Category: Medical/Health Care

ADDIS ABABA, The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Africa reached 8,134,511 as of yesterday afternoon, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said.

The Africa CDC, the specialised healthcare agency of the African Union, in its continental COVID-19 dashboard, indicated that the death toll from the pandemic across the continent stands at 206,202.

Some 7,454,718 patients across the continent have recovered from the disease so far.

South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia and Ethiopia are among the countries with the most cases in the continent, according to the agency.

In terms of the caseload, southern Africa is the most affected region, followed by the northern and eastern parts of the continent, while central Africa is the least affected region in the continent, according to the Africa

Source: NAM News Network

COVID-19 vaccines are now being distributed to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), with global urgency surrounding national vaccination plans. LMICs have significant experience implementing vaccination campaigns to respond to epidemic threats but are often hindered by chronic health system challenges. We sought to identify transferable lessons for COVID-19 vaccination from the rollout of three vaccines that targeted adult groups in Africa and South America: MenAfriVac (meningitis A); 17D (yellow fever) and rVSV-ZEBOV (Ebola virus disease).

Methods We conducted a rapid literature review and 24 semi-structured interviews with technical experts who had direct implementation experience with the selected vaccines in Africa and South America. We identified barriers, enablers, and key lessons from the literature and from participants’ experiences. Interview data were analysed thematically according to seven implementation domains.

Results Participants highlighted multiple components of vaccination campaigns that are instrumental for achieving high coverage. Community engagement is an essential and effective tool, requiring dedicated time, funding and workforce. Involving local health workers is a key enabler, as is collaborating with community leaders to map social groups and tailor vaccination strategies to their needs. Vaccination team recruitment and training strategies need to be enhanced to support vaccination campaigns. Although recognised as challenging, integrating vaccination campaigns with other routine health services can be highly beneficial if well planned and coordinated across health programmes and with communities.

Conclusion As supplies of COVID-19 vaccines become available to LMICs, countries need to prepare to efficiently roll out the vaccine, encourage uptake among eligible groups and respond to potential community concerns. Lessons from the implementation of these three vaccines that targeted adults in LMICs can be used to inform best practice for COVID-19 and other epidemic vaccination campaigns.

Source: British Medical Journal

COTONOU, BENIN – Benin set up a service early in the COVID-19 pandemic to allow people to register their business online, and now the West African country is the world’s fastest place to start a business, according to a U.N. agency.

Sandra Idossou, owner of a store selling art in Cotonou, Benin, submitted her business application online and received approval and legal documents within three hours.

She said if the e-registration system did not exist and she instead had to go stand in line to start a business, she never would have done it.

To create her business, Idossou went online to monentreprise.bj, a platform in Benin to create and formally start a business. The site was launched in February 2020 by the country’s Investment and Export Promotion Agency, which did not want people to come into their offices during the pandemic.

Applicants fill out the required information, download the required documents and make a payment online. The documents arrive at the agency’s headquarters, where staff verify the information and mail business certificates to those who are approved.

Laurent Gangbes, general manager of the Investment and Export Promotion Agency, said in 2019 the agency was at 28,000 businesses created. In 2020, the figure went to over 41,000. He said the agency now processes an application in about three hours.

The online service helped make Benin the fastest place in the world to start a company, according to the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development.

The businesses must be located in Benin; however, people abroad can use the service if they are in the process of setting up a business inside the country.

Economists like Albert Honlonkou see big benefits for entrepreneurs.

He said the online service reduces costs, reduces delays and avoids corruption. It also avoids carrying papers around and, in the COVID period, it avoids contacts.

The Investment and Export Promotion Agency said it will continue to review the procedures and work with the private sector to further improve the process.

Sourrce: Voice of America

ADDIS ABABA, The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Africa reached 7,844,232 as of Friday afternoon, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said.

The Africa CDC, the specialized healthcare agency of the African Union, said the death toll from the pandemic across the continent stands at 197,986.

Some 7,015,476 patients across the continent have recovered from the disease so far, it was noted.

South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia and Ethiopia are among the countries with the most cases in the continent, according to the agency.

In terms of the caseload, southern Africa is the most affected region, followed by the northern and eastern parts of the continent, while central Africa is the least affected region in the continent, it was noted.

Source: Nam News Network

GENEVA – The World Health Organization reports Africa will fail to reach the global target of vaccinating 10% of vulnerable populations against COVID-19 in every country by the end of September.

WHO’s regional director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, blames the situation on what she says is the hoarding of life-saving vaccines by the world’s wealthier countries.

She notes African countries have received more than 143 million doses and inoculated 39 million people, or less than 3% percent of the continent’s population. This, she says, compares to more than 50% in the European Union and United States.

“Equally concerning is the continuing inequity in the distribution of doses. Africa accounts for just 2% of the over five billion doses given globally. This percentage, I’m afraid, has not shifted in months… If current trends hold, 42 of Africa’s 54 countries — nearly 80% — are set to miss the September target, I’m afraid.”

Africa’s third wave of the coronavirus peaked in July; however, WHO reports 24 of Africa’s 54 countries are still reporting high or fast-rising case numbers. The situation is particularly acute in west, central and east Africa.

The latest WHO figures put the number of coronavirus infections at nearly eight million, with more than 214,000 new cases reported this past week. Of the 196,000 Africans who have died from this infection, more than 5,500 lost their lives last week.

Moeti says the pandemic is still raging on the continent, noting every hour, 26 Africans die of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. She warns people must not let down their guard, as they remain at risk of becoming severely ill or dying if vaccination rates remain low.

“With concerns about variants and political pressures driving the introduction of booster shots and countries with high vaccination rates expanding their rollouts to reach to lower-risk groups, our hope for global vaccine equity is once again being challenged,” she said.

Moeti says she is encouraged the pace of vaccine shipments to Africa is picking up but adds dose-sharing arrangements must continue to be improved. She says international solidarity remains key to the global recovery from this pandemic.

Source: Voice of America

HARARE, ZIMBABWE – Zimbabwe resumed in-classroom teaching this week, but thousands of teachers are protesting salaries that are below the poverty level and a lack of personal protective equipment against COVID-19.

Zimbabwe’s Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union says it will only call off the strike when the government addresses the concerns.

“And there is negligence on the part of the authorit(ies) to make sure that there is enough safety to guarantee our teachers and learners from the pandemic,” said Robson Chere, secretary general of the teachers union. “They should have been providing adequate water supply, enough PPEs. Arcturus Primary School, which is down here, hasn’t even water. It’s messy. It’s a disaster. We are sitting on a time bomb for both learners and teachers.”

Authorities did not allow VOA into Arcturus Primary School, which is about 40 kilometers east of Harare.

Some students around Harare have been going to school since Monday to try to learn among themselves, as there are no teachers.

The teachers union warns that classrooms may turn into COVID-19 superspreaders. But Taungana Ndoro, director of communications and advocacy at Zimbabwe’s Education Ministry, says the government has been working to ensure classrooms are safe.

“We have been putting in new infrastructure to ensure that we decongest the existing infrastructure to ensure that there is social and physical distancing for the prevention and management of COVID-19,” Ndoro said.

“We have also made sure that our schools have adequate supplies of sanitizers and water. So, it is looking good. We have got single-seated desks now, instead of two- or three-seated desks. This is to encourage social distancing. We do not have bunk beds anymore in our boarding schools. We have got single beds and spacing of at least one-and-half to two meters. So, it is encouraging.”

UNICEF Zimbabwe has been helping students and the government during the COVID-19 lockdown.

“The two-key approaches were, one: How we can support the loss of learning as a result of school closure. The second one was: How to keep the school safe and ready for children to return to school,” said Niki Abrishamian, UNICEF Zimbabwe’s education manager. “We managed to produce more than 1,600 radio lessons as part of alternative learning approaches. We had to look at how to take learning to the children, especially when they were at home and did not have access to schooling.”

Zimbabwe’s teachers hope such organizations can assist the government and supply the resources they require — adequate PPEs against COVID-19 and salaries that allow them to live above the poverty line.

Zimbabwe currently has 124,773 confirmed coronavirus infections and 4,419 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University, which is tracking the global outbreak.

Source: Voice of America

BLANTYRE, MALAWI – Malawi president Lazarus Chakwera has urged southern African leaders to increase efforts to combat the coronavirus pandemic and called on wealthy nations to stop hoarding vaccine.

The Malawi leader was speaking at the annual summit of the 16-member Southern African Development Community in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe.

Speaking during the televised function Tuesday, Chakwera, who is also SADC’s current chairperson, said it was concerning that, despite the devastating social and economic impact of the COVID-19, wealthy nations continue hoarding vaccine.

Statistics show that less than 2% of Africa’s population is fully vaccinated. That is low compared with the rest of the world.

Chakwera blamed it on inequalities and disparities in the distribution and production of COVID-19 vaccine.

He said it is symptomatic of an old geopolitical framework that regards some human lives as more worthy of saving than others.

“Our message to those countries that perpetuate and promote those frameworks is simple, ‘You are using a failed and tired formula’. African countries are full members of the global community, period,” Chakwera said. “As such for the sake of human dignities everywhere, we as African have a moral duty to refuse to be treated as second-class citizens.”

Chakwera said that thinking would make it difficult for the region to reach herd immunity and reduce high infection rates.

Dr. Vera Songwe is executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. She said the Africa Vaccines Acquisition Task Team, put together by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, has procured 400 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine for the continent.

Songwe also said Africa needs to do more than just procure vaccine.

“We also need to produce on the continent,” Songwe said. “SADC region is demonstrating its capacity do that by starting in South Africa with production of vaccines in South Africa. This is for us, as a continent I think, a first demonstration that Africa coming together can effectively [go] forward better sustainably in the crisis.”

The summit also aims to promote regional trade and building a regional defense force after its first deployment to fight insurgents in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province.

Speaking through a translator, Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi thanked the SADC for authorizing the deployment.

“We congratulate countries of the region for the brotherhood and prompt solidarity demonstrated by the deployment of SADC standby force capabilities in the spirit of SADC Mutual Defense Pact which as launched on the 9th August 2021 in Pemba city,” Nyusi said.

Nyusi said he would speak more on the issue during a closed-door session.

The summit is expected to end Wednesday when a communiqué on resolutions will be read.

Source: Voice of America

GENEVA – The World Health Organization has begun giving the Ebola vaccine to high-risk people in Ivory Coast, after a woman was diagnosed with the Ebola virus in Abidjan.

On Saturday, Ivory Coast declared its first case of Ebola in more than 25 years. An 18-year-old woman who arrived by bus from Guinea in Abidjan, a city of nearly five million inhabitants, was found to be infected with the deadly virus.

Officials have responded swiftly. Within 48 hours after the outbreak was declared, they began vaccinating people who had contact with the Ebola patient, as well as first responders and health workers.

World Health Organization spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said the vaccination campaign was able to get off the ground quickly because surplus vaccine doses the WHO had used to fight a four-month-long outbreak in Guinea were rapidly sent to Ivory Coast.

“This swift response is a reminder of how crucial preparedness and surveillance are to minimize the potential damage and to try to limit and to stop the spread of the virus by breaking that transmission chain,” he said.

The 18-year-old patient is currently receiving treatment in a local hospital, Jasarevic said, adding that health officials are tracing the nine people with whom she had come in contact. There is one suspect case.

Jasarevic added there is no indication the cases of Ebola in Ivory Coast are linked to the monthslong Ebola outbreak in Guinea earlier this year.

“Preliminary investigations and genomic sequencing to identify the strain show that there is a close link to the 2014 to 2016 outbreak in West Africa,” he said. “And we are probably looking here at the Zaire strain of the virus as well. Now, further investigations are needed really to confirm these early results.”

Since the Ebola outbreak was declared in Guinea in mid-February, WHO has been helping six countries, including Ivory Coast, prepare for a potential outbreak. This includes support in disease surveillance and screenings at border crossings, as well as setting up rapid response teams and improving testing and treatment.

An Ebola outbreak centered on Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone killed more than 11,000 people between 2014 and 2016.

Source: Voice of America