South Africa has made no progress in reducing its under-five child mortality rate, a report published on Wednesday showed. Countdown to 2015 MNCH: The 2008 Report was published by the partnership for maternal, new-born and child health (MNCH), an umbrella organisation comprising about 240 members.
Iraq on Wednesday marked the fifth anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein’s iron-fisted regime with the nation still in turmoil, the capital under curfew and a surge of deadly violence in the Shi’ite bastion of Sadr City. Iraqi officials said three mortar rounds slammed into Sadr City, killing at least seven people and wounding 24 others.
Drivers hooted their way through Mumbai’s first no-honking day on Monday, ignoring efforts to cut the ear-splitting cacophony of life in India’s most bustling city. Residents said they were unable to heed the police appeal to reduce the din because they could not make their way through the usual snarled traffic.
Weather-pattern changes are expected to have a negative effect on health and quality of life, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said on Monday. ”We need to take actions aimed at strengthening our infectious-diseases control, ensure safe use of water supplies and coordinate health actions in order to respond,” she said.
Climate change is one of the factors causing an increase in the incidence of diseases like malaria and dengue fever, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday. At least 150 000 more people are dying each year of malaria, diarrhoea, malnutrition and floods, all of which can be traced to climate change.
Israel has turned away more sick Palestinians from Gaza seeking treatment since Hamas seized control of the enclave and several have died each month unnecessarily. The World Health Organisation said Israel denied entry permits to 18,5% of patients seeking to leave the Gaza Strip in 2007 versus 10% in 2006.
The United Nations is to hold its first debate on road safety amid warnings that the problem is a ”public health crisis” on the scale of Aids, malaria and tuberculosis. Next week’s meeting will follow research by the World Health Organisation forecasting that between 2000 and 2015, road accidents will cause 20-million deaths.
Smokers are more likely to kick the habit if they are told how ”old” their lungs are, a British study found on Friday. The concept of lung age — measured by comparing a smoker’s lungs to the age of a healthy person whose lungs function the same — has helped patients better understand how smoking damages health.
Malawi lawmakers on Tuesday began examining draft legislation aimed at ridding the HIV/Aids-plagued country of quacks claiming to cure the pandemic through such remedies as sex with virgins, health authorities said. "When it passes into law, all traditional healers claiming to cure Aids will be dealt with," Mary Shaba, head of HIV/Aids issues for Malawi’s Health Ministry, said.
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/ 25 February 2008
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang on Sunday welcomed a new World Health Organisation (WHO) tobacco report that indicates that consumption of cigarettes has declined in South Africa. The WHO report states that higher taxes are especially important for deterring tobacco use among the young and the poor.
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/ 22 February 2008
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang on Friday said her efforts to promote a healthy lifestyle — including responsible drinking habits — among South Africans were not hypocritical. Speaking to the media at the launch of ”the Healthy Lifestyle Day” in Port Shepstone, she questioned why the media linked her recent liver transplant to her promotion of a healthy lifestyle.
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/ 14 February 2008
Malaria continues to cut a swathe through Africa, which accounts for most cases of the disease and of malaria-related deaths. A study by Burkina Faso’s Health Sciences Research Institute may point the way to reducing malaria’s toll on children, however.
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/ 13 February 2008
The KwaZulu-Natal doctor who faces a disciplinary hearing for giving dual-therapy drugs to babies at risk of HIV infection should be hailed as a hero, a doctors’ organisation said on Wednesday. ”To discipline him for doing his ethical duty is disgraceful,” the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society said in a statement.
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/ 8 February 2008
Tobacco use could kill a billion people this century unless governments act now to reduce smoking, the United Nations said on Thursday. In a strongly-worded report the World Health Organisation, the UN’s public health arm, said no country was doing all it could to curb tobacco use.
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/ 2 February 2008
The death toll from ethnic fighting and a police crackdown in western Kenya rose to 44 on Saturday, a day after the feuding political sides agreed to a framework to try to end weeks of violence. Thirty-four people have died in fresh clashes, police said on Saturday, including in western Nyanza province.
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/ 23 January 2008
Activists and doctors on Wednesday accused the government of backsliding on promises to provide more effective treatment to prevent mothers passing on Aids to unborn children. The Treatment Action Campaign said that more than 60 000 babies are infected with HIV yearly in South Africa, most of them in the womb.
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/ 10 January 2008
An estimated 151 000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the violence that has engulfed the country from the time of the United States-led invasion until June 2006, according to the latest and largest study of deaths officially accepted by the Iraqi government.
Cambodia suffered its worst-ever outbreak of dengue fever last year and it killed 407 people, most of them children, the highest toll in nearly a decade. Dengue, which causes fever had infected nearly 40 000 people since the first outbreaks last May, Ngan Chantha, director of the Health Ministry’s anti-dengue programme, said on Friday.
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/ 14 December 2007
In an act that has sparked outrage among Egyptian women’s rights activists, a controversial Islamic scholar filed a lawsuit against the minister of health protesting against a recent ban on female circumcision, a practice referred to by rights groups as female genital mutilation.
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/ 8 December 2007
The father of China’s latest bird-flu victim also has the disease, officials said on Friday, prompting World Health Organisation fears of possible human-to-human transmission. A Health Ministry statement said a 52-year-old man named Lu in the eastern city of Nanjing had the H5N1 strain, which killed his son on Sunday.
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/ 6 December 2007
A new strain of the deadly Ebola virus is thought to have infected 93 people and killed at least 22 in Uganda, including a doctor and three other medical staff looking after patients, a health official said on Thursday. Dr Sam Zaramba, the government’s director of health services, said the doctor had died after looking after a patient in an isolation ward.
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/ 5 December 2007
A new type of Ebola fever in Uganda might be less deadly than others — but that’s not necessarily good news. The World Health Organisation said last week that an ongoing Ebola outbreak in Uganda was caused by a new subtype, the fifth to be detected since the virus was first identified in 1976 in Sudan and the Congo.
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/ 4 December 2007
A blue pick-up truck pulls to a sudden halt outside Tiriri health centre in Uganda. Many hands surround it, lift the woman lying in the back and carry her inside to the examination room. She cannot speak and her breathing is laboured. Sister Mary Magdalene Anyait, the only member of the medical staff, has a look and takes the woman’s blood pressure.
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/ 1 December 2007
There has been great progress in the response to the challenge of HIV/Aids and few setbacks, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said on Saturday. Speaking at World Aids Day commemorations in Mokopane, Limpopo, Tshabalala-Msimang pointed out that the setbacks have been in the area of research.
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/ 1 December 2007
Activists on Saturday sought to keep the battle against HIV in the public eye on World Aids Day in the face of growing complacency amid progress in treating and slowing the spread of the disease. The December 1 event is traditionally a time of grim stocktaking as Aids campaigners sound the alarm over the disease’s rampage through Africa.
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/ 29 November 2007
In a rare public-health success story on the world’s most beleaguered continent, Africa has slashed deaths from measles by 91% since 2000 thanks to an immunisation drive. Worldwide measles deaths fell to 242 000 between 2000 and 2006, a reduction of 68% made possible by the remarkable gains in Africa.
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/ 28 November 2007
A plant found only in the Eastern Cape has been hailed as a new miracle cure for diabetes, the Herald Online reported on Wednesday. Researchers said ”astounding results” had been obtained from the effect of extracts of the Karoo plant Sutherlandia Frutescens in stabilising blood sugar in diabetes one and two.
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/ 22 November 2007
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Thursday that 164 people have died from Rift Valley Fever in Sudan, more than half as many again as the latest figure given by the Sudanese government. The WHO called on local media, community and religious leaders to ensure people know what measures to take to reduce the risk of infection.
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/ 22 November 2007
Lack of proper toilet facilities and sanitation kills almost two million people a year, most of them children, the World Toilet Association said at its first meeting on Thursday. ”It is regrettable that the matter of defecation is not given as much attention as food or housing,” said Sim Jae-duck, the association’s South Korean head.
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/ 20 November 2007
The United Nations has slashed its estimates of how many people are infected with HIV/Aids, from nearly 40-million to 33-million. In a report to be issued on Tuesday, the UN says revised estimates on HIV in India account for a large part of the decrease.
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/ 9 November 2007
The global burden of tobacco is going to get much worse before it gets better, an expert from the World Lung Foundation said in Cape Town on Friday. Developing countries will bear the brunt of this burden and its ”huge” economic implications, said Dr Judith Mackay, coordinator of tobacco control at the foundation.
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/ 8 November 2007
South Africa’s tuberculosis (TB) cure rate will reach 85% over the next five years, the Department of Health vowed on Thursday. Releasing the final version of its latest TB strategic plan, Director General of Health Thami Mseleku said the plan’s goals were guided by international targets.