Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ebola outbreak is spreading at its fastest rate yet, eight months after it was first detected, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday.

Each of the past two weeks has registered a record number of new cases, marking a sharp setback for efforts to respond to the second biggest outbreak ever, as militia violence and community resistance have impeded access to affected areas.

Less than three weeks ago, the WHO said the outbreak of the haemorrhagic fever was largely contained and could be stopped by September, noting that weekly case numbers had halved from earlier in the year to about 25.

But the number of cases hit a record 57 the following week, and then jumped to 72 last week, said WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier. Previous spikes of around 50 cases per week were documented in late January and mid-November.

Deaths occur outside treatment centers

More alarmingly, about three-quarters of Ebola deaths last week occurred outside of treatment centers, according to Congo health ministry data, meaning there is a much greater chance they transmitted the virus to those around them.

“People are becoming infected without access to response measures,” Lindmeier told Reuters.

The current outbreak is believed to have killed 676 people and infected 406 others. Another 331 patients have recovered.

In the past two months, five Ebola centers have been attacked, some by armed militiamen. That led French medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) to suspend its activities in two of the most affected areas.

Another challenge has been a mistrust of first responders. A survey conducted last September by medical journal The Lancet found that a quarter of people sampled in two Ebola hotspots did not believe the disease was real.

New outreach program

Lindmeier said new approaches to community outreach were showing signs of progress and that some previously hostile local residents had recently agreed to grant health workers access.

One treatment center that closed in February after being torched by unknown assailants reopened last week.

More than 11,000 people died in West Africa’s 2013-16 Ebola outbreak. Since then, health authorities have worked to speed up their responses and deployed an experimental vaccine and treatments, both of which have been considered effective.

Source: Reuters

Kenya’s pharmacy and poisons regulator on Friday destroyed packs of condoms deemed to be unsafe for public use. The product is said to have failed quality tests prompting a recall.

The Pharmacy and Poisons Board said its drug inspectors supervised the destruction of the Fiesta condoms valued at 10 million Kenyan shillings (which comes up to over $100,000). The incarceration took place at the facility located in Athi River, a town located outside the capital Nairobi.

The authorized market dealers of the product were listed as Deep Kumar Tyagi Healthcare International Limited. Apparently, the board had ordered a recall of all the affected consignments.

“The recall of the affected batches of the fiesta condoms was concluded on 11th March, 2019 upon which Pharmacy and Poisons Board Kenya directed the market authorization holder to carry out destruction of the recalled consignment under PPB supervision,” they said in a tweet.

Workers in protective are seek unpacking the products and hurling them into a fire place. The Board has meanwhile urged vigilance on the part of the public to identify any sub-standard health products on the market.

Reports indicate that it is not the first time such an incident is taking place. In 2018, the Health Ministry did order a recall of some condom brands on the same grounds.

The Fiesta Stamina and Fiesta Big Black products were said to have failed thickness tests in November 2018 hence the recall.

Source: Africa News

A new report by the World Health Organization disputes a belief that refugees and migrants bring exotic communicable diseases into the European region.

The report is based on evidence from more than 13,000 documents. It provides a snapshot of the health of refugees and migrants who comprise about 10 percent of the nearly 1 billion population in 53 European countries.

The survey finds migrants and refugees are generally in good health, but, due to poor living conditions, they risk falling ill while in transit or while staying in receiving countries. The report says contrary to common perception, the risk of refugees and migrants transmitting communicable diseases to their host population is very low.

The WHO regional director for Europe, Zsuzsanna Jakab, tells VOA displacement itself makes refugees and migrants more vulnerable to infectious diseases.

“The refugees and migrants who come to Europe, they do not bring any exotic diseases with them, any exotic communicable diseases,” said Jakab. “The diseases that they might have, they are all well-established diseases in Europe. And also, we have very good prevention and control programs for these diseases. This applies both for tuberculosis, but also HIV-AIDS.”

Europe is the only one among WHO’s six regions where HIV is prevalent and increasing, especially in the east. Jakab says a significant proportion of migrants and refugees who are HIV-positive acquire the infection after they arrive in Europe.

The report finds refugees and migrants seem to have fewer noncommunicable diseases on arrival than their host populations; but, it notes the longer they stay in the countries in conditions of poverty, their risk of cardiovascular diseases, stroke and cancer increases.

The report says refugees and migrants are more affected by depression and anxiety than host populations. It says unaccompanied minors are vulnerable to sexual exploitation and suffer from higher rates of depression and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

WHO considers it critically important that European countries provide quality and affordable health care for all refugees and migrants, regardless of their legal status. Providing universal health coverage, it says, would significantly improve the well-being of both the displaced and host populations.

VOA

A cholera outbreak in north-eastern Nigeria has claimed nearly 100 lives over the past two weeks, the United Nations said Saturday. More than 3,000 cholera cases have been recorded in the states of Yobe and Borno in a region that is also grappling with a Boko Haram insurgency, it said.

“The cumulative number of recorded cases in both states currently stands at 3,126 including 97 deaths,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

The outbreak was declared two weeks ago in restive Borno, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people live in camps.

Boko Haram has intensified attacks, especially against military targets in recent months. On Wednesday, the UN reported that more than 500 people had died from cholera in the Lake Chad region since the start of the year, representing the worst outbreak to hit the area in four years.

It said more than six million people could be affected by the outbreak without urgent action to control it. Expected floods and heavy rains were “an ideal environment for the outbreak to spread”, OCHA warned.

The Lake Chad region straddles parts of Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger, which also have to deal with a jihadist insurgency. OCHA said Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, was the worst-hit with 24,000 cases overall, and said immediate action was needed to stem the disease.

Cholera is caused by a bacterium transmitted through contaminated food or drinking water. It causes acute diarrhoea, with children particularly at risk.

Water-borne diseases are a constant threat in the Lake Chad region because of a lack of adequate sanitation as well as stagnant groundwater during the rainy season.

AFP

Boko Haram militants have killed a midwife who was kidnapped in an attack in remote northeast Nigeria more than six months ago, the Red Cross said on Monday. The humanitarian agency condemned the “tragic killing” of Saifura Hussaini Ahmed Khorsa, who was abducted in Rann, in the far north of Borno state, on March 1. “We are devastated by the murder of our colleague Saifura,” said Eloi Fillion, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delegation in Abuja.

No details were given about the circumstances of her death but the ICRC called on the Islamists to release another midwife and nurse still being held. “There is no ideology or religious law that could justify doing any harm to them,” said Fillion. The UN’s humanitarian coordinator in Nigeria, Edward Kallon, said “the killing of Ms. Hussaini, a young, dedicated and passionate midwife and humanitarian, is a cowardly, heinous and despicable act”. “This incident demonstrates the severe challenges that Nigeria continues to face,” he added.

Humanitarian work was suspended in March after Boko Haram attacked Rann, killing three aid workers and eight Nigerian soldiers. The announcements by the ICRC and the UN are the first public news about the women since they were kidnapped.

Rann is a remote town on the border with Cameroon where more than 60,000 people who have fled from Boko Haram jihadists depend on emergency food aid and medical care to survive. The Islamist group has intensified attacks in recent months, with the violence spilling over into neighbouring Chad, Niger and Cameroon. The jihadists have increasingly turned to kidnapping for ransom as a way to finance their operations and win back key commanders in prisoner swaps with the Nigerian government.

www.vanguardngr.com

On the deadly night of August 21, 1986, a strange and mysterious natural disaster took place at one of the most interesting lakes in Africa — Lake Nyos.

Lake Nyos is not an ordinary lake. It is a crater lake — a lake formed atop a volcanic crater in northwest Cameroon. Though it is one of the most unforgettable tourist attractions in Cameroon, the areas surrounding the lake are deserted as settlers were moved far away from it.

What exactly happened?

Before the 21st, Lake Nyos was a beautiful blue lake with picturesque surroundings.

What the villagers settled around it did not know was that CO2 leaks deep below the lake. On that unfateful day, the water became saturated with the gas and a frothy spray shot hundreds of feet out of the lake, and a white cloud of carbondioxide collected over the water and flowed across the land. The cloud grew to 100 meters tall and moved up to 25 kilometres away from the lake, into the villages of Cha, Nyos and Subum.

The gas cloud displaced all the air, quietly suffocating an estimated 1,746 people and 3,500 livestock.

A volcanic eruption in Cameroon once killed over 1700 people (Imgur)

This disaster lasted for two days, leaving everywhere dead silent, and by Aug. 23, most of the cloud had blown away. After being unconscious for up to 36 hours, few people revived to find, horrifically, that their family members, neighbours and livestock were dead. They found no disturbances, no violence – just corpses. Even the flies had dropped dead. The lake had even lost its signature blue hue and all that was left was a brown rust colour.

A volcanic eruption in Cameroon once killed over 1700 people (Volcano world)

One survivor, Joseph Nkwain from Subum, described himself when he awoke after the gases had struck:

“I could not speak. I became unconscious. I could not open my mouth because then I smelled something terrible … I heard my daughter snoring in a terrible way, very abnormal … When crossing to my daughter’s bed … I collapsed and fell. I was there till nine o’clock in the (Friday) morning … until a friend of mine came and knocked at my door … I was surprised to see that my trousers were red, had some stains like honey. I saw some … starchy mess on my body. My arms had some wounds … I didn’t really know how I got these wounds … I opened the door … I wanted to speak, my breath would not come out … My daughter was already dead … I went into my daughter’s bed, thinking that she was still sleeping. I slept till it was 4:30 p.m. in the afternoon … on Friday. (Then) I managed to go over to my neighbours’ houses. They were all dead … I decided to leave … (because) most of my family was in Wum … I got my motorcycle … A friend whose father had died left with me (for) Wum … As I rode … through Nyos I didn’t see any sign of any living thing … (When I got to Wum), I was unable to walk, even to talk … my body was completely weak.”

Now, the government has put in preventive measures like the 3 degassing pumps in the lake although the settlers have still not returned. Till date, Lake Nyos and the surrounding land in northwest Cameroon still seem to be completely dead with no sign of birds or any other animals.

Source: Pulse.ng

World hunger rose in 2017 for a third consecutive year, fueled by conflict and climate change, the United Nations warned on Tuesday, jeopardizing a global goal to end the scourge by 2030.

Hunger appears to be increasing in almost all of Africa and in South America, with 821 million people – one in nine – going hungry in 2017, according to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2018 report.

Meanwhile, 672 million adults — more than one in eight — are now obese, up from 600 million in 2014.

“Without increased efforts, there is a risk of falling far short of achieving the SDG target of hunger eradication by 2030,” the report said, referring to the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, adopted by member nations in 2015.

It was the third year in a row that global hunger levels have increased, following a decade of declines.

The report’s editor Cindy Holleman said increasing variation in temperature; intense, erratic rainfall and changing seasons were all affecting the availability and quality of food.

“That’s why we are saying we need to act now,” said Holleman, senior economist for food security and nutrition at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

“Because we’re concerned it’s not going to get better, that it’s only going to get worse,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Last year, almost 124 million people across 51 countries faced crisis levels of hunger, driven by conflicts and climate disasters, the U.N. said.

Many nations struggling with prolonged conflicts, including Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan and Afghanistan, also suffered from one or more climate shocks, such as drought and floods, the report said.

On Monday, the charity Save the Children warned 600,000 children in war zones could die from extreme hunger by the end of this year as funding shortfalls kick in and warring parties block supplies from getting to the people who need them.

The U.N. said South America’s deteriorating hunger situation might be due to the low prices of the region’s main export commodities – particularly crude oil.

A lack of food had caused an estimated 2.3 million people to flee Venezuela as of June, the U.N. has said.

Uncertain or insufficient access to food also contributes to obesity because those with limited financial resources may opt for cheaper, energy-dense processed foods that are high in fat, salt and sugar, the report added.

Being deprived of food could also lead to psychological and metabolic changes, said Holleman.

“The emotions and anxieties associated with food deprivation could then lead to disorders and bingeing when you do have food,” she said, adding that experiencing this in fetal and early childhood increases the risk of obesity later in life.

Paul Winters, associate vice-president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), said reducing hunger required targeted approaches that went to the roots of chronic poverty.

“That requires having data on where they are, what their limitations are… and making sure we actually do investments that are transformative,” he said. “One of the big concerns is some (donor) countries are shifting much more to humanitarian aid which is important but doesn’t build resilience and address the underlying cause.”

Reuters

Health workers trying to control the Ebola outbreak in the city of Beni, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), have met resistance and hostility from residents who refuse to accept their city has been hit by the virus.

Yet the Health Ministry has identified Beni as the new flashpoint and two people who died in Butembo, just over 50 km from Beni and an important trading hub, have been confirmed Ebola cases.

The Ebola death in Butembo, a city of almost a million on the border with Uganda, dampened hopes that the spread of the disease was close to being brought under control. Butembo straddles a major trading route for consumer goods entering Congo from East Africa and for Congolese exports of artisanal gold, coltan, timber and other materials to East African ports via Uganda.

Taxi drivers plying the Beni-Butembo route have a different opinion about the epidemic, claiming they would have been the ones to have been infected as they always meet and mix with both Beni and Butembo residents.

“We hear people talking about Ebola but we have never seen anyone suffering from it. I am a resident of Beni and I don’t think there is Ebola”, said Moses Tekela, a taxi driver.

Some areas close to the epicentre of the outbreak, which is believed to have killed 89 people since July and infected another 40, have been off-limits to health workers due to their proximity to rebel-controlled territory. Most have been in villages but about 20 cases have been in Beni, a city of several hundred thousand people with close links to Uganda.

Unlike the taxi drivers, teachers in Beni fear the worst and many have stayed away from schools due to start after the summer break this week. Parental concern over possible infection also has stopped some pupils from attending classes at the start of the school year.

The health ministry has advised those in high-risk areas to observe strict hygiene rules such as washing their hands before entering supermarkets, schools and other public places.

Health officials say they have made progress slowing the virus’s spread with experimental vaccines and treatments. But they cannot be sure the situation is under control due to difficulties accessing some areas.

Congo has experienced 10 outbreaks of Ebola since it was discovered in the country’s forested north in 1976. The disease causes haemorrhagic fever and kills about half of the people it infects.

Reuters

More than 1.4 billion adults are putting themselves at heightened risk of deadly diseases by not getting enough exercise, doctors are warning, with global activity levels virtually unchanged in nearly two decades.

With richer nations enjoying an increasingly comfortable, sedentary lifestyle, a study by the World Health Organization said a third of women and a quarter of men worldwide are in the firing line for killer conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer unless they up their physical activity.

“Insufficient physical activity is a leading risk factor for non-communicable diseases, and has a negative effect on mental health and quality of life,” said the study of world exercise levels published Wednesday by The Lancet Global Health Journal.

The WHO recommends each adult do at least 150 minutes “moderate-intensity” exercise — such as brisk walking, swimming, or gentle cycling — each week, or 75 minutes “vigorous-intensity” activity — such as running or team sports.

The study tracked activity levels of 1.9 million people in 168 countries across the world during 2016.

Researchers found there had been no improvement in physical activity levels since 2001, despite numerous public health initiatives extolling the benefits of exercise.

More than a quarter of the world’s adults (1.4 billion people) were insufficiently active, according to the data.

“We definitely haven’t done enough” to encourage people to exercise, the WHO’s Regina Guthold, lead study author, told AFP.

“We have seen basically no progress.”

The study authors highlighted several worrying trends, including a stark divide in exercise rates between poor and rich nations, and between men and women.

Wealth, gender gaps

Levels of insufficient activity to guard off non-communicable killers, including dementia and cardiovascular diseases, are more than twice as high in high-income countries compared to developing nations.

Guthold said the link between the lifestyle in wealthier nations — more time indoors, longer office hours, more easily accessible high-calorie foods — and lower exercise levels, was part of a “clear pattern” of poorer health coming with urbanization.

“As countries urbanize, people who used to be, say, farmers, and got a lot of physical activity through their work all of a sudden live in an urban environment where they might be without work or move to a sedentary job, so societies need to compensate,” she said.

In four countries — Kuwait, American Samoa, Saudi Arabia and Iraq — more than half of adults were classified as insufficiently active.

Melody Ding of the University of Sydney, who worked on the paper, said there were a variety of reasons why some countries were more active than others, including “biological, psychosocial, institutional, cultural and environmental barriers.”

“I consider one of the biggest barriers being our environment — physical activity has been engineered out of life, with desk-based jobs replacing labor jobs, lifts replacing stairs, cars replacing active travel,” she told AFP.

“Technological advancement has made our life more convenient but also less active.”

Women still lag behind men in nearly every region of the world, with the gender exercise gap highest in Bangladesh, Eritrea, India, Iraq, and the Philippines, the study found.

“In these settings, women are often expected to be at home, take care of the children, manage the household and so sometimes don’t always have time to exercise,” said Guthold.

One bright spot on the global exercise map was Southeast Asia, where women were equally as active as men in the only region where inactivity has decreased since 2001.

(Source: AFP)