HARARE, 30 January 2012 (IRIN) – Over the past few weeks some 900 residents of the Zimbabwean capital Harare have been diagnosed with typhoid, and about 60 have been admitted to hospital, say health authorities. See the full report.
Here is the Wikipedia article on typhoid fever.
Abby Norris Turner, PhD, is a public health researcher in Ohio State University’s Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, who has conducted research in Zimbabwe since 1999. Her work focuses on women’s reproductive and sexual health. Her current project involves a counseling intervention related to practices that women undertake such as drying the vagina to increase male pleasure during intercourse. Such “dry sex” may increase the risk of acquisition of HIV as well as another reproductive tract infection called bacterial vaginosis.
Before Abby left for a trip to Zimbabwe in April, Better Healthcare for Africa helped her arrange a meeting in Harare with Dr. Elizabeth Tarira, director of St. Albert’s Mission Hospital, to explore the possibility of doing some work at St. Albert’s. Abby asked Elizabeth to name the most pressing public health problems in the area around St. Albert’s. Here are the leading problems Elizabeth noted: (more…)
Dr. Elizabeth Tarira (right) with her mother and sister Juliet. Juliet runs the Shelter Trust, an NGO in Harare that works with St. Albert's Hospital to care for abandoned pregnant women.
Rome
21st June 2011
Dearest Friends,
God has always good plans for each and every one of us.
Greetings from Rome! Some of you have been following my breast-cancer illness for many years now, so I have to give you some updates. It seems I have developed resistance to the drugs I have been taking.
At the end of 2009, I had another small lump operated just below the previous scar and had a small mark on the sternum bone. The cancer markers that had started going up, after the operation and the change of therapy, started going down. This year at my check up, the markers had risen again and seemed on a loose end, and one of the ribs had some osteoblast sign (the bone looked eaten up). This did puzzle the doctors. Now I have been put on a new hormone treatment which is an injection (chemotherapy) every 28 days. I do not know yet if I shall respond well to this treatment. I shall have the blood test repeated on the 4th of July. The drug name is Faslodex (generic name, fulvestrant) produced by Astra Zeneca. (more…)
A post of mine about cancer care available in Zimbabwe following my March 2011 trip led to interesting comments from readers that focused mainly on the problem of cervical cancer. Is breast cancer also a problem in Zimbabwe? For example:
Your comments are welcome and might help others.
Thanks, and I hope all is well…Darrell
iThemba means “hope” in Ndebele, one of two major languages spoken in Zimbabwe, and it is the title a new documentary film by Elinor Burkett and Errol Webber. With wonderful good humor, it tells the story of five talented secondary-school students in the music group LiYana. But these are not ordinary secondary school students. LaYana is composed of disabled students from the King George VI School in Bulawayo, the only school in Zimbabwe for disabled children. Elizabeth and I had the good fortune to attend the Zimbabwe premier, held at Prince Edward Secondary School in Harare Tuesday evening, at the invitation of Ms. Burkett.
iThemba is first a good story about talented musicians whose dream is to perform before audiences in the United States. At the same time, it demonstrates the human potential of disabled children everywhere. With humor, it shows what life is like for many disabled teens and their oh-so normal desires and wants. It is also a film about Zimbabwe. It accurately presents life in Zimbabwe’s rural areas, along with life during the country’s critical 2007 – 2008 period when food couldn’t be found in markets and inflation reached the millions of percent.
WHO estimates that about 10 percent of the Zimbabwe population – some 1.3 million people – have disabilities. These individuals often experience rejection within their families as children, and widespread discrimination as adults in employment, transportation, education, and sports and cultural activities. This film reminds us of this injustice and of how wrong stereotypes of the disabled can be. Those attending the Harare premier included Charles Ray, U.S. Ambassador to Zimbabwe, and David Courtart, Zimbabwe’s Minister of Education. Ambassador Ray’s comments included the importance of the Americans With Disabilities Act, which had its 20th anniversary last year.
Perhaps most important, the audience included a group of disabled primary-school children from King George VI School, who saw and heard iThemba’s entertaining message of hope. Ms. Burkett won an Academy Award for her short film Prudence, about LaYana ‘s lead singer. iThemba is the story of the larger group.
With good music and good humor, this is a good film. Catch iThemba if you can.
A friend recently told me about a blog kept by Jess Cosby, a young British nurse who specializes in tropical nursing and in caring for people with HIV/AIDS. She worked as a surgical nurse in Gambia and Sierra Leone, earned a MSc in public health and spent a year in Botswana providing support for healthcare workers caring for Batswana with HIV/AIDS. Jess is now in Zimbabwe for a year on her first Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) mission. Read about her adventures on her blog, “Jess in Zim.”
Darrell