Suspected Boko Haram gunmen kidnapped more than 100 women and children and killed 35 other people on Sunday during a raid on the remote northeast Nigerian village of Gumsuri, a security source and resident said on Thursday. From Reuters:
Although no one has claimed it yet, the attack bore the hallmarks of Boko Haram, which abducted more than 200 women in April from a secondary school in Chibok, only 24 km (15 miles) from this latest attack.
Its campaign for an Islamic state by Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is sinful”, has become the gravest threat to Africa’s biggest economy and top oil producer.
Thousands of people have been killed and many hundreds abducted, raising questions about the ability of security forces to protect civilians, especially around the north Cameroon border where the militants are well established.
Maina Chibok, who did not witness the attack but is from Gumsuri and visited family there shortly afterwards, said the insurgents came in pick-up trucks and sprayed the town with bullets from AK-47s and machineguns.
“They gathered the people, shot dead over 30 people and took away more than 100 women and children in two open-top trucks,” Chibok said. Burials of many of the victims had already happened, he added.
News from remote parts of Nigeria that are cut off from mobile communications sometimes takes days to emerge.
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Global Health and Development Beat
One of Sierra Leone’s most senior physicians died Thursday from Ebola, the 11th doctor in the country to succumb to the disease, a health official said.
The United Nations is seeking more than $8.4 billion for next year to help nearly 18 million people affected by the war in Syria.
The World Health Organisation and the nations that fund it failed to respond quickly and effectively to the deadly West Africa Ebola outbreak despite repeated warnings by aid agencies, a UK parliamentary committee said on Thursday.
Cambodia’s prime minister appealed Thursday to villagers in northwestern Cambodia not to lynch an unlicensed medical practitioner who they suspect caused more than 100 people to become infected with HIV.
The plight of an eight-year-old Chinese boy with HIV, reportedly ordered to leave his village by 200 petitioners, sparked intense online soul-searching Thursday in a country where discrimination against sufferers remains rife.
For some Ebola survivors, overcoming the lethal viral assault has not heralded a full return to good health. An array of ailments including headache, joint pains, vision and hearing problems have afflicted convalescents; experts are still uncertain of the exact cause.
Up to 10,000 children have been recruited by armed groups during the conflict in the Central African Republic despite a U.N.-backed peacekeeping presence, the number rising sharply in the past two years, Save the Children said on Thursday.
In Zimbabwe, more than half a million people living with HIV and AIDS are in danger as the public hospitals countrywide are experiencing shortages of the anti-retroviral drugs.
WFP and the European Union are shining a spotlight during the coming holiday season on the universal custom of the family meal, by launching the Family Meal Photo Competition, with celebrity chef Jamie Oliver on the judging panel.
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Buzzing in the Blogs
Dr Martin Deahl, a British doctor working in Sierra Leone, describes the profound emotional impact of his first shift at an Ebola treatment center in Port Loko, in the Guardian. An excerpt:
I had thought non-verbal communication would be impossible in personal protection equipment, but was surprised and heartened to find that a hug was a hug and even two layers of gloves didn’t diminish the emotional impact of squeezing a hand.
There is little place for modern medicine here. Life or death is a matter of rehydration, rehydration, rehydration. Encouraging patients to drink oral rehydration solution can be hard – it tastes vile, like sugary salt water – so water, or anything the patient fancies, is a good second best. The adults want tea and coffee; bringing this into the red zone is a logistical nightmare, but with a bit of imagination and ingenuity we managed it. The children liked fizzy drinks and sodas, which was an easier wish to grant.
Drinking has to be encouraged and supervised: sips, not glugs. Glug and you vomit, rendering the whole exercise counter-productive. Prompting and supervising drinking becomes problematic when you only have 45 minutes in the zone, although concentrating on the patient takes the mind off the heat, sweat and physical discomfort. Ninety minutes (my personal record) flew by, and I was only aware of my own physical state after I’d doffed my personal protection equipment. As one team leaves, another enters; it’s reminiscent of a relay or tag team.
Confronting Ebola for the first time generates strong emotions. Sadness at seeing such suffering and fear. Anger – what have these people done to deserve this? A sense of guilt that the international community didn’t respond more quickly. Love, especially for the children, innocent young lives so undeserving of anything like this; why them, not me? And, of course, fear of the ever-present invisible enemy. I have seen a lot of suffering in a career of more than 30 years, but rarely have I felt so emotional about my patients.
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Capital Events
Happy Friday!
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By Mark Leon Goldberg and Tom Murphy
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