prevention

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) says the HIV/AIDS  epidemic could end in 15 years if ‘fast-track targets’ are accelerated in the next six years - if not, infection rates could continue to rise.

The UN agency says if these targets are reached, 20.6-million AIDS-related deaths will be averted by 2030 and 27.9-million new adult HIV infections and 5.9-million infections among children will also decrease.

The United Nations has launched a mission to prevent the global spread of Ebola, describing the epidemic as the world's ‘highest priority’ as the United States scrambled to limit its own outbreak.

Anthony Banbury, head of the UN Mission on Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER), began a tour of the three hardest-hit nations in the Liberian capital Monrovia setting out an ambitious goal to eradicate the deadly virus.

A United Nations (UN) trust fund seeking nearly US$1 billion for rapid, flexible funding of the most urgent needs to fight Ebola in West Africa has received a deposit of just US$100 000 nearly a month after it was set up.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in September that US$988 million is needed to tackle the deadly haemorrhagic fever over the next six months and since then, US$365 million has been committed to stop Ebola in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, which have been hit hardest by the epidemic.

Director of the University of Pretoria's Centre for Human Rights, Frans Viljoen, believes South Africa should have played the leading role in the fight against the spread of the Ebola virus in Africa.

Speaking at the University of Pretoria’s panel discussion on South Africa's preparedness for Ebola, Viljoen stresses that, “As a beacon of public health on the continent, as a country that stands for African problems being resolved by Africans themselves, South Africa should have taken a leading role.”

The international medical agency, Medecins sans Frontieres, says the world was ‘losing the battle’ to contain Ebola as the United Nations (UN) warned of severe food shortages in the hardest-hit countries.

MSF told a UN briefing in New York that world leaders were failing to address the epidemic and called for an urgent global biological disaster response to get aid and personnel to West Africa.

Zimbabwe has started setting up health ports to strictly monitor visitors coming in via air or land routes and will quarantine them if necessary in a bid to curb a possible Ebola outbreak.
 
This, despite confirmation from Zimbabwe’s director of epidemiology in the Ministry of Health and Child Care, Portia Manangazira, that no Ebola cases had been detected in that country.

Mozambican health authorities draw up a questionnaire that will be asked to all passengers who have come from, or passed through, the West African countries where Ebola has been reported in an attempt to ensure that the deadly disease Ebola does not reach the country.

The health ministry says the measures will be implemented at all the country's international airport, ports and land borders, in addition, anyone from the affected areas who presents possible Ebola symptoms (such as fever, severe weakness and muscular, head and throat pains) will also be questioned.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says the world's worst outbreak of Ebola that has killed nearly 1 000 people in West Africa represents an international health emergency and could continue spreading for months.

WHO director-general, Margaret Chan, warns that, "The outbreak is moving faster than we can control it."

Advocacy groups believe that greater regional cooperation is needed to eliminate malaria as it remains a health threat to millions of people living in Southern Africa.

Roll Back Malaria, a partnership of organisations, says 200 000 people continue to die from the disease in Southern African each year, with the occurrence remaining unacceptably high in the region.

Malawi’s Department of Nutrition and HIV/AIDS in the Office of the President and Cabinet’s principal secretary, Edith Mkawa, blames the mechanisms utilised to dispatch messages of HIV/AIDS in the early 1990s as a contributing factor to the increased transmission of the virus in that country.

Mkawa has been quoted as saying that attributes that people in the country do not fully understand the concepts of HIV and AIDS because of traditional norms which influenced the spread of the disease.