DAR ES SALAAM, Feb. 6 (Xinhua) -- Tanzania has created a national strategy aimed at ending female genital mutilation (FGM) which was still prevalent in the country despite years of campaigning, a senior official said on Saturday.

Sebastian Kitiku, the Director of Children Affairs in the Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children, said the strategy will be launched on March 15, 2021.

He said the four-year national strategy will entail running campaigns on the health consequences of FGM for girls and women, recruitment of change agents from within the communities and the enforcement of legal mechanisms.

"National statistics show that prevalence of FGM in Tanzania stands at 10 percent, an indication that there is an uphill task to eliminate the malpractice," Kitiku told a news conference in the capital Dodoma to mark the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation.

The official said the 2015/2016 Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey showed that one out of 10 women in Tanzania underwent FGM, citing Manyara, Dodoma, Arusha, Mara and Singida as regions with leading incidences of FGM.

In 1998, the government of Tanzania criminalized female genital mutilation. - Xinhua

NAIROBI, Kenya -- Burundi has become at least the second African country to say it doesn’t need COVID-19 vaccines, even as doses finally begin to arrive on the continent that’s seeing a deadly resurgence in cases.

The health minister of the East African nation, Thaddee Ndikumana, told reporters on Thursday evening that prevention is more important, and “since more than 95% of patients are recovering, we estimate that the vaccines are not yet necessary.”

The minister spoke while announcing new measures against the pandemic. The country closed its land and water borders last month. It now has well over 1,600 confirmed coronavirus cases.

Neighboring Tanzania this week said it had no plans to accept COVID-19 vaccines after President John Magufuli expressed doubt about them, without giving evidence. He insists the country has long defeated the virus with God’s help but faces growing pushback from fellow citizens, and officials with the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization have urged Tanzania to cooperate.

Burundi’s previous government under the late President Pierre Nkurunziza also had been criticized for not taking COVID-19 seriously. But current President Evariste Ndayishimiye last year described the virus as Burundi’s “worst enemy.”

Last month he told a religious meeting in the political capital, Gitega, that “we are seeing new cases of COVID-19 because God is punishing us” for not respecting vows to serve the country without corruption.

When leaders don’t fulfil such promises, “it’s the whole family that has to be punished,” he said. - Eloge Willy Kaneza, Associated Press/ABC News