TalkAfrique News Flash, Author at TalkAfrique

January 22, 2011

Government to empower Ghana AIDS Commission

Vice President John Dramani Mahama on Friday announced that government would commit adequate resources towards the fight against HIV and AIDS and other diseases in the country.

“In our new National Strategic Plan, we are focused on eliminating the mother-to-child transmission of the disease. We are also committed to educating the public against new infection of the disease.”

Vice President Mahama announced these when Miss Jean Beagle, Deputy Executive Director of United Nations AIDS Programme, called on him at the Castle, Osu to announce her impressions on HIV and AIDS programmes in the country’s health facilities.

The Vice President said although Ghana had 1.9 per cent prevalence rate, one of the lowest on the African continent, government would continue to initiate programmes that would stem the spread of the disease in a few years.

He promised to draw up comprehensive programmes in consultation with development partners to ensure that the incidence of HIV/AIDS was reduced to the barest minimum.

He gave the assurance that satellite hospitals would be constructed in the Metropolis to relieve the existing hospitals of the current congestions they experienced in the past years.

Miss Beagle commended government for the number of interventions it had made towards the upkeep of persons living with HIV and AIDS and appealed for more proactive programmes that would make the patients comfortable.

“Ghana has done so well in taking care of the HIV and AIDS patience, but I want to appeal to government to intensify educational programmes on stigma and discrimination which are quite high in the country.”

In a related development, Vice President Mahama has commended the British government for its tremendous support to Ghana in the areas of the Ghana Armed Forces Staff College and the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority programme.

He also expressed happiness that the British government had initiated moves to establish a multi-purpose eye clinic in the national capital.

Vice President Mahama made the commendation when Dr Nicholas Westcott, Out-going British High Commissioner to Ghana called on him to announce the end of his duty tour in the country.

The Out-going High Commissioner who is taking up a European Union position for Africa in Brussels, Belgium, commended Ghana for the open debates on national issues, adding “it helps in nation-building.”

Source: GNA

January 20, 2011January 20, 2011

Millions in Niger need help to avoid another food crisis, warn UN agencies

20 January 2011 – The United Nations food agencies are urging continued assistance for Niger, where acute malnutrition rates remain high despite a good harvest and millions need help to avoid another food crisis.

Last year the Government of Niger, supported by the UN, launched a massive humanitarian intervention which averted the worst effects of a food and nutrition crisis that threatened the lives of more than seven million people and the livelihoods of the country’s farmers and pastoralists.

As part of that effort, the World Food Programme (WFP) delivered emergency food assistance to more than 5 million people, including vulnerable groups such as children under five, and pregnant or lactating women.

In addition, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) provided 13,000 tonnes of animal feed and distributed over 3,400 tonnes of quality seeds, covering 94 per cent of affected villages.

These interventions, coupled with a good rainy season in 2010, led to a 60 per cent increase in domestic cereal production. Livestock that survived the drought were also restored to health as pastures returned.

However, according to a joint assessment published today by the two Rome-based UN agencies, the acute malnutrition rate was still above 15 per cent in most parts of the country in October and November, reaching 17 per cent in the area around Agadez and Zinder.

“Food and non-food assistance is still necessary to reconstitute the resilience capacity of the affected populations to allow them to have independent access to food,” said the report.

The agencies are calling for assistance to pastoralists to help them replenish their livestock, help with restoring cereal banks and reconstituting the national grain stock, as well as continued support of feeding centres for malnourished people.

Assistance needs to begin immediately, they stressed, so that farmers will have the necessary quality seeds and fertilizers before the next planting season that starts in May.

January 20, 2011March 20, 2011

Sex Workers in Umunde Delta State Beat Three Customers Into Coma

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It is reported that commercial sex workers in Umunede Delta State have beaten three customers into a unconsciousness for non-complete payment after several rounds of sex. The report obtained from LEADERSHIP SUNDAY asserts that the irritated prostitutes descended on their customers who were said to have taken Viagra before seeking them out.

The going rate in Umunede, for what is called “daybreak”, is N8,000 to N10,000 depending on what is agreed upon.

The severe beating which took place on the night of January 13^th involved Igbo traders travelling from Benin to Onitsha. After being stranded for hours due to a broken down vehicle, the travelers had no option but to seek a place to survive the chilly night.

The traders therefore went into a ‘hotel’ only to discover that all the hotels were brothels filled with sex workers. They were said to have bargained to sleep with a few of them on “daybreak” menu but this was not to be as they tried to elope without paying in full.

Observers say the overly vexed up prostitutes joined hands and released heavy blows on their customers, leaving them with deep-cut wounds. They were taken to the University of Benin Teaching Hospital, UBTH) still in heavy bleeding.

The victims’ names were given as Emeka, Nnamdi, and Cornelius who hail from Imo State but live in Benin City where they deal in vehicle spare parts.

Some bystanders confirmed that some of the men were still ‘hard’ are they were receiving the blows on their faces.

While this may appear as entertainment, of course it does entertain, it reveals a major problem that African governments and leaders need to address if we as a people are going to meet the challenges of the millenium development goals. Food for thought.

January 19, 2011January 20, 2011

Caught in The Act: Imaging Microscopy Catches Malaria Parasite Invading Blood Cells

Australian scientists using new image and cell technologies have for the first time caught malaria parasites in the act of invading red blood cells. The researchers, from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne, Australia, and the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), achieved this long-held aim using a combination of electron, light and super resolution microscopy, a technology platform new to Australia.

The detailed look at what occurs as the parasite burrows through the walls of red blood cells provides new insights into the molecular and cellular events that drive cell invasion and may pave the way for developing new treatments for malaria. Institute researchers Dr Jake Baum, Mr David Riglar, Dr Dave Richard and colleagues from the institute’s Infection and Immunity division led the research with colleagues from the i3 institute at UTS.

Dr Baum said the real breakthrough for the research team had been the ability to capture high-resolution images of the parasite at each and every stage of invasion, and to do so reliably and repeatedly. Their findings are published in today’s issue of the journal Cell Host & Microbe.

“It is the first time we’ve been able to actually visualise this process in all its molecular glory, combining new advances developed at the institute for isolating viable parasites with innovative imaging technologies,” Dr Baum said.

“Super resolution microscopy has opened up a new realm of understanding into how malaria parasites actually invade the human red blood cell. Whilst we have observed this miniature parasite drive its way into the cell before, the beauty of the new imaging technology is that it provides a quantum leap in the amount of detail we can see, revealing key molecular and cellular events required for each stage of the invasion process.”

The imaging technology, called OMX 3D SIM super resolution microscopy, is a powerful new 3D tool that captures cellular processes unfolding at nanometer scales. The team worked closely with Associate Professor Cynthia Whitchurch and Dr Lynne Turnbull from the i3 institute at UTS to capture these images.

“This is just the beginning of an exciting new era of discoveries enabled by this technology that will lead to a better understanding of how microbes such as malaria, bacteria and viruses cause infectious disease,” Associate Professor Whitchurch said.

Dr Baum said the methodology would be integral to the development of new malaria drugs and vaccines. “If, for example, you wanted to test a particular drug or vaccine, or investigate how a particular human antibody works to protect you from malaria, this imaging approach now gives us a window to see the actual effects that each reagent or antibody has on the precise steps of invasion,” he said.

Malaria is caused by the Plasmodium parasite, which is transmitted by the bite of infected mosquitoes. Each year more than 400 million people contract malaria, and as many as a million, mostly children, die.

“Historically it has been very difficult to both isolate live and viable parasites for infection of red blood cells and to employ imaging technologies sensitive enough to capture snapshots of the invasion process with these parasites, which are only one micron (one millionth of a metre) in diameter,” Dr Baum said.

He said one of the most interesting discoveries the imaging approach revealed was that once the parasite has attached to the red blood cell and formed a tight bond with the cell, a master switch for invasion is initiated and invasion will continue unabated without any further checkpoints.

“The parasite actually inserts its own window into the cell, which it then opens and uses to walk into the cell, which is quite extraordinary,” Dr Baum said. “Visually tracking the invasion of Plasmodium falciparum into a red blood cell is something I’ve been aiming at ever since I began at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in 2003; it’s really thrilling to have reached that goal. This technology enables us to look at individual proteins that we always knew were involved in invasion, but we never knew what they did or where they were, and that, we believe, is a real leap for malaria researchers worldwide

This work was supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council, The University of Melbourne, Canadian Institutes of Health, the University of Technology, Sydney, and the Australian Research Council.

This image is a composite showing the behavior of different parts of the malaria parasite as it invades a red blood cell, at nanometer scales. The three components of the malaria parasite are labeled with fluorescent proteins (blue = parasite nucleus, red = secretory organelle, green = tight junction). The red blood cell is superimposed on the image for context. Image 1 (Attachment): The parasite is about to invade the red blood cell (unseen to the right of the picture). The tight junction (green) is like a window that the parasite brings with it and inserts into the red blood cell to gain entry. Image 2 (Invasion): This image is mid-invasion, the first time this step has even been visualized. The parasite "opens" the window it has inserted into the cell, and walks through. The secretory organelle (red) secretes its contents through the tight junction (green) and creates a vacuole which the parasite lives within in the red blood cell. In this image we see the parasite nucleus (blue) moving through the ‘window’ into the cell. Image 3 (Sealing): The parasite has completed invasion and is within a vacuole inside the host red blood cell. The window has been closed again, and will break down at a later stage. The parasite is now enclosed within its vacuole (red), the nucleus (blue) showing the parasite safely inside.

Penny Fannin

fannin@wehi.edu.au

January 19, 2011January 23, 2011

Generic Malaria Drug Approval Granted to Glenmark Pharmaceuticals

The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Glenmark Pharmaceuticals final approval to sell a generic version of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) malaria drug Malarone.

In April 2010, Glenmark settled a patent litigation with GlaxoSmithKline over atovaquone and proguanil hydrochloride 250 milligram/100mg tablets–the generic version of Malarone.

The Indian company can sell the generic tablets under a royalty-bearing license from GlaxoSmithKline in the third quarter of 2011, or earlier under certain circumstances.

KAM

January 18, 2011January 18, 2011

Côte d’Ivoire: Gbagbo Loyalists Open fire towards UN security patrol

18 January 2011 –Forces loyal to former president of Côte d’Ivoire, Laurent Gbagbo, who refuses to step down despite his defeat in November’s elections, opened fire last night towards United Nations peacekeepers in charge of security for a top African Union (AU) emissary, according to the UN peacekeeping mission in the country.

Deploring the repeated acts of aggression against its patrols, the UN Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI) reported today that its security forces stationed at the Pullman Hotel were waiting for the arrival of the AU Emissary, Kenya’s Prime Minister Raila Odinga, who was escorted by a UNOCI patrol, when a group of young people from the Gbagbo camp encircled them.

“The armed elements, which were supporting them, opened fire in the direction of the UNOCI vehicles forcing the peacekeepers to respond by shooting in the air,” the mission said in a press statement.

It stressed that the version of events given by Ivorian state television, under Mr. Gbagbo’s control, was not based on fact.

“It was in fact part of an ongoing campaign whose objective is to incite hatred among President Gbagbo’s supporters against UNOCI,” it said in the statement, adding, “UNOCI reiterates its appeal for calm and serenity to ensure a favourable environment to find a solution to the current post-electoral crisis.”

The nearly 9,000-strong peacekeeping operation has been supporting efforts over the past seven years to reunify a country split by a civil war in 2002 into a government-controlled south and a rebel-held north.

November’s run-off election was meant to be a culminating point in this process; and the UN, the AU, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and many countries recognized opposition leader Alassane Ouattara as the clear victor. But Mr. Gbagbo rejected the outcome of the poll, refused to step down and demanded UNOCI’s withdrawal – which the UN has rejected.

The resulting turmoil has displaced tens of thousands of people, mainly in the west of the country where the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is strengthening its presence to cope with the crisis.

UNHCR teams have been deployed in the towns of Man and Danané to register internally displaced people (IDPs) and monitor their protection needs. More than 18,000 people are believed to be in this area.

The UN refugee agency “is particularly concerned about conditions at the Catholic mission in the town of Duékoué, where some 13,000 people have sought shelter,” the agency said in a statement today. “The church compound there does not have the sanitation facilities to cope with the numbers, garbage is accumulating, and the risks of disease are growing.”

Meanwhile in eastern Liberia, where some 30,000 refugees have fled from Côte d’Ivoire, work is under way on the construction of a new camp in the town of Bahn but the difficult jungle conditions have made this slower going than anticipated, UNHCR reported. Two bulldozers have been brought in from Sierra Leone to speed up the clearing of land, which until now has been done by hand. UNHCR estimates that some 600 Ivorians are crossing the border into Liberia each day.

In Geneva, humanitarian agencies with a presence in West Africa today launched a $32.7 million regional emergency plan in order to be prepared for humanitarian needs that could arise due to Côte d’Ivoire’s political crisis. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has warned that two millions Ivorians – including 100,000 refugees and 450,000 IDPs – could be affected if a major humanitarian crisis develops.

The six-month appeal aims to allow UN agencies and non-governmental organizations to secure funds that would be used to provide a timely and effective humanitarian aid in Côte d’Ivoire and in the neighbouring countries of Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana in vital sectors. The aid will include support for protection, health, water and sanitation, education, food and nutrition. The funds will also help assist those already affected by the ongoing crisis.

In a statement today, OCHA said that the current crisis is already affecting lives and livelihoods of both the displaced and host communities. Displaced children are unable to attend school and families have lost their sources of income. Humanitarian aid workers also estimate that as many as 420,000 nationals of neighboring countries currently living in Côte d’Ivoire could return to their countries of origin and require assistance, notably in transit camps, should the situation further deteriorate.

January 17, 2011January 17, 2011

Global Action on Malaria Resistance Urgent, WHO

The WHO has launched a worldwide ‘call to action’ to governments, agencies, researchers and non-governmental organisations over the malaria parasite’s growing resistance to the most potent weapon against it — the drug, artemisinin.

If recently discovered resistance spreads, said the WHO, the formidable successes of anti-malaria campaigns in recent years will be threatened. Artemisinin lies at the heart of malaria treatment worldwide and has no obvious successor.

“The consequences of widespread resistance to artemisinins would be catastrophic,” WHO director-general Margaret Chan told a press conference held after the launch of the ‘Global plan for artemisinin resistance containment’ yesterday (12 January).

“We need to maintain this medicine. What is at stake it is not just the goals on malaria but, frankly, the whole related Millennium Development Goals”, said Robert Newman, director of the WHO Global Malaria Programme.

Resistance to artemisinin was identified in the Plasmodium falciparum parasite on the Cambodia–Thailand border in studies conducted between 2001 and 2009. It is now reported in other areas of the Greater Mekong Subregion and some fear that the resistance will spread to Africa, where most malaria deaths occur.

GPARC calls for increased surveillance of resistance and improved access to diagnostics and treatment with artemisinin combination therapies (ACTs), and for more research on topics ranging from new methods for containing resistance to mathematical modelling of its spread.

“We don’t have all the knowledge and tools we need,” said Newman, adding that finding a quick way of testing for resistance should be a priority.

“We need a molecular marker for drug resistance that will allow us to know much earlier where this problem may be emerging.”

“The research community must be engaged in the development of new classes of antimalarial medicines that would not fall into the same trap of resistance that we have with ACTs,” he added.

But it will not be easy to pin down the parasite’s genes responsible for resistance, according to Pascal Ringwald, coordinator of the drug resistance and containment unit of the WHO Global Malaria Programme.

“It took 30 years to find the gene related to chloroquine resistance,” he told SciDev.Net. “There are thousands of mutant genes in the parasite and the problem is to find which mutation could be related to artemisinin resistance.”

“Now we have better molecular tools,” he said. “I don’t think it’s going to take another 30 years, but it is very difficult and also very expensive.”

Call for action also aims to bring in new funds to bridge the estimated US$175 million funding gap for the project. So far, the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) has agreed to fund a project to improve surveillance and map the extent of resistance.

January 13, 2011January 14, 2011

Niger: UN, African officials To Assess Progress Towards Democratic Poll

13 January 2011 –A joint United Nations-African mission arrived in Niger today to assess progress by the transitional authorities in organizing elections following last year’s coup and a recent wave of arrests.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Representative for West Africa Said Djinnit was accompanied by African Union (AU) Peace and Security Commissioner Ramtane Lamamra and Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Commission Vice-President Jean de Dieu Somba.

“The purpose of the visit is to express collective support to the transition process in Niger and assess progress and remaining challenges in restoring constitutional order, including the organization of the elections,” the UN Office for West Africa (UNOWA) said in a news release.

The delegation is scheduled to meet with national authorities, as well as presidential candidates and members of the international community in Niamey, the capital.

Last February renegade soldiers stormed the presidential palace and deposed Mamadou Tandja, who had been accused by opposition figures and others of anti-democratic practices.

The electoral timetable provides for polls to be held by 6 April, starting with a referendum on a new constitution and culminating with the election of a new president to be inaugurated on 11 April. Members of the transitional government and the military and security forces will be ineligible to stand.

Niger’s transitional head of State, General Salou Djibo, reassured the mission on a similar visit last October that the agreed timeline would be adhered to.

Mr. Djinnit told the Security Council last month that the situation in Niger continued to be a work in progress. “Evidence from the ground shows promising prospects for a swift return to constitutional order, despite a recent wave of high-profile arrests indicating divisions within the military leadership,” he said.