of democracy for voters right now, these kinds of political concerns or secondary to more basic needs in this country is in the grips of an energy crisis. and throughout the campaign, voters have been asking all the candidates, the same question. what is being done to make sure there is enough power for them to stay warm? because winter is coming and days before the election winter is already here. zebra robbie ultra 0. miss carter. ah. all right, it's going to round up. are the top stories the world health organization has named the new code 19 variance, alma crohn and says is concerned about it's many mutations suggested may pose more of a risk than the delta variant, which is driving waves of infections around the world. and the w h o also says urgent work is being done to assess how effective or current vaccines against the

new variance on the coin is vastly different from the original corona virus which started the pandemic. right now, there are many studies that are underway. there's a lot of work that has ongoing in south africa and in other countries to better characterize the very itself, in terms of transmit stability, in terms of severity and any impact on our counter measures like the use of diagnostics therapeutics or vaccines. so far, there's little information, but those studies are under way. so we need researchers to have the time to carry those out. and w h a will inform the public am and our partners and our member states. as soon as we have more information, several countries are restricting travel to and from southern africa, we're on the chrome was 1st identified cases of also been detected in belgium, israel and hong kong. at least 3 people have been killed in the solomon islands capital on yara where they have been days of rioting. gangs have been setting buildings on fire and trashing property,

demanding the prime ministers resignation. they say they're part of the pacific nation has long been neglected by the government, as also anger about the decision to switch diplomatic allegiances from taiwan to china. french president emanuel macro has accused british primaries, the boys, johnson of not being serious about migration, count french of also dis invited the u. k. from the european crisis meeting, at least $27.00 refugees and migrant found of northern fonts on wednesday. the united states is taking the disbanded colombian rebel good fark off its list of foreign terrorist organizations. the decision will allow us agencies to operate in more parts of columbia. those are the headlines. we're back in half an hour. right now. it's up front from african stories of resilience and parish. i get younger the and i right wanna a

tradition and dedication with you on a short documentary, sty, african filmmakers on the white 9 and the book maker, africa direct on al jazeera, a hidden pandemic within a pandemic. as a world marked worlds children's day last week. over a 1000000 children around the world are facing an uncertain future after losing a parent or caregiver to cobit 19. in fact, a recent study found that a child is orphaned by the pandemic. every 12 seconds with child welfare systems in most countries already weakened by lack of funds and resources. are we prepared to deal with this crisis? we'll ask one of the office of that report. but 1st, in the united states, the majority of parents are hesitant to vaccinate younger children. what's behind these down and what impact could it have on?

not just children, but the wider population will talk to the director of the national institutes of health this week headliner, friends with the doctor cobbler. thank you so much for joining me on upfront. according to a recent poll in the united states, only 27 percent of parents of 5 to 11 year olds said that they were eager to get it back seen right away for their child. why do you think people are more hesitant to get the vaccine for children than they are for themselves? well, you know, it's interesting when you go back and look what happened when vaccines were 1st made available to adults. back in january of 2021. it was pretty similar is about a 3rd of people said yeah, sign me up on the wrong my sleeve and there are a lot of people, i mean, wait and see and think about this. so maybe the numbers aren't that different. these are kids after all. and i'm a parent and a grandparent,

and when it's about your children, you want to be really sure you know what the facts are and you've been figured out the benefits and the risk. so let's see what happens over the course of the coming weeks and months. i'm not too surprised that the initial response is a bit muted. but when people do look at the data, they will see because it's very easily accessible. now that these kids in the trial there were more than 3000 of them age 5 to 11. i got a 91 percent protection against infection from this pfizer dose, which was one 3rd of the adult us and had no really unexpected side effects. other than the sor arms that we adults have also experience. so it looks to any kind of rational assessment to be a really good opportunity to protect your child from this disease which can make children very sick, even though generally they do better than adults. that's not always the case, the risk of children getting a severe case of cov,

it is point 05 percent. so why are cov, it vaccines necessary for children? well i'm not sure when you give that percentage that that really conveys what most people worried about is my kid at. a risk mean go to any pediatric, i see you in the country and you will see kids. they are with cove it some of who are on respirators as a result. and we have seen 145 children die. and these are kids between the age of 5 and 11 of cove at 19 a many of them without any predisposing medical condition that would have made you think they were vulnerable. so it may be uncommon, but it's certainly not unheard of for kids to get really sick and that doesn't even count. those who get covered seem to have recovered, but then have a long term effects we call long covert which can include fatigue and brain fog. that makes it hard for kids to perform well in school. so trying to balance this

out, the risk of the disease versus some uncertain and so far not well identified potential risks of the vaccine. it sure looks like the vaccine is a better bed in the united states. covered 19 infection rates are higher among black, indigenous, and other people of color. so as vaccine hesitancy among the very same populations for variety of reasons, including a history of being subjected to medical testing without consent. how should this be addressed? but it's a really important point in the u. s. we don't have a good history of health equity amongst racial groups. and so there has been a lot of effort put into trying to spread really valid information to those groups that are most likely to be skeptical. by the way it's looking like that is kind of working. if you say, hey, let's look at those who are fully immunized in the united states. the levels now for whites and blacks and latinos are almost the same and about 70 percent. so it

got off to a slow start. but i think there's been a pretty good catching up as the information got shared. i hope that will happen also with children, but again, we have a lot of work to do there to overcome what is quite understandable in terms of distrust based upon past experiences that people from racial and ethnic minorities that had with the health care system, which didn't necessarily seem to be meeting their needs. we have work to do here and that work that needs to be done. part of it is the information sharing that you talked about. the other part might be acknowledging historical wrong doing. do you think the medical community and the government has done a, an adequate job, a sufficient job addressing those, those, those histories? well, people often bring up a really wrenching story of tusky, or african american males who had syphilis, were observed and not offer a treatment, even when treatment was known to be successful. and that never should have happened

. that was totally unethical. president clinton made a formal apology for that back in about 998. another example that's raised is the heel cells that are used from lots of different laboratories to study various aspects of medicine derived without our consent. from henry and a lax, a young african american woman in 1952. we had and i have worked really hard with the lax family to try to make sure we're doing bad part right now. they've become some of our best allies in trying to see how we can right those wrongs, but also make it clear that we do want medical research to be able to go forward and to benefit everybody. another source of this trust is big pharma. a 2020 survey showed that 32 percent of the american public viewed profit as the main reason that pharmaceutical companies are producing coven 19 vaccines. can we trust that the

process wasn't rushed just for profit motors? well, i can tell you, having been in the middle of the process of developing these vaccines, that it was not rushed in a way to cut any corners. this was a full partnership of between the federal government, academic institutions and companies. and we wanted to be sure everybody was held accountable. so i understand that what it, what does it mean to be held accountable? that you basically have designed and conducted trials in the most rigorous way that the results of those trials are being evaluated by people who don't work for the company and don't work for the government. and they decide whether the vaccine was actually safe and effective. and that's what was done. why are companies able to make money off of research that was publicly funded? well, this is a complicated and challenging issue. we did at one point try to figure out ways that the government would have reached through abilities for any kind of research

that was funded by the government. and then if a company made some money, they would have to basically feed back funds. and that is done all the time with intellectual property claims. but if you go too far with that, companies stop being interested in actually building upon the government funded research. you know, our ecosystem, and that would have been the case this time though, in the middle of a global pandemic. would that have been the case the companies would have lost interest or pulled back? if, if, if those types of circumstances have been produced, i think might have changed their approach a bit. i think you're right though in a global pandemic, everybody wants to help. and i knew it's tempting to demonize pharmaceutical companies, but we need them. nobody else is going to actually put vaccines into bios or make pills. and if we want to see success against a terrible pandemic, we need them as partners. we just have to hold them accountable, we have to trust and verify that this is being done in a fashion that is scientifically rigors speaking of holding them accountable. one

of the issues that companies like madonna are saying they won't enforce their patterns, but at the same time they're still not sharing the recipe, right? they're not giving the, the, the know how of how to make the vaccine. so other others can't make a generic version of it. it's one thing to distribute the vaccines. another thing to create the context in the conditions for countries to generate the vaccine, safely and on a why a widespread case out. what do you make of it? well, it's a really tough and complicated issue, but an important one. yeah, i know. in an ideal world i would want to see my doorknob be more generous with their ability. not only to say ok, you can basically use the information are patent, but will help. you will help you set up a factory. now they've made a commitment to do that in africa, but the time table looks like it may be quite long. other companies i think have been more forthcoming. johnson and johnson in particular now working in south

africa to try to do more of this visor. certainly talking about that. so i think it's appropriate for all of these companies to have some public pressure to say, hey, you guys, if you're making a lot of money here, you've got a responsibility to the world to be more general. so you talked about generosity, which still is sort of individual choice. you talk about public pressure. but what about government intervention? what about states actually making some sort of demand? do you think government's role is to intervene in this way? i think certainly governments ought to be able to apply a pretty strong amount of pressure, even calling this a moral situation in calling on companies to behave an ethical and moral and how to mystic way. i'm not sure in most instances, because i'm not a lawyer. what other labors they have to pull to, to demanded are required. i mean, part of why i asked them, because modern in the u. s. a currently in a spent right now over the patent rights over the corona, virus vaccine,

which was jointly developed with the national institutes of health majority received a huge amount of funding from the office within the department of health and human services, which now holds the vaccine recipe. so in this case, the u. s. government has the ability to share it with other countries. why aren't they? well, as you refer to, there does seem to be a significant spat, where madonna is now claiming that they have the patent on this coven 19 vaccine. and have not included us government co inventors which we had in h r. think was an unfortunate step that they have taken and we have been quite public in stating that. so we have to see how that plays out if the government were also in a position being a co inventor on that patent, then the government would have more labors to pull, to make sure that it was made available to others. this seems like something that could have been resolved at the drafting stage of disagreement. the united states

government drafted the agreement and the terms with modernity. do you think it was a mistake not to make open sharing of vaccine technology? one of the conditions, one of the times that sort of goes back to how things were worked out in the process of operation work speed. and i think there was a great deal of attention there to trying to get vaccines manufactured and tested as quickly as possible. i was not engaged in the details of those contracts. i'm not sure i can answer your question. my question is i shouldn't have been not, and i understand you don't know the details of what happened, but would it, was it a mistake not to have the open sharing of vaccine technologies part of this at so little hard to answer that in a simple way what does open sharing mean? just like we were talking about before, it's one thing to say, we're going to share everything in our path than our technology and our recipe. but what you really want companies to share their expertise, they have

a technical experience of how to actually build the factory and make that go. that's a harder thing to put into a contract. but in many ways, it may be the most important factor before you go. what do we learn from cove it or how can we use the information that we've gotten, the experience we've gotten to help protect us against future problems, future inequities. when the next pandemic comes, that's a great question and some of us are spending a lot of our time on that right now. we could learn from this and should immediately be acting on that to identify ways to make our response even faster and more global. should this happen again, and it probably, well, this is not the last pandemic that we'll see. we have a reasonable idea of sort of the 20 most likely pathogens to cause the next pandemic. why don't we start now to develop vaccines against those at least carry them forward to the point where we'd be ready to run

a clinical trial rather quickly. if one of those actually emerged, why don't we develop a drug therapies, antivirals, for those 20 most likely pathogens, and move those along as well, so that we would have that kind of treatment available, which we really haven't had for cobit 19 until fairly recently. all those are things we could do in preparation is going to cost money is going to mean that people are going to have to decide this is a priority and we can't slip back into complacency. but there are really important lessons here that we can act upon and i think we must verify the account. thank you so much for joining me on the front. i had to be with you ah, worldwide more than 1000000 children have lost a parent or caregiver to cove at 19, in the us. more than a 140000 children are now orphans or one in every 500 in south africa. that number leaps to one and every 200 children in peru. it's one in every 100. according to dr

. lucy clover family loss on that scale has not been seen since the aids pandemic tore through sub saharan africa nearly 20 years ago. given the looming get some vaccination coverage around the world, the numbers are only expected to rise in the crisis to grow more dire. so what's to be done to respond to a growing generation of kids without caregivers? joining me now to discuss this pandemic with in a pandemic is lucy clover. she's a professor of child and family, social work at oxford university and an honorary professor in psychiatry and mental health at the university of cape town. she's co lead the cove at 19 emergency parenting response, and she's worked closely with the w h o unicef and other international in jo's and government organizations to support caregivers looking after children during locked downs and school closures. lucy, clover, thanks so much for joining me on up front. according to your research, every 12 seconds a child loses an important care giver due to cobit 19. but when the pandemic began,

did you expect it to be this bad? you anticipate this? well actually it was the year esl fulfilled the front hospital, thieves control that fast identified this challenge. a colleague up to season. hillis called me one morning and said these sorts about what's, what happened with ha, and the fact that this is going to be happening with covered, and a mock, you know, i heard you say the numbers 1000000 children and, and one every 12 seconds. that was what we published in the lancet in july. but since then there's been a huge rise, even in those numbers, particularly with am surges in india and africa. and the numbers that we're now looking at a 5200000 children who've lost a primary caregiver due to covet 19 associated orphan hood. and those numbers have gone to one in every 6 seconds. a child loses a caregiver. while you talk about these numbers being on the rise,

obviously latin america's been hard hit. as you mentioned, indian in these numbers are going up quickly. we've also seen it in south africa, was in russia, iran. and of course, here in the united states. but what's the common denominator? what's the driving force behind the rise in these places? we seen huge surges because of the delta variant. we've also seen that some countries are only just now able to estimate how many people have died of covered. we've seen deaths going to younger and younger generations, particularly amongst those who are unvaccinated. and i think crucially, what we've seen is the communities where that people have lots of children. and when, when a, when a parent or a grandparent is looking after those children passes away, you know, not just one child is losing a caregiver, but often many children in that same family. a study last month found that in the u . s. one out of every $500.00 children has experienced loss of

a parent or grandparent caregiver, due to call it 19. but when you break down those numbers according to race, they get down to one out of every 310 black children as compared to one of us. i'm 153 white children. it's a huge gap in digits, children, it even harder. one out of every $168.00. how does a nation respond to this crisis when the burden is so unevenly? terry, it's such an important question and it's an urgent question for governments right now in the u. s. but, but also globally, and the evidence that we have from this pandemic. but also from other pandemic, like ha, and abolla has shown some very clear responses. the 1st one is vaccination in countries where we, where we don't have vaccines, we have to pushed her to allow access for, for people in countries where we do have vaccines, it's essential that people take them and use them and use other public health

measures to protect them from dying, but we move them on to children. and what happens once the children has lost a primary caregiver with a 1st urgent thing that we have to do is make sure that they don't go into an situation. there is very strong evidence that orphanages institutions have very much higher rates of abuse of sexual exploitation, that children's long term outcomes are, are much more difficult. and so what we have to do is find them family homes, ideally within their extended family, but to support families to look after these children, they'll be recently bereaved. they may be out of school, they need extra support on parenting support and economic support within that family. in your estimation, our government's making that connection between the need for social investment and institutional investment, and improving the circumstances of coven orphans. you know, this is very new,

it's very new evidence and governments are so many governments are still struggling to, to cope with the epidemic and to know what they should do. but what we started to see is that some governments are realizing how urgent this is. and are coming to us to colleagues at cdc usaid pet far at the world bank at w h o to say what are our next steps? for example, the brazilian government are looking at recording on death certificates. whether, whether people have dependence and allowing then access to get economic support and, and social support to those families. we're seeing that the u. s. government is starting to, to discuss how they can best do this within their pandemic response. i think there are encouraging signs, but what we still have to see is one government step forward and say we, we see this problem and what we're going to rise to meet at chapters about the mental health piece of this. what are they held, the rest,

the mental health or as they call it, orphans are facing. oh well, what we know about bereavement for children. is that an a child who, who loses a parent or grandparent primary caregiver? so so many children pastor by the grandparents. if that child or adolescent is, is supported and cared for and within a strong and loving family environment than within about a year or so that their progress, their achievement is, is back on track. primarily that children are grieving, but they're able to to unstick seed with their lives. but what we also know is that if that bereavement happens and that child goes into a very difficult situation that there isn't care for them that they don't have enough. they don't have enough money to continue going to school that, that, that bereavement can be a point in their lives which, which leads to really severe progress. and we see, for example, on, in,

in sub saharan africa, very high rates of transactional sacks. the girls are forced into situations where they have to get money and that's the only option for them. we see girls being a and boys being pulled out of school. we see children who don't have the kind of a you know, that the kind of loving monitoring and supports that, that, that we provide for our teenagers and, and that's a really crucial time. so let's pivot and talk a little bit more about the response to the crisis. we know that money is important, but how do we use funding in ways that create sustainable and effective solutions? or the good news is that we do have strong research evidence of what is an effective and sustainable solutions. what we know is that providing economic strengthening cash economic support has long term positive impacts for children and adolescents. we see on from south africa that child support grants, for example,

lead to reductions in teenage pregnancy. 15 years later, we also know the parenting programs can be incredibly effective in the long term. amazing research done in jamaica shows that that children whose families received an early years parenting program, 30 years later, those children have better education outcomes that earning more money. they are and have better mental and physical health. so we do have sustainable solutions. we also need to think about digital delivery and remote delivery and people may not be able to get to services. services may be closed due to covered, people may been locked down, they might be in isolation. and so there are now ways that we can deliver services like her, like a grant or a parenting program through people's mobile phones when they can't reach those services. and these are some really exciting new ways that we can reach these

families. what are some of the biggest mistakes people, me, or institutions, governments, et cetera. what are some of the biggest waste of resources that was? well, i think one of the most important things we've learned in the last 10 years has been that institutionalizing children who lost a caregiver is a huge mistake. people have done this from the best of intentions, built orphanages, wanted to support these um these, these centers. but what the evidence is found there was a very famous lancet commission on, on da, institutionalization of children, which has shown that children consistently do better in a family environment. and i think that's a key lesson that we've learned for dis response. i think the, the, the other huge mistake that we would make would be not to act fast. when we publish this paper in april, there were 1500000 children who had lost a caregiver. now, in,

in november there are 5200000 children. within the next year, there are going to be $10000000.00 children. we can't say that this is a problem which is going to happen. this is a problem already happening. and it's getting worse and fast. that melissa can thank you so much for your renewal up front. thank you so much and, and lovely to meet mark. that is our show up for it will be back next. reporting in the field means i also get to witness not just news is breaking but also history as it's unfolding drove me from serbia hungry to rep one day i might be covering politics. and then actually i might be covering protests. but what's most important to me is talking to people,

understanding what they're going through so that i can convey the headlines in the most human way possible. here at al jazeera, we believe everyone has a story worth hearing. the story of a small community in one of mexico's most dangerous states standing up to criminal cartels and corrupt politicians. you don't want to politicians anymore. they just dis, united the people in the last episode of democracy. maybe we explore how sharon's elders led the fight to self determination for that time thinking that the na coast was the same as thinking of trans government. hi, the people on al jazeera from the al jazeera london broke off fantastic to people in thoughtful conversation with no hate and no limitation. it leads as oppressive color. it's always the struggle here. it would be much easier for me. it's my, it felt that white people part to go into and sing a song, right,

that in the other people's wait a minute, you get way down, you stop what you're doing and maybe one studio b unscripted on al jazeera. ah . ready global alert, more countries imposed travel restrictions on southern africa in response to a new path, ovarian zip code 19. ah, hello and darren jordan. this is al jazeera la from dough are also coming up. france puts a pause on vaccine requirements for health workers in guadalupe and martinique following days of protests. at least 3 people had been killed in riots in the solomon islands as police arrest more than a 100 rioters. and on the front lines.