Category Archives: HEALTH
Centre for African Family Studies Courses
Helpful courses
The Centre for African Family Studies (CAFS) is an African institution dedicated to strengthening the capacities of organisations and individuals working in the field of health, HIV & AIDS, population and development in order to contribute to improving the quality of life of families in sub-Saharan Africa.
To achieve its mission, CAFS conducts courses and provides research and consultancy services from strategically located bases in East and West Africa, with headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, and a regional office in Lomé, Togo. Highly qualified professionals, who form a multi-disciplinary team within the fields of reproductive health, HIV & AIDS and population & development, provide its services.
For more information visit their website: Centre for African Family Studies
I asked them about advice on funding for applicants to these courses and here is what they suggest:
“We offer courses in both French and English in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Togo. If you would like to receive funding for the course we advise that you ask your current employer or seek funding through another development or reproductive health iNGO, NGO, or donor agency that your organization has worked with in the past. DFID, DED, GTZ, UNFPA, UNDP, and UNCEF are some organizations that like fund capacity building activities/courses for CBOs or small NGOs. If you are employed at a larger NGO we suggest bringing together several employees for a custom training. This would be the most cost effective and have the greatest impact on your organization. Some of our clients based in Nairobi or west Africa have several employees from multiple countries take part in a joint course. For more information about us and our services please visit www.cafs.org or email info@cafs.org.â€
Gambia : Radio initiative against malaria
Malaria radio programmes
In many African countries radio programmes have proved to be a great way of communicating health issues to people. In The Gambia, a 26 episode radio series called Bolongodala (beside the river) has been produced.
Bolongodala – Gambia
Initiated by the Centre for Innovation Against Malaria (CIAM) Public Health Research & Development Centre in The Gambia, the 26-episode Bolongodala radio drama series was broadcast in Mandinka, the most widely spoken national language in Gambia. The drama, complemented by radio phone-in programmes and listeners’ groups, was designed to disseminate key messages on malaria control and prevention, such as promoting preventive health practices, in particular the use of insecticide treated nets to prevent
malaria.
To read more about it please look at the item on the Communication Initiative Network, where you will also find links to summaries about the programme and related reports.
http://www.comminit.com/en/node/283629/376
Potential of Traditional Medicine should be Fostered
Fostering potential
A recent press release from the UN Economic and Social Council 2009 Organizational Session Panel Discussion reports on the discussion about fostering the potential of traditional medicine in developing countries. Several issues were raised, particularly the integration of traditional medicine into main stream medicine and the legal protection and mainstreaming of traditional medicines. The development of a ‘traditional knowledge digital library’ in India which is ‘a database containing 30 million pages of scientific formulas derived from traditional medicinal substances’ was of particular interest.
The library’s creator further believed that traditional medicines would be prone to misappropriation by third parties if they were not properly codified, Mr. Rao said. Moreover, he believed that a central database would engender wider use of the medicines contained within it, while helping to preserve the attendant knowledge and skills associated with producing those medicines. The scientific formulas contained in the digital library were comparable to modern medical formulations, and were based on information gleaned from old texts. The library was the product of several hundred scientists. He said the digital library was now being used to facilitate international trade negotiations between India and other countries. So far, the Indian Government had reached an agreement with the European Patent Office so that herbal medicines originating from India could not be patented in Europe without first referring to the database. Negotiations on a similar arrangement with the United States Trademark and Patent Office were currently ongoing. He also said that access to information from the digital library was helping to lower the cost of producing medicines — for example, medicine to treat psoriasis was being produced at a cost of $50 per patient per year, as compared to $20,000 per patient through conventional means. The concept of a digital library for traditional knowledge was currently under consideration by authorities in South Africa, Tanzania, Thailand, Nigeria, Malaysia as well as countries of the Middle East.
Mothers in Niger care for their own health
Free pre-natal checkups
Niger has one of the highest maternal and neo-natal mortality rate in the world. The following article shows how free pre-natal checkups and encouraging mothers to be to seek for expert help with deliveries are helping to address this. These pre-natal clinics also give each mother ‘an insecticide-treated bed net, essential medicine and vaccines to prevent malaria and tetanus, and vitamins and micronutrients to promote a healthy and risk-free pregnancy’.
A literature review of district health systems in East and Southern Africa
Participation in health in Southern Africa
A literature review of district health systems in East and Southern Africa: facilitators and barriers to participation in health byL. L. Levers; F. I. Magweva; E. Mpofu, EQUINET: Network for Equity in Health in Southern Africa, 2007
This Equinet paper reviews evidence on community voice, roles and participation in primary health care and district health systems in sub-Saharan Africa, and examines facilitators and barriers to participation. The paper finds that governments developed policies for dealing with community participation in local health care, but there was little, if any, implementation of these policies. Both national and international efforts to implement public health strategies often ignore local input and the delivery of ‘decentralised’ health care has often lost touch with local communities.
Download a pdf of the Literature of District Health Systems in East and Southern Africa
SIERRA LEONE: Emergency wheelbarrows replace missing doctors
A sad story
The following story brought tears to my eyes. The lady who lost the baby is my namesake.
CHARLOTTE, 22 January (IRIN) – The recently-built health centre in the Sierra Leonean village of Charlotte was shuttered. Inside were lamps without bulbs, infant scales that had not weighed any babies, an unused baby cot, boxes of surgical plaster, unopened bottles of formaldehyde, and rows of beds without mattresses.
Two apartments next door intended for health centre staff remained unoccupied.Since the health centre – on the outskirts of the capital Freetown – was opened in June 2007 by then Health Minister Abattor Thomas, no patients have been treated. At the opening ceremony, the minister said solar-powered lights, running water and at least one doctor would soon arrive.
Months later, the then-ruling Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) was defeated in both legislative and presidential elections. With a different health minister in place, the clinic remained unopened. “Those promises went out the window,” said village leader Mody Conteh. “Now the centre sits there and sticks out like a bandaged thumb.”
Residents told IRIN the most recent medical intervention in their village was a temporary voluntary clinic operated by visiting Cuban doctors in April 2008 who treated dozens, and distributed free antibiotics and anti-worm medication. But once the medicines were distributed, the doctors left, along with their mobile clinic.
Emergency wheelbarrow
Charlotte resident Aminata Conteh told IRIN she was pregnant in January 2008.
When she went into labour her pains persisted and the local traditional birth attendant was unable to treat her problem. With no other transportation, neighbours placed her in a wheelbarrow and pushed her 9km to the closest health centre in the neighbouring village of Regent.
She lost the baby.
“This is what happens to most of our sick people. Especially those who fall severely sick in the night – look at the road”, said village leader Conteh, pointing at a dusty rocky dirt path, “How can you carry someone in the middle of the night along this road?”
Villagers told IRIN for medical emergencies they travel by foot to the outskirts of Regent before continuing by car to the village health centre.
Sierra Leone has the world’s highest recorded maternal mortality rate and consistently falls at the bottom of a UN ranking of living conditions in 179 rated countries. Â The UN Children’s Fund in its State of the World’s Children Report found that in 2005, for every 100,000 births, 2,100 women died.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=82018The 11-year brutal civil conflict that officially ended in 2002 displaced at least two million and killed and mutilated unknown numbers. As of 2004, the government reported only 168 doctors, about 2,500 nurses and midwives, and some 550 traditional or community healers remaining to serve more than five million people.
WHO recommends at least one doctor per 10,000 residents.
Using the government’s 2006 population count of 5.7 million, and factoring in health staffing changes, the country still has approximately one third fewer doctors than needed to ensure everyone can access basic health services.
Charlotte’s residents said they are eager for anyone to staff the centre, even just to record births and deaths so there are records the village existed.
© IRIN. All rights reserved. More humanitarian news and analysis: http://www.irinnews.org
[This item comes to you via IRIN, the humanitarian news and analysis service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the United Nations or its Member States. Reposting or reproduction, with attribution, for non-commercial purposes is permitted. Terms and conditions: http://www.irinnews.org/copyright.aspx
Edutainment : The SADC, Drama for Life Programme
Education through drama
The Drama for Life Programme was developed by SADC in partnership with GTZ. It aims to build capacity in the area of HIV/AIDS and education through drama and theatre. Launched in 2006, the three-year programme runs in all SADC member states which include Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The programme plans to stimulate a stronger use of Applied Drama and Theatre practices (Drama in education, Drama Therapy, Playback Theatre, Theatre in education, Theatre of the oppressed, Community Theatre and Theatre for Development) in the fight against HIV/AIDS in the region.
Are Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Unfair to Africa?
MDGs and Africa
WordPress.com is home to a diversity of good content blogs not found on many other sites. One of the blogs I follow is IH-Blog which is the blog of the APHA International Health Section. You’ll find a number of thoughtful articles there on health topics. The following article picks up the argument about Millennium Development Goals and contains a link to the paper under discussion. You may also want to follow some of the discussion that ensued on the blog.
Posted by Eckhard on February 9, 2008
“At the midway point between their adoption in 2000 and the 2015 target date for achieving the Millennium Development Goals, sub-Saharan Africa is not on track to achieve any of the Goalsâ€.
Yes, according to William Easterly, author of “The White Man’s Burdenâ€, at a February 6 event, Africa was set up to fail by the way MDG targets were set and indicators defined (http://www.brookings.edu/events/2008/0206_africa.aspx).
Download the pdf of Millennium Development Goals Africa 2008 HERE
Download the pdf of Millennium Development Goals Africa 2009 HERE
Paper : An evaluation of infant immunization in Africa
An evaluation of infant immunization in Africa: is a transformation in progress?
Authors: L. Arevshatian; C. J. Clements; S. K. Lwanga
Publisher: Bulletin of the World Health Organization : the International Journal of Public Health, 2007
This paper, in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, assesses the progress towards meeting the goals of the African Regional strategic Plan of the Expanded Programme on Immunisation between 2001 and 2005. These goals include: to interrupt the circulation of wild polio virus in all countries; eliminate maternal and neonatal tetanus in all high-risk districts; 80 per cent of the countries to have reached at least 80 per cent diphtheria-tetanus-pertissus-3 (DTP-3) coverage; and measles to be controlled and eliminated in Southern Africa.
The paper finds that although more infants had been immunised by 2005, most of the targets had been missed by at least half of the region’s counties. The authors estimate that DTP-3 coverage increased from 54 per cent in 2000 to 69 per cent in 2004, and as a result the number of non-immunised children declined from 1.4 million in 2002 to 900,000 in 2004. Reported measles cases dropped from 520,000 in 2000 to 316,000 in 2005 and mortality was reduced by approximately 60 per cent. The paper concludes that the rates of immunisation coverage are improving dramatically in the WHO African Region. The huge increases in spending on immunisation and the related improvements in programme performance are linked predominantly to increases in donor funding.
http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/85/6/06-031526/en/
Africa Malawi : A hospital horror story
Chiradzulu district hospital shame
I guess I have been around long enough that I am rarely really shocked. However, a story on IPS News from Malawi caught my eye, and yes – I admit it – I am shocked. Read the following:
LILONGWE, Jun 27 (IPS) – Gladys Mawera’s face is contorted with pain -– both she and her newborn baby survived a complicated birth three days ago — but she has not been able to take the painkillers and antibiotics prescribed to her by the medical personnel at the Chiradzulu District Hospital in southern Malawi. The hospital has been without water for five days.
“I am disgusted with my own smell and that of my baby,” says Mawera, who is still wrapped in bloodstained linens as she cradles her child. “There is literally not a drop of water around here,” worries Mawera.
That last line in the highlighted paragraph does it for me. As you read on in the article your mouth drops further and further.
This is not some rustic hospital in the back of beyond. This is a state of the art modern hospital built in 2005 at a cost of 25 million dollars European Union funding which is trying to exist with highly erratic water supplies. In this state of the art hospital, x-rays services are suspended, operations are suspended, patients do not even have water to drink, nurses and doctors do not have water to wash in, linen cannot be washed. How can the hospital function? Relatives of patients are sent out under cover of darkness to ‘pinch’ water from community boreholes. A dangerous practice because of snakes, dogs and community disquiet over the practice.
“The real beneficiaries pay for the maintenance of the boreholes and they’re not happy to see strangers drawing water from their facilities. The people from the hospital therefore have to wait until the owners of the boreholes are sleeping to collect water for the patients,”
Why?
The problem appears to be a local planning one. The hospital was built without its own reservoir and it is higher than the local reservoir.
“Ideally, we should have constructed a new reservoir to cater for the hospital,” says Bulukutu.
He said there is need to upgrade the whole water system in the district to improve the pumping of water from the reservoir. Bulukutu says there is a proposal to construct a new dam on a higher ground which will be used as the hospital’s new reservoir to satisfy the water demand. But as funds have not yet been set aside for this project, this is far from an immediate solution.
Meanwhile the EU has promised the construction of a borehole within the hospital premises as a short term solution to the water problems.
My question is, why on earth was that not done when the hospital was constructed? Or at least when the problem was recognised.
Free resource: Handbook on community-led total sanitation
Handbook on community-led total sanitation
How to facilitate community-led total sanitation
Authors: K. Kar; R. Chambers
Publisher: Plan International, 2008
Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) is a participatory process focused on promoting change in sanitation behaviour through social action - stimulated by facilitators from within or outside the community. Aimed at empowering local communities this handbook is a source of ideas and experiences to be used for CLTS orientation workshops, advocacy to stakeholders as well as for implementing CLTS activities. It is intended as a tool for field staff, facilitators and trainers to plan, implement and follow up on CLTS activities.
A sequence of possible steps and tools, including do’s and don’t, are provided to help trigger CLTS in a community. They include:
- Pre-triggering
- Selecting a community
- Introduction and building rapport
- Triggering
- Participatory sanitation profile analysis
- Ignition moment
- Post-triggering
- Action planning by the community
- Follow up
- Scaling up and going beyond CLTS
Users are encouraged to use and modify the processes outlined in this handbook as they see fit to compliment their given context.
Source:Â ELDIS
AFRICA: Mind your language – a short guide to HIV/AIDS slang
There’s an interesting article on IRIN NEWS about a glossary of the language used in several African countries to refer to HIV/AIDS. (Click the link to access the article)
Many agencies are concerned about how the negative connotations in the language used on the street undermines the efforts to reduce the stigma of the disease. One researcher cited in the article says “Language can neither be separated from our thoughts and feelings, nor from the social context in which it is used,” she said. “Words and images create different conceptual realities of the phenomenon.”
PlusNews is interested to hear from you if you can improve this glossary. Please send your examples, with a brief description of meaning and where the slang is used, to: mail@plusnews.org
Here is the glossary to date:
Angola (Portuguese)
Pisar pisar na min – Contracting HIV is like having “stepped on a landmine”
Bichinho – “Little bug” (the virus)
Kenya (Kikuyu, spoken mainly in central Kenya)
kagunyo – “The worm” (euphemism for HIV)
Nigeria (Hausa, spoken mainly in the north)
Kabari Salama aalaiku – Literally translates as “Excuse me, grave” (reference to AIDS)
Tewo Zamani - Translates as the “sickness of this generation†(another reference to AIDS)
Nigeria (Igbo, spoken mainly in the east)
Ato nai ise - “Five and three” (5 + 3 = 8, and “eight” sounds like “AIDS”)
Oria Obiri na aja ocha - “Sickness that ends in death” (euphemism for AIDS)
Nigeria (Yoruba, spoken mainly in the west)
Eedi – “Curse”
Arun ti ogbogun – “Sickness without cure”
Nigeria (Pidgin, the unofficial lingua franca)
He don carry – “He carries the virus”
Nigeria (English)
HIV - He Intends Victory (acronym of HIV and a phrase popular among born-again Christians)
South Africa (IsiXhosa and IsiZulu)
Udlala ilotto - “Playing the lotto” /ubambe ilotto – “won the lotto” (said of someone suspected of being HIV positive; Lotto is the national lottery)
Unyathele icable – Contracting HIV is like “stepping on a live wire”
South Africa (English)
House in Vereeniging - (Acronym of HIV; “bought a house in Vereeniging”, a town about 50km south of Johannesburg, refers to someone suspected of being HIV positive)
Driving a “Z3″/ “having three kids”/ the “three letters” - All refer to the three letters in the HIV acronym
Tracker - If you are suspected of being HIV positive people say God is tracking you, like the popular southern African service that tracks and recovers stolen vehicles
Tanzania (KiSwahili)
amesimamia msumari – “Standing on a nail”; euphemism for being skinny, or being small enough to fit on a nail’s head, referring to AIDS-related weight loss
kukanyaga miwaya – Contracting HIV is like “stepping on a live wire”
mdudu – “The bug” (refers to HIV)
Uganda (English)
Slim - Euphemism for HIV/AIDS as a result of the associated weight loss; less popular since the advent of ARVs
Uganda (Luganda, spoken mainly in the central region)
Okugwa mubatemu - You have been waylaid by thugs (contracted HIV)
Zambia (Nyanja, spoken mainly in the east and the capital, Lusaka)
Kanayaka – “It has lit up” (refers to a positive reaction from an HIV test)
Ka-onde-onde - “Thing that makes you thinner and thinner” (HIV)
Zambia (Bemba, spoken mainly in the north and Lusaka)
Bamalwele ya akashishi - “Those that suffer from the germ” (HIV-positive people)
Kaleza - “Razor blade” (Refers to a person being thin as a result of AIDS-related weight loss)
Zimbabwe (Shona)
Ari pachirongwa - “He/she is on a (treatment) programme”
Akarohwa nematsoti – “He/she has been beaten by thieves”
Mukondas – Abbreviation of “mukondombera” (epidemic)
Ari kumwa mangai - “He/she is drinking mangai” (mangai is boiled corn seedlings, which represent antiretroviral (ARV) drugs)
Akabatwa – “He/she was caught” (received a positive diagnosis)
Zvirwere zvemazuvano – “The current diseases” (the HIV epidemic)
Akatsika banana – “He/she has stepped on a banana and slipped” (someone who has tested positive and therefore will “fall” or die as a result)
Shuramatongo – “A bad omen for relatives”
Zimbabwe (English)
Red card – Like a football player being sent off, life is over
Go slow - Taken to mean that he/she is now progressing slowly towards death
TB2 – Refers to high rates of HIV and TB co-infection (used to denote AIDS)
RVR – Slang for ARVs, adapted from Mitsubishi’s RVR sports utility vehicle
John the Baptist - When someone has TB, he/she is said to have been baptised by “John the Baptist”, who has come to announce the coming of HIV
FTT – “Failure to thrive” (adapted from the medical phrase, now used to describe HIV-positive children)
Boarding pass - Implies that HIV is a boarding pass to death
Departure lounge – An HIV-infected person is in the departure lounge awaiting death