Wellness Update: Africa: key to improving the tenuous state of health care in sub-Saharan Africa is to train and retain more doctors and other medical

UMB News: "Professor George Magoha, vice chancellor of the University of Nairobi (UoN), understands that the key to improving the tenuous state of health care in sub-Saharan Africa is to train and retain more doctors and other medical professionals.

Last week, Magoha led a 12-member UoN delegation, including the deans of its schools of dental sciences, medicine, and pharmacy, and directors of its schools of nursing and public health, on a fact-finding trip to the University of Maryland's (UM) Baltimore campus. 'We came to strengthen our partnerships with the University of Maryland by visiting firsthand to our contemporaries in each of your schools, because this is one of the premier universities in the U.S.,' said Magoha.

According to World Health Organization records, Africa has only 2.3 health care workers per 1,000 people, compared with the Americas, where there are 24.8 health care workers per 1,000 people. There is an estimated shortage of 817,992 health care workers in Africa.

The Kenyans' visit is part of a five-year, National Institutes of Health-funded Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) to the UoN in partnership with UM and the University of Washington."

Wellness Update: Africa

Who will lead? - JSOnline:

We have passionate people involved in the infant mortality crisis, but the efforts are fragmented. Needed: leadership.....

Poverty, unemployment, segregation, teen pregnancy, obesity, stress and race all play a role in poor birth outcomes for African-American women.....

"Anything that can be done to reduce stress in a woman's life can make a difference in birth outcomes, said George Morris, immediate past president at the Medical Society of Milwaukee County.

Morris believes that it's important for someone to lead the infant mortality effort so that everyone can understand their roles. An effort to combat teen pregnancy, now on the decline in Milwaukee, is an example of how positive leadership can change bad outcomes.

When Milwaukee led the nation in teen pregnancies, many people had become complacent with children having children. But the United Way of Greater Milwaukee got involved and made curbing teenage pregnancies one of its primary goals.

The organization brought together partners from across all sectors of the community and explained that teen pregnancy was not just a problem in minority communities - it was everyone's problem. They were able to rally the community around the issue, and the results have been four straight years of reductions."

Wellness Update: Africa: Rwanda to Lead Region Health Labs Networking

allAfrica.com: East Africa: Rwanda to Lead Region Health Labs Networking: "Dr Daniel Ngamije, the Global Fund and World Bank project management unit coordinator said countries will provide leadership at the regional level by leading working groups in key technical areas where each country has a comparative advantage.

Rwanda will take the lead in determining the applicability of the performance- based financing approach to public health laboratories, document and share lessons.

Rwanda's Ministry of Health is planning to invest approximately $32million in e-health to support development of ICT mechanisms for its healthcare system including hospital management information systems, telemedicine and community based information systems across the country.

It has also been selected as a centre of excellence for MDR-TB for the Africa region by the Dutch TB Foundation (KNCV) and will also share lessons in this area."

Wellness Update: Africa: Counterfeit Drugs: Africa’s silent public health crisis ::: Breaking News | News in Ghana | features

Ghana News :Counterfeit Drugs: Africa’s silent public health crisis ::: Breaking News | News in Ghana | features: "The discussion’s moderator Bright Simons called fake drugs “the most systemic threat to healthcare in Africa”. Mr. Simons is the founder of mPedigree (www.mPedigree.Net), an innovative mobile phone-based system, which enables consumers through instant messaging to check the authenticity of their medications against a central database.

This kind of consumer empowered identification capacity is increasingly important as drugs are being manufactured by increasingly sophisticated counterfeiters who are able to reproduce medications, packaging and even security holograms that are indistinguishable to the consumer from the authentic products.

At the country level, Nigeria has been a pioneer in Africa in fighting counterfeits. According to a 2006 study, Nigeria was able to cut the proportion of fake drugs in the Nigerian market, from 48% in 2004 to 16.7%, at least over the period under observation."

WELLNESS IN AFRICA: AL Extends Business to South Africa, Announces Upcoming... -- HONG KONG and LOS ANGELES, April 14, 2011 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -

Artificial Life Extends Business to South Africa, Announces Upcoming... -- HONG KONG and LOS ANGELES, April 14, 2011 /PRNewswire-Asia/ --: "The Company currently already provides two mobile health monitoring apps: GluCoMo™, a diabetes monitoring app, and Opus-M Health: Neurodermatitis an app for monitoring the skin condition known as neurodermatitis. In the past, these two applications were targeted mainly to industrialized markets. However, GluCoMo™ as well as the upcoming patient monitoring app for HIV/AIDS will now also target the BRICS emerging markets of which South Africa is a new member. Featuring functions such as patient/medication monitoring, reminders, and education/health tips, the application will be built especially with the treatment of HIV/AIDS in mind. The Company will again be leveraging its Opus-M technology to power the backend system to ensure reliability and security of user-sensitive data.
According to AVERT, an estimated 5.6 million people are living with HIV and AIDS in South Africa in 2009 – more than any other country. It is estimated that in the same year, around 310,000 South Africans died of AIDS. The highest prevalence age group is 15-49, at 17.8 percent."

Circumcision best for older boys: MD

Circumcision best for older boys: MD

Health; Benefits only begin during teen years

BY SHARON KIRKEY, POSTMEDIA NEWS APRIL 4, 2011 4:13 AM

It's an idea that will make grown men squeamish, but a leading Canadian infectious disease expert says it is time to consider circumcising prepubescent boys, and not newborns.

With three large trials from Africa concluding that male circumcision cuts the risk of acquiring HIV by approximately 60 per cent in heterosexual men- data the World Health Organization calls "compelling" - Dr. Noni MacDonald says there may be merit in offering circumcision to young boys "rather than their baby brothers."

Writing in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, the professor of pediatrics at Halifax's Dalhousie University says the potential benefits of circumcision only begin to set in once males become sexually active.

"There's been a lot written about how important circumcision is now that we know about the African data," MacDonald told Postmedia News. The data also show a decrease in the risk of contracting human papilloma virus, or HPV, a virus that can cause genital warts, as well as penile cancer.

"The (infant) isn't at risk of HIV and sexually transmitted diseases, because they're not sexually active, so why are we rushing to do it at that time?" MacDonald said. "If you're really going to do this, we need to think of the timing. Why aren't we offering it to peripubertal boys, when it's going to be relevant?"

Men - and women - may squirm at the idea of routinely offering circumcision to older boys, worried it would be too painful and uncomfortable, she said. But babies feel the same pain.

"Why are we fine with doing it to a baby but not a young man?

"It's curious that a painful elective procedure of no major benefit to the infant until years later would ever be deemed more acceptable than the same procedure for a peripubertal boy," Mac-Donald writes in the CMAJ. What's more, unlike infant boys, older boys can give consent.

"The baby gets no choice, the parents make the decision," she said. "An 11-, 12-, or 13-year-old boy could really make a decision on their own about this."

It would also be an opportune time for parents to broach the subject of sex, she says.

"We could really talk about the other ways that you can decrease your risks."

"I think most boys would choose not to have it done. But it would be a prime time to discuss it."

Just how relevant the African studies - which all involved adult male circumcision - are for Canada and other countries that have far lower HIV rates isn't clear. A recent U.S. analysis estimated that neonatal circumcision would reduce the 1.87-per-cent lifetime risk of HIV among men by only about 16 per cent.

"It's not a huge decrease," says MacDonald. In addition, giving boys the HPV vaccine might be cheaper and far more effective at preventing HPV than circumcision, she said.

The Canadian Paediatric Society is in the process of trying to decide what to say about the topic. Several committees are reviewing the African data, said executive director Marie Adèle Davis.

The Ottawa-based group's current position is that the benefits and harms of circumcision are so evenly balanced that it does not support recommending circumcision as a routine procedure for newborns.

Circumcisions, which are uncommon in northern European countries, Central and South America and Asia, are largely a North American phenomenon.

The procedure involves cutting away the inner and outer layers of the foreskin. The cells of the foreskin are thought to be more susceptible to HIV infection.

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