Cameroonian president Paul Biya has signed the treaty for the establishment of the African Medicines Agency (AMA), a specialized organ of the African Union (AU), state broadcaster CRTV reported on Sunday.

The treaty for the establishment of the AMA was adopted by the AU in February 2019. Last week, Cameroon Senate approved a bill that authorized the country’s president to ratify the treaty.

The AMA should serve as the continental body that will govern the regulation of medicines and medical products on the African continent. It will regulate the access to safe, effective, good quality and affordable essential medicines and health technologies.

Source: Xinhuanet

The world passed the “tragic milestone” of four million recorded Covid-19 fatalities on Wednesday, the World Health Organization said, adding that the pandemic’s true toll was probably higher.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced the landmark had been reached, more than 18 months since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019.

“The world is at a perilous point in this pandemic. We have just passed the tragic milestone of four million recorded Covid-19 deaths, which likely underestimates the overall toll,” Tedros told a press conference at WHO headquarters in Geneva.

The UN health agency’s director-general said some countries with high vaccination coverage were now “relaxing as though the pandemic is already over”, dropping public health measures and planning to roll out booster shots.

“The world is at a perilous point in this pandemic

‘Shocking inequity’ in vaccine access

But he said that far too many countries all over the world were seeing sharp spikes in cases and hospitalisation, due to fast-moving virus variants and a “shocking inequity” in global access to vaccines.

“This is leading to an acute shortage of oxygen, treatments and driving a wave of death in parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America,” Tedros said.

“Vaccine nationalism, where a handful of nations have taken the lion’s share, is morally indefensible

“At this stage in the pandemic, the fact that millions of health and care workers have still not been vaccinated is abhorrent.”

Tedros said variants were currently outpacing vaccines due to the inequitable distribution of available doses, which he said was also threatening the global economic recovery from the Covid-19 crisis.

“From a moral, epidemiological or economic point view, now is the time for the world to come together to tackle this pandemic collectively.”

(AFP)

A measles outbreak has killed four people in Cameroon, according to a report on Tuesday by the expanded immunization program of the country’s Ministry of Public Health.

About 200 people are infected with the disease, according to the ministry. Seven out of the 10 regions of the Central African nation have been affected by the outbreak.

“Seventy-eight percent of victims are aged between nine months and nine years,” the report said, stating that the East region, as well as the Center region where the capital Yaounde is located, have the highest number of suspected cases.

Authorities have appealed to parents to vaccinate their children against the disease.

In 2019, the government organized a national vaccination campaign to stop an outbreak of the disease after more than 3,000 suspected cases were reported and 17 people died.

Source: Xinhuanet

University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Nursing professor Edwin Aroke, Ph.D., has been elected president of the Association of Cameroonian Nurse Anesthetists in America and will serve a two-year term from 2021-2023.

As president, Aroke, along with other members of the ACNAA, will improve training for nurse anesthetists in Cameroon, develop workshops for education and create a sustainable revenue source to support ACNAA’s efforts. He will continue to donate lightly used equipment when possible and plans to complete a robust benchmarking study of the state of anesthesia care in Cameroon.

“As individuals who still have family in Cameroon and who have lived there, we bring more than expert knowledge to the table,” Aroke said. “It makes a difference to have providers who really understand the politics of the area and the culture and challenges of the people. Being able to relate to each other matters.”

Aroke is an award-winning educator, CRNA and researcher for pain disparities among minorities in the United States. He was recently named the John F. Garde Researcher of the Year by the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists Foundation. He hopes to use his knowledge and research during his ACNAA appointment to positively impact people’s lives in the United States and internationally.

The tie to his home country is strong, Aroke says, and for members in ACNAA, there is a

passion for improving anesthesia care in Cameroon. The gap in health care provider knowledge is a major issue and can lead to increased death rates for conditions that are easily treatable in the United States.

“Most of us entered nurse anesthesia to make a difference,” he said. “You get tired of hearing that someone had a hernia or appendicitis, went to the hospital, and died. If we come together and share our ideas and experience, we can be part of the solution instead of just sitting on the sidelines and criticizing.”

Source: UAB News

South Africa will host the continent’s first Covid-19 vaccine production facility, as President Cyril Ramaphosa said Monday Africa now understood that doses would “never come” from elsewhere in time to save lives.

Ramaphosa joined the World Health Organization (WHO) and French President Emmanuel Macron in announcing the new hub for Messenger RNA coronavirus vaccine technology.

But as the project will take time to get off the ground, no vaccines are expected from it until next year.

At tech transfer hubs, the technology is established at industrial scale, while interested manufacturers can receive training and any necessary licences to the technology.

“The ability to manufacture vaccines, medicines and other health-related commodities will help to put Africa on a path to self-determination,” Ramaphosa told a WHO virtual press conference via video-link.

“It’s been shown now that we just cannot continue to rely on vaccines that are made outside of Africa because they never come. They never arrive on time and people continue to die.”

Hub seen as combating inequality

The hub is seen by the Geneva-based WHO as a way to combat the vast inequality in access to vaccines between the world’s wealthiest and poorest nations.

WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said it could take nine to 12 months before Covid-19 vaccines could be produced in South Africa using tested and approved processes.

Under the tech transfer hub system, the WHO and its partners bring in the production know-how, quality control and necessary licences to enable a rapid roll-out.

At the South African hub, the bio-pharmaceutical company Biovac will act as developer; the Afrigen biotechnology firm will be the manufacturer; and a consortium of universities will provide the scientific know-how.

Messenger RNA genetic technology — as used in the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna coronavirus jabs — trains the body to reproduce spike proteins similar to those found on the coronavirus. When exposed to the real virus later, the body recognises the spike proteins and is able to fight them off.

The WHO said it would “continue its assessment of potential mRNA technology donors and will launch subsequent calls for other technologies, such as viral vectors and proteins, in coming months”.

Kate Stegeman of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said that “Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech must immediately share their mRNA technology with the hub so that many more mRNA vaccines can be produced independently by manufacturers in South Africa and more broadly on the African continent”.

‘Great day for Africa’

During a visit to South Africa last month, Macron said he was pushing for the faster transfer of technology to allow poorer countries to start manufacturing their own Covid-19 jabs.

It was a “great day for Africa,” said Macron.

“Each continent must be able to develop and produce its own vaccines, its own medicines,” he added.

“Action for global public goods is the fight that this century must uphold and the fight that cannot wait.”

South Africa accounts for more than 35 percent of Africa’s total recorded Covid-19 cases, and is currently suffering a third wave of infections.

South Africa, along with India, has been pushing for a temporary waiver of vaccines’ intellectual property rights in order to speed up production.

More than 2.6 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been injected in at least 216 territories around the world, according to an AFP count.

In the highest-income countries, accounting for 16 percent of the global population, 74 doses have been injected per 100 inhabitants.

Source: AFP

Authorities in Cameroon are battling vaccine hesitancy with only eleven percent of doses received since April dispensed most of them due to travel requirements. Cameroon’s government and clergy have been struggling to get the public to accept that the vaccines are safe.

A group of 70 Cameroonian Muslims gathered at the Djoungolo government hospital in Yaoundé Friday to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Coordinator of the Council of Imams and Muslim Dignitaries of Cameroon, Moussa Oumarou says vaccine hesitancy meant he had to convince the group.

He says Cameroon’s government asked the clergy to convince their followers that the vaccines could save their lives.

Oumarou says every religion that puts God first seeks to protect human lives. He says it is both a divine and civic obligation to protect lives by accepting to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. Oumarou says the council has asked all Imams and Muslim dignitaries in Cameroon to accept to be vaccinated and to encourage all their faithful to be vaccinated.

Cameroon health officials say only 75,000 people have been inoculated since April, when the government received 700,000 doses.

And most of the doses administered, say officials, went to people who were planning to travel outside of Cameroon, including expatriates.

37-year-old college teacher in Yaoundé Rigobert Fonbanla says many Cameroonians don’t trust authorities’ urging the jab after a COVID funds scandal and seizure of fakes.  

“The same government that is asking people to accept to be vaccinated against COVID-19 is the same government that is investigating the authenticity and origin of the coronavirus vaccines,” said Fonbanla. “There is a possibility that corrupt government officials may have imported fake COVID-19 vaccines or produced dubious COVID-19 vaccines. I will wait for investigations announced by the government to be complete before I can decide whether I will be vaccinated or not.”

Most of a $335 million International Monetary Fund loan to Cameroon to fight COVID disappeared.

Last week at least 15 ministers were called up at the supreme state audit office to justify their management of the funds.

In December, Cameroon announced that its military seized several tons of fake COVID drugs and vaccines from neighboring Nigeria, raising fears that other fakes might be in circulation.

Cameroon’s Health Minister Manaouda Malachie says the COVID vaccines being used are good quality and recommended by the World Health Organization.

He says the vaccines are not obligatory but will be administered freely to all civilians who want to save their lives from the deadly coronavirus. Malachie says Cameroon’s President Paul Biya is very keen to have transparency on all COVID-19 vaccination procedures. He says the state of Cameroon cannot joke with the lives of its citizens.

To encourage Cameroonians to get the jab, hospitals in the northwest region in April said they would wave a usual $2 consultation fee.

In May, Cameroon’s government instructed all its ministers and senior officials to be vaccinated in public.

Source: VOA