India’s daily Covid cases saw the slimmest daily rise in one-and-a-half-years despite recent large festivals such as Diwali as vaccination and antibody levels rise
- Slovakian prime minister Eduard Heger considers 3-week lockdown
- Germany issues warning: ‘vaccinated, cured or dead’ by end of winter
- Young women’s mental health hit hardest by pandemic, research shows
- Britons urged to delay making plans for Christmas
- See all our coronavirus coverage
Here’s the latest from Reuters on the situation in Germany, where the acting health minister called on Tuesday for further restrictions to contain a “dramatic” surge in coronavirus cases as the country’s infection rate hit a record high and the United States advised against travel there.
The seven-day incidence rate – the number of people per 100,000 to be infected over the last week – hit 399.8 on Tuesday, up from 386.5 on Monday, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed.
Access to healthcare is expensive and, in an emergency, villagers are forced to walk for hours to the nearest health facility. For women, the lack of facilities, combined with patriarchal attitudes, means they have had no control over their reproductive health. But Communities Health Africa Trust (Chat) organises mobile healthcare outreach to poorly served communities such as Lekiji. Chat identifies vulnerable communities with limited access to health facilities and significant family planning needs, and brings health provision and education to their door.
Lack of roads is no barrier to their work. If they cannot reach the communities by car, they switch to an older form of transport: camel. In the past three years Chat has reached more than 100,000 people with behaviour-changing messages that focus on family planning but include TB, HIV and Covid prevention services across 14 counties in Kenya.
