With parents and policymakers agonising over when to reopen schools as lockdowns ease, scientists are still struggling to find out how the new coronavirus affects children.

While youngsters can become infected with the new coronavirus, very few have died or contracted serious symptoms. But could they still spread contagion?

Here is what we know so far.

– Are children at risk? –

This is one of the few questions where there is broad agreement. Only a tiny proportion of children appear to have become seriously ill with COVID-19.

“There are three key questions: How much do children get COVID-19; how badly does it affect them; and do they spread it to others?” said Russell Viner, President of Britain’s Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.

“We only have good data about the second of these.”

Specialists writing for the British pediatric website Don’t Forget The Bubbles (DFTB) said in a recent roundup of international research that only around one percent of critical cases involved children, while “deaths remain extremely rare”.

– Do they get infected? –

The short answer is yes.

“Research indicates that children and adolescents are just as likely to become infected as any other age group and can spread the disease,” says the World Health Organization.

But this is not reflected in global official data about the virus, with many countries largely focusing their COVID-19 testing on those who have gone to hospital with severe symptoms.

France’s health agency, which has amalgamated data from a host of international studies, said pediatric cases represent between one and five percent of all officially-documented global infections.

It said this is because children catch the virus, but generally exhibit only “mild” symptoms — or no symptoms at all — meaning they go uncounted.

But other experts believe that children, especially those under the age of 10, might not be getting infected as much in the first place.

“It appears fairly convincing that children are less likely to acquire the infection than adults, by a significant amount,” said specialists Alasdair Munro and Damian Roland of DFTB.

Their conclusions were based on several international contact tracing studies that looked at how the disease spread and to whom.

They also assessed data from places that have carried out mass community-wide testing — South Korea, Iceland and the Italian principality of Vo — all of which found that the proportion of infected children was far smaller than adults.

– But are they silent vectors? –

This is the area of greatest uncertainty.

Initially researchers believed they could be spreading the disease, drawing comparisons with other viruses like the flu where children help accelerate infections.

But recent studies on the new coronavirus suggest that they are less likely to transmit the virus.

In one incident, a nine-year-old was among 12 people infected in a super-spreading event at a chalet in the Haute-Savoie region of France, after a British man returned from Singapore and went on a ski holiday.

A study of the incident — one of the first major clusters of infection in France — showed that the child, who only displayed mild symptoms, came into contact with 172 people while sick.

None of them contracted COVID-19, not even the youngster’s two siblings. But the child did transmit other winter viruses, including the flu.

Children could be less infectious because they do not have as many symptoms and do not cough, French expert Arnaud Fontanet told a parliamentary hearing last week.

But a German study last month led by virologist Christian Drosten, an adviser to Angela Merkel, concluded that children had a viral load comparable to that of adults.

They “could be as contagious”, it added.

Other scientists, including Munro, have disputed both the methodology of that study and its conclusion. Re-analysing the data they said it might even be possible to draw the opposite conclusion — that age and viral load are correlated.

Even so, we cannot say for sure that a higher viral load makes a person more infectious.

– A new threat? –

In recent weeks, a spate of cases of children affected by an inflammatory illness resembling a rare condition called Kawasaki disease has caused alarm.

Symptoms are high fever, abdominal pain, rash and swollen glands. If untreated, patients can suffer heart failure, but those who are given medical care respond well.

A few dozen cases have been reported in New York, France, Britain, Italy and Spain and while no link has been formally established to the new coronavirus, scientists believe it could be connected.

In an article published this week in the medical journal The Lancet, British doctors describing eight cases observed in London said it could be “a new phenomenon” affecting previously-asymptomatic children with the coronavirus “manifesting as a hyperinflammatory syndrome”.

Reports of the illness came just as several countries in Europe were mulling reopening schools, kindling fears among parents. But experts say the cases are too rare to affect policy decisions.

– Should the schools open? –

On this there is much disagreement.

Authorities in Italy, which has the oldest teachers of OECD nations with almost 60 percent aged over 50, have expressed concern that reopening schools would risk infecting staff and reigniting the epidemic.

But many other countries, including Germany, Denmark and France, have prioritised reopening schools as they unwind lockdown measures.

In France, scientific estimates that it would be better to keep schools shut until September were outweighed by concerns about other social issues, particularly those facing children from troubled families.

“School can be a haven of peace,” explained Jean-Francois Delfraissy, who leads the scientific committee advising the government.

Other experts argue that the benefits of continuing education far outweigh the risks.

In a column published this week in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood, Munro and British infectious disease specialist Saul Faust called on governments to allow children to resume lessons, regardless of underlying health conditions, and conduct detailed surveillance to monitor safety.

“Children are not COVID-19 super-spreaders: time to go back to school,” they said.

Source: AFP

Barrister Nkongho Felix Agbor alias Agbor Balla, Instructor at the English Law Department, Faculty of Laws and Political Science of the University of Buea has been summoned by authorities to justify why he set an examination question on the Anglophone Crisis.

The Disciplinary Hearing opens at 10:00 a.m. Wednesday, May 6, 2020 at the Board Room of the Central Administrative Block, said Prof. Atangcho Nji Akonumbo, Dean of the Faculty of Laws and Political Science.

The rights activist is said to have breached professional obligations when he set an exam question on the Anglophone Crisis in a first semester level one course titled “Political and Constitutional History of Cameroon”. The question read: “The Anglophone crisis since 2016 was caused by lawyers’ and teachers’ strikes. Assess the validity of this statement. (40 marks).”

An “Invitation Letter to a Disciplinary Hearing” dated April 29, 2020 was only delivered to Agbor Balla’s office at the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa (CHRDA) at 12:08 p.m. Tuesday, May 5, 2020, Cameroon-Info.Net has learnt. Although Agbor Balla was not on seat, the invite was received on his behalf by one of his collaborators at CHRDA where he is founder/president.

In the invitation letter, Prof. Atangcho writes: “On the instruction of the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buea, and in keeping with article 16 of decree No. 93/036 of 29th January 1993, you are being invited to appear before a constituted Disciplinary Panel of the University to hear allegations against you for non-compliance of professional obligations for a question you set on LAW243: Political and Constitutional History of Cameroon, during the 2019/2020 first semester examination.”

The Minister of State  for Higher Education and Chancellor of Academic Orders,  Professor Jacques Fame Ndongo had on April 20 instructed the Vice-Chancellor of  the University of Buea ,Professor Horace Ngomo Manga  to put a definite end to all  on-campus activities of  Agbor Balla which breach the “ethics and deontology”  of the University.

Cameroon-Info.Net recalls that when the crisis in the North West and South West regions started in October 2016 with the Lawyers’ and later Teachers’ strike, Agbor Balla was President of the Fako Lawyer’s Association (FAKLA) as well as President of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium, CACSC.

When pressure came to bear on government, the CACSC was banned on January 17, 2017 and Agbor Balla arrested same day along with Dr. Fontem Neba who served as Secretary General of the Consortium.

Brought before the Yaoundé military court for promoting terrorism among other charges that carry the maximum sentence, Agbor Balla was freed when President Biya ordered the discontinuance of proceedings against him and others on August 30, 2017.

Human Rights Lawyer Agbor Balla’s trouble at the University of Buea may not be unconnected to his indictment of government for the February 14, 2020 killings in Ngarbuh.

Culled from Cameroon Info.Net

The suspension of a university professor’s classes in Cameroon has raised fears that the government wants to silence those who dare raise the subject of the country’s Anglophone crisis.

Since late 2016, Anglophone regions of Cameroon have been gripped in violence between government forces and armed groups seeking a separate state. The crisis has claimed thousands of lives.

The government has repeatedly denied that its security forces have committed abuses during the crisis, but now it seems to be taking matters even further.

On April 20, the minister of higher education sent a letter to Buea University alleging that law professor Felix Agbor Nkongho, also known as Agbor-Balla, breached “the university’s code of ethics and conduct” and called on the head of the university to take measures. Agbor-Balla’s classes were then suspended.

Agbor-Balla told Human Rights Watch that he believes the suspension of his classes was because of an assignment in which he asked students to explore the reasons behind the Anglophone crisis. He added that it was only meant to get the law students to think critically and put the crisis into a legal context.

“I don’t discuss politics in the classroom,” he said.

A Ministry of Higher Education representative told Radio France International that Agbor-Balla had “turned a classroom into a political space.”

It is not the first time teachers got into trouble for discussing current events in Cameroon. On September 13, 2019, a teacher at the high school in Avebe-Esse, a village in the South region, was arrested after mentioning in class that the government was considering allowing jailed opposition leader Maurice Kamto to participate in a national dialogue. The teacher was released five days later.

Agbor-Balla had been arrested in January 2017 for leading peaceful protests in Buea along with other Anglophone activists. Charged by a military court under the anti-terrorism law, he was eventually released in August 2017 and all charges were dropped.

Since then, he has advocated for upholding human rights during the crisis, denouncing abuses by both the military and the armed separatists.

University students should be encouraged to debate the most pressing issues of the day. The suspension of Agbor-Balla’s courses shows the government wants to stifle that debate.

Culled from Human Rights Watch

Iranian authorities have released French academic Roland Marchal, who has been imprisoned in Iran since June 2019, the French presidency announced in a statement on Saturday.

Roland, a specialist of sub-Saharan conflicts, is due to arrive in France around midday on Saturday, the statement said.

French President Emmanuel Macron urged the Iranian authorities to also release French citizen Fariba Adelkhah, who is still imprisoned, the presidency added.

France has for months demanded that Iran release the two researchers, who both went on trial in early March.

Adelkhah is a citizen of both Iran and France, but Tehran does not recognise dual nationality.

The two academics faced charges of “propaganda against the system” and “colluding to commit acts against national security”, according to their lawyer Said Dehghan.

Their Paris-based support group and the French foreign ministry have sounded the alarm over the health of both detainees — Adelkhah went on hunger strike for 49 days and Marchal’s health was said to be deteriorating.

The support group has repeatedly claimed that the two are innocent of the charges they face.

Adding to concerns for the welfare of the prisoners, Iran has been hard hit by the novel coronavirus pandemic, behind only Italy and China in number of fatalities.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS)

On January 30, armed separatists kidnapped Marie (not her real name), a 19-year-old secondary school student, in Buea, in Cameroon’s Anglophone South-West region. Three days later, they chopped her finger off with a machete.

The reason? Marie wanted to go to school.

Since 2017, armed separatist groups have enforced a boycott of education in the country’s two English-speaking regions, as part of a perverse attempt to pressure the government to get greater political recognition.

They’ve burned school buildings and kidnapped and assaulted students and teachers for not complying with their demands to keep schools shut. They have used schools as bases, torturing and holding people hostage in and near them.

“They punished me because they found schoolbooks in my bag,” said Marie. “They wanted to cut a finger of my right hand to prevent me from writing again. I begged them [not to], and then they chopped the forefinger of my left hand.”

Marie said the separatists also maimed a 19-year-old man who was held with her and also accused of attending school. Both students were released on February 3, after a ransom payment. They have received medical treatment but have not yet returned to school.

Separatists’ attacks on schools, students, and teachers in the Anglophone regions have had a devastating impact on education. According to United Nations agencies, nearly 600,000 children have been prevented from going to school since late 2016, and only 19 percent of primary and secondary schools are open across the North-West and South-West regions. Government forces have been implicated in one arson attack at a school, according to open source investigators.

In September 2018, Cameroon announced its endorsement of the Safe Schools Declaration, one of 28 African Union members to join this international political commitment to protect education during armed conflict. Clearly, far more needs to be done by the government to ensure children can return to school safely and to promote alternative forms of education, including teaching by radio, the internet, or television, for those students who cannot yet return.

In their brutal campaign, separatists are using education as a weapon for political gains and are robbing an entire generation of children of their fundamental right to education. Separatist leaders should immediately direct their fighters and followers to stop interfering with children’s education.

Culled from Human Rights Watch

When an Amnesty International delegation visited Cameroon in August 2010, they identified that circumstances at prisons were appalling. At New Bell prison where Cameroonian creator Bertrand Zepherin Teyou was held, the scenario was not distinct. Officially intended to accommodate 700 persons, the New Bell prison in Douala experienced more than 2,453 detainees in August

2010.

“The detainees are in an overcrowded and everyday living-threatening setting – some have irons on their feet – and there is a dire absence of satisfactory foodstuff and professional medical treatment,” Tawanda Hondora, deputy director of the Africa plan at Amnesty Worldwide, claimed at the time.

“The guards are not adequately qualified and are ill-outfitted to deal with this kind of a significant quantity of detainees, a problem which often gives increase to unrest and attempted escape, some of which are lethal,” Hondora included.

For months, Teyou had to survive within the 4 walls of New Bell prison, even suffering from heavy bleeding triggered by acute hemorrhoids, a ailment built even worse by his weak prison eating plan.

And this was all simply because he could not fork out the court good just after he was arrested for creating a guide about the country’s very first lady.

Teyou was arrested in a lodge in November 2010 though making an attempt to launch a e-book he experienced prepared about Chantal Biya, the spouse of Cameroon’s President Paul Biya.

Teyou experienced hired a room at the Somatel Lodge for the signing of his e book, La Belle de la République bananière: Chantal Biya, de la rue au palais (The Banana Republic’s Natural beauty: Chantal Biya, from the street to the palace).

The ebook is about Chantal’s modest beginnings to her increase as Cameroon’s first lady. But just before the guide was about to be launched in the existence of the media, management of the resort reported they would no lengthier allow for him to use the venue.

Protection forces quickly arrived, arrested him and whisked him to a police station in Douala. There, he was detained and charged with contempt of a persona (outrage à personnalité) and illegal assembly (manifestation illégale).

On November 10, 2010, Teyou was attempted by the Superior Courtroom (Tribunal de première instance) in Douala, which uncovered him responsible of the costs.

He was sentenced to a fine of two,030,150 CFA francs (4,425 US pounds) or two years’ imprisonment if he was unable to pay the good. Not in a position to fork out the great, he had to keep on being in prison.

Then his wellbeing circumstances deteriorated because of to the lifetime-threatening ailments at the jail. Alongside the way, he could only receive professional medical treatment outdoors, only when and if he could find the money for it.

In the meantime, human legal rights companies these as Amnesty Worldwide and Writers in Prison Committee of International PEN had begun demanding his release.

Amnesty International argued that the charges against him “are unfounded at best and he really should be launched immediately and unconditionally.”

According to Articles or blog posts 152 to 156 of the Cameroonian Penal code, the offense of contempt is only applicable to senior govt and legislative officials, as very well as foreign dignitaries. It does not mention their spouses or users of their households, a report by africultures claimed in April 2011.

It extra that Teyou was not sued by the first girl, nor was she a witness in the circumstance immediately after he was arrested, detained and through his demo.

His charge of unlawful assembly was also stunning for quite a few, taking into consideration the Cameroonian creator experienced notified authorities of the start ahead of time.

About two months in prison, on February 15, 2011, Teyou went on a hunger strike to protest the ailments at the prison but his spouse and children persuaded him to back down due to his health and fitness which continued to deteriorate.

The good news is, that same 12 months, on May two, Teyou was unveiled when the London chapter of Global PEN agreed to spend his high-quality and to also go for health-related procedure.

Rejoining his family members and mates, it was later on documented that his overall health experienced improved. The chair of African literature at the University of Bayreuth also available to shell out the charges for his e book to be reprinted in Germany.

At the time of his arrest, Amnesty Global mentioned it considered Teyou was held as a prisoner of conscience, “detained entirely for the tranquil exercising of his ideal to freedom of expression and affiliation.”

In an interview in March 2011, Teyou disclosed his motives for producing his e book. “We are entitled to increase in opposition to the injustice that is crippling our region. We can’t enable evil go unquestioned… This reserve is the expression of my dissatisfaction with what is going on in Cameroon, especially the macabre process that gives Chantal Biya the leeway to treat people today about her with serious cruelty.”

Paul Biya

Chantal’s husband, 87-12 months-outdated Biya, is just one of Africa’s longest-serving presidents who gained one more seven-calendar year expression in 2018. Right after serving for 36 a long time, he is not ready to move down even nevertheless the nation continues to tumble apart.

Latest situations in the region comprise all the telltale indications of a regime in decline and a failing setting.

For a prolonged time, Biya has relied on the common dictatorial techniques to maintain his stranglehold on the place ethnic divisions, a brutal military crackdown on dissenters, arrest and imprisonment of opposition leaders, preserving a shut school of cronies, most of whom are from his area of origin and have remained blind loyalists. These that have proven indicators of wavering have been swiftly thrown in prison.

Source: gotech daily.com

Strange but true. That’s Cameroon for you. Pegue Manga reported in a release that the Registrar of the Cameroon General Certificate of Education, GCE Board, Dr. Omer Weyi Yembe, September 13, 2005, issued a release cancelling the 2005 Ordinary Level results of Government Secondary School, GSS, Tabenken in Donga and Mantung Division for copy work and cheating.

That year James Wenong wrote “The perpetrators are very lucky to be in Cameroon. In Developed Countries, they will all be axed from their jobs, sent to jail and be banned for life. In Cameroon, they keep their jobs and can return after a three-year probation. That is a joke. Lucky criminals”.

The Yembe-signed release also banned some nine teachers of GSS Tabenken who were said to have helped the students to cheat, from taking part in any aspect of examinations organised by the GCE Board for a period of three years.

They included among others a certain Oliver Tarlishi – Mathematics Teacher of GSS Tabenken. (Details can be obtained from Searches related to Tarlishi and GCE examination fraud in Cameroon.

Subsequently, as if to compensate the said Tarlishi Oliver for his mischief, he was on several occasions and in a row appointed Principal of many secondary schools.

The question here is when Tarlishi Oliver was principal in the series of secondary schools, did he take part in the management of the GCE examinations (the GCE Board during examinations normally appoints Principals of schools to act as Chiefs of Centre).

What role did he play in the GCE examinations when he served as Principal?

Presently Tarlishi Oliver is the Divisional Delegate of Secondary Education in Donga and Mantung Division.

With the current socio-political situation in the North West Region of Cameroon, he is conspicuously absent from his Nkambe office, as he has to proof his allegiance to the ruling CPDM party by running messy and difficult errands for Mr Fuh Calistus Gentry – Secretary of State to the Minister of Mines, Industries and Technological Development (from Misaje Sub Division, Donga and Mantung Division) and Ngala Gerard – the section president of the CPDM in Nkambe in the North West region (from Ntabenken).

He is not a fool! He is playing his last cards while eyeing the post of Regional Delegate for Secondary Education.

It is worthwhile noting that Tarlishi Oliver, while serving as Principal was at the head of a network which collected monies from teachers in exchange for appointments.

The other teachers banned that same year 2005

Francis Tantoh – Physics and Mathematics Teacher,

Emmanuel Bigi Nyabikesa – English Language Teacher,

Oliver Lambip – French Teacher,

Christian Nyon – Senior Discipline Master,

Gabriel Zemkwe – Mathematics Teacher,

Louis Niba Akongnui – French Teacher,

Peter Z. Chungong – Biology Teacher,

Vitalis Abi Takah – Chemistry Teacher.

Cameroon is going down the drain and it must be known that those pushing the country down the bottom of the abyss  also include teachers, many of whom are sucking up to corrupt politicians to earn what they do not deserve.

The citizens of this country must stand up for their country. They must take back their country, if not things will bottom out and that will be very soon.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai with files from Cameroon Intelligence Report

In December 2019, the University of Toronto launched a new initiative, the Global Database of Atrocities, to collect and store information on atrocities perpetrated in the Anglophone crisis in Cameroon.

The Anglophone crisis in Cameroon emerged in 2016 but is grounded in long-standing and unresolved issues surrounding political, economic, and social marginalization of the Anglophone minority community. The Anglophone community constitutes of approximately 20% of the country’s population, with the remaining 80% being Francophones. In 2016, Anglophone lawyers and teachers took to the streets in protest against the Government’s appointment of French-language judges and teachers and the introduction of French-language procedures in Anglophone-region courts and schools. The response to the protests was one marked by excessive use of violence.

Cameroon’s ‘Anglophone Crisis’

In the subsequent months, the situation only deteriorated. This provided fertile ground for the emergence and/or engagement of several non-state groups. As the International Crisis Group reported in September 2019, since 2017, as a result of the crisis, approximately 3,000 people have been killed, over 500,000 have become internally displaced persons (IDPs) and 40,000 sought refuge in Nigeria. In November 2019, UNICEF reported that close to 2 million people in the Anglophone Regions were in urgent need of humanitarian aid. 855,000 children were forced out of school because of the crisis.

Government forces are accused of involvement in extrajudicial killings, disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force, use of torture, forcible displacement of the population, using rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war, and attacks on hospitals. The non-state actors involved in the crisis have been accused of using torture, kidnappings, violence, rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war.

The new initiative, the Database of Atrocities aims to “aggregate, verify, secure, and publish information about atrocities or crimes against humanity committed by Cameroonian military and non-state armed groups.” The new initiative recognizes that to ensure justice in the future, evidence of the atrocities must be collected now. Indeed, the data collected now could be used to prosecute those most responsible for the crimes, whether in domestic courts or some form of international tribunal. It could also be used at a future national truth, justice, and reconciliation commission.

A New Approach To Engagement Sees Exemplary Results

The authors of the initiative are calling upon anyone with relevant information, including photos, videos, documents, or other proof of atrocities from October 2016 in Cameroon’s Anglophone North-West Region and South-West Region, to submit the information onto its website to be processed. The Database of Atrocities is hosted at the University of Toronto and is supported by Amnesty International’s Digital Verification Corps (University of California-Berkeley, University of Toronto, University of Pretoria and University of Essex) who will engage in the verification.

The new initiative must be commended. International actors may be too slow to act in setting up mechanisms that could help to collect the evidence of such atrocities and in ensuring that justice is served in the future. Civil society actors are stepping up to address the shortfall. Time will only tell whether the database triggers the attention that is needed and is able to secure the evidence. However, as the evidence is collected, it is crucial to explore options for how the evidence could be used to ensure justice for the victims and survivors of the atrocities. Cameroon, despite having signed the Rome Statute, the treaty underlying the International Criminal Court (the ICC), has not ratified the Rome Statute and hence is not subject to territorial jurisdiction of the ICC. However, considering the mass forcible displacement of thousands of Cameroonians to Nigeria (a state party to the Rome Statute), the ICC could (potentially) gain the required jurisdiction following the precedent of dealing with the situation in Myanmar/Bangladesh. However, there are other options as well. Where there is a will, there is a way to put a stop to impunity.

Source: Forbes