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DR Congo Records New Case Of Ebola Virus
The Democratic Republic of Congo has reported a new case of Ebola hemorrhagic fever in a city in its northwestern region, four months after the end of the country’s last outbreak. According to a report by the National Institute of Biomedical Research, a 31-year-old male in Mbandaka city tested positive for the deadly virus on Saturday.…
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Malawi Secures 6.8 Million Doses Of Oral Polio Vaccine
On Sunday, March 20, Malawi will launch a nationwide campaign to vaccinate kids against Polio after a case was recorded in February, the first in the country since 1992. The Southwestern African country secured 6.8 million doses of the oral polio vaccine intended to be administered to children under the age of five across all…
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Endemic: Wild Polio Resurfaces In Malawi After Five Years
Malawi has recorded an outbreak of the Wild Poliovirus in the country’s capital Lilongwe after a three-year-old girl was reported to have developed the virus investigated to be similar to a strain circulating in Pakistan. The highly infectious wild poliovirus, a major cause of total paralysis in children was last detected in Nigeria’s Borno State…
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BioNTech To Kickoff Modular Vaccine Factories In Africa
German pharmaceutical company, BioNTech has finalized plans to establish vaccine factories in Africa in order to increase the availability of the vaccine in Africa. The company would ship containers fitted with the equipment necessary to make the company’s mRNA-based vaccine, save for the final step of putting doses into bottles, a process known as fill…
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Fact Check: Can Viagra Be Used As A Cure For Covid-19?
Back in November 2021, a UK based nurse was admitted to Intensive Care after contracting the coronavirus. According to the Sun, 37-year-old Monica Almeida was placed on a ventilator after her condition deteriorated. However, Almeida recounts that Viagra was administered during treatment which opened up her airways and saved her life. Almeida eventually left the…
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Infographics: Tracking Omicron Variant
The Omicron coronavirus variant has been detected in at least 19 countries since November 24. On Monday, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that the global risk from the spread of Omicron was “very high” due to the multiple mutations in the variants spike protein. The organization has since urged 194 member nations to speed the delivery of vaccinations…
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Infographic: Countries Vaccinating Children Against COVID-19
According to a report from UNICEF, which analysed 115 million confirmed COVID-19 cases from 105 countries, people under 20 account for 16 percent of reported Covid-19 cases. Now more than 100 countries around the world have extended their COVID-19 vaccination drive to children. The three vaccines that have been approved by the World Health Organization…
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Could Syringe Shortage Slow Down Vaccination Drive In Africa?
The United Nation’s fund for children, UNICEF, is predicting an “imminent shortfall” of up to 2.2 billion of the single-use syringes used for Covid-19 vaccination, a report that poses a huge problem for the vaccination drive in Africa. As vaccines begin to flood the continent, the WHO shared that the shortage of both single-use syringes…
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EU Blocks Funds To WHO in DRC Over Cases Of Sexual Abuse
The European Union has temporarily blocked funding for the WHO in the DRC, following several accounts of sexual abuse by employees of the organization in the central African country. The European Union’s executive in a statement last Friday said it “has temporarily suspended the payments and will refrain from awarding new funding related to the…
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New Ebola Case Confirmed In Eastern DRC
One Ebola case has been confirmed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a few months after the latest outbreak in the country was declared over. A three-year-old boy tested positive near the eastern city of Beni, one of the epicentres of the 2018-2020 outbreak, and died from the disease on Wednesday, Health Minister Jean…