were these vaccines harming Africans?

 We gave vaccines out in Africa (and America), and I saw how a lot fewer babies died of measles etc.

But after the Dengue vaccine deaths here in the Philippines, we have to realize there might be a problem.

Uganda covid

 

Black Lives matter (but not if they live in Africa)

StrategyPage summarizes the latest news from Central Africa.

Ebola is back, alas.

 While Ebola is one of the most lethal epidemic diseases ever encountered, a much less lethal visitor from China has recently shown up in Congo. The covid19 has, in three months, inflicted around 3,400 confirmed cases of covid19 virus in Congo and 72 confirmed deaths. That’s 37 per million people and 0.8 deaths per million. For all of Africa (including North Africa) there have been 120 cases per million and 3.4 deaths per million people. That’s far lower than anywhere else...

the only problem: the numbers are not accurate you know.

 There may be more cases in Congo but the country has little or no access to modern medical care and people regularly die of undiagnosed afflictions. Since most of these involve a fever, caused by the immune system trying to fight off some kind of infection, people call many fatal conditions an unspecified fever, and such fatal fevers are common.

Sigh. This is probably true here in the Philippines too. One of our neighbors had a fever and shortness of breath but died in the hospital of a "heart attack". I am pretty sure that he had Covid, but they didn't test him. I have no proof, but maybe because if a known case was found in that (private) hospital then no one would go their for routine illnesses.

Nigerian update

The Nigerian president will be visiting President Trump, and some white news agencies say he should represent all of Africa, as if Africa and her problems were a monolith.

and you can tell the US press is both reflexivly anti Trump and racist/clueless about Africa when they write stuff like that about Africa. Heck, check out this article: because they insist his remark about "s...... countries" was about Africa, when I thought he meant Latin America, where some countries are good, but others are deteriorating into chaos and lots of folks are fleeing from these countries, most to the country next door, but some to the USA...(Venezuela, Nicaragua, Hondoras and Haiti come to mind).

Nigeria has many problems, and StrategyPage has a summary of them here.

He is facing traditional tribal wars in the north, not just terrorism:

April 30, 2018: The current Nigerian president (Muhammadu Buhari) is a Moslem, a retired general and a Fulani who cracked down hard on Boko Haram but has been more reluctant to take on the Fulani.

he is also facing opposition by corrupt businessmen and politicians (hey, sounds like here in the Philippines, where the corrupt politicians are pushing the "Drug war murder" meme to get rid of him before he puts them in jail.).

At the same time, there is another battle raging between the many corrupt politicians and their corrupt allies in the business community fighting growing government efforts to curb the endemic and crippling corruption. The corruption crowd is suffering losses but have massive financial resources to call on and tend to be stubborn and determined. In addition, there are the criminal gangs that corrupt politicians, especially state governors maintain, and often use during elections or any other crises situation.

He also faces the usual problem of disease. SP notes the fight against polio made worse because some mulsim immans oppose getting the shots: I suspect they read the "anti vaccine" stuff in the UK papers, so again don't pretend this is due to "ignorant Muslims", and eventually these clergymen change their mind when they see less disease.

In Pakistan and Afghanistan, even the Islamic terrorists have come to agree that polio vaccination is a good thing and vaccination is catching up the few unvaccinated kids. That leaves Nigeria where Islamic conservatives up north have been preaching against polio vaccinations for years insisting that the medicine is actually a Christian plot to poison Moslems.

Not mentioned in the article: The oral polio vaccine, which is easy to give to kids, mutates into the real disease once in awhile, so if there are a lot of unvaccinated people around, the vaccinated kid can spread the real disease. Two ways to stop this; one, vaccinate all the kids, and two, use the shot instead (more expensive and requires training).

sigh.

finally, the article mentions that a lot of Nigerians working and living elsewhere are sending money back to help their families.

During 2017 Nigeria received $22 billion in remittances from Nigerians living abroad. This was the largest amount for any nation in sub-Saharan Africa and the fifth highest in the world. The world leaders are India, which received $69 billion in 2017, China $64 billion, the Philippines $33 billion and Mexico $31 billion.

Again, this is a big thing here in the rural Philippines (including our family, who were supported by my husband): One person pays the school fees of all their relatives, and voila, the entire family enters the middle class.

lots more at that link, so go read the whole thing.

Unlike most of the US MSM, they tend to get things right about countries where I have personal experience (i.e. Colombia and the Philippines).

Doctor's strike continues

from Zim on line

Doctors at public hospitals went on strike last week to press for more pay. The industrial action has brought back memories of last year when striking doctors and nurses deserted hospitals as a cholera epidemic ravaged Zimbabwe, killing more than 4 000 people before it was brought under control with help from international relief agencies.

"The health delivery system is still struggling to emerge from a crisis that left the country's major referral hospitals unable to deliver services at the end of 2008," ZADHR said in a statement.

"Health professionals are entitled to adequate remuneration and acceptable working conditions. However, this must be balanced against the well being of patients. Unavailability of health services ultimately results in increased morbidity and preventable deaths."

The Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association that represents all state doctors is pushing for a salary of US$1 000 per month plus $500 allowance.

DNA of schistosomiasis decoded

from the BBC.

Schistosomiasis is a common infection in rural Zim

Cholera cases may hit 100 thousand

from the BBC:

The number of cholera cases in Zimbabwe is expected to reach 100,000 this week, according to the Red Cross....

So far, 98,309 cases have been reported, with some 4,283 deaths, said the Red Cross in a report.

The outbreak, which began last August, has been fuelled by Zimbabwe's poor water, sanitation and health systems....

Some $3.4m (£2.15m) was needed to rehabilitate Zimbabwe's water systems, dig wells and construct latrines, the aid group said.

World Malaria Day: Ending the scourge

Battling MALARIA:

...

One of the key questions is where to focus first. Some believe it is best to start in the more severely affected countries, while others support initially choosing nations where there is less malaria in order to build momentum.

Brian Greenwood of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, believes it is important to tackle the less threatening enemy first, in countries where there is the least possibility of malaria returning across the borders of neighboring states....

Dr. Donald Hopkins, vice president of health programs at the Carter Center, believes tackling the big enemy first is the best approach.

“I think you are very, very well advised to start in the worst affected areas first or very, very early. Sometimes you see folks want to get rid of the easier areas first to establish momentum but that’s a mistake in my view,” he said...

(but Greenwood continues)He also noted, “You’ve got to start somewhere first.” That has already happened, in both the most severely affected countries, as well as those with lower malaria prevalence. As more insecticide-treated bed nets are distributed, more homes are sprayed and more people are treated for the disease, the momentum has already accelerated

Public Health system has collapsed says MSF

From CBC (Canada)

The Nobel Prize-winning agency Médecins Sans Frontières, also known as Doctors Without Borders, called on both international donors and the Zimbabwean government to do more.

"You've all heard about the disastrous cholera epidemic," said Dr. Christophe Fournier, MSF's international president, who spent four days touring Zimbabwe.

"However catastrophic this epidemic is, it is only the most visible manifestation of a much broader crisis in the whole country. Actually the whole public health system in Zimbabwe is down, it has collapsed."

World Health Organization figures released Monday indicate 77,650 people in Zimbabwe have been infected with cholera, a water-borne disease, since August.

So far, 3,688 people have died from the disease, which causes severe diarrhea.

The country also faces food shortages, malnutrition, collapsed infrastructure, political violence, displacement within Zimbabwe and to neighbouring countries, as well as an HIV epidemic, MSF said in the report released in Johannesburg, South Africa.

There was no immediate comment from the Zimbabwean government.
Urgent measures needed

Malaria could be the next epidemic, the group said, because malaria season is approaching and people cannot afford to take preventive steps such as using insecticide-treated nets.

"The situation in Zimbabwe is causing inexcusable suffering," Fournier said.

"Urgent measures must be taken to ensure Zimbabweans have unimpeded access to the humanitarian assistance they so desperately need. The Zimbabwean government must guarantee that aid agencies can work wherever needs are identified and ease bureaucratic restrictions so projects can be properly staffed and drugs quickly procured."

NOTE
the government requires aid organizations to funnel all aid through them...they say it is so that the aid money doesn't go to dissadent groups and is more efficiently spread around, but most people suspsect it is so the government can blackmail opponents: YOu oppose us, and you starve/die of disease.

As for the public health system: It has been in a state of collapse for almost a year...

Doctors say Zim's ruined health system a man made failure

from Medical news Today
In a new report released today, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) finds that a causal chain runs from Mugabe's economic policies to Zimbabwe's economic collapse, food insecurity and malnutrition and the current outbreaks of infectious disease. The report is based on a health assessment by PHR public health and human rights experts who travelled to Zimbabwe in December 2008.

The 45-page report, Health in Ruins: A Man-Made Disaster in Zimbabwe asserts that "the Government of Zimbabwe has abrogated the most basic state functions in protecting the health of the population - including the maintenance of public hospitals and clinics and the support for the health workers required to maintain the public health system." These services have been in decline since 2006, but the deterioration of both public health and clinical care has dramatically accelerated since August 2008. PHR calls for emergency international intervention to address the water, sanitation, food and health crisis. ....
PHR asserts that the 2008 cholera epidemic continuing into 2009 is an outcome of the state's failures in governance and in protecting the basic rights of Zimbabweans.

"This disaster is man-made, was likely preventable, and has become a regional issue since the spread of cholera to neighbour states," stressed Dr. Chris Beyrer, one of the report's authors and a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. The report also documents that the Mugabe regime intentionally suppressed initial reports of the cholera epidemic and has since denied or underplayed its gravity.

Dr. David Sanders, a team member and Professor of Public Health at the University of the Western Cape stated, "The ZANU-PF government has exacerbated food insecurity for Zimbabweans in 2008 by blocking international humanitarian organizations from delivering food aid and other succor to populations in the worst-affected rural areas."

At the end of the PHR team's visit to Zimbabwe, the state-controlled media falsely reported the delegation's arrest. "Not only does the government actively disregard the plight of its people, it also seeks to prevent the horrific results of its actions being publicly disclosed. Our team was under constant surveillance," noted PHR researcher Richard Sollom.

The PHR report, which includes a preface by Justice Richard Goldstone, Mary Robinson and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, accuses the Mugabe ZANU-PF regime of the systematic violation of a wide range of human rights, including the rights to life, health, food, water and work....

Cholera? What cholera? Oh that cholera...it's England's fault

one doesn't know where to start.

First Mugabe is going around saying there is no cholera in Zimbabwe

Then we hear it's the UK's fault.

over 15000 have cholera in Zim

from CNN

HARARE, Zimbabwe (CNN) -- Nearly 775 people have died in Zimbabwe from the recent cholera outbreak, an official from the World Health Organization said Wednesday, refuting the government's claim that the situation is under control.

The number of overall cholera cases is also on the rise, hitting 15,141 on Wednesday, said Dr. Eric Laroche, who heads the WHO unit addressing health action during the crisis.

The WHO added that up to 60,000 people in Zimbabwe could be infected if the epidemic worsens.

Meanwhile, Zimbabwe's opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said the country's widening humanitarian crisis could only be addressed once a "legitimate government" was in place.

"It is up to that government to deal with the problems the country is facing, which are quite wide-ranging," Tsvangirai said.

"But the immediate intervention of the health crisis has exacerbated the situation to the extent that it has now become an international crisis."

Laroche told CNN from the Zimbabwean capital of Harare that "the epidemic is clearly on the increase."

"I think it's going to last for several months."

Laroche said the current outbreak had a high fatality rate, indicating that sufferers were either not able to reach health centers in time or that the centers lacked the capacity to treat them.....

doctors protest failing health system

from the ZimbabweMail:

HARARE - Truckloads of riot police were deployed outside Harare's main hospital on Tuesday to prevent scores of doctors and nurses from marching in protest at the state of Zimbabwe's collapsing health system.

Many of the group of about 100 health professionals took off their shoes to dance and sing in the parking lot of Parirenyatwa Hospital, vowing to stay away from work until a recent outbreak of cholera is brought under control....

Health service on the verge of collapse

from the ZimbabweMail

HARARE - Zimbabwe's health services, once regarded among the best in Africa, are "in a state of collapse" with its main hospitals closed and a cholera epidemic raging, a leading medical body said Wednesday.

The country's four main hospitals, in the capital, Harare, and the western city of Bulawayo, were "virtually closed", while smaller district hospitals and municipal clinics "are barely functioning or closed", the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights (ZADHR) said.

"Sick people in need of attention are being turned away."

Harare's two big state hospitals have withdrawn maternity services, meaning that women needing to deliver by Caesarean section "will needlessly die in childbirth", the doctors' association said....

(the medical school has also shut down)

Mugabe government blamed for Cholera epidemic

From the NYTimes

A group of doctors blamed President Robert Mugabe’s government on Wednesday for a cholera epidemic sweeping through Zimbabwe, saying the spread of the disease had been severely underreported. The group, the Zimbabwean Association of Doctors for Human Rights, also said dysentery was becoming increasingly prevalent. “This cholera epidemic is man-made,” Dr. Douglas Gwatidza, the head of the group, said in a telephone call with reporters. About 160 people have died of cholera in Zimbabwe in recent weeks, independent aid organizations said.

doctors on strike

WSJ photos of the day

Cholera reaches Zim capital

from GMA news (Philippines).

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HARARE, Zimbabwe - A cholera outbreak has claimed its first victim in Zimbabwe's capital after causing death and illness elsewhere in a country too poor to provide clean water or clear garbage from the streets.

Health authorities reported the death in Harare Thursday and said 20 other people had been hospitalized.

Across the country in recent weeks, at least 27 people have died from cholera, mostly in impoverished districts, and hundreds have been treated for the highly infectious intestinal disease spread by contaminated food and water.

Doctors have reported at least 120 preventable deaths from the disease during the year as sewer and drainage service collapse. Infrastructure has been left to crumble for months with politicians deadlocked first over disputed elections and now over forming a power sharing government.

Bleeding sickness outbreak in South Africa

From Reuters SA

JOHANNESBURG, Oct 6 (Reuters) - South African health authorities are on high alert after three people died in hospital from an unknown, infectious disease similar to hemorrhagic fever, health officials said. A fourth person, a cleaner, had also died but it was not clear whether that case was related to the others who all died at the Morningside Clinic in Johannesburg, the hospital's spokeswoman Melinda Pelser said on Monday. There are several strains of hemorrhagic fever, including Ebola and Marburg, which have killed hundreds of people in outbreaks in Africa. The diseases cause bleeding from multiple sites and can have very high death rates. The South African Health Department issued an alert over the weekend after the deaths but Morningside spokeswoman Pelser said tests for existing strains of hemorrhagic fever were negative. Pelser said hospital officials were investigating an unknown flu-like disease which caused external and internal bleeding. It spreads through bodily fluids but there are no signs it is airborne.

Cholera

From SWradioafrica

At least nine residents of Harare’s Chitungwiza Township are believed to have died this week after a deadly cholera outbreak in the community – with unconfirmed reports claiming the death toll is closer to 20 people.

The outbreak, which is believed to have first struck on Monday, comes after weeks of increasing numbers of cases of serious diarrhoea reports across the city, as a result of a failing clean water system and numerous sewage spills that have contaminated Harare’s water reservoirs.

The deaths have prompted the Combined Harare Residents Association to lash out at the government as well as the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA). The Association has also demanded that the city’s water and sewer reticulation services be handed over to the Harare council, saying ZINWA has failed to address the crisis. In a statement released by the Harare Residents Association on Friday, the group said, ‘the decision by the previous cabinet to authorise ZINWA to take over water and sewer reticulation services from the city councils was not only irresponsible, but also reckless.’...

ZINWA must go

From the Zimbabwean:

The Combined Harare Residents Association (CHRA) maintains that the city council must reclaim total control of the water supply and sewer reticulation management from the bankrupt Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA). The water and sewer crisis bedeviling the once sun shining city of Harare is a direct result of ZINWA’s general incapacity to effectively execute the mammoth task of providing water to the residents. Recently the ‘Deputy Minister’ of Water and infrastructural development issued a statement that his ‘Ministry’ will engage the city council to address the water and sewer crisis. CHRA reasserts its position that ZINWA has failed and the city council must take charge now!....

-------------------------------------

From SWRadioAfrica:

The Combined Harare Residents Association has called for the Zimbabwe National Water Authority to hand over control of water supply and sewer reticulation management to the Harare city council.

It comes after one person died and almost 30 more people have been hospitalised this week following an outbreak of cholera in the crowded Harare township, Chitungwiza. It’s understood the outbreak occurred on Monday after weeks that saw an increasing number of chronic diarrhoea reports, as a result of a failing clean water system and numerous sewage spills that have contaminated the city’s water reservoirs.

The country’s ongoing political and economic crisis has seen the almost total collapse of infrastructure in the once thriving Zimbabwean cities. The deteriorating water and sewerage systems have led to a number of cholera outbreaks in recent years. Zimbabwe Water Authority officials have said the situation is constrained by costs, poor funding and frequent power cuts, which mean that water cannot be properly purified, if at all....