Abuja - 23 December 2022 - The festive season is a time for celebration. However, enjoying the holiday’s food does not mean neglecting healthy diet, being inactive and putting your health at risk. 

Elizabeth Agbonkhese, a chef and event planner residing in Abuja, says despite the celebration in the air, she will ensure her family eats healthy meals during the yuletide season. 

WHO Namibia with support from the Regional Office in Africa trained 45 school staff, nurses, and school board members from schools in the Oshana region as part of the SURGE flagship programme. The aim of the training was to increase capacity of schools to implement the health promoting school initiative and prepare better to minimize impact of health outbreaks and other public health events on schools.

The Ministry of Health and Social Services with support from WHO, trained national and regional risk communication and community engagement pillar members on Infodemic management. The spread of the COVD-19 pandemic has been followed by unprecedented and repeated waves of misinformation and disinformation generating what has been defined as an Infodemic. This overabundance of misleading information has been amplified by social media and affected the deployment of public health responses, generating fear and anxiety in local populations about preventive measures and vaccination campaigns.

The Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health (FMoH) in close collaboration with the Ethiopian Country Office of World Health Organization (WHO-Ethiopia) hosted an Inter-Country Coordination Meeting of Cross-Border Pastoral Project on Using innovative digital solutions for improving Access to Health Care Services and Nutrition Information in Cross-Border Pastoral Communities.

Maiduguri, 20 December, 2022 – "At some point, I lost it,” says Hafsat Naya,* 59, who lives in Jere, a Local Government Area in Borno State, Nigeria. “I was separated from the people I knew. Everyone had been displaced. There were a lot of killings and we could not go to the farm or market because of fear.”

In Borno State, over two million women, children, and men have been forced to flee their homes to stay alive. More than a decade of conflict in north-east Nigeria has resulted in an ongoing humanitarian crisis, with a dramatic mental health cost. 

Yola, 20 December, 2022 - In August 2022, 31 years old Mrs Jenifer James, of Mumore community, Tongo Local Government Area in Adamawa State had just returned from the market when she developed a fever. 
“It started with a headache, high temperature, body ache and later rashes all over my body,” she says in an interview, as she describes the agonizing symptoms associated with the mpox (monkeypox) disease.  
Adding to the physical pain from the lesions was the mental stress because she did not know about the disease or where to go for care. 

Borno, 15 December, 2022 - One of the 36 States in Nigeria, had been experiencing incessant power outages since 2020, leaving some locations in the state in total darkness, due to the disruption of the power grid caused by insecurity. This has hampered operations at the polio laboratory situated at the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH).