Health

Washington, United States | AFP | Doctors at Johns Hopkins University said Monday they have performed the world’s first total penis and scrotum transplant on a US military serviceman who was wounded in Afghanistan. The 14-hour operation took place on March 26, and was performed by a team of nine …

And it doesn’t matter how much exercise you put in Kampala, Uganda | CATHERINE PADDOCK | Too much sitting may not be good for the brain, according to a preliminary study of adults who have reached middle age and beyond. Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) discovered that …

THIS WEEK: 11 patients with abnormal heartbeat treated at Mulago Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Doctors at the Uganda Heart Institute corrected heartbeat anomalies in 11 patients in a medical procedure known as Radiofrequency Ablation (RFA). RFA is a medical procedure where part of the electrical conduction system of the …

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia | AFP | Saudi sports authorities shut down a female fitness centre in Riyadh Friday over a contentious promotional video that appeared to show a woman in figure-hugging workout attire. “We are not going to tolerate this,” Saudi sports authority chief Turki al-Sheikh tweeted as he ordered …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …