Posts tagged South Africa

Meet 16 year old Sinethemba.

Her mother passed away when she was six months old and she was given to the care of her aunt. Last December, her aunt passed away, as well. She now lives with her grandmother and four other family members in Khayelitsha, Western Cape, South Africa. 

At the funeral of her late aunt, Sinethemba was visibly ill – thin, weak, pale, high temperature, always sleeping. Her health was deteriorating at alarming rates and if she did not leave the Port Elizabeth area (where she lived with her aunt), she would not survive. This was when her grandmother, Vuyisiwa, took her in to care for her. On December 12th, 2015, Sinethemba went through a series of tests and was diagnosed with multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). In February 2016, MSF introduced a new treatment drug to her called delamanid: a drug not usually available for TB patients in South Africa.

 After a month on her new drug regimen, she was singing, dancing, and enjoying the improvements of her health. When she went for her last X-ray, doctors found no signs of TB in her chest. Vuyisiwa says, “If people got this drug, they could really control DR-TB. TB is a giant, but not a killer. TB can be cured.”

“We have created the impression that we don’t care about the young people who are sick and dying…This is a war. It means that all of us should stand on our feet and mobilise the community” - Nelson Mandela, during a visit to one of the AIDS clinics in Khayelitsha. He expressed support for the treatment initiative, coupled with prevention programs, to protect the lives of people infected with HIV and to curb the impact of the virus. 

It’s the international day in honor of Nelson Mandela. It’s also AIDS2016 - where Doctors Without Borders will share operational research related to simplified patient-focused differentiated models of care, community-based testing, linkage and retention in care, human resources for health as well as scale up of routine viral load monitoring. 

In, 2015, we’re asking you to join the campaign to Fix the Patent Laws, so generic medicines are available to everyone. http://ow.ly/G38a8

Photo by Sydelle WIllow Smith

With one brave last gulp Phumeza, 23, swallowed the last of the 20,000 pills she had taken to cure her extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB). Read the story/watch the video

MSF & the Treatment Action Campaign rallied in front of the Africa IP Forum in Johannesburg, South Africa. We are calling for the South African government to fix its patent law to better protect access to affordable medicines.

Photo: A child at MSF’s intensive feeding center in Guidam Roumdji, Maradi region. Niger 2011 © Alessandra Vilas Boas

Rotavirus Research Results Show Need to Tailor Vaccines to Improve Their Impact

Cape Town/Geneva/New York, November 8, 2012- Research presented today by Epicentre, the epidemiological research arm of MSF and other African researchers, contributes to the growing body of evidence that the two existing rotavirus vaccines may not be best adapted for use in Africa.

“Vaccine developers have not taken into account the full rotavirus picture in places that are hardest hit by diarrheal illness and deaths caused by rotavirus,” said Dr. Anne-Laure Page, an epidemiologist at Epicentre. “This study adds to the growing body of research that underscores the need to ensure that vaccines are developed that effectively address the needs of developing countries.”

The two available rotavirus vaccines were developed and tested in industrialized countries, and have an efficacy rate of 90 percent against severe diarrhea in these countries, compared to an estimated 50-60 percent in countries in Africa and Asia. The current vaccines are also bulky and have a limited shelf life at room temperature, further making them unsuitable for developing countries that lack adequate refrigeration capacity.

“The fact that currently available vaccines are not easy to use in the places that are hardest to reach contributes to the fact that 22 million children born each year do not receive even the basic vaccination package,” said Elder.

Johannesburg is the economic engine of the most prosperous country on the African continent, but it is also home to inner city slums inhabited by vulnerable migrants. These people came to the city looking for new opportunities, but what many found instead was a life defined and circumscribed by crime, exploitation, marginalisation, violence, and xenophobia. Many fear that they will be deported from the country. As a result, they remain hidden from view in abandoned high-rise office buildings. One of these buildings is now referred to as Dark City, which remained without electricity during the city’s original economic boom.

Urban Survivors is a multimedia project by Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in collaboration with the NOOR photo agency and Darjeeling Productions, highlighting the critical humanitarian and medical needs that exist in slums the world over.

Photo: © Pep Bonet/NOOR

Most of slum residents (85 percent) in Johannesburg, South Africa have a living space that is smaller than 3.5 square metres. Rooms in the informal slum buildings in central Johannesburg are tiny, cramped spaces with walls made of thin wood panels and cardboard. Twenty-two percent of residents surveyed by MSF live in spaces with less than one square metre per person and 17 percent sleep on bare floors without a mattress. Residents have little privacy and few ways to protect themselves from thieves or other threats.

Urban Survivors is a multimedia project by Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in collaboration with the NOOR photo agency and Darjeeling Productions, highlighting the critical humanitarian and medical needs that exist in slums the world over.

Photo: © Pep Bonet/NOOR

At 21 years old Phumeza should have her whole life to look forward to. Right now she’s confined to a bed in a tuberculosis (TB) care centre in Khayelitsha near Cape Town, South Africa on treatment for the most virulent form of TB currently known – extensively drug-resistant TB, or XDR-TB.

Phumeza doesn’t know how she contracted TB. She thinks it could have been on a crowded bus or at school. She knows she felt ill and that no-one could tell her what was
wrong. So began a long and painful journey of misdiagnosis and waiting while she just got sicker and sicker.

“At first, they gave me aspirins and paracetamol,“ Phumeza said. “They didn’t see any TB on the smear they took. I had so many different tests but they still couldn’t see what was
wrong! I just got more sick.”

Finally, nearly two months later Phumeza was diagnosed in hospital with MDR-TB (multidrug-resistant TB) by which time she was so ill she was forced to drop out of school.

“Sometimes I didn’t know whether I was coming or going,” she said.

Last year for the first time in ten years, the number of people dying from TB worldwide dropped, but still every year we miss diagnosing and treating around three million cases of TB. And half of those people die as a result of not being treated. So many people with this curable disease fall through the net because, until recently, the tests to confirm that someone has active TB or not have been so completely inadequate.

Now, a new test using molecular technology is clearing the path for getting many more people on the treatment they need earlier. It’s still only a start – too many patients will still be kept waiting for a diagnosis so they can get the treatment they need but some first steps have at least been taken to improve TB diagnostics.

"5 Lives” tells the stories of people who MSF works with every day, people whose lives often hinge on whether or not they can gain access to a simple medical intervention. These are situations that could be avoided with proper and sustainable funding and investment in public health. That’s why MSF supports calls to permanently allocate a small portion of a new financial transaction tax (FTT), which has been proposed by some governments, to support global health needs. A regular stream of funding would help provide some of the resources needed to address unchecked health crises around the world.

Photo: © Samantha Reinder

(Photo: Alon Skuy, The Times, South Africa)

Doornfontein, Johannesburg – July 2011
There are approximately 250,000 people living in slum buildings of inner-city Johannesburg. These migrants from Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa are without documentation, rights, or money.

Inside these informal settlements unhygienic and overcrowded living conditions prevail. There is no sanitation or waste management, poor access to clean water, electricity and to basic health care. MSF is helping residents by providing primary health care, referrals to the public sector clinics, and providing materials for cleaning in some of these buildings. View more photos at the MSF photo blog