With the COVID-19 pandemic has come a global spike in the demand for oxygen, and 25 countries – most of them on the African continent – are reporting a surge in demand they cannot meet. To that end, global health officials announced Thursday the creation of a new COVID-19 Oxygen Emergency…
African nations may have a better idea of what COVID-19 vaccination products to expect with an update from the global COVAX Facility issued Wednesday. COVAX, led by the Gavi vaccine alliance, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the World Health Organization, provided a country-by-country breakdown in a detailed…
President John Magufuli of Tanzania – no stranger to controversy where the COVID pandemic has been concerned – has made new and alarming statements about the coronavirus during a public appearance. Magufuli questioned the safety and efficacy of the vaccines, according to local media accounts of his remarks, and put…
As President-elect Joseph Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris are sworn into office in the United States Wednesday, there are a number of immediate policy changes that affect the global community and Africans in particular. Biden vowed to reverse the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), a decision…
Roughly half of the world’s malaria deaths occurred in just six African nations in 2019, while the progress achieved in reducing malaria cases in the last two decades has slowed. That’s according to the annual World Malaria Report released Monday by the World Health Organization. The six nations – Nigeria,…
Access to water has long been recognized as a basic human right, but the ways in which women and girls bear the brunt of water scarcity is often overlooked by those who seek to address the issue. Now, climate change and coronavirus are combining forces to wreak havoc on African…
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…
The World Health Organization has issued a clear warning about the acceleration of coronavirus cases on the African continent, noting that many countries are seeing a rise in positive COVID cases that exceeds the percentage that has commanded so much attention in South Africa. “It’s not accelerating any faster than…
The strain of Ebola virus that’s active in a new outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo is not related to the previous two outbreaks, according to the World Health Organization. “Genetic sequencing from new Ebola cases in Équateur DRC shows that the outbreak is not linked to North Kivu or…
President Donald Trump of the United States escalated the controversy over his response to the global coronavirus pandemic with the announcement Tuesday night that the U.S. has frozen all funding to the World Health Organization, over what Trump claims were its management failures and its support for China in the…
Just as the Democratic Republic of Congo was closing in on the end of its current Ebola outbreak, a new case has emerged in the eastern city of Beni. “After 52 days without a case, surveillance and response teams on the ground have confirmed a new case. We have been…
There’s a new tool in the fight against COVID-19, and it’s a tech tool from the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention that shows the impact of the coronavirus pandemic across the continent in one easy-to-use dashboard. The interactive COVID-19 dashboard linked here keeps real-time cumulative case totals for…
There are now at least 229 positive cases of the novel coronavirus on the African continent, according to health officials, with the first confirmed cases in Equatorial Guinea, Mauritania, Rwanda and Seychelles among them. The Department of Health on Seychelles said two of its citizens returned to the Indian Ocean…
There are now at least 159 positive cases of the novel coronavirus on the African continent, according to health officials, with the first confirmed cases in Ethiopia and Kenya among them. The Ethiopian case involves a 48-year-old Japanese citizen who traveled from Burkina Faso on March 4 but is isolated…
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in South Africa has risen to 17, with news that a 32-year-old man in Free State is the first person to become ill through known community contact. The man was in contact with a Chinese businessman, according to the South African ministry of health….