Luanda – Joana Domingos had long ceased to believe the official COVID-19 information coming from national authorities in her native Angola. The mother of two had become convinced that the COVID-19 vaccine was part of a global plan to annihilate the most vulnerable – disinformation she had gleaned from messages circulated through mobile phone texts.…

World Health Day is observed annually on 7 April, to commemorate the anniversary of the founding of the World Health Organization (WHO). This year’s event is marked under the theme “Our Planet, Our Health,” and is aimed to raise awareness of the inextricable link between the planet and our health, as the burden of non-communicable…

A measles vaccination campaign was conducted in Ethiopia from February to March 2022 in SNNP, Somali and Oromia regions targeting more than half a million children aged between 6 months to 10 years. The campaign aimed to stop the spread of a measles outbreak reported from 12 woredas (districts) in three regions: seven woredas of…

Kigali – When COVID-19 cases and deaths in Rwanda began to spike in early 2022, the health authorities were determined to avoid reliving the experience of prior pandemic waves. Despite the country’s well-coordinated response, hospitals had been overwhelmed with demand and struggling to keep up. The solution? Operation Save the Neighbour, an initiative to save…

Kampala, 19th April 2022: - The Ministry of Health, the World Health Organization (WHO) and Tree Adoption Uganda (TAU), joined hands to commemorate World Health Day in a tree-planting exercise, in line with the day’s theme, “Our Planet, Our Health”. Through the “Our planet, our health” campaign, the Ministry of Health and WHO highlighted the…

Loyce Twikirize is 18 years old and lives in Kabale district with her parents and siblings. She received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine on January 10, 2022, and the second dose on March 24, 2022. "I received both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine because I know that it will protect me from being…

17 April 2022, Addis Ababa –On 15 April 2022, Ethiopia kicked off the second-round polio campaign with type 2 novel oral polio vaccine (nOPV2) aiming to protect over 16 million under-five children from disability and death due to the ongoing polio outbreak in the country. The campaign is taking place on 15-18 April in all…

Brazzaville – Africa is experiencing its longest-running decline in COVID-19 infections since the onset of the pandemic. Recorded weekly cases have fallen for the past 16 weeks, while deaths have dropped for the last eight. Infections—largely due to the Omicron-driven fourth pandemic wave—have tanked from a peak of over 308 000 cases weekly at the…

The World Health Organization (WHO) in Eswatini in collaboration with the Ministry of Health (MOH) brought together more than 100 key stakeholders to discuss issues around health and the environment under the theme, “Our Planet, Our Health”.  The stakeholders included government sectors, regulatory authorities, international organizations,  non-governmental organizations, municipalities, academia, and members of the media.…

Brazzaville – Researchers in Botswana and South Africa have detected new sub-lineages of the Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 and are carrying out further investigations to fully understand crucial traits such as infectivity and virulence. The identified sub-lineages variant are BA.4 and BA.5. World Health Organization (WHO) experts are working with scientists and researchers in the…

Accra/Brazzaville – Noncommunicable diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes are increasingly becoming the main cause of mortality in sub-Saharan Africa, where the diseases were responsible for 37% of deaths in 2019, rising from 24% in 2000 largely due to weaknesses in the implementation of critical control measures including prevention, diagnosis and care. This…

7 April 2022 - Today, The Ministry of Health and Child Care (MoHCC) joins the rest of the world to mark World Health Day 2022. This year’s theme “Our planet: Our health” advocates for global attention on urgent actions needed to keep humans and the planet healthy and foster a movement to create societies focused…