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Weakening Typhoon Churns Through Japan, Up to Six Dead

A farmland is submerged due to floods caused by heavy rains from Typhoon Shanshan in Yufu, Oita Prefecture, southwestern Japan, August 29, 2024, in this photo taken by Kyodo. Mandatory credit Kyodo/via REUTERS
A farmland is submerged due to floods caused by heavy rains from Typhoon Shanshan in Yufu, Oita Prefecture, southwestern Japan, August 29, 2024, in this photo taken by Kyodo. Mandatory credit Kyodo/via REUTERS
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Weakening Typhoon Churns Through Japan, Up to Six Dead

A farmland is submerged due to floods caused by heavy rains from Typhoon Shanshan in Yufu, Oita Prefecture, southwestern Japan, August 29, 2024, in this photo taken by Kyodo. Mandatory credit Kyodo/via REUTERS
A farmland is submerged due to floods caused by heavy rains from Typhoon Shanshan in Yufu, Oita Prefecture, southwestern Japan, August 29, 2024, in this photo taken by Kyodo. Mandatory credit Kyodo/via REUTERS

Typhoon Shanshan weakened to a tropical storm Friday but was still dumping heavy rains as it slowly churned through Japan, triggering transport havoc and landslide warnings, with up to six people killed.
The storm, which at landfall was one of the fiercest to hit Japan in decades, pummeled Kyushu island on Thursday with gusts of up to 252 kilometers (157 miles) per hour. On Friday they eased to 108 kph as it moved up the archipelago.
Even before making landfall, a landslide caused by the heavy rains preceding the storm killed three members of the same family late Tuesday in Aichi prefecture, around 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) away.
Government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi on Friday confirmed reports of one additional death, but said that "the relation to the typhoon was being studied". Two more were feared dead and two others were missing, he added.
Eight people were seriously hurt and 70 others had light injuries, Hayashi said, with many injured by broken glass after the typhoon smashed windows and ripped tiles off roofs on Thursday. Almost 200 buildings were damaged.
- Climate change -
Typhoons in the region have been forming closer to coastlines, intensifying more rapidly and lasting longer over land due to climate change, according to a study released in July.
A rapid attribution analysis issued Friday by Imperial College London using peer-reviewed methodology calculated that Typhoon Shanshan's winds were made 26 percent more likely by a warming planet.
"Without phasing out fossil fuels, the root cause of climate change, typhoons will bring even greater devastation to Japan," said Ralf Toumi, director of the Grantham Institute at Imperial.
The coming storm prompted Japanese authorities to issue their highest alert in several areas, with more than five million people advised to evacuate, although it was unclear how many did.
On Friday the Japan Meteorological Agency issued alerts for possible landslides in many parts of Kyushu, and as far away as Shizuoka on the main island of Honshu, the Tokyo region and nearby Kanagawa.
Footage from Japanese broadcaster NHK showed a car park in Kanagawa prefecture with vehicles half-submerged in brown water, with authorities there urging residents to move to higher floors after a local river flooded.
Some parts of Kyushu saw record rains for August, with the town of Misato recording a staggering 791.5 millimeters (31 inches) in 48 hours, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
Kyushu island's Kitakyushu saw 474 mm in the 24 hours to Friday morning, the most since 2012, when comparative data began to be collected. Nearby Kunimi had 384.5 mm, the most since records began in 1977.
- Inconvenient -
The holiday resort of Beppu in Kyushu suffered no major damage, but tourists were stranded and bored, with the onsen hot springs, a monkey park and even 24-hour convenience stores shut.
"This is my first time (here). I was very looking forward to it," morose visitor Nobuhiko Takagishi from Tokyo told AFP. "But it will be a trip to remember. A trip when I couldn't do anything."
Power cuts hit more than 250,000 Kyushu households, but the utility operator said Friday that only 5,250 were still without electricity as engineers repaired transmission lines.
Overnight, many motorways were fully or partially closed in Kyushu, as were others further afield, media reports said.
Shinkansen bullet trains remained suspended in Kyushu and were also halted on the major route between Tokyo and Osaka, with operators warning of disruptions elsewhere.
Japan Airlines and ANA had already announced the cancellation of more than 600 flights between them for Friday, having scrapped a similar number the previous day, affecting almost 50,000 passengers.
Four baseball games due to take place on Friday, Saturday and Sunday in the central city of Nagoya and Nishinomiya near Osaka were canceled. Five J-League football matches slated for Saturday in different cities were also called off.
Auto giant Toyota said it had extended a production halt at all 14 of its Japanese plants, while a suspension at Nissan's Kyushu factories remained in place.

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There Is an Mpox Jab. Why Is It Taking So Long to Reach Africa? 

A Red Cross worker sprays chlorine as other Red Cross personnel raised awareness about mpox and hygiene among internally displaced people in the Don Bosco camps in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, 22 August 2024. (EPA)
A Red Cross worker sprays chlorine as other Red Cross personnel raised awareness about mpox and hygiene among internally displaced people in the Don Bosco camps in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, 22 August 2024. (EPA)
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There Is an Mpox Jab. Why Is It Taking So Long to Reach Africa? 

A Red Cross worker sprays chlorine as other Red Cross personnel raised awareness about mpox and hygiene among internally displaced people in the Don Bosco camps in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, 22 August 2024. (EPA)
A Red Cross worker sprays chlorine as other Red Cross personnel raised awareness about mpox and hygiene among internally displaced people in the Don Bosco camps in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, 22 August 2024. (EPA)

Mpox is nothing new to Africa yet there is no vaccine available on the continent, exposing rank inequity in global distribution as tens of richer nations inoculate people facing far less risk.

Experts say that inequality - alongside competing health problems and slow regulation - is putting millions of Africans in jeopardy, after scientists found the virus was now mutating fast, leaping from person to person and stealing over borders.

"The lack in the distribution of mpox vaccines in Africa is due to challenges in supply, funding, and infrastructure, and because the disease is less prevalent compared to other health priorities," Duduzile Ndwandwe, a scientist at the South African Medical Research Council (SAMARA), said in emailed comments.

Mpox had been circulating in the Democratic Republic of Congo since January last year but only became a grave concern this January when scientists spotted the worrying, new mutation.

Two mpox vaccines made by Denmark's Bavarian Nordic and Japan's KM Biologics used to combat a 2022 outbreak have been widely available in at least 70 countries outside Africa - even administered for free in some US and European clinics.

But before Nigeria received 10,000 doses from the United States this week, no mpox vaccine was available - in any country - in Africa, and the variant now circling vulnerable, displaced populations in DRC is even more virulent than previous strains.

'A SERIOUS EPIDEMIC'

Mpox, formerly known as monkey pox, has been a public health problem in parts of Africa since 1970, but received little global attention until an international outbreak in 2022.

It typically causes flu-like symptoms, pus-filled lesions and can kill. Protection costs about $100 a person.

Jimmy Whitworth, professor of epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, described the new variant, clade 1b pox, as "fairly lethal".

"This appears to be from sexual contact that it's spreading, and this time it is going from person to person," Whitworth said. "There's now a need to raise it to the priority list because this is a serious epidemic."

Since January 2023, there have been more than 27,000 suspected cases and 1,100 deaths in Congo, according to government figures, mainly among children.

The viral infection has spread from DRC to 12 neighboring countries, leading the World Health Organization (WHO) to designate the outbreak a public health emergency.

Many African nations are struggling to meet the challenge.

Whitworth said the $100 needed to distribute a dose of the vaccine is prohibitive for governments who must quash multiple threats - measles, malaria, cholera - with limited budgets.

"It is a huge expense to vaccinate just DRC. If you asked people in DRC last year what the higher priority was, 'was it the measles or mpox vaccine?' They would have said 'measles vaccine'. And so would anybody else in public health because that was a bigger threat then," the epidemiologist said.

National regulations are also a problem.

Despite the severity of the mpox crisis and the risk of it spreading across DRC's borders, local regulators only approved a vaccine in June with no date yet set for distribution.

WHY THE DELAY?

In 2022, two mpox vaccines, along with public health campaigns against risky behavior, effectively controlled an outbreak that had hit 100 countries globally.

But African countries have so far remained underserved, with efforts only now ramping up to bolster their protection.

Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said it had been granted 9.34 million euros ($10.43 million) in emergency funding from the Africa Union for its mpox response and it said it would need 10 million doses of vaccines.

Bavarian Nordic said it can make 10 million doses of its vaccine by end-2025 and offered 2 million doses this year.

The WHO gave its partner agencies, including global vaccine organization Gavi and UNICEF, the go-ahead to buy mpox vaccines pre-approval to speed their delivery to Africa.

DRC had expected to receive its first vaccines in the week of Aug. 26 after the United States and Japan both promised deliveries, but has since said it would take longer.

European Union countries have also pledged donations to help Africa fight the current outbreak.

Whitworth said regulators in Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and Kenya, all countries where cases have been detected, should approve vaccines urgently without waiting for a full outbreak.

"The vaccine isn't even licensed in those countries," said Whitworth. "Those countries ... need to speed up the process."

WEAK HEALTH SYSTEMS

Even pre-mpox, Congo's health system was at breaking point - weighed down by epidemics of measles and Ebola and years of conflict - and campaigners say short-term fixes won't work.

Katharina Schroeder from Save the Children said long-term investment in social welfare and healthcare infrastructure were vital to prevent future outbreaks, with many remote health centers lacking basic testing kits or trained staff.

"The health centers outside the city need to be equipped to triage patients ... because often they're looking for things like gloves and masks," Schroeder said.

Save the Children has been training staff on the disease, but even when diagnoses are successfully sped through, few sick patients can then afford to isolate for the mandated four weeks.

"They understand this is mpox, they understand this is dangerous for their family. But they still don't go into isolation because they live day by day. They don't have enough to eat," Schroeder said.