In Case You Missed It 9/20/15 — 9/27/15

Alamy/The Guardian newspaper

A phar­ma­cist pre­scribes med­ica­tion to an HIV pos­i­tive patient at a clin­ic in Kitwe, Zambia.

The most impor­tant in this week’s head­lines out of and con­cern­ing Africa, for those who need help catch­ing up.

In this week’s news, the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion pro­vides aid to help stop the spread of HIV/AIDS, the admin­is­tra­tion is increas­ing efforts to stop Boko Haram, the sit­u­a­tion in Burk­i­na Faso con­tin­ues to evolve, Nige­ria holds its own by tak­ing a sig­nif­i­cant step towards elim­i­nat­ing Polio and by res­cu­ing  pris­on­ers from Boko Haram.

1. Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion allots more mon­ey for HIV/AIDS treat­ment in Africa

The Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion is allot­ting an addi­tion­al $300 mil­lion to help reduce the rate of HIV/AIDS infec­tion among women and girls in Africa. The addi­tion­al funds are part of the President’s Emer­gency Plan for Aids Relief (PAPFAR), which hopes to pro­vide treat­ment for 12 mil­lion peo­ple by 2017, as well as pro­vid­ing mea­sures to reduce the spread of the disease.

2. U.S. admin­is­tra­tion increas­es efforts to fight Boko Haram

HIV/AIDS treat­ment and pre­ven­tion is not the only aid that the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion is pro­vid­ing in Africa. The gov­ern­ment announced this week that they will be spend­ing up to $45 mil­lion dol­lars to help Africans fight Boko Haram.  The funds will pro­vide train­ing and mil­i­tary equip­ment to those fight­ing the ter­ror­ist group.

Mean­while, the Niger­ian mil­i­tary raid­ed two Boko Haram camps this week, result­ing in the arrests of 43 mil­i­tants and the res­cue of 241 women and chil­dren. The local leader, Bula­ma Modu, was among those arrest­ed. The camps were destroyed and their weapons seized. The raids on the camps are part of Nige­ri­a’s ongo­ing, ded­i­cat­ed efforts to stop the ter­ror­ist group.

3. Civil­ian lead­ers return to pow­er in Burk­i­na Faso

Michel Kefan­do, the inter­im Pres­i­dent of Burk­i­na Faso, returned to pow­er after last week’s coup. The coup was car­ried out by sup­port­ers of Blaise Com­paoré, the for­mer Pres­i­dent of Burk­i­na Faso, who was oust­ed in an upris­ing last year. The coup end­ed with a polit­i­cal com­pro­mise, and for now things are return­ing to nor­mal as Burk­i­na Faso pre­pares for it’s elections.

4. Fight against polio takes a turn for the bet­ter in Nigeria

The Nige­ria gov­ern­ment announced this week that Polio is no longer endem­ic to the coun­try. The gov­ern­ment  says it is com­mit­ted to pre­vent­ing the spread of the dis­ease by con­tin­u­ing to encour­age vac­ci­na­tions, and that the coun­try is well on the path to erad­i­cat­ing the dis­ease com­plete­ly. They say they will sup­port the World Health Organization(WHO) in their efforts to remove polio from Afghanistan and Pak­istan, now the only two coun­tries were Polio remains an endem­ic disease.