health

A rabies disease outbreak has been detected in Schweizer-Reneke and Bloemhof, in the North West.

More than 20 heard of cattle have died.

Rabies is a viral disease that causes inflammation of the brain in humans and other mammals.

Early symptoms can include fever especially on dogs and cat families and can be spread to other mammals.

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At least 32 people have died in Somalia after drinking water from a well that was believed to have been poisoned, officials said on Monday.

More than 10 other people were hospitalised after drinking the water in Masuubiye near the south-western city of Baidoa, regional senior official Hassan Hussein Elay said.

Elay accused the militant Islamist group al-Shabaab of poisoning the well.

"Al-Shabaab poisoned the waterhole to prevent government soldiers from drinking water there," he said, without providing details.

Repeated rain failures have pushed 15 million people across the three countries into crisis, and in need of aid, as their animals are dying and water is in short supply, Save the Children said in a statement.

"The situation for already desperate children and families in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya will only get worse – leaving millions at risk of hunger, and even death," the charity's Ethiopia country director, John Graham, said.

The next rainy season is likely to bring more below-average rainfall across the region, experts predict.

A Pinetown resident whose right arm was slashed in an attempted hijacking last month now fears losing the use of his limb after he says indifferent hospital staff left the wound open for hours on end.
Riaan van der Westhuizen, 31, also says that he lay unattended in the casualty ward unit of RK Khan Hospital in Chatsworth before his heart stopped.

Only when his wife started CPR did her frantic screams gain the attention of medical staff, who rushed him into theatre.

A new clinical trial is underway in South Africa on an experimental vaccine that could safely prevent HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

According to a statement from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the HVTN 702 is the largest and most advanced HIV vaccine clinical trial to be undertaken in South Africa, where some seven million people are living with the virus.

The Gauteng Health Department has come under attack for the alleged poor treatment of Community Health Workers following its decision to award a tender worth R87 million to a company to manage the payment of about 7000 of these workers.  
 
Opposition parties in the Gauteng Provincial Legislature say the workers who receive a R2 500 stipend every month are underpaid while others go for months without being paid.   
 
In May this year a company called SmartPurse won a contract for 87 million to manage the payment of community health workers for three years.