Preventable Diseases - Africa

U.N. peacekeepers outside the Golf Hotel. Credit:  Monica Mark/IRIN

COTE D’IVOIRE: Protecting Public Health Despite Political Impasse

The political stand-off between Alassane Ouattara, certified by the United Nations as winner of Nov. 28 elections, and the incumbent president, Laurent Gbagbo, who has refused to step down, is stretching into its eighth week.

SOUTH AFRICA: How Better ARV Prices Were Won

South Africa’s recently-awarded tender for antiretroviral drugs halved drug costs for the world’s largest ARV programme. Driven by a better-prepared and more aggressive government, the deal may stand up to criticism better than initially thought.

Health System Failing Nigeria’s Youngest Citizens

Despite some progress, Nigeria is lagging behind its peers in reducing deaths among children under five. The mortality rate remains worryingly high for newborn infants - 700 children less than 28 days old die in the country every day.

HEALTH: The Silent Killer that Continues to Claim Children’s Lives

Medical experts have warned that malaria and HIV have monopolised interventions geared towards curbing child mortality in Kenya, thus ignoring the equally deadly killer, diarrhoea. This disease has silently claimed the lives of hundreds of children every year.

Malaria, the Silent Killer in Africa Credit: John Robinson/IPS

HEALTH: Scientists Focus on Male Mosquitoes in Bid to Control Malaria

After successfully suppressing scourges of fruit, tsetse and screwworm flies in the Americas, researchers are exploring whether the same sterilised insect technique can be used to control malaria, which kills some one million people every year, many of them in Africa.

Mabalesa is now spared long, costly journeys to a distant clinic for medical care. Credit:  Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

TB Care Moves to the Community in Swaziland

Ntombikayise Mabelesa (36) is a recovering multi-drug-resistant (MDR) TB patient from Hoseya in the southern part of Swaziland.

WEST AFRICA: New Vaccine For Mass Campaign Against Meningitis

More than 20 million people will be vaccinated between now and the end of the year in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger as a mass vaccination campaign using a new conjugate vaccine unfolds across West Africa. Manufactured in India, MenAfriVac offers health authorities a powerful weapon against a deadly disease.

The aim is to vaccinate 72 million children at risk across Africa in 2010. Credit:  Ricci Shryock/UNICEF

DR CONGO: Lack of Funds Reverses Vaccination Gains

Health officials' fears that insecurity and a lack of resources could lead to fresh outbreaks of preventable diseases are being proved painfully accurate in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Polio - thought to have been eradicated in DRC five years ago - has made a frightening reappearance in Central Africa.

Maclean Kamya. Credit:  Credit: Evelyn Kiapi/IPS

UGANDA: ‘Why Waste ARVs on Sex Workers?’

Sex workers, among the populations most at risk of HIV infection in Uganda, say they are yet to realise their right to health.

The AIDS pandemic confronts individuals, households and communities with multiple stresses that threaten their livelihoods. Credit:  Davison Mudzingwa/IPS

AFRICA: Threat of a Perfect Storm – AIDS and a Fresh Food Crisis

In November, the Food and Agriculture Organisation was just one of many voices warning that food prices have risen to levels last seen at the start of the 2007-2008 crisis. A majority of the countries most exposed to a repeat of that problem are in Africa, where vulnerability to food security is exacerbated by AIDS.

ZAMBIA: Drugs Kit Helps Mothers Protect Babies

A thousand babies are infected with HIV every day - in pregnancy, during birth and through breastfeeding. Close to 400,000 African children are infected with HIV every year.

SIERRA LEONE: (Misused) Key to Malaria Prevention

Lucky for Osman Conteh that one of his aunts disagreed with the family consensus that he had been stricken by an evil spirit. She insisted the twitching, incoherently babbling child be taken to the hospital rather than a witch doctor.

Zambia Must Fulfill Promises to Children Living With AIDS

Less than one in four Zambian children who should be on life-saving anti-retroviral drugs is receiving them. The country planned to increase the number of children on ARVs from the present 20,000 to 120,000, but inadequate facilities pose a major stumbling block.

Malawi Struggling to Address Paediatric HIV

There are 91,000 children living with HIV in Malawi. A shortage of resources means that many do not receive proper treatment and care.

Examining a patient with drug-resistant TB. Credit:  Dominic Chavez/IPS

AFRICA: New Drugs To Speed TB Treatment

Researchers are testing a new combination of tuberculosis drugs on patients in South Africa which they are hoping will shorten the treatment term of the disease to six months.

Administering oral vaccine: a risk of polio epidemics remains as long as the disease exists anywhere in the world. Credit:  IRIN

CONGO: Polio Kills 100

An emergency vaccination campaign against polio begins Nov. 12 in the Republic of Congo, where an epidemic centred on the southern city of Pointe-Noire has killed at least 100 people since the beginning of October.

Malaria accounts for 20 percent of deaths of young children in Africa. Credit:  Julien Harnels/Wikicommons

AFRICA: Malaria Vaccine To Protect the Most Vulnerable

As nearly 25 years of development of a malaria vaccine come to fruition, health authorities across Africa will need to come to grips with how to effectively introduce it.

Cervical cancer screening in Soroti, Uganda. Credit:  Rosebell Kagumire/IPS

Cancer Treatment Out of Reach for Ugandan Women

Josephine Adongo's heart leapt when she heard that two doctors from Kampala were offering free medical exams in Soroti. She was diagnosed with cervical cancer at a regional hospital more than a year previously, but unable to afford to travel to the capital for treatment.

ZIMBABWE: Free Maternal and Child Care Needed From Government

Mother-to-be Agnes Ncube budgets up to 100 dollars each month from her informal roadside business just so she can pay for the maternal services at her local government clinic.

Treating a TB patient in Kenya: work is under way to develop more effective vaccines to prevent the deadly disease. Credit:  Julius Mwelu/IPS

Hope for Expanded Protection Against TB

Despite the availability of a vaccine, 1.3 million people worldwide died from tuberculosis (TB) in 2008, according to the World Health Organisation. Most of them lived in Africa and Southeast Asia.

DEVELOPMENT: Fate of Millions Hangs on Global Fund Pledges

Sibongile Mavimbela has been living with HIV for the past 12 years; she has been on antiretrovirals for the past seven. But the mother of two fears the supply of free ARVs could dry up in the near future if contributions to the Global Fund on HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria fall short of the $20 billion needed to meet development targets.

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