In the heart of Nairobi, a team of dedicated researchers is poised to revolutionize maternal healthcare, potentially reshaping the future of pregnancy outcomes for women. Led by Dr. Moses Obimbo Madadi, a Clinician-Scientist and Associate Professor at the University of Nairobi, this groundbreaking project is shedding light on the intricate relationship between vaginal infections, reproductive health, and neonatal mortality rates in Africa, where 27 deaths per 1,000 live births remain a stark reality. What has been established so far is that
Summary: UNAIDS, an organization that works to end AIDS, says that even though a recent trial for an HIV vaccine did not work, it is important to continue using other ways to prevent and treat HIV. They say that by using existing methods and making them more widely available, we can still reach the goal of ending AIDS by 2030. The trial was stopped because it did not show that the vaccine was effective. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS
Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, together with a consortium of global partners, have announced that an independent data review of the Phase 3 Mosaico study of Janssen’s investigational HIV vaccine regimen was not effective in preventing HIV infection among the study participants. The study will be discontinued and further analysis of the data will be conducted. They revealed no safety issues with the vaccine regimen were identified during the trial. The consortium of global partners
The World Health Organization’s Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has urged countries to increase their COVID-19 sequencing efforts and share data with the global community in order to detect and track the emergence and spread of new variants. The Director-General stated that despite the progress made in the fight against the pandemic, such as the development of vaccines, the number of sequences being shared has dropped by over 90% since the peak of the Omicron wave and the number of countries
The World Health Organization (WHO) has published a statement in The Lancet Public Health stating that there is no safe amount of alcohol that does not affect health. Alcohol, classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, causes at least seven types of cancer, including the most common types such as bowel cancer and female breast cancer. The statement clarifies that currently available evidence cannot indicate the existence of a threshold at which the
New research from the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) reveals that only 47% of people living with diabetes in Nigeria find their healthcare practitioner to be the most useful source for information to help manage their condition. This means people are turning elsewhere to receive education, with the figures – released ahead of World Diabetes Day on Monday 14 November – showing people in Nigeria using a number of other sources, with one in five (21%) turning to Google for
Only 46% of people living with diabetes in the African region know their status, raising the risk of severe illness and death, potentially worsening the situation in the region which already has the world’s highest mortality rates due to the disease, a new analysis by World Health Organization (WHO) shows. Globally, 55% of people with diabetes know they have diabetes. In the African region, lack of testing facilities and equipment, inadequate number of trained health personnel, poor access to health facilities
Today, the World Health Organization (WHO) has released its guidelines for the treatment of people co-infected with visceral leishmaniasis and HIV, to recommend better treatments based on the results of two studies conducted by the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and their partners in Ethiopia and India. In Ethiopia, the new treatment strategy was shown to have an 88% efficacy rate at the end of therapy (after 58 days), whereas the efficacy
On April 23, 2022, the Minister of Public Health, Hygiene, and Prevention announced a new case of Ebola virus disease (EVD) occurring in Mbandaka health zone in Equateur Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). EVD outbreaks occurred previously in Equateur Province in 2018 and 2020. The 31-year-old male, a student from Boende in Tshuapa Province, returned to Mbandaka, Equateur Province on February 25, 2022. He was vaccinated against Ebola virus in 2020 and is not known to be an EVD
The World Health Organization (WHO) has updated its living guideline on COVID-19 therapeutics to include convalescent plasma. For non-severe COVID-19 patients, WHO recommends against its use, while it should only be used within clinical trials for severe and critical COVID-19 patients. Convalescent plasma is a transfusion of blood plasma from someone who has recovered from COVID-19. Current evidence shows that convalescent plasma does not improve survival or reduce the need for mechanical ventilation, while it has significant costs. An independent panel of experts,
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