Health Medical Pharma

The final report of the Global Commission on HIV and the Law presents a coherent and compelling evidence base on human rights and legal issues relating to HIV

Adolescents are generally perceived as a healthy age group, and yet 20% of them, in any given year, experience a mental health problem, most commonly depression or anxiety. In many settings, suicide is among the leading causes of death among young people

Mental well-being is fundamental to good quality of life. Happy and confident adolescents are most likely to grow into happy and confident adults, who in turn contribute to the health and well-being of nations (2). Emotional health and well-being among young people have implications for self-esteem, behaviour, attendance at school, educational achievement, social cohesion and future health and life chances

Leaders from around the world attending the 2011 High Level Meeting on AIDS committed to work towards the elimination of new HIV infections among children by 2015 and reducing AIDS-related maternal mortality. This is to be accomplished through the implementation of a new Global Plan* for scaling up comprehensive prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV
(PMTCT) programmes. The Global Plan calls for broader thinking and action both within and outside the formal health-care delivery system. An important feature of the plan is its emphasis on community engagement as an integral part of the scale-up strategy.

Family planning is a fundamental right. More surprisingly perhaps, it’s also vital to improving children’s chances of survival. Ensuring women are able to plan whether or when to have children means babies and young children are more likely to survive, and it saves the lives of adolescent girls and women who are pregnant. And it helps countries to achieve their goals on development, and improve the lives of many millions of people.

The global war on drugs is driving the HIV/AIDS pandemic among people who use drugs and their sexual partners. Throughout the world, research has consistently shown that repressive drug law enforcement practices force drug users away from public health services and into hidden environments where HIV risk becomes markedly elevated. Mass incarceration of non-violent drug offenders also plays a major role in increasing HIV risk. This is a critical public health issue in many countries, including the United States, where as many as 25 percent of Americans infected with HIV may pass through correctional facilities annually, and where disproportionate incarceration rates are among the key reasons for markedly higher HIV rates among African Americans.

This is the first issue of the DHS News for 2012! Much has happened during the first 4 months of this year. To begin, the Minister of Health made the much-anticipated announcement of the names of the first 10 NHI pilot districts! The Minister has already commenced with road shows in these pilot districts to inform stakeholders of plans to strengthen the coverage and quality of care in these areas over the next 5 years. He also asked for inputs from stakeholders on their views of what needs to be done in addition to the planned activities. It is critical for district management teams to be fully involved with the creation of the plan.

This guide summarises The Union's experience in developing approaches to integrated TB-HIV care for adults in resource-limited settings. It is recommended for health professionals at the implementation level and national programme staff in charge of policy and practices for collaborative TB-HIV activities.

Health donors, policymakers, and practitioners continuously make life-and-death decisions about which type of patients receive what interventions, when, and at what cost. These decisions—as consequential as they are—often result from ad hoc, nontransparent processes driven more by inertia and interest groups than by science, ethics, and the public interest. The result is perverse priorities, wasted money, and needless death and illness. Examples abound: In India, only 44 percent of children 1 to 2 years old are fully vaccinated, yet open-heart surgery is subsidized in national public hospitals.

Between 31 January and 2 February 2012, the World Health Organization (WHO) convened a meeting of experts to discuss recent research on use of hormonal contraception by women at high risk of HIV and those currently living with HIV and its implications. The Technical Consultation brought together 75 participants from 18 countries; 18 agencies were represented. The multidisciplinary group comprised experts in international family planning and HIV, including clinicians, epidemiologists, researchers, programme managers, policy-makers, guideline methodologists, reproductive biologists and pharmacologists, HIV advocates, and women’s health advocates.

Attached are important changes to ART guidelines applicable in all state facilities, some of which were already signalled in the NSP 2012-2016.