Everything You Need To Know About Yellow Fever

You’ve probably heard of yellow fever. It’s one of those conditions that has a famous name that almost everyone can recall having heard at some point. But how much do you really know about it? If you’re like most people, you probably don’t actually know that much, even if you might be aware that it’s a fairly serious condition. Well, yellow fever is a viral infection that is spread by mosquitos. It is most common throughout tropical places such as South America and Africa but often affects travellers and as well as residents of these areas.

 

Yellow fever isn’t necessarily a very bad or dangerous conditions. In its mild form, yellow fever causes headaches, fever, nausea and vomiting. So while it is unpleasant it is not necessarily life threatening. However, there is also the more serious form of the infection which can cause serious damage to your heart, liver and kidneys as well as cases of bleeding. In fact, the serious form of the condition is so dangerous that it is known to be fatal in up to 50 per cent of severe cases. So, given that yellow fever can be such a worrying threat to our lives – what is there that we can do about it?

 

Unfortunately there is no specific treatment that is able to fight off yellow fever – it is mainly down to your immune system and your ability to fight off the virus. It is well known, however, that if you receive the yellow fever vaccine before you travel to areas where the disease is prevalent then it will completely protect you from the condition. This is very good news for anyone who is likely to travel to an area where yellow fever causes problems.

 

So how do you know if you’ve got yellow fever? In the first few days when you have contracted the condition you won’t see any symptoms at all. Unfortunately, it then hits its most acute stage which can in some cases lead to a toxic stage where in severe cases it is known to be fatal. In the acute stage you’re likely to feel sick or be sick, followed by headaches and fever. In the toxic phase you’re likely to see a yellowing of your skin (which is where the condition gets its name from) followed by severe abdominal pain and vomiting, and then possibly bleeding from the nose, eyes and mouth, heart dysfunction and kidney and liver failure. Clearly, these very severe conditions are extremely bad for you.

 

With this in mind it cannot be emphasised enough that if you are travelling to an area that is well known to have problems with yellow fever, you must speak to your doctor well in advance of your travel so that you can receive your inoculations and travel safely to the region. In any case of travel to South America or Africa it is strongly advised that you seek urgently the advice of doctors on this issue as so avoid doing so can be very dangerous for you.

 

If you do find yourself exhibiting symptoms of the condition then it is worth seeking the advice of your doctor as soon as possible. In mild cases there may be little to do aside from rest and improving your health, but in more severe cases it is very important you seek urgent medical attention. Overall, however, it is strongly recommended that you receive inoculations from the condition before you travel as this is the only way to ensure you’ll be safe where you are.

Categories: Africa, South America, yellow fever

Scientists Discover ‘Roadmap’ to AIDS Vaccine

A team of scientists on a quest for an antibody-based AIDS vaccine have said that they found promising signs in an unusually robust natural immune response of a patient in Africa. Through studying a number of blood samples over the three-year period after the sufferer was infected, researchers watched a microscopic battle between the virus and antibodies. Both evolved as they sought to gain the upper hand.

In an important breakthrough, for the first time, scientists were able to follow the full chain of events that led to the patient naturally producing the antibodies which attacks different strains of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS.

This research has the potential to fill a gap in current scientific knowledge, which has been a roadblock on the path to an effective vaccine for the virus, which has already been responsible for more than 30 million deaths.

Antibodies could be considered to be the foot soldiers of your immune system. They latch onto viruses or other microbe-sized intruders into the body and tag them to be destroyed by other cells in the immune system. Most antiviral vaccines are made by priming antibodies to recognise specific germs more easily, but an effective method of doing this has not yet been successful in AIDS control.

One of the biggest problems for medical scientists and researchers, the HIV virus typically evolves too fast to ever be left open to antibody attack. The individual who is in the study, from an African country that was not specified, is one of around 20 percent of HIV-infected people whose immune systems naturally produce antibodies.

Scientists Discover ‘Roadmap’ to AIDS Vaccine

Categories: Africa, aids, Vaccine

African Culture Shifts in Favour of Fuller-Figured Women

While women have, in recent years, deemed thin as synonymous with, a new trend appears to have sneaked into vogue, displacing the once yearned-for-by-men and envied-by-women skinny model. Now, the voluptuous bodies of Beyonce, Nicki Minaj, Shakira and Jennifer Lopez are what we’re after, and this trend is certainly on the rise in Africa.

Peter Mugagga, a student at Makerere University, Kampala, explains, ‘Not that they aren’t pretty, but slimming girls look like fragile pretty little things that are good to look at but too delicate to touch.’ He notes that curvy women have a womanly vibe, ‘without any protruding bones or ribs to jab you when you embrace them.’ Real estate developer Steven Akiiki adds, ‘Slimming women show that they are overly concerned with what others think of them. They change from being a person into a consumer product seeking purchase.’

Dr Tabley Bakyaita, a health educator at the Health ministry, scoffs at weight loss in order to look like skinny celebrities, calling it a crazy wellness practice. ‘Men have never prescribed the kind of size a woman should be. Why, then, do young girls copy those exaggerated model sizes that can be risky to their lives?’ According to Dr Bakyaita, Western magazines and internet are to blame for having models’ photos with exaggerated thin bodies, ‘which our girls copy’.

Yet one person against the new trend towards curvier figures is professional model Vincent Kaliisa, who makes no apology for slimming. ‘Fashion and trends work together with our bodies,’ he says. ‘A woman is, therefore, expected to do anything possible [like slimming] to look nice.’ Yet Makerere University’s Professor of Nutrition and Bio-engineering John Muyonga advises a healthy balance: ‘It is healthy for someone to reduce or add weight as long as they remain within the ranges of the body mass index. The normal indices are always between 18.5 and 25, anything below or above that is considered abnormal.’

According to Dr Eria Olowo Onyango, a Makerere University social anthropologist, it’s not surprising that the trend is changing. ‘Culture grows through people picking and dropping certain practices,’ he says. ‘This idea of slimming is like a full circle. Some women took up the Western slimming phenomenon but after some time, we now see them go back to the original African full woman.’

Categories: Africa, fuller figures, slimming

Medication Halts Spread of HIV But Women Failing to Use it

Using a vaginal gel that contains HIV medication before and after sex has been shown to reduce the number of cases of infection of the virus. This is one of the strategies used to prevent HIV infection through unprotected sex in sub-Saharan Africa.

However, a project analysing the use of the vaginal gels along with daily tablets has shown that this particular strategy has failed because the women involved did not take the medication when they were supposed to. The results of the study reveal the importance of individual’s behaviour in dictating the spread of the disease.

More than 5,000 women in Zimbabwe, South Africa and Uganda were given the gel and two different types of anti-HIV drugs in the three-year study carried out by the University of Washington called Vaginal and Oral Interventions to Control the Epidemic (VOICE).

Blood tests at the end of the study revealed that more than 70% failed to use the medication in the way it was prescribed. Unmarried women, who are the group most at risk of contracting HIV, were shown to be the most likely to not use of any of the medication.

Truvada, the daily tablet tested during the study, has now given approval for use in HIV prevention by the US Food and Drug Administration because tests have shown its effectiveness in reducing the risk of HIV.

The results of the University of Washington study were revealed at a conference on retroviruses and opportunistic infections in Atlanta. Experts in HIV and AIDS believe the study confirms that, alongside medication, encouraging a change in people’s behaviour so they take the drugs is the only way that infection rates will be reduced.

HIV rates in eastern and southern Africa are the highest anywhere in the world and so the focus for experts on the disease has been on finding drug treatments that can be administered simply and effectively to a destitute population.

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Medication Halts Spread of HIV But Women Failing to Use it

Categories: Africa, HIV prevention, medication

What Is The African HIV Epidemic?

HIV is a global epidemic which a lot of people don’t like to think about. 70% of the worlds HIV/AIDS positive population live within sub-Saharan Africa, one of the poorest areas on the planet. Though HIV has become much less of a death sentence in the developed world than it once was, in the less developed areas of the planet it’s just as life threatening as it once was. With such a high level of infected people and such a small amount put towards their treatment, the spread of this disease is far outpacing the therapies put in place to counter it.

Most of the money poured into countering this epidemic is aid money donated by countries all over the world. Without this money there’d simply not be any resources put towards dealing with the AIDS epidemic and it would spread totally unchecked. Though a lot of money and volunteer hours are put into easing this crisis, this amount is starting to diminish. The developed world seems to have decided that the issue is being beaten. This could be due to how tired and overworked their volunteers are or general economic strain, but less and less is donated each year. This lessens what can be done to ease the issue.

The fact is that the issue isn’t getting better and as countries lessen their donations things will get worse. For this reason the aid charities need to work out the best way to get the very most from every donated pound. The things they need to be doing also need to be very cost efficient. Wasting what little money is available would be terrible and as such a lot of charities are looking at specialist care bundles. These would contain certain items which could be easily mass produced for little expense but could be the difference between life and death for an HIV positive individual.

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What Is The African HIV Epidemic?

Categories: Africa, aids, HIV