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From the 22nd to the 27th of January 2018, Bafoussam was the venue of intensive training of the North West Rapid Response Team (RRT). The team was made up of about thirty (30) individuals from various backgrounds: Clinicians, veterinians, Epidemiologists, Lab Scientists, WASH experts, Communicators, expert in psychosocial assistance, Data managers, Logisticians.
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Taking the common painkiller ibuprofen has been linked in a small study with a condition affecting male fertility problems.
Male fertility is dropping around the world and the researchers wanted to see if ibuprofen might be contributing to this.
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Coffee may not only give you a morning boost; it also may have significant health benefits.
So says a review by British scientists of more than 200 studies on coffee consumption and health, published Wednesday in The BMJ, a British medical journal.
“Coffee drinking appears safe within usual patterns of consumption,” said the University of Southhampton's Robin Poole, who led the study.
According to the researchers, people who drink three to four cups of coffee a day are more likely to see health benefits than harm, experiencing lower rates of premature death, cardiovascular disease and liver disease.
Drinking more coffee is also associated with a decrease in several types of cancer — including prostate cancer, endometrial cancer, skin cancer, leukemia and liver cancer — according to the researchers' findings. There were also lower rates of type 2 diabetes, gallstones and dementia associated with coffee consumption.
Drinking three to four cups of coffee offers the most health benefits, except for pregnant women and people who are prone to bone fractures.
Since the review was an analysis of existing studies, it is impossible to account for many other factors that might have influenced the subjects' health. More studies would be needed to determine causation and not just correlation. In other words, it might be that healthier people also drink coffee, but the review's findings suggest that there are more positive effects than negative ones.
Although the review found that there was more benefit than harm from drinking coffee, the studies were not adjusted for important confounders, such as body mass index, smoking, age, alcohol use, income and education level.
ABC
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KAMPALA — Uganda’s ministry of health confirmed Thursday that one person has died of Marburg hemorrhagic fever, a close relative of the Ebola virus. Surveillance teams have deployed to the affected district in the eastern part of the country to contain the outbreak.
Uganda’s Ministry of Health says one of the two suspected cases of Marburg virus disease has been confirmed via laboratory tests conducted by the Uganda Virus Research Institute.
“The confirmed case was a 50-year-old female from Chemuron village, Kween District in Eastern Uganda. She presented with signs and symptoms suggestive of a viral hemorrhagic fever," said Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng, the minister for health. "Preliminary field investigations indicated that prior to her death, the deceased had nursed her 42-year-old brother, who had died on September 25, 2017 with similar signs and symptoms."
According to the World Health Organization, Marburg is transmitted via contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person or the handling of infected animals. Local media report that the deceased woman’s brother was a hunter.
The Ministry of Health has dispatched a rapid response team to the Kween district.
“As of this morning, because their surveillance obviously started from the hospitals where the confirmed case passed away, we have ten health workers who have been listed as contacts, and they have already been isolated in their homes for follow up,”Aceng said.
Uganda is no stranger to viral hemorrhagic fever. The country has battled several outbreaks of Ebola, including an outbreak in 2000 that killed over 200 people.
Marburg is named after the town in Germany where it was first identified in 1967, though that outbreak was traced back to infected monkeys brought from Uganda.
“We have the caves that have the bats that are capable of transferring infection to man in different parts of the country. You can never know when the next outbreak will be. It depends on when man interacts with an infected bat from one of these caves,” said Dr. Miriam Nanyunja , the disease prevention and control officer for the WHO in Uganda.
A person suffering from Marburg presents with sudden onset of high-level fever and headache. This can be accompanied by vomiting, joint and muscle pain, and unexplained bleeding.
There is no cure or vaccine available for Marburg. Patients are given supportive treatment to increase their chance of survival.
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An emergency vaccination campaign is getting under way in northeastern Nigeria to prevent a deadly cholera outbreak from spreading to other countries.
The World Health Organization reports the potentially devastating cholera situation is emerging in Borno State in northeastern Nigeria. During the past few months, it says 2,600 suspected cases of this fatal disease, including 48 deaths, have occurred in this former stronghold of Boko Haram. The militant group has been waging war to establish an Islamic state in northeast Nigeria.
Dominique Legros is cholera coordinator for WHO’s department for pandemic and epidemic diseases. He says the outbreak, which is centered in camps for internally displaced people, is spreading to other areas of northeastern Nigeria, toward Chad and northern Cameroon.
He says 900,000 people in the state will receive the oral cholera vaccine to quickly contain the spread of the disease.
“Once it is out of the box, once it has spread, it is very, very difficult to contain and we have a huge number of cases and deaths," he said. "So, this outbreak in Nigeria, hopefully, will not reach Chad, because in Chad already, we have an alert in the eastern part of the country towards the border with Sudan, 344 cases, 49 deaths.”
Legros says this comes to a 14 percent case fatality. He notes this is very high for a cholera outbreak, which usually has a case fatality rate of less than one percent.
WHO estimates the global cholera disease burden at around 2.9 million suspected cases, including 95,000 deaths. It reports Yemen has the world's worst cholera epidemic, with nearly 690,000 suspected cases and more than 2,000 deaths.
The agency expresses concern about the situation in Africa, where it reports tens of thousands of suspected cases and thousands of deaths in, among others; Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya and Tanzania.
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ONDON —
At least 1.4 million people uprooted by Boko Haram's insurgency in northeast Nigeria are living in 'cholera hotspots,' prey to an outbreak of the deadly disease which is sweeping through camps for the displaced, the United Nations said on Thursday.
An estimated 28 people have died from cholera in the conflict-hit region, while about 837 are suspected to have been infected with the disease, including at least 145 children under the age of five, said the U.N. children's agency (UNICEF).
The outbreak was first identified last week in the Muna Garage camp in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, which is the heart of jihadist group Boko Haram's brutal eight-year campaign to carve out an Islamic caliphate in northeast Nigeria.
About 1.8 million people have abandoned their homes because of violence or food shortages, U.N. agencies say, and many live in camps for the displaced throughout northeast Nigeria.
Several aid agencies last month told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that Nigeria's rainy season could spread disease in already unsanitary displacement camps, and 350,000 uprooted children aged under five are at risk of cholera, UNICEF said.
"Cholera is difficult for young children to withstand at any time, but becomes a crisis for survival when their resilience is already weakened by malnutrition, malaria and other waterborne diseases," UNICEF's Pernille Ironside said in a statement.
"Cholera is one more threat amongst many that children in northeast Nigeria are battling today in order to survive," added Ironside, UNICEF's deputy representative in Nigeria.
UNICEF said aid agencies have set up a cholera treatment centre at the Muna Garage camp, chlorinated water in camps and host communities to curb the outbreak, and mobilised volunteers and local leaders to refer suspected cases to health facilities.
The disease, which spreads through contaminated food and drinking water, causes diarrhea, nausea and vomiting. It can kill within hours if left untreated, but most patients recover if treated promptly with oral rehydration salts.
The latest figures represent a 3.3 percent fatality rate - well above the 1 percent rate that the World Health Organization rates as an emergency. The short incubation period of two hours to five days means the disease can spread with explosive speed.
More than 20,000 people have been killed in the conflict with Boko Haram, at least 2.2 million have been displaced, and 5.2 million in the northeast are short of food, with tens of thousands living in famine-like conditions, U.N. figures show.
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Flourish Doctor Article Count: 3
Meet Your Coach Dr. Joyce Akwe ... With a master's in public health and a medical doctor specialized in internal medicine with a focus on hospital medicine.
Dr. Joyce Akwe is the Chief of Hospital Medicine at the Atlanta VA Health Care System (Atlanta VAHCS), an Associate Professor of Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine and an Adjunct Faculty with Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta GA.
After Medical school Dr. Akwe worked for the World Health Organization and then decided to go back to clinical medicine. She completed her internal medicine residency and chief resident year at Morehouse School of Medicine. After that, she joined the Atlanta Veterans VAHCS Hospital Medicine team and has been caring for our nation’s Veterans since then.
Dr. Akwe has built her career in service and leadership at the Atlanta VA HealthCare System, but her influence has extended beyond your work at the Atlanta VA, Emory University, and Morehouse School of Medicine. She has mentored multiple young physicians and continuous to do so. She has previously been recognized by the Chapter for her community service (2010), teaching (as recipient of the 2014 J Willis Hurst Outstanding Bedside Teaching Award), and for your inspirational leadership to younger physicians (as recipient of the 2018 Mark Silverman Award). The Walter J. Moore Leadership Award is another laudable milestone in your car
Dr. Akwe teaches medical students, interns and residents. She particularly enjoys bedside teaching and Quality improvement in Health care which is aimed at improving patient care. Dr. Akwe received the distinguished physician award from Emory University School of medicine and the Nanette Wenger Award for leadership. She has published multiple papers on health care topics.
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