The WHO Regional Office for Africa wishes to provide clarification and guidance on the issue of expiry dates of COVID-19 vaccines in general, and specifically on AstraZeneca vaccine doses produced by the Serum Institute of India (SII) – referred to as Covishield, that were delivered to several African countries and have since expired
Africa’s largest-ever vaccination drive is well under way. Forty-nine African countries are rolling out COVID-19 vaccines and over 22 million doses have been given on the continent. Valuable lessons are emerging, but major risks and challenges threaten Africa’s fragile gains.
Zimbabwe has upscaled the use of antigen rapid diagnostic tests to reinforce its COVID-19 response, hitting a daily rate of 4000 tests – a fourfold increase reached within just two months after the method was launched in November 2020.
The emergence of COVID-19 and the pandemic have raised many challenges regarding treatment and spawned the use of unproven therapies. Professor Lucille Blumberg, the Deputy Director of the South African National Institute for Communicable Diseases, discusses the causes, the risks and how to tackle unproven COVID-19 cures.
Abuja, 12 May, 2021 - With the imminent accelerated Polio Programme ramp down in Nigeria, the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) Country Representative (WR) Dr
On a sultry morning in early March in the small town of Gouécké in south-eastern Guinea, scores of concerned community and customary leaders gathered for a meeting with WHO’s local team of social anthropologists.
Freetown, 11 May 2021 – Ebola vaccination kicked off today in Sierra Leone as the country takes proactive public health measures to protect people at high risk of infection in case of any potential cross-border transmission of the disease from the ongoing outbreak in neighbouring Guinea.