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Public and private sector health officials and public policymakers should team up immediately with community leaders to more effectively disseminate accurate narratives regarding the life-saving benefits of vaccines to counter widespread, harmful misinformation from anti-vaccine activists.

CORNELIUS Mweetwa is not being honest not only with himself but the millions of Zambia who voted for the United Party for National Development (UPND) in the August 12, 2021 tripartite elections.

The overwhelming vote that President Hakainde Hichilema received was anchored on their promise to bring about positive change in the nation.

That change was to begin immediately that Mr Hichilema was declared winner, starting with the Kwacha gaining strength against the United States dollar.

There were of course other promises that the price of mealie meal would be reduced to at least K50, in addition to cheaper fuel.

Zambians are therefore surprised that Mr Mweetwa, who is UPND spokesperson and Southern Province Minister, while admitting that they voted for change, they should not expect the changes to be immediate.

Mr Mweetwa was quoted in our edition yesterday as saying that Zambians voted for change in the August 2021 general elections but they should not be expecting that the change should be instant.

We do not think Mr Mweetwa has endeared himself with the expectant voters who put their trust in the UPND as a vehicle that would drive them to prosperity.

Speaking on Radio Phoenix Let the People Talk Programme on Tuesday, Mr Mweetwa said the promises of cheaper mealie meal and fuel were being implemented but that the high cost of living was being influenced by external factors which could not be blamed on the UPND.

He said mealie meal prices would only be reduced if local production costs were reduced and that it was his hope that sooner rather than later, Zambians would start smiling because things shall be much better, cheaper and easier.

If anything, Mr Mweetwa has actually proved true the general perception people have about politicians that they speak with forked tongues – never the truth.

For if indeed they were speaking the truth, the crisis that the country has faced in the health and agriculture sector would not be there.  The people were promised improved services.

Government hospitals have since the new dawn administration assumed office been in the “intensive care unit,” operating without basic medicines.

The Minister of Health, Ms Sylvia Masebo has continued to defy logic that there is a crisis in the health sector even when the experts – doctors – on the ground bemoan the crippling shortage of medicines.

In the agriculture sector, the distribution of farming inputs under the Farmers Input Support Programme has been in shambles as the government “sought” to streamline the procurement chain.

In the process, some suppliers, like in the health sector, were removed on suspicion that they had links with the former Patriotic Front regime.

Government abandoned the transparent open tender system and ended up single-sourcing companies to supply fertiliser and the results are there for all to see.

Ironically, Mr Mweetwa claimed that Zambians were not suffering and that citizens were much better than they were during the PF reign in government.

He said they should sacrifice for just a little longer than now as President Hichilema was working at addressing and correcting the economic chaos left by the PF.

And that, according to Mr Mweetwa should not be immediate, but long-term.

Certain chemotherapy-resistant ovarian cancer cells protect neighboring cancer cells by sending signals that induce resistance, according to a new study from University of Pittsburgh and UPMC researchers that may help explain why ovarian cancer patients respond poorly to chemotherapy or relapse after treatment.

A new study led by UC Davis MIND Institute researchers confirms that brain development in people with autism differs from those with typical neurodevelopment. According to the study published in PNAS, these differences are linked to genes involved in inflammation, immunity response and neural transmissions. They begin in childhood and evolve across the lifespan.

Prostate cancer takes a greater toll on Black men than on men of other races. In the United States, one in six Black men will get prostate cancer in their lifetime, compared to one in eight men overall. Black men are also more than twice as likely to die from the disease.

When a parent needs to cook dinner or take a shower, often they will place their baby in a bouncy seat, swing, exersaucer, or similar seating device intended to protect the baby and grant a degree of independence to both the parent and infant. For many parents, these devices represent a helpful extra set of hands; for babies, the freedom to safely explore their immediate surroundings.

A new study by researchers at Reichman University’s Brain Cognition and Technology Institute directed by Prof. Amir Amedi has shown that visual navigation areas in the brain can be activated using sound. By traversing mazes using sound information instead of visual information after training, visual navigation areas were activated.

A new app developed by scientists at Stanford Medicine and other institutions can detect skin lesions caused by mpox, previously known as monkeypox, in images with an accuracy of 90%, the researchers found in a study. To analyze images, the app uses a type of artificial intelligence that was trained and evaluated on a large data set of about 130,000 images of various skin conditions.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has allowed scientists at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC) to produce an accurate picture of the healthy heart in adolescence. Using this advanced technology, the research team was able to determine reference values for anatomical and functional parameters in the heart during adolescence. This information, published in eClinicalMedicine, has direct implications for clinical practice.

A study published in JAMA Network Open has found that in the U.S. between 1999 and 2020, Black infants disproportionately died from necrotizing enterocolitis compared to White infants, despite overall improvements in the rates of death from the disease.