January 2021 CNN; The discovery of important new coronavirus variants in the UK and South Africa began with a bet of a bottle of wine. In mid-November, Tulio de Oliveira, who leads a genetics lab in South Africa, began receiving anxious phone calls from physicians in the Eastern Cape province …

January 2021 Businessdaily; Kisumu Governor Anyang’ Nyong’o has implemented a raft of disciplinary measures against over 400 nurses who were on strike for ”absconding duty”. The health workers have been locked out of their work stations and their names struck off the payroll. In a statement by acting chief officer for …

January 2021 BusinessDaily; Mombasa county government has sacked 86 doctors, including KMPDU boss Chibanzi Mwachonda and senior specialists for refusing to return to work. In a letter signed by county secretary Jeizan Faruk, Governor Hassan Joho’s administration dismissed the 86 striking workers for boycotting duty. “Following the correspondence shared between …

January 2021 CNBC; Viruses mutate all the time, so it’s no surprise that the coronavirus which emerged in China at the end of 2019 has undergone significant mutations as the virus replicates and spreads. But a new strain that has emerged in South Africa is causing concern. Like a variant …

January 2021 theStandard; A decision by the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) to use a couple’s picture in its commercial advertisements is to cost the taxpayer Sh10 million. The Court of Appeal declined to set aside conditions set by the trial court for the corporation to appeal against the ruling, …

January 2021 thestandard; You may soon be confronted with graphic health warnings on your pizza box or candy wrapper of possible cancer risk. Why, because the plastics contain components known as endocrine disrupting chemicals that are causing great harm to health. Similar restrictions are also being contemplated on a host …

January 2020 CNN; The coronavirus pandemic transformed the working and social lives of millions of European adults in 2020. Children too have suffered immensely, with months of confinement only giving way to some sense of normality when schools in most countries reopened in the summer and autumn. Now even that is under …

December 2020 GroundUp; Johnson & Johnson is trying to get approval for a vaccine against Covid-19 that only requires one shot. Details of the vaccine’s trial are expected to be released in January. Only a massive global rollout of an effective vaccine can end the Covid-19 pandemic in the short …

December 2020 Nation; The crisis at public hospitals is expected to grow worse as doctors join nurses and clinical officers in boycotting work. For two weeks, public hospitals have been manned by doctors after the other healthcare employees went on strike. The new crisis comes at critical time – the …

December 2020 Aljazeera; A new variant of the pandemic SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is spreading rapidly in the United Kingdom and prompting high levels of concern among its European neighbours, some of which have cut transport links. The strain, referred to by some experts as the B.1.1.7 lineage, is not the first …