Kilifi, Kenya – Amid the soft purr of the air conditioner and glinting LED screens, laboratory technicians inside a sprawling facility on the Kenyan coast peer into test tubes and pore through spreadsheets, hard at work to help propel Africa’s efforts to monitor and detect COVID-19 variants and boost pandemic response.
Read moreWith new COVID-19 cases significantly dropping, many countries are increasingly curtailing COVID-19 surveillance and quarantine measures. While the need to reopen economies and resume social life is important, the World Health Organization (WHO) is calling for caution and consideration of the risks involved.
Read moreHarare – Nothando Moyo* contemplated giving up treatment for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis “even if it meant I would die,” she admits. The months-long treatment for the drug-resistant strain—which does not respond to the two most effective drugs—entailed daily injections which Moyo, a resident of Zimbabwe’s Bulawayo city, found painful to bear.
Read moreInadequate investment and funding for tuberculosis (TB) control in Africa is jeopardizing the efforts to meet the global target of ending the disease by 2030, while the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to roll back progress made so far in the continent, an assessment by World Health Organization (WHO) finds.
Read moreHundreds of farmers in Migori County, Kenya will break free from risky tobacco farming and transition to producing more sustainable crops, through the Tobacco-Free Farms Project being launched today.
Read moreAbidjan – When Cote d’Ivoire set to drive up COVID-19 uptake, a three-week mass vaccination campaign in February saw over 2 million people vaccinated, yielding an 8% rise in the number of people fully vaccinated. In a country with less than 20% vaccine coverage, the increase realized in a matter of weeks marks a significant progress.
Read moreMalawi will on Sunday launch the first round of vaccination campaigns against wild poliovirus type 1. More than 80 million doses will be administered to more than 23 million children under 5 years in the four-round vaccination drive in five southern African countries after Malawi declared an outbreak on 17 February—the first such case in the country in 30 years, and the first in Africa since the region was certified free of indigenous wild poliovirus in 2020.
Read moreAfrica’s COVID-19 vaccine uptake rose by 15% between January and February as several countries embarked on mass vaccination drives to expand coverage and protect populations against the adverse health impacts of the virus.
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