News Releases

Health authorities in Guinea today declared an outbreak of Ebola in the rural community of Gouéké in N’Zerekore prefecture after three Ebola cases were confirmed by the national laboratory, marking the first time the disease has been reported in the country since an outbreak ended in 2016.

Deaths from COVID-19 in Africa have surged by 40% in the last month, pushing Africa’s death toll towards 100 000 since the first reported case on the continent on 14 February 2020. This comes as Africa battles new, more contagious variants and gears up for its largest-ever vaccination drive.

The Ministry of Health of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) today announced that a new case of Ebola has been detected in Butembo, a city in North Kivu Province, where a previous outbreak was declared over in June 2020.

COVAX has notified countries in Africa of the estimated dose allocation for the first phase of COVID-19 vaccine delivery. The global initiative led by the World Health Organization (WHO), Gavi the Vaccine Alliance and The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) aims to start shipping nearly 90 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to the continent in February, in what will be Africa’s largest ever mass vaccination campaign.

Early cancer detection improves the chances of successful treatment, which presupposes the availability of equipped facilities and health workforce. Yet without the right information on prevention and care, many patients are diagnosed late, reducing their chances of survival. In her home state of Niger in North-Central Nigeria, Dr Amina Abubakar Bello, also the state’s first lady, is spearheading a campaign to improve awareness and treatment of breast and cervical cancers – the most common cancers in women in Nigeria.

COVID-19 cases and deaths are surging in Africa as new, more contagious variants of the virus spread to additional countries.

This publication is the abstract of a scientific article, initially published in BMC Reproductive Health

Background

While the development and approval of safe and effective vaccines less than a year after the emergence of COVID-19 is a stunning achievement, Africa is in danger of being left behind as countries in other regions strike bilateral deals, driving up prices.

As COVID-19 cumulative cases in Africa top 3 million and daily case numbers exceed the first wave peak, the continent is now confronted with emerging variants of the virus. Revamped public health measures are ever more critical to avert a runaway surge in infections that could stretch health facilities to the breaking point.

With the recent emergence in the African region of new COVID-19 variants which seem to have higher transmissibility, the World Health Organization (WHO) calls on countries to boost genomic surveillance and analysis through the African genome sequencing laboratory network to detect any new mutations and strengthen the efforts to curb the pandemic.