The Institut Pasteur in Dakar, Senegal, a World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre laboratory, has confirmed Ghana’s first outbreak of Marburg virus disease. The Institut Pasteur in Dakar, Senegal received samples from each of the two patients from the southern Ashanti region of Ghana – both deceased and unrelated – who showed symptoms including diarrhoea, fever, nausea and vomiting. The laboratory corroborated the results from the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, which suggested their illness was due to the
The government of West African state of Ghana has announced it is swiftly setting up preparations for a possible outbreak response for Marburg virus disease following the announcement of the country’s first-ever reported suspected cases. Ghana has announced the preliminary finding of two cases of Marburg virus disease and if confirmed these would the first such infections recorded in the country. Marburg is a highly infectious viral haemorrhagic fever in the same family as the more well-known Ebola virus disease. Preliminary analysis of
Only 27% of health workers in Africa have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, leaving the bulk of the workforce on the frontlines against the pandemic unprotected, a preliminary analysis by World Health Organization (WHO) shows. Analysis of data reported from 25 countries finds that since March 2021, 1.3 million health workers were fully vaccinated, with just six countries reaching more than 90%, while nine countries have fully vaccinated less than 40%. In sharp contrast, a recent WHO global study of 22
Ifeoma Joy Okoye, Professor of Radiology, College of Medicine, University of Nigeria, Nsukka has stressed the need for patients who have been diagnosed with breast cancer or even metastatic breast cancer to have the right information and expectations. “It is our duty to encourage them to have open conversations with their healthcare teams to understand how they can be supported but also how they can participate in their own care – taking an active role in their treatment can help
Malaria vaccine coverage through childhood immunization programme signals strong community demand for vaccine. Two years on from the launch of a pilot programme, more than 1.7 million doses of the world’s first malaria vaccine have been administered in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi, benefitting more than 650,000 children with additional malaria protection. The number of children reached in this relatively short period indicates strong community demand for the vaccine as well as the capacity of the countries’ child immunization programmes to deliver the vaccine on
INOVIO (NASDAQ:INO), a biotechnology company focused on bringing to market precisely designed DNA medicines to treat and protect people from infectious diseases and cancer, today announced the first participant was dosed in a Phase 1B clinical trial for INO-4500, its DNA vaccine candidate for Lassa fever, in Ghana. The Phase 1B clinical trial (LSV-002), ongoing at the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research in Accra, Ghana, is the first vaccine clinical trial for Lassa Fever to be conducted in West
As government officials in Nigeria continue to promise citizens that doses of COVID-19 vaccines will soon become available in the country, Ghana has become the first to receive COVID-19 vaccine on the continent through the Gavi and WHO-led COVAX platform. The vaccines arrived on a flight from Mumbai, via Dubai, where the flight also collected a shipment of syringes from a Gavi-funded stockpile at UNICEF’s regional Supply Hub. In a statement, COVAX today announced that 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine