International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation

6 February 2012

    The International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation is observed each year to raise awareness about this practice. Female genital mutilation of any type has been recognized as a harmful practice and violation of the human rights of girls and women. WHO is committed to the elimination of female genital mutilation within a generation and is focusing on advocacy, research and guidance for health professionals and health systems.

Image via Wikipedia

    Female genital mutilation (FGM) refers to all procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. Female genital mutilation has no known health benefits. On the contrary, it is associated with a series of short and long-term risks to both physical, mental and sexual health and well-being.
    FGM is affecting about 140 million girls and women, and more than 3 million girls are at risk every year. A special focus for WHO this year, is the troubling trend of health-care providers increasingly being the ones performing female genital mutilation, and thereby contributing to legitimize and maintain the practice.

Read More:

• Global strategy to stop health-care providers from performing female genital mutilation
• Eliminating female genital mutilation: an interagency statement
• Fact sheet on female genital mutilation
• More information on FGM

Improved Treatment for Severe Malaria Saves More Lives

Malaria kills around one million people every year, with nine in ten deaths being in young African children. 

• Severe malaria, marked by serious symptoms such as coma, convulsions, or difficulty breathing, progresses rapidly and is particularly deadly. Those who manage to survive are often left with life-long neurological damage.

• Severe malaria is still mostly treated with the drug quinine, while uncomplicated malaria is treated with drugs containing derivates of artemisinin, an extract from a Chinese plant. In early 2010, the World Health Organization (WHO) strongly recommended that adults with severe malaria be treated with artesunate, a derivate of artemisinin, because it is more effective and has fewer side effects than quinine.

Now, the results from a large trial in nine African countries provide strong evidence that children would also benefit from the newer drug. MSF is already treating severe malaria in children with a drug derived from artemisinin and will now widely introduce artesunate. Artesunate should be used to treat both adults and children with severe malaria so that many more lives can be saved.
But wider obstacles remain: WHO treatment recommendations have yet to be revised in light of the latest evidence in children, and most countries have yet to recommend artesunate in place of quinine for either adults or children. And international donors have yet to put their full weight behind the latest evidence.

Breakthrough Meningitis Vaccine Developed for Africa at Affordable Price

          A new conjugate vaccine against meningococcus A costing only $0.5 (£0.3; €0.4) a dose that has been developed for use in Africa is about to be introduced for the first time in a national vaccination programme in Burkina Faso, researchers announced.

• The campaign to vaccinate all children and young adults from the ages of 1 to 29 years with the vaccine, MenAfriVac, will begin in Burkina Faso on 6 December. Niger and Mali will follow with similar vaccination campaigns.

Countries in the so called meningitis belt in sub-Saharan Africa—from Senegal in the west to Somalia in the east—have had regular epidemics of meningococcal meningitis for the past century. Almost all of the major outbreaks are caused by group A Neisseria menigitidis.

Sources:

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs141/en/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001633

http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org

Ebola - haemorrhagic fever

Ebola haemorrhagic fever (EHF) is a viral haemorrhagic fever and one of the most virulent viral diseases known to humankind.

The virus interferes with the endothelial cells lining the interior surface of blood vessels and with coagulation. As the blood vessel walls become damaged and destroyed, the platelets are unable to coagulate, patients succumb to hypovolemic shock. Ebola is transmitted through bodily fluids, while conjunctiva exposure may also lead to transmission.

There are five distinct species of the Ebola virus: 

• Bundibugyo, 
• Côte d’Ivoire, 
• Reston, 
• Sudan and 
• Zaïre.  

Bundibugyo, Sudan and Zaïre species have been associated with large outbreaks of Ebola haemorrhagic fever (EHF) in Africa causing death in 25-90% of all clinically ill cases, while Côte d’Ivoire and Reston have not. 

The Ebola virus is transmitted by direct contact with the blood, body fluids and tissues of infected persons. Transmission of the Ebola virus has also occurred by handling sick or dead infected wild animals (chimpanzees, gorillas, monkeys, forest antelope, fruit bats). 

The predominant treatment is general supportive therapy.

More:

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/spb/mnpages/dispages/Fact_Sheets/Ebola_Fact_Booklet.pdf

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/spb/mnpages/dispages/ebola/ebolatable.htm

"The Practice of Breast Ironing" -Female Genital Mutilation

         Key facts

• Female genital mutilation (FGM) includes procedures that intentionally alter or cause injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.
• The procedure has no health benefits for girls and women.
• Procedures can cause severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later cysts, infections, infertility as well as complications in childbirth increased risk of newborn deaths.
• About 140 million girls and women worldwide are currently living with the consequences of FGM.
• FGM is mostly carried out on young girls sometime between infancy and age 15.
• In Africa an estimated 101 million girls 10 years old and above have undergone FGM.
• FGM is a violation of the human rights of girls and women.

Breast ironing is the practice of using various objects to massage or press on developing girls’ breasts to discourage growth. It is traditional in several areas of Africa, but notably in Cameroon, affecting 1 in 4 girls, according to a study by the development group Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ).

       Usually mothers or elders carry on this tradition meant to delay the appearance of sexual maturity and thus, delay sexual predation. The GTZ reports that the devastating psychological and physical health effects include “damaged tissue, open wounds, abscesses, infections, an elevated cancer risk,…difficulties with breastfeeding and trauma.”

Tools used in "Breast Ironing"