03/26/2022 | UPONSOFT

Southern Malawi has started recording a rise in cholera cases, which health authorities blame on flooding from a recent tropical storm and cyclone. More than 30 people have been infected and two have died. UNICEF is intervening to reduce the spread of the disease.

Malawi confirmed the first cholera case March 2 in the Machinga district.

Health authorities say the disease has so far hit the Nsanje and Machinga districts in southern Malawi with a cumulative number of cases now reaching 33. There have been two deaths as of Friday.

“Out of 33 cases, eight cases were still receiving treatment at the cholera treatment center, Ndamera treatment center specifically. We also have a cumulative number of two deaths. The rest were discharged,” said George Mbotwa, the spokesperson for the Nsanje District Health Office.

He says they have put in place measures to prevent and control the further spread of the disease such as surveillance and contact tracing.

“We are also doing health education; health talks in [evacuation] camps where there are a lot of people and of course in surrounding communities. We have also instituted health workers; HSAs (Health Surveillance Assistants) in all uncharted entry points where actually they are conducting health promotion in water treatment efforts, health talks and all that,” he said.

Cholera is an acute diarrheal infection caused by ingesting food or water contaminated with bacteria. The disease affects both children and adults if untreated and it can kill within hours. Cholera is more common during the rainy season.

Health authorities in Malawi say the disease is largely a result of floods caused by Tropical Storm Ana and Cyclone Gombe, which hit Malawi in the past two months.

Estere Tsoka, an emergency specialist for the U.N.’s children agency, UNICEF, in Malawi, told VOA that UNICEF is making several interventions to control the further spread of the disease.

“UNICEF is supporting the disinfection of household water sources and also chlorination of water sources at community level that got affected by the floods. UNICEF is also supporting sanitation of the cholera treatment centers that have been established so that they should not become a source of infection,” she said.

Tsoka also says plans are underway to procure a cholera vaccine.

“Also there are plans to administer oral cholera vaccine in eight districts of the country. And UNICEF is providing support to bring in the vaccines in the country and also supporting planning processes for the vaccine’s national campaign.”

Maziko Matemba, the national health ambassador in Malawi, says cholera can be prevented if community health structures are financially empowered to effectively perform their task of educating communities on matters of hygiene and sanitation particularly in flood-prone areas.

“Because we already know that we normally have cholera and also floods more especially in that part of Malawi because it’s a low-lying area and our rivers do burst when the rains come more than expected,” Matemba said.

The Ministry of Health said in a statement this week that it is distributing chlorine to communities in affected areas for water treatment as well as sending cholera control information to all the people there through various channels of communication.
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Taylor Hawkins, for 25 years the drummer for Foo Fighters and best friend of frontman Dave Grohl, has died during a South American tour with the rock band. He was 50.

There were no immediate details on how Hawkins died, although the band said in a statement Friday that his death was “tragic and untimely loss.”

Foo Fighters had been scheduled to play at a festival in Bogota, Colombia, on Friday night. Hawkins’ final concert was Sunday at another festival in San Isidro, Argentina.

“His musical spirit and infectious laughter will live on with all of us forever,” said a message on the band’s official Twitter account that was also emailed to reporters. “Our hearts go out to his wife, children and family.”

Police vehicles, an ambulance and fans were gathered outside the hotel in northern Bogota where Hawkins was believed to have been staying.

“It was a band I grew up with. This leaves me empty,” Juan Sebastian Anchique, 23, told The Associated Press as he mourned Hawkins outside the hotel.

Authorities in Colombia have not commented on Hawkins’ death. The U.S. Embassy in Bogota expressed its condolences in a tweet.

After Grohl, Hawkins was the most recognizable member of the group, appearing alongside the lead singer in interviews and playing prominent, usually comic, roles in the band’s memorable videos and their recent horror-comedy film, Studio 666.

Hawkins was Alanis Morrissette’s touring drummer when he joined Foo Fighters in 1997. He played on the band’s biggest albums including One by One and On Your Honor, and on hit singles including My Hero and Best of You.

In Grohl’s 2021 book The Storyteller, he called Hawkins his “brother from another mother, my best friend, a man for whom I would take a bullet.”

“Upon first meeting, our bond was immediate, and we grew closer with every day, every song, every note that we ever played together,” Grohl wrote. “We are absolutely meant to be, and I am grateful that we found each other in this lifetime.”

It’s the second time Grohl has experienced the death of a close bandmate. Grohl was the drummer for Nirvana when Kurt Cobain died in 1994.

Tributes poured out on social media for Hawkins on Friday night.

“God bless you Taylor Hawkins,” Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello said on Twitter along with a photo of himself, Hawkins and Jane’s Addiction singer Perry Ferrell. “I loved your spirit and your unstoppable rock power.”

“What an incredible talent, who didn’t also need to be so kind and generous and cool but was all those things too anyway,” tweeted Finneas, Billie Eilish’s brother, co-writer and producer. “The world was so lucky to have his gifts for the time that it did.”

Born Oliver Taylor Hawkins in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1972, Hawkins was raised in Laguna Beach, California. He played in the small Southern California band Sylvia before landing his first major gig as a drummer for Canadian singer Sass Jordan.

Hawkins told The Associated Press in 2019 that his early drumming influences included Stewart Copeland of The Police, Roger Taylor from Queen, and Phil Collins, who he said was “one of my favorite drummers ever. You know, people forget that he was a great drummer as well as a sweater-wearing nice guy from the ’80s, poor fella.”

When he spent two years in the mid-1990s drumming for Morrissette, he was inspired primarily by the playing of Jane’s Addiction’s Stephen Perkins.

“My drums were set up like him, the whole thing,” Hawkins told the AP. “I was still sort of a copycat at that point. It takes a while and takes a little while to sort of establish your own sort of style. I didn’t sound exactly like him, I sound like me, but he was a big, huge influence.”

He and Grohl met backstage at a show when Hawkins was still with Morrissette. Grohl’s band would have an opening soon after when then-drummer William Goldsmith left. Grohl called Hawkins, who was a huge Foo Fighters fan and immediately accepted.

“I am not afraid to say that our chance meeting was a kind of love at first sight, igniting a musical ‘twin flame’ that still burns to this day,” Grohl wrote in his book. “Together, we have become an unstoppable duo, onstage and off, in pursuit of any and all adventure we can find.”

Hawkins first appeared with the band in the 1997 video for Foo Fighters’ most popular song, Everlong, although he had yet to join the group when the song was recorded. He would, however, go on to pound out epic versions of it hundreds of times as the climax of Foo Fighters’ concerts.

In another highlight of the group’s live shows, Grohl would get behind the drums and Hawkins would grab the mic to sing a cover of Queen’s Somebody to Love.

“The best part of getting to be the lead singer of the Foo Fighters for just for one song is I really do have the greatest rock ‘n’ roll drummer on the planet Earth,” Hawkins said before the song in a March 18 concert in Chile.

Grohl can be heard telling him to shut up.

Hawkins also co-starred in Foo Fighters’ recently released horror-comedy film, Studio 666, in which a demonic force in a house where the band is staying seizes Grohl and makes him murderous. Hawkins and the other members of the band are killed off one by one. The premise came out of their work on their 10th studio album at a home in Los Angeles.

He also drummed and sang for the side-project trio Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders. They released an album, Get the Money, in 2006.

Hawkins is survived by his wife Alison and their three children.
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