HEALTH - The African Mirror

Mar

19

2021

AU urges use of AstraZeneca shot

COVID-19

THE African Union has urged African countries should continue to use AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine, echoing the World Health Organization (WHO) by saying the shot's benefits outweigh risks. The recommendation comes after more than a dozen European countries suspended use of the AstraZeneca vaccine amid concerns over the risk of blood clots. Africa has lagged wealthier parts of the world in vaccinations, with many countries on the continent using free AstraZeneca shots distributed by a global scheme co-led by the WHO to kick-start immunisation campaigns. John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a news conference…

Mar

18

2021

By The African Mirror

Uganda launches COVID-19 rapid test kit

COVID-19

UGANDA yesterday launched a rapid COVID-19 antibody test partly funded by France that developers hope to market in sub-Saharan Africa, where the laboratory infrastructure needed for extensive novel coronavirus testing is thin. The test, which requires a finger prick to draw blood, was developed by a team at Makerere, Uganda's oldest public university, with partial funding from the French embassy. The east African country has long experience of infectious diseases like HIV and Ebola which it has drawn on to develop diagnostics expertise. "This is a point-of-care test that can be used within equatorial Africa village settings, remote areas where…

Mar

17

2021

By The African Mirror

Will COVID-19 inspire young women to become social entrepreneurs?

COVID-19

MICHAEL TAYLOR THEY have been called a lost generation - fledgling careers, studies and social lives upturned by the chaos wrought by COVID-19. But as the pandemic exposes long-standing social problems, and creates new ones, some young people have seized the opportunity to apply business-minded solutions. The Thomson Reuters Foundation asked three young, female social entrepreneurs to reflect on their experiences over the last year and what advice they can give to other youths hoping to set up socially conscious businesses. We spoke to Harsha Ravindran, 18, co-founder of Ascendance, a Malaysia-based social enterprise and youth movement that connects and empowers students…

Mar

17

2021

By The African Mirror

SA approves vaccine for emergency use

COVID-19

SOUTH Africa's drugs regulator SAHPRA said yesterday that it had approved a "section 21" emergency use application for the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech. SAHPRA added in a statement that the approval was subject to further efficacy and safety surveillance of the vaccine in the country, including monitoring its efficacy against the dominant local coronavirus variant. South Africa is the hardest-hit country on the African continent in terms of recorded coronavirus cases and deaths and suffered a severe second wave of infections driven by the more infectious 501Y.V2 variant, first identified late last year. It kick-started its vaccination…

Mar

17

2021

By The African Mirror

Morocco’s vaccination drive bypasses undocumented migrants

COVID-19

AHMED ELJECHTIMI MOROCCO is further ahead with its COVID-19 vaccination programme than any other African country, but undocumented migrants are not a part of its plans, potentially undermining efforts to come to grips with the disease. The COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged Morocco's tourism sector, and led to a drop in industrial exports. The country hopes that the inoculation programme will help its economy recover. Its vaccination rate of 14 doses per 100 people has outperformed that of much wealthier France and Italy. So far, the programme has concentrated on medics, other key workers, older people and those with chronic ailments,…

Mar

17

2021

By The African Mirror

Whose mental health suffered the most during COVID-19 lockdown in Nigeria

HEALTH

THE toll of the coronavirus pandemic on physical health and lives worldwide is enormous. But the disease and the lockdown measures have had an impact on mental health too. DR ABIODUN MUSBAU LAWAL, Lecturer, Department of Psychology , Federal University, Oye Ekiti Some of the mental health issues that have been reported due to COVID-19 include anxiety, depression, anger, confusion, insomnia, post-traumatic disorders, boredom, loneliness and adjustment problems. The phases of COVID-19 lockdown in Nigeria spanned between early May 2020 and the end of July 2020. Movement was restricted during this period. Gradually, lockdown was eased but a curfew of…

Mar

16

2021

By The African Mirror

Don’t panic, says WHO on vaccine safety fears

COVID-19

THOMAS ESCRITT and STEPHANIE NEBEHAY GERMANY, France and Italy announced that they would suspend AstraZeneca COVID-19 shots after several countries reported possible serious side-effects, but the World Health Organization (WHO) said there was no proven link and people should not panic. Still, the decision by the European Union's three biggest countries to put inoculations with the AstraZeneca shot on hold threw the already struggling vaccination campaign in the 27-nation EU into disarray. The Democratic Republic of Congo has announced that it is delaying using AstraZeneca until concerns about safety have been addressed. Denmark and Norway stopped giving the shot last…

Mar

16

2021

By The African Mirror

No vaccine yet, for “careful” Ugandan leader

COVID-19

UGANDA’S President Yoweri Museveni has said he has not yet been vaccinated against COVID-19 because he is "careful" and is still weighing which jab to take, days after the East African country began its inoculation campaign. The apparent hesitation may fuel already significant vaccine scepticism in the country, which is in the earliest stages of its roll out of the jab. Many African countries have struggled to get doses and have not administered a single shot. Uganda began vaccinating health workers and the elderly last week after receiving 864,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine from COVAX, the World Health Organisation-backed programme…

Mar

16

2021

By The African Mirror

‘Regular booster vaccines are the future’

COVID-19

GUY FAULCONBRIDGE REGULAR booster vaccines against the novel coronavirus will be needed because of mutations that make it more transmissible and better able to evade human immunity, the head of Britain's effort to sequence the virus's genomes told Reuters. The novel coronavirus, which has killed 2.65 million people globally since it emerged in China in late 2019, mutates around once every two weeks, slower than influenza or HIV, but enough to require tweaks to vaccines. Sharon Peacock, who heads COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) which has sequenced half of all the novel coronavirus genomes so far mapped globally, said international cooperation…

Mar

15

2021

By The African Mirror

First ever national survey shows the extent of South Africa’s TB problem

HEALTH

SOUTH Africa’s long-awaited tuberculosis (TB) prevalence survey results were recently released. This is the first national prevalence survey of its kind for TB in South Africa. EMILY B. WONG, Assistant Professor, Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI) ALISON GRANT, Professor of International Health at LSHTM and Member of Faculty, Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI) TB prevalence surveys are difficult and expensive to do, and so are not carried out routinely, but have been done in many high burden countries following a World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendation in 2007. In the absence of prevalence survey data, TB estimates are based on the…