Category: Medical

The International Rescue Committee says more than two million Kenyans are facing hunger due to poor rainfall. Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, declared a national disaster this month because of drought.

Thirty-six-year-old Suleiman Ahmed Osman lost 50% of his livestock to drought in the past six months. He says more are dying now due to worsening drought.

“When we lost this number of animals there is no other source of income,” he said. “To source our daily meal because we used to get milk and meat, sometimes selling the animals to get other food, sugar and other things. Now that the animals are very emaciated, nobody can buy them, no milk because the drought has affected them to the extent that no milk can come from the animal.”

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) says Kenya received insufficient rainfall during the October to December 2020 and March to May 2021 rainy seasons, leading to the current drought situation.

The IFRC report said that arid and semi-arid areas received less than 50% of the average rainfall in June. The three counties in northeastern Kenya received less than 25% of average rainfall.

Abdullahi Musa has been buying animal feed and water for four months now for his more than 100 cattle in Garissa, along the Kenya and Somalia border.

“There are two sets of livestock herders,” he said. “There are those who the drought in Kenya has affected them there are those who crossed to Somalia to get pasture but came back due to lack of water. I am among the people who are not so affected. I have lost some animals but most of them are alive. But 90% of animal herders have lost their livestock. They got nothing.”

The International Rescue Committee says 2.1 million people in Kenya are now food insecure.

The head of the organization in Kenya, Mohamed El Montassir Hussein, says he is concerned about the growing humanitarian situation in some 20 out of 47 counties.

“Our concern overall is the protracted drought situation and protracted aspect of drought in Kenya that’s been over the years coming again and again and also concern is extended to the growing humanitarian needs as people move out of their homes searching for places closer to water sources,” he said.

The IRC says climate change is the main driver of the region’s recurring drought and locust outbreaks.

Kenya’s National Drought Management Authority predicts the food insecurity situation will persist until the end of the year.

The drought management authority says people’s fortunes may change if the affected areas get rain in the next three months.

Source: Voice of America

A World Health Organization investigation has found that dozens of women were allegedly sexually abused and exploited by international staff and locals hired to respond to an Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

The WHO appointed a five-member independent commission in October 2020 to investigate allegations of sexual abuse by its staff in Congo’s Ituri and North and South Kivu provinces.

Senior WHO officials call the results, released Tuesday, horrifying and heartbreaking.

The commission found that more than 80 alleged cases of sexual abuse occurred during the outbreak between August 2018 and June 2020. Most of the victims were uneducated women ages 13 to 43.

Commission member Malick Coulibaly said most of the women who testified said they had been forced to exchange sex for the promise of a job. He said some of the sexual exploitation and abuse was organized through a network operating through the local branch that recruited people to work on the Ebola response.

“Most victims did not get the jobs that they were promised in spite of the fact that they agreed to sexual relations,” Coulibaly said through an interpreter. “Some women declared that they continued to be sexually harassed by men and they were obliged to have sexual relations to be able to keep their job or even to be paid.”

Coulibaly added that some women had been dismissed for having refused sexual relations. The panel reports nine women were raped.

Women who were interviewed said none of the perpetrators had used birth control, and some who became pregnant said the men who had abused them forced them to have abortions.

The investigation found 21 of the 83 alleged perpetrators were WHO staff, some Congolese, some from abroad. The other alleged perpetrators were contractors such as drivers and security personnel.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described the document as harrowing reading.

“The conduct it describes is a sickening betrayal of the people we serve,” he said. “It is my top priority to ensure that the perpetrators are not excused but are held to account. … And I will take personal responsibility for making whatever changes we need to make to prevent this happening in future.”

Tedros said four WHO staff have been fired and two have been put on administrative leave. He said the alleged perpetrators of rape will be referred to national authorities in Congo for investigation.

The WHO chief also said that all victims of sexual exploitation and abuse will have access to the services they need, including medical and psychosocial support, and that assistance for their children’s education will be provided.

Source: Voice of America

PARIS— France will double the number of vaccine doses it will send to poorer countries to 120 million, President Emmanuel Macron pledged, in a video broadcast during the Global Citizen concert in Paris.

“The injustice is that in other continents, obviously, vaccination is very late…,” he said. “We have to go faster, stronger.

“France pledges to double the number of doses it is giving,” he added. “We will pass from 60 million to 120 million doses offered.”

On Wednesday, the United States announced that it would be doubling its donation of vaccine doses, bringing its total contribution to 1.1 billion.

President Joe Biden described the pandemic as an “all-hands-on-deck crisis”, adding “we need other high income countries to deliver on their own ambitions”.

The European Union has committed to distributing 500 million doses.

And China’s President Xi Jingping, in a video message broadcast to the UN on Tuesday, pledged a total of two billion doses by the end of the year, repeating a figure already given by the Chinese authorities.

It was not made clear how many of those would be sold and how many donated.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, has repeatedly denounced the injustice of the massive imbalance in the distribution of vaccine doses in rich and poor countries.

“I will not stay silent when the companies and countries that control the global supply of vaccines think the world’s poor should be satisfied with leftovers,” he said earlier this month.

African leaders pleaded for the chance to buy vaccine doses for their people during a meeting of the African Union earlier this month.

According to a tally drawn from official sources, Africa’s 53 countries, with a population of more than 1.3 billion people, has had a total of 10 vaccine doses per 100 people.

In contrast, the United States and Canada, with a population of just over 368 million people, has had 120 doses per hundred people.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

DAR ES SALAAM– At least 40 employees of a steel factory in Tanzania’s northern region of Mwanza were injured on Friday afternoon, following an explosion, police said yesterday.

Ramadhan Ng’anzi, the Mwanza regional police commander, said, the 40 employees of Nyakato Steel Mill factory in the Mwanza city, got injured after a metal exploded, throwing galvanised steel into all directions.

Ng’anzi said, police, in collaboration with members of the Tanzania Fire and Rescue Force, arrived at the factory to supervise rescue operations.

The police official said, the injured workers were rushed to the Sekou Toure regional referral Hospital for treatment, adding, some of the victims were in serious condition.

He said, the police launched an investigation to establish the cause of the explosion.

Diana Anatory, a medical doctor at the Sekou Toure regional referral hospital, said, seven of the 40 injured workers were in critical condition.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

BRAZZAVILLE— The World Health Organization’s Africa regional body says the current wave of COVID-19 on the continent is easing off but warned that the “fight is far from over”.

WHO Africa’s director for communicable disease response Dr. Benido Impouma said that a fourth wave spreading throughout the continent during the festive season could be the “most brutal yet”.

The WHO is telling countries in Africa to use the intervening time of the relative dip in cases to get prepared by strengthening their capacities for a vaccine rollout.

Impouma also mentioned that inconsistent vaccine supply to date has been affecting people’s uptake of the vaccine.

African countries have mostly relied on donations to vaccinate their populations.

Leaders attending the UN General Assembly have criticized vaccine inequity in their speeches.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

KANO, NIGERIA At least eight Nigerian soldiers were killed and several others were missing Friday after being ambushed by IS-affiliated jihadists in violence-wracked northeast Borno state, two military sources told AFP.

A military convoy came under rocket fire by Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) militants as it made its way between the towns of Dikwa and Marte in the Lake Chad region, the sources said.

Eight other soldiers and an anti-jihadist militiaman were injured in the attack, a military officer said.

According to a second military source, who lacked authorization to speak about the incident and asked not to be identified, the jihadists took away two military vehicles and burned three others.

It was the second high-profile attack in less than two weeks by ISWAP jihadists, who are waging a 12-year Islamist insurgency in Nigeria’s northeast.

ISWAP has been consolidating territory in the Lake Chad area since rival Boko Haram commander Abubakar Shekau was killed in fighting between the two jihadist forces earlier this year.

Earlier this month, 16 Nigerian soldiers and two anti-jihadist militia were killed in another ambush by IS-allied fighters on their patrol on a highway in northeast Borno state.

ISWAP has recently intensified attacks on civilians along the 135-kilometer (84-mile) Maiduguri-Monguno highway where they set up checkpoints, robbing and killing motorists, according to accounts of local residents.

The near-daily attacks prompted military patrols along the highway, the military sources said.

Since 2019, soldiers have shut down some smaller army bases and moved into larger, fortified garrisons known as “super camps” in an attempt to better resist militant attacks.

But critics say the “super camp” strategy has also allowed militants liberty to move freely in rural areas and left travelers more vulnerable to kidnapping.

The conflict has spilled into neighboring Niger, Chad and Cameroon.

A regional military coalition is fighting the Islamist groups to end their violence.

Source: Voice of America

ADDIS ABABA— The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Africa reached 8,177,919 as of Wednesday noon, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said.

The Africa CDC, the specialized healthcare agency of the African Union, said the death toll from the pandemic across the continent stands at 207,132.

Some 7,534,544 patients across the continent have recovered from the disease so far, it was noted.

South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia and Ethiopia are among the countries with the most cases in the continent, according to the agency.

South Africa has recorded the most COVID-19 cases in Africa with 2,886,331 cases, while northern African country Morocco reported 922,222 cases as of Wednesday noon, it was noted.

In terms of the caseload, southern Africa is the most affected region, followed by the northern and eastern parts of the continent, while central Africa is the least affected region in the continent, according to the Africa CDC.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK