Health e News
Every day, over 2,5-billion people suffer from a lack of access to improved sanitation and half of these practise open defecation, the riskiest sanitary practice of all, according to a report issued by the WHO/UNICEF.
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The United States Senate has repealed the entry and immigration ban on HIV-positive non-citizens.
Last week we reported on the launch of guidelines developed by the Southern African HIV Clinicians’ Society to prevent and treat TB and HIV in prisons. Their implementation will not be easy.
The World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts has launched an HIV and AIDS training tool-kit aimed at educating young girls who join the movement about HIV.
Health minister Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has told the Board of Healthcare Funders’ annual conference that the private health sector has seen an uncontrolled cost spiral since the 1980s and it has become increasingly unaffordable for South Africans to belong to medical schemes. She identified the most important cost drivers as private hospitals, specialists and administrative costs. Read the Minister’s full speech here.
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Discovery Vitality has introduced a program aimed at encouraging school children to live healthy lifestyles. A survey conducted by the Sport Science Institute of South Africa (SISSA) in 2007 indicates that the level of obesity among South African school children, because of unhealthy diet and lack of exercise, is higher than that of other African countries.
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South Africa’s more standardized HIV treatment approach in the public sector is as effective as the more individualized approach in Switzerland a comparative study has shown.
The Southern African HIV Clinicians’ Society recently published guidelines aimed at the prevention and treatment of HIV and TB in prisons, affirming the rights of prisoners to quality health care.
The AIDS Law Project (ALP) and Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) have hit back after two senior health department officials attacked one of its senior leader’s presentation at the national tuberculosis conference in Durban last week.
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In May last year, little Lara Price lost her battle against liver disease. For three months, her desperate parents, Rennie and Alison, waited in the vain hope that a donor liver would become available for their little girl.
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DURBAN – While squabbling over human rights and other issues around HIV, the country allowed the tuberculosis (TB) epidemic to grow out of control and take a hold over the country, AIDS Law Project Executive Director Mark Heywood has told delegates at the South African TB conference.
This is the last in our two-part conversation with Dr Thys von Mollendorff, author of ‘Dare to care’, a personal account of how political interference can deny patients the right to appropriate and quality health care.