Category: Medical

The U.N. Children’s Fund warns an estimated 100,000 children in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray province are at risk of life-threatening severe acute malnutrition over the next 12 months. This is a tenfold increase over the annual average caseload in this war-torn region.

A UNICEF official who has just returned from Tigray says her agency’s worst fears about the health and wellbeing of children in this war-torn region have been confirmed.

Marixie Mercado says the malnutrition crisis has worsened because of extensive systematic damage to the food, water, health care, nutrition and sanitation systems upon which children and their families depend for their survival.

She says a massive scale up of humanitarian assistance in the region is needed to reverse this catastrophic crisis.

“We need unfettered access into Tigray and across the region, in order to provide support that children and women urgently need,” Mercado said. “Right now, we have just 6,900 cartons of life-saving ready-to-eat therapeutic foods in our warehouses in Tigray. That is enough to treat severe malnutrition in just 6,900 children.”

Mercado visited several previously inaccessible areas in Tigray, places that have virtually had no assistance over the past months. She says she was appalled by the overcrowded, unsanitary sites hosting displaced families—conditions that are ripe for disease outbreaks.

But what struck her most, she says, was the acute suffering and mental anguish of these people who have had to endure multiple atrocities.

“One young woman who is a survivor of sexual assault, she watched her grandmother get killed,” Mercado said. “She was raped by several men as she watched her nine-month-old baby being tossed around by other men … It is not the assault itself that is the worst part, but it is the psychological damage that people now have to deal with for a very long time.”

Mercado reports the recent uptick of fighting in neighboring Afar and Amhara regions is creating another catastrophic situation for civilians in the region. She says nearly 1.5 million people already are facing acute food insecurity.

She warns child malnutrition will rise beyond current alarming levels and leading to more deaths if insufficient humanitarian assistance reaches this widening area of conflict.

Source: Voice of America

Thursday marks the second and final day of the Global Education Summit in London, hosted by Kenya and the United Kingdom. International governments and corporations pledged to donate $4 billion for the Global Partnership for Education, which provides fair access to public education in 90 countries and territories that account for 80% of children out of school.

The summit emphasized the importance of equitable access to education amid warnings that COVID-19 has exacerbated already under-resourced public education programs in less economically developed countries. Experts alerted the organization that it was unlikely for those forced out of schools due to the pandemic to return.

Julia Gillard, former Australian prime minister and chair of the partnership, noted that the pandemic affected access to education in all nations but poorer countries where families may lack internet connection or electricity were devastated.

Gillard said that this pledge puts the partnership on track for completing the goal of raising $5 billion over five years.

Ambassador Raychelle Omamo, Kenyan Cabinet secretary for foreign affairs, warned of the pandemic’s devastating impact on global education, saying “education is the pathway, the way forward.”

Malala Yousafzai, a Nobel Peace Prize winner from Pakistan and activist for female education, spoke to the summit leaders and stressed the significance of accessible education for young girls who are often discriminated against. She warned that 130 million girls were unable to attend school because of the pandemic and said that “their futures are worth fighting for.”

Addressing the conference with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced his government’s commitment to girls’ education and its goal of enrolling 40 million more girls in school by 2026.

“Enabling them to learn and reach their full potential is the single greatest thing we can do to recover from this crisis,” Johnson said.

Johnson faced criticism for advocating for girls’ education while simultaneously cutting the U.K.’s overseas aid budget. The prime minister pledged $602 million to the Global Partnership for Education, while slashing $5.6 billion from the U.K.’s international development allowance.

British officials said that the budget cut is temporary and was a necessary action due to the economic strain from pandemic recovery.

The Global Partnership for Education also received criticism for continuing funding to partner countries that openly discriminate against students. Investigations by Human Rights Watch uncovered open exclusion of pregnant students in Tanzania and Rohingya refugee children in Bangladesh.

Source: Voice of America

The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says the continent’s death toll from COVID-19 has jumped 17 percent in the past month. In a media briefing Thursday, the Africa CDC said the infection rate has also increased and warned some countries are testing less often for the virus than needed.

In his weekly online press briefing from Ethiopia, the head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, John Nkengosong, gave a grim picture of the continent’s COVID-19 situation during the month of July.

“There has been an average increase of four percent of new cases over that time period … in terms of new deaths in the last four weeks, we’ve recorded an average of 17 percent new deaths [in the continent’s most populous countries] over same period … in terms of testing as a continent, as of today we have conducted about 58 million COVID tests and last week alone the continent conducted about 1.3 million tests but that represents a decrease of 19 percent over the previous week,” Nkengosong said. “Overall positivity rate stands at 11.2 percent.”

Overall, the continent recorded 239,000 coronavirus cases last week and 6,700 deaths, an increase of 700 deaths over the previous week.

The Africa CDC blames the increased deaths on virus-spreading events like the recent looting in South Africa and the celebration of Eid al-Hajj, the end of the Muslim pilgrimage in Mecca.

It also blames the delta variant, the most contagious form of coronavirus, which has spread across the globe in recent weeks.

The continent’s public health agency was happy that some African countries like South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya have managed to limit the virus while allowing economic activities to go on.

Africa has so far received about 80 million vaccine doses from COVAX, the UN-backed global initiative to distribute vaccines to low- and middle-income countries.

The senior director for Africa at the U.S. National Security Council, Dana Banks, said Wednesday her country has started to ship some ten million vaccines to Africa.

“We are happy to announce that we will be sending over 5 million doses to South Africa … of Pfizer vaccines as well as 4 million doses of Moderna vaccine to Nigeria…. So we’re very excited about that and we hope that these will go a long way in helping to provide safety and health security for the people of Nigeria and South Africa, which will then enable them to get back to their regular activities, their economic activities, and help them to build back better,” Banks said.

The World Health Organization has said at least 700 million vaccines will be sent to Africa by the end of the year, enough to vaccinate about 30 percent of the continent’s 1.3 billion people.

However, Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director, said African governments and health officials need to do more to encourage people to get the vaccines.

“With the expected influx of vaccines, it’s crucial that countries scale up all the aspects of vaccine rollout to reach as many people as possible,” Moeti said. “This entails mobilizing adequate resources including finances for the vaccination activities, for the logistics and for the personnel as well as addressing any concerns by communities including those fueled by misinformation to increase vaccine confidence and demand.”

So far, less than 2 percent of Africans have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. The continent has officially recorded 6.5 million cases of the disease, although the real number is believed to be significantly higher.

Source: Voice of America

The World Health Organization warns that millions of people in conflict-ridden Tigray in northern Ethiopia lack access to basic health care and risk falling ill. The agency has been able to reach only a fraction of them.

According to the WHO, about 3.8 million people in Tigray need health assistance. The agency wants to scale up its health services to assist at least 2.3 million this year but only 87,000 have been reached since May 1.

WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib says lack of cash and fuel, limited access, insecurity, and depleted medical stocks are some of the many obstacles hampering WHO’s life-saving operation.

“What we are most concerned with is the fact that it is the season for cholera and cholera is a problem in the region,” said Chaib. “Measles, malaria, providing health care for people who are injured from the current conflict, and also people who need help. For example, pregnant women, lactating women, children with vaccination. All are very urgent needs.”

A couple of months ago, a first round of an oral cholera vaccination campaign reached more than two million people out of the four million targeted. Chaib says holding a second round is key to reaching more at risk people.

Chaib, however, says the campaign cannot happen if the WHO is unable to get enough vaccine supplies and maintain a cold chain to store the doses. This, she notes, is difficult because access to electricity is often unavailable and fuel stocks are dwindling.

Chaib notes multiple cases of violence or threats of violence against aid workers are hampering efforts to take actions to respond to diseases of epidemic potential, including cholera, measles, malaria and COVID-19.

Another problem of deep concern is the rising level of severe acute malnutrition in the Tigray region. In the first two weeks of this month, Chaib says 458 severely acute malnourished children were admitted to stabilization centers for specialized care.

“When you get a severely malnourished child and he gets a disease like malaria and measles, it is really a death sentence for that child,” said Chaib. “We have 92 stabilization centers previously in place, but we have only 23 that are operational. Now, 200 more would be needed to address the health risk of malnutrition.”

More than nine months ago, Ethiopian government forces launched a military offensive to gain control of the Tigray region. After the government declared a unilateral cease-fire on May 8, Tigrayan rebels quickly retook the regional capital Mekelle, and fighting goes on.

Under these circumstances, WHO says restoring health services is extremely challenging. It says health facilities have been damaged, equipment looted and destroyed, and essential medicines are lacking.

Additionally, it says many health workers no longer are available because they are not being paid and face dangers from the prevailing chaotic conditions.

Source: Voice of America

A man accused of attempting to stab Mali’s interim President Assimi Goita last week has died in hospital while in the custody of security services, the government said in a statement on Sunday.

Goita, a special forces colonel who orchestrated two coups in the last year, escaped unharmed after the assailant tried to stab him during prayers at a mosque in the capital Bamako on Tuesday.

Security agents threw a man into the back of a military pickup truck, video obtained by Reuters showed, as Goita was ringed by bodyguards.

“During the investigations … his state of health deteriorated,” the statement said. He was taken to hospital, where he died, it said.

An investigation is underway to determine the cause of death.

Mali, the theatre of French-supported operations against al Qaeda and Islamic State-linked insurgents for a decade, was thrown into political turmoil after a military junta led by Goita toppled President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in August 2020.

Goita served as vice-president to transitional leader Bah Ndaw until the latter’s ouster in May.

Source: Voice of America

Cameroon says hundreds of civilians have fled Sagme, a northern village on the border with Nigeria, after a Boko Haram attack Saturday that left eight government troops dead and 13 wounded, according to a press release. The Cameroonian military deployed to the area and said fighters were also killed.

Cameroon’s military says about 90 heavily armed terrorists on six military tactical vehicles and several motorcycles entered the country from Nigeria Saturday, launching attacks on Sagme village.

Sagme is located in Cameroon’s Far North region that shares a border with Nigeria’s Borno state, said to be an epicenter of jihadist group Boko Haram.

The press release by Army Captain Cyrille Serge Atonfack Guemo says the troops fought back but did not say how many combatants were killed. Guemo said the fighters escaped to Nigeria carrying bodies of their dead peers.

Midjiyawa Bakari, governor of Cameroon’s Far North region, said six of the Cameroonian troops were killed on the spot while the other two died while being transported to a hospital in the northern town of Maroua. He said many troops suffered severe wounds during the intense shootout with Boko Haram terrorists but managed to escape. Bakari said he is extending the condolences of Cameroon’s President Paul Biya to the families of the soldiers killed.

Cameroon’s military said Biya immediately ordered the deployment of more troops to secure the country’s territory and civilians.

Bakari said several hundred civilians escaped from Sagme and neighboring villages to the bush for safety. He said the fleeing civilians should return to their villages as the military has been redeployed to protect lives and property.

He said people who think that Boko Haram has been eradicated from northern Cameroon are wrong. He said he is calling on civilians to help the military fight the terrorists through information sharing.

Bakari said he has asked traditional rulers, the clergy and community leaders to remobilize self-defense groups, especially along the border with Nigeria.

The Nigerian government has not issued a statement regarding the attack. But the Multinational Joint Task Force of the Lake Chad Basin Commission, comprising troops from Cameroon, Nigeria, Chad and Benin, has acknowledged the incident and said the fighters crossed over from Nigeria.

Security analyst and former military spokesman Didier Badjeck says the Cameroonian military alone cannot defeat Boko Haram terrorists.

He said Boko Haram has been infiltrating many localities on the northern border with Nigeria and that it is very difficult for the military to detect the terrorists if civilians do not collaborate by reporting strangers in all border towns and villages. Badjeck said churches and mosques should ask civilians to stop lodging visitors and giving strangers food, thinking that they are obeying religious teachings.

Badjeck said fighters may be disguising themselves as ranchers moving around in search of food for their cattle or as farmers visiting markets to sell crops.

In December 2020, Bakari said Boko Haram was establishing ties with top officials of his region. The revelation came after Cameroon’s military arrested Blama Malla, a former lawmaker, for allegedly supplying cattle to the Nigerian terrorist group. Malla was detained in the northern town of Mora.

Boko Haram terrorists have been fighting for 11 years to create an Islamic caliphate in northeast Nigeria. The fighting has spread to Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Benin, with regular killings, burnings of mosques, churches, markets and schools, and attacks on military installations.

The United Nations reports that Boko Haram violence has killed 30,000 people and displaced about two million in Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad.

Source: Voice of America

The World Health Organization is urging African countries to ramp up preparations for COVID-19 vaccination rollouts in anticipation of the imminent arrival of millions of vaccine doses on the continent. WHO reports more than 6.2 million people have been infected with COVID-19 and more than 159,000 have died.

New cases of COVID-19 in Africa have fallen slightly following eight weeks of a fast-moving surge. The decline is attributed to a sharp drop in cases in South Africa. However, the World Health Organization reports the situation could change quickly as violent protests and mass gatherings in the country could trigger another rise in cases.

WHO regional director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti says Africa’s third wave is not over. She notes 21 countries, three more than last week, are experiencing a resurgence. She says the highly contagious delta variant has now been detected in 26 countries and 13 of them need more oxygen due to a surge in cases.

She says Africa continues to lag in COVID-19 vaccines, with just 20 million Africans or 1.5 percent of the continent’s population fully vaccinated. But she says Africa’s supply crunch is starting to ease.

She says the first delivery of doses donated by the United States through the COVAX Facility is arriving in Africa this week and altogether nearly 60 million doses from other sources are expected in the coming weeks.

“African countries must go all out and speed up their vaccine rollouts by five to six times if they are to get all these doses into arms and fully vaccinate the most vulnerable 10 percent of their people by the end of September,” Moeti said. “Around 3.5 to four million doses are administered each week on the continent, but this needs to rise to 21 million doses each week at the very least to meet this goal.”

Moeti says more than half a billion doses are expected through COVAX alone this year. This massive influx, she says, means countries must up their game.

“We need to address the issue of vaccine hesitancy,” Moeti said. “So, this communication—targeting people, targeting the messages that we are tracking and the misinformation or the fears and misconceptions is absolutely vital now because the time to mobilize people to be ready to be vaccinated is not when the vaccines are landing. It is now in this narrow period of a window that we have to do all of this.”

Regional director Moeti says countries must scale up their operations. She says countries need sufficient vaccine sites, storage facilities, adequate transport, plans for distribution and, of course, health care workers to carry out this life-saving activity.

Source: Voice of America

Pfizer and BioNTech have reached an agreement with a South African company to produce their COVID-19 vaccine for distribution in Africa, the biotechnology companies said Wednesday.

The Biovac Institute in Cape Town will manufacture 100 million doses of the vaccine annually starting in 2022. The company will mix vaccine ingredients it receives from Europe, place them in vials and package them for distribution to the 54 countries in Africa.

The agreement may eventually help alleviate vaccine shortages on a continent where the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says less than 2% of its population of 1.3 billion has received at least one dose.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said the company’s goal is to provide people throughout Africa with the vaccine, a departure from previous bilateral agreements that saw most doses being sold to wealthy countries.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is already being manufactured in South Africa in a similar “fill and finish” process that has the capacity to produce more than 200 million doses annually. The vaccines are also being distributed across the African continent.

Source: Voice of America

Police said Sunday that 13 people were killed and many others seriously burned when an overturned petrol tanker exploded in western Kenya as crowds thronged to collect the spilling fuel.

The fuel truck collided with another vehicle and toppled over late Saturday near Malanga, some 315 kilometers northwest of Nairobi, on the busy highway between Kisumu and the border with Uganda.

Onlookers rushed to the scene with jerrycans but the cargo exploded, engulfing those around in a fireball.

“It burst into flames as they scooped fuel that was flowing,” said Charles Chacha, a local police chief in Siaya County where the accident occurred.

“We counted 12 bodies at the scene. Another person died in hospital from their injuries.”

Fire crews arrived on the scene two hours later to douse the inferno while those injured in the blast were taken to hospital.

“Many others have been taken to hospital with serious burns and they include young children,” Chacha said.

The cause of the explosion is not yet known.

Images broadcast by Kenyan media showed the blazing tanker lighting up the night sky and in the morning following, crowds gaping at the twisted, smoldering wreckage.

Deadly fuel truck accidents along perilous roads are not uncommon in Kenya and the wider East Africa region.

In 2009, more than 100 people were killed when a petrol tanker overturned northwest of Nairobi and an explosion consumed those gathering to collect leaking fuel.

More recently, at least 100 people were killed when a tanker exploded in Tanzania in 2019 while in 2015 more than 200 perished in a similar accident in South Sudan.

Source: Voice of America

BLANTYRE, MALAWI – The Malawi government has announced it will start inoculating its citizens with several COVID-19 vaccines in an effort to protect more of its population amid growing coronavirus infections. Health Minister Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda says the extra vaccine is necessary to fill a gap.

Health Minister Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda says the COVID-19 vaccines Malawi has added include Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Sputnik, Sinovac and Sinopharm.

Kandodo, who also is the co-chairperson of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, says the country is expected to receive a donation of 300,000 doses each of the Pfizer and Johnson and Johnson vaccines in early August.

“We have done this because we don’t want to put all our eggs in one basket, as has been the case,” said Kandodo. “That’s why we have opened up to include other vaccines, which can fill the gaps that would be created.”

She assured Malawians that the government has independently verified the safety and efficacy of the newly recommended vaccines.

Malawi stopped vaccinating its citizens in June when it ran out of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Records show that about 400,000 people have been vaccinated — far short of the 11 million people needed to reach herd immunity.

In May, Malawi destroyed about 20,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine, which expired in April.

The incineration was largely because many Malawians were reluctant to be vaccinated due to concerns about the vaccine’s safety and efficacy.

Malawi is expected, however, to receive a fresh consignment of 192,000 doses of the AstraZeneca next week.

But Kandodo said the vaccine will be restricted to unvaccinated health workers and those who already have a single dose.

“We know there are a lot of people who are now willing to take the jab. But bear with us, other vaccines are coming,” said Kandodo. “And the importance of Johnson &Johnson’s is that it’s a single dose vaccine. So, those who have never taken any vaccines will take these Johnson & Johnson’s vaccines.”

Health rights campaigner Maziko Matemba is advising the government to make vaccine available through a standardized program and stop relying on donated vaccine.

“Vaccine has to be part of our routine program so that everyone who wants that vaccine needs to get it,” said Matemba. “Once you have the rights information and you are convinced that this is the vaccine that can save me, you should be able to get it, other than passing two to three weeks without vaccines at all.”

Kandodo said the problem Malawi is facing, though, is not about money to buy the vaccine but where to find it.

She said the Malawian government has just received about $30 million from the World Bank to help purchase COVID-19 vaccine.

Source: Voice of America