Health e News
- ///Health
South Africa has to gear itself up for an additional five million people to become infected with HIV during the next 20 years even if the country significantly increases the money dedicated to treatment and prevention. A study requested by government The Long-Run Costs and Financing of HIV/AIDS in South Africa concludes that the country faces a major and mounting financial challenge to confront the AIDS problem and that U$102-million will be needed over the next 20 years to keep the number of new infection at five million. Read the full report here.
- ///Health
Berlin – Patients are at risk of developing resistance to Tuberculosis medicine due to lack of access to quality treatment, according to a report presented at the 41st Union World Conference on Lung Health.
- ///Health
BERLIN – It is a myth the drug-resistant TB is concentrated in Eastern Europe, with high levels of the disease reported from Khayelitsha in Cape Town, an epidemiologist told the 41st Union World Conference on Lung Health.
- ///Health
BERLIN – An important tuberculosis vaccine trial among HIV-positive participants in Klerksdorp has been paused this year due to funding constraints as governments and donors pull back in the face of struggling economies.
- ///Health
BERLIN – Although still a couple of years away – new, effective, affordable, better tolerated, short course ‘ tuberculosis drugs are in the pipeline and showing promise both for drug sensitive TB and the more complex drug-resistant TB.
BERLIN ‘ Unless South Africa takes action to prevent and rapidly treat childhood pneumonia ‘ the biggest killer of children under five in developing countries ‘ reducing infant mortality and reaching Millennium Development Goal 4 will remain a pipedream.
Although the HIV prevalence rate for pregnant women has been virtually the same over the past four years at 29.2%, this was still a ‘high and unacceptable’ level.
- ///Health
BERLIN ‘ AIDS activists are calling for the price of a machine which drastically cuts the diagnosis of drug-resistant tuberculosis to be reduced making it affordable to the regions where the epidemic is most serious, including South Africa. The development of the Gene Xpert is hailed as one of the greatest breakthroughs in TB control.
- ///Health
BERLIN ‘ Unless the money needed for tuberculosis is invested now the world will face a drug-resistant epidemic that will affect everyone in the world, warned Dr Nils Billo, Executive Director of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union).
Health-e is very proud to announce that our print journalist, Lungi Langa has won first prize in the ‘Stop TB’ Excellence in Reporting on Tuberculosis competition (low- or middle-income-country category).
- ///News
Provincial Health Departments will accelerate their male circumcision rollout as government commits up to R40-million towards the intervention.
The Treatment Action Campaign has published a four part series on what they call ‘a massive unethical medical intervention’ in Kwazulu-Natal.