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As the risk of a surge in COVID-19 cases increases, African countries must urgently boost critical care capacity to prevent health facilities from being overwhelmed. This comes as vaccine shipments to the continent grind to a near halt.

Mauritius marks the World No-Tobacco Day this year through two important events: the opening of its nineth tobacco cessation clinic at the Dr Yves Cantin Community Hospital, in Black River and the validation of the new set of tobacco regulations. These two tobacco control measures aim at reducing the demand and the supply of tobacco to better protect the population against the dreadful effects of tobacco. Hon. Dr Kailash Kumar Jagutpal, Minister of Health and Wellness, the WHO Representative in Mauritius, Dr Laurent Musango and high-level officials of the Ministry of Health and Wellness attended both events. In line with the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and the MPOWER measures, Mauritius first started a tobacco cessation clinic in 2008 on a pilot basis. Subsequently, capacity building was conducted with the support of WHO in view of decentralizing this service at regional level. Since 2011, the tobacco cessation services have been made available in the five health regions. As at date, a total of seven smoking cessation clinics in the country and one in the Rodrigues outer island are offering free of charge both pharmacological and non-pharmacological therapies to smokers who want to quit. With the opening of this additional tobacco cessation clinic in the west of the island, more smokers will benefit from this service. A new set of tobacco regulations was also validated as from 24 May 2021 over three consecutive days with key stakeholders at the Head-quarters of the Ministry of Health and Wellness in Port Louis. This new piece of tobacco legislation is a milestone in the implementation of stronger tobacco control policies in Mauritius as well as strong collaboration between the Ministry of Health and Wellness and WHO. Due to COVID-19 pandemic, this exercise was conducted under strict implementation of sanitary measures and in batches of 10 stakeholders. Representatives from key Ministries including Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Mauritius Revenue Authority, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, WHO and the State Law Office discussed implementation issues and timeframe before validated the new set of tobacco regulations

Port Louis.  Some 27 health care workers, involving specialists, public health superintendents, medical officers and nurses across five health regions have been trained during a three day training workshop on the World Health Organization (WHO) Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) guidelines, standards, early detection, triage, diagnosis, and controls and other IPC measures. The training was organized at Dr D.G. Jeetoo Hospital from 17th to 19th May 2021.  This training of trainers was jointly conducted and facilitated by WHO and officers from Ministry of Health and Wellness (MoHW) who attended the capacity building workshop last year. The second training of trainers’ workshop was conducted in order to further strengthen the capacity of MOHW in terms of trained human capacity.  The fully capacitated Health Care Workers will eventually support the focal points in each region to conduct cascade trainings and implement and monitor respective IPC control measures in their respective field of work. This serves as a turnkey event and will aid towards a huge task of training approximately 10,000 health care workers and thus optimizing participation of doctors, nurses, community workers and support staff on infection prevention and control practices.

News on the discovery of COVID-19 vaccine brought with it, a renewed sense of hope and security as had been the expectation. Prior to that, COVID-19 response strategy had mainly been non-pharmaceutical interventions (face masks, physical distancing, hand hygiene) and the vaccines were expected to be an additional preventative measure to the pre-existing protocols.