Health e News
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South Africa’€™s first bio-bank, a cold storage facility where samples from HIV clinical trials and other diseases can be stored for years to support future medical research, was launched in Johannesburg, recently.
Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi has announced his 25-person team which will advise him on the National Health Insurance plan crafted by the ANC. The team includes among others academics, pharmacists, researchers and the private healthcare industry. Chair of the ANC’s NHI task team Dr Olive Shisana will also chair Motsoaledi’s committee.
Anthony Mbewu, the current President of the Medical Research Council of South Africa (MRC), has been appointed the Executive Director of the Swiss-based Global Forum for Health Research (GFHR). Is this an appropriate appointment? By Nathan Geffen.
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A retreat from international funding commitments for AIDS threatens to undermine the dramatic gains made in reducing AIDS-related illness and death in recent years, according to a new report by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).The MSF report highlights how expanding access to HIV treatment has not only saved the lives of people with AIDS but has been central to reducing overall mortality in a number of high HIV burden countries in southern Africa in recent years.
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One of the organisers of the upcoming AORTIC conference and a leading expert on cervical cancer Professor Lynette Denny shares her thoughts on the cancer burden in Africa and what can be done to change the gloomy picture.
Read the story of Eunice Sanders, a young South African who relates her story of battling breast cancer.
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The cancer burden is rising rapidly in Africa with around 650 000 people developing the disease annually while treatment remains largely unavailable or inaccessible. Next week stakeholders will gather in Tanzania under the banner of the African Organisation for Research & Training in Cancer (AORTIC) to find ways to curb the more than 500 000 cancer deaths annually.
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By next year cancer is set to be the biggest killer in the world, killing more people than HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria combined. Dr John Seffrin is Chief Executive Officer of the American Cancer Society (ACS), the world’€™s largest voluntary health organisation fighting cancer. In an interview with Health-e News Service he spoke about the challenges facing Africa.
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Over 8 000 gynaecologists and obstetricians recently met in Cape Town where Professor Joanna Cain, a passionate voice on women cancers spoke of the world facing an historic opportunity to control and one day eliminate cervical cancer, one of the biggest killers of poor women.
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Accessing useful and reliable information on their condition is often one of the biggest obstacles facing people diagnosed with a life threatening illness such as cancer. The launch of a cancer call centre in Gauteng province is aiming to offer the support, information, advice and advocacy that is often lacking.
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The Tobacco Atlas is viewed as a critical weapon against tobacco. Along with detailed tobacco statistics on nearly every country around the globe, the publication offers in-depth information on the prevalence of tobacco and health, the costs of tobacco, the tobacco trade throughout the world, how tobacco is promoted and marketed, and the tobacco control efforts already under way.
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Over 4000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer every year in South Africa and more than half of them die. According to the Cancer Association of South Africa (CANSA) these numbers could be reduced if more men were screened.