Day: June 19, 2021

YAOUNDE, CAMEROON – Hundreds of sickle cell disease patients in Cameroon are using World Sickle Cell Day, June 19, to teach their neighbors that people with the disease can live longer, contrary to popular beliefs and stigma that label them as witches who must die before the age of 24. Cameroon says 20% of its 25 million people are carriers of the gene primarily seen in people of African descent. The government is also telling hesitant sickle cell patients to accept vaccinations against COVID-19.

At least 300 sickle cell patients and their family members turned out at the Cameroon Baptist Convention hospital at Etoug-Ebe, a neighborhood in Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé. Hospital officials said hundreds of other sickle cell patients came out in the coastal city Douala and the English-speaking western towns of Buea, Bamenda, Kumba and Kumbo to observe the 2021 World Sickle Cell Day.

Fifty-five-year-old Ashu Egbe was diagnosed with sickle cell when he was seven months old. He says he is living proof that people can live long with the disorder, in which red blood cells contain an abnormal type of hemoglobin.

‘I am a sickle cell sufferer, I usually tell people that I am a sickle cell warrior because we go through the challenges of life, the pains and we think that we are warriors, we are overcomers,” Egbe said. “The younger ones should be courageous, avoid extreme colds or extreme heat and drink plenty of nonalcoholic fluids. You have a normal diet of good vegetables and then you have continuous follow up. You can live a good life.”

Egbe said he created Ashu Egbe Foundation to educate sickle cell patients on their rights and encourage people to consider sickle cell patients normal citizens.

Cameroon’s health ministry reports that 20% of the country’s 25 million people are carriers of the gene primarily seen in people of African descent.

Cameroon says patients suffer stigma, including superstitious beliefs that sickle cell is divine punishment for wrongdoing. There are beliefs that people with the disease die before they reach 25 years because they are witches and wizards. Couples with sickle cell children are forced by their families to divorce.

Twenty-seven-year-old Somo Francis Glenn lives with sickle cell. He says communities should stop abusing the rights of sickle cell patients. He says the government should ask hospitals to pay more attention to patients.

“At times we are sick, but we are afraid to go to the hospital because if you get to the hospital at 7 a.m., you shall be received at 10 [a.m.],” Somo said. “Imagine the pain you go through. Doctors will tell you that you are not the first person to have pain. Those are the things that make us go psychologically mad. I am begging the minister of health to create a hematology center only for sickle cell patients in Cameroon. Our immune system is first of all weak. COVID-19 and sickle cell are a whole lot of problems.”

Somo said the government could help eradicate the disease by asking people to have medical consultations before marriage and before having children.

Cameroon’s health minister, Manaouda Malachie, said special services exist in all hospitals in the central African state to treat sickle cell patients. He said patients should not fear going to hospitals for fear of being infected by COVID-19.

Lydie Ze Meka is president of Cameroon’s National Association for the Protection of Sickle Cell Patients. She says the association she leads is encouraging all sickle cell patients to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

She says sickle cell patients are reluctant to be vaccinated against COVID-19. She says the coronavirus attacks lungs and sickle cell patients have fragile lungs which are constantly exposed to pulmonary infections that can cause deaths. She says on this year’s World Sickle Cell Day, she is pleading with reticent patients to voluntarily agree to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to save their lives.

The United Nations reports that sickle cell is common in most of sub-Saharan Africa, affecting close to 3% of births in some African countries.

The U.N. recognizes June 19 as World Sickle Cell Day to raise awareness of the disease, which they say has not been eradicated due to ignorance. The U.N. encourages couples to have medical consultations before marriage and before having children.

Source: Voice of America

KAMPALA, UGANDA – Uganda has reimposed a 42-day lockdown as coronavirus infections surge in the East African country. President Yoweri Museveni said in his Friday night address that he was tired of receiving calls about deaths, but critics say he presented a wish list that would instead worsen the situation for Ugandans.

Earlier Friday, the Health Ministry shared the latest coronavirus figures indicating 1,564 new cases recorded in the previous 24 hours.

This included 42 new deaths, bringing the total to 584. One thousand four active cases have been admitted at health facilities around the country.

After presenting those figures in his national address Friday night, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni said Ugandans had been violating an earlier ban on interdistrict travel.

In his speech, Museveni said every village has community health workers who are in touch with families and keep records on the health status of the villages. They know how many people are in the village, how many are pregnant, how many have children, etc.

Private vehicles, other than those operated by essential workers will only be allowed to travel if they have permission from their local village chairman or health worker to transport a patient to hospital.

“All cross-boundary district and intradistrict movement of public transport and by private vehicles or boda bodas is hereby suspended for 42 days starting today,” said Museveni. “Why 42 days? Because we know that this virus, once it doesn’t spread in 14 days, it gets out of your body.”

Source: Voice of America

The World Health Organization officially announced Saturday the end of Guinea’s second Ebola outbreak, which was declared in February and claimed 12 lives.

At 16 confirmed cases and seven probable infections, according to WHO figures, the limited size of the flare-up has been credited to experience from the 2013-16 epidemic, which killed more than 11,300 people, mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

“I have the honor of declaring the end of Ebola” in Guinea, WHO official Alfred Ki-Zerbo said at a ceremony in the southeastern Nzerekore region, where the disease surfaced at the end of January.

International rules meant that Guinea had to wait 42 days — twice the virus’s incubation period — without a new case before declaring the epidemic over.

That wait was over Friday, weeks after the last person was declared cured on May 8, a senior health ministry official told AFP.

Health Minister Remy Lamah also declared the outbreak finished “in the name of the head of state,” President Alpha Conde.

Saturday’s event in a health ministry building was attended by around 200 people, including local religious and community leaders.

“We must also thank the communities who pitched in to overcome the disease,” the WHO’s Ki-Zerbo said.

Previous resistance

During last decade’s outbreak, reluctance and outright hostility toward anti-Ebola infection control measures led some people in Guinea’s forested southeast to attack and even kill government employees.

“Community engagement, effective public health measures and the equitable use of vaccines” had this time been key to overcoming Ebola, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.

The U.N. body said it had delivered about 24,000 vaccine doses to Guinea and that 11,000 people at high risk had received shots, including more than 2,800 frontline workers.

“We’ve beaten Ebola but let’s remain vigilant” read a banner unfurled at Saturday’s ceremony.

“We must stay alert for a possible resurgence and ensure the expertise in Ebola expands to other health threats such as COVID-19,” WHO Africa director Matshidiso Moeti said.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a statement that genetic sequencing showed links between the previous outbreak and the latest epidemic.

This year’s outbreak could have been caused by “persistent infection in a survivor from the West Africa outbreak” back then, the CDC said, emphasizing “the necessity for strong and ongoing survivor programs,” as well as more research.

Ebola causes severe fever and, in the worst cases, unstoppable bleeding. It is transmitted through close contact with bodily fluids, and people who live with or care for patients are most at risk.

Source: Voice of America