With no recorded cases since 2017, the archipelago has had a long journey to become free of the disease, which killed 608,000 people globally in 2022
Cape Verde has become the fourth country in Africa and the 44th in the world to eliminate malaria.
Africa has the highest number of cases of the mosquito-borne disease in the world. In 2022, 94% of the 249 million cases globally and 95% of deaths were recorded on the continent.
Continue reading...Some took parts of wooden seats for buoyancy after watching friends die on drifting vessel
Facing hunger, thirst and a rising number of deaths, some of the group of asylum seekers who were adrift for more than a month in the Atlantic resorted to breaking off chunks of the boat’s wooden seats in hopes of floating to land, a friend of three of the survivors has said.
More than 90 people are believed to have died before the rickety boat that had set off from Fass Boye, a seaside town in Senegal, was found off Cape Verde last week. Survivors said they left on 10 July aiming to reach Spain’s Canary Islands and spent weeks drifting at the mercy of powerful Atlantic trade winds.
Continue reading...Walking Borders said it told authorities in four countries on 20 July about vessel with more than 100 asylum seekers onboard
A Spanish NGO alerted authorities from four countries on 20 July about a boat carrying an estimated 130 asylum seekers that was found earlier this week with just 38 survivors and the bodies of seven dead people on board.
Relatives of those onboard said the large fishing vessel had left Fass Boye, a seaside town in Senegal on 10 July, and was heading for Spain’s Canary Islands. The boat was spotted on Monday about 150 nautical miles (277km ) north of the Cape Verdean island of Sal.
Continue reading...Fishing vessel with 100 asylum seekers was travelling from Senegal to Spain’s Canary Islands
More than 60 people are believed to have died after the boat they were travelling on from Senegal was found off Cape Verde, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Wednesday.
At least 63 asylum seekers are thought to have died, while the 38 survivors include four children between the ages of 12 and 16, an IOM spokesperson told AFP.
Continue reading...The number of nesting sites on the archipelago has risen dramatically, but global heating sees male population plummet
It’s nearly midnight as Delvis Semedo strolls along an empty beach on the Cape Verdean island of Maio. Overhead, the dense Milky Way pierces the darkness. A sea turtle emerges from the crashing waves and lumbers up the shore. Then another. And another.
Semedo is one of about 100 local people who patrol Maio’s beaches each night during nesting season to collect data on the turtles and protect them from poachers. This year has been busier than usual. Sea turtle nests on the islands of Sal, Maio and Boa Vista – the primary nesting grounds for loggerheads in Cape Verde – have soared in the last five years. Cape Verde’s environment ministry puts nest numbers in 2020 across all 10 islands at almost 200,000, up from 10,725 in 2015.
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