Africa is riskiest place to be born

waltky · May 8, 2013

Africa riskiest place to be born...

Africa is riskiest place to be born, report says
May 7, 2013 More than 1 million babies die the day they are born every year, and the 14 countries with the highest rates of first-day deaths are all in Africa, according to a new report released Tuesday.

Somalia, Congo, Mali, Sierra Leone and Central African Republic are the five countries with the highest rates of such deaths, according to the report "Surviving the First Day" from the aid group Save the Children. "Health care for mothers in sub-Saharan Africa is woefully insufficient. On average, only half the women in the region receive skilled care during birth," the report said. "The region as a whole has only 11 doctors, nurses and midwives per 10,000 people, less than half the critical threshold of 23 generally considered necessary to deliver essential health services."

The numbers in Somalia a country wracked by 20 years of violence with little established government and few health services are particularly grim. Eighteen out of 1,000 babies in Somalia die the day they are born, the report said. Five percent of newborns die within the first month of life and one in six won't live to age 5, it said. "What's worse, Somalia has seen absolutely no improvement in newborn or child survival in at least two decades," it said. Somali women have on average more than six children, the second-highest fertility rate in the world.

Pre-birth care to expectant mothers is largely not available in Somalia, said Dr. Omar Saleh, a World Health Organization official who frequently travels to health facilities in rural Somalia. "And then the natal care itself, which is delivery, some of the obstructed labors are delayed due to the long distances to medical care or insecurity or high prices of transport," Saleh said. "And then after delivery the main thing is the availability of incubators. And the whole science of neo-natal care is a huge science that is not well developed in Somalia." The one positive: "Everybody is working on it," he said. "The good thing is that everybody is aware."

In terms of absolute numbers, the most first-day deaths occur in India more than 300,000 per year, the report said. Nigeria has nearly 90,000 per year. Improvements in access to contraceptives, maternal nutrition and breastfeeding practices will save more lives, Melinda Gates, of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, wrote in a forward to the report. "Saving newborn lives will prevent incalculable suffering. It is also a vital piece of the global development agenda. The long-term economic prospects of poor countries depend on investments in the health, nutrition and education of the people, particularly the women and young children living there," Gates wrote.

Nearly all of newborn deaths 98 percent occur in developing countries, a statistic that underlines a widening gap between the health of the world's rich and poor, the report says. "A mother in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, is 30 times more likely than a mother in an industrialized country to lose a newborn baby at some point in her life," the report concluded. "On average, one in six African mothers is likely to lose a newborn baby, a commonplace but largely untold tale of grief."

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/africa-riskiest-place-be-born-report-says
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Anders Hoveland · Jul 15, 2013

Isn't this pretty much just like an abortion? Why should Liberals be concerned?
Oh wait, I forgot, women's choice.

waltky · Aug 17, 2013

African countries facing anti-AIDS drug shortages...

Uganda Health Clinics Face AIDS Drug Shortages
August 16, 2013 Ugandan health workers are facing a dilemma. In June, the World Health Organization recommended giving HIV positive patients anti-retroviral treatment (ARVs) earlier to reduce the risk of spreading the disease. But for the past few months, many doctors have been struggling to provide the life-saving treatment to anyone at all.

Clinics outside the capital have been complaining of drug shortages, especially of HIV test kits and ARVs. John Barasa, who heads an ARV clinic in Busia in eastern Uganda, says the government is not been delivering all of the drugs his facility orders. Of the 100 packs of ARVs the clinic requested in June, he says, only six were delivered. To make up for the shortages, Barasa has been stretching his supplies by giving patients only one or two weeks worth of drugs at a time. "Some, who have to travel for hours to reach the clinic, have been running out of medicine," he says.

Elvis Basudde, head of the Positive Mens Union, says he has been receiving complaints of drug shortages from clinics across the country. For HIV-positive Ugandans, he says, lack of access to ARVs could be disastrous. "With us, there must be strict adherence to treatment," Basudde said. "So whenever we have such problems and issues, and somebody cannot be able to access medicine in good time, you can imagine the consequences. It could lead to drug resistance." Yet Ugandan health advocates such as Margaret Happy, who works with the National Forum of People Living with HIV, say that there is no shortage of drugs in the country. "At facility level, it is very severe," she said. "However, at national level the situation seems to be very different."

Ugandan HIV/AIDS patients listen as a Mbuya Community Outreach doctor explains how to start anti-retroviral treatment, near Kampala

According to the Ministry of Health, Uganda has plenty of ARVs, enough to last until December. Ministry spokesperson Rukia Nakamatte says the problem lies with the clinics themselves, and with health workers who do not know how to use the governments new Internet-based system for ordering medicine. "The current shortage that we are experiencing in some facilities is due to increased orders that are being placed wrongly," Nakamatte said. "We have problems with some data entrants and bio-statisticians who are not able to enter the right data."

But in the clinics visited by Happy, this hasn't been the case. "National level transfers blame to the local level. Yet the local level [has] evidence that clearly shows that they make the right quantification, and they make it timely," she said. "The problem is with delivery." Happy says the new web-based order form is not always functional, and some of her fellow advocates also blame a new national supply system that prevents facilities from boosting each others supplies. Both systems would be good ones if they worked, Happy said, adding that unless Ugandas ARVs can make it out of the warehouses and into the clinics, they will not be saving anyone.

http://www.voanews.com/content/uganda-health-clinics-face-aids-hiv-drug-shortages/1731225.html
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Zambia Faces Shortage of Anti-AIDS Drugs
August 17, 2013 The Zambian government is putting in place stringent measures aimed at ensuring a sufficient supply of anti-retroviral drugs. The drugs are essential for those infected with HIV/AIDS, but the medicine currently is in short supply. AIDS patients have had to travel more than 30 kilometers from their homes - often on foot - to reach clinics, where all too often they are told that the medicine has run out.

This is the second time this year that the more than 500,000 people living with HIV in Zambia have had to cope with what the Ministry of Health calls rationing of the drugs - a system that some patients here have been contending with for more than a decade. It is a bitter pill to swallow, especially because obtaining medicine is not as easy as one would think. A check at some clinics in Lusaka shows that patients must turn up at 4 a.m. to queue services they will only receive hours later. Zambias Ministry of Health admits there is a challenge regarding the stocks of ARVs in the country, which it refers to not as a shortage, but as "rationing."

Chikuta Mbewe is the deputy director of pharmaceutical services. He said part of the problem was an ongoing switch in Zambia and other countries from one drug, Truvada, to another, Atripla. Mbewe said complications with the switch have driven down the stocks of both drugs. "I must hasten to say that there are a lot of planned shipments that have already started arriving in the country. We think now we are in the normalization curve, so to say. We hope we can get back to our normal levels, he said. Mbewe said the Zambia government wanted as many people as possible to be on [taking] Atripla, since an eight-month supply of the drug was expected to arrive in Zambia before the end of October. Mbewe said the governments strategy was to get 95 percent of people living with HIV using Atripla, to simplify the supply chain.

An HIV-AIDS patient (R) places her hand on her forehead during a visit by a caregiver at her home in Matero township on the outskirts of Lusaka, Zambia

But Felix Mwanza, national director of the Treatment Advocacy and Literacy Campaign, believed the ARV situation in Zambia could have been avoided with proper planning. To us, when they say the situation will improve by October, I think justifies what we have been saying," said Mwanza. "I think there is more than what the naked eye actually sees. Because if the government were saying initially that it will take two weeks for the situation to improve, and they and they move on to say that it will improve in one month's time - and this time they are talking about October - then who is telling the truth? So people should actually be asking questions, [such as] 'Is there something amiss?'"

Whatever the cause, the shortage is real. Ackim Sakala, a primary school teacher who has been living with HIV for 12 years, is not happy that he has to go to the clinic every month to collect his ARVs, though he acknowledged the situation could be worse. His clinic is only a kilometer away. I can imagine for those that walk long distances, I know what they are passing through. From the experience that I have had some people have been rationed to two weeks and you can imagine every two weeks they have to get to the clinic to collect their drugs. For sure there is a shortage," he said.

One of the long-term interventions that Zambias Ministry of Health wants to achieve is to attract investors to set up a pharmaceutical plant that will not only manufacture ARVs in the country but other essential drugs as well. In the meantime, all the people living with HIV have to face the grim reality of what the authorities are referring to as rationing, when the people that use the drugs call it a shortage.

Source
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waltky · Jul 17, 2016

End of AIDS not easy to reach...

Optimism About Ending AIDS Misplaced, Some Experts Say
July 16, 2016 As experts converge on Durban for the International AIDS Conference that begins Monday, even optimists say such goals won't be easy to reach

Everyone agrees it sounds like a wonderful goal: The U.N. AIDS agency aims to end the deadly epidemic by the year 2030. The agencys 90-90-90 treatment plan, using 2020 as a target date, aims for 90 percent of people living with HIV to know their HIV status; 90 percent of HIV-positive people to receive treatment; and 90 percent of people on treatment to show suppressed viral loads. The plan, in theory, would prevent nearly 28 million new HIV infections and 21 million AIDS-related deaths worldwide.

A man has his blood taken before being tested for HIV in Harare, Zimbabwe

It won't come cheaply, UNAIDS said. In the next five years, low-income countries will need as much as $9.7 billion, and lower-middle-income countries will need $8.7 billion. That means the bill will fall on wealthier international donors, like the United States and other Western nations. As experts from around the world converge on Durban, South Africa, for the International AIDS Conference that begins Monday, even the optimists say such goals won't be easy to reach.

Data look promising

That doesnt mean it's not possible, said Matthew Kavanagh, senior policy analyst for the U.S.-based Health Global Access Project. The health statistics look promising; some countries, he said, have reached the 90-90-90 goals and others are close. Thats what makes it maddening, he said: The end of AIDS could be within reach if donors invested more money and governments showed more political will to fight the disease. He sharply criticized major donors, including the U.S. and European nations, for giving greater priority to other problems.

A doctor draws blood from a man to check for HIV/AIDS at a mobile testing unit in Ndeeba, a suburb in Uganda's capital, Kampala.

Speaking to VOA from Durban, Kavanagh said he was worried that talk about the end of AIDS might overshadow problems at the conference. I am deeply disturbed that we dont hear the emergency in the voice of UNAIDS and the United Nations," he said. I hope that I dont hear a lot of happy talk about how were on track to end AIDS, because were not. We could be, but the world is not showing a political will. "Were halfway to a goal. If we get the rest of the way to the goal, we could actually be in the space to talk about the end of AIDS. But given that were not on not on track, we need to be hearing about how theres an emergency, how donors need to step up, how affected countries need to step up, how there needs to be a radical change in how we do business or we wont end AIDS.

Scientists' warning
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WHO: Suspected Congo Yellow Fever Cases Up 38 Percent in Last 3 Weeks
July 15, 2016 Government last month declared an epidemic in capital Kinshasa and two provinces that border Angola, health officials will launch a vaccination campaign next week

The number of suspected yellow fever cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo has jumped 38 percent in the last three weeks, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday, as health officials prepare to launch a vaccination campaign next week. Congo's government last month declared a yellow fever epidemic in the capital Kinshasa and two provinces that border Angola, where the worst outbreak of the disease in decades has killed about 350 people.

Staff members of the Teaching Hospital receive the first vaccination treatment for yellow fever in El Geneina, West Darfur

As of July 11, Congo had recorded 1,798 suspected cases since the start of the outbreak in January, WHO said in a weekly report, up from 1,307 on June 24. Seventy-five people are believed to have died from the disease in Congo, it said. Officials have confirmed 68 cases. But they have not been able to confirm or rule out any additional cases for the last three weeks due to a technical problem shipping a chemical used in the tests, said WHO's resident representative in Congo, Yokouide Allarangar. However, the issue has now been resolved and new test results will be available in the coming days, Allarangar added.

Health authorities plan to administer 1 million doses of yellow fever vaccine during a 10-day campaign beginning on Wednesday in the Kinshasa district of Kisenso and the neighboring Kwango province. Due to a global shortage of vaccines, plans to inoculate some 10 million more people in Kinshasa and along the Angolan border have been put on hold until August, when newly-manufactured doses from Brazil are expected to begin arriving.

http://www.voanews.com/content/who-suspected-congo-yellow-fever-cases-up/3420867.html
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waltky · Aug 25, 2016

Africa will remain a backwater, third-world region until they get their population growth under control...

Report: African Population Boom + Poverty = Dangerous Mix
August 25, 2016 A new report says children in Africa may account for nearly half of the worlds poor by 2030. That prospect the result of rapid population growth and continued poverty poses problems for the continent, but a solution is not far off, some say.

Nigeria is Africas most populous country with more than 170 million people and growing fast. The report by the London-based Overseas Development Institute (ODI) says the population boom coupled with existing poverty and extreme inequality are a dangerous mix. ODIs Kevin Watkins, one of the researchers of the report, says over the next 15 years, the African child will emerge as the face of world poverty. By 2030, around one in five children in Africa will be born into and raised in poverty. So the immediate thing that needs to happen is we need to lift the children out of acute poverty, Watkins says.

A health care worker attends to a pregnant woman in Busiu, in Mbale district, eastern Uganda

Family planning seen as key

Activists say family planning is a key component of meeting that goal. Nigeria alone will account for six percent of all global births between 2015 and 2030, the report says. The U.N. projects that by 2050, Nigeria will surpass the United States to become the worlds third most populous country, behind China and India. Its both a blessing and a curse, says Felix Obi, a development policy analyst in Abuja. We have the potential of having a very large pool of skilled workers if government invests properly in education and building human capital. If the population keeps growing and the government is not investing in the education of young people, its a recipe for chaos in the future, Obi says. In Nigeria, women on average give birth to five children, but its not uncommon to find 10, 14 or even 20 children in a household, in particular in areas where polygamy is practiced.

Sensitive subject

Birth control remains a sensitive subject. Its more of like religion. One of the things they say is that you cannot control birth because if God will give you. God will provide, says public health worker Bintu Konto. She says she often meets women who tell her they want to have less children but they dont know how. A key challenge for women in Nigeria is not just getting access to birth control pills or injections, but paying for them. The Nigerian government committed to allocate an additional $8.35 million annually to family planning in 2012. That was on top of its existing $3 million annual commitment. Family planning activist Chinwe Onumonu is lobbying for follow-through. Basically to increase funding for family planning and also to get the government to redeem its commitment it made at the London Summit in 2012. So what were trying to do is to first track and do an assessment of the bottlenecks within the Ministry of Health., Onumonu says.

A health worker explains birth control at a clinic outside Juba, South Sudan.

Logistical, financial woes

Contraceptives arrive in Nigeria via the seaport in Lagos, but according to Obi, there often isnt government money to transport them to local public health facilities. Procurement is just one bit of it. Its just the beginning. But for it to be used and get to the end user, logistics comes in, then the advocacy, sensitization and that bit comes in as well, so states are supposed to be able take care of some of these costs, Obi says. The federal government passed a record $30 billion budget this year. Only four percent was allocated to health, and out of that, family planning programs received a mere 0.3 percent. Activists say the government cannot continue to rely on donor agencies to meet its needs. Even Nigerias first lady has called for more commitment and funding for family planning services.

http://www.voanews.com/a/africa-population-poverty-family-planning/3480454.html
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