African Briefs

SA recalls 500 000 HIV test kits
JOHANNESBURG – South Africa is recalling 500 000 HIV test kits it ordered from a South Korean company despite a World Health Organisation (WHO) warning over inconclusive results, the health ministry said yesterday.
Authorities are investigating how the SD Bioline tests were ordered earlier this year after the WHO issued notices in November last year, health spokesman Joe Maila said.

‘The set order was about 500 000, and all of them have been recalled as a precaution,’ Maila told AFP.The South Korean company issued a recall after the WHO again in June flagged the problem.South Africa, which launched a massive HIV testing campaign in 2010, had already begun using the finger-prick test kits. The WHO said the kits did not return false results but were plagued by inconclusive readings.Lagos slum demolition startsLAGOS – Nigerian officials on Monday began demolishing a large waterfront slum in the economic capital Lagos, a move that could leave tens of thousands of people homeless.The Makoko settlement consists of rows of shanties perched on stilts in the lagoon of Lagos, one of the world’s largest cities with an estimated population of roughly 15 million.The Lagos state government on 12 July warned Makoko residents that ‘their unwholesome structures on the waterfront’ amounted to an ‘environmental nuisance’, in a letter seen by AFP.’Notice is hereby given to you to vacate and remove all illegal developments along the Makoko/Iwaya Waterfront within 72 hours,’ said the letter from the Lagos state ministry of waterfront, infrastructure and development.Timbuktu drinker gets 40 lashesBAMAKO – A Timbuktu man accused of drinking alcohol was given 40 lashes on Monday by members of an Islamist group that has seized the north Malian city and imposed Islamic law there, witnesses said.’A young man has just been lashed 40 times for drinking alcohol. The whipping took place in the Timbuktu market,’ a resident told AFP by phone.’He is injured and was taken to hospital,’ the resident added, asking not to be identified.Other witnesses confirmed the incident.The Islamist group, Ansar Dine (Defenders of Faith), is one of several al Qaeda-linked groups that seized northern Mali amid a power vacuum opened by a March 22 military coup in the south.