HEALTH - The African Mirror

Nov

08

2020

Bedouins go back to their roots in Egypt as COVID-19 hits tourism

COVID-19

MENNA A. FAROUK FOR years, Um Saad has been urging fellow Bedouins to tend their orchards and vegetable patches in the mountains of Egypt's South Sinai. It took a pandemic for them to listen to her. Tourism, her community's main source of income, has been wobbly for years - rattled by militant attacks and political unrest. But COVID-19 has decimated the sector, encouraging many Bedouins to go back to the livelihoods of their ancestors. "This is one good thing about the coronavirus," said Um Saad, 75, sitting outside the house where she has lived for decades near the town of…

Nov

07

2020

By The African Mirror

India-made COVID-19 vaccine could be launched as early as Feb – government scientist

COVID-19

AN Indian government-backed COVID-19 vaccine could be launched as early as February - months earlier than expected - as last-stage trials begin this month and studies have so far shown it is safe and effective, a senior government scientist told Reuters. Bharat Biotech, a private company that is developing COVAXIN with the government-run Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), had earlier hoped to launch it only in the second quarter of next year. “The vaccine has shown good efficacy,” senior ICMR scientist Rajni Kant, who is also a member of its COVID-19 task-force, said at the research body’s New Delhi…

Nov

07

2020

By The African Mirror

As the malaria season begins in southern Africa, COVID-19 complicates the picture

HEALTH

TWO of the nine global public health awareness days are associated with malaria: World Malaria Day, observed on 25 April, and World Mosquito Day, which commemorates the discovery by Sir Ronald Ross on 20 August 1897 that Anopheles mosquitoes transmit malaria parasites to humans. JAISHREE RAMAN, Laboratory for Antimalarial Resistance Monitoring and Malaria Operational Research, National Institute for Communicable Diseases SHÜNÉ OLIVER, medical scientist , National Institute for Communicable Diseases Both World Malaria Day and World Mosquito Day are particularly relevant to Africa. The continent shoulders the greatest burden of malaria globally. Ninety-three percent of the 228 million malaria cases…

Nov

06

2020

By The African Mirror

AstraZeneca aims to bring non-U.S. vaccine data before the FDA

COVID-19

ASTRAZENECA will start discussing emergency approval of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine with U.S. regulators once it has good trial data from Britain, South Africa and Brazil, as it has no indication the watchdog would favour U.S. data. If and when AstraZeneca reaches the first statistically reliable efficacy and safety results from those trials, based on more than 25,000 volunteers in total, it would present them to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) even though any read-out from an ongoing U.S. trial will be months later. "If you hit those thresholds we are going to have a conversation with them,"…

Nov

06

2020

By The African Mirror

Doctor’s self-funded test lab leads way in Somalia’s COVID fight

COVID-19

ABDI SHEIKH HAVING scraped money together following medical studies abroad, Somali doctor Abdullahi Sheikdon Dini opened Mogadishu's first advanced diagnostic laboratory in January. Its arrival could hardly have been better timed because, just two months later, the coronavirus epidemic reached the Horn of Africa country. Since then Medipark Diagnostics, which he runs with five other doctors who pooled $1 million to buy equipment, has become a linchpin of the country's creaking, donor-supported health infrastructure. Hospitals in the battle-scarred city that once had to wait weeks for blood test results now use the lab to test for conditions including HIV and…

Nov

05

2020

By The African Mirror

Kenya extends COVID-19 night curfew beyond Christmas and New Year’s Day

COVID-19

OMAR MOHAMMED KENYA’S President Uhuru Kenyatta has extended the country's nightly curfew to January 3 as part of measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 after numbers surged in October. Kenyatta said that in October alone, the number of new confirmed coronavirus cases had risen by 15,000 and the East African nation reported about 300 deaths. "October has gone down as the most tragic month in our fight against COVID-19," Kenyatta said, adding that the rate of infections from tests carried out had shot up to 16% in the month, four times what it was a month earlier. The government…

Nov

04

2020

By The African Mirror

How ending polio in Africa has had positive spinoffs for public health

HEALTH

CHARLES SHEY WIYSONGE, Director, Cochrane South Africa, South African Medical Research Council POLIO is a highly infectious disease. It’s caused by a virus that enters the body through the mouth. The virus then multiplies in the intestine and attacks the central nervous system – causing paralysis. Polio was one of the most dreaded diseases in the world in the 20th century. Four decades ago, an estimated 350,000 people were paralysed each year by the poliovirus in more than 125 countries. This led the World Health Assembly in 1988 to adopt a resolution for the worldwide eradication of polio, drawing inspiration…

Nov

04

2020

By The African Mirror

Kenya’s blind students struggle with social distancing as schools re-open

COVID-19

KENYAN students Purity Nduku and Blessing Cheroo, who go to a boarding school for blind and partially blind children near Nairobi, often walk holding hands. That way "you are sure you have the support and if something happens, your friend will help," Nduku says. Visually impaired pupils hold on to each other for confidence as they walk after attending a lesson, amid the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at the Thika school for the blind in Thika town of Kiambu county in Kenya October 29, 2020. REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi However, this simple yet vital tool of holding hands makes it…

Nov

04

2020

By The African Mirror

Algerian president has COVID-19 but improving, presidency says

COVID-19

ALGERIAN President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has tested positive for COVID-19, but his condition is gradually improving as he receives treatment in a German hospital, the presidency has disclosed. Algerian authorities had previously said Tebboune was in Germany for medical checks when he flew there last week, after saying people in his administration had the coronavirus. Tebboune, 75 and a smoker, was elected less than a year ago as Algeria faced its biggest political crisis in decades with a mass protest movement demanding the entire ruling class be replaced. Backed by the powerful military, he pushed for changes to the constitution as…

Nov

03

2020

By The African Mirror

South Africa’s Aspen agrees initial deal to make J&J vaccine candidate

COVID-19

TANISHA HEIBERG SOUTH African pharmaceutical company Aspen Pharmacare said on Monday it had reached a preliminary agreement with Johnson & Johnson to commercially manufacture its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, sending its shares higher. The country's biggest drugmaker said it had agreed to provide capacity required for the manufacture of J&J's vaccine candidate, which is still in clinical trials, at its Port Elizabeth facility. The agreement with J&J will see Aspen perform formulation, filling and secondary packaging of the vaccine for the U.S. firm, the company said. Aspen's shares rose more than 4% on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange on the announcement. The…