Why a Kenyan pastor hid her HIV status from her husband

A Kenyan pastor has told the BBC about her decision to hide her HIV-positive status from her husband for many years.

As a young woman it had crossed Lucy Nyawira’s mind that she might have the virus as she had had several partners before her marriage, and a number of people in her family had been also diagnosed with it.

However, she did not go for a test until she became pregnant in 2005, a few years after her marriage.

“I tested positive after tests during a prenatal clinic and I was scared to death,” she said.

The stigma associated with the virus plunged her into depression – and she was unable at first to tell anyone about her situation.

She even breastfed her son, against the advice of doctors – as there is a chance of mother-to-baby transmission.

Ms Nyawira would often listen to sad funeral songs, and her husband suspected something was wrong – but she was just not able to open up.

When her son became ill as a toddler, the whole family was tested for HIV. She was very relieved to discover that her son and husband were negative.

Her husband then knew she had HIV – and she was grateful he agreed to stay in the marriage, yet they did not talk about her diagnosis as a family, it seemed they were all in denial.

However, by this time she had opened up to her church leaders – and this helped her accept her HIV status and influenced her decision to become a pastor herself.

It also emboldened her to eventually open up to her wider family.

With their acceptance, she then went public with her status – and for the last two years has been touring churches and other forums to speak about her experience.

The pastor wants to take away the stigma around HIV, so others do not suffer like she did.

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Oil vessel explodes off coast of Nigeria with 10 crew members on board

Footage circulating on social media shows the vessel sinking as huge clouds of thick black smoke billow into the sky - with an investigation under way to determine the cause of the fire.

 

 

A production and storage vessel which can hold up to two million barrels of oil has exploded off the coast of Nigeria with 10 crew members on board.

The FPSO Trinity Spirit, with can process up to 22,000 barrels of oil per day, was situated near Warri in southern Nigeria when it burst into flames.

The vessel, which is also used for offloading, is owned by Shebah Exploration & Production Company Ltd (SEPCOL), whose chief executive Ikemefuna Okafor said there were no immediate reports of fatalities.

Footage circulating on social media shows the vessel sinking as huge clouds of thick black smoke billow into the sky.

The footage also appears to show water being sprayed on the fire from another vessel.

“We can confirm that there were 10 crew men on board (The FPSO Trinity Spirit) prior to the incident and we are prioritizing investigations with respect to their safety and security,” Mr Okafor said.

He added that investigations were under way to establish the cause of the explosion in the early hours of Wednesday, while attempts to contain the situation were being made with help from local communities and Chevron, which has a facility nearby.

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Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Qurayshi killed in Syria, US says

The leader of the Islamic State (IS) group has been killed in an overnight US special forces raid in north-western Syria, senior US officials say.

“Thanks to the skill and bravery of our armed forces, we have taken off the battlefield Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi,” President Joe Biden said.

Qurayshi detonated a bomb that killed him and members of his own family, administration officials told US media.

Syrian first responders said they found the bodies of 13 people after the raid.

Several US helicopters reportedly landed on the outskirts of the opposition-held town of Atmeh, which is in northern Idlib province and is close to the border with Turkey, around midnight on Thursday (22:00 GMT on Wednesday).

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Local sources said the troops faced stiff resistance on the ground, and that they came under fire from heavy anti-aircraft guns mounted on vehicles.

Gunfire and shelling were heard for two hours before the helicopters left.

The New York Times reported that one helicopter was abandoned after suffering a mechanical problem, and that it was later destroyed in a US air strike. Photos of the wreckage have been posted online.

President Biden said all Americans involved had returned safely from the operation, which he declared would “protect the American people and our allies, and make the world a safer place”.

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An AFP news agency correspondent who visited a two-storey home that appeared to be targeted in the raid said it bore the scars of an intense battle – with blood-splattered walls, torn window frames, charred ceilings and a partly collapsed roof.

The White Helmets, also known as the Syria Civil Defence, said in a statement that its first responders reached the building at 03:15 and recovered the bodies of 13 people, including six children and four women.

They also found an injured girl whose other family members were killed in the raid, the organisation said. She was taken to hospital along with a man who was injured when he approached the building during the clashes to see what was happening, it added.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, also put the death toll at 13, but said four children and three women were killed.

IMAGE SOURCE,EPA

Image caption,

It is not yet known who was living inside the building targeted in the US operation

The senior US official told Reuters news agency: “At the beginning of the operation the terrorist target exploded a bomb that killed him and members of his own family, including women and children.”

“While we are still assessing the results of this operation, this appears to be the same cowardly terrorist tactic we saw in the 2019 operation that eliminated al-Baghdadi,” he added.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Qurayshi’s predecessor, killed himself and three children in October 2019 by detonating an explosive vest during a US special forces raid on a hideout that was only 16km (10 miles) away from Atmeh.

North-western Syria is a stronghold of jihadist groups and Turkish-backed rebel factions that are fierce rivals of IS.

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Novavax’s COVID vaccine becomes the fifth jab to be approved for use in the EU

It was given the green light by the European Commission after the European Medicines Agency (EMA) recommended it for use on Monday.

“We welcome today’s European Commission decision reflecting the first authorization of a protein-based COVID-19 vaccine for the people of the E.U.,” said Stanley C. Erck, Novavax’s CEO.

Called Nuvaxovid, it is the fifth vaccine authorised in the EU after Pfizer/BioNTech, AstraZeneca/Oxford, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson.

Its manufacturer claims it can help win over vaccine sceptics.

Nuvaxovid uses a more conventional technology than those used for the other vaccines already in use — it is similar to the technology used in the decades-old hepatitis B and pertussis vaccines — and does not need to be stored at ultra-low temperatures.

The so-called protein “subunit” vaccine contains purified fragments of the pathogen which then trigger an immune response. The jab is given as two injections three weeks apart.

Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines are messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines, an innovative technology that injects strands of genetic instructions into the body that tell the patient’s cells what to make to fight the disease.

AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson use viral vector technology which uses a very common type of virus called adenovirus that has been modified to carry genetic information in the body to fight COVID.

Rare but serious side effects of heart inflammation have been reported with the mRNA vaccines and blood clots with the virus vector vaccines.

While large numbers of people received the COVID jabs in trials, “certain side effects may only emerge when millions of people are vaccinated,” EMA said.

 

Novavax’s CEO has argued his company’s vaccine “could help overcome key barriers to global vaccination, including the challenges of global distribution and vaccine hesitancy”.

Results from clinical trials released in June showed 90.4% efficacy against the disease, and 100% efficacy against severe to moderate cases.

The company also said it was “evaluating its vaccine against the Omicron variant” and working on a version specific to it.

The European Commission has already signed a contract with Novavax for the advance purchase of 200 million doses of its vaccine once it has been approved by the EMA.

But Novavax has struggled with months of delays amid what a group of MEPs recently called “production problems”.

Indonesia and the Philippines have already approved Novavax’s jab, while Japan has agreed to buy 150 million doses.

Novavax says it has also filed for approval in Britain, India, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and with the World Health Organization.

The World Health Organization granted emergency use listing for the vaccine late last week.

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In world first, South Africa’s Afrigen makes mRNA Covid vaccine using Moderna data

SOUTH Africa’s Afrigen Biologics has used the publicly available sequence of Moderna’s Covid-19 mRNA vaccine to make its own version of the shot, which could be tested in humans before the end of this year, Afrigen’s top executive said on Thursday.

The vaccine candidate would be the first to be made based on a widely used vaccine without the assistance and approval of the developer. It is also the first mRNA vaccine designed, developed and produced at lab scale on the African continent.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) last year picked a consortium including Afrigen for a pilot project to give poor and middle-income countries the know-how to make Covid-19 vaccines, after market leaders of the mRNA Covid vaccine, Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna declined a WHO request to share their technology and expertise.

The WHO and partners hope the hub will help overcome glaring inequalities between rich nations and poorer countries in accessing vaccine doses, with 99 percent of all of Africa’s vaccines imported and the negligible remainder manufactured locally.

During the pandemic, wealthy countries have hoovered up most of the world’s supplies of vaccines.

Biovac, a partly state-owned South African vaccine producer, will be the first recipient of the technology from the hub. Afrigen has also agreed to help train companies in Argentina and Brazil.

In September, the WHO’s hub in Cape Town decided to go it alone after failing to bring on board Pfizer and Moderna, both of which have argued they need to oversee any technology transfer due to the complexity of the manufacturing process.

Moderna’s vaccine was chosen due to an abundance of public information and its pledge not to enforce patents during the pandemic. It’s not clear what will happen after that.

The UN-backed Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) said it was in talks with Moderna about possible access to some of its patents

Under pressure to make drugs in lower-income countries, Moderna and BioNTech have announced plans to build mRNA vaccine factories in Africa, but production is still a long way off.

Biovac has agreed to fill and finish the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the final stages of production, although the drug substance will come from Europe.

‘We haven’t copied Moderna, we’ve developed our own processes because Moderna didn’t give us any technology,’ Petro Terblanche, managing director at Afrigen told Reuters.

‘We started with the Moderna sequence because that gives, in our view, the best starting material. But this is not Moderna’s vaccine, it is the Afrigen mRNA hub vaccine,’ Terblanche said.

She said it had managed to make, in collaboration with Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand, its first micro-litre laboratory scale batches of Covid-19 mRNA vaccines at the Cape Town facility.

Terblanche said it was working on a next generation mRNA vaccine that didn’t need freezing temperatures for storage, required for the Pfizer and Moderna doses, and which would be better suited to the hot conditions of Africa with its poor health facilities and infrastructure.

Afrigen was recruiting staff and receiving training from international partners including Thermo Fisher Scientific, she said.

‘We will only make our clinical trial batch probably in six months from now, (meaning) … fit for humans. And the target is November 2022,’ Terblanche added.

Online training for other companies to make the shot started with manufacturers in Brazil and Argentina last year. Afrigen expects to get more on board within the next month.

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