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In DRC camps women face stark choice: hunger or rape. (Photo by Fabio Teixeira/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
CAMPS

In DRC camps, women face stark choice: hunger or rape

Hundreds of thousands of people are crammed into camps around the city of Goma, a crisis triggered by M23 rebels

  • Alexis Huguet
4 min read
Bern-Thomas Nyang’wa the first Malawian doctor to work for MSF
BERN THOMAS NYANG WA

Malawian doctor leads ‘kinder’ TB breakthrough

Treatment consisting of four drugs showed 89% of patients were cured, compared with 52% getting the more complicated tuberculosis treatment

  • The Continent
2 min read
Top shot: The drug tocilizumab reduces Covid deaths but it is expensive and in short supply in Kenya. Photo: Brian Ongoro/Getty Images
AFRICA

Unvaccinated, untreated: Africa may not get its fair share of Covid-19 drugs

Only 18 countries are using dexamethasone, while tocilizumab and sarilumab can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars a dose

  • Laura López González
4 min read
AL FASHQA REGION

Border tensions mount between Sudan, Ethiopia

Skirmishes between forces continue despite government calls for peace in a region already torn apart by ethnic conflicts

  • Ayin Network
9 min read
Despite the long history of medical racism, any potential Covid-19 vaccines must be tested in Africa — but not only on the continent. (Reuters)
AFRICA

My late uncle, and the ethics of clinical trials in Africa

Despite the long history of medical racism, any potential Covid-19 vaccines must be tested in Africa — but not only on the continent

  • Lydia Namubiru, The Continent
6 min read
The highly poisonous element occurs naturally and in high abundance in Zamfara’s gold-rich areas, escaping into the air when the dusty rock is pounded to extract the precious specks.
ARTISINAL MINING

Gold miners face dangerous life in Nigeria’s ‘bandit’ country

The mineral-rich earth of Zamfara State, northwest Nigeria, has provided generations of families with the means to make ends meet

  • Emmanuel Akinwotu
4 min read
Hazardous: A health worker carries a baby suspected of having Ebola into an MSF-supported Ebola treatment centre in Butembo, DRC. But because of attacks this centre has been closed. (John Wessels/AFP)
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

Vaccines alone won’t beat Ebola

It doesn’t matter how effective the medicine is if affected communities don’t trust the people who administer it

  • Simon Allison
4 min read
DRC’s latest Ebola epidemic, which began in August 2018, has killed 2144 people, making it the second deadliest outbreak of the virus, after the West Africa pandemic of 2014-2016. (Reuters)
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

Ebola outbreak spreads to new city in conflict-hit Congo

Home to nearly one million people, Bunia is the latest Congolese city to report an Ebola infection

  • Deutsche Welle 1
1 min read
Africa alone sees about half a million snakebites that need treatment every year, according to the World Health Organisation. (AFP)
DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS

The battle to bring antivenoms to Africa

A shortage of snake antivenom in Africa is a "shameful failure"

  • Francois Ausseill
4 min read
The outbreak emerged in North Kivu last August and has since claimed 591 lives out of 894 recorded cases. (AFP)
AFP

MSF: Ebola response in DR Congo ‘failing’ to contain outbreak

The ongoing Ebola outbreak is the 10th in the country’s history and the second largest ever recorded worldwide.

  • Staff Reporter
3 min read
One major challenge that the WHO has identified is what happens if the coronavirus spreads into informal settlements and other densely populated areas on the continent. (AFP)
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

WHO braces for six more months of Ebola in DRC

Over 200 people have died in the worst outbreak of Ebola on record in the Democratic Republic of Congo

  • Deutsche Welle 1
2 min read
One major challenge that the WHO has identified is what happens if the coronavirus spreads into informal settlements and other densely populated areas on the continent. (AFP)
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

Ebola vaccine put to the test in DRC

The latest outbreak is in a city and next to the Congo River, factors that increase the risk of it spreading rapidly

  • Sarah Smit
4 min read
Mail & Gaurdian
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

DRC Ebola outbreak on ‘epidemiological knife edge’ — WHO

An Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has a clear "potential to expand", WHO warned on Wednesday

  • Nina Larson
4 min read
Students from universities across the country participate in the annual DSIDE programme aimed at growing local data science capacity
HIV

Manning up to the epidemic

The latest national HIV survey found about 72% of women 15 years and older said they had tested for HIV. Only six out of 10 men could say the same.

  • Kiri Rupiah
1 min read
DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS

Global north can’t keep driving the health agenda, says Doctors Without Borders

Joanne Liu, Doctors Without Borders’ international president, says input to the MSF agenda must be balanced to meet the needs of parts of the world.

  • Simon Allison
3 min read