Sunday 3 August 2014

Abiria toka Zanzibar Ashukiwa Kuwa Na Ebola



MORE than 100 passengers on Air Namibia flight SW722 were held in isolation for almost four hours Friday morning after it was suspected that one of them had Ebola.
The passengers in the flight, from Johannesburg that landed at Hosea Kutako International Airport at 07h32, were later released after doctors carried out checks.

Chairperson of the national health emergency management committee in the Ministry of Health and Social Services, Dr Jack Vries, confirmed the quarantine, but said it was a false alarm.

"The suspected passenger had an allergic reaction after eating food that contained fish. He is, however, clear now," said Vries.

He also said the passenger, who had flown from Zanzibar in Tanzania, was told to return to the hospital in case he develops Ebola-like symptoms within the next 21 days.

Vries said one should be suspicious if they have a high fever. “Ask who they are and where they come from. Those two go hand in hand. This is very serious. Ebola kills nine out of 10 people and there is no cure,” said Vries.

The Namibian understands that the passenger is Namibian by nationality but lives in Zanzibar and is in the country on holiday.q


Primus Shilongo, an epidemiologist at Windhoek Central Hospital said they conducted an assessment, asking passengers questions about where they were coming from; and whom they had made contact with.

Shilongo said they realised that the Ebola alarm was false, while Air Namibia general manager of quality and safety, Raul Sosa Riera said the crew became suspicious when they realised that the passenger was coughing, had body rashes and persistent diarrhea.

Namibia Airports Company general manager for commercial services Toska Sem said the crew communicated with the air traffic control officer before landing, hence the immediate activation of the emergency plan.

“The plane was put on quarantine and no contact was made with other aircraft for safety reasons. The Ministry of Health and Social Services' emergency committee was called,” said Sem.
- See more at: http://www.namibian.com.na/indexx.php?category_id=1&page_type=story_detail&id=16114#sthash.DlrEOPch.dpuf

Thursday 10 July 2014

Wachapwa Bakora Kwa Kula Mchana - Pemba



Chake Chake. Pemba
Vijana wawili kama wanavyooneka kwenye picha hapo juu, walijikuta kwenye wakati mgumu, baada ya kuchapwa bakora ikiwa ni adhabu kwao kwa kula hadharani mchana.

Ikumbukwe kuwa hairuhusiwi kula hadharani katika Mwezi Mtukufu wa Ramadhani. Adhabu ya kawaida kwa anayekula ovyo mchana ni kufungwa kwa mwaka mmoja gerezani.

Hata hivyo kumekuwepo na ongezeko la watu wanaojilia ovyo majiani, kiasi kwamba sasa wanachapwa viboko kabla ya kukabidhiwa kwa vyombo husika kwa adhabu zaidi.

Thursday 26 June 2014

Tuesday 13 May 2014

Ferry's Sinking in Tanzania is One of Many Tragedies We Ignore.


A capsized ship. The cowardly captain first to jump ship. Hundreds dead. I’m talking about the South Korean ferry, right? Or perhaps that Italian cruise ship? Wrong. This is an event you probably never heard about. And you never heard about it because, although the news media have devoted countless columns and viewing hours to those two tragedies, the one I’m talking about got almost no press. Few papers carried the story, and in those that did, it died quietly.

On July 18, 2012, a ferry traveling to Zanzibar, Tanzania, left port in Dar es Salaam in rough seas — rough enough that the captain was advised not to sail. To make matters worse, he had no radio. Two-thirds of the way to Zanzibar, the engines were swamped; at the mercy of an angry Indian Ocean and high winds, the ferry began rocking with increasing violence. Not only were the passengers not warned of any danger, they were told all was well. But the ship capsized, turned over and sank. The official count was 146 dead, but anyone who has traveled on Tanzanian ferries knows they are packed to the gills, well beyond the number on the passenger manifest. Frankly, no one knows just how many people drowned. This, by the way, was the second such ferry sinking in the same waters in less than a year.

Why do I know about this when you don’t? Because my daughter was aboard that ship. By chance, she chose to sit on the starboard side of the top deck, which happened to be the upper side when the ship capsized. She swam out through a window someone had kicked out, and when she surfaced, she spotted one of the two lifeboats that had self-deployed. Swimming to it, she was helped into the lifeboat by the captain, who, with his crew, had managed to leave the ship ahead of the passengers.

Sound familiar?

To be sure, there weren’t 300 high school students aboard the Tanzanian ferry. But there were a number of children — and not one survived. Mothers, fathers, grandparents and at least one couple on their honeymoon were among the people who went to the bottom of the sea in a disaster that didn’t need to happen.

The important question is, why do we care about some people and not others? The Somerville (Mass.) Journal carried a story about this, but only because a local resident (my daughter) survived. Nobody seemed concerned about the Tanzanians who didn’t, or about their families and friends. Americans often are so full of compassion for people in such circumstances that one has to ask: Why not this time?

The problem is, Tanzania is in Africa — you know, that place where there’s nothing but tribal war, famine, disease, unrelenting poverty and jungle-dwellers with spears. A ferry sinking off the coast of Tanzania is no surprise; that continent is just one disaster after another. Isn’t that the way most Americans view Africa?

And why do we do that? Because Africa is an exotic mystery to most of us. You’re in a tiny minority if you can remember learning anything in school about Africa. The AP world history course one of my sons took spent all of five days studying the world’s second-most populous continent, a continent with more than 55 countries and more than a billion people.

So it’s no surprise that most Americans are unaware of Africa’s size and diversity, that it includes, yes, deserts and jungles but also big cities, tall buildings and men and women in suits with cellphones — and considerably better cell service than we have. It is a continent full of people who are far more like us than we imagine. And when tragedy strikes, its victims are worthy of the compassion we willingly and generously shower on people like us.

Bottom line: Tanzanians are “people like us.” They may be a third of a world away, but they’re human beings, and our shrinking world makes it increasingly scandalous for us to pretend they’re not there. When 146 of them drown, they and their families deserve our attention.

The news media are uniquely capable of bridging that gap, of turning the foreign into the familiar. They are our source for the stories that help us travel the geographic and cultural distance, overcome our provincialism and embrace those we’ve previously thought of as “other.” That, I would argue, is not just the ability but also the obligation of a dynamic free press.

Frank Strasburger, a retired Episcopal priest, is the co-founder of Princeton in Africa, an international fellowship organization.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/05/12/4112771/ferrys-sinking-in-tanzania-is.html#storylink=cpy