Tag Archives: West Africa

Congo records one-day record for confirmed Ebola cases

FILE PHOTO: Healthcare worker carry a coffin with a baby suspected of dying of Ebola during the funeral in Beni, North Kivu Province of Democratic Republic of Congo, December 18, 2018. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic/File Photo

KINSHASA (Reuters) – Democratic Republic of Congo on Wednesday confirmed 14 new cases of Ebola virus in its eastern borderlands, the largest one-day increase since the current outbreak was declared in August.

The outbreak of the haemorrhagic fever in the eastern provinces of North Kivu and Ituri is already the second-largest in history with 713 confirmed and probable cases and 439 deaths.

It is surpassed only by the 2013-2016 outbreak in West Africa, which involved over 28,000 cases and 11,000 deaths and led to substantial investments in a vaccine and treatments for the virus.

Health officials have struggled to bring the current outbreak, Congo’s tenth since 1976, under control, largely due to widespread militia violence in eastern Congo which has hampered the response.

The health ministry said in a daily bulletin that nine of the new cases were in the health zone of Katwa, just outside Butembo, a city of several hundred thousand people near the Ugandan border that has emerged as the outbreak’s new epicenter. One other case was in Butembo.

The ministry also announced six new deaths of confirmed cases as well as the recovery of one patient.

(Reporting By Stanis Bujakera and Fiston Mahamba; Writing by Aaron Ross; Editing by William Maclean and Peter Graff)

Congo approves more experimental Ebola treatments as cases rise

FILE PHOTO: Congolese health workers prepare the Ebola treatment centre in the village of Mangina in North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, August 18, 2018. REUTERS/Olivia Acland

KINSHASA (Reuters) – Democratic Republic of Congo has approved four more experimental treatments against the deadly Ebola virus, the health ministry said as it raced to contain an outbreak in its violence-torn east.

Health authorities last week started administering the U.S.-developed mAb114 treatment to Ebola patients, the first time such a treatment had been used against an active outbreak.

The health ministry said in a daily bulletin late on Tuesday that the 10 patients who received mAb114 since Aug. 11 have experienced a “positive evolution”, but the outbreak has continued to grow.

The four additional treatments approved by Congo’s ethics committee are Remdesivir, made by Israel’s Gilead Sciences; ZMapp, an intravenous treatment made by San Diego’s Mapp Pharmaceutical; Japanese drug Favipiravir; and one referred to as Regn3450 – 3471 – 3479.

Remdesivir was administered to its first patient in the town of Beni on Tuesday, who is doing well, the ministry said in its bulletin.

Six new cases and four new deaths have been confirmed from the haemmorhagic fever, which causes vomiting and severe diarrhea, the ministry said.

That brings the total number of deaths to 59 and confirmed cases to 75 since last month.

Congo, whose heavily forested interior makes its a natural home for Ebola, is at the forefront of a global campaign to combat the virus, which killed more than 11,000 people when it swept through West Africa from 2013-2016.

The Central African country has experienced ten Ebola outbreaks since the virus was discovered in northern Congo in 1976 – more than twice as many as any other country – and 33 people died in a flare-up in the northwest that ended last month.

In addition, a vaccine manufactured by Merck, which proved effective against the earlier outbreak in northwestern Congo, has been administered to 1,693 health workers and contacts of Ebola patients.

Insecurity in Congo’s eastern borderlands with Uganda has continued to complicate the response, with some contacts of Ebola patients located in so-called “red-zones”, which are off limits to emergency responders due to militia activity.

Instead, local health workers in those areas are monitoring the contacts and no Ebola cases have yet been confirmed there.

(Reporting By Amedee Mwarabu and Fiston Mahamba; Writing by Aaron Ross; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

U.S. must step up support for operation against West Africa militants: France

French soldiers prepare their armoured vehicles at the Relay Desert Platform Camp (PfDR) in Ansongo, Mali, October 15, 2017, during the regional anti-insurgent Operation Barkhane. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

By John Irish and Yara Bayoumy

PARIS/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States must step up its support for a planned African force to fight Islamist militants in West Africa otherwise it could fail, leaving French troops to carry the burden alone, France’s defense minister said on Friday.

France intervened in Mali to ward off an offensive by Islamist militants that began in 2012 and 4,000 of its troops remain in the region as part of Operation Barkhane where they work alongside 10,000 U.N. peacekeepers in Mali.

France and West African countries are pushing for the creation of a regional force known as the G5 Sahel.

Washington provides bilateral assistance, intelligence and training for regional security operations, but it is cool toward the African force and has pushed back against U.N. support for it.

“In the Sahel, France is deploying in a high-intensity environment, with tremendous support from the United States. We are immensely grateful for that support,” Parly said in a speech at a Washington think tank monitored in Paris.

“But much more needs to be done. We can’t be, and don’t want to be, the praetorian (guards) of sovereign African countries. They must be made able to defeat terror on their own,” she said during a visit for meetings with her American counterpart James Mattis and White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster.

“I would be happy if you could help spread the word in the Beltway,” she said in a reference to the U.S. government.

Parly said the G5 Sahel force was meant to bolster the security capacity of Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali and Mauritania, which are all former French colonies.

French officials see the success of the G5 Sahel as a long-term exit strategy for Paris. For decades, France has mounted military operations in its former African colonies but in recent years it has looked to spread the cost.

Until now the G5 force has only received a quarter of its estimated 423 million euro budget, according to a report by the U.N. Secretary General, who said financing the operation would “remain a significant challenge” for several years.

“It will start its first operations soon. It needs support. The U.N. wants to give support. I hope everyone can become convinced that a robust U.N. assistance is necessary,” Parly said.

French defense officials say they expect the first G5 patrols to begin this month and hope that will provide momentum ahead of a donor conference in December.

Parly said that militants could flourish if financial backing for the G5 was not forthcoming.

Her visit also aimed to ascertain the political fallout from an ambush in Niger in early October that saw four U.S. special forces soldiers killed by jihadists.

U.S. troops called in French fighter jets for air support and French helicopters to evacuate several wounded soldiers.

(Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg)

Man claiming to be Boko Haram leader denies 5,000 hostages freed

By Ardo Abdullahi

BAUCHI, Nigeria (Reuters) – A man purporting to be the leader of Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram denied in a video posted on Friday that 5,000 people held by the group had been freed by West African forces earlier in the week.

On Wednesday, Cameroon said regional forces had rescued the hostages, who were held in villages by the jihadist group, in an operation along the Nigeria-Cameroon border.

“You are telling lies that you killed 60 of our men and rescued 20 children, and that you rescued 5,000 of your people, Paul Biya,” said the man claiming to be Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau, referring to Cameroon’s president.

He also claimed responsibility for attacks earlier this week which included suicide bombings in the city of Maiduguri and a raid on the town of Magumeri, both of which are in the northeast Nigerian state of Borno.

Nigeria’s military has said on multiple occasions in the last few years that it has killed or wounded Shekau.

Such statements have often been followed by video denials by someone who says he is Shekau, but poor footage makes it difficult to confirm if the person is the same man as in previous footage.

Boko Haram has killed around 15,000 people and forced more than 2 million people to flee their homes since 2009 in an insurgency aimed at creating a state adhering to strict Islamic laws in the northeast of Africa’s most populous nation.

The jihadist group, whose attacks have increased since the end of the rainy season in late 2016, also carries out cross-border attacks in neighboring Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Kingimi; writing by Alexis Akwagyiram; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Taiwan loses another ally, says won’t help China ties

Taiwan diplomats

By J.R. Wu and Ben Blanchard

TAIPEI/BEIJING (Reuters) – Taiwan accused China on Wednesday of using Sao Tome and Principe’s financial woes to push its “one China” policy after the West African state ended ties with the self-ruled island, with Taiwan saying China’s action would not help relations across the Taiwan Strait.

China’s claim to Taiwan have shot back into the spotlight since U.S. President-elect Donald Trump broke diplomatic protocol and spoke with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen this month, angering Beijing.

Trump has also questioned the “one China” policy which the United States has followed since establishing relations with Beijing in 1979, under which the United States acknowledges that Taiwan is part of China.

The election of Tsai from the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party this year infuriated Beijing, which suspects she wants to push for the island’s formal independence, though she says she wants to maintain peace with China.

Taiwan Foreign Minister David Lee said Taipei would not engage in “dollar diplomacy” after Sao Tome’s decision.

“We think the Beijing government should not use Sao Tome’s financing black hole … as an opportunity to push its ‘one China’ principle,” Lee told a news conference in Taipei on Wednesday.

“This behavior is not helpful to a smooth cross-Strait relationship.”

Tsai held emergency meetings with cabinet officials and security advisers on Wednesday, and told her ministers:

“Foreign diplomacy is not a zero-sum game,” according to her office spokesman, Alex Huang.

Tsai’s office said in a statement China’s use of Sao Tome’s financial woes to push its “one China” policy would harm stability across the Taiwan Strait.

“This is absolutely not beneficial to the long-term development of cross-Strait relations,” it said.

China says Taiwan has no right to diplomatic recognition as it is part of China, and the issue is an extremely sensitive one for Beijing.

In Beijing, China welcomed Sao Tome’s decision, without explicitly saying it had established formal relations with the former Portuguese colony or making any mention of a request for financial aid.

“We have noted the statement from the government of Sao Tome and Principe on the 20th to break so-called ‘diplomatic’ ties with Taiwan. China expresses appreciation of this, and welcomes Sao Tome back onto the correct path of the ‘one China’ principle,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying declined to comment when asked when the two countries may exchange ambassadors, and dismissed a question on how much China may have offered Sao Tome to switch ties as being “very imaginative”.

Defeated Nationalist forces fled to Taiwan at the end of a civil war in 1949 and Beijing has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control.

In Africa, only Burkina Faso and Swaziland now maintain formal ties with Taiwan. President Tsai will visit Central American allies Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador next month.

“We now have 21 allies left. We must cherish them,” Lee said.

China and Taiwan had for years tried to poach each other’s allies, often dangling generous aid packages in front of developing nations.

But they began an unofficial diplomatic truce after signing a series of landmark trade and economic agreements in 2008 following the election of the China-friendly Ma Ying-jeou as Taiwan’s president.

Sao Tome and Principe’s tiny island economy is heavily dependent on cocoa exports but its position in the middle of the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea has raised interest in its potential as a possible oil and gas producer.

Diplomatic sources in Beijing have previously said Sao Tome was likely high on China’s list of countries to lure away from Taiwan.

In 2013, Sao Tome said China planned to open a trade mission to promote projects there, 16 years after it broke off relations over Sao Tome’s diplomatic recognition of Taiwan.

(Editing by Lincoln Feast, Robert Birsel)

Famine killing tens of thousands in West Africa : biggest crisis anywhere

By Tom Miles

GENEVA (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of people are dying of hunger in the area of west Africa where Boko Haram militants are active, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for the region, told a news conference on Friday.

About 65,000 people are in a “catastrophe” or “phase 5” situation, according to a food security assessment by the IPC, the recognized classification system on declaring famines.

Phase 5 applies when, even with humanitarian assistance, “starvation, death and destitution” are evident.

“The tragedy of using the F word is that when you apply it it’s too late,” said Toby Lanzer, who has also worked in South Sudan, Darfur and Chechnya.

Boko Haram militants have killed about 15,000 people and displaced more than 2 million in a seven-year insurgency and they still launch deadly attacks despite having been pushed out of the vast swathes of territory they controlled in 2014.

“This is the first time I’ve come across people talking about phase 5. The reason for that was simply a lack of access. We couldn’t get to places,” Lanzer said.

“Because of the insecurity sown almost exclusively by Boko Haram, people have missed three planting seasons.”

Asked if it was safe to assume that tens of thousands of people were dying, Lanzer said: “It’s not what we’re assuming, it’s what the IPC states. And I back that number.

“I can tell you from my first trip outside (the regional capital) Maiduguri, I had never gone to places that had adults who were so depleted of energy that they could barely walk.”

One aid agency reported back from the Nigerian town of Bama that its staff had counted the graves of about 430 children who had died of hunger in the past few weeks, Lanzer said.

With millions more short of food in northern Nigerian and regions of the adjoining countries, the situation could get much worse, and could turn into the “biggest crisis facing any of us anywhere”, he said.

“We’re now talking about 568,000 across the Lake Chad basin who are severely malnourished, 400,000 of them are in the northeast of Nigeria. We know that over the next 12 months, 75,000, maybe as many as 80,000, children will die in the northeast of Nigeria, unless we can reach them with specialized therapeutic food,” Lanzer said.

Across the Lake Chad region, more than 6 million people are described as “severely food insecure”, including 4.5 million in Nigeria, he said.

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

NASA’s New mission; improving good security in West Africa

ourists take pictures of a NASA sign at the Kennedy Space Center visitors complex in Cape Canaveral, Florida

By Nellie Peyton

DAKAR (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A drive by NASA to stream climate data to West African nations using its earth-observing satellites could boost crop production in a region hit hard by climate change, experts say.

NASA last week launched a hub in Niger’s capital Niamey that will use space-based observations to improve food security and better manage natural disasters, said Dan Irwin, manager of the SERVIR project, named after the Spanish word meaning “to serve”.

The project, which will cover Burkina Faso, Ghana, Senegal and Niger, is one of four regional hubs worldwide, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

“The model is demand driven,” said Irwin, who describes SERVIR’s vision as “connecting space to village”. NASA performed a study in the region two years ago and found that governments either did not have good data, or were not using it, he added.

The Sahel is one of the most vulnerable regions in the world to climate change, where rising temperatures and increasingly erratic rainfall are wreaking havoc on farmers, disrupting food production, and fuelling widespread hunger and malnutrition.

“The whole livelihood along the Sahel depends on a few main crops, namely millet and sorghum,” U.N. World Food Program analyst Matthieu Tockert told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“These crops are highly dependent on rainfall, so any data that allows for proper forecasts is key,” Tockert said.

Farmers in Senegal say that traditional methods of predicting the weather are no longer reliable. A program launched last month by the country’s aviation and meteorology agency aims to solve the problem by sending texts to farmers.

“There is an immediate need to connect available science and technology to development solutions in West Africa,” said Alex Deprez, director of USAID’s West Africa regional office.

In East Africa, SERVIR scientists have since 2008 built a system to track water in streams and rivers and predict when and where droughts or floods will occur, and created maps that show which land is the most fertile, and which areas risk erosion.

SERVIR could adopt similar programmes in West Africa, but the first step will be to identify the region’s most pressing needs, with a priority on improving food security, Irwin said.

(Reporting by Nellie Peyton, Editing by Kieran Guilbert and Katie Nguyen.)

Pirates are switching to kidnapping instead of stealing oil cargo

A machine gun is seen on a sandbag on a boat off the Atlantic coast in Nigeria's Bayelsa state

By Jonathan Saul

LONDON (Reuters) – Pirate gangs in West Africa are switching to kidnapping sailors and demanding ransom rather than stealing oil cargoes as low oil prices have made crude harder to sell and less profitable, shipping officials said on Tuesday.

Attacks in the Gulf of Guinea – a significant source of oil, cocoa and metals for world markets – have become less frequent partly due to improved patrolling but also to lower oil prices, according to an annual report from the U.S. foundation Oceans Beyond Piracy (OBP), which is backed by the shipping industry.

“They have had to move towards a faster model and that faster model is kidnappings,” OBP’s Matthew Walje said, noting that ransom payouts were as high as $400,000 in one incident.

“It only takes a few hours as opposed to several days to conduct the crime itself,” he told Reuters at the report’s launch in London. “Fuel prices have fallen, which cuts into their bottom line.”

OBP said violence had also risen, including mock executions, and last year 23 people were killed by pirates there.

“A lot of people are dying from piracy – nowhere near that number died in the last few years in the Western Indian Ocean (due to Somali piracy),” Giles Noakes, of leading ship industry body BIMCO, told the briefing.

“We are particularly concerned by the issue,” said Noakes, whose association audits the OBP’s annual report.

Last month, Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea agreed to establish combined patrols to bolster security.

Analysts say the pirates have emerged from Nigerian militant groups such as the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta and OBP’s Walje said a growing problem was the splintered nature of the various gangs operating in West Africa.

“It is more fractured than it would be off Somalia where there were a few major gangs and kingpins operating,” he said.

OBP estimated costs related to piracy and armed robbery in 2015 in the Gulf of Guinea were $719.6 million, 61 percent of which was borne by the industry. The 2014 cost was $983 million, 47 percent of which was borne by the maritime sector, it said.

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

Fifth person dies in Guinea Ebola flare-up

CONAKRY (Reuters) – A fifth person has died of Ebola in southeast Guinea since March 17, a health official told Reuters on Tuesday, raising concerns that a recent flare-up of the deadly virus could spread.

The latest case was detected in Macenta prefecture, about 200 kilometers from the village of Korokpara where the four other recent Ebola-related deaths occurred, said Fode Sylla Tass, spokesman for National Coordination of the Fight against Ebola in Guinea.

The man, who has not been identified, had recently visited Korokpara and had been in direct contact with the first patients, Tass said. He was buried in the village of Makoidou without any sanitary precautions.

Burials, where bodies of the deceased are often washed, have been a main cause of transmission of Ebola, which has killed at least 11,300 people in West Africa since 2013 in the worst outbreak on record.

Guinea, one of the worst hit countries, was declared Ebola free in December, but the World Health Organization warned about possible flare-ups.

It was not immediately clear how the people from Korokpara had contracted the disease but the area had previously resisted efforts to fight the illness in the initial epidemic.

Guinea’s Ebola coordination unit has traced an estimated 816 people who may have come into contact with the first four recent victims.

Liberia closed its border with Guinea on Tuesday as a precaution against the latest outbreak.

In Makoidou, news of the latest test was met with panic.

“When the villagers realized that the test conducted by our health teams on the man were positive, they all fled into the bush,” Tass said.

(Reporting by Saliou Samb; Writing by Edward McAllister; Editing by Catherine Evans)

U.S. doctor with Lassa fever en route to Atlanta from West Africa

ATLANTA (Reuters) – An American doctor who was working with missionaries in West Africa is being moved to an isolation ward at an Atlanta hospital on Friday with a suspected case of Lassa fever, a deadly hemorrhagic disease similar to Ebola, officials said.

The patient, who has not been identified publicly, was being flown in a specially equipped aircraft from Togo and was expected to arrive at Emory University Hospital sometime Friday or this weekend, officials said.

The isolation ward is where Emory successfully treated four Ebola patients in 2014, said Dr. Bruce Ribner, director of Emory’s Serious Communicable Disease Unit.

“The take-away from this for the public, is that there is absolutely no risk to anyone,” he said. “We’ve shown that we can handle Ebola and this is a lot less communicable.”

Lassa fever has been endemic in Africa for many years, with up to 300,000 infections annually. Only about 3 percent presenting symptoms severe enough need hospitalization, Ribner said.

Of those hospitalized, about 20 percent of the cases are fatal, compared with a 70 percent rate for all patients who catch Ebola, which is transmitted through blood and bodily fluids.

“With Lassa, most of the people who get it never even know it,” Ribner said.

The worst Ebola outbreak in recorded history began in West Africa in December 2013, spreading to at least 11 countries on the continent before petering out. In all, more than 11,300 people died, almost all in the three worst-affected countries.

At its height, the Ebola outbreak sparked fear around the world, prompting governments and businesses to take emergency precautions.

An outbreak of Lassa fever is now underway in Nigeria, according to the World Health Organization, and it is starting to spread to nearby countries including Togo.

According to a WHO statement, 159 suspected cases of Lassa fever and 82 deaths were reported between August 2015 and January 2016. Some media reports have said as many as 101 people have died as of February.

Like Ebola, Lassa causes a severe fever with bleeding, Ribner said. It is most commonly transmitted to people from rodent excrement, and it can be transmitted from person to person by contact with blood or bodily fluids, Ribner said.

He said the hospital will take every precaution and that the public should not be alarmed.

“You can’t catch it like you get the common cold,” he said. “We can handle this.”

(Editing By Frank McGurty, Bernard Orr)