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HEALTH

French can break coronavirus lockdown to adopt pets

France has decided to allow people outside to adopt a pet from animal shelters, despite strict home confinement measures to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

Published: 11 April 2020 13:30 CEST
French can break coronavirus lockdown to adopt pets
Photo: VALERY HACHE / AFP

The interior ministry announced Saturday that “tolerance will be granted” for the mercy missions from Thursday after a call from the Animal Protection Society (SPA).

The society shut its 62 centres to the public in line with official decrees to limit contact three weeks ago.

But on Monday the SPA urged a re-think and warned of overcrowding with thousands of animals waiting for a new home.

“Fully behind the cause of animal welfare, the government has heard the SPA's call and immediately shown the heart to find a sensible solution,” said Interior Minister Christophe Castaner.

“It has been decided that tolerance will be granted for travel to adopt animals from shelters,” the ministry said in a statement.

However, it added a series of restrictions including selecting the pet online and making an appointment for it to be collected by a single person.

“This will enable the rules to be respected and to save the lives of numerous animals,” the ministry added.

“We have 5,000 animals in our shelters and a capacity of 6,000,” said SPA president Jacques-Charles Fombonne. France has recorded more than 13,000 coronavirus deaths.

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HEALTH

France reports nearly 200 cholera cases in Mayotte

Nearly 200 cases of cholera have been reported on the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte, which is struggling to contain the deadly epidemic.

Published: 21 June 2024 14:08 CEST
France reports nearly 200 cholera cases in Mayotte

“As of June 18th, 2024, 193 cases of cholera have been reported in Mayotte,” France’s Santé publique France health agency reported in its weekly update.

Of those, 172 were locally acquired cases, while 21 were in people infected in the neighbouring Comoros archipelago and countries on the African continent.

Cholera is an infectious disease typically causing severe diarrhoea, vomiting and muscle cramps. It spreads easily in unsanitary conditions.

Mayotte, which is home to around 320,000 people, reported its first locally acquired cases of cholera in late April, according to officials in Paris.

Two people have died since the beginning of the epidemic, one of them a three-year-old girl.

Santé publique France warned there was a particularly high risk of transmission in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, “as long as access to drinking water and sanitation is unsatisfactory”.

French authorities have been criticised for failing to secure access to drinking water to prevent a cholera epidemic in its overseas territory.

President Emmanuel Macron called for cholera to be ‘consigned to the past’ when he hosted a summit on Thursday on vaccine production in Africa.

Many parts of Africa have recently seen fatal outbreaks of cholera, which has highlighted the shortage of local vaccine production.

The Comoros, which has been affected by a cholera epidemic for the past four months, has recorded 134 deaths and more than 8,700 cases, according to a report published by local authorities this month.

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