A major typhoid vaccination campaign begins today in Harare to tackle a drug-resistant outbreak of the disease. The campaign aims to vaccinate 325,000 people in nine suburbs of Zimbabwe’s capital. The campaign will be the first in Africa to use a new Typhoid Conjugate Vaccine (TCV) which, unlike other typhoid vaccines, can...

Cheikh Oumar Seydi is the new Africa Director for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Senegalese national is joining the Gates Foundation from the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation (IFC), where he was the regional director for sub-Saharan Africa. Seydi joins Gates Foundation less than two years after he was appointed IFC...

Peter Macharia, Kenya Medical Research Institute and Emelda Okiro, Kenya Medical Research Institute The number of children who die before reaching their fifth birthday is closely monitored as a marker of social well-being and national development. It best summarises the social, economic, environmental and health care systems that children are born into...

A new research concluded that treatment of HIV-positive children with efavirenz, a popular HIV drug, is associated with a mild increase in neuropsychiatric symptoms. According to the study which was conducted in Tanzania, the symptoms were more pronounced in children who receive doses higher than or equal to the WHO recommended doses...

The World Health Organization (WHO) warns of increasing attacks on health facilities and workers in both frequency and scale. In a statement, the WHO said has documented more than 41 attacks targeting health workers and facilities throughout 2018–2019 across the country. These attacks resulted in 6 health workers and patients killed and...

In his second State of the Union address, US president Donald Trump announced plans to stop the transmission of HIV in the country by 2030. According to data by UNAIDS, about 1.2 million people were living with HIV in the United States in 2015. The epidemic is largely concentrated in urban environments...

Late January 2019, Morocco's health ministry launched a national mobile phone survey to assess the risk factors for noncommunicable diseases (NCDs).  According to the ministry, the survey which will be completed on February 28, 2019, will be conducted among the Moroccan population aged over 18 years. Mobile data collection will be via Interactive...

On Monday January 28, the vaccination of health workers and other front-line responders against Ebola officially began in South Sudan as part of preparedness measures to fight the spread of the disease. The exercise is a partnership involving the country's Ministry of Health with support from the World Health Organization (WHO), Gavi,...

A Nigerian professor of virologist believes the current Ebola in DR Congo will not end anytime soon. In an exclusive interview with healthnews.africa in Abuja Nigeria, Prof Oyewale Tomori, a Nigerian professor of virology, revealed that the worsening Ebola outbreak in DR Congo is a product of decadence and poor governance. "DR...

No end in sight yet for DR Congo's worsening Ebola virus disease outbreak Latest report released by the World Health Organization (WHO) has revealed the Ebola virus disease outbreak in DR Congo is spreading and worsening. According to the WHO, in recent weeks, the number of reported cases have increased. Furthermore, response teams have faced pockets of community mistrust even as the...