Health

Ghana today took delivery of COVID-19 vaccines from the COVAX facility thereby becoming the first African country to receive the 600,000 Oxford-AstraZeneca doses. The vaccines from the global effort to boost access to doses arrived in the capital Accra Wednesday morning. The World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Africa made this known via Twitter. In the tweet WHO said the delivery is the first wave of arrivals to continue in the coming days. Ghana’s government said this in a statement on Wednesday “The government of Ghana is taking delivery of 60,000 doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine made by the Serum Institute of India (Covishield).”

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has on Monday disclosed that a new variant of the COVID-19 has been detected in Nigeria and 15 other countries. The new variant “B.1.2.5” is different from the highly infectious “B.1.1.7” variant, and is yet to be described as a variant of concern. This was made known by the Director-General, NCDC, Dr. Chikwe Iheakweazu during the daily Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 briefing in Abuja, saying researchers and scientists are working to understand the effects of the variant as well as its transmissibility, immunity, diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics.

As part of efforts to curtail the spread of the Coronavirus pandemic the Kano State COVID-19 taskforce technical Committee, has introduced a Home-based care program to reach out to people in difficult to reach areas. This was disclosed in a statement from the state Primary Health Care Management Board, signed by its Information Officer, Mr. Maikudi Marafa, on Saturday. According to the statement the state Commissioner of Health, Dr. Aminu Tsanyawa, who launched the program on Saturday, said that it was necessary to curtail the second wave of the pandemic.

The Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has revealed that the country has recorded a fresh 877 cases of coronavirus in the country pushing the toll to surpass 150,000 since the index case last year.

Following the announcement of a new Ebola virus outbreak that has been declared in Goueke community in N'Zerekore prefecture of Guinea by the World Health Organization (WHO), the Federal Government has said it is closely monitoring diseases of public health concern while observing the outbreak in Guinea. The Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire during the daily press briefing on COVID-19 said "Nigeria’s Port Health Services have been put on alert on land, sea and air borders and all major hospitals have also been put on notice to alert health workers to have a keen index of suspicion and to check patient travel history, especially at Outpatient Departments, and report concerns to infectious disease focal persons and the state epidemiologists without hesitation.

The Federal Government is working diligently to end the transmission of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus /Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) in the country by 2024, Dr. Aliyu Gambo, Director-General of National Agency for the Control of HIV/AIDS (NACA). Dr. Gambo made the disclosure on Monday, at the launch of a five-day “Capacity Strengthening of Key and Vulnerable Populations in Access to HIV Services Efficiency” in Sokoto State, saying “Nigeria is working toward ending the transmission of HIV/AIDS in the next three years, which is 2024, less than the targeted year of 2030 by the UN.”