The national blood deficit is most pressing in places like Turkana, where malaria, anaemia and violence make heavy demands on transfusion services – and doctors are pinning their hopes on innovation In his small cubicle in Lodwar County referral hospital in north-west Kenya, Edward Mutebi, the technician in charge of the hospital’s blood bank, greets a nurse from the maternity ward. “We want more blood,” the nurse says. “The previous allocation was not enough.” Mutebi dashes into an adjacent room and hands the nurse a pack of blood from a freezer, leaving the paperwork for later. Back at the m ..read more

Cinemovel is screening Oscar-nominated Io Capitano to packed houses around the country, highlighting the perils migrants face on the journey to Europe At about 1pm on Monday a 35-seater bus arrived in Pikine, a city east of the Senegalese capital, Dakar. A portable screen, projector, sound system and generator were unpacked to set up a temporary cinema in a lively neighbourhood where the scent of hibiscus and orange blossom fill the air. Pikine’s cultural centre was the first stop for Cinemovel, a travelling cinema that is showing the Oscar-nominated Italian film Io Capitano in the streets and ..read more

Images from Gaza, Ukraine, Madagascar and the US border chosen by global jury from more than 60,000 entries • World Press Photo winners 2024 – in pictures Photographs documenting the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, migration, family and dementia have topped this year’s World Press Photo awards – one of the world’s most prestigious photography competitions. Mohammed Salem, Lee-Ann Olwage, Alejandro Cegarra, and Julia Kochetova have been announced as the winners of this year’s competition, which is run by the World Press Photo Foundation – an independent, not-for-profit organisation that celebrates th ..read more

Adding another insecticide to the protective netting has proved effective in fight against the disease that killed 600,000 in 2022 Two new types of mosquito bed nets have been found to reduce cases of malaria by up to a half, raising hopes of combating the disease, which is becoming increasingly resistant to treatments and prevention efforts. Nets treated with two types of insecticide rather than one were trialled in 17 African countries where malaria is endemic between 2019 and 2022 ..read more

Deaths from record temperatures in Mali reportedly led to full morgues turning away bodies this month The deadly protracted heatwave that filled hospitals and mortuaries in the Sahel region of Africa earlier this month would have been impossible without human-caused climate disruption, a new analysis has revealed. Mali registered the hottest day in its history on 3 April as temperatures hit 48.5C in the south-western city of Kayes. Intense heat continued across a wide area of the country for more than five days and nights, giving vulnerable people no time for recovery ..read more

Westerners see elephants as pets, said Mokgweetsi Masisi, whose government threatened to send 30,000 elephants to Germany and the UK to demonstrate their dangers Many Europeans value the lives of elephants more than those of the people who live around them, the president of Botswana has said, amid tensions over potential trophy hunting import bans. Botswana recently threatened to send 30,000 elephants to the UK and Germany after both countries proposed stricter controls on hunting trophies. The country’s president, Mokgweetsi Masisi, said it would help people to understand human-wildlife confl ..read more

Paul Kagame flew to UK for Champions League match while national police told citizens to restrict activities including football The president of Rwanda, whose police force has asked the country’s people to restrict football-related activities during the 30-year anniversary of the Rwanda massacre, is facing questions after flying to the UK and watching Arsenal play Bayern Munich. Paul Kagame visited on Tuesday 9 April to watch the Champions League match in north London. Before the match, he visited Rishi Sunak at No 10 Downing Street, after giving civil servants just a few days’ notice of his v ..read more

Lords also press ministers to allow independent Rwanda monitoring as deportation bill returns to Commons UK politics – latest updates Rishi Sunak’s government is considering concessions on the Rwanda deportation bill to allow exemptions for Afghans who served alongside UK forces, parliamentary sources say. Ministers are also being pressed to give ground to an amendment to the legislation so that the east African country could be ruled unsafe by a monitoring committee ..read more

The campaign that came to prominence when 276 schoolgirls were kidnapped from their classes in 2014 has had an impact beyond its first rallying cries It was a kidnapping that changed Nigeria’s image internationally. For many, the first inkling of what was going on in the country’s north-east was after April 2014, when 276 girls were snatched from a school in Chibok by the Islamist militia group Boko Haram. It came from social media postings from the then US first lady, Michelle Obama, from the actor Angelina Jolie and Pope Francis, holding up #BringBackOurGirls signs. That became the name of a ..read more

Swiss food firm’s infant formula and cereal sold in global south ignore WHO anti-obesity guidelines for Europe, says Public Eye Nestlé, the world’s largest consumer goods company, adds sugar and honey to infant milk and cereal products sold in many poorer countries, contrary to international guidelines aimed at preventing obesity and chronic diseases, a report has found. Campaigners from Public Eye, a Swiss investigative organisation, sent samples of the Swiss multinational’s baby-food products sold in Asia, Africa and Latin America to a Belgian laboratory for testing ..read more