The government dispatched a team of health scientists to investigate a ‘strange’ nosebleed disease in southern regions of Tanzania, President Samia Suluhu Hassan disclosed yesterday.
Gracing the 20th Association of Member Episcopal Conferences in East Africa (AMECEA) Plenary Assembly organised by Tanzania Episcopal Conference (TEC), President Hassan said the hypothesis was that the disease is associated with impacts of environmental degradation.
She said with environmental degradation, the lives of some wild species have been disrupted, forcing them to go closer to human settlements, thus affecting human beings’ health.
“I was speaking with the Prime Minister (Kassim Majaliwa) recently as he toured in the southern part of the country, and he told me that there is this new disease where people have nosebleed and then collapse. We have not known what it is yet, scientists are now going there and hopefully, they will come up with answers and how to contain it,” said President Hassan yesterday.
“If it was one or two cases we could have assumed it was high blood pressure that burst the nerves, but in several cases, something we have never seen before, we consider it a strange disease, which might have been caused by the growign interaction between people and wild animals,” she said.
The AMECEA with a theme of environmental impact for integral development involved Catholic bishops from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Malawi, Kenya, Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.
According to the head of TEC Archbishop Gervas Nyaisonga this theme carries the message of the church’s support towards national and global efforts to protect and conserve the environment.
“The AMECEA pledged support on the global initiatives for environment care for development,” said Archbishop Nyaisonga.
In regard to the environment message the President had also called upon the religious leaders to use their platforms educating their congregations on the significance of protecting the environment.
She said this topic is now more important than ever because the impacts of the environmental crisis are visible now..
“We now experience temperatures rising to levels that we never experienced before. Flooding and the rise of the sea level have been caused by human activities,” she said.
The President later quoted the religious verses which insisted on protecting natural resources that were given freely by God.
Moreover the Minister of State (Union and Environment), Dr Selemani Jafo, said while the outbreak of the nosebleed in the southern regions is left in the hands of scientists and health experts, Tanzanians are encouraged to fully participate in the efforts to rebuild the biodiversity.
“It’s a collaborative effort and everybody needs to take part in protecting our environment which in turn supports development,” said Dr Jafo.
