collective memory. The public health system have been gutted in the West. They have been handed over to private capital. There is what is called just-in-time manufacturing principles applied to the health system, by which you don't keep the beds empty. You plan for the influenza peak that comes in the flu seasons. And once that peak is met, during the peak, you should just pick cut to cut. That means you should really not have any surplus capacity. Then of course, the fact that private healthcare has taken over in a big way. So what they're discovering is private healthcare as well as the pharma companies basically want ill health because that's what gives the money. Public health is completely opposite to that. And that's something that seems to have forgotten. Moving on to our next story, Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani and his political opponent Abdullah Abdullah entered into a power sharing deal on May 17th. The deal will break the months-long political stalemate over election results. As per the deal, Ashraf Ghani will continue to be the president of Afghanistan. However, Abdullah Abdullah, his rival, can appoint half the cabinet and will also be leading the peace talks with the Taliban. Elections were held in Afghanistan in September 2019. Official results showed Gandhi to have won the election. However, Abdullah alleged that the results were fraudulent. He also declared a parallel government of his own and held a separate inauguration ceremony. This breakthrough in the political uncertainty comes at a time when Afghanistan is grappling with the spread of coronavirus and the intense fighter attacks in the country. In April, the Taliban had ended intra-Afghan talks over disagreements on a number of the released government-held Taliban prisoners. Moving on to Egypt, Lina Talha, the editor-in-chief and co-founder of the Independent Egyptian News Outlet, Madan Masar, was arrested on Sunday. Talha was arrested outside the Tora prison complex by the Egyptian Security Services. She was conducting an interview with Leila Soyeb, the mother of imprisoned Egyptian activists, Allah Abdul Fattah. Fattah has been on a hunger strike for the past 35 days, protesting the government's decision to suspend lawyer visits and court sessions under the guise of the pandemic. Talha was taken to the Mahdi police station and interrogated for more than three hours. She was released after an order from the prosecutor's office and signing a bail amount of 2000 Egyptian pounds, which is around US$127. According to Madan Masar, the authorities had refused her access to her lawyer while she was held. They also did not disclose the reason for her abrupt and extrajudicial arrest. The news of Talha's arrest prompted journalists and press freedom advocates around the world to express their concern and condemnations. Madan Masar has been subjected to several repressive measures by the Egyptian government under President Abdul Fattah Al-Sisi. Last year in November 2019, the officers of Madan Masar were raided and ransacked by Egyptian police. It is also one of the more than 500 news websites that are currently banned from reporting and publishing inside Egypt. Finally, nurses in Zimbabwe's public hospitals won a major victory after the government announced that from May 18, they will get two weeks off after each week of work. This is in accordance with the new agreement between Zimbabwe Nurses Association or ZINA and the government. The agreement was reached on May 13. The shift for each day will be for eight hours. On returning to work after the two weeks off following a week's duty, nurses will be tested for COVID-19. Due to the extreme shortage of PPEs in Zimbabwe, nurses are particularly vulnerable to contracting COVID-19. Nurses have been threatening a strike due to the working conditions. The real income has eroded by over 85% over the past two years. Nurses have a monthly salary of as low as 1000 to 2000 Zimbabwe dollars which is around 40 to 80 US dollars. They are often unable to travel to work. Two years ago, prior to the de-dolarization and introduction of a new unstable currency, the lowest paid nurses wage was equivalent to 284 US dollars. And this is all we have for this episode of The International Daily. Round up for more such stories and videos. Visit our website peoplesdispatch.org, subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Thank you for watching. Thank you.