Health experts on Wednesday declared an end to the most recent Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of the Congo, some six months after the first cases were reported in Equateur Province in the country’s northwest. The World Health Organization announced the waiting-period window, usually 42 days since the last confirmed…
President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa joined China’s Xi Jinping in calling for cooperation and unity in the fight against COVID as leaders of the five developing BRICS economies met Tuesday in a virtual meeting hosted by Russia. Ramaphosa’s focus on trade disruptions, supply chain challenges and African debt follows…
The world has met news of a successful COVID-19 vaccine candidate with guarded optimism, but a number of challenges remain in producing, storing and distributing the treatment – and that’s assuming the vaccine and others in development are successful in preventing COVID. Pharmaceutical company Pfizer announced Monday that there’s a…
The Urumuri robot helping to screen passengers at Rwanda’s Kigali International Airport is just one of more than 120 health technology innovations that Africans are using in the fight against COVID-19. That’s according to a new World Health Organization (WHO) analysis of 1,000 new or modified technologies developed around the…
Humanitarian aid workers in Nigeria say that food prices have soared because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the cost is driving hunger in parts of the country that can ill afford yet another challenge. “Everywhere we work the food prices have gone up, in some places they doubled. It means…
There were 20,000 empty chairs set up in view of the White House on Sunday as part of a memorial for those lost to the COVID-19 pandemic, even as President Donald Trump remained in the hospital himself following a positive diagnosis for the virus. The chair represented “a fraction of…
The head of South Africa’s tax authority (SARS) has warned that it may take years to dismantle the criminal networks that have flourished during the alcohol and tobacco ban implemented as part of the country’s response to coronavirus. SARS Commissioner Edward Kieswetter said that the ban – which was established…
With the COVID-19 pandemic and its many sorrows has come a new appreciation for essential workers, and now a Roman Catholic nun in Zambia has been named one of “seven unsung heroes” by wealthy philanthropist Bill Gates. Gates recently featured Sr. Astridah Banda in his popular “Gates Notes” newsletter and…
Back in 2015, Liberia was among the highest-ranked countries in the world with citizens who said they think vaccines are safe, while Ethiopia was atop the list of those whose people said vaccines were important. Morocco, conversely, was among the lowest on both measures. But now, at a time when…
The ongoing Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo has been overshadowed by the COVID pandemic, the country’s security crisis in the east and other headlines, but the virus has now claimed four dozen lives and experts are worried of a spread into Kinshasa or across the border. “The most…
Uganda is moving toward presidential elections in early 2021, with candidate nominations expected in September – a contentious process as President Yoweri Museveni, now approaching his 76th birthday and in power since 1986, is expected to seek another term. Opposition leaders in Uganda have long been targets of the ruling…
Malaria hits hard on the African continent, home to 93 percent of the world’s 228 million cases in 2018 and 94 percent of its fatalities. What scientists at the universities of Leeds and Lincoln in the UK want to know is how Africans might be affected in the climate change…
Africans celebrated the end of wild poliovirus on the continent on Tuesday, making good on an international promise that dates to 1996 and the Nelson Mandela era. “This is a momentous milestone for Africa. Now future generations of African children can live free of wild polio,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti,…
The latest Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo isn’t going away because of other crises like the COVID-19 pandemic, and its numbers keep growing even as the scale in Équateur Province remains smaller so far than that seen previously in the nation’s east. Another six confirmed cases bring the…
A consortium of tobacco companies has taken the South African government to court in a bid to overturn the administration’s decision to ban the sale of alcohol and tobacco products during the Covid-19 pandemic. Japan Tobacco International (JPI) and British American Tobacco South Africa (BATSA), together with The South Africa…