Throughout the world, COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected the day-to-day functioning of cities. It has paralyzed transport systems, endangered public health, and ruined their economies and livelihoods of vulnerable groups. For the lobbyists of walkable, unpolluted and vehicle-free cities, the past few months have offered an unprecedented opportunity to test the ideas they have long advocated for.
Every year on 28th July, we mark World Hepatitis Day. The running call for this year’s celebration is to encourage every person from across the globe to act and raise awareness to “find the missing millions”.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the social policy weaknesses of the devolved units of government as well as the absence of a coherent core across the different social development programmes of the National Government. For instance, the different social protection instruments implemented by the National Government but consumed at counties did not demonstrate a coordinated flow to be rapidly marshaled and deployed to address the pandemic-related crises.
Universities and other education institutions in Kenya were ordered closed by His Excellency President Uhuru Kenyatta on March 15th, 2020, with a closure deadline of March 20th. This was in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic and the confirmation of the first case in Kenya on March 13, 2020.
Spouse abuse (SA) refers to a phenomenon that is commonly known as domestic violence. It is also variously referred to as family violence, domestic dispute, intimate partner violence, wife abuse, wife battering, husband battering, gender based violence and many other terminologies in various parts of the world. Spouse abuse also refers to violence between intimates living together or who have previously cohabited (Buzawa and Buzawa, 2003).
Male-Kayongo and Onyango (1984) recognized the need to conduct complete studies in the areas of divorce, abuse and homicide by spouses as well as family issues which end up in court, and although many researches have been undertaken in Kenya in the area of domestic violence, no specific study has focused on establishing the socio-demographic characteristics of spouse abuse victims in Nairobi City County. This makes it difficult to design effective interventions in addressing spouse abuse.
Over the years, there has been increasing public investment in transport infrastructure in Kenya both through direct budgetary allocations and private sector partnerships. For instance, in 2018, US$ 2.1 billion (representing almost 10 per cent of the entire 2018/19 annual budget) was allocated to transport infrastructure where over 50 per cent of it was availed for road projects. This was a 100 per cent increase from the previous year.
Early April amid the panicky crescendo of drumbeats for strong-arm solutions for managing COVID-19, my friends and I held series of online touch-base sessions. The friends were in four different continents- Africa (Kilifi, Kenya), America (Boston, USA), Europe (Leeds, England) and Asia (Kathmandu, Nepal). From the onset, we were struck by the commonality of the responses being adopted across the world – rapid militarization and medicalization of the pandemic all peppered in a variety of politicization.
With the continuously expanding COVID-19 pandemic, increasing numbers of patients and contacts are progressively posing a global challenge. Being novel, there is so much that is yet to be known about this virus and how to manage it. This scenario is not only true for conventional medicine, but is also applicable to herbal medicine and natural products. An ideal anti-COVID-19 medication (or a combination of agents) should be safe for patients while conferring three basic therapeutic effects (and/or preventive health benefits):
