HEALTH
SENEGAL – Didier Raoul visits Dakar
Didier Raoult will be in Senegal from this Sunday, March 27, 2021, for a working visit of a few days, according to information obtained by Emedia.sn. The specialist of infectious and tropical diseases, famous for his statements and positions often subject to controversy, is a regular in the Senegalese capital where he was born in 1952.
This will be his first visit to his country of birth since the outbreak of the Covid-19 health crisis. Accustomed to collaborating with leading Senegalese specialists such as Professor Souleymane Mboup of the IRESSEF or Doctor Cheikh Sokhna Paludologue at the IRD, in the VITROME unit and in charge of the IRD observatories in Senegal, Didier Raoult has often mentioned his attachment to Senegal.
In an exclusive interview with Emedia, last April, the Infectiologist and Microbiologist told himself: I was born in Dakar, in the Main Hospital. I lived in the building that my father built as a professor of tropical medicine. He was right in front of the Institut Pasteur in Dakar and the Aristide Le Dantec hospital. So, my destiny was found. I lived at the Plateau, in Dakar opposite the beach of Anse Bernard which I kept very endearing memories. After that, my father went back to France. It was too complicated because life was so beautiful where we were. Luckily, I was asked to run a research unit in Senegal 12 years ago.”
While he describes himself as a fisherman of viruses and microbes, Didier Raoult is one of the most divisive characters in the world of science and medicine. His positions on the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat the novel coronavirus have, for a long time, fed the chronicle around the world around the management of the pandemic. This is its position and the results announced in its Hospitalo-University Institute in Infectious Diseases of Marseille, IHU Méditerranée Infection, which partly served as justification to the Senegalese health authorities for the use of hydroxychloroquine in anti-Covid 19 treatment.
Beau travail des équipes médicales sénégalaises. Les autorités algériennes, marocaines, turques et tant d’autres rapportent l’efficacité d’un traitement qu’ils ont très tôt proposé à leurs patients.https://t.co/nBvAhn7kaq
— Didier Raoult (@raoult_didier) May 3, 2020
Despite the differences in his positions, Didier Raoult nevertheless remains a specialist recognized by his peers. In 2010, he won the Grand Prix de l’Inserm (French National Institute of Health and Medical Research) for his entire career and was one of eleven members of the French government’s Covid-19 Scientific Council.
Source : Emedia
HEALTH
COVID 19 – A new variant we discovered
According to a senior official at the World Health Organization, a new highly mutated variant of COVID called BA.2.86 has been discovered in several countries including Switzerland, South Africa, as well as Israel, Denmark, the United States and the United Kingdom.
According to “Reuters”, the variant was first spotted in Denmark on 24 July after sequencing of the virus infecting a patient at risk of becoming seriously ill”. And so it was detected “in other symptomatic patients, during routine checks at airports and in wastewater samples in a handful of countries”.
Thus, scientists have indicated that “although it was important to monitor BA.2.86, it was unlikely to cause a devastating wave of serious illness and death given the immune defenses developed worldwide as a result of vaccination and previous infection”.
WHO COVID-19 technical officer Maria Van Kerkhove said, “The numbers are still low”. But the reduction in global surveillance could lead to rapid circulation of the virus…
HEALTH
TOBACCO CONTROL: Seven out of 10 people protected by anti-smoking measures
A new report from the World Health Organization (WHO) highlights that 5.6 billion people, or 71% of the world’s population, are now protected by at least one good practice policy to save lives from deadly smoking, five times more than in 2007.
Over the past 15 years, since WHO’s MPOWER measures were introduced globally, smoking rates have fallen. Without this reduction, the UN World Health Agency estimates that there are now 300 million more smokers worldwide. This new WHO report on the global tobacco epidemic focuses on protecting the public from passive smoking, noting that nearly 40% of countries now have fully non-smoking indoor public places. The report assesses the progress made by countries in tobacco control and shows that two other countries, Mauritius and the Netherlands, have reached the level of best practices for all MPOWER measures, a feat that only Brazil and Turkey have achieved so far. These data show that, slowly but surely, more and more people are protected from the harms of tobacco by WHO policies based on evidence and best practices.”said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO, congratulating Mauritius on becoming the first country in Africa and the Netherlands on becoming the first country in the European Union to implement WHO’s comprehensive tobacco control policies at the highest level. Eight countries are only one policy away from joining the leaders of tobacco control: Ethiopia, Iran, Ireland, Jordan, Madagascar, Mexico, New Zealand and Spain. However, much remains to be done: 44 countries are not protected by any of WHO’s MPOWER measures. At the same time, 53 countries have still not adopted a total ban on smoking in health facilities. In addition, only half of the countries have smoke-free private workplaces and restaurants.
Passive smoking
“WHO urges all countries to implement all MPOWER measures at the level of best practices to fight the tobacco epidemic, which kills 8.7 million people worldwide, and to oppose the tobacco and nicotine industries, who are lobbying against these public health measures,” said Dr Ruediger Krech, Director of Health Promotion at WHO. About 1.3 million people die each year from second-hand smoke. All of these deaths could be prevented. People exposed to second-hand smoke are at risk of dying from heart disease, stroke, respiratory disease, type 2 diabetes and cancer. In this fight against tobacco, the ban on smoking in public spaces is only one of the measures of the Effective Tobacco Control Package, MPOWER, designed to help countries implement the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and stem the tobacco epidemic. The paper shows that all countries, regardless of income level, can lower the demand for deadly tobacco, achieve major public health victories and save billions of dollars in health care and production costs.
HEALTH
SENEGAL – 400 cases of measles recorded
Measles is back in force, with more than “400 cases recorded nationally”. It is a revelation of Doctor Boly Diop, responsible for epidemiological and post-vaccination surveillance at the Ministry of Health and Social Action, on Thursday, July 13, 2023.
“Performance in the first half of the year revealed the existence of a measles epidemic,” said Dr. Boly Diop, noting that Fatick is the only one of the country’s 14 regions that has yet to register a confirmed case of measles.
Outside of Fatick, all regions have confirmed cases of measles and there are districts that have become epidemic. This means that today, measles is back in force, there are confirmed cases and epidemics that are recorded throughout the regions,’ he said, on the sidelines of a quarterly coordination meeting for epidemiological surveillance.
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