Leading global organisations and NGOs have come together to urge Cambodia to focus on children’s rights to healthy diets as rates of malnutrition are in danger of rising amid the COVID-19 (C-19) pandemic.

The call was made in a joint statement from Unicef, the World Food Program, the Food and Agriculture Organisation and World Health Organisation.

In the statement, Unicef executive director Henrietta Fore said in countries like Cambodia, the socioeconomic impact of COVID-19 is disrupting food security, livelihoods and the economy.

“It’s been seven months since the first COVID-19 cases were reported and it is increasingly clear that the repercussions of the pandemic are causing more harm to children than the disease itself,” Fore said.

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Closing live animal markets that trade in wildlife, strengthening efforts to combat trafficking of wild animals, and working to change dangerous wildlife consumption behaviours are all needed, said the leading wildlife conservation group, WCS.

With the outbreak of the Wuhan Coronavirus, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has called for governments to recognize the global public health threats of live animal markets and to strengthen enforcement efforts on trafficking of wild animals. 

Poorly regulated, live animal markets mixed with illegal wildlife trade offer a unique opportunity for viruses to spillover from wildlife hosts into the human population, and for viruses to exchange viral components amongst the multiple species being traded, creating new viruses with new host spectrums, it said.

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The global toll of dengue fever is becoming well known, with rising temperatures contributing to severe outbreaks that made 2019 the worst year on record for the disease.

In 1970 only nine countries faced severe dengue outbreaks. But the disease, which is spread by mosquitoes that can only survive in warm temperatures, is now seen in more than 100 countries. There are thought to be 390m infections each year

More than a million of those cases were in south-east Asia, hitting the poorest households hard and stretching health services.

The epidemic is exacerbated by poor infrastructure and lack of access to healthcare, with struggling health services overwhelmed by outbreaks.

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Social Development and Human Security Juti Krairiksh said he would speed up the drafting of a new master plan for elderly care and submit it for the Cabinet’s approval within a month.

Juti was speaking to reporters on Tuesday while accompanying a team of doctors from the Police General Hospital to provide medical checkups for residents of the Ban Bang Kae home for the elderly. The hospital provided free medical checkups for 240 residents of the home to make merit to mark the 67th birthday anniversary of His Majesty the King.

In drafting the master plan and subsequent operation plans, the Social Development and Human Security Ministry would take the results of research and opinion surveys undertaken conducted by various agencies into account, Juti said.

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U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue on Thursday criticized Vietnam’s move to ban imports of glyphosate-based herbicides, saying the decision would have “devastating impacts on global agricultural production.” 

Vietnam’s government said in a statement that the toxic level of herbicides containing glyphosate had long been of concern, in the latest display of global worries over the product’s impact on human health. State media reports said the ban would take effect in June.

Glyphosate, the chemical contained in Bayer AG’s best-selling weed killer Roundup, is the target of thousands of lawsuits in the United States alleging exposure to it causes cancer.

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The post U.S. criticizes Vietnam ban of glyphosate herbicide imports first appeared on Open Development Mekong.