Ebola crisis - The African Mirror

Mar

2021

Securing the education of Kenya’s girls during COVID-19

THE COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted education in many countries. Similar to other epidemics – such as the Ebola crisis in West Africa which pushed about five million children out of school in 2013 – the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the closure of schools in about 194 countries. BENTA A. ABUYA, Research Scientist, African Population and Health Research Center In Kenya there was a nationwide closure of schools between March 2020 and January 2021. This disrupted the education of about 18 million learners, with a total of about 15 million children in primary and secondary schools. Evidence suggests that the disruptions…

Dec

2020

By The African Mirror

UN criticised for holding back review of troubled Congo Ebola response

HUMAN RIGHTS

PHILIP KLEINFELD and BEN PARKER A review by leading aid agencies of Ebola operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo was not widely circulated to organisations involved in the response until several months after the epidemic was declared over, despite containing details of mismanagement, sexual abuse and exploitation, and coordination problems during the deadly outbreak. The internal report from the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), a grouping of major UN agencies and NGOs, is one of the clearest acknowledgements – by humanitarian agencies themselves – of mistakes made during the Ebola crisis, which claimed more than 2,200 lives between August 2018 and June 2020.…

Sep

2020

By The African Mirror

Over 50 women accuse aid workers of sex abuse in Congo Ebola crisis

NEWS

ROBERT FLUMMERFELT and NELLIE PEYTON MORE than 50 women have accused Ebola aid workers from the World Health Organization and leading NGOs of sexual exploitation and abuse in the Democratic Republic of Congo, an investigation by The New Humanitarian and the Thomson Reuters Foundation revealed. In interviews, 51 women - many of whose accounts were backed up by aid agency drivers and local NGO workers - recounted multiple incidents of abuse, mainly by men who said they were international workers, during the 2018 to 2020 Ebola crisis. The majority of the women said numerous men had either propositioned them, forced…