COVID-19

Survivors of COVID-19 from 37 countries are among almost 1,000 people who have signed an open letter to pharmaceutical industry leaders calling for a ‘people's vaccine’ and treatments that are available to all.

Pharmaceutical and tech companies and wealthy white Americans benefit from dramatic pandemic profits, further exacerbating inequality.

Notwithstanding all measures put in place, and considering the alarming rate of infection of the coronavirus, the inevitable eventually happened. On 12 March 2020, Ghana Health Service under the Ministry of Health confirmed the first two COVID-19 cases in the country. The cases have since been rising daily with the COVID-19 story yet to end. To this point, Ghana has recorded 46,222 cases of COVID-19 cases with 45,417 recoveries and 299 deaths.

On humanitarian grounds, the President of Uganda directed its Government to temporarily re-open the Zombo border to allow life-saving aid and protection to be provided to the group of refugees.

In many African countries, infection prevention and control measures aimed at preventing infections in health facilities are still not fully implemented.

Dozens of children have been killed, maimed, and recruited by armed groups in a recent surge of violence and civil unrest in Colombia, Save the Children has warned. The violence is ripping families and communities apart, leaving a lasting impact on children and youth.

Timely interventions and health actions are not the only aspects that enabled the Kerala model of COVID-19 response to be unique. It focused a lot on preparing Kerala as a society to face this adverse condition by building people’s trust in its health system.

The Rwanda National Police has intervened with drones to raise COVID-19 awareness in densely-populated and hard-to-reach areas of the country.

While this pandemic may have created new forms of exclusion, strategies and tools exist to address health promotion, whilst continuing to communicate for peace in conflict-affected contexts. The design of an integrated peacebuilding and technical health response, which is sensitive to individual conflicts’ dynamics and keeps in mind communication challenges such as misinformation, mistrust and reduced interpersonal contact, is crucial.

Inkanyezi Events, a Port Elizabeth-based marketing company has partnered with a local technology start-up in South Africa to create virtual exhibition software, which, according to Inkanyezi CEO, Andrew Binning, is receiving "intense global interest".