Monthly Archives: April 2020

29, April 2020

Ivory Coast presidential candidate Soro hit with 20-year jail term ⁰

Guillaume Soro, the former rebel leader running for president in Ivory Coast, was convicted in absentia on Tuesday of embezzlement and sentenced to 20 years in prison for embezzlement. The former prime minister, who is in exile in France, has denied the charges claiming they are politically motivated.

The verdict, announced after a trial in Ivory Coast that lasted only a few hours and was boycotted by Soro’s lawyers, is likely to exclude Soro from October’s election, when President Alassane Ouattara is due to step down.

Prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Soro in December for allegedly plotting a coup against his former ally Ouattara’s government and stealing public funds.

Soro, who has been living in Europe, diverted his plane in the air instead of returning home in December to Ivory Coast — where he planned to launch his campaign — when it became clear that Ivorian authorities had issued an arrest warrant for him.

Soro has denied the charges, which he says are intended to prevent him from challenging Ouattara’s preferred successor, Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly, in the election.

In an interview with a French weekly in December, Soro vowed to lead the “resistance” from abroad “like de Gaulle,” referring to the French wartime resistance leader.

‘Thunderbolt in the sky of Ivorian corruption’

The Abidjan court fined him nearly seven million euros ($7.6 million), ordered the confiscation of his Abidjan home and barred him from civic duties for five years.

The court issued a fresh arrest warrant against him, in effect barring him from contesting elections, and ordered him to pay three million euros in damages and interest to the state.

Soro helped Ouattara to power in 2010 amid political violence that cost 3,000 lives, later serving as premier and then parliamentary speaker.

After falling out with Ouattara, he launched an unsuccessful bid to become president last year.

Government lawyer Ben Meite Abdoulaye dismissed suggestions the verdict was political, calling it a “thunderbolt in the sky of Ivorian corruption”.

“This decision is the start of a new era in Ivory Coast. We must hunt down corruption wherever it is found,” he said.

The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights had recently ordered Ivory Coast to suspend an arrest warrant against Soro, who had taken his case to a Tanzania-based court last month.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and REUTERS)

29, April 2020

US Vice President tours hospital without Covid-19 mask despite being told to wear one ⁰

US Vice President Mike Pence did not wear a face mask during a Tuesday visit to the Mayo Clinic, violating the prestigious medical center’s policy despite his team being warned in advance.

Video showed Pence visiting staff and a patient in a crowded hospital room without wearing a mask.

The Minnesota-based center’s policy states: “Part of our protocol for ensuring your safety is to require all patients, visitors and staff to wear a face covering or mask while at Mayo Clinic to guard against transmission of COVID-19.”

The clinic said in a statement that it had “shared the masking policy with the VP’s office.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently updated its advice to recommend that people wear cloth face coverings in public settings where it is difficult to maintain adequate physical distance at all times, such as in grocery stores and pharmacies.

This is because a very high proportion of people infected with the coronavirus are believed to be asymptomatic and because recent research has shown that it may in certain circumstances be possible to infect others through normal speaking and breathing.

Pence, President Donald Trump, and other senior White House officials have pointedly ignored the advice, leading to speculation it is a coordinated decision to downplay the severity of the crisis.

The vice president said he did not wear a mask because the CDC guidelines suggest that masks help prevent the spread of the virus by those who are infected — and he is not.

“Since I don’t have the coronavirus, I thought it’d be a good opportunity for me to be here, to be able to speak to these researchers, these incredible health care personnel, and look them in the eye and say thank you,” he said.

Source: AFP

29, April 2020

Covid, Corona and Lockdown: the newborns named after a pandemic ⁰

First there was Corona Kumar, then Covid Marie: parents have taken to naming newborns after the coronavirus, apparently unperturbed by the prospect of their children being forever associated with a deadly pandemic.

When Colline Tabesa gave birth to a healthy baby girl in the central Philippine city of Bacolod on April 13, she and the father John Tupas decided to mark the occasion with a show of gratitude.

“This COVID-19 has caused great suffering around the world,” said 23-year-old Tupas, expressing relief after the uneventful delivery.

“I wanted her name to remind us that COVID did not only bring us suffering. Despite all of this, a blessing came to us,” he added.

And so, Covid Marie it was.

Weeks earlier, two mothers in southeastern India had had similar ideas, apparently encouraged by a doctor in the hospital where their babies were delivered.

One was called Corona Kumar and the other Corona Kumari.

“I told them this would help create awareness about the disease and remove the stigma around it,” said S.F. Basha, the doctor.

“To my surprise, they agreed.”

Not to be outdone, a migrant-worker couple in India’s northeast stranded thousands of kilometres from their home in the desert state of Rajasthan decided to name their child Lockdown.

“We named him Lockdown remembering all the problems we had to face during this tough time,” local media reports quoted the father Sanjay Bauri as saying.

“She might experience bullying, but I’ll just teach my daughter to be a good person,” he said.

“We didn’t have second thoughts.”

Source: AFP

28, April 2020

Wife of disgraced French Cameroun Defense Minister rushed to hospital ⁰

The wife of a former French Cameroun Minister of Defence, Bernadette Mebe Ngo’o who has been in prison since the 11^th of March 2019 alongside her husband, Edgar Alain Mebo Ngo’o for complicity in a case of alleged embezzlement of public funds in the purchase of military equipment for the French Cameroun army, was rushed to intensive care on Saturday, 25^th of April 2020, at the Yaoundé Emergency Centre.

Bernadette Mebe Ngo’o was reportedly taken from her detention cell in Ward 5 of the Yaounde-Kondengui Central Prison and nothing has so far filtered about the woman who was prominent in French Cameroun some few years ago.

Cameroon Concord News gathered that Bernadette Minja Nkoulou (to use her name at birth) has suffered several minor heart attacks in recent months and has been abandoned by the ruling CPDM female mafia known as the Circle of Friends of Cameroun (CERAC), founded by the First Lady, Mrs. Chantal Biya.

By Asu Isong in London

28, April 2020

New York doctor who treated COVID-19 patients kills herself ⁰

A New York emergency doctor who treated coronavirus patients has killed herself, with family, police and physicians linking her death to trauma faced by health care workers battling the outbreak.

Lorna Breen, 49, died on Sunday from self-inflicted injuries in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she had been staying with her family, police said in a statement.

Breen ran the emergency department of New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital in Manhattan, a facility that has seen a huge influx of COVID-19 patients.

While it is not clear why she took her own life, her family, police and doctors suggested stress caused by the outbreak had contributed to her death.

“She tried to do her job and it killed her,” her father Philip Breen told The New York Times.

He said she had no history of mental illness and had contracted coronavirus herself before returning to work and then being sent home.

“Frontline healthcare professionals and first responders are not immune to the mental or physical effects of the current pandemic,” said Charlottesville police chief RaShall Brackney.

The president of the American College of Emergency Physicians, of which Breen was a member, said her death was a tragic reminder of the suffering that many health care workers are going through.

“The impossibility of the situation in many of our hospitals leaves us deeply wounded.

“I can only imagine for Dr. Breen it was more than she could bear — not out of weakness, but out of the strength of her compassion,” William Jaquis said in a statement on the group’s website.

The hospital where she worked described her as “a hero who brought the highest ideals of medicine to the challenging front lines of the emergency department.”

More than 17,300 people have died from COVID-19 across New York state, the epicenter of America’s outbreak.

Source: AFP

28, April 2020

Of Ngarbuh and Bafut Massacres and the arrest of Captain Jacques Tchenem Valkossa ⁰

Out of shame and embarrassment, the operations manager of the French Cameroun war machinery in Southern Cameroons, Joseph Beti Assomo has said in a press release that the Francophone army captain Jacques Tchenem Valkossa who carried out the massacre at Ngarbuh has been disarmed and forced back to Yaoundé where he will be tried at the Military Court next week.

The Defense boss also revealed in the communiqué that Captain Valkossa of the Fourth Amphibious Rapid Intervention Battalion led a team of seven soldiers who opened fire on a farm mother of three and beheaded a civilian suspected of being a leader of a separatist group.

Mr Joseph Beti Assomo concluded his flat press release that was made public on state radio and television by offering his condolences to the families of the bereaved and warned the military to remain professional in accordance with a recent presidential order punishing crimes by soldiers.

If you have been following the war in Southern Cameroons, you will know Mr. Joseph Beti Assomo who said that French Cameroun soldiers would implement President Biya’s war decision without batting an eyelid. He seek and gotten a longer timeframe to submit a fake Ngarbuh Massacre report to the international community on the numerous atrocities committed by French Cameroun army soldiers in that locality and in Southern Cameroons in general.

Beti Assomo’s statement came out on the same day that the French Cameroun army staged another massacre operation in Bafut, in the Mezam County. Cameroon government military trucks loaded with soldiers entered Bafut via Metap village firing shots and explosives. Several Southern Cameroons houses were set on fire in Mankwi, followed by the arrest of 10 civilians.

Cameroon Intelligence Report thinks it is of vital importance to state that this new massacre comes just days after the publication of the report on the Ngarbuh incident, following a so-called independent investigation by the Head of State, Paul Biya.

All military judges and army and gendarmerie commanders are from President Paul Biya’s Beti Ewondo tribe whose main goal is to keep Biya and his tribal setting in power and plunder Southern Cameroons wealth. The Yaoundé government will not allocate any resources required to pursue another investigation in Bafut as they have done in the past.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

28, April 2020

Russia overtakes China with recorded Covid-19 cases at 87,000 ⁰

Russia overtook China in the number of confirmed coronavirus cases on Monday, when its tally climbed above 87,000, as pressure rose on the government to consider easing lockdown restrictions for businesses to help shore up the rattled economy.

Russia, the world’s largest country by territory, has been on lockdown since President Vladimir Putin announced the closure of most public spaces in late March. These measures are due to expire on April 30 and Putin has not yet said if he plans to extend them.

Anna Popova, the head of Russia’s safety watchdog Rospotrebnadzor, told state television on Monday that, in her view, restrictions should be in place until May 12.

Earlier Prime Minister Mikhail Mishushin asked his government to submit proposals by Thursday to ease some of the restrictions on businesses. Many firms have warned that they risk going bankrupt if the lockdown continues, and thousands of workers have been laid off.

Mishustin told an online government meeting that as soon as the situation started to improve “we would need to consider a step-by-step cancellation of restrictions on certain companies… operations”.

On Monday, the authorities reported 6,198 new cases of the new coronavirus, bringing the total to 87,147, with 794 deaths.

Moscow plans to open two new hospitals, with 1,500 beds each, in the defence ministry’s Patriot museum and in the Crocus exhibition centre, once a spot for lavish concerts, business daily RBC reported on Monday.

St Petersburg, the country’s second largest city, is also turning Lenexpo, which used to host Russia’s top economic forum, into a temporary hospital with 1,000 beds.

Energy sector in focus

Russia, one of the world’s top oil and gas exporters, is particularly vulnerable to the spread of the coronavirus at production sites. Most are located in remote areas accessible only by air, meaning the workers must be in close proximity, increasing their risk of infection.

Citing local officials, news agency Interfax said on Monday that an airport in Sabetta, in the northern Yamal peninsula, had been shut down for quarantine after cases of the new coronavirus were detected at the Yamal LNG production site controlled by Novatek.

A total of 143 cases were confirmed in Sabetta, the local crisis response centre said separately.

In the northwestern region of Murmansk where Novatek is building a plant to supply its next LNG project, the Arctic LNG 2, more than 800 workers tested positive for coronavirus, the local crisis response centre said on Sunday.

Velesstroy, a sub-contractor for the plant, temporarily suspended work at the site near Murmansk, but said in a statement to Reuters that the project would remain on schedule.

To limit the risk of contagion at more than 1,000 power plants in Russia, including nuclear ones, more than 200,000 employees – or nearly a third – were recently tested for the virus, the energy ministry said.

It did not say how many of those tests returned positive.

Mainland China, where the new coronavirus first emerged, reported a total of 82,830 cases on Monday. China is now fighting an increased number of new cases coming from Russia.

Source: REUTERS

28, April 2020

Coronavirus Frightens Malaria Patients in Cameroon ⁰

A song urging Cameroonians not to relent in the fight against malaria blasted through speakers Saturday — World Malaria Day — at road junctions and popular neighborhoods, as well as from publicity vans driving through Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde.

Dr. Daniel Etoundi of Cameroon’s public health ministry said health teams were being taken to every neighborhood to try to discourage patients from buying roadside drugs or resorting to African traditional healers for malaria treatment, because those can lead to severe health complications.

“If the product is toxic, the liver will be spoiled [destroyed]. Same with the kidney,” he said. “Most of the products that we consume are eliminated through the kidney by urine. Now, if the drug is toxic, it will spoil the kidney function.”

The Cameroon Ministry of Public Health reported that since March 5, when the first case of the coronavirus was reported in the central African state, many people with suspected cases of malaria or other diseases have refused to go to hospitals for fear they will catch COVID-19. As of Saturday, more than 1,500 cases had been confirmed in the country, according to Johns Hopkins University statistics.

But medical doctors say 90 percent of Cameroon’s 25 million people are at risk of malaria, while 41 percent have an episode each year.

Dr. Dorothy Achu, coordinator of Cameroon’s National Malaria Control Program, said people should understand that although there is much government emphasis on the dangers of COVID-19, malaria remains the nation’s major killer, especially of children.

“We are trying to sensitize health workers to protect themselves well but to continue to provide services,” as well as reassure the population “that it is not in all hospitals that we take care of COVID patients. So we just require them to protect themselves when they go to hospitals,” she said.

Education efforts

Innocent Kuisseu, sensitization team member for the prevention of malaria, said members also were educating Cameroonians about how to protect themselves from malaria by systematically using insecticide-treated mosquito bed nets and visiting hospitals when they suspect they might have malaria. He said people should not think that anyone who has malaria also has COVID-19.

“Efforts are being put in to make sure that the population is more and more aware of what should be the right treatment, to make sure that in suspicion of malaria there should be a rapid diagnostic test, to make sure that they sleep under insecticide-treated nets,” he said.

The International group Severe Malaria Observatory reports that malaria causes 22% of deaths occurring in health care facilities in Cameroon, and that 10% of deaths in children under 5 years old are linked to malaria.

Health officials in Cameroon blame the surge of malaria and COVID-19 cases on the fact that many people do not respect basic hygiene standards and don’t visit health facilities when they have early signs of either disease. They also say there are too many people who refuse to use treated mosquito bed nets.

Source: VOA

28, April 2020

COVID-19 cases in Africa hit 30,000 ⁰

The World Health Organisation (WHO) Regional Office for Africa in Brazzaville, Congo says the number of COVID-19 cases in the WHO African Region has increased to over 30,000.

The UN’s health agency gave the update on its official twitter account @WHOAFRO on Sunday.

“Over 30,000 COVID-19 cases reported on the African continent with over 9,000 associated recoveries and 1,300 deaths recorded,’’ it said.

The WHO African Region COVID-19 dashboard showed that in sub-Saharan Africa, the South Africa suffered the most severe outbreak, while Cameroon and Ghana had more than 2, 500 confirmed cases.

The figures on the dashboard showed that South Africa, Algeria and Cameroon had continued to top the list of countries with the highest reported cases.

It showed that South Africa had 4, 361 cases and 86 deaths followed by Algeria with 3, 256 cases and 419 deaths, while Cameroon had 1,518 confirmed cases with 53 deaths.

According to the dashboard, South Sudan, Sao Tome and Principe, Mauritania are countries with the lowest confirmed cases in the region.

It showed that South Sudan had the lowest confirmed cases of five reported with zero death.

Mauritania, the dashboard showed, was second country with the lowest confirmed cases with seven reported cases and one death.

Source: The News

27, April 2020

Nutritional advice during the Coronavirus Pandemic ⁰

Nutritional advice during the Coronavirus Pandemic

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the first case in Cameroon of which was reported by the Ministry of Health on March 6 2020. To date, more than 800 cases have been reported in Cameroon despite the measures that were put in place by the government. Key amongst these measures were recommendations on hygiene (handwashing and/or hand sanitizing) and social distancing aimed at limiting transmission.

Other theories have been put forward as to how best to manage COVID-19, ranging from the use of pharmaceutical products like chloroquine to food supplements. For any of these to merit any serious consideration, it is important to know how the body actually reacts to viral infections. The human body generally has the appropriate mechanisms to defend itself against bacterial or viral (pathogen) attacks. The first line of defense is generally through the physical barrier provided by the skin and associated structures like dermal and nasal. If the pathogen however goes through this first line of defense into the body’s circulation, the second line of defense – the immune system immediately kicks into play, producing a variety of substances to get rid of the foreign substance which is also known as antigen. One of these substances called antibodies recognizes features of the antigen and attacks it continuously to get rid of it. The immune system’s ‘memory’ can now have the ability to produce antibodies in future if it sees the same pathogen again like in the cases for viruses that cause chickenpox or polio, destroying it before the symptoms become serious. For some other viruses like coronavirus that cause the common cold, their recognition by the immune system seems to be lost after a short while, making people vulnerable to suffering frequently from colds. Since SARS-CoV-2has only been recently discovered and presently causing havoc worldwide, it is not yet known how the immune system or the immune system’s memory is going to handle it. It is therefore important for the body to have an efficient immune system.

Nutrition plays an important role in maintaining a fully functional and efficient immune system. In this period of the COVID-19 epidemic, it is more important than ever to maintain an efficient immune system. This can be done through certain lifestyle changes as well as our choice of foods, to include foods with known properties of boosting immune function. This can be easily achieved by eating as many colors as possible through the consumption of fruits, vegetables and nuts that are readily available in Cameroon. Certain foods however stand out due to their high content of particular micronutrients with proven scientific claims. These include foods like bitterleaf (ndole), spinach, green and yellow peppers, broccoli, pawpaw and oranges which are high in Vitamin C which contributes to immune defense as well as lowers the risk of respiratory infections. Zinc also plays an important role in controlling and regulating immune function and has been shown to inhibit the replication of viruses. Zinc can be found in beans, pumpkin seeds (egusi), meat, fish, mushrooms, avocados and guavas. Vitamin D found in mushrooms, sardines, liver and eggs modulates immune response as well as helps the immune system to stay balanced.

As well as the above mentioned foods containing nutrients with proven scientific action on the immune system, the Cameroonian cuisine is generally spicy, with some of the commonly used spices containing bioactive components which are powerful antioxidants and could be beneficial to the immune system. Garlic for example is known for its immune boosting properties linked to its high sulphur content. Initial results from ongoing research with spices used in some traditional dishes from the West region of Cameroon show a lot of promise as potential immune boosters as well as antiviral agents.

Despite the above nutritional recommendations, the best way to stay healthy and SARS-CoV-2 free is by following the current WHO recommendations as well as those outlined by the Cameroon government.

*Article first published in CEFOPDIETnews, newsletter of the Professional School of Dietetics and Functional Foods(CEFOPDIET) in Yaounde

**The author is a professor of Nutritional Biochemistry at the University of Yaounde I who discovered bush mango is a therapy for obesity and is co-founder of CEFOPDIET of the J&A Oben Foundation

By Julius E. Oben