Category: Health

{{The world marked on May 23rd, for the second time the International Day to End Obstetric Fistula. }}

This day was designated by the United Nations General Assembly, in 2013. This year also marks the 11th anniversary of the Campaign to End Fistula, which was launched by UNFPA, in collaboration with a wide range of partners.

The theme of this year’s International Day to End Obstetric Fistula, “Tracking Fistula – Transforming Lives,” reflects an important step forward in eradicating obstetric fistula.

The celebration, organized by the Ministry of Health in collaboration with UNFPA, will be held at Umubano Hotel on Friday 23 May 2014 from 9:30am.

The aim of the event is to publicly acknowledge the efforts of government, providers, clients, communities and development partners in ending fistula. The event will also help create awareness of the plight of women suffering from fistula.

Obstetric fistula is a hole in the birth canal typically caused by prolonged labour without prompt emergency care—usually a Caesarean section.

The woman is left with chronic incontinence and, in most cases, her baby is stillborn. Unable to control her flow of urine or faeces, she is often abandoned by her husband and shunned by her community.

“The time has come to put an end to obstetric fistula and address the circumstances that perpetuate it, including poverty, lack of access to health care, child marriage and early childbearing. We have the resources and know-how.

What we need now is the political will to elevate the status of women and girls, rectify inequalities and protect the human rights of every woman and girl, so that fistula may never again undermine a person’s health, well-being, dignity and ability to participate in and contribute to their communities”, said Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, UNFPA Executive Director.

{{The trial, which took place in the US, involved injecting two sufferers with a dose of the measles vaccine 10 000 times stronger than that used for normal vaccination. }}

One of the sufferers experienced a total remission with all of her tumours vanishing.

The other experienced a remission but her cancer soon returned, indicating the treatment might not work for all sufferers.

The mechanism underlying the cure involves the injected virus latching on to the cancerous cells, particularly those found in tumours.

The virus then destroys these cells, causing the tumours to disappear. Myeloma, however, is not restricted to tumours as it infects the bone marrow as well.

The measles treatment completely cleared the bone marrow of any cancerous cells, meaning the patient was essentially cancer-free.

This came after the patient had exhausted every other treatment option available, including radiation and chemotherapy.

Adding another kind of treatment to those currently available should increase the number of cases that can be successfully treated, boosting survival rates.

Multiple Myeloma kills over 70 000 people a year worldwide with a 5-year survival rate of only around 45%, making it one of the deadlier forms of cancer in the world today.

Treating cancer with other diseases has been trialled several times before, with mixed success. The problem lies in the fact that cancer is such a diverse illness.

No single disease can be used to treat every cancer, meaning scientists have to spend time determining which disease is best suited to the targeted cancer.

Because it led to complete remission, this is the most successful trial to date.

Obviously, results from two patients do not constitute significant evidence, but it is a cause for optimism.

The Mayo Clinic plans to build on this discovery with a large-scale trial that will be launched by the end of the year.

{Above , the most common method of processing local potent gin ethanol (Kanyanga) popularly consumed in the East African region. Ethanol is cheap and consumers in the region like it for getting high or ‘knocked-out’ quick. In some countries including Uganda its legal whereas in Rwanda its illegal. However, mass production of this gin from Uganda has found its way through porous boarders to Uganda and DRC,Kenya and Tanzania.}

{{In 2012, deaths due to harmful use of alcohol reached up to 3.3 million says a new report launched by WHO Tuesday.}}

Governments around the world have been advised to establish policies and strategies to prevent such alcohol deaths.

According to the report, alcohol consumption can not only lead to dependence but also increases people’s risk of developing more than 200 diseases including liver cirrhosis and some cancers. In addition, harmful drinking can lead to violence and injuries.

The report also finds that harmful use of alcohol makes people more susceptible to infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and pneumonia.

The “Global status report on alcohol and health 2014” provides country profiles for alcohol consumption in the 194 WHO Member States, the impact on public health and policy responses.

“More needs to be done to protect populations from the negative health consequences of alcohol consumption,” says Dr Oleg Chestnov, WHO Assistant Director-General for Noncommunicable Diseases and Mental Health. “The report clearly shows that there is no room for complacency when it comes to reducing the harmful use of alcohol.”

Some countries are already strengthening measures to protect people. These include increasing taxes on alcohol, limiting the availability of alcohol by raising the age limit, and regulating the marketing of alcoholic beverages.

The report also highlights the need for action by countries including:

national leadership to develop policies to reduce harmful use of alcohol (66 WHO Member States had written national alcohol policies in 2012);

national awareness-raising activities (nearly 140 countries reported at least one such activity in the past three years);

health services to deliver prevention and treatment services, in particular increasing prevention, treatment and care for patients and their families, and supporting initiatives for screening and brief interventions.

In addition the report shows the need for communities to be engaged in reducing harmful use of alcohol.

On average every person in the world aged 15 years or older drinks 6.2 litres of pure alcohol per year. But as less than half the population (38.3%) actually drinks alcohol, this means that those who do drink consume on average 17 litres of pure alcohol annually.

The report also points to the fact that a higher percentage of deaths among men than among women are from alcohol-related causes – 7.6% of men’s deaths and 4% of women’s deaths – though there is evidence that women may be more vulnerable to some alcohol-related health conditions compared to men.

In addition, the authors note that there is concern over the steady increase in alcohol use among women.

“We found that worldwide about 16% of drinkers engage in heavy episodic drinking – often referred to as ‘binge-drinking’ – which is the most harmful to health,” explains Dr Shekhar Saxena, Director for Mental Health and Substance Abuse at WHO.

“Lower-income groups are more affected by the social and health consequences of alcohol. They often lack quality health care and are less protected by functional family or community networks.”

Globally, Europe is the region with the highest consumption of alcohol per capita, with some of its countries having particularly high consumption rates.

Trend analysis shows that the consumption level is stable over the last 5 years in the region, as well as in Africa and the Americas, though increases have been reported in the South-East Asia and the Western Pacific regions.

Through a global network, WHO is supporting countries in their development and implementation of policies to reduce the harmful use of alcohol.

The need for intensified action was endorsed in the landmark 2011 United Nations General Assembly meeting, which identified alcohol as one of four common risk factors* contributing to the non-communicable diseases (NCDs) epidemic.

{{Rwanda Military Hospital (RMH) has launched a two week long Army Week Medical Outreach activities for youth undergoing Vocational Training and Civic Education at Iwawa Rehabilitation and Vocational Training Center. }}

The RMH is working in collaboration with Society for Family Health (SFH). Maj Dr King Kayondo from Rwanda Military Hospital (RMH) said that within two weeks, 1350 youth will benefit from free circumcision, HIV/AIDs counselling, Malaria, and hygiene.

While launching the Army Week at Iwawa on 2nd May 2014, Col Ben Karenzi, the Commandant of RMH told the youth that research has revealed that circumcision can reduce HIV risk in men by up to 60% and urged the youth to avoid sexual relations that can expose their lives.

The Director of Iwawa Rehabilitation and Vocation Training Center, Niyongabo Nicolas, said the Center runs a one year program aimed at rehabilitating youth involved in drug abuse and other forms of delinquency.

“They are taught discipline and benefit vocational training in construction, carpentry and tailoring”, he said.

SHF Director, Gihana Manasse told the youth that they are the force of the nation and urged them to adopt good attitude in the community.

{{The World Health Organization has declared the spread of polio is an international public health emergency.}}

Outbreaks in Asia, Africa and Middle East are an “extraordinary event” needing a co-ordinated “international response”, the agency says.

It recommends citizens of affected countries travelling abroad carry a vaccination certificate.

It says Pakistan, Cameroon, and Syria “pose the greatest risk of further wild poliovirus exportations in 2014.”

{{‘Ongoing risk’}}

“The conditions for a public health emergency of international concern have been met,” said Bruce Aylward, WHO Assistant Director General.

He was speaking after last week’s emergency meeting in Geneva on the spread of polio which included representatives of the affected countries.

“The international spread of polio to date in 2014 constitutes an ‘extraordinary event’ and a public health risk to other states for which a co-ordinated international response is essential,” the WHO’s International Health Regulations Emergency Committee said in statement.

“If unchecked, this situation could result in failure to eradicate globally one of the world’s most serious vaccine preventable diseases.”

The WHO also lists Afghanistan, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Iraq, Israel, Somalia and Nigeria as “posing an ongoing risk for new wild poliovirus exportations in 2014.”

It is only the second time in the WHO’s history it has made such a declaration, the first being during the swine flu pandemic of 2009, the BBC’s Imogen Foulkes in Geneva reports.

She says the polio virus is endemic in just three countries – Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria. But attacks on vaccination campaigns in Pakistan in particular have allowed the virus to spread across borders.

Syria, which was polio free for 14 years, was re-infected with polio virus from Pakistan.

Refugees are still pouring out of Syria, to Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, and checking whether all of them have been vaccinated will be impossible, our correspondent says.

{{wirestory}}

{{Resistance to antibiotics poses a “major global threat” to public health, says a new report by the World Health Organization (WHO).}}

It analysed data from 114 countries and said resistance was happening now “in every region of the world”.

It described a “post-antibiotic era”, where people die from simple infections that have been treatable for decades.

There were likely to be “devastating” implications unless “significant” action was taken urgently, it added.

The report focused on seven different bacteria responsible for common serious diseases such as pneumonia, diarrhoea and blood infections.

It suggested two key antibiotics no longer work in more than half of people being treated in some countries.

One of them – carbapenem – is a so-called “last-resort” drug used to treat people with life-threatening infections such as pneumonia, bloodstream infections, and infections in newborns, caused by the bacteria K.pneumoniae.

Bacteria naturally mutate to eventually become immune to antibiotics, but the misuse of these drugs – such as doctors over-prescribing them and patients failing to finish courses – means it is happening much faster than expected.

The WHO says more new antibiotics need to be developed, while governments and individuals should take steps to slow this process.

In its report, it said resistance to antibiotics for E.coli urinary tract infections had increased from “virtually zero” in the 1980s to being ineffective in more than half of cases today.

In some countries, it said, resistance to antibiotics used to treat the bacteria “would not work in more than half of people treated”.

{{Gonorrhoea treatment ‘failure’}}

Dr Keiji Fukuda, assistant director-general at WHO, said: “Without urgent, coordinated action by many stakeholders, the world is headed for a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries which have been treatable for decades can once again kill.”

He said effective antibiotics had been one of the “pillars” to help people live longer, healthier lives, and benefit from modern medicine.

“Unless we take significant actions to improve efforts to prevent infections and also change how we produce, prescribe and use antibiotics, the world will lose more and more of these global public health goods and the implications will be devastating,” Dr Fukuda added.

The report also found last-resort treatment for gonorrhoea, a sexually-transmitted infection which can cause infertility, had “failed” in the UK.

It was the same in Austria, Australia, Canada, France, Japan, Norway, South Africa, Slovenia and Sweden, it said.

More than a million people are infected with gonorrhoea across the world every day, the organisation said.

{{‘Wake-up call’}}

The report called for better hygiene, access to clean water, infection control in healthcare facilities, and vaccination to reduce the need for antibiotics.

Last year, the chief medical officer for England, Prof Dame Sally Davies, said the rise in drug-resistant infections was comparable to the threat of global warming.

Dr Jennifer Cohn, medical director of Medecins sans Frontiers’ Access Campaign, said: “We see horrendous rates of antibiotic resistance wherever we look in our field operations, including children admitted to nutritional centres in Niger, and people in our surgical and trauma units in Syria.

“Ultimately, WHO’s report should be a wake-up call to governments to introduce incentives for industry to develop new, affordable antibiotics that do not rely patents and high prices and are adapted to the needs of developing countries.”

She added: “What we urgently need is a solid global plan of action which provides for the rational use of antibiotics so quality-assured antibiotics reach those who need them, but are not overused or priced beyond reach.”

Professor Nigel Brown, president of the UK Society for General Microbiology, said it was vital microbiologists and other researchers worked together to develop new approaches to tackle antimicrobial resistance.

“These approaches will include new antibiotics, but should also include studies to develop new rapid-diagnostic devices, fundamental research to understand how microbes become resistant to drugs, and how human behaviour influences the spread of resistance.”

BBC

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