Month: May 2022

Clashes last week between gold miners in the country’s north left more than 100 people dead, the Chadian government said.

The clashes took place May 23 and 24 in the Kouri Bougoudi district, near the border with Libya. The area is home to many unregulated mines where people search for gold.

Chad’s minister of defense said Monday that according to a government fact-finding mission, more than 100 people were killed and 40 others injured in the fighting.

Minister Daoud Yaya Brahim said the fighting broke out at night in the mining sites, but did not identify the cause of the violence.

Chad’s communication minister said last week that the clashes were between Arabs who crossed the border from Libya and the Tama community who hail from eastern Chad.

Chadian authorities have suspended informal mining operations in Kouri Bougoudi and evacuated people from the area.

Chad is involved in a fight against terrorism and rebel groups who threaten to topple the interim government led by the son of late president Idriss Deby. However, there was no indication that terrorist or criminal groups played a role in the mining violence.

Source: Voice of America

GENEVA— Some prominent infectious disease experts are pushing for faster action from global health authorities to contain a growing monkeypox outbreak that has spread to at least 20 countries.

They are arguing that governments and the World Health Organization (WHO) should not repeat the early missteps of the COVID-19 pandemic that delayed the detection of cases, helping the virus spread.

While monkeypox is not as transmissible or dangerous as COVID-19, these scientists say, there needs to be clearer guidance on how a person infected with monkeypox should isolate, more explicit advice on how to protect people who are at risk, and improved testing and contact tracing.

“If this becomes endemic (in more countries), we will have another nasty disease and many difficult decisions to take,” said Isabelle Eckerle, a professor at the Geneva Centre for Emerging Viral Diseases in Switzerland.

The WHO is considering whether the outbreak should be assessed as a potential public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), an official said.

A WHO determination that an outbreak constitutes a global health emergency – as it did with COVID-19 or Ebola – would help accelerate research and funding to contain a disease.

“It is always under consideration, but no emergency committee as yet (on monkeypox),” Mike Ryan, director of the WHO’s health emergencies programme, said on the sidelines of the agency’s annual meeting in Geneva.

However, experts say it is unlikely the WHO would reach such a conclusion soon, because monkeypox is a known threat the world has tools to fight. Discussing whether to set up an emergency committee, the body that recommends declaring a PHEIC, is just part of the agency’s routine response, WHO officials said.

Eckerle called for the WHO to encourage countries to put more coordinated and stringent isolation measures in place even without an emergency declaration. She worries that talk of the virus being mild, as well as the availability of vaccines and treatments in some countries, “potentially leads to lazy behaviour from public health authorities”.

More than 300 suspected and confirmed cases of monkeypox, a usually mild illness that spreads through close contact, causing flu-like symptoms and a distinctive rash, have been reported this month.

Most have been in Europe rather than in the Central and West African countries where the virus is endemic. No deaths have been reported in the current outbreak.

However, global health officials have expressed alarm over the growing outbreak in non-endemic countries. The WHO has said it expects numbers to rise as surveillance increases.

On Friday, the WHO reiterated that the monkeypox virus is containable with measures including the quick detection and isolation of cases and contact tracing.

Mass vaccination is not considered necessary but some countries, including Britain and France, are offering vaccines to healthcare workers and close contacts.

Other experts say the current response is proportionate and that deeming monkeypox a global health emergency and declaring a PHEIC would be inappropriate at this stage.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

Cameroon observed World Menstrual Hygiene Day Saturday with donors and health workers distributing reusable sanitary pads to several hundred poor girls displaced by terrorism and the country’s separatist crisis. Some of the girls said they were seeing sanitary pads for the first time. Also, sensitization teams are working to convince communities to stop stigmatizing girls during menstruation.

Several hundred girls displaced by the separatist crisis in Cameroon’s English-speaking western regions have received reusable sanitary pads, pants, soap and buckets in schools and public spaces in the capital, Yaounde.

The gifts, called “dignity kits,” were distributed Saturday as part of World Menstrual Hygiene Day activities by donor agencies and the government to help women and girls maintain proper hygiene.

Among the several hundred girls who received the dignity kits was 14-year-old Ernestine Mbih, who said she was displaced by separatists from Babanki, a town in Cameroon’s English-speaking North-West region. Mbih spoke on behalf of girls who received the kits.

“At the end of each month we are wondering where we are going to get money and buy [sanitary] pads, but now, with this pad that we are going to use for one year, we are so very happy,” she said. “It will reduce the risk of some girls getting pregnant when they go out to get money to buy pad. So we are very grateful and we are thankful that they have brought to us the most essential things that we need as women and young girls.”

Mbih said some girls go out for prostitution before their monthly flows begin to be able to raise about $3 to buy sanitary pads.

International Menstrual Hygiene Coalition coordinator Welisane Mokwe Nkeng, said girls and women displaced by Cameroon’s separatist crisis live in desperate conditions, lack sanitary towels and need education on managing their periods.

“Menstrual hygiene education has been a hush-hush topic and many people (girls and women) don’t know how to manage their periods, so education is very important,” she said. “Secondly, we are doing this because of the unorthodox methods that young girls use to manage their periods, especially during this time of displacement. Many of them use grass, dirty clothes, leaves and other things to pad themselves, and so we felt the need to give them an option that is healthy for them and that is going to restore their privacy and dignity.”

Nkeng spoke from Adagom, a Nigerian town located 60 kilometers from the Cameroon-Nigeria border, where her coalition is distributing sanitary kits to displaced Cameroonians.

Cameroon officials report that many Cameroonians stigmatize girls and women during their monthly periods. The government says men force their wives to sleep on the floor during their periods out of the erroneous belief that menstruation brings bad luck.

Josephine Nsono, a gender expert in Bamenda, capital of Cameroon’s English-speaking North-West region, said it is imperative for the government and its partners to convince communities to stop stigmatizing girls and women during their periods.

“This girl had a heavy flow and her dress got stained and people see it and instead of calling her attention and helping her in a very dignifying manner, people jeer and it becomes so stigmatizing that someone feels so ashamed instead of feeling very dignified that I am a woman and I am experiencing a natural phenomenon,” she said. “Some men are simply overburdening their women because they don’t seek to understand what menstrual hygiene is.”

Cameroon says it is building adequate sanitation facilities in schools and public spaces so women and girls will not face difficulties in managing their periods.

The United Nations says World Menstrual Hygiene Day is observed on 28 May because menstrual cycles average 28 days in length. It says May is chosen because it is the fifth month of the year and girls and women menstruate an average of five days each month.

The U.N. says the day is to advance the idea that menstruation is a biological process so girls and women can menstruate without fear or shame, and without being exposed to more vulnerabilities. The day also raises awareness of the inability of the poor to afford menstrual supplies.

Source: Voice of America