Harare, Zimbabwe | AFP | Scores of Zimbabwe nurses on Friday protested in Harare’s central city park after the government dismissed them for striking over low salaries and poor working conditions. The nurses, who wore their white uniforms, demanded the government reverse its decision to fire the majority of the …
Read More »COMMENT: How corruption impedes healthcare
Today, some 800 million people spend at least 10% of their household budgets on health payments COMMENT | SANIA NISHTAR | Half of the planet cannot access essential health services. For many people, paying to see a doctor, obtaining medications, seeking family-planning advice, or even getting immunised against common illnesses is …
Read More »Zimbabwe sacks thousands of striking nurses
Harare, Zimbabwe | AFP | Zimbabwe has fired all nurses who went on strike to demand higher salaries, in a hardline response by the country’s new leadership to growing labour arrest. Several thousand nurses were sacked in a terse statement issued on Tuesday evening by Vice President Constantino Chiwenga, who …
Read More »Japan to trial ‘world’s first urine test’ to spot cancer
Tokyo, Japan | AFP | A Japanese firm is poised to carry out what it hailed as the world’s first experiment to test for cancer using urine samples, which would greatly facilitate screening for the deadly disease. Engineering and IT conglomerate Hitachi developed the basic technology to detect breast or …
Read More »Novartis to inject $100 mn into malaria drug research
Zurich, Switzerland | AFP | Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis on Tuesday announced $100 million of funding over the next five years for research into new treatments for malaria, a mosquito-borne disease with a devastating impact that killed 445,000 people in 2016. There were some 216 million cases of malaria worldwide in …
Read More »Want to de-stress?
Delete Facebook, study suggests Kampala, Uganda | ANA SANDOIU | If Cambridge Analytica didn’t put you off Facebook forever, this might: a new study says that quitting the social media network can drastically lower your stress levels. The Cambridge Analytica scandal — also known as the largest data leak in Facebook …
Read More »Over five million children get polio vaccines in Niger: UN
Niamey, Niger | AFP | More than five million children were vaccinated against polio in Niger last month, the UN said Tuesday, adding that the number was higher than the target. The drive was broadened to include children in refugee camps whose parents had fled the Boko Haram insurgency in …
Read More »TOBACCO: Study recommends 70 percent tax to discourage smokers
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | More taxes imposed on tobacco products could reduce smoking in Uganda. That is the suggestion presented in the latest study by the Kampala-based think tank, the Economic Policy Research Centre-EPRC. The study led by Dr Ibrahim Kasirye, a Principal Research Fellow at the Economic Policy …
Read More »COMMENT: Benefits of primary healthcare
Effective systems can address today’s four major global health challenges COMMENT | ASAF BITTON | We have four major global challenges in health care. And I think the unsung hero of the health-care system – primary health care – can help us solve them all. The first challenge is the rise …
Read More »Sex and the brain
How does one impact the other? Kampala, Uganda | MARIA COHUT | Having sex can flavor our nights, and days, with sweet pleasure and excitement, relieving stress and worry. And, of course, sex has been key to ensuring that the human race lives on. In this article, we ask, “How does …
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