Concerns growing over the privacy, security, and sovereignty of Ugandans’ health data A new report by Human Rights Watch has renewed scrutiny of a new generation of health cooperation agreements between the United States and African governments, raising concerns about data-sharing provisions, pathogen access arrangements and the broader implications for health sovereignty across the continent….
The Federal Government has said West Africa is central to Nigeria’s foreign policy stressing that the country must mobilise its enormous resources to lead the sub-region to tackle the wild wave of terrorism across the Sahel, proliferation of small arms and light weapons of illicit origin, drug and human trafficking. Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador…
The UN human rights office (OHCHR) has launched a Global Alliance for Human Rights, a broad coalition aimed at placing the issue at the heart of decision-making, when conflict levels have reached a record high amid deepening inequality and accelerating climate change. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk unveiled the initiative in Geneva,…
When South Africa’s government suddenly withdrew its newly gazetted national AI policy framework, the document itself was flagged with fictitious sources. Ironically, these sources were likely hallucinated by the very technology the policy sought to govern. This was a very uncomfortable AI moment for us, but also a teaching one. This isn’t just a case…
A new report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) has thrust Liberia into a growing international debate over health aid, data sovereignty, disease surveillance, and the future of global health partnerships after the organization alleged that the United States is conditioning critical health assistance on broad access to health information systems, pathogen samples, and compliance monitoring….
During my years working in Malawi’s health system – from clinician and public health officer to leading national public health programmes, and now as Minister of Health – I have seen firsthand how neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) shape people’s lives. I have sat with patients in our hospitals, spoken with families in rural communities, and…
In February 2025, the classical pianist Betsy Arakawa died in her New Mexico home from a virus most people had never heard of. Her husband, the actor Gene Hackman, died a week later of heart disease. The pathogen that killed her was hantavirus, almost certainly picked up from deer mouse droppings on the property. Fourteen…
Hantavirus victims on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean may have been infected prior to joining the cruise and human-to-human transmission on board cannot be ruled out – although it is rare – the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday. The deadly disease outbreak has triggered an international public health response. Seven individuals of…
The World Health Organization said Tuesday it believes there was rare human-to-human transmission of the hantavirus on a cruise ship at the center of the outbreak, with three people now dead after coming down with the illness. “We do believe that there may be some human-to-human transmission that’s happening among the really close contacts [on board],”…
Cliff de Wit, Chief Innovation Officer at Accelera Digital Group (ADG). Across the globe, financial hubs are facing a new class of cyber threat: deepfake as a service. What began as crude impersonations has evolved into industrialised deception with AI-generated voices authorising fraudulent payments, synthetic executives joining video calls and cloned identities breaching onboarding systems….
