At off-grid Hakwata Clinic in Zimbabwe’s Manicaland Province, women gave birth by candle-light and gas-powered fridges strained to keep vaccines cool. That all changed when a solar mini-grid was installed. 27 September 2024 by Farai Shawn Matiashe A 200kW solar mini-grid providing uninterrupted power to a clinic in Hakwata village in Chipinge, Zimbabwe. Credit: Farai Shawn…
Matchmaking apps and dating platforms in Nigeria are joining the fight against sickle cell anaemia, a dangerous and genetically heritable condition. 26 September 2024 by Zubaida Baba Ibrahim When Onyinye Igbokwe, the founder of Genzee Baddies – an innovative dating app – turned 25, he discovered that his search for a life partner involved more than…
“I am happy,” one vaccinator says, seeing mothers’ enthusiasm for the novel jab. 3 October 2024 by Winnie Cirino Public health experts in South Sudan say that the malaria vaccine has seen enthusiastic uptake since its introduction into the national immunisation schedule in mid-July this year. John Elia, the deputy head for Expanded Programme for Immunization…
By Professor Myriam Sidibe and Serah Malaba Without a concerted effort to support integrated Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR), we are unlikely to meet the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on Good Health and Well-being or Gender Equality. Health systems in Sub-Saharan Africa are failing to meet the needs of adolescent girls and…
The UN’s Sanitation and Hygiene Fund (SHF) has announced a grant of USD 250,000 to the Swedish Institute for Standards (SIS) to support the participation of Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) in the development of global quality standards for menstrual products. As the secretariat of the technical committee of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) – ISO/TC…
By Rose Muasya When was the last time you donated blood? Or perhaps you needed blood but couldn’t find any unless you rallied relatives to donate? Across the border in Uganda, our neighbors have embraced digital tools to aid in blood donation, revolutionizing the way they approach this critical issue. In Uganda, a WhatsApp group…
The World Health Organization (WHO) and TikTok, a platform for short-form mobile videos, announced a year-long collaboration aimed at providing people with reliable, science-based health information. This reflects WHO’s commitment to leveraging multiple digital communication platforms to increase outreach to people globally, to promote health literacy, healthy behaviours and actions in an increasingly digitized world. Social media…
In recent years, immunotherapies have given patients renewed hope, albeit with relatively modest success. A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the Geneva University Hospitals (HUG) has succeeded in identifying a specific marker on the surface of tumour cells, and in generating immune cells carrying an antibody to destroy them. Furthermore, these cells,…
Karamoja has faced intracommunal violence for decades, and as climate change exacerbates water scarcity, it’s getting worse. But vaccinator Sister Virginia Virgo is not backing down. 18 September 2024 by John Agaba When Virginia Virgo packed her bags to join a monastery in northern Uganda in the 1980s, she had one thing in mind: to leave…
At the dawn of Zambia’s Expanded Programme on Immunization in 1974, Nurse Anne Zimba recalls boiling glass syringes and running out of gas to power the fridges. Many things have changed. 24 September 2024 by Fiske Nyirongo Anne Zimba, née Mbilishi, was in her early twenties when she started at Lusaka Nursing School. It was 1973.…