Login to BlackFacts.com using your favorite Social Media Login. Click the appropriate button below and you will be redirected to your Social Media Website for confirmation and then back to Blackfacts.com once successful.
Enter the email address and password you used to join BlackFacts.com. If you cannot remember your login information, click the “Forgot Password” link to reset your password.
BY MIRIAM MANGWAYA THE Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights) has filed an urgent chamber application at the High Court seeking an order to compel government to provide a COVID-19 national vaccination roll-out plan. In papers filed at the High Court, ZimRights, represented by Tendai Biti of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, wants the government to present the budget for COVID-19 vaccine before Parliament. Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga who is the Health minister, Finance minister Mthuli Ncube and President Emmerson Mnangagwa were cited as respondents. ZimRights wants the government to provide the COVID-19 national vaccination deployment plan within seven days of the High Court order. In his founding affidavit filed at the courts, ZimRights national director Dzikamai Bere stated that section 29 of the Constitution obliges the government to take all practical measures to ensure the provision of basic accessible and adequate health services throughout Zimbabwe. In the face of a ravaging pandemic that has claimed lives of over two million people globally and over 1 200 in Zimbabwe, ZimRights is calling for government to act timeously and save lives from the pandemic. “Section 29(3), in particular, obliges the state to take all preventive measures within the limits of resources available to it, including education and public awareness programmes against the spread of diseases. Section 76 obliges the State to take reasonable legislative and other measures, within the limits of the resources available to it, to achieve the progressive realisation of the right to healthcare,” Bere said. He also urged government to take a cue from other countries and take the necessary steps and a human rights-centred approach to fight coronavirus. “We are simply asking the government to lead, and save lives.” ZimRights said. “We don’t understand how anyone can fail to agree with us given the far-reaching consequences of inaction.” The World Health Organisation is urging governments to avail factual information on COVID-19 to the public. In its efforts to combat the spread of the deadly virus, ZimRights provided urgent humanitarian support to marginalised communities and institutions reaching out to over 17 000 people and 26 institutions that include rural clinics, schools, quarantine centres and correctional facilities. Follow Miriam on Twitter@FloMangwaya
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.
With two members of the far-right Crusaders group now behind bars, a third - Harry Knoesen - will contest the terror charges filed against him.
World Cancer Day raises awareness of the global impact of cancer and increase understanding of prevention, detection, treatment and care.
A leading US Intelligence advisor has taken a firm stance on the origins of COVID-19, insisting that the virus came from a biological weapons lab in Wuhan.
The court set aside the report, but the cost order has been dismissed.
Ebenezer D. Bassett was appointed U.S. Minister Resident to Haiti in 1869, making him the first African American diplomat. For eight years, the educator, abolitionist, and black rights activist oversaw bilateral relations through bloody civil warfare and coups détat on the island of Hispaniola. Bassett served with distinction, courage, and integrity in one of the most crucial, but difficult postings of his time.
Born in Connecticut on October 16, 1833, Ebenezer D. Bassett was the second child of Eben Tobias and Susan Gregory. In a rarity during the mid-1800s, Bassett attended college, becoming the first black student to integrate the Connecticut Normal School in 1853. He then taught in New Haven, befriending the legendary abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Later, he became the principal of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s Institute for Colored Youth (ICY).
During the Civil War, Bassett became one of the city’s leading voices into the cause behind that conflict, the liberation of four million black slaves and helped recruit African American soldiers for the Union Army. In nominating Bassett to become Minister Resident to Haiti, President Ulysses S. Grant made him one of the highest ranking black members of the United States government.
During his tenure the American Minister Resident also dealt with cases of citizen commercial claims, diplomatic immunity for his consular and commercial agents, hurricanes, fires, and numerous tropical diseases.
The case that posed the greatest challenge to him, however, was Haitian political refugee General Pierre Boisrond Canal. The general was among the band of young leaders who had successfully ousted the former President Sylvan Salnave from power in 1869. By the time of the subsequent Michel Domingue regime in the mid 1870s Canal had retired to his home outside the capital. Domingue, the new Haitian President, however, brutally hunted down any perceived threat to his power including Canal.
General Canal came to Bassett and requested political asylum. A standoff
[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.
