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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.
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/ 7 November 2007
In certain parts of Africa, female genital mutilation (FGM) has been linked to religion, with Muslim communities mistakenly believing that the practice is a religious requirement. But in Côte d’Ivoire, religion is also being put at the service of fighting FGM — sometimes referred to as female circumcision.
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/ 6 November 2007
South African medical authorities need to start thinking about tuberculosis (TB) and HIV/Aids as a single epidemic, rather than treating them separately, a TB expert said on Tuesday at a media briefing ahead of a major international conference on lung health, which begins in Cape Town on Thursday.
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/ 2 November 2007
Drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) and HIV have merged into a double-barrelled pandemic that is sweeping across sub-Saharan Africa and threatening global efforts to eradicate both diseases, according to a report released on Friday. Overburdened health systems are unable to cope with the epidemic and risk collapse, says the report.
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/ 31 October 2007
Zimbabwe has registered a 2,5% decline in the prevalence of HIV to 15,6% of the population, the authorities revealed in Harare on Wednesday. The latest decline is from 18,1% of the population in 2006 to 15,6% this year, or one in every seven people, Health Ministry officials were quoted as saying.
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/ 16 October 2007
Only 60% of HIV/Aids patients in Africa still take the drugs they need to stay alive two years after starting treatment, researchers reported, noting a grim reason many stopped: death. Of the patients found no longer to be taking the drugs after two years, 40% died and the rest missed scheduled appointments.
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/ 12 October 2007
Sixty-nine children in northern Nigeria contracted polio following a vaccination against the disease, a World Health Organisation (WHO) official in Nigeria said on Thursday. ”They were vulnerable [to this type of virus against] which they hadn’t been vaccinated enough. These are extremely rare cases, however,” the representative said.
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/ 12 October 2007
"Our crops have been destroyed by the water and houses have collapsed," says Egoliam of his village’s ordeal in Amuria, Uganda. The heaviest rains in 35 years have caused the worst floods on the continent in decades. Flood waters have destroyed vital infrastructure and left more than one million people needing emergency help.
African countries should make use of intellectual provisions to protect their innovations when it comes to African traditional medicines, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said on Monday. ”Africa should make use of intellectual-property provisions to protect its innovation with regard to indigenous knowledge and African traditional medicine,” she said Johannesburg.
For Malawian nurse Hilda Maganga, the financial pull of a spell in a ward in Britain is close to overwhelming her desire to tend to patients in her Aids-stricken and impoverished homeland. ”I would like to do a two-year stint in the United Kingdom, make my money and come back to retire for good,” says the 54-year-old.
Fresh from summit diplomacy with North Korea, South Korea’s government now faces an entirely new challenge — trying to set international quality and size standards for condoms. The five-day meeting, organised by the International Organisation for Standardisation and the Seoul government, will begin next Monday on the southern resort island of Jeju.
Zimbabwe set out Wednesday to demonstrate that Western economic sanctions were hurting ordinary people, the poor and even the unborn. In its first detailed policy statement on sanctions, the central bank disputed claims from Britain and the United States that their ”targeted sanctions” — like travel bans on top officials — did not hurt most Zimbabweans.
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/ 25 September 2007
International health agencies began on Monday to install two laboratories to test cases of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo, amid fears of an epidemic of the disease, World Health Organisation (WHO) officials said. The two laboratories will allow a precise diagnosis within two to six hours.
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/ 24 September 2007
Only -million out of a -million appeal has come in to help growing numbers of victims of Sudan’s worst floods in living memory, the United Nations said on Monday. Throughout Sudan, heavy rains have sparked flash floods and rivers have burst their banks, sweeping away tens of thousands of homes.
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/ 22 September 2007
Nine cases of Ebola virus have been confirmed in the West Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that is at the epicentre of an outbreak that has killed at least 174 people, a World Health Organisation official said on Friday. Symptoms of the epidemic were first seen on April 27.
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/ 12 September 2007
A tropical sun rises over Havana and in the neighbourhood of Vedado, a maze of worn, bleached apartment blocks, a unique healthcare system limbers up for another day. In Parque Aguirre, a small plaza shaded by palms, two dozen pensioners form a semi-circle and perform a series of stretches and gentle exercises, responding to the commands of a spry septuagenarian.
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/ 11 September 2007
An outbreak of Ebola haemorrhagic fever, a deadly disease for which there is no treatment, has been confirmed in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the World Health Organisation said on Tuesday. Samples from five people have tested positive for the Ebola virus in the southern province of Kasai Occidental.
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/ 10 September 2007
Men are five times more likely to commit suicide than women, the South African Depression and Anxiety Group said on Monday, World Suicide Day. The World Health Organisation (WHO), meanwhile, estimates that on average almost 3 000 people commit suicide every day.
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/ 5 September 2007
Seven developing countries in Africa and Asia will be the first to take part in a new global health campaign aimed at directing aid more effectively at the basic needs of poor countries. Health ministers from Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Zambia, Cambodia and Nepal will take part in the launch of the initiative at British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s office later on Wednesday.
HIV has slashed life expectancy in Zimbabwe by up to 19 years for men and 22 years for women but births still outpace deaths, according to the first study to detail how the Aids pandemic has affected the country’s wider population. The study, led by Simon Gregson of Imperial College London, sought to gauge HIV’s impact on Zimbabwe to see if researchers got it right in 1989.