Cheaper HIV drugs?

In Kenya, people will now be able to get lower cost drugs for HIV.  How?  The High Court outlawed the parts in the law which barred the manufacturing of generic drugs.  The Act was put in place in 2008 to help with the production of counterfit drugs, which were costing the people, but not helping them.  The parts of the law about generics were "vauge" and failed to determine clearly the difference between generic and counterfit medicines.  Sections 2, 32, and 34 of the Act are now amended to allow the use of generic medicines. 

I found this interesting since the article that I posted about not to long ago was an article about the wide spread use of counterfit drugs.  It is something that I have never even thought of before.  I think about drugs that we get here and medications that I have gotten in the past.  I think I almost always get the generic versions of drugs, unless for some reason my insurance doesn't cover it.  I am always shocked when I look at the price differences. 

Elephants Cause Havoc

There are reportedly as many as 70 wild elephants roaming around in Namibia that are scaring people away and causing damage to property.  People in the area are living in fear of the "beasts."  They are believed to be coming from the Khoreizas area where there are no fences and they roam free.  The elephants frequently will destroy water pipes and taps leaving people to compete with them for water. There has been a few preposed solutions including sinking holes to keep elephants away from homes and permanant rangers in areas with abundant elephants. 

This article caught me off gaurd because when I think of Africa and their wildlie, I always thought that the elephants are supposed to roam free just like deer here.  I guess I thought wrong.  I also did not think that the elephants would be harmful to the residents and their resources.

Male Circumcisions

The biggest medical breakthrough of 2007 has been declared as the male circumsision.  Trials done in Kenya and Uganda both found that male circumsisions reduced the risk of HIV by up to 65 percent.  Similar findings were found during a study in 2005 in South Africa. The procedure is now recommended to help reduce the transmission of HIV through heterosexual sex. Some countries are doing their part to ensure that more males get circumsized including Uganda making circumcisions free and Rwanda has plans of conducting a mass male circumcision. More African's are now understanding that circumcisions is a major weapon in preventing HIV, now it just needs to be made safe and afordable to all.

I thought this article was very intersting, especially since we were discussing HIV this week.  In my research that I conducted I didn't find much of an emphasis on circumcision, but then again my question was focusing on women.

Insect Cookbook

Seventy percent of the worlds agricultural land is taken up by meat production.  Insects could be the a solution to satisfy the growing population.  There are reportedly 1800 species of insects that are suitable for human consumption. They are easier to breed than pigs, chickens, and cows and a lot lower maitenance.  One kilo of insect meat takes one twelfth of the food needed to make a kilo of beef. 

Locust cakes and mealworm muffins can actually be found in an Insect Cookbook written by Dutch cook Henk van Gurp.  He warns that the insects crawling out in your garden are not the ones to use due to the pesticides that we use which makes them hard for the human body to digest.

I do not find this at all appetizing.  But in a starving country, insects could very well be a solution for people to get the protein that they need. 

Women Fakes Kidnapping in Kenya

I found an article on allAfrica about a women who faked her own kidnapping in order to get money out of her friends and family. She reportedly went to her boyfriends house last week, where she called her family and told them that she had been abducted.  She then told them about the ransom that the so called kidnappers wanted and she received and undisclosd amount of money from her family.  She was tracked down by police through the mobile phone that she had used to call her friends and family with.  Her boyfriend and her were both arrested and police say that they definitely plan to charge her for providing false iformation and and demanding money.

This to me at first looked like any ordinary article that I would read while on allAfrica.  The thing about this article that really shocked me and made me want to share it, was the fact that she was tracked down through her mobile phone.  I watch a lot of crime shows; CIS, NCIS, Criminal Minds, so investigation type stuff really interests me.  Now I'm just rambeling, but what I'm trying to say is that I was surprised that Africa has that type of technology to track somebody down by cell phone.  It surprises me that we are able to do that here in the US, let alone Africa, which people think to be so "savage."

Counterfit Drugs in Uganda.

In Africa there are many counterfit drugs, in fact, about 20-30% of the drugs in their market are fake according to this news report.  These fake drugs come from places such as China and India and are becoming increasingly hard to monitor due to technological advances.  In 2007 the World Health Organization did a survey and found that 20,000 people had lost their lives due to consuming fake medicines, especially those said to be for Malaria.  Producers of these fake drugs do their best to imitate the brands that the Ugandan's already trust and often time the packaging even looks better than the real deal, making the people easily tricked.  They are making lots of money selling these counterfit drugs. 

This is a whole new epidemic that I have never heard of before.  It makes me sick to think about.  You think about how we have learned all about the different diseases in Africa and how many people are infected and then to think that people are trying to use them just to make money by selling them fake drugs.  It's just so sad! It makes me wonder if we have things like this here in the US.

African Music

All Africa is a very interesting website that has a music page with information about music, singers, bands, everything music about Africa.  I am a person, like many, who love music.  I mean who doesn't?  I was just skimming through a few articles on this music page and also ended up youtubing some of the artists to see what their music sounds like.  If anybody else is interested in music and has time to kill, it's something you could do as well :)

The first thing that I noticed when clicking on the music section was the headlines about Whitney Houston.  I was surprised to find that there was several articles about African artists mourning the death of Whitney Houston.  I guess I had never thought that people in Africa would listen to music from America.  Which makes me think, I wonder how many of them simply just liked her voice and had no idea what she was even saying because they couldn't speak English.

I also clicked on an article titled, "Nigeria: 2face is Not Dead-Publicist."  I immediately thought about rumors that hit the web here in the US about rappers, actors, and singers dying, when in fact it isn't true.  I also thought about people who think that some famous people who in fact are dead, are believed to be still alive.  This article goes on to explain that a rumor that actually started last year about the rapper being dead had came about again this week. The article then went on to say that he is alive and is recording currently in Los Angeles!  I found this crazy that an African artist would be recording music in the US.

This is kind of just a really random post, but I found the music section very interesting, so I thought I would share :)

Zambia: Abortions Still Provided By Clinics Despite Illegality

I came across this interesting article about the controversial topic of abortions being done illegally in Zambia's capital.  Although abortions are illegal in Zambia, there are several private clinics in Lusaka that will perform abortions at the low cost of 20 euros, which is roughly $27 USD.  Eventhough Zambia's law sees abortion as being murder, doctors seem unconcerned about getting caught, although they understand the consequences if they do.  If any of the doctors in the area are caught performing abortions, they will be charged with murder and could do life in prison or even face death.

One doctor explained, "Some pregnancies may endanger the lives of the mother. Other expectant mothers may not be in a position, financially, to provide proper care to their child when it's born. So we try and help them."  Many Zambian women express that with the high prevelance of HIV/AIDs and increased poverty, that is why many turn to these private clinics to avoid the costs and potentially harmful risks of going through with the pregnancy and raising the child. 

I find this article very interesting and obviously different from out laws here in the US.  Everybody here, and anywhere in the world, has their own view on abortions, and every place has their own laws on it as well.  Even when abortion was illegal in the US, there were still ways to obtain an abortion.  I have my own views of abortion, although I am not going to go into depth with them in this post, but I believe that whether abortions are legal or illegal, people are still going to find a way to get the job done if they feel the need. 

I also think it is very interesting that if any of these doctors get caught, they will be charged with murder.  The sentence for this could be life in prison or even the death sentence.  I wonder if abortions were illegal here and doctors were caught performing them if the they would also get the same charge and sentence, or just simply lose their medical license and receive a fine.

Lake Nyos

Lake Nyos is something that I had heard about in high school, but didn't really know too much about.  I am sure a lot of people haven't heard about it either.  It is truley an interesting tragedy that happened to the people in Cameroon that lived near Lake Nyos. 

I remember when my French teacher in high school first told us about Lake Nyos.  She was talking about African's perceptions of people in the United States coming there.  She lived in Africa, in Cameroon actually, with her parents for 12 years growing up.  She said that when she remembers the first time when her and her family walked down to the lake, everybody in the village would give them dirty looks.  After people got to know them they opened up to them why this was.  Many people in Cameroon believe that the explosion in Lake Nyos was caused by something that American's did, such as a bomb experiment that went bad and therefore was covered up by the government!

On August 21, 1986 1,700 people and 4,000 livestock that lived in villages of Cameroon surrounding Lake Nyos died.  The lake literally exploded and a cloud covered the area.  The cloud spread up to about 16 miles from the lake to surrounding areas such as Nyos and Kam.  The lake before the explosion was a blue shade and after it's now a rust color.  The whole environment changed.

What caused so many people to die and the lake to change?

Carbon Dioxide was to blame for this tragedy.  CO2 is present in the bottom of the lake since Lake Nyos rests on a valcano.  The CO2 comes from magma.  Scientist disagree about exactly what happened, but many believe that CO2 was building up at the bottom of the lake for some time before the occurance.  They beleive that a external force, such as a rock sliding down into the lake triggered the release of gas and in turn causing the water to explode and the cloud of carbon dioxide to form.



Famine Over in Somalia?

While looking through articles online I stumbled across this one titled Famine conditions in Somalia have ended, UN says.  War-torn Somalia is said to have come to the end of a six month famine crisis due to good harvest and humanitarian assistance.  Somalia was hit the most by the worst drought in 60 years in East Africa due to their instability.  There are still some 1.7 million people in need of aid just in Southern Somalia alone.  Tens of thousands of Somalians fled to other surrounding countries such as Kenya and Ethiopia in search of food.  The UN says that about 1.5 million people have left Somalia due to the conditions.  Although the conditions may have ended, there are still several in need of help in Somalia.

I found this article interesting because it reminds me of the myths of savage Africa.  Stories about famine, malnutrition and high mortality rates are what we all constantly hear about Africa.  I went on to read several stories related to the famine and drought in East Africa and specifically Somalia that were all very interesting and heart breaking.  One article stated that there were 12 million people across the region who were in need off food and half of those who already had died were children.