IGIHE

Category: Health

  • School meal leaves 21 children dead in India

    {{At least 21 children have died and dozens are in hospital after eating free meals at a primary school in the eastern India, officials have said.}}

    The children, aged between eight and 11 years old, fell ill after lunch on Tuesday at the government-run school in Masrakh, a village 80km north of Patna in Bihar.

    P.K. Sahi, the state education minister, said a preliminary investigation suggested the food was contaminated by phosphorous, which is used to preserve rice and wheat.

    Bihar state official Amarjit Sinha told the Associated Press news agency that 27 children and the school’s cook were taken to hospital in Patna, the state capital.

    Al Jazeera’s Karishma Vyas, reporting from the Indian capital, said eight children were in serious condition.

    The meal was cooked in the school kitchen.

    Nitish Kumar, the state’s chief minister, ordered an inquiry. Authorities have suspended a food inspector and registered a case of criminal negligence against the school headmaster.

    Each of the families of the dead children are set to receive 2,00,000 Indian Rupee ($3376).

    Al Jazeera’s Vyas said the free meals were supposed to give the impoverished parents an incentive to send their children to school.

    “And in fact this worked. Studies have shown that this programme has directly increased enrollment of children in school,” she said.

    “So it is extremely concerning that, after consuming this state-provided meal, 21 children have died and more are in the hospital.”

    aljazeera

  • Tanzania Maternal Health Lagging

    {{Against the backdrop of the two-year countdown to the Millennium Development Goals, a Tanzanian activist and advocate of reproductive health education in the country for thirty years so far believes she knows the reason behind Tanzania’s sluggish performance in promoting safe motherhood.}}

    ‘’Government authorities are not politically committed and the people we target are not actively involved in reproductive health programmes,” says Ms Josephine Mwaikusye, who is the executive director of Umati, a reproductive health education advocacy non-governmental organisation.

    Ms Mwaikusye, who represented Tanzania at a recent global conference on safe motherhood dubbed ‘Women Deliver 2013’, which was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, has realised that there is every reason for her motherland to emulate the Asian country.

    “Malaysia has made remarkable progress in curbing the deaths of women who lose lives due to pregnancy-related complications,” she explains.

    Currently, the maternal mortality rate in Malaysia stands at 28 deaths per 100,000 live births but in Tanzania, women are losing lives due to pregnancy-related complications at a rate which is 16 times greater, with latest statistics pointing to 454 deaths per 100,000 live births within the past two years.

    “We were at the same bad level just a few years back but the country has embarked on deliberate moves to curb maternal deaths, leaving us behind,’’ she said on Suturday.

    According to the 50 year-old sociologist—a product of the University of Dar es Salaam — the alarming statistics could be reduced significantly if government leaders made the political will to curb the menacing deaths, citing the exemplary situation with the Malaysian government again.

    “In Malaysia, the government and the private sector have meaningfully joined hands in curbing maternal deaths under the Public-private-Partnership Programmes (PPP),” she says.

    “In our country, there is still regressive belief among citizens that provision of healthcare is the sole responsibility of the government,’’ she adds, pointing to the irony that the same government that grapples with laxity in tax collection is meant to shoulder the health care burden—meaning it also needs a helping hand from its citizens.

    “If the citizens took the cost-sharing idea seriously, I am sure a lot could be achieved from it. I would encourage even more people to enrol with the National Health Insurance Fund,’’ she remarked.

    Ms Josephine also believes, albeit partly, that Tanzania could get to where Malaysia is, if the communities they serve accept and fully support the projects on reproductive health—by sharing the costs, being eager to benefit from them, as well as shunning the belief that there is always someone out there to take care of their health.

    “For most health projects to be sustainable, it depends on the involvement and acceptability in the communities we serve and in Tanzania this is still very low,’’ she said on Saturday at a recent reproductive health workshop organised by Umati in Kibaha District, Coast Region.

    {The Citizen}

  • UNAIDS Accelerates Action On HIV Treatment, Prevention

    {{As an important strategy towards achieving zero AIDS-related death in Africa, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), Saturday, launched Treatment 2015 – a new HIV treatment guideline. }}

    The framework, launched at the International Conference Centre (ICC) Abuja, is to accelerate action in reaching 15 million people with antiretroviral (ARV) treatment by 2015 – the target year set by the United Nations Members State two years back.

    The launch was part of the official programme of the Special Summit on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which starts tomorrow.

    Executive Director UNAIDS, Michael Sidibe, said the framework offers countries and partners both practical and innovative ways to increase access to antiretroviral medicines.

    These medicines, he noted, would not only enable people living with HIV to live longer and healthier lives but will also help prevent new infections.

    Sidibe told international delegates at the launch that about 10 years ago it was thought that effective treatment at $15,000 per person a year and 18 toxic pills per day were impossible.

    “But today, with innovations that have created one-pill treatment a-day, we have reached more people… Countries and partners need to urgently and strategically invest resources and efforts to ensure that everyone has access to HIV prevention and treatment,” he said.

    Treatment 2015 outlines three fundamental pillars essential to reaching the 2015 target.

    The pillars are demand (increasing demand for HIV testing and treatment services), invest (mobilising resources and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of spending) and deliver (ensuring more people have access to antiretroviral therapy).

    NgrGuardian

  • Mandela Responding to Treatment

    {{Former South African president and anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela is responding to treatment but remains in a critical but stable condition after more than a month in hospital, the office of President Jacob Zuma said on Wednesday.}}

    “We are encouraged that Madiba is responding to treatment and urge the public to continue providing support and showering him with love, which gives him and the family strength,” Zuma himself said after visiting Mandela, often referred to affectionately by his clan name Madiba, in a Pretoria hospital.

    Mandela, whose 95th birthday is on July 18, has been receiving treatment for a recurring lung infection that has led to four hospital stays in the past six months.

    A presidency statement said Zuma “found Mandela still critical but stable, and was informed by doctors that he was responding to treatment”.

    The faltering health of South Africa’s first black president, a figure admired globally as a symbol of struggle against injustice and racism, has reinforced a realization that the father of post-apartheid South Africa will not be around for ever.

    His eldest daughter Makaziwe said in a court document filed late in June that her father was in a “perilous” condition and breathing with the aid of life-support machines.

    {agencies}

  • Population Covered by Ban on Tobacco Advertising Has Doubled

    {{At 2.3 billion, the number of people worldwide covered by at least one life-saving measure to limit tobacco use has more than doubled in the last five years, according to the WHO Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic 2013. }}

    The number of people covered by bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship, the focus of this year’s report, increased by almost 400 million people residing mainly in low- and middle-income countries.

    the Report shows that 3 billion people are now covered by national anti-tobacco campaigns. As a result, hundreds of millions of nonsmokers are less likely to start.

    However, the Report notes, to achieve the globally agreed target of a 30% reduction of tobacco use by 2025, more countries have to implement comprehensive tobacco control programmes.

    Bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship are one of the most powerful measures to control tobacco use. As of today, 24 countries with 694 million people have introduced complete bans and 100 more countries are close to a complete ban.

    However, 67 countries currently do not ban any tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship activities or have a ban that excludes advertising in national broadcast and print media.

    “If we do not close ranks and ban tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship, adolescents and young adults will continue to be lured into tobacco consumption by an ever-more aggressive tobacco industry,” says WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan.

    “Every country has the responsibility to protect its population from tobacco-related illness, disability and death.”

    Tobacco is the leading global cause of preventable death and kills 6 million people every year. It can cause cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and chronic respiratory diseases.

    If current trends continue, the number of deaths attributed to tobacco smoking is projected to rise to 8 million a year by 2030.

    In defiance of the deleterious effects of smoking, tobacco companies are spending tens of billions of dollars each year on advertising, promotion and sponsorship.

    “We know that only complete bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship are effective,” stresses Dr Douglas Bettcher, the Director of WHO’s Prevention of Noncommunicable Diseases department.

    “Countries that introduced complete bans together with other tobacco control measures have been able to cut tobacco use significantly within only a few years.“

  • WHO Wants HIV Patients Treated Sooner to Save Lives

    {{Doctors could save three million more lives worldwide by 2025 if they offer AIDS drugs to people with HIV much sooner after they test positive for the virus, the World Health Organisation said on Sunday.}}

    While better access to cheap generic AIDS drugs means many more people are now getting treatment, health workers, particularly in poor countries with limited health budgets, currently tend to wait until the infection has progressed.

    But in new guidelines aimed at controlling and eventually reducing the global AIDS epidemic, the U.N. health agency said some 26 million HIV-positive people – or around 80 percent of all those with the virus – should be getting drug treatment.

    The guidelines, which set a global standard for when people with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) should start antiretroviral treatment, were drawn up after numerous studies found that treating HIV patients earlier can keep them healthy for many years and also lowers the amount of virus in the blood, significantly cutting their risk of infecting someone else.

    “We are raising the bar to 26 million people,” said Gottfried Hirnschall, the WHO’s HIV/AIDS department director.

    “And this is not only about keeping people healthy and alive but also about blocking further transmission of HIV.”

    Some 34 million people worldwide have the HIV virus that causes AIDS and the vast majority of them live in poor and developing countries. Sub-Saharan Africa is by far the worst affected region.

    But the epidemic – which has killed 25 million people in the 30 years since HIV was first discovered – is showing some signs of being turned around. The United Nations AIDS programme UNAIDS says deaths from the disease fell to 1.7 million in 2011, down from a peak of 2.3 million in 2005 and from 1.8 million in 2010.

    Swift progress has also been made in getting more HIV patients into treatment, with 9.7 million people getting life-saving AIDS drugs in 2012, up from just 300,000 people a decade earlier, according to latest WHO data also published on Sunday.

    Indian generics companies are leading suppliers of HIV drugs to Africa and to many other poor countries. Major Western HIV drugmakers include Gilead Sciences, Johnson & Johnson and ViiV Healthcare, which is majority-owned by GlaxoSmithKline.

    {{“IRREVERSIBLE DECLINE”?}}

    Margaret Chan, the WHO’s director general, said the dramatic improvement in access to HIV treatment raised the prospect of the world one day being able to beat the disease.

    “With nearly 10 million people now on antiretroviral therapy, we see that such prospects – unthinkable just a few years ago – can now fuel the momentum needed to push the HIV epidemic into irreversible decline,” she said in a statement.

    The WHO’s guidelines encourage health authorities worldwide to start treatment in adults with HIV as soon as a key test known as a CD4 cell count falls to a measure of 500 cells per cubic millimetre or less.

    The previous WHO standard was to offer treatment at a CD4 count of 350 or less, in other words when the virus has already started to damage the patient’s immune system.

    The guidelines also say all pregnant or breastfeeding women and all children under five with HIV should start treatment immediately, whatever their CD4 count, and that all HIV patients should be regularly monitored to assess their “viral load”.

    This allows health workers to check whether the medicines are reducing the amount of virus in the blood. It also encourages patients to keep taking their medicine because they can see it having positive results.

    “There’s no greater motivating factor for people to stick to their HIV treatment than knowing the virus is ‘undetectable’ in their blood,” said Gilles van Cutsem, the medical coordinator in South Africa for the international medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

    MSF welcomed the new guidelines but cautioned that the money and the political will to implement them was also needed.

    “Now is not the time to be daunted but to push forward,” MSF president Unni Karunakara said in a statement. “So it’s critical to mobilise international support… including funding for HIV treatment programmes from donor governments.”

    The WHO’s Hirnschall said getting AIDS drugs to the extra patients brought in by the new guidelines would require another 10 percent on top of the $22-$24 billion a year currently needed to fund the global fight against HIV and AIDS.

    {agencies}

  • Bone Marrow ‘Frees Men of HIV Drugs’

    {{Two patients have been taken off their HIV drugs after bone-marrow transplants seemed to clear the virus from their bodies, doctors report.}}

    One of the patients has spent nearly four months without taking medication with no sign of the virus returning.

    The team at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in the US, caution that it is far too soon to talk about a cure as the virus could return at any point.

    The findings were presented at the International Aids Society Conference.

    It is difficult to get rid of an HIV infection because it hides inside human DNA, forming untouchable “reservoirs” in body.

    Anti-retroviral drugs keep the virus in check within the bloodstream – but when the drugs stop, the virus comes back.

    {{HIV gone?}}

    The two men, who have not been identified, had lived with HIV for about 30 years.

    They both developed a cancer, lymphoma, which required a bone-marrow transplant.

    Bone marrow is where new blood cells are made and it is thought to be a major reservoir for HIV.

    After the transplant, there was no detectable HIV in the blood for two years in one patient and four in the other.

    The pair came off their anti-retroviral drugs earlier this year.

    One has gone 15 weeks, and the other seven, since stopping treatment, and no signs of the virus have been detected so far.

    Dr Timothy Henrich told the BBC the results were exciting. But he added: “We have not demonstrated cure, we’re going to need longer follow-up.

    “What we can say is if the virus does stay away for a year or even two years after we stopped the treatment, that the chances of the virus rebounding are going to be extremely low.

    “It’s much too early at this point to use the C-word [cure].”

    It is thought that the transplanted bone marrow was initially protected from infection by the course of anti-retrovirals. Meanwhile the transplant also attacked the remaining bone marrow, which was harbouring the virus.

    However Dr Henrich cautioned that the virus could be still be hiding inside brain tissue or the gastrointestinal track.

    “If [the] virus does return, it would suggest that these other sites are an important reservoir of infectious virus and new approaches to measuring the reservoir at relevant sites will be needed to guide the development of HIV curative strategies,” he said.

    Berlin patient
    Timothy Brown, also known as the “Berlin patient” is thought to be the first person cured of Aids. He had a bone marrow transplant from a rare donor who was resistant to HIV.

    The two US cases both received bone marrow from normal donors.

    There was also a report of an HIV cure in a baby born in Mississippi, US. She was treated with anti-retroviral drugs at birth so it is thought the virus was cleared from the body before reservoirs were established.

    Dr Michael Brady, the medical director of the Terrence Higgins Trust, said: “It is too early to know whether HIV has been eradicated from these men’s bodies or whether it might return.

    “However, the case suggests that what happened to Timothy Brown, the Berlin Patient was perhaps not a one-off.

    “A bone marrow transplant is a complex and expensive procedure, which comes with significant risks.

    “For most people with HIV, it would be more dangerous to undergo a transplant than to continue managing the virus with daily medication.

    “So while this is by no means a workable cure, it does give researchers another signpost in the direction of one.”

    The head of the Foundation for AIDS Research, Kevin Frost, said: “These findings clearly provide important new information that might well alter the current thinking about HIV and gene therapy.

    “While stem-cell transplantation is not a viable option for people with HIV on a broad scale because of its costs and complexity, these new cases could lead us to new approaches to treating, and ultimately even eradicating, HIV.”

    BBC

  • UK government backs three-person IVF

    {{The UK looks set to become the first country to allow the creation of babies using DNA from three people, after the government backed the IVF technique.}}

    It will produce draft regulations later this year and the procedure could be offered within two years.

    Experts say three-person IVF could eliminate debilitating and potentially fatal mitochondrial diseases that are passed on from mother to child.

    Opponents say it is unethical and could set the UK on a “slippery slope”.

    They also argue that affected couples could adopt or use egg donors instead.

    Mitochondria are the tiny, biological “power stations” that give the body energy. They are passed from a mother, through the egg, to her child.

    Defective mitochondria affect one in every 6,500 babies. This can leave them starved of energy, resulting in muscle weakness, blindness, heart failure and death in the most extreme cases.

    Research suggests that using mitochondria from a donor egg can prevent the diseases.

    It is envisaged that up to 10 couples a year would benefit from the treatment.

    However, it would result in babies having DNA from two parents and a tiny amount from a third donor as the mitochondria themselves have their own DNA.

    ‘Clearly sensitive’
    Earlier this year, a public consultation by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) concluded there was “general support” for the idea and that there was no evidence that the advanced form of IVF was unsafe.

    The chief medical officer for England, Prof Dame Sally Davies, said: “Scientists have developed ground-breaking new procedures which could stop these disease being passed on, bringing hope to many families seeking to prevent their future children inheriting them.

    “It’s only right that we look to introduce this life-saving treatment as soon as we can.”

    She said there were “clearly some sensitive issues here” but said she was “personally very comfortable” with altering mitochondria.

    Scientists have devised two techniques that allow them to take the genetic information from the mother and place it into the egg of a donor with healthy mitochondria.

    BBC

  • Mugabe heads to Singapore for health check before vote

    {{Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe left for a medical check-up in Singapore on Tuesday, his spokesman said, a month before an election in which the 89-year-old is looking to extend his 33 years in power.}}

    Africa’s oldest leader – who denies reports he has received treatment for prostate cancer – will return at the weekend after a routine visit to an eye specialist, his spokesman George Charamba said in a statement.

    Mugabe has said he has cataracts but no other major health problems and regularly dismisses media allegations that his condition is deteriorating as wishful thinking by his enemies.

    He has often gone to Singapore for check-ups and passed through the southeast Asian city state during a trip to Japan three weeks ago.

    Mugabe’s main political rival, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, has called for a delay of at least two weeks to the vote, currently scheduled for July 31.

    Tsvangirai has appealed to the 15-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) to prod Mugabe into delaying the poll to allow media and security reforms designed to prevent a repeat of the bloodshed that marred a 2008 vote.

    The government has asked the Constitutional Court to move the date and a ruling is expected by the end of the week.

    Mugabe accuses his political rivals of seeking to delay elections because they fear defeat, a charge dismissed by Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

    The MDC says reforms to restrictive media and security laws are essential for a credible vote, and accuses Mugabe of using violence to win previous elections.

    Besides the quarrel over reforms and the election date, Finance Minister Tendai Biti from Tsvangirai’s party also says the southern African state does not yet have the $132 million needed to fund the election.

    Mugabe has been in power since independence from Britain in 1980.

    {wirestory}

  • Condom Supply To Be Intensified

    {{More condoms are expected to reach deeper at grassroots points in new distribution efforts that will involve small community groups to complement the normal channels.}}

    The national programme officer of HIV/Aids and Comprehensive Condom Programme at the UN Population Fund, Mr. Andrew Gasozi Ntwali noted ; “Previously, health centres were the last distribution outlet for free condoms, yet with the increasing demand, these alone cannot fully reach out to all the people in communities, except the few who only visit them when they are faced with other health complications.”

    He further explained that Health facilities and partners at the district level have not distributed enough to their target populations and sometimes ration the available stock, probably because they are not aware of existing stock at the central level.

    Between 2009 and 2012, a total of 77,962,520 condoms were distributed in the country, and more than 52 million were distributed through social marketing and more than 25 million condoms freely.

    Also 2,673,057 condoms were distributed in Rwanda via social marketing between January and March 2013 through Society for Family Health (SFH).