 14M Russians Mentally Ill
One in 10 South African youths has HIV/AIDS
RUSSIANS NEED PSYCHIATRIC HELP
MOSCOW
Russia's mental health has deteriorated in the past decade, and nearly 10 percent of the population needs psychiatric help today.
Some 14 million out of Russia's 144.5 million people are in need of psychiatric assistance and 3.8 million have serious mental disorders, the Interfax news agency quoted a report by nongo-vernment organizations.
"The number of people who become disabled as a result of psychiatric disorders has increased by over 50 percent over this time," said the report prepared by several NGOs led by the Civil Society Foundation, the Center for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights, and the Moscow-Helsinki Group.
CROSS-BORDER HEALTH CARE IN EU MAY BE PROBLEMATIC
PRAGUE
The migration of patients as a result of the European Union's forthcoming expansion could create problems for some countries that are unprepared.
"We will undoubtedly see more patients seeking treatment in neighboring regions," said Nata Menabde, director of the division of country support of the World Health Organization regional office for Europe. "But some countries are not ready for that and are ill prepared for the implications of cross-border health care," she said during a conference of European health ministers in Prague.
Freedom of movement to seek treatment abroad would necessitate the development of electronic patient records, for example, while the issue of the transfer of financial resources would have to be addressed, she said.
Menabde also warned that the migration of doctors could also create difficulties, resulting in shortages in some countries from the new member states.
"Some countries could face a shortage of certain medical specialists," she said. But she played down fears of a mass exodus of medical staff. "Overall, joining the EU will be a very positive thing and will mean an improvement in the standard of health of people in the new member states," she said.
For example, she said Portugal's child mortality rate had been significantly reduced within a short time of the country joining the EU. "But there is work to be done on reducing the negative factors that still have to be addressed," she added.
CHINA'S FIRST BABY FROM FROZEN EGG
BEIJING
China's first test-tube baby conceived from a frozen egg is expected to be born in May, marking the arrival of a technology that was introduced abroad only three years ago. The complex operation, conducted at a hospital affiliated with Peking University, involved freezing a human egg, thawing, it and fertilizing it with sperm before implanting it in the mother's uterus, the China Daily reported.
The technology, said the paper, gives hope to a growing segment of China's urban population-busy career women who want to postpone birth until they enter a quieter period of their lives. Doctors involved in the procedure hope to set up an egg bank, although the price could be steep, allowing only the wealthiest access to the technology, the report said.
LITTLE-KNOWN NOMA KILLING AFRICAN KIDS
NAIROBI
Noma, a little known disease, continues to kill children in Africa due to poverty. Known in Africa as the "face of poverty," noma still kills African children because their families are too poor to afford antibiotics, antiseptics, and improve nutrition to prevent its gangrenous phase, said Ibrahim Samba, the World Health Organization regional director for Africa.
"However, noma stands out as it represents a special challenge, an avoidable tragedy of poverty and underdevelopment," he said. Noma is a disorder that destroys mucous membranes of the mouth, and later other tissues, that occurs in malnourished children in areas with poor sanitation.
Samba said that general development indices, as well as health and oral health indicators in the African region, are among the lowest in the world and oral diseases impact significantly on general health.
"There is a disproportionate number and prevalence of oral diseases in the African region, particularly dental caries, periodontal disease, oral cancers and maxillo trauma, as well as oral manifestations of the deadly HIV/AIDS that has infected about 28 million Africans," he added.
POLIO RETURNS TO BOTSWANA
GENEVA
Botswana has reported its first case of polio for more than a decade and the infection is likely to have come from Nigeria. A seven-year-old boy from the Ngami district of northwestern Botswana was found to have caught the crippling disease on February 8, the World Health Organization said. "The virus has been closely linked genetically to poliovirus endemic to northern Nigeria," it added.
The worrying development in the southern African country, which had been polio-free since 1991, underlined the risks to the rest of the continent of ongoing outbreaks of the disease in west and central Africa, the WHO said.
Efforts to eradicate polio through mass-vaccination campaigns have been hampered in Nigeria-the worst hit country-by radical Islamists who believe the drugs are laced with chemicals that render girls infertile. Cases of polio with a similar genetic make-up in other countries that had defeated the illness have arisen in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Togo over the past 18 months.
"The importations are associated with an extensive outbreak of polio in Nigeria, which resulted following the suspension of polio immunization campaigns in some northern states of the country in August 2003," the WHO said.
The WHO said all Nigerian states have resumed polio vaccinations except for the northern city of Kano, at the center of the world's fastest growing polio outbreak. Officials there have refused to allow UN agencies to proceed with the campaign, despite assurances from senior Muslim leaders that immunization was safe.
TEN PERCENT OF AFRICAN YOUTHS HAVE HIV
JOHANNESBURG
One in 10 South African youths are infected with HIV and young women, often forced into unwanted sex, are the worst affected, according to a survey of 12,000 youths aged between 15 and 25, who were interviewed by the reproduction health research unit of the Witswatersrand University.
Helen Reese, executive director of the unit, said alcohol and drug abuse was contributing to the spread of HIV/AIDS, South Africa's biggest killer. About 10 percent of young people reported that they had used different sorts of substances, including alcohol, 10 percent said they had used drugs, and three percent said they had used intravenous drugs. "If this is a trend that is beginning to creep in... it's clearly something else that we need to be very mindful of and to be watching for," said Reese.
The survey showed that young women are bearing the brunt of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Of the 10 percent of infected youth, 77 percent are women.
"The research shows one in four women aged between 20 and 24 is HIV-positive compared with one in 14 men of the same age," said health expert Sue Valentine. "Almost one-third of sexually experienced young women reported their first sexual encounter had been unwanted and that they had been coerced by their male partner into having sex."
The UNAIDS estimates that South Africa has 5.3 million people infected with HIV/AIDS at the end of 2002-the highest ratio in the world.
ONE IN THREE PREGNANT WOMEN IN ZIMBABWE HAS HIV/AIDS
HARARE
Around 70 percent of patients admitted to Zimbabwe's hospitals suffer from HIV and AIDS-related illnesses, and 33 percent of pregnant women in the country are infected with HIV, according to Rangarirai Chiteure of the nongovernmental Zimbabwe Aids Prevention and Support Network.
The government, which has for the past year administered nevirapine to pregnant women to reduce HIV transmission to babies, plans to introduce free antiretroviral drugs to tens of thousands of HIV-infected people this month.
With about 24.6 percent of its adult population infected with HIV/AIDS, the southern African country has one of the world's highest prevalence rates. AIDS kills an estimated 3,000 people in the country weekly.
LIMITED ANTIRETROVIRAL REACH
DAKAR, Senegal
Only three percent of the 3.9 million AIDS patients in Africa who could benefit from antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) have access to them, according to a study conducted by the Accelerating Access Initiative, a partnership between the United Nations and six pharmaceutical laboratories.
The figure is a far cry from the 84 percent in Latin America.
"People said it was too expensive, too complex, so it was difficult to install in these countries," said Joep Lange, head of the group Pharm Access International. "In a lot of African countries, governments are not functional and very poor, so how could you expect something to work?" he asked.
"Many patients can't even afford to eat, let alone pay for expensive treatments," said Papa Salif Sow, a Senegalese researcher.
In Senegal, where drugs have been free since January, 50 patients have received treatment in a cooperation project with Roche that began nearly three years ago, Sow said.
Ivory Coast, Kenya and Uganda are also benefiting from the project. Sow said that the World Health Organization's goal of delivering ARVs to three million people in developing countries by the end of 2005 cannot be attained without further training of medical personnel and increased AIDS testing.
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