Six months in the past, for the primary time in its historical past, the Peace Corps suspended all operations because the coronavirus raced across the globe. Now it’s making ready to ship volunteers again into the sphere.
However the planning for the redeployment of Individuals round a world shaken by the pandemic comes because the company faces renewed questions about the quality of its medical care, touched off partly by the demise of a 24-year-old volunteer from undiagnosed malaria.
The volunteer, Bernice Heiderman, died alone in a resort room in Comoros, off Africa’s east coast, in 2018, after sending determined textual content messages to her household. She instructed them that her Peace Corps physician was not taking her complaints severely.
An investigation by the company’s inspector normal documented a string of issues. Ms. Heiderman’s physician, the investigation discovered, had “restricted coaching in tropical drugs,” and failed to check for malaria — an apparent analysis. And the company’s medical consultants in Washington, with whom he consulted, by no means requested him to.
“Had she acquired well timed therapy,” the inspector general concluded, “she may have made a fast, full restoration.”
In March, the Peace Corps evacuated greater than 7,000 volunteers from greater than 60 international locations. It’s now accepting applications for them to return to service. If situations allow, officers stated, some might return to their posts by the top of the yr, and new volunteers might start as early as Jan. 1.
The company stated in an emailed assertion that it “continues to grieve the tragic lack of volunteer Bernice Heiderman” and that it had “initiated a number of steps to additional strengthen well being take care of volunteers.”
In different international developments:
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Eire is contemplating reimposing a nationwide lockdown for 4 weeks, after concern from public well being officers over rising infections. Beneath the proposed restrictions, which native media stated authorities leaders would focus on with the nation’s chief medical officer on Monday, most individuals can be barred from leaving house besides to train or for important causes. Nearly 1,000 new instances have been reported from the weekend as of Sunday. Eire has recorded a complete of 38,032 instances and 1,810 deaths.
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Pope Francis criticized the lack of unity on the planet’s response to the coronavirus pandemic in a doc launched on Sunday. “Except for the completely different ways in which varied international locations responded to the disaster, their incapability to work collectively turned fairly evident,” Francis said in the encyclical, probably the most authoritative type of papal instructing. “For all our hyperconnectivity, we witnessed a fragmentation that made it tougher to resolve issues that have an effect on us all.”
