Explosive health costs push Kenyans into poverty



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The surge in health care costs has become a serious concern in Kenya, where about one million people fall into poverty each year due to unaffordable medical bills. And Zimbabwe must start paying compensation to thousands of white farmers who lost their land under Robert Mugabe.

Hospital bills would have worsened in Kenya, where nearly a third of the population (17.4 million out of 59.7 inhabitants) live with 92.4 shillings (8 euros) per person. day, according to World Bank data for 2018.

The Daily Nation tells the nightmare of a mother and a business woman once happy and whose life was turned upside down by a simple cough.

Diana Mwalili told the Nairobi-based newspaper how she had spent everything she had to try to treat her daughter's misdiagnosed health problem, which had worsened, going from a simple one. influenza to an infection of the spine and then to brain damage, which prevented him from sitting still. , walk or feed.

Hospital Prisons

Aggrey Omboki, the author of the report, also discusses another viral case on social media in the Kenyan capital: that of a patient whose family is struggling with a medical bill of 16,000 euros that needs to be settled before leaving the hospital. "She is basically a prisoner until they can clear the debt," Ombeki discovered.

The Daily Nation correspondent said that a legislator's bill compelling hospitals to release patients who could not pay was still under discussion in Parliament. "The sad and painful situation is that more and more families are forced to sell land, houses and even cars to find relatives and sometimes bodies released from their hospitals," he said.

Keep your unemployed at home

The new xenophobic attacks against African immigrants continue to dominate what was said in South African newspapers two weeks after sporadic outbreaks of violence in the sensitive suburbs of Durban and Johannesburg.

According to the Sowetan daily, 105 people, including five babies, fled to local police stations when unemployed young people from their neighborhoods opened at 2am.

In the same vein, the citizen is relaying the calls of the South African Minister of Small Business Development, Lindiwe Zulu, to foreign governments to prevent undocumented nationals from entering the country. Zulu spoke at a crisis meeting with African ambbadadors on Sunday.

Many commentators are not convinced by President Cyril Ramaphosa's argument that the violence was spread by people with criminal intent.

The Johannesburg Star warns that the government is trapped in the mantra of arguing that the problem is purely "criminal", as if it makes it less serious. "

Thabisi Hoeane, professor of political science at Rhodes University, wrote this article and urged the government to qualify xenophobia for what it really is, so that it can be defeated.

Zimbabwe's white farmers see the light at the end of the tunnel

Zimbabwe must start paying compensation this year to thousands of white farmers who have lost land because of land reform of former President Robert Mugabe.

The Zimbabwean state-owned Herald publishes a government statement announcing the payment of $ 18 million to this program, the full compensation to be paid later.

In South Africa, Mail and Guardian points out that the package concerns land improvements by former landowners – not lands seized from 4,500 white farmers in the country to correct what Mugabe calls "property disparities landmark of the colonial era ".

Critics attribute the expulsions to a collapse in agricultural production that forced the breadbasket of Africa to become dependent on imported food to feed its population, according to the newspaper.

The South African Times Live reports that President Emmerson Mnangagwa considers that paying compensation to white commercial farmers is critical to restoring ties with the West.

The Johannesburg-based Citizen said Zimbabwean farmers had agreed to provide interim payments as part of a two-year international legal initiative.

Am I really rich?

And a staggering revelation by Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote is causing a sensation in the press.

Dangote says he has withdrawn $ 10 million from a bank just to review it.

The Uganda Daily Monitor reports that the richest man in Africa has caused an explosion of laughter in Abidjan this weekend when he explained how he had put the money in the trunk of his car and brought it back to his room to make sure it was real, before recovering it. at the bank the next day.

The manufacturing magnate, who was speaking at a Mo Ibrahim forum in the Ivorian capital, gave this advice to young African entrepreneurs. "Do not get carried away by the first wave of success," he said.

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