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By Johannes Marisa QUALITY health delivery service requires collaboration. In 2007, the World Health Organisation proposed a framework describing health systems in terms of six core components or building blocks. These components are the availability of good service delivery, health workforce, health information systems, access to essential medicines, financing and leadership. Much has been said in our country pertaining the desire to deliver a robust healthcare to the masses. With COVID-19 always threatening to strike further, it is thus prudent that we keep ourselves ready for action so that we are not caught unawares as a nation. While Europe continues to be hit by COVID-19 left, right and centre, the situation in Africa is a little better despite the little resources available. The public health measures that were introduced by authorities paid off with a halt on both morbidity and mortality. Health stakeholders in Zimbabwe include all those who are involved in health service delivery. These include policymakers, health practitioners, city councils, medical aid societies, the donor community, community leaders who, therefore, should come together for the benefit of the nation at large. It is a fact that there has been a lot of dissension among the stakeholders due to differences which have often threatened the viability of the health sector. Surprisingly, some of the contentious issues are easy to resolve. They only need minimal co-operation in order to move ahead. Being difficult does not help matters when dealing with issues, particularly important ones. The following matters have been of concern among stakeholders and it is my prayer that solutions will be found if the country is to make great strides in healthcare delivery: Service providers/medical aid societies feud The friction between service providers and medical aid societies should be resolved if many people are to access healthcare. There are patients that have been denied medical care simply because their health insurers do not want to honour claims from service providers. Some medical aid societies have gone for more than six months without paying a single dollar in this COVID-19 era. Service providers have been left without any option except to demand cash or shortfall upfront, thus putting more misery on patients. Members of medical aid societies should enquire with service providers on when medical aid societies last paid them. Harare City Council/private practitioners food handlers feud There has been acrimony from private practitioners about the way the city health department has handled the issue of food handlers’ certification. Council has claimed that many private practitioners have a tendency of making claims without examining patients, which has been denied by doctors. Council has refused to release medical certificate forms and its officials have gone around restaurants and supermarkets threatening that anyone who has a certificate not signed by council medical practitioners will be arrested. This is very unfair and it ridicules the prof
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 ruling Zanu PF party yesterday said it was supportive of government and Harare City Council’s proposed demolition of illegal structures, including those under co-operatives led by party members. The demolitions, according to council, are set to start on April 2 this year, with hundreds of houses set to be destroyed because they were built on illegally-acquired land.
BY LORRAINE MUROMO TEACHERS yesterday dismissed claims by government that it had released over $750 million to schools for procurement of COVID-19 personal protective equipment (PPE). Schools are set to open on March 15 and government has announced that it is equipping schools with PPE and other World Health Organisation (WHO)-stipulated COVID-19 necessities to ensure the safety of pupils and teachers. However, Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe president Takavafira Zhou yesterday alleged that government had not yet released the $750 million required to secure COVID-19 sundries for students and teachers. “Currently, schools are in a fix, and are struggling to ease financial constraints and accumulated debts since they used their own money last year to buy sanitisers among other related COVID-19 materials, the government has not refunded the money yet,” Zhou said. “Government lied that in the first phase they disbursed $600 million and an additional $150 million in the second phase to schools, yet the money never materialised. It might not be surprising that the money went into private pockets of corrupt officials.” He said schools were reluctant to use their own resources since government had failed to live by its promise. Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe president Obert Masaraure said: “Those alleged disbursements are a drop in the ocean as (compared) to international standards or what was proposed in the national budget by Finance minister Mthuli Ncube towards the funding of the education sector. “We have been querying the government about the disbursements. The last time, (Primary and Secondary Education) minister Cain Mathema claimed they were drilling boreholes that never materialised. “The education sector has been underfunded for a very long time and dirty hands go ahead to steal the little available resources, whereby corruption is compounding on underfunding. “We, therefore, urge government to exercise accountability and transparency on public funds in the education sector.” Contacted for comment, Mathema curtly said: “Despite what teachers’ unions are saying, we are continuing to open schools as directed by government.” Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Health chairperson Ruth Labode on Wednesday said that the country’s 136 000 teachers did not benefit from the 200 000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine availed by government. Recently, Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Primary and Secondary Education chairperson Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga also expressed concern over lack of investment by government in the education sector. “The education sector has been largely funded by parents themselves,” she said.
The new cases come from 1,187 samples tested on Saturday at border points and the Uganda Virus Research Institute.
At least 19 of the new cases are Ugandan truck drivers who entered the country through the Elegu and Busia border points while four cases were from community infections.
According to the Ministry of Health, all the community cases are contacts of truck drivers who tested positive for the virus.
Uganda's new cases come at a time when the number of cases reported on the African continent is on the rise.
WHO Regional Director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti says despite the rise in the number of cases, there is still hope that the effect of the disease on the continent might not be as dire as earlier predicted.
The Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 has warned Nigerians against large purchase of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19, saying the drug had not been certified for use.
\"We wish to reiterate that this drug has not being certified for use in treating COVID-19 in Nigeria by the relevant health and pharmaceutical authorities.
Although the World Health Organisation and other health experts have repeatedly warned that no drug has been approved for treating COVID-19 yet, statements by public officials including President Donald Trump of the U.S. and Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi State may have encouraged the mass purchase of chloroquine and its derivative, hydroxychloroquine, by Nigerians.
Mr Mohammed also said he had approved the use of the drug for COVID-19 patients in the state.
Mr Mustapha said May 20th served as a reminder to the world about the severity of the COVID-19 when the World Health Organisation (WHO) reminded the world that there was still a long way to go in fighting the pandemic, quoting Tedros Ghebreyesus, the WHO Director General, who said 106,000 cases were recorded globally in 24 hours, representing the highest single day number since the outbreak of the pandemic.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to threaten health and food systems in Africa and around the world, the 2020 Global Nutrition Report calls on governments, businesses and civil society to step up efforts to address malnutrition in all its forms.
As inequalities and malnutrition continue to sweep the world and Africa, the 2020 Global Nutrition Report stresses that the need to address malnutrition in all its forms by tackling injustices in food and health systems is now more urgent than ever.
Of 37 countries that struggle with three forms of malnutrition – childhood stunting, anaemia in women of reproductive age and overweight among women – 27 were in Africa.
Venkatesh Mannar, Co-Chair of the Report and Special Adviser on Nutrition to the Tata Cornell Agriculture Nutrition Initiative, said: “At a time when COVID-19 has further revealed the gaps in our food systems, we now have a unique opportunity to act in coordination to address them and ensure that healthy and sustainably produced food is the most accessible, affordable and desirable choice for all.”
Renata Micha, Co-Chair of the Report and Research Associate Professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, said: “Good nutrition is an essential defence strategy to protect populations against epidemics, release the burden on our health systems, deliver Universal Health Coverage and ultimately save lives.
[Vanguard] With the approval of the COVID-19 vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech, and Mordena Inc., mass vaccinations have since commenced in the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
Speaking at a briefing on Wednesday, WHO emergencies director Dr Mike Ryan warned against trying to predict when the virus would disappear.
The United Nations health agency has been releasing a raft of guidelines as to how operations should resume as lockdown measures continue to be eased across different countries globally.
Some of these guidelines include public health and social measures in schools and the workplace.
Since Covid-19, an infectious disease that primarily affects the lungs, was declared a pandemic on March 11, countries have implemented a raft of measures like restriction on movement, partial closure or closure of schools and businesses, quarantine in specific geographic areas, and international travel restrictions.
The international health agency advises that protective measures, including physical distancing, handwashing, respiratory etiquette, and, potentially, thermal monitoring, have to be established.
The Gauteng Health Department has been posting myth busters regarding the COVID-19 vaccine. Here’s to separating the truth from the tale.
UNITED NATIONS — Global human development – which can be measured as a combination of the world's education, health and living standards — could decline this year for the first time since the concept was introduced in 1990, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has warned.
With school closures, UNDP estimates of the “effective out-of-school rate”— the percentage of primary school-aged children, adjusted to reflect those without Internet access — indicate that 60 per cent of children are not getting an education, leading to global levels not seen since the 1980s.
According to a UNDP report released Wednesday, the drop in human development is expected to be much higher in developing countries that are less able to cope with the pandemic's social and economic fallout than richer nations.
In education, with schools closed and stark divides in access to online learning, UNDP estimates show that 86 per cent of children in primary education are now effectively out of school in countries with low human development, compared with just 20 per cent in countries with very high human development.
This is particularly important for the 'new necessities' of the 21st century, such as access to the Internet, which is helping us to benefit from tele-education, telemedicine, and to work from home,” says Pedro Conceição, director of the Human Development Report Office at UNDP.
KAA says passenger flights won’t resume soon at JKIA
Friday, May 15, 2020 16:17
By WACHIRA MWANGI |
Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.
FILE PHOTO | NMG
The Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) has denied that it plans to resume passenger flight operations at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.
This comes a day after an internal memo by JKIA Airport Manager Abel Godo to officials from the Aeronautical Operational Control (AOC), all government agencies, concessionaires, contractors, suppliers and service providers about the imminent resumption of passenger flights for a meeting leaked.
“In preparation of the imminent resumption of passenger operations at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, you are hereby invited to a virtual meeting to be held on Wednesday 13th May 2020 at 11.00hrs,” read the memo.
Moi International Airport Manager Paul Wafula confirmed that they do routine meetings internally to brainstorm on the measures to put in place just in case the travel ban is lifted.
The African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team – established by AU chairperson Cyril Ramaphosa – has secured a provisional 270 million vaccine doses for African countries.
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.
The devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Africa's economy has shown that the continent can ill-afford a further delay in the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), panelists in a web conference on Africa's economic recovery, post-COVID-19, said on Monday.
\"With the COVID-19 crisis, Africa must see the positive message that there comes a time when every groups of people should begin to fend for themselves and be independent and integrate the continent better in terms of trade and investment among ourselves as well as promote growth and development as a people, without always looking out for bailouts from outsiders,\" he said.
'ACFTA as the way'
Mr Oramah said the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed so many weaknesses across Africa, ranging from lack of basic infrastructure to appropriate economic policies to help drive growth and manage the crisis of current magnitude.
He said \"massive hunger is looming if nothing is done before the end of the pandemic,\" adding that \"if governments in Africa allow hunger to take over from COVID-19, the continent would likely see political problems, since hungry people would start agitating.\"
On developing opportunities for more global support against COVID-19, Mr Maurer said the current crisis has provided an excellent opportunity to address the high incidence of extreme poverty in Africa, which has constrained investment.
World Health Organisation (WHO) member states have signed a resolution that calls for COVID-19 vaccines to be classified as a global public good for health in order to bring the pandemic to an end.
This follows China's commitment made by President Xi Jinping during the two-day World Health Assembly to make the vaccine a global public good, once one is available.
It calls for countries to ensure the fair distribution of all quality essential health technologies required to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic.
This includes open innovation across all relevant domains and the sharing of all relevant information with WHO.
As the world continues to battle COVID-19, Ghebreyesus called on governments to ensure that health systems continue to function to avoid the risk brought on by the suspension of essential services, like child immunisation.
