Category: Health

The number of older persons – defined as aged 60 and over – are growing in virtually every country.

There were an estimated 605 million older persons in 2002 and the number of older persons worldwide is expected to reach more than 1.2 billion by 2025.

The vast numbers of the aging population is creating a dramatic change in how healthcare professionals view, manage and deliver services.

Prevention and lifestyle modification is proving to be the most effective mechanism to managing one of the leading health condition in aging females – menopause.

Women comprise the majority of the older population in virtually every country, largely because women live longer than men. However, women also tend to manage and take better care of their health.

1 in 3 at risk of fractures

Menopause creates special nutritional needs and lifestyle modification techniques to ensure hormonal balance, strong bones, effective weight management and chronic disease prevention.

Women are at greater risk of osteoporosis due to accelerated bone loss after menopause.

Menopause induced osteoporosis and associated fractures are a major cause of illness, disability and death. Women suffer 80 percent of all hip fractures and their lifetime risk of experiencing an osteoporotic fracture is between 30 to 40 percent.

Lifestyle factors – especially diet and exercise have been found to be effective preventative and corrective techniques in menopause related osteoporosis. Increasing bone mass can be achieved by providing the proper nutrients and stressing the bones in a healthy way.

The strength of bones is directly related to the amount of stress you place on them. The amount of physical activity one places on their body diminishes as we get older.

This reduces the load on the bones and will cause the bones thin and weaken.

The foods and nutrients that we eat play the most significant role in the development and maintenance of strong bones. A leading cause of bone thinning is inflammation in the body.

Inflammation is greatly influenced by the nutrients that we consume on a daily basis.

Calcium in more than milk

Providing one’s body with enough calcium is only part of the solution. Absorption of calcium is based on several factors such as amount of vitamin D, inflammation and overall absorbability of the calcium.

Calcium-rich foods are readily absorbable but nutritional supplements may not be.

The Harvard Medical School recommends that post menopausal women get at least 1,500 mg of calcium each day. Foods that are high in calcium include dark green, leafy vegetables, fish, beans, nuts and some dairy products.

Calcium needs vitamin D

Vitamin D is required for the body to absorb and make use of calcium according to The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Vitamin D acts more like a hormone and is involved in dozens of bodily functions including healthy bones.

One’s body produces Vitamin D with sufficient exposure to sunlight. It’s common to get less physical activity and go outside less as we age. These two factors will diminish one’s vitamin D production and calcium absorption. Vitamin D is also available in one’s diet. Foods that are rich in vitamin D include fish, eggs and dairy products.

Primary prevention and treatment recommendations for menopause-induced osteoporosis is improving one’s diet and engaging in a healthy exercise regimen.

Taking proactive steps early in life will greatly reduce the risk a broken hip or associated osteoporotic fracture later in life.

Dr. Cory Couillard is an international healthcare speaker and columnist for numerous newspapers, magazines, websites and publications throughout the world.

He works in collaboration with the World Health Organization’s goals of disease prevention and global healthcare education. Views do not necessarily reflect endorsement.

When I began working on malaria in the late 1970s, the disease was rampant.

Working for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, I was stationed at a hospital in the Western Kenya district of Siaya.

In the pediatric ward there were often two children to a bed, with more than half succumbing to malaria-related anemia.

Kenya didn’t have a strategy to protect children from malaria – at that time no African country did. In fact, bed nets, a cornerstone of today’s prevention efforts, were not being used.

They hadn’t yet been proven to be an effective tool for fighting malaria. Instead, the focus was on providing treatment for the sick and trying to delay death that was often unavoidable.

Malaria was, without a doubt, the biggest problem Africa faced; but it was largely invisible. It was not considered a national or global priority and international funding was virtually nonexistent.

We didn’t have the knowledge or tools to get it under control and make a lasting impact.

This all began to change, just over a decade ago. Data demonstrating the incredible power of bed nets began to mount and we realized the benefits of combining tools and strategies under national programs to control malaria.

Until this point there wasn’t a roadmap to guide countries, showing how to do it and what to expect.

Beginning in 2005, we had the opportunity to do just that, show how you could design and implement a national malaria control program and make an impact.

In partnership with the Zambian government, the Scale-up for Impact (SUFI) approach was implemented to rapidly deploy, at high coverage levels, malaria prevention tools to achieve maximum health impact.

Zambia became the first country in Africa to successfully achieve high coverage with tools like bed nets, and the results were nothing short of dramatic.

From 2006 to 2008, malaria cases, hospitalizations, and prevalence in children were reduced by more than 50 percent in Zambia – a major drop in a short period of time, never before seen in Africa.

The SUFI approach is now the global standard for malaria control, and has been implemented in more than 40 African countries.

Thanks to these efforts and the work of national programs across Africa, partners like the World Bank and the U.S. president’s Malaria Initiative – and a surge in international funding through organizations like the Global Fund – the lives of more than one million African children have been saved in the last ten years.

Today, many of the countries that were early adopters of SUFI are now setting their sights on eliminating malaria, a once unfathomable goal. Kenya is one of these countries.

The pressures and demands malaria put on the country’s health services have been relieved.
We know malaria can be controlled. We’ve seen the results.

Lives saved. Health improved. But controlling malaria isn’t an acceptable goal, and especially not when we see a very real path toward elimination for the first time.

It’s time to end one of the leading threats to Africa’s children by eliminating malaria. The evidence we’re seeing across Africa shows this is possible.

What’s needed now is a new road map to guide countries on the path toward elimination. And our group at PATH, along with national program partners, is working on the development of the practical experience at the program level to build such a road map.

We’re working with partners across Africa, like Zambia, to show what works and what’s needed and to plot the path ahead.

By maintaining the use of proven prevention tools while aggressively diagnosing and treating malaria, we can break the chain of transmission and end infections in Africa.

We’ll create malaria-free zones one at a time, and grow them – to districts, states, and countries. The fight will be long, but it’s one that we can win.

But to say that malaria can be eliminated in Africa does not mean that it will be eliminated. Success requires political and financial support.

It’s an effort that will require all of us – local and national governments, the global health and donor community, scientists and policymakers.

We know there are challenges ahead, with countries and partners facing competing priorities and financial pressures, but we also know this is a fight that’s worth it. Together, we can make malaria history.

Adapted from CNN

Twenty five low- and middle-income countries, including Rwanda, have managed to halve their rate of new HIV infections since 2001, UNAIDS said in its annual report on the state of the global pandemic.

The UN body’s World AIDS Day Report 2012 shows that in the last ten years, the landscape of national HIV epidemics has changed dramatically, for the better in most countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

Rwanda, Gabon, and Togo, are some of the countries which achieved significant declines of more than 50%, according to the report.

Globally, new HIV infections fell to 2.5 million last year from 2.6 million in 2010 and represented a 20-percent drop from 2001, according to UNAIDS.

Sub-Saharan Africa has cut the number of people dying of AIDS-related causes by 32% between 2005 and 2011.

Rwanda cut AIDS related death by 68%, Burundi by 51% while Kenya registered 71,000 fewer death and 48,000 in Tanzania, while Botswana one of the region’s countries with smaller populations but high HIV prevalence cut AIDS-related deaths reduced by 71%.

The report lists Rwanda among five countries in the region that have achieved more than 80% coverage of HIV treatment. The others are Botswana, Namibia, Swaziland and Zambia.

Most Rwandan nationals that complete their professional medical studies abroad are said to be reluctant on returning to their home country and instead takeup jobs abroad.

This is a major cause for lack of specialists in Rwanda’s health sector where hospitals are said to lack specialists.

Joan Matabaro a specialist in Charge of HRD, Capacity Building in General Directorate Ministry of Foreign Affairs urges Rwandan health doctors abroad to return home to help their country mate.

Dr. Musa Tugirimana is a Rwandan general surgeon from Belgium who has been placed by international organization for migration (IOM) at Kibagabaga Hospital.

In only 15 days he has operated 20 patients, most of them suffering from goiter illness. He also trained nurses.

“The Rwandan doctors in foreign countries might come back to Rwanda to support their country because Rwanda has many patients who need treatment.” said Dr. Tugirimana.

Mukarurangwa Doris is a chief in surgeon hall said that Dr. Musa helped in reducing a number of patient to be operated.

In Rwanda, hundreds of people daily from curable diseases due to lack of appropriately trained and specialized health professionals.

International Organization for Migration (IOM) and Migration for development in Africa (MIDA) heatlh project is a joint initiative of IOM, the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation (MINAFFET) in Rwanda whose overall objective is to strengthen the national health strategy and the health sector in Rwanda in general by providing return air ticket and a monthly subsistence allowance for the volunteer health specialis.

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Aid agencies and international groups are using this year’s World Toilet Day to highlight the risks to women and children from poor sanitation.

Since 2001, November 19 has marked World Toilet Day, drawing attention to issues of toileting and sanitation worldwide.

The United Nations says more than 2.7 million people die each year due to lack of sanitation, with almost 2,000 children dying each day from unsanitary conditions.

In her latest report to the UN General Assembly, Catarina de Albuquerque, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, has called for the elimination of inequalities in access to water and sanitation.

She’s told Radio Australia’s program the problem extends beyond the the right to sanitation, to other rights including health, education, work and the right to lead a life in dignity.

“It is a crisis that we are facing, and since sanitation is a taboo issue, it’s something dirty that we want to hide, we don’t want to talk about it, we don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

“So if we don’t talk about and if we make a taboo around it, obviously it’s very difficult for governments to prioritise it in their policy and address this problem.”

The United Nations says a lack of access to toilets remains an important source of global inequality, with poor sanitation almost exclusively a burden of the poor.

It says lacking sanitation not only made poor people sick; it also shrank their already limited possibilities by forcing them to stay away from school and work

Each year, children miss a total of 272 million school days due to water-borne or sanitation-related diseases.

“Each time I go on a mission for the UN, I always visit a school, and I always talk with the girls, and not having sanitation – not having girls’ only toilets – means after they reach puberty, they don’t go to school – especially if they have their period” she said.

“And I met some girls who tell me they miss school for one week a month…so you see the dimensions of the tragedy.”

Jane Caro from international NGO WaterAid has told Radio Australia’s program the aim of World Toilet Day is to bring the issue of sanitation out into the open.

“As long as we keep it hidden – partly because it’s such a taboo, shameful kind of subject still, shamefully – there isn’t the same kind of pressure to provide this kind of infrastructure as there is perhaps for other things,” she said.

“I think it is that silence that has allowed this to go on, and avoid thinking about it, and avoid, therefore, actually raising awareness, increasing pressure…and generally just being more open about the issue, which is I think the first step towards doing something about it.”

WaterAid says 1 in 3 women and girls do not have access to toilets, and unsafe or open toilets increase the risks of physical and sexual violence.

Ms Caro says they’ve found World Toilet Day events such as ‘Big Squat’ flash mobs help to raise awareness of the dangers through humour.

“There’s an obvious way to get people to talk about it, and that is our tendency to have ‘toilet humour’ as part of the way we joke with one another,” she said.

“I actually think using some humour…[makes] people think, because that’s what it did for me when I started to know about this, was actually to think about what it would be like to be a woman in a village where there was no toilet – or only one – and where it was not only embarrassing to reveal my needs, but possibly dangerous.

“It made me think.”

One organisation working on the ground in Papua New Guinea is A-T Projects, which uses local materials to develop toilets for schools and communities in in Goroka Province.

Director Miriam Layton says while some foreign aid helps in setting up proper sanitation, more needs to be done by the local and PNG governments to improve facilities.

She says she hopes the new female governor of Eastern Highlands province will help drive the push to improve sanitation needs for women.

“In our urban centres, as well as rural centres, there is no proper facilities to cater for women’s needs as well,” she said.

“So when women come for business in town, or for markets as well, they face problems when looking for toilets, and that is when they are arrested and there’s violence.

“At the moment we are still getting support from outside, not our own government – so we need to do a lot more work to convince the Papua New Guinea government, as well as the donors, to do more in this area.”

Seventeen students from the Integrated Polytechnic Regional Center (IPRC) have graduated after 3 years of intensive training program for hands-on medical equipment repair and maintenance.

Graduates received certificates from IPRC Kigali as Biomedical Equipment Technicians (BMETs); however this number is seen as low compared to over 47 hospitals in need of such technicians across the country.

The Acting Head of Medical Maintenance Centre (MMC) in Rwanda Bio-Medical Centre, Theogene Namahungu revealed that graduates will have a measured positive impact on the ability of Rwandan hospital BMETs to service and repair critical medical equipment.

Namahungu during a Health Technology Management workshop last month in the Eastern province, noted that insufficiency of Bio-Medical Engineers hinders progress in health sector.

“Many hospitals have medical equipments that are not in good condition and there is no closer collaboration between hospital technicians and the heads of hospitals in ensuring proper functionality of medical equipments”, notes Namahungu.

However, partners in the sector have pledged support to train more technicians in ensuring well trained Biomedical Equipment Technicians to support the public health system in.

The concluded training at IPRC in Kigali was done in collaboration with GE Foundation, Duke University, and Engineering World Health (EWH).