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.