Breaking news Kenya

2023 - 1 - 24

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Image courtesy of "The Guardian"

'Culture is hard to break': Kenya's medical schools face a shortage of ... (The Guardian)

Medical training is in demand, but hesitancy on body donation means students have little to work with, while an illicit trade in transplant organs ...

“It’s the only way to end the stigma.” It also aims to make organ transplants – still largely a preserve of the privileged – more accessible. “We are coming into an environment where we are regulating what’s already being practised,” says Alfred Obengo, chair of the authority. “We need to normalise these conversations,” he says. [make organ donation the legal default](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0955470X20300628) at death – unless a person opts out – to increase donor numbers and save, or improve, many lives. Ogola is due to have a cornea transplant at Lions SightFirst Eye hospital, a private facility in the city. “We need to inform our people of the importance of body donation. But the situation is now serious, and speaks to a wider issue about attitudes in Kenya towards donating bodies and organs to science . “That’s one of the biggest barriers.” “Accessing the bodies through traditional means is becoming more of a challenge,” says Prof Moses Obimbo, head of the human anatomy department. “You see people appealing for blood, bone marrow, eyes,” he says, but even though the need is dire, there’s often no response to public appeals, except for those made by prominent people. Scalpel in hand, Carl Mwangi, a first-year medical student at the University of Nairobi, slices through the brain tissue.

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Image courtesy of "Lexology"

Kenya delivers ground-breaking ruling on unauthorised disclosure ... (Lexology)

In January 2023, the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner ("DPC") delivered one of its first rulings under the Data Protection Act, 2019 (the…

In some cases, it was further noted that even if the documents had been provided, they were part of documents that were readily available on various public resources and there was therefore no breach of the Act. On the question of jurisdiction, the DPC found that it had jurisdiction to hear and determine the complaint since the matter in question involved the disclosure of personal data and sensitive personal data. The DPC also distinguished the proceedings before it and those before the High Court, the DCI and the LSK, holding that each of these proceedings covered different issues under Kenyan law. It went on to state that questions of intellectual property were not within the its jurisdiction since its mandate only extended to personal data as defined in the Act. They also alleged that all the documents in question were public documents and, as such, could not be covered by the provisions of the Act. The claimants alleged that this disclosure was contrary to the provisions of the Act because the documents were the firm’s intellectual property and contained trade secrets that could not be disclosed without their authorisation.

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