Health

Unprecedented: All 14 parties in SA parliament unite in fight against coronavirus

SOUTH AFRICA - Gauteng Health MEC Bandile Masuku outlines the measures the Gauteng government will be taking to overcome coronavirus in the province.

A team of ministers will brief the media on the details of the South African government's interventions to curb the spread of coronavirus. President Cyril Ramaphosa on Sunday night announced that all schools will be closed from Wednesday and gatherings of more than 100 people are prohibited. 

The SAA chartered plane carrying over a hundred repatriated South Africans from the Chinese city of Wuhan and members of the SANDF landed at the Polokwane International Airport on Saturday.

The South African National Defence Force (SANDF) team deployed to evacuate South Africans from Wuhan in China - the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak - will be departing from O.R. Tambo International Airport tonight. SABC reporter Chriselda Lewis was at the airport.

China's Ambassador to South Africa Lin Songtian hosted a briefing in Pretoria on Friday to update the media on the latest developments in China's spirited fight against the coronavirus.

A diet of cassava, Irish potatoes and indigenous vegetables helped Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni shed 30kg (4 stone), he told the BBC.

Once the bane of sub-Saharan Africa, sleeping sickness is agonisingly close to being wiped out, but only if countries -- and donors -- keep up their guard, say scientists.

The head of a medical charity that is at the forefront of dealing with the Ebola outbreak in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo has called for a "change of gear" in the approach.

A woman who died this month of Ebola may have carried the disease into Rwanda, Reuters news agency quotes the World Health Organization as saying.