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Over 90 per cent of malaria cases in 2018 were recorded in the African region according to the World Health Organization (WHO). In Rwanda, over 3 million people are infected by the disease and the country has launched a drive to use drones in spraying pesticides in mosquito breeding sites.</p>


Rwanda is deploying this new weapon in fight against malaria

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Following the WHO report on the ongoing global coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, the Rwanda&#8217;s Health Ministry has recommended preventive measures to protect residents and visitors. Dr. Sabin Nsanzimana, Director General of Rwanda Biomedical Centre mentions that the country estimates to use about FRw16 billion in the response in a period of 6 moths. He joins CNBC Africa for more.</p>


Rwanda to spend FRw16bn in COVID-19 fight

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<p>As of this morning, two deaths have been reported in Wuhan, the city at the center of the Corona Virus outbreak, but was the World Health Organization (WHO) right not to declare a global health emergency?</p>


Coronavirus outbreak: What you need to know

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<p>News has broken from the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) during his trip to the DRC on Wednesday that the Ebola outbreak in the country, which is the second worst in history, is finally, &#8220;on the retreat&#8221;. He went on to warn that the risk was still high and that there was no room for complacency, but is this the sign of relief that the region has been waiting for? Coordinator of UN Emergency Ebola Response, David Gressly joins CNBC Africa for more.</p>


Ebola outbreak 2nd largest since 2014-2016: 2000 lives lost

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<p>Two people cured of Ebola using two experimental treatments have been released from a treatment centre in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and reunited with their families. Doctor Jean-Jeacque Muyembe and other scientists announced this week that preliminary results from two trials in Congo found two drugs made by Regeneron and the U.S. National Institutes of Health seem to be saving lives. Soraya Aziz Souleymane, Business &#038; Human Rights defender joins CNBC Africa for more.</p>


DRC receives major boost in Ebola fight as two experimental treatments prove effective

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<p>The World Health Organization declared the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo to be a “public health emergency of international concern”, saying that the recent risk of its spread in the city of Goma and into Uganda had increased the threat. Soraya Aziz Souleymane, Business &#038; Human Rights defender joins CNBC Africa for more.</p>


Ebola outbreak declared international health emergency

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<p>As the United Nations and World Health Organization prepare to observe World Health day on the 7th of this month, Chike Nwangwu, CEO of NOIPOLLS joins CNBC Africa to discuss ways to deepening health insurance in Nigeria.</p>


Deepening healthcare insurance in Nigeria

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<p>According to the World Health Organization, the ratio of physicians to patients is 1 per every 1000 in Africa, This, denying many a chance to quality healthcare. CNBC Africa sat down with Prof. Agnes Binagwaho, Vice Chancellor for the University of Global Health Equity for a look at that and raising the numbers for female enrolment in the medical field.</p>


Here’s how we can cure the physician shortage in Africa – Expert

<p>South Africa said on Monday producers of cold meat products were to blame for delays in tracing the cause of the world’s worst listeria outbreak, which has killed 180 people in the past year.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-300987 size-full" src="http://cnbc.africa/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/sausages_Public-Domain.jpg" alt="" width="1920" height="1280" /></p>
<p class="">As shoppers queued up to return processed meat items and demand refunds, shares in the biggest food firm in Africa’s most industrialised economy, Tiger Brands, tumbled because of its link to the outbreak that has spread since January 2017.</p>
<p class="">The government, which has been criticised for taking too long to find the cause, had on Sunday linked the outbreak to a meat product known as “polony” made by Tiger’s Enterprise Food.</p>
<p class="">It also said it was investigating a plant owned by RCL Foods that makes a similar product, whose shares also slid on Monday before recovering.</p>
<p class="">Both companies, which say they are cooperating with the authorities, suspended processed meat production at their plants after health authorities ordered a recall of cold meats associated with the outbreak from outlets at home and abroad.</p>
<p class="">The U.N. World Health Organization called the outbreak the largest ever recorded globally, after 948 cases were reported since January 2017. Listeria causes flu-like symptoms, nausea, diarrhoea and infection of the blood stream and brain.</p>
<p class="">South Africa’s Health Ministry said the source was found after pre-school children fell ill from eating polony products traced to processed meat producers.</p>
<p class="">“The meat processing industry was not cooperating for months. They did not bring the samples as requested. We had long suspected that listeria can be found in these products,” the ministry’s communications director, Popo Maja, told Reuters.</p>
<p class="">“It is not that we are incompetent, or that we have inadequate resources,” Maja said when asked why it had taken more than a year to find the cause of listeria.</p>
<p class="">He said all firms in the industry were being examined.</p>
<p class="">South Africa’s processed meat market grew about 8 percent in 2017 to a retail value of $412 million, according to Euromonitor International. Tiger Brands has a 35.7 percent market share, followed by Eskort Bacon Co-Operative with 21.8 percent. Rhodes Food, RCL Foods and Astral Foods each have less than 5 percent.</p>
<p class="">Tiger Brands, Eskort, RCL Foods, Rhodes and Astral said they had complied with all requests from the health authorities.</p>
<p class="">Lawrence McDougall, the CEO of Tiger Brands, said there was no direct link between the deaths and its cold meat products. “We are unaware of any direct link,” he told a media briefing.</p>
<p class="">Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi had said on Sunday the outbreak had been traced to a Tiger Brands factory in the northern city of Polokwane.</p>
<p class="">The authorities are also examining a second Tiger Brands factory and have not said when they could conclude tests on RCL Foods, which has a plant under investigation.</p>
<p class="">Rhodes said it produced processed canned meat, different from the cold processed meat made by rivals. Astral said it produced fresh and frozen chicken, not polonies and items linked to the outbreak. Both those firms said their products were safe.</p>
<p class="">Fast food chain owner Famous Brands said it was recalling ready-to-eat meat products from its retail outlets.</p>
<h3>CLEANING FRENZY</h3>
<p class="">The minister told South Africans not to consume any ready-to-eat processed meat due to the risk of cross-contamination.</p>
<p class="">The announcement prompted a frenzied clearing and cleaning of the shelves by local supermarkets chains Shoprite, Pick n Pay, Spar and Woolworths, which also urged consumers to return the meats for refunds.</p>
<p class="">Neighbouring states acted swiftly. Zambia banned imports of South African processed meat, dairy products, vegetables and fruit. Mozambique and Namibia halted imports of the processed meat items and Botswana said it was recalling them. Malawi stepped up screening of South African food imports.</p>
<p class="">Shares in Tiger Brands sank as much as 13 percent, before recouping some losses to close 7.4 percent lower at 393.38 rand. RCL Foods fell more than 6 percent but later recovered to trade down just 0.5 percent at 17.11 rand.</p>
<p class="">Dozens of customers lined up outside a Tiger Brands outlet with bags of cold meat products and demanding their money back.</p>
<p class="">“I lost trust with Enterprise. I’ll be scared even if they say this problem is solved. I would rather go back to peanut butter and jam,” said call centre agent Tshepo Makhura, 37.</p>
<p class="">Deline Smith, a 57-year-old housewife with three full bags, said: “I hope my grandchildren are going to be okay because we gave them food over the weekend from these parcels.”</p>
<p class="">Analysts said profits at the two firms were unlikely to be hit hard. Standard Bank analyst Sumil Seeraj estimated the recall would cut operating profit at Tiger Brand’s value added foods division by 6 percent at most.</p>
<p class="">“The big hit is going to come with inventory write-offs because they are recalling all these products. That’s most likely where they will lose because the inventory write-off will affect operating profit from that division,” Seeraj said.</p>
<p class="">The Enterprise unit of Tiger Brands had “a very strong brand in meat”, he said, adding: “In the short term consumers will switch to other forms of protein.”</p>


South Africa blames food firms for world’s worst listeria outbreak

<p>The use of giant rats to sniff out the potentially deadly disease tuberculosis (TB) in Tanzania is set to nearly double by the end of the year due to successful detection rates, a charity who trains them said on Thursday.</p>
<div id="attachment_128142" style="width: 740px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-128142" class="wp-image-128142 size-full" src="http://cnbc.africa/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/tanzania_shutterstock_354115238-730x480.jpg" alt="" width="730" height="480" /><p id="caption-attachment-128142" class="wp-caption-text">Photo: Shutterstock.</p></div>
<p>African Giant Pouched Rats, which are taught to detect TB using their olfactory abilities, have been so successful at the task that they will now service nearly 60 clinics countrywide, up from 29.</p>
<p>The rats, which can measure up to three feet (0.9 m) and can spot TB in samples of human mucus, were introduced in Tanzania in 2007 by Belgian charity APOPO as an alternative to more costly and slower traditional chemical testing.</p>
<p>“APOPO is very encouraged about the support and trust in our diagnostic service,” Lena Fiebig, the non-profit’s head of TB, said in a statement.</p>
<p>Tuberculosis, which is curable and preventable, is one of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), killing 1.7 million people in 2016.</p>
<p>In Tanzania, some 287 in 100,000 people are thought to be TB-infected, putting the country among 30 nations that the WHO views as TB hotspots due to the disease’s high incidence.</p>
<p>Yet, lack of money or awareness often means people in the east African nation fail to get screened.</p>
<p>Under the rat program’s growing footprint, mucus samples are dispatched by motorbike from across the country to laboratories, including one in the capital Dar es Salaam that employs 10 rats. Seventeen more clinics will be located in Dar es Salaam.</p>
<p>APOPO said trained rats take 20 minutes to screen 100 samples &#8211; compared to four days for a lab technician &#8211; with almost 100 percent accuracy although the rodents cannot distinguish between normal and drug-resistant strains.</p>
<p>The rats, nicknamed ‘HeroRATs’, undergo a training process that begins when they are four weeks old and involves receiving banana rewards for good behavior.</p>
<p>APOPO’s rats are also at work fighting tuberculosis in Mozambique and Ethiopia with APOPO one of various organizations fighting to meeting the global plan to end TB by 2030.</p>
<p>The rats are also deployed to detect explosives in minefields from Cambodia to Colombia.</p>


Tanzania uses giant rats to sniff out TB

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<p>According to the World Health Organization, motorcyclists make up 23 per cent of all road traffic deaths. One start up in Rwanda had this particular statistic as its selling point when entering the Rwandan market. Joining CNBC Africa or a breakdown on uptake of the business and market segmentation is the CEO Barrett Nash.</p>


Rwanda start-up looks to make riding in Africa safer

<p data-reactid="42">Global hunger levels have risen for the first time in more than a decade, now affecting 11 percent of the world’s population, as conflict, climate change and economic woes bite, U.N. agencies said on Friday.</p>
<p data-reactid="43">Last year, 815 million people were hungry &#8211; 38 million more than in 2015 &#8211; the five agencies said in the first global assessment since governments set an international target to eliminate hunger and malnutrition by 2030, as one of a set of so-called Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).</p>
<p data-reactid="44">The number of hungry began to rise in 2014, but this is the first time in more then a decade that the proportion of the global population going hungry has risen.</p>
<p data-reactid="45">About 489 million of the hungry are living in countries affected by conflict.</p>
<p data-reactid="46">“Over the past decade, conflicts have risen dramatically in number and become more complex and intractable in nature,” the heads of five U.N. agencies said in The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2017 report.</p>
<p data-reactid="47">“This has set off alarm bells we cannot afford to ignore: we will not end hunger and all forms of malnutrition by 2030 unless we address all the factors that undermine food security and nutrition,” they said.</p>
<p data-reactid="48">Famine struck parts of South Sudan earlier this year, and there is a high risk that it could return there &#8211; and develop in other countries affected by conflict: northeast Nigeria, Somalia and Yemen, the agencies said.</p>
<p data-reactid="49">The report was produced by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), World Food Programme (WFP) and World Health Organization (WHO).</p>
<h3 data-reactid="50">HUNGER AND WAR</h3>
<p data-reactid="51">The agencies called for new ways of working to achieve the goal of ending hunger and malnutrition by 2030.</p>
<p data-reactid="52">“It’s not only about meeting need, but also ending the need and addressing the root causes of hunger,” Zlatan Milisic, WFP’s deputy director of programmes told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.</p>
<p data-reactid="53">In war-torn countries, it means agencies need to spend more time understanding the complexities of the conflict and working towards building peace, he said.</p>
<p data-reactid="54">“We have a lot of research &#8230; which says food insecurity doesn’t directly lead to conflict, but it is a very powerful trigger &#8230; (and) food security has been as seen as a contributor to maintaining peace,” Milisic said.</p>
<p data-reactid="55">Aid can sometimes increase tensions in a community. For example, unless aid for refugees supports their hosts as well, it may raise tensions with those families &#8211; who are often poor themselves with little access to basic services.</p>
<p data-reactid="56">Aid programmes that create jobs, restore roads and improve farming in countries recovering from war help address root causes of conflict, FAO says.</p>
<p data-reactid="57">Intense and prolonged droughts can significantly increase the likelihood of conflict, according to the report. And these are expected to become more frequent with climate change.</p>
<h3 data-reactid="58">FEWER CHILDREN STUNTED</h3>
<p data-reactid="59">The proportion of children stunted by hunger fell to 22.9 percent in 2016, from 29.5 percent in 2005. Now, about 155 million children under five years old are affected. Stunting can undermine children’s physical and mental development.</p>
<p data-reactid="60">“We see there is a decline &#8211; we also know that decline is not as fast as we would like &#8230; to meet the SDG targets,” said Victor Aguayo, UNICEF’s director for nutrition said.</p>
<p data-reactid="61">The number of stunted children &#8211; short for their age &#8211; fell by 40 percent between 1990 and 2015 and Aguayo said this decline should continue.</p>
<p data-reactid="62">Progress hinges around improving diets for women and children, improving the status of women in society, and lowering poverty levels, he added.</p>
<p data-reactid="63">A worrying trend is the rise of child obesity, with an estimated 41 million children around the world now overweight.</p>
<p data-reactid="64">“Obesity is going to increasingly affect the poor, caused by poor diet and poor lifestyle,” Aguayo said.</p>
<h3>NEW TREND?</h3>
<p data-reactid="67">Asia has the largest number of hungry people &#8211; 520 million &#8211; and sub-Saharan Africa has the highest proportion of hungry, affecting 20 percent of the population.</p>
<p data-reactid="68">Wars, droughts linked to last year’s El Niño weather phenomenon and a global economic slowdown have affected people’s access to food, the agencies said.</p>
<p data-reactid="69">Falling commodity prices &#8211; especially for oil &#8211; have made it harder for some countries to import food and to fund state subsidies which normally protect people from hunger, said Jose Rosero Moncayo of FAO’s statistics division.</p>
<p>Overall, however, it’s not clear whether the rise in the number of hungry people is a sign of longer-term trend, he said.</p>
<div class="Attribution_attribution_o4ojT" data-reactid="70">
<p class="Attribution_content_27_rw" data-reactid="71">Reporting by Alex Whiting @Alexwhi, Editing by Ros Russell.; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, resilience, women&#8217;s rights, trafficking and property rights. Visit <a href="http://news.trust.org/climate">news.trust.org/climate</a></p>
</div>


World Health Organization

Rwanda is deploying this new weapon in fight against malaria

Rwanda to spend FRw16bn in COVID-19 fight

Coronavirus outbreak: What you need to know

Ebola outbreak 2nd largest since 2014-2016: 2000 lives lost

DRC receives major boost in Ebola fight as two experimental treatments prove effective

Ebola outbreak declared international health emergency

Deepening healthcare insurance in Nigeria

Here’s how we can cure the physician shortage in Africa – Expert

South Africa blames food firms for world’s worst listeria outbreak

Tanzania uses giant rats to sniff out TB

Rwanda start-up looks to make riding in Africa safer

Global hunger rises for first time in decade: U.N. agencies

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World Health Organization

Rwanda is deploying this new weapon in fight against malaria

Rwanda to spend FRw16bn in COVID-19 fight

Coronavirus outbreak: What you need to know

Ebola outbreak 2nd largest since 2014-2016: 2000 lives lost

DRC receives major boost in Ebola fight as two experimental treatments prove effective

Ebola outbreak declared international health emergency

Deepening healthcare insurance in Nigeria

Here’s how we can cure the physician shortage in Africa – Expert

South Africa blames food firms for world’s worst listeria outbreak

Tanzania uses giant rats to sniff out TB

Rwanda start-up looks to make riding in Africa safer

Global hunger rises for first time in decade: U.N. agencies

News Tips

Advertise With Us

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