Aids-related deaths in South Africa: 2 087 010 at noon on March 28 2007
TB infections: Tuberculosis cases are rising rapidly in the Mozambican coastal town of Beira, according to local doctors.
The city of half a million, which is the capital of the country’s most HIV/Aids-affected province, logged 2 736 new TB cases last year, a 5% increase from 2005.
Three patients who were suspected of having multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB, a strain of the disease that is resistant to two of the five first-line TB drugs, were sent to the capital, Maputo, for further treatment.
According to Custodio da Cruz, a local doctor, half of Beira’s TB patients are co-infected with HIV. Prevalence of HIV in the province is estimated at 26,5%.
The living conditions of the city’s poor have only compounded the problem.
‘The population of Munhava [an impoverished suburb of Beira] live in slums, without hygienic conditions, which facilitates the spread of the bacterium that causes TB, resulting in an explosion [of infection],” Cruz said.
Paulo Francisco (21) from Munhava contracted TB while nursing his mother. While treatment is available in Munhava, Francisco sometimes struggles to access it.
‘When I arrive late, I don’t receive my medication,” he said. ‘Sometimes I am dismissed from the clinic.”
Cruz noted that 320 TB patients had died after abandoning treatment. While seven of Beira’s 12 public health facilities provide TB treatment, Cruz said only one is adequately ventilated to lower the risk of TB transmission.
Source: PlusNews
Number of Aids-related deaths in South Africa: 2 073 735 at noon on Wednesday March 14
Longer life: Far more African babies infected with HIV by their mothers may survive to puberty than previously thought — but the health services are ill-equipped to deal with HIV-positive teens who need special care.
‘The findings are quite extraordinary,” says researcher Dr Liz Corbett, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
‘The phenomenon of long-term survival is poorly recognised and until recently has been almost positively resisted by the international HIV community because of the strongly held assumptions that survival from birth to adolescence with HIV was so unlikely without treatment as to be negligible. Somewhere around one in 10 infected infants — and perhaps even as high as one in four — may survive into late childhood or early adolescence without diagnosis or treatment.”
But late diagnosis is likely to have a significant effect on their future health, warns researcher Dr Rashida Ferrand. ‘A delayed diagnosis means that patients have a higher risk of developing serious opportunistic infections and may have significant and irreversible damage to vital organs … We also know that antiretroviral therapies are less effective if started in patients with advanced disease.”
It is also important to recognise that these children may have already suffered from the indirect effects of HIV, such as orphanhood, impoverishment and the psychological trauma of prolonged illness in parents, argues Dr Ferrand.
Source: Health-e
Aids-related deaths in South Africa: 2 067 095 at noon on Wednesday March 7
Targeting business: The Namibian government has called on Namibian companies to include HIV and Aids activities in their annual budgets.
At a meeting to discuss the impact of HIV/Aids on the transport sector, Works Deputy Minister Steve Mokgotsi said companies must stop thinking that ‘HIV will disappear into thin air”.
‘The impact of Aids is taking its toll. Gone are the days that it was just a responsibility of the ministry of health,” said Mokgotsi.
He said transport companies had a heavy responsibility, as their truckers were away from home most of the time and ‘have their sexual needs met while on the road”.
The work of truckers was critical, Mokgotsi said, and posed a challenge to their employers to explore the best ways to bring about behavioural change.
Johnny Smith, business development executive of the Walvis Bay Corridor Group that organised the gathering, said HIV was likely to undermine company operations until they acted to counter the epidemic. ”It is not just a social-responsibility issue.Companies need full-scale HIV work programmes,” he said.
All speakers at the meeting agreed that management support was critical in achieving a positive impact in the workplace.
Ohlthaver and List’s human capital director, Bethold Mukuahima, said his company initiated a strategic plan with clear goals in its fight against HIV/Aids.
‘HIV will not stop targeting your business. So don’t stop targeting HIV,” said Mukuahima.
Christoph Tjirongo of the Walvis Bay Corridor Group said awareness and prevention programmes at many companies ended with the distribution of condoms without a demonstration on how to use them.
Source: The Namibian