TAMESNA: After African countries struggled to get testing kits during the COVID-19 pandemic, officials vowed to make the continent less dependent on imported medical supplies. Now, in a first for Africa, a Moroccan company is filling orders for mpox tests as an outbreak continues.
Moroccan startup Moldiag began developing mpox tests after the World Health Organization declared the virus a global emergency in August. Africa’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported more than 59,000 mpox cases and 1,164 deaths in 20 countries this year.
The WHO has also announced a plan to provide mpox tests, vaccines and treatments to the most vulnerable people in the world’s poorest countries, after facing criticism for moving too slowly on vaccines. It recommends all suspected mpox cases be tested.
But in some far-flung areas of the mpox outbreak, tests have to be delivered to distant labs for processing. Most of Congo’s 26 provinces don’t have such facilities. And some areas have no tests. In eastern Congo’s South Kivu province, doctors are still diagnosing patients by taking temperatures and looking for visible symptoms.
That makes it difficult to tell how the virus is spreading, health officials say.
“This is a major problem,” said Musole Robert, medical director of the Kavumu Referral Hospital, one of the few treating mpox patients in eastern Congo. “The main issue remains the laboratory, which is not adequately equipped.”
Mpox primarily spreads through close skin-to-skin contact with infected people or their soiled clothes or bedsheets. It often causes visible skin lesions. A health worker swabs the rash and sends the sample to a lab. Mpox testing is critical because many symptoms resemble diseases like chicken pox or measles.
When mpox cases were found in some Western countries like the United States in 2022, some companies began developing rapid test kits that don’t require lab processing. But they shelved those efforts when the virus was largely contained.
Then outbreaks emerged again in Africa. Scientists are concerned by the spread of a new version of the disease that might be more easily transmitted among people.
Morocco has reported three mpox cases, though most have been in central Africa.
At his factory in Morocco, Moldiag founder and chief scientific officer Abdeladim Moumen said the tests they make — sold for $5 each — can help to remedy shortages affordably.
The company last month began accepting orders from Burundi, Uganda and Congo and has also sold them to Senegal and Nigeria as well.
“It’s rather easy to send tests from an African nation to another one rather than waiting for tests to come in from China or Europe,” Moumen said.
Moldiag was founded out of Morocco’s Foundation for Advanced Science, Innovation and Research, a university-affiliated nonprofit whose research has received funding from the European Commission and Morocco’s government. The startup previously developed similar genetic tests for COVID-19 and tuberculosis.
Moldiag won approval to distribute its mpox tests from the Africa CDC in November. But it hasn’t submitted paperwork to be considered for expedited approval from the WHO, which during this outbreak has approved three mpox tests and is considering five others. Each is made in North America, Europe or Asia.
The Africa CDC’s acting director for laboratory diagnostics and systems, Yenew Tebeje, said the organization created a process to accelerate approval of tests like Moldiag’s because the WHO’s approval process can take months or years and “be a limiting factor for access to diagnostics.”
Historically, international institutions have not always ensured medical supplies like tests are quickly made available for crises in Africa, Tebeje added.
Only mpox tests that require laboratory processing have been approved by the WHO and Africa CDC, which has expressed the need for rapid tests that don’t need to be sent to labs.
Moldiag and other companies are working to develop rapid tests and pursue approval.
Moldiag’s $5 price for the current tests aligns with recommendations from both the WHO’s target product standards and demands of health advocates who have criticized the cost of other tests. The nonprofit Public Citizen last month called on Cepheid — one of the WHO’s three approved mpox test manufacturers — to reduce its price from about $20 to $5, citing a Doctors Without Borders analysis showing genetic tests can be produced for less.
Africa-based manufacturing fulfills a primary objective that African Union member states agreed on after the COVID-19 pandemic, which revealed global disparities and unequal access to medical supplies, including vaccines, tests and antiviral medications.
In 2022, shaken by the pandemic, African leaders called for action to address those disparities plaguing the continent’s over 1.4 billion people, who experience the highest incidence of public health emergencies.
Moumen said experts were waking up to the fact that it makes more sense for tests to come from regions where outbreaks are taking place so manufacturers can tailor production to address issues close to home.
“They want African tests for Africa,” he said.
Morocco produces Africa’s first mpox tests as the continent tries to rely less on imports
https://arab.news/num3c
Morocco produces Africa’s first mpox tests as the continent tries to rely less on imports
- Morocco has reported three mpox cases, though most have been in central Africa
- Moroccan startup Moldiag began developing mpox tests after the World Health Organization declared the virus a global emergency in August
Police arrest 400 in Istanbul: lawyers group
There was no immediate comment on the detentions from city authorities
ISTNABUL: Police arrested more than 400 people in Istanbul on Thursday, with parts of Turkiye’s biggest city paralyzed in a bid to prevent May Day demonstrations, a lawyers group said.
On Wednesday city authorities closed metro, bus and ferry services in the metropolis and arrested 100 people who were allegedly planning to protest in the city’s central Taksim Square, where demonstrations have been banned since 2013.
This year’s May Day comes as the government is embroiled in a showdown with the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CPH), following the detention of its presidential candidate Ekrem Imamoglu.
Imamoglu, who is Istanbul’s mayor, is the biggest political rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“The number of arrests that have been reported to us exceeds 400,” the Istanbul branch of the CHD lawyers group wrote on X on Thursday.
There was no immediate comment on the detentions from city authorities.
AFP journalists witnessed several dozen people arrested in neighborhoods on the European side of the city.
Several thousand people assembled in sanctioned protests called by labor unions on the Asian side of the city, according to local media and an AFP journalist.
On Wednesday, rights group Amnesty International urged Turkiye to lift the ban on demonstrations in Taksim.
“The restrictions on May Day celebrations in Taksim Square are based on entirely spurious security and public order grounds and... must be urgently lifted,” said Dinushika Dissanayake, an Amnesty’s specialist on Europe.
As happens every year, the square has been sealed off with metal barriers for several days, with a heavy police presence.
Turkiye stresses opposition to decentralization in Syria
- Ankara sees decentralization demands by Syria’s Kurds as a threat because of what it says are their cross-border links to Kurdish militants in Türkiye
- “Turkiye does not accept any initiative that targets Syria’s territorial integrity,” a Turkish Foreign Ministry source said
ANKARA: Türkiye rejects any plans that undermine the central government in Syrian Arab Republic or threaten its sovereignty and territorial integrity, Turkish sources said, responding to demands from Kurds for Syria to adopt a decentralized system of government.
Türkiye backed rebels against former President Bashar Assad for years and is seen as the closest foreign ally of Syria’s new Islamist leaders, vowing to help them rebuild and stabilize a country devastated by 14 years of war.
Ankara sees decentralization demands by Syria’s Kurds as a threat because of what it says are their cross-border links to Kurdish militants in Türkiye, while it looks to end a decades-old conflict with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militia.
Rival Syrian Kurdish parties, including the dominant Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the northeast, agreed at a meeting on Saturday on a common political vision for the country’s Kurdish minority and decentralization, a call rejected by Syria’s leadership.
Turkish sources elaborated on comments by President Tayyip Erdogan, who said on Wednesday that decentralization demands in Syria were “nothing more than a raw dream.”
“Turkiye does not accept any initiative that targets Syria’s territorial integrity, that will damage its sovereignty, or that allows weapons to be carried by others not in the Syrian central authority,” a Turkish Foreign Ministry source said.
Türkiye, a NATO member, views the US-backed SDF as a terrorist organization.
Ankara welcomed a March deal between the SDF and Damascus to merge Kurdish-led governing bodies and security forces with the central government, but said it must also ensure the dismantling of the YPG militia spearheading the SDF, and of the SDF’s chain of command.
PROVIDING ‘SPACE’
The source said Türkiye had provided “the necessary space” for Damascus to address Türkiye’s concerns over Kurdish militants in Syria. Ankara has previously warned of military action if its concerns are not alleviated.
A Turkish defense ministry source said on Wednesday that demands for autonomy could harm Syria’s sovereignty and regional stability.
“We cannot consent to the disintegration of Syria’s territorial integrity and the deterioration of its unitary structure under any guise,” the source told a briefing in Ankara.
“We are against autonomous region and/or decentralized rhetoric or activities, just as is the new Syrian administration.”
Late on Wednesday, Turkish Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Oncu Keceli said all regional countries must contribute to Syria’s security and stability, calling on Israel to halt “its air strikes that harm the unity and integrity of Syria.”
Israel has been mounting air strikes inside Syria, which Türkiye has called an unacceptable provocation to harm Syria’s unity in the post-Assad era. Ankara has been a fierce critic of Israel since it launched the Gaza war.
Ankara also wants all Western sanctions imposed on Syria to be fully lifted and for US troops stationed in the northeast to withdraw.
Paramilitary shelling hits Sudan’s presidential palace: army source
- RSF used “long-range artillery” launched from their holdout position in Al-Salha
- They targeted the army’s General Command headquarters in central Khartoum
KHARTOUM: Sudan’s presidential palace in central Khartoum was shelled by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces on Thursday, a military source said, the second such attack on the capital in a week.
The RSF, at war with the army for two years, used “long-range artillery” launched from their holdout position in Al-Salha, located south of Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman, the source told AFP on condition of anonymity.
There were no immediate reports of casualties.
On Saturday, the RSF targeted the army’s General Command headquarters in central Khartoum, also using long-range artillery fire, according to a military source.
The attacks come weeks after the army pushed the RSF out of central Khartoum, which the paramilitary had swept through early in the war.
In a major military offensive in March, army forces regained control of the presidential palace, the airport and other strategic areas in the capital.
But the RSF still clings to its last pockets of control in southern and western Omdurman.
Since April 2023, the war in Sudan has killed tens of thousands, uprooted 13 million and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.
The conflict has effectively divided the country in two with the army holding the center, east and north while the RSF controls nearly all of Darfur and parts of the south.
Tunisia leader’s opponents, supporters stage rival rallies in sharp political split
- The anti-Saied demonstration reflects growing concerns among human rights groups that the birthplace of the Arab Spring is sliding toward one-man rule
TUNIS: Opponents of Tunisian President Kais Saied protested on the streets of Tunis on Thursday, accusing him of using the judiciary and police to suppress critics, while his supporters held a counter-rally, highlighting a deepening political divide.
The anti-Saied demonstration — the second opposition protest in a week — reflects growing concerns among human rights groups that the birthplace of the Arab Spring is sliding toward one-man rule.
Demonstrators on the capital’s main thoroughfare chanted slogans such as “Saied go away, you are dictator” and “The people want the fall of the regime,” a slogan reminiscent of the 2011 uprising that toppled former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
On the same street, Habib Bourguiba Avenue, Saied’s supporters rallied in his defense, chanting, “No to foreign interference” and “The people want Saied again.”
Riot police deployed in large numbers to separate the groups. No clashes were reported.
The demonstrations follow a months-long government crackdown on Saied’s critics, including the detention last week of prominent lawyer Ahmed Souab, a fierce critic of the president.
On Thursday the anti-Saeid protesters marched from the headquarters of the Administrative Court, where Souab had served as a judge before retiring and becoming a lawyer widely respected by all political parties.
They then joined other protesters in a square that is home to the headquarters of the powerful UGTT union, before heading toward Habib Bourguiba Avenue.
Souab’s arrest followed prison sentences handed down last week to opposition leaders on conspiracy charges, drawing criticism from France, Germany, and the United Nations.
Saied rejected the criticisms, calling it a blatant interference in Tunisia’s sovereignty.
The opposition accuses Saied of undermining the democracy won in the 2011 revolution, since he seized extra powers in 2021 when he shut down the elected parliament and moved to rule by decree before assuming authority over the judiciary.
They described his move as a coup, while Saied says it was legal and necessary to end chaos and rampant corruption.
The leaders of most political parties in Tunisia are in prison, including Abir Moussi, leader of the Free Constitutional Party, and Rached Ghannouchi, the head of Ennahda — two of Saied’s most prominent opponents.
The government says there is democracy in Tunisia. Saied says he will not be a dictator, but insists that what he calls a corrupt elite must be held accountable.
Turkiye says it remains committed to contested ‘Kanal Istanbul’ project
- The plan was shelved in recent years largely due to economic turmoil, lack of financing, and public opposition
- Critics have questioned the viability of a waterway running 45 km (28 miles) through marshland and farms on the western edge of Istanbul
ANKARA: Turkiye is determined to construct a canal project intended to relieve pressure on the busy Bosphorus Strait, when financing is secured, a government minister said on Thursday, despite widespread criticism over its possible environmental impact.
President Tayyip Erdogan laid the foundation of the canal in 2021, aiming to connect the Black Sea north of Istanbul to the Marmara Sea to the south and prevent accidents in the Bosphorus.
The initiative, described by Erdogan as his “crazy project” when he revealed it more than a decade ago, was estimated to cost some 75 billion lira ($1.95 billion).
Critics have questioned the viability of a waterway running 45 km (28 miles) through marshland and farms on the western edge of Istanbul, and say it will wreak environmental havoc, destroy a marine ecosystem and endanger some fresh water supply for the country’s biggest city.
The plan was shelved in recent years largely due to economic turmoil, lack of financing, and public opposition.
“We have not abandoned the Kanal Istanbul project. It is not on our agenda today, but when the day comes, the right financing is found, we will definitely do it,” Transport and Infrastructure Minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu said.
He was speaking a day after Environment and Urbanization Minister Murat Kurum said the project was not, and had not been, on the government’s agenda for some time.
Uraloglu’s comments come amid a widening legal crackdown on opposition members of the Istanbul municipality, including senior personnel that the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) says were responsible for environmental matters among other issues. The CHP runs the municipality.
In March, a court jailed Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, from the CHP, as part of the months-long crackdown. The mayor is seen as Erdogan’s main political rival and leads him in some polls.
Imamoglu has denied all charges against him, while the CHP, other opposition parties and Western powers have said his arrest was a politicized move to eliminate a potential electoral threat to Erdogan, who has run the country for more than two decades.
His arrest has triggered mass protests and economic turmoil, but the government denies any influence over the judiciary.
