Category: Medical

The World Health Organization (WHO) warned Thursday that the African continent is facing a surging third wave of COVID-19 cases, driven by new and faster variants of the coronavirus that causes it.

During a virtual briefing, WHO Regional Director for Africa Dr. Matshidiso Moeti said new cases have increased by an average of 25 percent in Africa for six straight weeks, to almost 202,000 in the week ending on June 27. She said deaths rose by 15 percent across 38 African countries to nearly 3,000 in the same period.

Moeti said this wave is being driven by more contagious COVID-19 variants, “raising the threat to Africa to a whole new level.” She said among the 14 African countries now in resurgence, 12 have detected variants of concern, including nine with the Delta variant, originally identified in India.

Meanwhile, she said the Alpha and Beta variants have been reported in 32 and 27 countries respectively.

Moeti said hygiene, social distancing and mask wearing can certainly help slow the spread, but globally, it has been shown that vaccines offer the best path toward ending devastating surges.

Just over 1% of Africans are now fully vaccinated, compared to 11% of people globally, and over 46% of people in the United States and Britain.

Earlier Thursday, in interviews with the Associated Press, African Union Vaccine Envoy Strive Masiyiwa blasted Europe and international suppliers for failing to deliver promised vaccine.

Masiyiwa said that while Europe has promised to sell vaccines to Africa, so far, it has not followed through. He said, “The fact of the matter is the EU has vaccine factories. It has vaccine production centers across Europe. Not a single dose, not one vial has left a European factory for Africa.”

African CDC Director John Nkengasong said the WHO-managed international vaccine cooperative COVAX had promised to deliver 700 million vaccine doses to Africa by December. But to date, Africa has received just 65 million doses overall and fewer than 50 million doses have arrived through COVAX.

However, both leaders did announce that the first shipments of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, with U.S. support, will begin arriving next week.

Source: Voice of America

The World Health Organization has expressed concern about Uganda’s approval of a locally made herbal treatment for COVID-19 amid a third wave of cases.

The WHO has not approved the substance for COVID-19 treatment, but Ugandan pharmacists say they have little choice because drugs authorized for emergency use in developed countries are not available.

Uganda’s drug authority said Tuesday that it had approved the herbal medicine, Covidex.

Dr. David Nahamya, executive director of Uganda’s drug authority, said the approval followed a two-week scientific evaluation of the medicine’s safety and efficacy.

“Covidex has been notified to be sold in licensed drug outlets for supportive treatment in management of viral infections but not as a cure of COVID-19,” Nahamya said.

The WHO consulted researchers from nine African countries, including Uganda, in March about the use of traditional medicine to treat COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

Dr. Solome Okware of the WHO’s Uganda office said Covidex wasn’t among the traditional medicines that were evaluated.

“WHO has not received any information about this product,” Okware said.

Bases for approval

Nahamya reassured Ugandans that the manufacturer, Jena Herbals Uganda, had increased production and that the herb would be available for all who needed it, under medical supervision.

He added that the approval was based on initial assessments, published literature and safety studies conducted by the innovator.

“The product has been formulated from herbal plants that have been traditionally used to alleviate symptoms of several diseases,” Nahamya said. “To further the efficacy of the drug for other uses, NDA [Uganda’s National Drug Authority] has advised the manufacturer to conduct random controlled clinical trials, which are the highest level of evidence to ascertain any claims of treatment.”

Okware said that in collaboration with the Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, the WHO developed master and generic protocols to provide guidance to members for developing clinical trials to assess claims of effective treatment for COVID-19.

“Many plants and substances are being proposed without the minimum requirements and evidence of quality, safety and efficacy,” Okware said. “The use of products to treat COVID-19 which have not yet been robustly investigated can be harmful if the due process is not followed.”

‘Local solutions’

Dr. Samuel Opio, secretary of the Pharmaceutical Society of Uganda, said that while there were concerns about misuse of Covidex by the public, its approval was a positive step.

“Whatever is currently being approved [for] emergency use in the U.S. are not available in Uganda,” Opio said. “So the issue of lack of a treatment, the issue of inaccessibility to even what is approved for emergency use, means that we need to also look for local solutions to the global challenges, and herbal treatment is one area.”

Uganda recently received 175,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine but is inoculating only frontline workers. With just 856,025 people vaccinated in the country, many members of the public have resorted to using Covidex to treat COVID-19 symptoms.

Source: Voice of America

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Friday that the delta variant of the novel coronavirus has been identified in at least 85 countries and “is the most transmissible of the variants identified so far . . . and is spreading rapidly among unvaccinated populations.” He also said, “As some countries ease public health and social measures, we are starting to see increases in transmission around the world.”

“It’s quite simple: more transmission, more variants. Less transmission, less variants,” the WHO chief said. “That makes it even more urgent that we use all the tools at our disposal to prevent transmission: the tailored and consistent use of public health and social measures, in combination with equitable vaccination.

Meanwhile, health officials say a new strain of the delta variant of the coronavirus, first identified in India, has emerged in almost a dozen countries, including India, the United States, and the U.K. The new variant has been dubbed Delta Plus. Authorities fear Delta Plus may be even more contagious the delta variant. Scientists are just beginning to study the new strain.

Australia’s biggest city has been ordered into a two-week lockdown because of a growing number of COVID-19 cases. Health authorities in Sydney are fighting to contain an outbreak of the highly infectious delta variant. Stay-at-home orders will also apply to other areas in New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state. It is the first lockdown in Sydney since December. Australia has consistently maintained very low rates of coronavirus transmission. The latest outbreak is linked to a limousine driver at Sydney airport.

Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Saturday that the global count of COVID-19 cases has reached more than 180 million. The U.S. continues to have the most infections with 33.6 million, followed closely by India with 30.1 million and Brazil with 18.3 million.

Johns Hopkins said 2.8 billion vaccines have been administered.

Source: Voice of America

Security officials in Somalia say dozens of people were killed after militants attacked a small town in the central state of Galmudug early on Sunday.

At least 30 people were killed, among them civilian residents caught in the crossfire between militants and security forces in the town of Wisil, local officials told VOA Somali.

The attack started with the militants detonating a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device in an area close to a security camp in the town, said a regional official who asked not to be named because he is not allowed to speak to the media.

Galmudug’s information minister, Ahmed Shire Falagle, told VOA Somali that regional forces repulsed the dawn attack and inflicted losses on the militants. Falagle said three soldiers were among the dead with at least seven others injured. He said about 100 militants attacked the town and that “many of them have not returned alive.” He did not elaborate.

For its part, the al-Shabab militant group claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it killed 34 members of the security forces.

Wisil lies 200 kilometers southeast of Galkayo in an area where al-Shabab recently made advances. In April, the group captured the town of Ba’adweyne, not far from Wisil, after government and regional forces vacated it for undisclosed reasons.

About two hours after the attack in Wisil, authorities in the regional state of Puntland executed 21 men accused of al-Shabab membership and terrorism, regional police commander Colonel Mumin Abdi Shire told the media.

The men were convicted in separate trials in the towns of Galkayo, Garowe and Qardho this year.

Eighteen of the men were lined up next to a sand hill outside the town of Galkayo. Security forces facing them opened fire, executing them. Separately, three other men were executed in Garowe and Qardho town. All of the executions were by firing squad. It is the largest single execution of al-Shabab militants in Somalia, observers say.

Security officials in Puntland accused the men of involvement in a series of assassinations and attacks, spanning more than 10 years, which claimed the lives of regional and community leaders, security officers and journalists.

Al-Shabab is largely active in south-central Somalia. The group also has a small footprint in Puntland in the northeast. Puntland is a semi-autonomous state.

Source: Voice of America

The U.N. children’s fund (UNICEF) says COVID-19 is having devastating consequences on millions of children in sub-Saharan Africa, as many become orphaned, making them vulnerable to many social ills.

The region is in the throes of a full-blown third wave of COVID-19. Children are often not directly affected by the deadly disease, but they are losing their parents to the pandemic.

Traditionally, when children become orphaned, the burden of looking after them falls on the grandparents. However, UNICEF spokesman James Elder, said older people are among the main victims of COVID-19. As a result, children are often shoveled off to another relative, who likely is living in dire, impoverished circumstances. The added strain and stress puts children at risk of abuse and child labor.

“We have seen the reporting of children reporting on help lines violence against them and the need for support,” said Elder. “Those things come again when children have lost the support mechanism that they previously had, which often comes from being orphaned or an economic situation where a parent simply had to leave to go elsewhere because economic opportunities have dried up due to the pandemic.”

Children who do not go to school are unprotected and open to exploitation, and Elder said COVID-19 has dealt a devastating blow to education. For example, he noted an estimated 9 million children in eastern and southern Africa haven’t returned to schools since they started re-opening

He also said many children are not getting enough to eat because of growing poverty due to pandemic-related lockdowns, and poor nutrition leads to worsening health.

“We know that routine immunization rates and things like malaria access have been slashed, as I say some by 20 percent,” Elder said. “We know that pregnant women have a great deal more difficulty getting to antenatal services. We know pregnant women have died because of that, because of things like lockdown and because health care systems are absolutely stretched…Yes, there have been unnecessary deaths of children.”

UNICEF says governments must prioritize keeping schools open and safe and is urging them to keep children in school while supplying water and sanitation to schools across the continent.

The U.N. children’s agency says it is increasing cash transfers to the most vulnerable and providing psychological support for children and their families. It says it also is working to prevent family separation and to strengthen family and community-based care during this challenging time.

Source: Voice of America

The first doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine arrived in Ivory Coast in late February.  By March 1, the country started vaccinating people, making it the first in the world to do so through the COVAX initiative, a program co-led by the World Health Organization; Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations; and UNICEF.

“The program plays a crucial role,” said Kouacou Epa, an immunization specialist with UNICEF in Ivory Coast. “We know that the vaccines are being used more in the developed countries, but we know the coronavirus is also here in Ivory Coast and the other developing nations.”

Epa continued, “What COVAX is doing is to make sure the vaccines are available in quantity and quality to help countries attain herd immunity, stop the disease and, if possible, go back to the normal lives we knew before.”

So far, Epa told VOA, the country has used the more than 500,000 doses delivered through COVAX. Additionally, it was able to secure more vaccines from other nations, including India and France, bringing the total doses to nearly 730,000. 

Slow rollout

The vaccination rollout has not gone without challenges, however. The country’s head of public hygiene, Bi Vroh Joseph Benie, says the average Ivorian went through three stages in their thinking about the vaccine.

“In the beginning, most people didn’t want to take the vaccine because there was some fake news in social media that the vaccine was going to go through an experimental phase on Africans first. For those reasons, people were very reluctant,” Benie told VOA.

“After that, we went through a second phase, where people were a bit hesitant … and the third phase, where people were engaged and want to take the shot when they saw that people who got vaccinated were not showing any major side effects,” he added.

Another hurdle came when many countries suspended use of the AstraZeneca vaccine over concerns about possible blood clots.

Both Benie and Epa said that to ensure people would step out of their comfort zone, the country modified its communication strategy to tackle vaccine hesitancy. Campaigners concentrated not only on the urban center of Abidjan but also developed what has been called the “politics of proximity” — meaning they got closer to communities across the West African nation to spread the word.

As of June 9, the Ivory Coast reported over 47,500 COVID-19 cases, with more than 600 deaths, and has vaccinated nearly 607,000 people, according to the country’s Ministry of Health and Public Hygiene. 

“We went from one vaccination center at the Palais des Sports arena in the beginning to now more than over 400 centers across the country,” Benie said. “Additionally, we have a dozen mobile units to get closer to the population.”

Mobile vaccination units

At the city hall of Abobo, a northern suburb of Abidjan and one of its 10 communes, people wait in line to get vaccinated. Yao Serge Djezou, the deputy director of communication at the health ministry, is on hand at the ministry-organized event.

“In areas where there aren’t many hospitals, these mobile vaccination units are there to fill the void. It also helps to get closer to the communities,” Djezou said.

While many Ivorians still said they would not get the shot, some, like Abidjan resident Elhaj Gbane Mour, said they would. “I will get vaccinated 100% because it’s a disease that could kill you,” he said. “We saw it on TV, and we saw that it killed a lot people, so everyone should get the shot.”

That’s not the case for Sephora Beugré, a student in Abidjan. “No, no, I will not take the vaccine, because I am afraid that it might be dangerous for (my) health. So I will not do it,” she said. 

Kouadio Jonas N’guessan, also of Abidjan, said, “I don’t know anyone close to me who died from the virus. So I don’t think the coronavirus exists in Cote D’Ivoire.” 

Incentives to get vaccinated

Meanwhile, like many countries, Ivory Coast is offering incentives for people to get the shot — such as free tickets to the recent soccer match between the Ivorian National team and Burkina Faso. 

“We just asked all the fans to get vaccinated. And with their vaccination card, they get to see the match for free. It’s a concept we just started, and people have been responsive,” Djezou told VOA.

Ivorian health officials say that in addition to providing vaccines, they’ll keep testing for the virus, a task that is also key to controlling the pandemic.

They are also ready to receive more shots, including ones that require colder storage temperatures, because they have a cold-chain system ready to handle whatever vaccines come their way.

Source: Voice of America