Day: October 12, 2021

The coronavirus pandemic has taken a toll on many people’s mental health, especially among vulnerable groups like refugees. In Kenya’s urban refugee camps, aid agencies are trying to help people cope with anxiety and depression.

In one of Nairobi’s suburbs, a group of refugee women go through the day’s training activity on how to detect and handle mental health related issues.

The training is to deal with the extra load of mental health issues brought on by the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Refugees already burdened by the trauma of fleeing their home countries must also face the pandemic’s impact on their income and way of life.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees spokesperson, Eujin Byun, says the agency has had its hands full dealing with this challenge.

“We noticed that the counseling per month has significantly increased during the COVID-19 pandemic so that we added more resources to account for those kind of challenges, so that we bring more therapists, more counsellors so that they can have, in the case that they do the home visits and then the phone counselling, so that refugees can feel they have access to the mental health service and they can fight with the mental health issue,” said Byun.

Psychologist Albert Chumo, who works with refugee women and children, says the pandemic has not only re-opened old trauma cases, but also manifested new mental health concerns.

“Some of them have families, they have children, they are withdrawing from family members, at times some of them would even say like there is not point of living, so they are hopeless,” he said.

Sixty-year-old Esperanza Mukawachina, is a Rwandese refugee who’s lived in Kenya for the last 20 years. She operates a clothing shop on behalf of close to 40 other refugee women who have felt both the economic and mental ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

She says the last 16 months have been the toughest of her twenty years of refugee life in Kenya due to the anxiety and uncertainty caused by the pandemic.

“Because of too much stress, and anxiety, you could get an illness you weren’t expecting, I developed high blood pressure, because of worrying too much,” she said.

Women like Esperanza are being helped to navigate the mental health pitfalls by aid agencies like Refushe Kenya. Demand for the agency’s help has been especially high in urban centers.

Mildred Kemunto, a programs officer with Refushe says the agency has had to re-tailor its program due to the pandemic.

“We are doing it on WhatsApp, where one who has a smart phone can access it through the sessions, where we always have one session every month for each member of the groups, where we do the phone sessions, that’s stress management on different issues that affect our women,” she said.

The UNHCR says this approach is working well in the refugee camps in northern Kenya where counseling services are also offered virtually for those refugees in need.

Source: Voice of America

The United States is sending more than 3.5 million doses of the two-shot Pfizer vaccine to Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, a White House official told VOA on Tuesday.

“We are sharing these doses not to secure favors or extract concessions,” the official said. “Our vaccines do not come with strings attached. We are doing this with the singular objective of saving lives.”

The 3,577,860 doses, which the White House said began shipping to Nigeria on Tuesday, follows a July donation of 4 million doses of the two-shot Moderna vaccine. The donation was processed through COVAX, the global vaccine-sharing initiative.

Nigeria has reported at least 2,747 deaths from the virus and some 208,000 confirmed cases, according to the World Health Organization. However, medical officials in Africa and overseas have expressed concern that the African continent’s true COVID-19 situation has been underdiagnosed and underreported.

On the continent, South Africa remains at the epicenter, with at least 88,317 deaths counted by WHO, and more than 2.9 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the highly contagious coronavirus.

With more than 206 million people, Nigeria is a lower middle-income country, according to World Bank data. Nigeria has also accepted donations of vaccines from Russia, plus donations of diagnostic and treatment equipment, and test kits from China and South Korea, its Ministry of Health said.

As of this month, just over 7.2 million vaccine doses have been administered, according to WHO. That’s a far cry from the goal shared by Nigerian authorities to vaccinate 40% of its population — about 80 million people — by the end of 2021.

The nation appears to be emerging from a third viral wave, with a height of about 5,000 daily reported cases. The second wave, the nation’s worst, peaked in January, with nearly 12,000 new cases reported in one day, according to WHO data.

In September, U.S. President Joe Biden announced the U.S. would donate 500 million additional doses of the Pfizer vaccine to low-income and lower-middle-income countries. In all, the United States has now pledged 1.1 billion doses.

But aid groups say this is not enough, coming from the world’s wealthiest nation.

“Despite its claim to be a global leader on COVID-19, the U.S. is hoarding nearly 500 million excess COVID-19 vaccine doses — more than any other country,” said Dr. Carrie Teicher, director of programs at Doctors Without Borders’ U.S. branch. “It’s reckless and dangerous for the U.S. and other high-income countries to be sitting on excessive stocks of COVID-19 vaccines while others — including in many places where MSF (Doctors Without Borders) is battling surges of COVID-19 — are desperate to provide their most vulnerable people with even their first dose.”

U.S. officials have been criticized for urging booster shots for vulnerable Americans while vaccination rates are low in the developing world. The White House casts the controversy over booster shots as a false choice, claiming the U.S. can help vaccinate the world while also protecting Americans.

According to projections by the Oxford University COVID-19 database Our World in Data, only one nation in sub-Saharan Africa — the tiny enclave nation of Lesotho — is on track to meet the target of inoculating 40% of its population with at least one dose of the vaccine by the end of 2021.

Source: Voice of America

Medical aid groups are welcoming plans by U.S. drug maker Moderna to build a plant for manufacturing vaccines in Africa. The groups say the plant, the first from a company making a COVID-19 vaccine, will help in fighting vaccine inequality.

African countries are facing a shortfall of nearly 500 million COVID-19 vaccines according to the World Health Organization.

The shortage has left most countries unable to vaccinate even the most vulnerable 10 percent of their populations.

Last week, U.S. drug maker Moderna announced plans to build a plant on the African continent. Its statement is raising hope Africa will have a sufficient supply of COVID-19 vaccines in the future.

Medical aid groups say although the plan will boost Africa’s vaccine manufacturing capacity, the continent still needs an immediate solution to shortages. Dr. Githinji Gitahi is the chief executive officer at Amref Health Africa.

“As significant as it is because of the high financial commitment of 500 million dollars, there are several other factors to consider,” said Gitahi. “One, that factory will not be a solution to the current challenge of vaccine access in Africa. If the factory is going to be ready in 2-4 years Africa wants to vaccinate at least 70% of its population by the end of June next year. Therefore, Africa still demands the most important step in redistribution of doses earmarked for rich countries to come into Africa.”

Although Moderna has yet to say where it will build the factory, at least 10 countries, among them Kenya, Morocco, South Africa and Senegal, have expressed an interest in hosting the facility.

Dr. Willis Akhwale, the chairman of Kenya’s vaccination task force, says Moderna will need to look at the project as a partnership with the host country.

“If Moderna is coming to open, they should come with an open mind that they are bringing technological transfer, not just setting up a factory,” said Akhwale. “Therefore, they need to transfer that technology to the host country. The other thing is capacity building of the local people beyond just the COVID-19 vaccine towards the whole human vaccine manufacturing.”

The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention welcomes the idea of manufacturing the COVID-19 vaccine on the continent.

Dr. Bernhards Ogutu, chief research officer at the center’s office in Kenya, says although the process is likely to take a long time, it’s a promising sign for making health care more available in Africa.

“If we really want health care affordable and accessible to all, then we must start doing a lot of production of health commodities in the region,” he said.

By September, an estimated 5.2 billion COVID vaccine doses had been administered globally but only 2 percent of those were in Africa. African medical groups say they hope that the manufacturing of such vaccines on the continent will prevent such unequal distribution in the future.

Source: Voice of America