Washington, United States | AFP | US authorities announced charges Thursday against more than 400 people, many of them doctors and nurses, over health care scams worth $1.3 billion including the wrongful prescription and distribution of opioids. The Justice Department called it the largest ever enforcement action of its kind …
Read More »Australia cautiously enters medical marijuana market
Melbourne, Australia | AFP | At a secret location in Australia’s southeast, Peter Crook delicately tends to a two-month-old cannabis cutting. Barely knee high, it is one of about 50 government-sanctioned “mother plants” to be cloned for future generations of crops for the country’s fledgling medicinal marijuana industry. “I think we’ll …
Read More »One step closer to a gonorrhoea vaccine?
One step closer to a gonorrhoea vaccine? Paris, France | AFP | A discontinued vaccine against a bacteria that causes brain inflammation also shielded people against gonorrhoea, the first drug ever to offer such protection against the sexually transmitted disease, researchers said Tuesday. Using a condom or abstaining from sex …
Read More »Mobile phone health apps How useful are they really?
Have you turned to a mobile app to manage or improve your health? |James Bullen| Apps that claim to treat everything from pimples to depression appeal to the anxiety many of us harbour about our health. But how trustworthy are they, and what’s the evidence behind their effectiveness? Can your …
Read More »Uganda increases tax on selected imported drugs
Kampala, Uganda| APA | Uganda government has increased tax levied on import of selected drugs including paracetamol, by pharmaceutical companies, from 2 percent to 12 percent. According to Uganda’s ministry of health the move which became effective August 1 , seeks to protect the locally made medicine from being out competed …
Read More »THE LAST WORD: Rethinking healthcare in Africa
Why attempts to provide too much too fast are the cause of corruption and institutionalised incompetence The Last Word | ANDREW M. MWENDA| Last week I moderated a World Health Organisation panel on providing universal healthcare in Africa. These ambitions assume that poor countries have the ability to deliver the set …
Read More »Ugandan Woman MP Kaudha dies after child-birth complications
Kampala, Uganda| GODFREY SSALI | Iganga Woman Member of Parliament (MP) Kaudha Grace Hailat Magumba,30, died Friday night after she developed complications related to pregnancy. The Secretary General of the ruling National Resistance Movement(NRM) Justine Lumumba confirmed the death, revealing that Kaudha passed away at Mulago National Referral Hospital (Kawempe extension) …
Read More »Diabetes taking growing toll on Africa
Paris, France | AFP | The costs of diabetes in sub-Saharan Africa could double to almost $60 billion annually just 13 years from now, as obesity fuels an explosion of the disease, a report said Thursday. In 2015, the overall diabetes cost in the region was nearly $20 billion (18 …
Read More »DRC declares end of Ebola outbreak
Kinshasa, DR Congo | AFP | The Congolese health minister on Saturday declared the end of an Ebola outbreak in a remote northeastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo which caused four deaths in the area. On May 12, officials declared an outbreak of the highly contagious disease, the …
Read More »Record 2000 Ugandan students wash their hands
NWSC hosts 3rd edition of the Annual School water and Sanitation convention Over 3000 students from over 100 school countrywide on Friday signed a commitment to promote hand washing as the Young Water Professionals (YWP) Uganda chapter launched the Schools Hand Washing Campaign 2017. At exactly 1pm, for 5 minutes, …
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