Category: Medical

GENEVA – Concerted efforts are underway by local health authorities and World Health Organization experts to prevent the spread of the deadly Marburg disease within Guinea and across borders.

Health workers are in a good position to contain Marburg disease before it gets out of control and infects and kills many people. The World Health Organization says no further cases of Marburg have been identified since the index case was confirmed August 9 in Guinea’s southern Gueckedou prefecture.

The WHO reports the infected patient has died and 150 people who came in contact with him have been identified.

WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib tells VOA that 10 WHO experts are on the ground supporting the government’s efforts to step up the emergency response. She says teams are tracing all those who encountered the patient.

She says the incubation period for Marburg is two to 21 days, the same as that for Ebola.

“Although Marburg and Ebola are both members of the same family, they are caused by different viruses. The two diseases are clinically similar,” said Chaib. “It is only by lab testing that we can differentiate them. But they have the same clinical feature. The same symptoms.”

Both Marburg and Ebola are highly infectious diseases that cause hemorrhagic fever. They have a fatality rate that can vary from 24 to 90 percent. Ebola now has a vaccine, but Marburg has no cure and no vaccine.

The first case of the disease was identified in 1967 in a man from Marburg, Germany. He had contracted the disease while working in Uganda.

Previous outbreaks and sporadic cases have been reported in Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, South Africa, and Uganda.

The current outbreak in Guinea is the first in West Africa. The virus was detected less than two months after Guinea declared an end to an Ebola outbreak that erupted earlier this year.

Chaib says it is important to quickly stop the virus in its tracks. So, she says, cross-border surveillance is being enhanced with neighboring Sierra Leone and Liberia to quickly detect any cases of Marburg.

“For now, 200 people were screened for the disease in the three countries, in the three borders. And no one shows symptoms for the disease,” she said.

According to the WHO, Marburg often starts abruptly with a high fever and severe headache, then progresses to severe bleeding from multiple areas.

The disease is transmitted to people from fruit bats and spreads among humans through direct contact with the bodily fluids of infected people, surfaces, and materials.

Chaib says investigations are ongoing to determine the source of the virus in Guinea. She says the man who got sick and died is known to have been in a forested area where he most likely became infected.

Source: Voice of America

Militants in Mali have massacred more than 50 villagers near the borders with Burkina Faso and Niger. The area has seen increasing violence from armed Islamists, and activists are calling on authorities to act.

Militants attacked three villages in northern Mali simultaneously this past Sunday, leaving more than 50 civilians dead and several injured.

The neighboring villages of Karou, Ouatagouna, and Daoutegeft are in an area near the borders with Niger and Burkina Faso that has seen increasing, often deadly, violence the past few years.

Almahady Cissé is coordinator of the collective Songhoy Chaawara Batoo, a group of organizations representing the Songhoy people, who make up most of the inhabitants of the Gao region, where the attacks occurred.

He says through a messaging application from Bamako, the assailants shot at everything that moved, including those leaving the mosques and those returning to the village from the fields.

Batoo has called on the Malian government and the international community to secure the area, and to disarm militants in a released statement.

“We can’t understand how a locality like Karou, like Ouatagouna, he says, where the military camps are not even 18 kilometers away, that massacres are happening and there are not reinforcements, there are no prosecutions… we do not understand,” he said.

Since a Tuareg rebellion and coup in 2012 Mali has seen both chronic political instability and increasing Islamist violence.

Through a messaging application from Dakar, Alioune Tine, an independent U.N. expert on human rights in Mali, said these Islamist groups are exploiting local mineral resources, mostly gold, and are able to finance themselves.

With funds, and control of the local area, which is largely inaccessible by the state, they gain credibility among the local population.

“In reality, we have, little by little, a state within the state, or two states within the state, and that is a real threat for the Malian state, for the survival of the Malian state,” he said.

Mali’s neighbors, Niger and Burkina Faso, are also plagued by violence from Islamist groups.

The same day of the attacks in the Gao region, suspected jihadists attacked Burkinabe troops near Mali’s border.

Thirty civilians were also killed in attacks in northern Burkina Faso last week.

Tine says the Sahel needs a regional strategy, focused on all of the affected countries in the Sahel and West Africa.

“The problem isn’t just Mali,” he says. “We can’t just fix Mali with a national security response. We can’t do this for Burkina Faso, nor Niger. What must be made is a regional strategy, with Africans that will cover the region, and who are supported – this is important – supported by the international community,”

VOA attempted to talk to Malian authorities for this story, but they did not make themselves available for comment.

Elections in Mali are scheduled for February 2022.

Tine says the insecurity in Mali’s center and north remains the top priority for the transitional government.

Source: Voice of America

Algerian officials are blaming arsonists for setting many of the fires raging in a mountainous region east of the capital Algiers and in more than a dozen other provinces. Algerian state TV says that 65 people have been killed so far.

Fires raged Tuesday and into Wednesday in the mountainous region of Tizi Ouzou as fire crews, soldiers and ordinary residents tried to douse the flames before they spread further. Algerian media reported that at least 79 major fires were burning in at least 17 provinces of the country.

While the fires reportedly began Monday, many more appeared to ignite Tuesday, prompting the country’s Interior Minister Kamel Beldjoud to insist that many had been set by arsonists.

He said that some experts are arguing these fires were deliberately set, what obviously would be criminal in nature because it’s impossible for dozens of fires to ignite at almost the same time without some criminal hand being behind these acts.

At least three arsonists have been captured by Algerian security services during the past several months after several other fires were ignited. Many Western media outlets are downplaying the arson claims and blaming “wildfires,” “excessive heat,” or “global warming.”

Ali Mahmoudy, head of the Algerian Forest Department, told state TV that many of the fires ignited suddenly and about the same time Tuesday, leading to speculation that many were deliberately set.

He said that initially there were five fires in the Tizi Ouzou region and then suddenly after 2 p.m. the number of fires started going up hour after hour and in some cases minute after minute, until there were 58 fires burning.

Canal Algerie, a French Algerian TV network, warned residents of the country “to be vigilant, vigilant, vigilant” and keep an eye out for anyone setting fires. It also thanked the military and fire crews for their “valiant efforts in extinguishing the fires and saving lives.”

An Algerian military commander was shown on amateur video ordering his soldiers into a region engulfed with flames to try and save residents who were trapped in their houses. At least 28 soldiers have been killed in the ongoing fires.

Algerian Prime Minister Ayman Benabderrahmane told Algerians in a televised address Tuesday night that all efforts were being made by the government to compensate those who have lost family members, their homes or livestock.

He said that a government delegation is visiting the regions hit by fire to determine the size of the losses from the disaster.

Algerian media reports the government has contacted a number of regional countries to seek help with planes equipped to combat the blazes. Major fires also are raging in Greece, Turkey, Lebanon and Syria.

Source: Voice of America

At least 51 people were killed when Islamist militants raided three villages in central Mali near the border with Niger, a district administrator said on Monday.

The towns of Ouatagouna, Karou and Deouteguef were simultaneously attacked around 6 p.m. on Sunday, according to a note from the Asongo district administrator to the governor of Gao region.

Houses were ransacked and burned to the ground and herds of livestock carried away, said the note, which was seen by Reuters.

“Provisional toll is 51 killed, several other injured,” it said.

No group has yet taken responsibility for the attacks in the area where Malian troops, French and European forces, and United Nations peacekeepers have been battling insurgents linked to the Islamic State and al Qaeda.

Mali’s army spokesman Colonel Souleymane Dembele confirmed the attacks but gave no further details.

Other local sources told Reuters that militants stationed themselves at the towns’ entrances and fired indiscriminately upon civilians.

The administrator said Malian troops were sweeping the area. He also requested military escort to “help with the funerals, reassure the populations and offer condolences to the bereaved families,” according to the note.

Source: Voice of America

Legal experts and rights campaigners here are criticizing the group Women Lawyers Association of Malawi, or WLA, for claiming thousands of dollars in legal fees after representing 18 women in a rape case involving police. The critics say the association is trying to cash in after saying it was working pro bono. Representatives of the WLA say their claim is normal.

At issue is the $313,000 the WLA claimed or demanded as compensation for representing the 18 women, who accused police of rape during post-election protests in 2019. The plaintiffs, who will share a $148,000 award, said 17 police officers sexually assaulted them in retaliation after protesters stoned a police officer to death in the capital, Lilongwe.

Thabo Chakaka-Nyirenda, a legal expert based in Lilongwe, says the fees appear immoral.

“In view of the background of the case, Women Lawyers Association got funding from donors; U.N. and Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa – almost $200,000. And I think to get those costs again, that would amount to just enrichment, also maybe we could say double-dipping in that case,” Chakaka-Nyirenda.

Peter Dimba, chairperson of the legal affairs committee in parliament, says the claim for legal fees is not justified considering that the association was fully sponsored by donors in handling the case.

“And what is more concerning is that here is a case where you are trying to deal with injustices that were perpetrated on women and women volunteer themselves to help them on a pro bono basis, and then, use the same case to exploit fellow women… This is a case of exploitation. You cannot represent somebody and charge [an] amount of legal fees when the actual victims have gotten much less,” Dimba said.

The 18 victims received compensation ranging from $5,000 to $12,000 each.

A beneficiary who did not want to be named told VOA the compensation was too low.

In a statement issued Saturday, Malawi’s Human Rights Commission asked the association to clarify what it meant when it said it was representing the victims pro bono. Kate Kujaliwa, the spokesperson for the commission, says the public want to know.

“Basically, what we are saying is: let them bring forth the information and it should be clear; justification and clarification if any; answer the question that the public is asking. The public is demanding how and why this has come to be,” Kujaliwa said.

VOA attempted to speak with representatives of the association Sunday but no one there answered the phone.

In a statement signed by its president, Immaculate Maluza, Saturday, the lawyers said their claim for legal fees was appropriate because they took into account the time spent working on the case.

Lawmaker Dimba told VOA that parliament’s legal committee has pledged to consult the courts to review the fees – a move the Malawi Law Society has also supported.

Source: Voice of America

LAGOS, Six teenage victims of human trafficking were rescued during a law enforcement operation in the southern state of Edo, Nigerian police said.

Philip Ogbadu, the state police chief of Edo, told reporters in Benin City, the state capital, that the victims, aged 16 to 19, were rescued on Friday by police operatives after an intelligence tip.

He said the victims were travelling to Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s capital, in a bus when they were intercepted by police operatives on the busy Benin-Lagos road.

The victims, who are from the southeast states of Delta, Edo and Enugu but all live in Edo, were recruited for the journey by a sister of one of them, he added.

Unyimen Johnson, associate project officer of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Nigeria, said at an event to commemorate the 2021 World Day Against Trafficking in Persons held in Benin City on July 30 that Nigeria remains a country of origin, transit and destination for human trafficking.

Driven by the demand for cheap labor and commercial sex, trafficking rings across borders and within countries capitalize on economic, social and political vulnerabilities to exploit their victims, Johnson said.

Source: NAM News Network

A fresh attack in western Niger near the border with volatile Mali has left 19 civilians dead, the government said Thursday.

The attack took place Wednesday in the village of Deye Koukou in the Banibangou area, where 14 civilians were killed Sunday, it said.

Three others were wounded and one was missing.

A local official earlier told AFP that 18 people had been killed in the raid.

The latest attack takes to 33 the number of civilians killed in the region in less than a week.

Banibangou falls inside what is known as the three-borders region between Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali, which for years has been the scene of bloody attacks by jihadist groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.

In mid-March, an attack by suspected jihadists in the same district targeting a village market left 66 people dead.

And on June 24, attacks on villages in Tondikiwindi, in a neighboring district, killed 19 people.

Despite repeated efforts by the authorities to secure the region, the deadly attacks have continued, often carried out by gunmen on motorbikes who flee across the border into Mali after their raids.

A contingent of 1,200 Chadian soldiers is deployed in the three-borders region as part of a multinational force put together by the G-5 Sahel group, which included Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.

Source: Voice of America