Health e News
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Young people are more likely to start smoking if they watch a lot of movies with cigarette-smoking characters, new research published in the journal Pediatrics suggest.
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A ‘vicious assault on people’s lifestyle choices’ by ‘Nicotine nazi’s’ ‘ that is how Leon Louw, executive director for the Free Market Foundation (FMF) described the new anti-smoking laws that will place severe restrictions on the areas where smoking are allowed.
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Researchers have found the cells at the origin of cervical cancer, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This discovery may offer new ways to prevent and treat the disease.
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The South African government should develop a plan to make healthy foods such as fruit, vegetables, and whole grain cereals more available, affordable, and acceptable, and non-essential, high-calorie, nutrient-poor products, including soft drinks and some packaged foods and snacks, less available, more costly, and less appealing to the South African population.
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The health care system must gear itself for an “explosion” of cancer and other non-communicable diseases, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said during a recent visit to the iThemba Labs in Cape Town.
Private medical insurance is a luxury less than one in five (16%) South Africans can afford, and it is not getting any cheaper. Studies reveal that in 1981 a household with one working member paid about seven percent of its income to medical scheme contributions, by 1991 this portion had increased to 14 percent, rising further to 20 percent by 2001, and by 2007 stood at 30 percent.
The Budget and Expenditure Monitoring Forum has expressed concern over the deepening crisis in the Eastern Cape health system and has identified ways in which civil society could continue to apply pressure on the government to take decisive steps in preventing its collapse. Read the full statement here.
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People at high risk of HIV infection can reduce their risk of acquiring the disease by taking antiretroviral drugs, according to Cochrane researchers.
Is it possible to control the epidemic of HIV by using antiretroviral therapy? This pressing question is addressed in a collection of new articles published in the open-access journal PLoS Medicine.
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An advocacy group affiliated with the American Cancer Society asked the Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services last week to direct the surgeon general to fully investigate the relationship between human health and consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, or SSBs. By Jennifer LaRue Huget for the Washington Post
CAPE TOWN – The time has come for social activists to campaign for a Global Constitution on the Right to Health ending the current status quo where ‘our ill health is politically constructed by those above us’, activist Mark Heywood told the 3rd People’s Health Assembly (PHA).
In South Africa and across Africa, HIV continues to prey on women, sex workers and men who have sex with men. It is clear that to end the HIV epidemic, we must protect and support these groups.By Festus Mogae and Stephen Lewis