vaccination

Mdecins Sans Frontires (MSF) is an international humanitarian aid organisation that provides emergency medical assistance to populations in danger in more than 80 countries. In countries where health structures are insufficient or even non-existant, MSF collaborates with authorities such as the Ministry of Health to provide assistance. MSF works in rehabilitation of hospitals and dispensaries, vaccination programmes and water and sanitation projects. MSF also works in remote health care centres, slum areas and provides training of local personnel.

Rarely in South Africa can a minister have come to power carrying such a weight of expectation as Barbara Hogan. Her first major public speech at the Aids Vaccine Conference in Cape Town in October was greeted with enthusiasm, and even international delegates speculated about the bright future that seems to lie ahead at last for South African healthcare. Her speech was reminiscent of one of those games where one has to bash crocodiles on the head as they pop up apparently randomly through holes in the floor. Politely, and without naming names, Hogan took a baseball bat and bashed all the major crocodiles on the head: Matthias Rath and his vitamins, for instance. Most of all she asserted the fact that HIV causes Aids.

Cervical cancer is the second most prevalent cancer (second to breast cancer) to affect women in South Africa. The most common cancer to affect black women - 31 per cent of all cancers - it is also preventable and treatable. It is associated with the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), of which the most prevalent strains are 16 and 18. Cervical cancer also appears to be an opportunistic infection among those living with HIV as it links to a weakened immune system. In South Africa a woman's risk of developing cervical cancer is one in 26. Each year 6 700 women develop cervical cancer while 3 700 die from the disease annually in South Africa.

Prevention

There is a vast experience of prevention work in South Africa, from information and edutainment programmes, focus on youth, to the advancement of female controlled methods in the form of microbicides and femidom distribution

Pharmacists have been receiving a number of queries about the current outbreak of wild poliovirus 1 in Namibia. Please remember that for more information you are welcome to phone the Amayeza Drug Information Centre on (011) 678-2332.

Avian Influenza (Update of INFOSAN Information Note No. 2/04 - Avian Influenza, 17 Dec. 2004) Highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza outbreaks in poultry and in humans: Food safety implications

The national Immunisation Awareness Week began on Monday, with various district activities designed to inform the public about the success and benefits of the early childhood vaccination programme in controlling vaccine preventable diseases. In a statement, the health department on Friday said the awareness week coincided with Child Health Week (also 6 - 12 August), and is an integral part of the Expanded Programme on Immunisation in South Africa (EPI(SA)) implemented by the national Department of Health. National Immunisation Awareness Week follows a recent strategic EPI workshop, which also formed part of the initiative sponsored by Aventis Pasteur. This workshop identified some of the critical issues to the continual improvement of EPI (SA) which were presented in an EPI action plan. The department said South Africa had already adopted the global strategies for polio eradication and measles elimination based on three principles. Firstly, routine immunisation of children under one year of age against polio and measles should reach at least 90 percent of this age group, in all provinces. Secondly, mass immunisation campaigns are conducted from time to time, to interrupt transmission of Polio and Measles viruses rapidly in the target age group. The third principle of the strategy to achieve polio eradication and measles elimination is to actively detect, report and investigate suspected cases of polio, also called acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) and measles. In order to meet the criteria for polio free certification and measles elimination, investigation of cases include laboratory support to confirm or discard each suspected case of AFP and measles. It added that measles decreased dramatically from about 22 000 cases and 53 deaths in 1992, to 37 laboratory confirmed cases and no deaths in 2000, a direct result of the measles elimination strategy. (Source: SAPA, 3 August 2001)