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[Premium Times] Described as neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) by the global health body, they are viral, parasitic and bacterial diseases that mainly affect the world's poorest people.
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 invasion of the Capitol and the Democrats’ victory in Georgia will change the course of the Biden presidency
Nigerian authorities have warned on Friday against the circulation of fake coronavirus vaccines in the country, where 10 million real doses of the shots are expected in March.
[Nation] Evidence of real economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic has started to manifest itself, with the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) for the first time surpassing its revenue collection target in December.
[Premium Times] According to her, the Pfizer vaccine and the AstraZeneca one were presently being negotiated so that poor countries don't have to stand in a queue behind rich countries.
Professor Peter Figueroa, one of Jamaica’s leading epidemiologists, said that if visitors from the United Kingdom (UK) to Jamaica in the last few weeks were observing strict quarantine measures, the risk of transmission of a new variant of...
[Radio Dabanga] Khartoum -- A digital meeting of the Sudanese, Egyptian and Ethiopian ministers of Foreign Affairs and Water Resources yesterday failed to reach agreement on a formula to continue negotiations on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
[Monitor] Government through Ministry of Tourism will spend $600 million (Shs2.2 trillion) in developing tourism infrastructure across the country in the next five years.
Despite being declared as one of the current hotspots for COVID-19 transmissions in the island, the parish of St Ann has a recovery rate that is higher than the national trend. Noting that the recovery rate for St Ann is over 85 per cent, medical...
[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.
A strawberry-flavoured tablet for children living with HIV will be rolled out in African countries in 2021.
MILAN, Italy (AP) - Shareholders of Fiat Chrysler and PSA Peugeot voted yesterday to merge and create the world's fourth-largest auto company which, its architects hope, can more readily take on an enormous technological shift in the industry.
[New Times] Rwanda's green coffee export was 19,723 tonnes during last Fiscal Year (2019/2020), and generated $60.4 million (about Rwf57 billion), according to figures from the National Agricultural Export Development Board (NAEB).
TULUM, Mexico (AP) - The friends from Jackson, Mississippi, relaxed on lounge chairs dug into a white sand beach and romped in the turquoise Caribbean waters, grateful for a break from the pandemic winter in the United States.
[WHO] Around 1.8 billion people are at heightened risk of COVID-19 and other diseases because they use or work in health care facilities without basic water services, warn WHO and UNICEF.
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.
[SAnews.gov.za] South Africa has recorded over 20 000 new COVID-19 cases two days in a row, the latest statistics reveal.
Chairperson of the African Union (AU) President Cyril Ramaphosa said efforts to secure a COVID-19 vaccine for the continent were always collaborative
[Monitor] The news about the Covid-19 vaccine that is 90 per cent effective in stopping coronavirus infection, has raised hope that the pandemic will end soon.
[Ghanaian Times] Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) has been adjudged the best university in the country by the US News and World Report rankings for 2021.
The state of army barracks for asylum seekers have been brought into question further following MPs open letter
The post Asylum seeker taken to army barrack-like accommodation at 2am appeared first on Voice Online.
World Cancer Day raises awareness of the global impact of cancer and increase understanding of prevention, detection, treatment and care.
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
[SAnews.gov.za] Health Minister, Dr Zweli Mkhize, has expressed concerns about the climbing number of COVID-19 cases in the Eastern Cape and the Western Cape provinces.
The African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team – established by AU chairperson Cyril Ramaphosa – has secured a provisional 270 million vaccine doses for African countries.
An Eco-Friendly Manufacturing Plant is Turning Plastic into Bricks
After Kenya imposed a ground-breaking law in 2017 on the use, manufacturing and import of plastic bags as part of global efforts to limit plastic waste, four engineers in Nairobi saw an opportunity in the estimated 500 tonnes of plastic waste the city generates daily and founded Gjenge Makers — a company that recycles plastic bottle tops and cooking oil containers into environmentally friendly bricks. Nzambi Matee, a co-founder of Gjenge Makers, explains how it came about.
\"So we started by collecting plastic waste and selling it to recyclers. That was in 2017, and then we realised three to six months later that we were collecting more waste than we could sell, than the recyclers could absorb. So that's when we decided what more we could do with the remaining plastic, as a value-added aspect, to see if we could put a product on the market using the plastic waste, and that's how we started making the paving stones\".
Grey pavers sell for around 8 euros per square meter, while coloured pavers sell for around 10 euros.
Matee describes the logic behind the ecologically-sound operation, \" Once the manufacturers package the soft drinks, or whatever product they are packaging, once the consumer finishes with that product, they have nowhere else to take it other than the litter box. And so, with that, we decided why don't we create a plug where instead of having the plastic to go the dumpsite, we intercept it on the way, and hence we started the making business.\"
The waste is then crushed into small pellets, sorted according to colour, mixed with sand and the desired colour pigment — before being taken onto the production line where they are moulded and put into a hydraulic press.
Ann Muthoni, the Programme Coordinator at Mukuru Slums Development Projects, shares some inside information, \"We had used the ballast before, but most of the trainees were complaining the ballast was damaging their shoes, so the Gjenge pavers, we find them very friendly. Walking on them feels like you are walking on rubber*
Gjenge Makers can currently produce up to 1,500 bricks a day with homeowners and schools as clients.
The West Dumping Plastic Waste in Africa
Although many African countries are making an effort to overcome the pressing issue of plastic waste, their efforts are often thwarted — as many countries in the Western world have used many nations in Africa as their plastic waste dumîng ground.
In April, the American Chemistry Council (ACC) - whose members include Shell, Exxon, Total, DuPont and Dow, companies already guilty of polluting many rivers in Africa via oil drilling and oil spills, proposed investments in recycling in Kenya with a catch.
The recycling investment deal is one only provided that the recipient country accepts US plastic waste i.e. Kenya would get about 500 million tonnes of plastic waste exports from the US per year.
Plastic But Not a Superficial Issue
According to a 2018 United Nations (UN) report, an esti
[Monitor] Cabinet has approved the National Industrial Policy 2020, which will shape the country's industrial growth and development over the next 10 years.
[Premium Times] Countries that have recently suffered large measles outbreaks include the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Madagascar, Central African Republic (CAR), Georgia, Kazakhstan, North Macedonia, Samoa, Tonga, and Ukraine.
