H5N1

Uganda: Sharing rooms with nodding disease patients

Via UGPulse.com: Sharing rooms with Nodding disease patients. Excerpt:

Residents have expressed concern at the dire health situation in many of their heath centers which are ill equipped and badly maintained.   

Patients at Palabek Kal Health Centre III in Lamwo district are forced to share wards with the nodding disease patients due to lack of enough accommodation.   

The Health Centre which was built in 1950 has not gone any major renovation and currently is running without staff quarters, water point, latrine and most of the times is run without drugs.  

According to the in charge of the health centre, Akwero Dorothy, the patients trek miles of distances to fetch water for themselves.   

Akwero said the unit has no staff quarters which have forced them to take some of the offices to be used for accommodation.   

She added that they have only 10 health workers at the centre out of the 19 who were supposed to run the Health Centre.   

The Area LCIII chairman Odong James said the district has turned a deaf ear to listen to his request to renovate the health Centre which is in a sorry state.

India: A doctor's view of dengue

Via The Hindu, an op-ed by Dr. P. Durai: Danger from dengue. Excerpt:

Some time ago, I received a weeping call from my sister. In a choked voice, she said that her nine-year-old kid had been admitted to a private nursing home and a provisional diagnosis of dengue was made by the consultant paediatrician based on clinical symptoms. Worried, I called up my paediatrician-friend to garner more information about the disease, and its recent outbreak, especially in Tamil Nadu. 

I was startled at the revelation that a large number of deaths due to dengue/dengue haemorraghic fever (DHF) occur every year but many cases go unnotified. This can be attributed partly to the health care facility fearing unnecessary queries and partly to the public health authorities' reluctance to register cases. 

Every year, after the onset of monsoon the incidence of dengue is annoyingly high, but the Public Health Department fails to acknowledge it until there is intense public outrage and agitation after the death of a child/patient. Under the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme, fogging/focal spray should be carried out within a 100-metre radius of residence and the workplace of the patient, that too only if a dengue fever case is confirmed by a serological test (a blood test). 

Spraying operations are not efficacious, owing to the increased resistance offered by the winged vectors. 

Records show only a very small number of reported cases, though the actual incidence is disturbingly high. This is attributable to the fact that the department takes into account only confirmed cases. How can one expect the figures to escalate in the records when most of the government hospitals are lacking diagnostic kits?

Haiti: Cholera down in Port-au-Prince

Via Le Nouvelliste, a report dated May 31: Cholera down in the metropolitan area. A slightly edited Google translation from French:

This week the cholera treatment centers (CTC) of the metropolitan area, particularly those of Martissant, Carrefour and Delmas have received fewer cases than in previous weeks. 

Last April, the MSF treatment center in Martissant was saturated, whereas this Wednesday, May 30 around 10 am, 17 of the 82 beds at this hospital were vacant, according to Javier Fernandez, MSF project coordinator in Martissant 25. 

Delmas has 51 beds occupied out of 77 and 96 out of 250 are occupied in Carrefour. This decrease was due to the lack of rain on the capital in recent days. Since mid-April, this is the first time that the numbers have falln so low, according to the coordinator. 

However, the situation is still worrying. "The numbers are still enormous," he said. According to the latter, the conditions are still conducive to cholera. "With more rain, we can expect a further rise in the deadly epidemic," he expected. 

A survey by the National Drinking Water and Sanitation (DINEPA), recently cited by MSF in a statement showed that less than a third of the displaced from the earthquake of January 2010 are still supplied with water and 1% have recently received soap. 

The last official assessment dated May 24, 2012 reported 7,188 deaths, 547,011 cases and 294,036 hospitalizations seen.

Haiti's lack of capable journalists

Via Time.com, an article that explains a lot about the dismal coverage of cholera and other health problems: Haiti Can't "Build Back Better" Without Better Journalists. Excerpt:

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Some post-quake international donor aid was earmarked for the media sector. The Haitian government in 2010 announced a $5.6 million plan to rescue more than a hundred media outlets, including replacement of destroyed equipment like presses and transmitters and the reconstruction of some 15 facilities. 

But according to government documents, virtually all of it went to the largest media owners who enjoy the most clout and personal relationships with high-ranking officials, even if they didn’t need it. Smaller media, including community radio stations, didn’t get a dime. 

Granted, every airwave in Port-au-Prince is taken today, and advertising appears to be keeping most of the capital’s 50-plus radio stations afloat. Even the country’s only daily newspaper,  Le Nouvelliste, is up and running again, albeit at a circulation 20% lower than the 14,000 readers it had pre-quake, which for a nation of 10 million people is quite low. 

But if the plan was to help nurture a more professional media culture, it has failed miserably. In fact, the same big media owners who cornered the international aid and gave lip service to “capacity-building” are now the very people arguing that investigative pieces are too expensive, too time-consuming – and too dangerous. 

Millions of dollars from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) did go to develop a local branch of Internews, a California-based non-profit agency that trains and supports journalists in the developing world. But Internews’ information focus is more humanitarian than investigative – its Haitian journalists, for example, are not allowed to cover anything political. 

Meanwhile, international NGOs have lured Haitian journalists away to well-paying public relations work since the earthquake. Like Internews, they offer the higher salaries Haitians want – but not the opportunity to report the harder news their country needs. 

A real Fourth Estate in Haiti, as a result, hasn’t stood a chance. And even if Haitian media outlets did want to encourage investigative work, few Haitians are well trained enough to carry it out. (Nor do they have much institutional memory to guide them: respected late-20th-century Haitian journalists like Jean Dominique, who was murdered in 2000, have either left the country or the profession.) 

Journalistic methods like requesting public records – especially land titles, which are often at the heart of disputes over where to relocate the hundreds of thousands of Haitians still left homeless by the earthquake – are as foreign to most Haitian reporters as the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

Turks and Caicos: Tourist died of heart attack, not mystery virus

Via The Turks and Caicos Sun: Tourist died of heart attack. Excerpt:

Autopsy ruled out death from the mystery sickness in Grace Bay 

The male visitor to the Turks and Caicos Islands who was found dead in his hotel room at the Grace Bay Club, died of a heart attack and not as a result of the mysterious sickness that has affected at least a dozen hotels in Grace Bay, on the island of Providenciales. 

Reliable sources told the SUN that visitor, whose name has been given as Steve Ware, suffered from “acute myocardial infarction” or a heart attack.

Most depressing public health news of the day

Via Gallup.com: In U.S., 46% Hold Creationist View of Human Origins. Excerpt:

Forty-six percent of Americans believe in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years. The prevalence of this creationist view of the origin of humans is essentially unchanged from 30 years ago, when Gallup first asked the question. About a third of Americans believe that humans evolved, but with God's guidance; 15% say humans evolved, but that God had no part in the process.

So much for the efficacy of public education, and for any public health programs based on science.

Ghana: PPP to focus on malaria, cholera eradication

Via Joy Online: PPP to focus on Malaria, Cholera eradication. Excerpt:

The Progressive People's Party (PPP), Thursday, laid down its health blue print with eradication of malaria and cholera as its key focus in its first term of office. 

It said alongside the eradication of the two diseases, the party would empower institutions to place more premiums on preventive measures supported by control treatment and bring back sanitary inspectors to enforce the law. 

“The PPP led government will solve the problems we have by restoring the state’s responsibility for clean and healthy environment throughout Ghana. What is required is a militant approach, strengthening of institutions and a sense of urgency to combat these diseases,” it stated. 

Presenting the PPP’s health policy on the theme: “Eradicating Preventable Disease” at a media briefing in Accra Thursday, the spokesperson, Dr Theophilus Kwofie, said the problem Ghana faced as far as preventable diseases was concerned was the lack of proper sanitation, which he said the current administration lacked the initiative to deal with. 

“These diseases, as the PPP understands, are diseases of poverty and cause of poverty. We recognise that the country sits on a time bomb till unwavering commitments are garnered by all stakeholders to convincingly alleviate the disease from the economy,’’ he said. 

Some of the party bigwigs who graced the occasion were the chairman of PPP, Nii Alotey Brew-Hammond, the General Secretary, Mr Kofi Siaw, Director of Communication, Mr Richmond Keelson, a member of the communication team, Mr Samuel K. Ampah and some of the Greater Accra Regional Parliamentary Candidates. 

Dr Kwofie who is also PPP’s chairman of the Ashanti Region said one key way of dealing with the menace was to solve the problem of water supply to ensure clean water for every household and investment into public houses in order to do away with the slums.

Central Vietnam skin condition kills woman, raises toll to 23

Via Thanh Nien Daily: Central Vietnam skin condition kills woman, raises toll to 23.

A mysterious skin condition plaguing Ba To District in the central province of Quang Ngai claimed another life Wednesday morning, two days after a young boy from the district died of the condition in Ho Chi Minh City. 

Pham Thi Trieu, 33, died at Quang Ngai General Hospital despite three blood transfusions, raising the death toll to 23 since the first case was reported in April last year. 

On Sunday night, 9-year-old Pham Van Thach died after eight days at HCMC Children’s Hospital No.1. Le Huy, chief of staff at the Quang Ngai Health Department, said three more Ba To children with the condition have been sent to HCMC Children’s Hospital No.2, ages 5, 6, and 14. 

The condition begins with blisters on the hands and feet and loss of appetite, and then becomes fatal due to organ failures, starting with the liver. 

Most patients have had enzyme levels 4-20 times the norm. At least 214 people from the district have the condition. 

The Heath Ministry has sent officials to study Ba To several times, but no conclusions have been released. 

The World Health Organization said it has not received an official request for help from the ministry.

Guangdong on alert after Hong Kong bird flu case

Via Xinhua: Guangdong on alert after Hong Kong bird flu case - Xinhua. Excerpt:

South China's Guangdong province is on high alert after a Hong Kong hospital confirmed that it has admitted a two-year-old boy infected with the H5 strain of avian influenza. 

The boy was admitted to a Hong Kong hospital on May 28 with convulsions after arriving from Guangdong's capital city of Guangzhou. He tested positive for the H5 strain. 

The boy was confirmed to have been in contact with a live duck between May 17 and 19 at a farmer's market in Guangzhou. However, tests conducted at the market and surrounding markets, as well as a hospital in Zhuangzhou that had admitted the boy, found no signs of a bird flu outbreak, said He Jianfeng, director of the Epidemic Studies Institute of the Guangdong Disease Control Center. 

He said the province has launched an avian influenza response plan and is keeping track of the whereabouts of those who were in close contact with the child, as well as monitoring their health.

Uganda: HIV positive boy abandons school

Via allAfrica.com, a report from The New Vision: Uganda: Stigma - HIV Positive Boy Abandons School. Excerpt:

At Nabwigulu Primary School, hundreds of kilometers away the capital Kampala in the western district of Kamuli, the 13-year-old Charles Okurut is crashing under HIV and segregation, and has opted to dropping out of school to avoid being a subject of mockery amongst his peers. 

He has become talk of every child at school and no one wants to play, eat or sit next to him in class. 

"I am frustrated. My friends run away from me. They even abandon the desks where I'm seated," Okurut says. "I always have to scratch myself to en extent of the skin peeling off, to be able to get relief. My skin is always irritating me. It itches badly," he laments.  

Okurut is just one of the 1.2m AIDS orphans in Uganda, according to Ugandan National Bureau of Standards estimates. 

An estimated 150,600 children are living with HIV in Uganda today. More 27,000 children are estimated to be will be born with HIV; of which 50% of them will die before their second birthday. Reports also show that 75% will most likely die before their fifth year of life. 

Okurut's ordeal started in April when he developed a skin rash, as a drug reaction from the ARV's he got from the Anti-Retroviral Therapy clinic in Kamuli Main hospital. 

Besides that, he is malnourished and often goes misses the school porridge meal because his guardians are poor cannot afford the six kilograms of maize and sh3,000 for its milling; as demanded by the school authorities of every pupil every term. 

His elder sister, Tapenensi Nansubuga says Okurut has abandoned school and spends roaming the village and climbing trees as his growing hobby out of desperation. 

It is believed Okurut contracted the virus from his deceased parents; who died in the early 2000s of HIV/AIDS. Nansubuga admits she is financially struggling. 

Okurut tested positive last year and was put on Septrin tablets, before he started ARV's, following the fall of his CD-4 count. "He may improve but the rash is at a high magnitude and there's need for serious consultations," Salamuka, the District Chairman for the Forum for the People Living with HIV/AIDS says, adding that, "the boy needs counseling and better feeding."