The family of a local official from the West Region of Cameroon was thrown into consternation, when their father was declared dead in a government hospital in Douala as a result of Covid 19.

According to a reliable family source, their father had complained of severe headache which they said was hypertension.

He was rushed to the said hospital, but few hours later, he was confirmed dead by government health officials who seen to be operating a money-making business out COVID-19.

As usual, the casket of COVID-19 victims are sealed and handed to the family for burial. In this case, something had to betray hospital officials who have been suspected of engaging in organ sales.

When the relations were handed the casket, some blood stains were discovered by the side of the casket which raised suspicion. The family insisted that the casket be opened, but was met with stiff resistance from the mortuary attendants.

They were warned not to open the casket and if they want they should do so in their village. This resulted in a fierce argument and the family of the deceased forcefully opened the sealed casket.

To their greatest surprise and dismay, the dead relative was not only naked inside the plastic bag, but his stomach had been slit open, and the intestines were gone.

That was when Hell broke loose as a free for all fight ensued between mortuary attendants and the deceased family.

It should be noted that the shabby and inhuman manner with which corpses claimed to be those of COVID-19 victims were being handled by hospital authorities was a call for concern.

Due to the constant fights in Cameroon hospitals, the powerless and irresponsible regime of President Paul Biya had no choice but to authorize relatives to bury their dead within 48 hours.

Who knows whether the others that have been buried before the new decree were not subjected to the same operations.

Organ sales have become so lucrative in Cameroon and many hospitals are making hay as the government fails to put in place rigorous measures that can spare the bereaved families the agony they have been going through because hospital officials want to make a quick buck.

 By Ndome Ntui in Douala

A cholera outbreak has sickened at least 983 people and killed at least 45 in Cameroon since January, health authorities said Thursday.

The cases and deaths were recorded in four of the 10 Cameroonian regions, authorities said, warning that cases could increase in the rainy season from March through September.

According to the state-run newspaper Cameroon Tribune, the Littoral Region, where the country’s commercial capital Douala is located, has reported 563 cases so far, the highest caseload among the regions, while the capital Yaounde is the least affected with just three cases.

The South Region has confirmed 344 cases over the past six months, followed by the Southwest Region with 73 cases. The statistics do not include those from the country’s northern regions, where cholera is a common occurrence as a result of floods during the rainy season.

Health officials have blamed the outbreak for difficulties to access portable water sources, non-compliance with hygiene measures and the absence of latrines especially in rural areas.

Authorities are working to launch a nationwide hygiene campaign and a mass vaccination campaign to help contain the spread of the disease.

Source: Xinhaunet

The British government has decided not to join a European Union coronavirus vaccine scheme because of concerns there could be costly delays in securing the vaccines, The Telegraph reported Thursday, citing sources.

The European Commission is expected to be notified on Friday, the report said.

UK business minister Alok Sharma is believed to have withdrawn from the plan after failing to get “sufficient assurance” that the UK would receive the number of vaccines it needs on time, the report added.

The officials believed that signing up to the scheme could delay the rollout of a successful vaccine in the UK by up to six months as talks on distribution took place, the report said, citing government sources.

The decision comes a week after officials in London and Brussels said Britain was in discussions with the EU about whether it would join a plan by the bloc to secure supplies of potential vaccines against COVID-19.

(REUTERS)

On the morning of April 24, Fritz Takang became so breathless he could barely walk across the cramped cell he shared with 60 inmates at the main prison in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde.

That night, he said, he was evacuated with five others to an apartment complex that was being used to quarantine suspected COVID-19 cases.

Near dawn the following morning, Takang, 48, heard a fellow inmate in distress in a neighbouring room. With no doctors present, he said, he went to the man’s bedside and laid a hand on his feverish forehead. Moments later, the man died.

“I prayed for him before the last breath,” Takang, a pastor, said. “I asked God to soften his pain.”

Correctional facilities worldwide have been fertile ground for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.

Africa’s prison population of more than one million is especially vulnerable because of overcrowding, malnutrition and limited healthcare, health experts say. Patchy testing and reporting have frustrated efforts to track and contain its spread – both behind bars and in the community.

Authorities in Togo, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa and Kenya have reported outbreaks in their prisons.

Cameroon’s government has not publicly acknowledged infections inside its correctional facilities, although President Paul Biya signed a decree on April 15 to de-congest prisons in an effort to contain the virus.

About 1,800 inmates were freed by May 8, according to preliminary figures from the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. The government has not provided numbers.

Hundreds of cases of COVID-19 were recorded among the inmates released from five prisons dotted across Cameroon’s central region in April, according to government data seen by Reuters which has not been made public.

Some were allowed home before their test results came in, while others were released with little or no screening to determine if they could be at risk of spreading the virus into the community.

Yaounde Central Prison, where Takang is held, was the worst hit, according to the data. The prison did not reply to requests for comment.

Behind its mouldy walls, the virus appears to have swept through packed, squalid cells, overwhelming its ill-equipped infirmary, according to interviews with over a dozen current and former inmates, four prison officials and two lawyers.

Some asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals. Prisoners are not officially allowed to possess phones, but many do.

More than 31 inmates have died there since the beginning of April, compared with the usual one or two a month, a senior prison official told Reuters, adding that none were tested for COVID-19.

A Cameroon health ministry spokesman declined to comment, as did officials at the prison authority and a leading official in the coronavirus response. The justice and communications ministries did not respond to questions sent via Whatsapp, email and in person.

Two sources present at recent health ministry briefings that were not open to the press said the government has made efforts to stem the spread of the virus in prisons, often struggling with limited resources and manpower.

“I am sure a thousand people are infected,” Takang said in a croaky voice from an isolation bed at the Cameroonian Presbyterian Church Hospital in Yaounde, where he was taken on April 25. “You cannot leave your room without passing a hundred people. It is a horror.”

‘TICKING TIME BOMB’

The inmate population exceeds prison capacity in 42 of the 47 African countries and territories where data is available, according to the World Prison Brief, a database compiled by the Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research (ICPR) at Birkbeck, University of London.

In Europe, prisons are over-full in 17 of 57 countries and territories.

“This is a ticking time bomb. Prisons in Africa are already struggling to provide the most elementary standards of sanitation,” said Catherine Heard, director of the World Prison Research Programme at ICPR.

Cameroon has around 15,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, one of the worst infection rates in sub-Saharan Africa, with more than 350 deaths.

Of 832 samples collected from inmates released from five prisons in April, 358 tested positive for COVID-19, according to the unpublished government data – 16% of the national total at the beginning of May.

The majority of positive samples came from Yaounde Central Prison, Cameroon’s largest, where the infection rate of those released and tested was 58%. Its population is still around 3,000, three times capacity, said the senior prison official.

Many who tested positive were quarantined. But dozens were allowed home before their results came back or without being tested, according to three prisoners released in April and May, and a guard who oversaw releases.

“I signed my release papers; they opened the gates and let us out,” said one inmate who said he was freed on May 22 with 15 others without testing.

Others fled quarantine, the guard said. He could not say how many.

CRAMMED CELLS

Takang spent two weeks in hospital before returning to prison. A vocal supporter of Cameroon’s Anglophone separatist movement, he has been confined there for over a year on charges of sponsoring terrorism, which he denies. His trial is ongoing.

His test result for COVID-19, seen by Reuters, was negative. He tested positive for malaria and typhoid, he said.

While he was in hospital, inmates and prison staff said they noticed an unusual number of people with coughs and fevers. Inmates cut up bed sheets and old t-shirts to make masks, they said.

“There is fear everywhere. Everyone has the feeling that they are next,” said Mancho Bibixy Tse, a 36-year-old inmate reached by phone.

The prison infirmary, made up of a dozen metal beds with thin mattresses, overseen by one doctor and a few nurses, was quickly overwhelmed. By mid-April, patients lay three to a bed, said three inmates treated there. Patients bought medication from outside the prison – if they could afford it.

In late April and early May, authorities disinfected cells and stopped prison visits, staff and inmates said.

Inmates, prison staff and their families were given the anti-malarial drug chloroquine, although there is no firm evidence to show it is effective against COVID-19.

Disposable masks and buckets of water and soap were placed in cell blocks so inmates could wash their hands.

But overcrowding makes social distancing impossible, some inmates and guards said. In some quarters, hundreds of men share one pit latrine. Dozens are crowded into cells of no more than 25 square meters.

“I am lucky that I am in a room with just 15 people. Some rooms you have to walk over (sleeping) bodies to get out,” said Tse.

When an inmate dies, their family has 24 hours to collect the body, the senior official said, no small task in a country the size of Spain with threadbare transport links.

Of the 31 who died in April and May, the official said, only four were collected. The rest were taken away by authorities for burial.

Deaths have continued since, the official said, but he has stopped counting.

Culled from Reuters

A HIV-positive man in remission may be the first patient effectively cured of the illness without needing a bone marrow transplant, researchers said Tuesday in a potential breakthrough.

HIV affects tens of millions of people globally and while the disease is no longer the automatic death sentence it once was, patients need to take medication for life.

In recent years two men — known as the “Berlin” and “London” patients — appear to have been cured of the disease after undergoing high-risk stem cell bone marrow transplants to treat cancer.

Now an international team of researchers believe they may have a third patient who no longer shows sign of infection after undergoing a different medicine regimen.

The patient, a 34-year-old Brazilian who has not been named, was diagnosed with HIV in 2012.

As part of the study, he was given several potent antiviral drugs, including maraviroc and dolutegravir, to see if they could help him rid the virus from his body.

He has now gone more than 57 weeks with no HIV treatment and he continues to test negative for HIV antibodies.

Ricardo Diaz, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Sao Paulo, said the patient could be considered to be free of the disease.

“The significance for me is that we had a patient that was on treatment and he is now controlling the virus without treatment,” he told AFP.

“We’re not able to detect the virus and he’s losing the specific response to the virus — if you don’t have antibodies then you don’t have antigens.”

– ‘Provocative’ findings –

Diaz’s findings were released as part of the first-ever all-virtual International AIDS Conference, held online this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The United Nations said Monday that 1.7 million people contracted HIV last year and there are now more than 40 million people living with it.

Diaz said his team’s treatment method, which needs further research, was a more ethical avenue for gravely ill HIV sufferers than the bone-marrow transplant route.

“They come with a high mortality rate, there have been a series of patients who have either died from the procedures or it didn’t work,” he said.

Sharon Lewin, co-Chair of the International AIDS Society Initiative Towards an HIV Cure and director of the Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne, said Diaz’s findings were “very interesting”.

She struck a note of caution however, due to the study’s limitations.

She noted that the Brazil patients’ antibody test had gotten weaker over time — suggesting a diminishing immune response.

“This is very unusual to see in someone off antivirals,” she said.

“The Berlin and London Patients may be the only exceptions. This very provocative data needs more in-depth analysis.”

Source:  AFP

Officials warned on Sunday that US hospitals were in danger of being overwhelmed by the upsurge in cases as countries around the world are battling surges in the coronavirus, with more than 11 million people now infected in 196 countries and territories.

The US has struggled to respond to the devastation wrought by the virus, with its national death toll rising to near 130,000 out of 2.8 million confirmed cases, and many states hit by increasing infections after lockdowns were eased.

Hospital beds are full in parts of Texas, while calls for fresh stay-at-home orders are growing. Some mayors say their cities reopened too early, as President Donald Trump tries to downplay the disease that has gripped much of the country.

Across the US, the annual July 4 holiday weekend was overshadowed by growing evidence that the country’s fractured response has exacted a heavy price across the south and west, after previous hotspots such as New York emerged from the worst of the virus.

“Our hospitals here in Harris County, Houston, and 33 other cities… they’re into surge capacities. So their operational beds are taken up,” said Lina Hidalgo, chief executive of Harris County, which includes Houston, Texas.

“Restaurants are still open. Indoor events can take place no matter the size,” she told the ABC TV channel. “What we need right now is to do what works, which is a stay-home order.”

Steve Adler, the mayor of Austin, Texas, also expressed concern that the healthcare system could buckle as the disease spreads rapidly.

“If we don’t change the trajectory, then I am within two weeks of having our hospitals overrun. And in our ICUs, I could be 10 days away from that,” he told CNN.

Phoenix city mayor Kate Gallego said, “We opened way too early in Arizona” state. She suggested that a new stay-at-home order should be issued.

The US is now recording 40,000 new cases a day, with a peak of 57,000 on Friday alone.

The pandemic has killed at least 531,789 people worldwide since it surfaced in China late last year, according to an AFP tally on Sunday based on official sources.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported 2,545,250 cases of new coronavirus and said that the number of deaths had risen to 126,369 as of Monday night.

The United States recorded at least 42,000 coronavirus infections in the 24 hours to Monday as the country confronts a rapid surge in the respiratory disease known as COVID-19.

Several state governors have reimposed lockdowns on businesses such as restaurants and bars as the White House claimed the rise in cases is due to record levels on “expanded testing” and not community spread.

In California, Los Angeles, which has become a new epicenter in the pandemic as coronavirus cases and hospitalizations surge, reported an “alarming” one-day surge in America’s second-largest city that put it over 100,000 cases.

Los Angeles county closed all beaches for the Independence Day holiday weekend due to the startling rise in coronavirus rates in the county, while state of Arizona closes bars, gyms and movie theaters for at least 30 days.

Nearly 20 states paused or rolled back reopening of businesses due to rapid rise in coronavirus cases.

California counties are dialing back plans to reopen some businesses after observing an increase in hospitalizations and a decrease in compliance with social distancing guidelines.

“We will take action to close bars wineries and breweries that do not serve food beginning midnight Wednesday morning,” San Diego County’s Public Health Officer Wilma Wooten said Monday. “Now more than ever, it is vital that we all take precaution to guide our personal, as well as our collective health.”

Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak paused the state’s reopening, with his office saying the governor “will sign an emergency directive extending the length of Phase 2 through the end of July, due to the trends in COVID-19 infection rates, the time needed for expanded contact tracing to identify trends, and to see the impacts of the Governor’s new face covering directive.” 

Nearly half of US virus deaths recorded in care facilities

According to the latest count from the Kaiser Family Foundation, long-term care facilities and similar institutions account for 45% of coronavirus deaths in the United States.

The survey found more than 52,000 deaths occurred in nursing facilities, assisted living facilities, memory care facilities, adult care centers, or other long-term care facilities in 40 states, plus Washington, DC.

KFF’s survey finds more than 10,000 facilities in 43 states plus Washington, DC, have confirmed cases of Covid-19.

According to the data, the states with the highest number of deaths in nursing homes were New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.

Trump’s reopening plan ‘backfired’   

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo criticized President Donald Trump’s administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, saying the White House has been “in denial” from the start of the public health crisis.

Cuomo said the Trump administration was not doing enough to tackle a surge of in COVID-19 cases in several US states that has emerged over the past few weeks.

The New York governor said that Trump’s focus on reopening the economy was misguided and that it had backfired.

“Yes, we have to get the economy going but reopening fast was not good for the economy. What has been happening is, when that virus spikes, the market goes down, not up,” Cuomo said.  

Trump is facing mounting criticism from both Republicans and Democrats over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

In a rare break with mask-averse president, fellow Republican leaders are advocating for mask as COVID-19 cases surge in some Republican-leaning states, Reuters said.

US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, “Wearing simple face coverings is not about protecting ourselves, it is about protecting everyone we encounter.”

Source: Presstv

The coronavirus pandemic is “not even close to being over”, the WHO warned Monday, as the global death toll passed half a million and cases surged in Latin America and the United States.

In another grim milestone, the number of infections recorded worldwide topped 10 million, while some authorities reimposed lockdown measures that have crippled the economies worldwide.

“We all want this to be over. We all want to get on with our lives,” World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

“But the hard reality is this is not even close to being over,” he said, adding that “although many countries have made some progress, globally the pandemic is actually speeding up.”

The virus emerged at least six months ago in China, where the WHO will send a team next week in the search for its origin, Tedros said.

Covid-19 is still rampaging across the US, which has recorded more than 125,000 deaths and 2.5 million cases — both around a quarter of the global totals.

US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the April-June quarter was expected to see the largest decline in GDP on record, adding that recovery would depend on government efforts to contain the outbreak.

Many of the south and west US states where the virus is most rampant are where state leaders pushed for early reopenings.

But even in New York, deemed to be in good health comparatively, the iconic Broadway theatre district announced it would remain closed through the end of the year.

And with numerous US states forced to reimpose restrictions on restaurants, bars and beaches, President Donald Trump has come under growing pressure to set an example by wearing a mask.

Trump’s health secretary has warned the “window is closing” for the US to regain control, but the president has largely turned away from the crisis, holding indoor rallies with big, largely maskless crowds against the advice of his experts and refusing to cover his own face in public.

‘Profound shock’

And while opposition Democrats have urged Trump to reissue an emergency declaration on coronavirus, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the president had “no interest” in doing so.

However, he may not be able to avoid masks forever — the Florida city of Jacksonville, where Trump’s Republicans are due to hold their national convention in August, declared face masks mandatory on Monday.

Underlining Trump’s increasing isolation on the issue, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is usually in lock step with the president, spoke out on the urgency of mask-wearing.

“We must have no stigma, none, about wearing masks when we leave our homes and come near other people,” he said.

“Wearing simple face coverings is not about protecting ourselves, it is about protecting everyone we encounter.”

The second hardest-hit country Brazil registered 259,105 infections in the seven days through Sunday — the country’s highest of any week during the pandemic.

Ireland’s pubs began pouring pints for the first time in 15 weeks, as Europe — still the hardest-hit continent — continues to open up after seeing numbers of new cases fall.

“Guinness is good for you,” quipped Mark O’Mahony — the first to order a pint with his breakfast at a Dublin pub. “Without it, it hasn’t been much good really for 15 weeks.”

In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said his country had gone through a “profound shock” as he prepared to unveil a large stimulus programme.

Constant threat

His government plans to reopen pubs, restaurants and hairdressers across England on July 4, but on Monday ordered schools and non-essential shops in Leicester, central England, to close after a localised outbreak.

Meanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron called for a “strong” and “efficient” recovery fund for the European Union.

In Merkel’s Germany, which has been praised for how it has tackled its Covid-19 outbreak, the North Rhine-Westphalia state extended a lockdown on a district hit hard by a slaughterhouse outbreak.

In neighbouring Switzerland, organisers said that 2021’s Geneva International Motor Show was cancelled, after already scrapping this year’s event.

China has imposed a strict lockdown on nearly half a million people in a province surrounding Beijing to contain a fresh cluster.

In a reminder of the constant threat of newly-emerged pathogens, researchers in Chinese universities and the country’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention announced they had discovered a novel swine flu that was capable of triggering another pandemic.

Named G4, it is genetically descended from the H1N1 strain that caused a pandemic in 2009.

It possesses “all the essential hallmarks of being highly adapted to infect humans,” said the authors of a study published Monday in the US science journal PNAS.

The Middle East’s most affected country Iran reported 162 more deaths on Monday, its highest single-day toll yet, a day after it also made mask-wearing mandatory for inside gatherings.

India, which is gradually easing a nationwide lockdown, registered a daily record of 18,500 new cases and 385 new deaths on Saturday.

Alka, one of the country’s million accredited social health activists, said it was difficult for the unprotected and poorly paid all-women workers to get people to heed their advice.

“People are struggling to feed their families,” she said. “What can we do?” 

(AFP)

Some health facilities in Cameroon are turning to telemedicine as patients have been keeping away from and fleeing medical facilities for fear of contracting the coronavirus Covid-19, which has so far killed 313 people in the country.

Cameroon reported its first case of the virus on March 6 and as at Wednesday had 12,592 confirmed cases with 10,100 recoveries, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).

Early this month, Dr Manaouda Malachie, Cameroon’s minister of Public Health, said patients have fled health facilities following the daily spike in the number of Covid-19 cases especially in the towns of Bamenda, Bafoussam, Douala and the capital Yaoundé.

Mr Edwin Biyeh Abi, Country Manager of Unite for Health Foundation, a local NGO that assists Cameroonians to access healthcare through its micro-clinics, said there has been a drastic decline in the number of patients visiting their health centres since the coronavirus figures soared.

Even pregnant women are not going for routine prenatal care visits, he said.

As a result of the far-reaching drop in patient turnover, the organisation, which operates two clinics in the capital Yaoundé and one in Bamenda in the Northwest, said it has resorted to telemedicine.

“We have decided to launch a telemedicine programme to permit those in the communities we serve to be able to use their phone and reach out to us either through direct phone call or video calls to consult with our doctors and get the best of advice on what to do about their health,” Mr Abi said.

The telemedicine programme will also be used to screen for and educate patients on Covid-19.

“We do not want to let the Covid-19 emergency separate pregnant women, mothers and children from our urgent, life-saving medical care or disease prevention programmes. Both are absolutely critical to the public health of thousands of Cameroonians,” Mr Abi said.

Several other health facilities have also adopted telemedicine.

The central African country has been struggling with the pandemic with a fragile healthcare system and limited financial resources.

Source: The East African