COVID-19: Pregnant Woman, 15 Others Die In Edo
A 33-year-old pregnant woman and 15 others have died from COVID-19 complications in the last 72 hours, in Edo State. The Permanent Secretary, Edo State Ministry of Health, Dr. Osamwonyi Irowa, disclosed this during the COVID-19 briefing in Benin, the state capital, on Monday.
He said, “The woman was 28-week pregnant; she was brought late for treatment and died within three hours of presentation at the hospital.
“We collected 507 samples, recorded 79 cases, 15 deaths including a HIV positive person and 104 recovery in the last 72 hours while the test positivity is 14.7 percent.”
He explained that they have vaccinated 57,236 persons in the third wave. He added that a total of 102,153 people have had at least a dose of the vaccines since inoculation against the virus commenced in the state. Irowa expressed worry over the rising cases of persons admitted for COVID-19 as well as high mortality rate in the state, noting that some of the deaths are preventable.
He advised residents to do the needful and get themselves vaccinated and also follow non-pharmaceutical measures of preventing the virus as most of the casualty are unvaccinated persons. He said the state would soon deny unvaccinated persons access to certain places to save the people.
Source: Dailytrust
Tanzania President Appoints First Female Defence Minister
Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan has appointed a politician dismissed for criticising her predecessor as energy minister in a cabinet reshuffle that also included the nomination of the country’s first female defence minister. Former deputy environment minister January Makamba was sacked from the government in 2019 and forced to apologise to then-president John Magufuli who died suddenly in March this year.
But in a reshuffle announced on Monday, Hassan, who has broken from some of her predecessor’s policies, welcomed the 47-year-old back to government and put him in charge of the strategically important ministry of energy. Magufuli had accused Makamba of criticising him during telephone conversations with other members of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party and threatened to expel him unless he apologised.
Magufuli, nicknamed “the bulldozer” for his authoritarian style, made no secret of the fact that he eavesdropped on the telephone conversations of members of his government.
Makamba, whose father is a former secretary-general of the CCM, had challenged Magufuli for the party’s 2015 presidential nomination and lost.
The reshuffle, which also saw Stergomena Tax named as defence minister, the first woman to hold that position, came as Hassan seeks to draw a line under the Covid-sceptic policies of her predecessor by launching Tanzania’s first vaccination drive in July.
Although some had hoped that Hassan would bring about a new era of political freedom after the increasingly autocratic rule of Magufuli, the arrest of opposition leader Freeman Mbowe has raised fears for the future of democracy in the East African nation.
Mbowe was arrested in July and is being tried on terrorism charges, which his Chadema party describes as a politically motivated effort to crush dissent.
The ministry of energy is currently overseeing the construction of a controversial hydropower dam project in the Selous Game Reserve and is strategically vital to Tanzania, which has significant natural gas reserves.
Source: Channelstv