Health & HIV/AIDS
RSS FeedUganda: Ugandans battle neglected tropical disease
2012-01-31, Issue 568
Health services in northern Uganda are still scarce in the wake of the region's 20-year civil war, leaving many battling diseases that could be cured with proper medical treatment. Elephantiasis is a widespread disease caused by a parasite that cause...
South Africa: 'Faulty' ANC celebration condoms recalled
2012-01-31, Issue 568
South Africa's leading HIV group has warned that large numbers of 'faulty' condoms are in circulation in the Bloemfontein area, despite a recall. The problem with the condoms was discovered after people complained to the Treatment Action Campaign (TA...
Zimbabwe: Mugabe's party says typhoid outbreak 'biological warfare'
2012-02-02, Issue 568
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party has attributed the typhoid outbreak that has affected 1,500 people in the capital Harare to biological warfare and Western sanctions. The claim was made by a Zanu-PF spokesperson in Harare Mr Claudious...
DRC: Alarm bells over poor funding for HIV treatment
2012-02-02, Issue 568
The lives of thousands of HIV-positive people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are at risk as the country faces declining donor funding and a severe shortage of HIV treatment, according to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). MSF recently launch...
Somalia: Mortality rates among world's highest in Somaliland
2012-02-02, Issue 568
The self-declared Republic of Somaliland is grappling with high child and maternal mortality rates, malnutrition and inadequate medical personnel, health officials told IRIN. 'Somaliland has one of the worst maternal mortality ratios in the world, es...
Global: Group comments on Global Fund crisis
2012-02-02, Issue 568
The UNAIDS Reference Group on HIV and Human Rights has released an independent statement in response to the crisis facing the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. It states: 'The November 2011 announcement of the cancellation of the 11th round ...
Africa: Men who have sex with men may now be the highest-risk group for HIV, study
2012-02-06, Issue 568
Men who have sex with men may now be at considerably higher risk of acquiring HIV than other at-risk groups such as female sex workers or young people of either sex, if findings by the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) of HIV incidence at ...
Global: Malaria mortality 'underestimated'
2012-02-06, Issue 568
A new attempt to quantify malaria deaths over the past 30 years suggests the death toll, especially among adults, has been greatly underestimated. The figures also show the fragility of the gains made in fighting the disease. Collecting data on mala...
Southern Africa: Eastern, Southern Africa scale up efforts against high AIDS prevalence, says UN official
2012-01-24, Issue 567
Eastern and Southern Africa, the region most affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, is making great strides to scale up access to prevention and treatment services, a United Nations official said today, adding that focus is on behavioural change and prev...
South Africa: 4.4m people lost to HIV/AIDS
2012-01-24, Issue 567
If it was not for HIV/AIDS, the population of South Africa would be over 4.4 million more than it is today, according to the South African Institute of Race Relations' latest South Africa Survey. The survey, published this week, says there are 50.6 m...
Tanzania: PM says govt ready to listen to striking medics
2012-01-26, Issue 567
The Tanzanian government has indicated it was bowing to pressure from medical doctors in public hospitals, who have been on strike to press for improved working conditions. Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda has appealed to the doctors to resume work, unde...
Côte d'Ivoire: Government scraps free health care for all
2012-01-29, Issue 567
Côte d'Ivoire is abandoning free health care for all after a brief experiment because of skyrocketing costs. 'In nine months the government had to pay 30 billion CFA francs [about US$60 million] under difficult circumstances,' Ivoirian Health Ministe...
Kenya: The downside of male involvement in PMTCT
2012-01-17, Issue 566
Involving men is increasingly being promoted as a key element in the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, and while its benefits are well-documented - in one Kenyan study it reduced the risks of vertical transmission and infant mortalit...
Global: Dangerous abortions 'on the rise', says WHO
2012-01-19, Issue 566
A rising proportion of abortions worldwide are putting women's health at risk, researchers say. The World Health Organization study suggests global abortion rates are steady, at 28 per 1,000 women a year. However, the proportion of the total carried ...
Global: Moving beyond aid to set the global health agenda
2012-01-23, Issue 566
This year, a well-known international meeting on global health research will adopt a provocative new theme. The subtitle of Forum 2012, the successor to the conferences organised by the former Global Forum for Health Research, will be ‘Beyond Aid’. N...
Senegal: Addressing Aids in Senegalese prisons
2012-01-09, Issue 565
Senegal has among the lowest rates of HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa, at less than one percent. But the most vulnerable group is men who have sex with men (MSM), nearly 22 per cent of whom are HIV-positive. Prisons are high-risk environments for the trans...
Mozambique: Own antiretroviral drugs to be produced
2012-01-10, Issue 565
Alexandre Manguele, the southeastern country's health minister, announced that the first ARVs produced in Mozambique, in partnership with Brazil, will be ready by July 2012. In doing so, it will be the first African country – rather than private sect...
Zimbabwe: Is another cholera epidemic on the way?
2011-12-13, Issue 563
Waterborne diseases, such as typhoid, dysentery and watery diarrhoea - all approaching epidemic levels - are creating concerns that conditions exist for a reprise of the 2008/09 cholera epidemic, which killed more than 4,000 people and infected nearl...
CAR: A state of silent crisis
2011-12-13, Issue 563
Five separate retrospective mortality surveys, carried out by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and other researchers in prefectures accounting for the majority of the population, show excess mortality above what is considered to...
Guinea: Evading the cholera epidemic
2011-12-13, Issue 563
With just two cholera cases reported in 2011, Guinea escaped an epidemic in West and Central Africa that infected 85,000 people and killed 2,500 in the first 10 months of 2011. Luck, as well as targeted prevention efforts on the part of aid agencies...
Swaziland: Failing healthcare system renews HIV activism
2011-12-13, Issue 563
A new wave of HIV activism is rising in Swaziland as people living with HIV take to the streets in protest, many for the first time in their lives, over continued shortages of antiretroviral (ARV) treatment. Swaziland's deepening financial crisis is ...
Chad: Mass meningitis vaccine campaign launched
2011-12-14, Issue 563
Chad has launched a mass campaign to vaccinate nearly 2 million people against meningitis A, the primary cause of epidemic meningitis in sub-Saharan Africa. This is part of a multi-year immunization campaign covering the 25 countries of the African m...
Swaziland: Contesting the Global Fund audit
2011-12-14, Issue 563
On the heels of a decision by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis (TB) and Malaria to cancel its next round of funding, the Swazi government is calling on donors to come to the impoverished country's aid. However, there are fears that the res...
Kenya: State freezes pay hike in public sector
2011-12-21, Issue 563
Cabinet responded to rejection of its latest offer to striking doctors by freezing wage increases across the public sector until Salary Remuneration Commission is constituted. It also ordered a raft of expenditure cut-backs in Government, targeting l...
Tanzania: Tanzania set to manufacture own drugs
2011-12-20, Issue 563
Efforts to integrate and modernise traditional medicines in the country have taken an upward turn with the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) gearing for mass production of its newly-developed remedies. According to NIMR’s director for r...
Angola: Availability, quality and utilisation of health services in Angola
2011-12-20, Issue 563
This report discusses the availability and quality of health services in two provinces of Angola (Luanda and UÃge) and reports how households perceive the level of quality and utilise the existing services. In addition to quality indicators such as t...
South Africa: Helen Zille’s ‘AIDS Gestapo’
2011-12-21, Issue 563
Blog Africa is a country summarises a debate over comments made by Democratic Alliance leader Helen Ziille, who has called for the criminalisation of HIV transmission, and saying the state should not have to pay for treatment for those who contracted...
Africa: ‘Nothing at Busan for African Women, Children’
2011-11-30, Issue 560
Although there has been considerable progress towards reducing maternal and infant mortality, millions of women and children in Africa are still in need of better health services, food and sanitation. Some 250,000 mothers are estimated to die in Afri...
Kenya: Crisis as doctors plan strike
2011-11-30, Issue 560
Kenyan doctors are set to go on strike from December 5, saying talks with the government over their terms of service had stalled. The Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union accused the government of dragging its feet in starting ...
Kenya: Men’s group fights stigma through farming
2011-11-30, Issue 560
In 2007, Robert Amakobe went public and declared that he was HIV positive. He formed the Elwesero Men’s Support Group with other men who were public about their HIV status. Theirs was probably the first men’s HIV support group in Kenya. It has become...
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