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THE fear and confusion surrounding the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine donated by China and brought into the country this week reflects the failure by government to relay information to the citizens. Health practitioners, teachers and trade unionists have expressed fears over being used as guinea pigs to prove the efficacy of the vaccine amid reports that it had resulted in complications in some countries it has been rolled out. Among some of the concerns, the drug has not been approved by the World Health Organisation (WHO), but is still undergoing tests and the highest efficacy rate it has had is 75% compared to other drugs that are now in wide use, AstraZeneca, Modena, Pfizer, the Russian Sputnik 5 which have had higher efficacy rates. Suddenly, the Sinopharm drug received amid much pomp and fanfare, is now presenting more headaches for government than solutions to the COVID-19 pandemic that has wreaked havoc in the country, claiming more than 1 400 lives since March last year. Government can only blame itself for the dearth of information around the Chinese vaccine. Comments by the head of monitoring and evaluation in the Health and Child Care ministry, Robert Mudyiradima, which circulated widely on social media, to the effect that they still didn’t have full knowledge of the vaccine have worsened the uncertainty over its safety. A well-organised and detailed information campaign about the drug will go a long way in allaying fears over the safety of the vaccine. This should include the public vaccination of President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his two deputies Constantino Chiwenga and Kembo Mohadi. Government’s messaging deficit has long been its Achilles heel and could severely hamper its efforts to curb the pandemic. Its pathetic messaging and double standards have not only been limited to the Sinopharm vaccine. Doesn't it raise eyebrows that while government is preaching the need to limit movement of people and public gatherings, the ruling Zanu PF party continues to hold face-to-face meetings? The glaring double standards were also laid bare when First Lady Auxillia Mnangagwa ignored her husband’s order to avoid public gatherings by organising a cooking contest in Chinhoyi in blatant defiance of the national lockdown regulations. That this was held a day after government warned citizens to brace for more restrictions in light of the highly fatal and fast-spreading South African variant, not only exhibits absence of leadership, but is also an insult to the country’s citizens. With such deplorable messaging, the government can forget about successfully curbing the COVID-19 pandemic.
A November 26 letter from the presidency asked the head of Uganda's national drug authority to 'work out a mechanism' to clear the importation of the vaccines.
China has about five COVID-19 vaccine candidates at different levels of trials. It was not clear what vaccine was being imported into Uganda.
One of the frontrunners is the Sinopharm vaccine developed by the Beijing Institute of Biological Product, a unit of Sinopharm’s China National Biotec Group (CNBG).
On Wednesday, the United Arab Emirates said the vaccine has 86% efficacy, citing an interim analysis of late-stage clinical trials.
China has used the drug to vaccinate up to a million people under its emergency use program.
On Tuesday, Morocco said it was ordering up to 10 million doses of the vaccine.
Record cases
Uganda on Monday registered 701 new COVID-19 cases, the highest-ever daily increase, bringing its national count to 23,200.
The new cases were out of the 5,578 samples tested for the novel coronavirus over the past 24 hours, the country's health ministry said in a statement.
Tuesday's tally was 606, the second-highest ever number of new infections, bringing the cumulative number of confirmed cases in the east African country to 23,860.
Health authorities have blamed ongoing election campaigns which have drawn huge crowds for the rise in infections.
[The Conversation Africa] Gambian maritime law expert Fatou Bensouda has just entered the final year of a nine-year term as Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. Her tenure of office will end on 15 June 2021.
\"Test, test, test\" has been the mantra for defeating the novel coronavirus, but African countries are finding themselves at the end of a long global queue for the chemical reagents and other commodities necessary for administering diagnostic tests, according to public health experts.
Although mass testing is seen as a key component to slowing transmission, African health authorities are struggling to compete with richer, more powerful countries when it comes to procuring the scarce testing material on the global market, notes a new commentary published in The Lancet scientific journal.
Building self-sufficiency
Many African researchers foresaw this scarcity and the consequent need for African countries to be as self-sufficient as possible when it comes to diagnostic tests.
Given the global shortages - particularly the reagents necessary to run polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, which remain almost exclusively the basis for diagnosis - African countries need to take two paths forward, suggests Dr. Misaki Wayengera of Uganda's Makerere University.
But there are only a few diagnostics manufacturing facilities across Africa that have developed RDTs and could work on COVID-19 solutions, acknowledged Dr. Moses Alobo of the African Academy of Sciences, who is leading the effort to coordinate elite researchers across the continent.
[RFI] West Africa is facing the first reported resurgence of Ebola since the end of a devastating outbreak in 2016. Guinea Conakry is dealing with a situation described by the national health authorities as an \"epidemic\" after seven cases were confirmed.
OVER FIFTY women have accused charity workers of sex abuse in Congo during the ebola...
The post Charities accused of sexual abuse in DR Congo during Ebola crisis appeared first on Voice Online.
Fita submitted on Wednesday that the court had acted "too benevolently" in siding with government's seasoning for enforcing the cigarette ban.
Pending the discovery of a vaccine that will help eradicate the virus, the government in its frantic effort put up 19 response measures that could attenuate the pain inflicted into the population in its entire dimension by the disease.
And to clear the air on the controversy some of the measures must have sparked, President Biya went ahead to clarify why it was necessary to set up the package of response measures which are being implemented at the moment and above all the readjustment that followed.
In effect, the spirit behind the 19 measures taken in April as explained by the Head of State was basically to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic on the national economy and the life of the most fragile households.
The encouraging lessons learnt from the response strategy enabled government to take \"relief and support measures for the economic sectors and persons most affected by the pandemic.\"
In spite of all these, the ball still remains in the court of the population that must continue to adhere to the measures set up by government and the World Health Organisation, notably the systematic wearing of protective face masks and distancing.
Malaria cases in northern Mali have spiked, according to medical workers, claiming 23 lives in the often lawless desert region last week alone.
Mali's ministry of health said this week that 59 people have died of malaria in the north since the start of the year, almost double the number of deaths over the same period last year.
Already struggling to curb coronavirus, the poor Sahel country is also fighting a brutal jihadist insurgency active in the north and centre of the country.
Medical workers in the north registered 13,000 malaria cases between September 21 and 27, marking an 88 percent increase on the previous week.
Twenty-three people also died over that period, the health ministry said.
\"At the moment, the health system is really overwhelmed,\" said Cheick Ag Oufene, a health centre administrator in the northern town of Kidal, who called the situation \"very alarming\".
Mahamadou Sangare, a doctor in the northern town of Aguelhok, said malaria has been wreaking havoc since the arrival of the rainy season.
WHO warning
Treating severe cases is difficult in the remote north, he added, raising the likelihood of fatalities.
Malaria claims hundreds of thousands of lives across the African continent each year.
But the World Health Organisation warned in April that the coronavirus pandemic could disrupt campaigns against the mosquito-borne disease, leading to a spike in cases.
Rudy Lukamba, a Red Cross doctor in Mali, told AFP that Covid-19 \"has absorbed a lot of attention and redirected some of the funds, which has caused delays in prevention activities\".
\"Cleaning up wetlands, clearing brushwood, drying up puddles, distributing mosquito nets and raising public awareness requires resources,\" he said.
Swathes of Mali lie outside government control after a jihadist insurgency emerged in 2012 and triggered a deadly conflict which has since spread to the centre of the country.
Failure to end the long-running conflict contributed to anger towards president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, whom young military officers toppled in a coup on August 18.
[RFI] The World Health Organisation urges countries to press on with efforts to contain the novel Coronavirus, noting the pandemic is worsening globally while lockdown restrictions are being eased. Africa has not spared as the rate of infection is on the rise.
Clean cooking tied to cost and mindset
Thursday, June 4, 2020 0:01
By EDWARD MUNGAI |
Many households in East Africa cannot access clean cooking fuels, largely because of cash constraints and outdated customary behaviour.
In Kenya, clean cooking fuel access rate stands at a paltry 10 percent, yet this is the best performance in the region, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
The International Energy Agency has grouped Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Nigeria and DRC in the bottom 20 list of countries with lowest access to clean fuels globally.
Already, Kenya has a funding arrangement with the World Bank to supply efficient cooking appliances powered by clean fuels to households located in marginalised areas, largely in northern Kenya and the coast.
To this end, as countries commit to universal electricity access targets for their populations, the same should be the case with clean cooking fuels.
There are a few examples that show that African institutions of higher learning and many other organisations can play their part in collectively helping fellow Africans face the pandemic head-on.
In recent history, other pandemics such as SARS (2002), H1N1 Swine flu (2009), and MERS (2012) did cause a global response and disruption, but it is probably fair to say that the Covid-19 pandemic has caused a global response like never seen before, with terms such as \"lockdown\", \"social-distancing\" and \"the new-normal\" now part of our common vocabulary.
Indeed, many parts of Africa are scarcely populated, but according to the United Nations, around 40 to 45% of Africans live in urban areas, with many living in a number of mega-cities such as Lagos, Kinshasa, Addis Ababa, Cairo, and Johannesburg.
Since a major focus of the Makerere University team is doing research and outreach related to refugee health, much of their current focus is monitoring for Covid-19 among refugee communities and camps in the country.
These are just a few examples that show that African institutions of higher learning and many other organisations can play their part in collectively helping fellow Africans face the pandemic head-on and \"rise like lions\", to use the words of the renowned African poet, Ben Okri.
[AIM] Maputo -- The Mozambican Ministry of Health says that about 10,000 cataract surgeries were performed across the country in 2019, a milestone that fell sharply to only 5,000 interventions as result of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
Zimbabwe's President Emmerson Mnangagwa said Saturday the lockdown imposed to control the spread of coronavirus would stay in place for the moment, but would be reviewed every two weeks.
Mnangagwa said the World Health Organisation had classified coronavirus transmission in Zimbabwe as \"sporadic, with one or more cases imported or locally detected.
\"This may suggest that despite the small numbers tested, our country might have a reduced COVID-19 trajectory,\" he said in a speech broadcast on public television.
\"Zimbabwe will therefore continue on ... lockdown for an indefinite period.
Local doctors have warned that Zimbabwe's poorly equipped health service could not cope with a coronavirus pandemic.
PRIVATE commuter omnibus operators and small cars, popularly known as mushikashika, are back on the road in most cities and towns defying President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s ban on their operations during national lockdown.
Mnangagwa (pictured) declared Zupco the sole public transport operator during the indefinite lockdown.
I have received several reports that there was activity at various night spots including the popular Showground over the weekend and that private transport operators, especially those plying Chiredzi-Save or Chiredzi-Checheche routes, are back on the road,” he said.
The Zimbabwe Passengers Association (ZPA) called on government to lift the ban on private commuter omnibus due to escalating public transport shortages following the eased lockdown regulations.
The President maintained the ban on commuter omnibuses, but called on private operators to join the Zupco franchise.
Over the past few months, technology has been making society more resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic. Technology has also played a crucial role in keeping many economies functional and accelerated IT trends in areas of telemedicine, online/e-...
The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has to be credited for pioneering the blueprint ‘cricket in the bubble phenomenon’, a new experience of playing behind closed doors during the last few months in the wake of the global COVID-19 pandemic.
The article Kudos to the ECB for spearheading the return of Int’l cricket appeared first on Stabroek News.
Akin Abayomi, the Lagos State Commissioner for Health, gave the update on Sunday on his Twitter handle.
However, on Sunday, the Lagos State Commissioner for Health said three of them have tested positive for COVID-19.
In addition to the new positive cases recorded in Lagos, three more COVID-19 related deaths have been recorded in the state.
This brings the total deaths from COVID-19 to 36 in Lagos State.
The commissioner urged Lagos residents and particularly those who recently returned to the country to cooperate with the COVID-19 response team as may be desirable at all times and in all circumstances.
The World Health Organization on Monday urged countries to continue funding the agency, saying it will initiate an independent review into its handling of the coronavirus pandemic \"at the earliest appropriate moment.\"
Speaking at the 194-member World Health Assembly virtual conference, the WHO Director-General, Tedros Ghebreyesus, also called on all nations to \"do everything it takes to ensure that the 2020 coronavirus pandemic is never repeated.\"
Mr Ghebreyesus said the world could no longer afford the \"short-term amnesia\" that had characterised the global response to health crises in the past.
PREMIUM TIMES reported how the U.S. President, Donald Trump, threatened to permanently pull funding from the World Health Organisation (WHO) if it does not commit to \"major substantive improvements\" within 30 days, according to a letter to the WHO chief shared by Mr Trump on Twitter on Monday.
\"The only way forward for the World Health Organisation is if it can actually demonstrate independence from China,\" the U.S. president asserted.
[Monitor] The world's population, years over, has been affected by a number of viral diseases such a Ebola and Influenza which, in some cases, have caused millions of deaths.
Health is important for the development of any nation. In essence, health and development are symbiotic hybrids. guest column:Johannes Marisa So many people have lost confidence in the public health system in Zimbabwe with the private medical sector also being blamed for exorbitant charges which are beyond the reach of many. Many people blame the government for lack of hospital equipment, medicines and sundries that are required for a robust health service delivery. In 2007, World Health Organisation (WHO) came up with a framework describing health systems in terms of six core components or building blocks and these are leadership, medicines, health workforce, information systems, financing and service delivery. The Health and Child Care deputy minister, John Mangwiro, on Sunday at a Kadoma conference for private medical practitioners pointed out that the popularity of Karanda Mission Hospital was because of the attitude of its staff. I visited Karanda at one time, the reception even from the gate keeper was warming, the receptionists were always smiling, nurses and doctors were always mingling with patients in a jovial way. In contrast, government hospitals were labelled death traps. We need to know the other side of the coin if we are to unearth the real cause of public hospital service disintegration in our beautiful country. A lot of people have often rushed to blame the government or the Health ministers for the poor service being offered at some government hospitals. What I witnessed on Sunday at Chegutu Hospital exposes preventable staff failure. Some of these hospitals are dying today because of maladministration, poor attitude and being inconsiderate on the part of medical staff. If a hospital like Chegutu District Hospital, which is along a major highway, is allowed to run without emergency preparedness yet we are approaching the festive season, then our country is doomed. The events I am narrating will tell you who to blame for some of the medical mishaps in a lot of public hospitals. Bad attitude, maladministration, arrogance, lack of consideration and empathy have slaughtered our health sector. An accident occurred on Sunday just 7 kilometres after Chegutu Hospital. Two people lost their lives and the injured were rushed to Chegutu Hospital. When we got to the scene of the accident on our way from a conference in Kadoma, it was already 2 hours after the incident. My sixth sense told me to drive back to Chegutu Hospital to check on the state of the survivors. Upon arrival in the casualty department, we introduced ourselves and then asked for gloves, suture material and other things to use because the three patients were groaning in pain and two of them were bleeding from lacerations. To my surprise, the following is what we discovered: • The injured were yet to be attended to, three hours after the accident • There was no single pair of gloves available • There were no available suture packs, what was only available was vicryl, an absorbable suture • No surgical blade • No painkillers for emergency cases
