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JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AFP) — Some 24,000 health workers in South Africa have contracted the coronavirus, 181 of whom have died, since the pandemic hit the country in March, the health minister announced on Wednesday. South Africa is the hardest-hit country in Africa with at least 521,318 infections diagnosed so far, accounting for more than half the continent’s cases. Health Minister Zweli Mkwize told a news conference that the numbers of health workers who […]
by Susan NJANJI Agence France Presse JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AFP) — South Africa has now registered more than 500,000 cases of coronavirus, the health ministry announced Saturday, making it by far the hardest-hit country in Africa. The country has become the epicentre of the deadly pandemic on the continent, accounting for more than half of Africa’s diagnosed infections. “Today South Africa has exceeded the half-a-million mark with a cumulative total of 503,290 confirmed COVID-19 […]
BUKAVU, DR Congo (AFP) — Health workers in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have launched a bid to vaccinate more than a million people against cholera in five days after their region was hit by heavy floods. Immunization teams have started fanning out in the territories of Fizi, Idjwi, Minova, Nundu and Uvira, near Lake Kivu and Lake Tanganyika, where cholera is endemic, Eugene Kabambi, of the DRC branch of the World Health Organization (WHO), […]
KHARTOUM, Sudan (AFP) — Gunmen killed at least 20 people, including children, who were visiting their farms in Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region for the first time in years, a tribal chief said Saturday. “Two months ago the government organised a meeting between the original landowners and those who took their fields” during the long-running war in Darfur, Ibrahim Ahmad told AFP by telephone. “An agreement was reached whereby the landowners would return to their fields […]
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AFP) — South Africa’s death toll from coronavirus has passed the 5,000 mark, according to official figures released on Sunday by the continent’s hardest hit country. South Africa registered 85 new deaths from the virus in the previous 24 hours, bringing the death toll to 5,033. A total of 13,449 new infections were also officially diagnosed, taking the number to 364,328, figures released by the health ministry showed. Minister of Health Zweli […]
by Junior KANNAH / Samir TOUNSI à KINSHASA MBANDAKA, DR Congo (AFP) — The Ebola outbreak in the DR Congo’s northwest is growing, according to health officials, sounding the alarm weeks after the country officially declared an end to a separate Ebola epidemic which claimed over 2,000 lives. There have been 54 confirmed cases since June 1 in Mbandaka, a transport hub in Equateur province, including 22 deaths, according to figures released by the country’s […]
NAIROBI, Kenya (AFP) — Kenya on Tuesday declared that its school year was considered lost because of the coronavirus pandemic, and primary and secondary pupils would return to class next January. The school year in the East African country runs from January to November, when it climaxes with end-of-term exams. But Education Minister George Magoha said in a statement that the curve of COVID-19 infections was expected to flatten only by December. As a result, […]
LILONGWE, Malawi (AFP) — Malawi’s new president Lazarus Chakwera called for national sacrifice to transform his country as he was inaugurated on Monday, completing a remarkable turnaround after losing last year’s election. That vote was annulled by Malawi’s top court over “widespread and systematic” irregularities and a re-run election was held on June 23. Chakwera, 65, comfortably beat Peter Mutharika with 58.5 per cent of the vote, marking the first time in African history that […]
CAIRO, Egypt (AFP) — A fire at a hospital in Egypt’s coastal city of Alexandria on Monday killed seven coronavirus patients, security and medical sources said. Seven other people were injured in the blaze, believed to be caused by a malfunctioning air conditioner in an area designated for isolating COVID-19 patients, the sources said. Firefighters stopped it spreading to other hospital buildings, and ambulances were dispatched to transfer patients to other medical facilities, the state-run […]
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AFP) — Torrential rains turned the streets of Ivory Coast’s main city Abidjan into rivers on Thursday, flooding homes, flipping cars, and killing three people. The city’s firefighters said that two people died in the devastation, but a journalist said he saw the body of a third victim. “In half an hour, the water rose a meter and a half (five feet). We had to take refuge on the roof of our […]
DAR ES SALAAM Tanzania (AFP) — A Tanzanian small-scale miner has become a multi-millionaire after uncovering two of the biggest of the country’s precious tanzanite stones ever found and selling them to the government. Saniniu Kuryan Laizer, 52, found the stones weighing 9.27 and 5.1 kilograms (20.4 and 11.2 pounds) respectively in the northern Mirerani hills, an area which President John Magufuli had fenced off in 2018 to stop smuggling of the gem. He sold […]
KINSHASA, DR Congo (AFP) — DR Congo’s government on Thursday officially declared an end to an Ebola epidemic that broke out in the east of the troubled country in August 2018 and went on to claim 2,277 lives. The outbreak was “the longest, most complex and deadliest” in the 60-year history of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Health Minister Eteni Longondo said. It has only been surpassed by the 2013-16 Ebola epidemic in West Africa […]
