Current major event Cholera: a global grade 3 emergency On 26 January 2023, the cholera outbreaks (event) was graded as a multi-region Grade 3 Public Health Emergency after considering the current scale, the potential for further international spread, the high urgency, complexity factors, current low to moderate capacity, and the very high reputational risk. Editorial note Cholera is preventable and

Avian flu has reached new corners of the globe and become endemic for the first time in some wild birds that transmit the virus to poultry, according to veterinarians and disease experts, who warn it is now a year-round problem. Reuters spoke to more than 20 experts and farmers on four continents who said the prevalence of the virus in

ROME – The United Nation’s World Food Programme (WFP) is preparing to support 490,000 people in Burkina Faso, The Gambia and Mali who were impacted by drought in 2022. WFP has received US$15.4 million worth of insurance payouts from African Risk Capacity (ARC) Limited that will provide a cash transfer to affected people from March to May 2023, enabling them

Militiamen killed 22 people in two separate attacks in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) Ituri province on Sunday and Monday, a local official and a human rights group said, in ongoing violence in the region. The DRC’s government declared martial law in Ituri and neighboring North Kivu province in 2021 to quell the bloodshed, but deadly raids have continued.

To expedite the end-to-end integration of influenza and SARS-CoV-2 surveillance, the WHO Ethiopia Country Office and the WHO Regional Office for Africa organized a two-week on-site laboratory training course for staff of the National Influenza Centre, Ethiopia Public Health Institute, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The course provided hands-on training and an in-depth understanding of next-generation sequencing (NGS), data analysis, and sharing

Malawi is experiencing the deadliest cholera outbreak in its history, say World Health Organization officials, who note that the disease has left more than 1,200 people dead and nearly 37,000 others infected since March of last year. The U.N. released a statement Thursday as an update on the situation. Cholera is an “acute enteric infection caused by ingesting the bacteria

A rash of killings across Africa has renewed focus on the risks facing those working to expose wrongdoing. The killings of two journalists in Cameroon and a respected human rights defender in Eswatini, along with the suspicious death of a well-known editor in Rwanda have raised questions about whether justice will be done. The cases also underscored the dangers of

GOMA (DR Congo), At least three demonstrators were killed in an attack on a UN convoy in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the United Nations mission in the country said in a statement. Militias have plagued the mineral-rich eastern DRC for decades, many of them a legacy of regional wars that flared during the 1990s and early 2000s. The UN