April 24, 2023
Nigeria: Nigeria Has Africa's Highest Malaria Death Rate - Progress Is Being Made, but It's Not Enough
Malaria is a major public health problem and can be life-threatening. The disease, mostly found in tropical countries, is transmitted to humans by the female Anopheles mosquito.… Read more »
Africa: Hope Is On the Horizon for a Malaria-Free Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa is disproportionally affected by malaria. The region accounts for 95% of the world's malaria cases. The disease kills an African child every 60 seconds. Read more »
April 18, 2023
Africa: If 1% of Covid-19 Cases Result in Death, Does That Mean You Have a 1% Chance of Dying If You Catch It?
As of April 2023, about 1% of people who contracted COVID-19 ended up dying. Does that mean you have a 1% chance of dying from COVID-19? Read more »
Kenya: Kenya Should Decriminalise Homosexuality - 4 Compelling Reasons Why
Kenya has recently seen the increasing visibility of sexual and gender minorities. However, this has been met with a growing backlash. Read more »
April 17, 2023
Africa: Predicting Epidemics Isn't Easy. We've Created a Global Dataset to Help
The world has recently seen a number of high-profile cross-border disease outbreaks and pandemics. The COVID pandemic and multi-country Mpox (monkeypox) outbreaks are just two… Read more »
April 12, 2023
Africa: Why Focusing On Covid Deaths Undercounts the Health Harms of the Pandemic - New Research
More than three years into the COVID pandemic, both the virus and the measures taken to control its spread have affected people's lives across the globe. But how can we fully… Read more »
Ethiopia: Community Health Workers in Ethiopia Set Out to Promote Health
Ethiopia has made significant progress in supporting gender equality and girls' empowerment. Rates of child marriage and teenage pregnancy have decreased substantially. Access to… Read more »
South Africa: Addressing Historical Injustice Key to Balancing Diet Access in South Africa
South Africa has a food crisis. The food system - made up of all of the activities and actors involved in the production, processing, transportation, selling, consumption and… Read more »
April 11, 2023
South Africa: South African Doctors' Criminal Charges for Mistakes May Have Unintended Consequences
Claims for financial compensation for medical mistakes in South Africa have been on the rise since 2007. Recently, however, criminal charges for medical errors have also become… Read more »
April 10, 2023
Africa: Cervical Cancer Can Be Beaten - the Key Is Vaccinating Young Girls
In 2020 the World Health Organization introduced a plan to eliminate cervical cancer as a public health threat by 2030. The first step towards this goal is to have 90% of girls… Read more »
April 04, 2023
Africa: Fake Medicines Are a Dangerous Threat in Africa - 3 Ways to Spot Them
At the end of a long day, you realise you're starting to get a headache. So you buy painkillers from the street vendor, and take two. But how do you know what those pills really… Read more »
April 02, 2023
South Africa: One in Five Households Begs for Food - The Link Between Food Insecurity and Mental Health
At least ten million South Africans didn't have enough food or money to buy food in 2019, according to the country's statistics agency. This food insecurity remains a leading… Read more »
March 30, 2023
Africa: Polio - Leading Virologist Offers a Beginner's Guide to the Different Viruses and Vaccines
On 17 March 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that health officials in Burundi and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) had detected cases of vaccine-derived… Read more »
March 29, 2023
Africa: Long Covid Puts Some People At Higher Risk of Heart Disease - They Need Better Long-Term Monitoring
Lasting damage to the heart and brain is an aspect of long COVID that should receive much more attention than it has so far. We have sufficient evidence now to call for ongoing… Read more »
Africa: Industries Can Harm Health in Many Ways - Here Are 3 That Aren't So Obvious
A recent ground-breaking series of reports in the science journal The Lancet unpacks what commercial determinants of health are, and how they affect public health. It uses a new,… Read more »
Africa: The World Is Hooked On Junk Food - How Big Companies Pull It Off
It is almost impossible nowadays to listen to the radio, watch TV or scroll through social media without being exposed to an advertisement telling us that all we need for a little… Read more »
March 28, 2023
Africa: Young People in Africa Should Have a Say in Decisions That Affect Their Health
Most of Africa's population - 70% - is under 30 years old. In 2017 there were 628 million young people under 25 on the continent. This figure is predicted to reach 945 million by… Read more »
March 27, 2023
Africa: Bird Flu FAQ
Avian influenza ("bird flu") is a highly contagious viral infection that affects wild and domestic birds worldwide. It has recently gained notoriety for its devastating impact on… Read more »
Africa: Profit Versus Health - 4 Ways Big Global Industries Make People Sick
It's now more commonly known that alcohol and tobacco use make us ill. Less known is that just four industries account for at least one-third of global preventable deaths. These… Read more »
Togo: Leprosy, Scabies and Yaws - Togo's Neglected Tropical Skin Diseases Need Attention
Neglected tropical diseases are a group of 20 diseases found mostly in tropical regions that are strongly associated with poverty. Among them are skin diseases like scabies,… Read more »
March 24, 2023
Africa: Covid Testing Led to New Techniques of Disease Diagnosis - Progress Mustn't Stop Now
In March 2020, weeks before the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic, its director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus delivered a speech in which he… Read more »
March 23, 2023
Africa: TB Kills 75,000 Children in Africa Every Year - How This Can Stop #WorldTBDay
Tuberculosis (TB) is a preventable and curable disease. Half of the world's 30 highest TB burden countries are in Africa. In many of these countries, TB is the leading cause of… Read more »
Africa: China's Only Now Revealed Crucial Covid-19 Origins Data. Earlier Disclosure May Have Saved Us 3 Years of Political Argy-Bargy
Once more, we're talking about the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Read more »
Africa: TB in Children Isn't Being Controlled - It's Key to Fighting the Disease for Everyone Else
World TB Day on March 24th will commemorate the day in 1882 when Professor Robert Koch announced in Berlin that he had discovered the microbial cause of tuberculosis (TB),… Read more »
March 22, 2023
Africa: Covid Origins Debate - What to Make of New Findings Linking the Virus to Raccoon Dogs
The origin of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, has long been a topic of heated debate. While many believe SARS-CoV-2 spread to humans from an animal at Wuhan's Huanan… Read more »
The Conversation Africa (Johannesburg)
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