UGANDA LAUNCHES ORAL HIV TEST KITS.

Kampala, UGANDA:

You no longer need to prick your finger or draw blood from your body to test for HIV. Uganda has endorsed a new self-test kit that will enable one test for HIV anywhere outside a health facility.

All you need to do is press the flat pad of a test stick/device firmly against your gum. Thereafter, you will move the test stick along the lower and upper gums once. Then, you will place the test device in a tube and wait for 20 minutes. The gums are rich in antibodies produced by people living with HIV.

The gums of people living with HIV, according to health experts, are rich in antibodies produced by the virus. Antibodies are proteins made by one’s body to attack foreign substances such as viruses and bacteria.

The HIV antibodies are not available in saliva and it is not required for the test, the acting director-general of health services, Dr. Henry Mwebesa, said. This was during an event to endorse the tool at Hotel Protea in Kampala yesterday.

If red lines appear on the test stick, there are high chances you are HIV-positive; whether the second line is faint or not. If only one red line appears, it means you are HIV-negative.

The kit is known as OraQuick. If the test indicates positive results, you are advised to visit a health facility for a confirmatory test before you can be enrolled in antiretroviral therapy (ARVs).

The test should be performed 15 minutes before eating or 20 minutes before using mouth cleaning products. The results should not be read 40 minutes after the test has been performed because they would be invalid. An estimated 1.3 million Ugandans are living with HIV/AIDS. Of these, 1.2 million people are said to be on ARVs.

The health ministry permanent secretary, Dr. Diana Atwine, said she is optimistic the new device will encourage an estimated 100,000 or more HIV-positive Ugandans, who have never tested, to know their serostatus.

Information from the ministry shows that the number of clients seeking HIV-testing services at health facilities is still the lowest among men and adolescents. The HIV prevalence rate is 6.2%, down from 7.3% in 2011.

It is only three months to 2020 when Uganda is expected to bring the HIV/ AIDS epidemic under control. The country also expects to end the disease as a public health threat by 2030.

Social harm ruled out Atwine said the new kit is the only self-test device recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO). The kit, according to the health ministry, was assessed by WHO on the possibility of its HIV positive results triggering social harm on patients and accuracy, among others, and it passed the test.

That notwithstanding, Atwine said the providers of the device should provide clients with telephone numbers of healthcare professionals they can get in touch with in case they establish they are HIV-positive.

This, she said, will prevent possibilities of the results triggering social harm such as cases of suicide. Mwebesa said the kits currently sold to clients that rely on blood samples for self-tests are fake and contrary to the national HIV testing algorithm. Any HIV test that involves blood samples, he added, should be performed in a health facility by medical personnel.

The OraQuick device is manufactured by a US company, OraSure. Human Diagnostics Uganda Ltd is the local representative of the manufacturer. Cost A single device, meant for one person, costs between sh23,000 and sh25,000 in various pharmacies. However, it is free in public health facilities.

The accuracy of OraQuick device is estimated at 99.6%. The ministry said the devices have been introduced in health facilities in 79 districts, and they will be made available in other local governments soon.

Comments

CUBA CLAIMS CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER IS FIDEL CASTRO'S SON.

The suicide note left by Fidel Castro’s eldest son has rocked the Cuban nation this week, with the most astonishing revelation being the claim that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was his half-brother and the son of the late Fidel Castro. The handwritten note left by Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, 68, the eldest of Fidel Castro’s children, appears to confirm the longstanding rumor in Cuba that Fidel Castro fathered Justin Trudeau after a public tryst with Margaret Trudeau in 1970. “ Castro Diaz-Balart, who had been attended by a group of doctors for several months due to a state of profound depression, committed suicide this morning ,” Cubadebate website reported. The death of the high-profile government nuclear scientist, also known as “Fidelito”, or Little Fidel, because of how much he looked like his father, stunned the nation, however it is his “ explosive ” suicide note that has set tongues wagging in Havana. Amid a wide-ranging barrage of compl...

WHY CHINA'S DOG-MEAT MARKET HAS EXPANDED.

Every year during the summer solstice, a dog-eating festival takes place in Yulin, a city in the southern Chinese province of Guangxi. This year’s event ended with the usual controversy. Photographs of dogs being fried or treated cruelly went viral. The Jinhua Hutou Dog Meat Festival, as it is called, was abruptly canceled last week. Animal-rights activists and American congressmen demanded that China ban the eating of dogs and cats, as Taiwan did in April. Yulin’s local government took modest steps to restrain or hide some of the more contentious activities, such as selling dogs in food markets. Still, the festival was packed. Why has the controversial culinary habit become so popular in China? Contrary to cliché, dog meat has not always been a common item in the Chinese diet. Unlike in the West, eating dogs has never been taboo, but it appears to have been rare in the past. Government accounts single out butchers who sold dog meat, suggesting it ...

UGANDA ANNOUNCES "KILL THE GAYS" LAW IMPOSING DEATH PENALTY TO HOMOSEXUALS.

Kampala, UGANDA: Uganda has announced plans to impose the death penalty on homosexuals. The bill, colloquially known as “Kill the Gays” in Uganda, was nullified five years ago on a technicality, but the government said on Thursday it plans to resurrect it within weeks. The government said the legislation would curb a rise in “unnatural sex” in the east African nation. “Homosexuality is not natural to Ugandans, but there has been a massive recruitment by gay people in schools, and especially among the youth, where they are promoting the falsehood that people are born like that,” the country’s ethics and integrity minister, Simon Lokodo, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “Our current penal law is limited. It only criminalises the act. We want it made clear that anyone who is even involved in promotion and recruitment has to be criminalised. Those that do grave acts will be given the death sentence.” Mr Lokodo said the bill, which has the support of th...

MALARIA VACCINE PROVES HIGHLY EFFECTIVE IN BURKINA FASO.

A vaccine against malaria has been shown to be highly effective in trials in Africa, holding out the real possibility of slashing the death toll of a disease that kills 400,000 mostly small children every year. The vaccine, developed by scientists at the Jenner Institute of Oxford University, showed up to 77% efficacy in a trial of 450 children in Burkina Faso over 12 months. The hunt for a malaria vaccine has been going on the best part of a century. One, the Mosquirix vaccine developed by GlaxoSmithKline, has been through lengthy clinical trials but is only partially effective, preventing 39% of malaria cases and 29% of severe malaria cases among small children in Africa over four years. It is being piloted by the World Health Organization in parts of Kenya, Ghana and Malawi. The Oxford vaccine is the first to meet the WHO goal of 75% efficacy against the mosquito-borne parasite disease. Larger trials are now beginning, involving 4,800 children in four countries. Prof ...

MINERS IN NAMIBIA DISCOVER SHIPWRECK LOADED $13 MILLION WORTH OF GOLD.

Image: Dieter Noli. Diamond miners working off the coast of Africa were beyond surprised when they discovered a 500-year-old shipwreck teeming with gold worth $13 million and other treasures. The ship, aptly named ‘Bom Jesus’ or ‘Good Jesus,’ was like a miracle to the miners. Bom Jesus was first identified and discovered by geologists working for the mining company De Beers in 2008. It was found off the coast of Namibia near Oranjemund. Image: Dieter Noli. According to experts, Bom Jesus is from the Golden era of Portuguese explorers who set sail in all directions in search of new lands to colonize. The ship left Lisbon in 1533 under the supervision of Sir Francisco de Noronha. But on its way to India, it mysteriously vanished. Before the discovery, the miners were draining an artificial salt lake. As the lake dried out, many lost ships were found at the bottom of the lake. Bom Jesus was among them, and it is considered the oldest of all ...

POPE TOLD BY ARMY CHIEF: "THERE IS NO RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATION IN MYANMAR."

Myanmar’s powerful army chief has told Pope Francis there is “no religious discrimination” in the country during talks at the start of the pontiff’s delicate visit to the majority-Buddhist nation that has been accused of “ethnic cleansing” against its Muslim Rohingya people. Min Aung Hlaing. Reuters Thousands of Catholics welcomed Pope Francis to the country’s capital, Naypyidaw, where he arrived for a three-day visit to Myanmar on Monday. The trip – fraught with sensitivity and trepidation over how he will deal with the plight of the Muslim Rohingya – could be the trickiest yet of his papacy. The army chief told the pope that “Myanmar has no religious discrimination at all. Likewise our military too ... performs for the peace and stability of the country,” according to a Facebook post published by the general’s office a few hours after the meeting. There is also “no discrimination between ethnic groups in Myanmar”, he added. The Vatican said the m...

BOTSWANA SHUTDOWNS PROPHET BUSHIRI CHURCHES.

Gaborone, BOTSWANA: It never rains, but it pours for flamboyant prophet Shepherd Bushiri’s Enlightened Christian Gathering church in Botswana, as government closes down all of his church branches following the deregistration of the organisation last year. As a result, disciples of Bushiri’s in Botswana have resorted to following their leader through his television channel, while those who have the means are travelling to South Africa on weekends to attend Sunday services. The recent crackdown on the church comes just a few weeks after the government of Botswana lifted a visa travelling ban imposed on Bushiri during former president Ian Khama’s presidency. Unlike other Malawian citizens, Bushiri, who is also known as Major 1, was forced to apply for a visa each time he entered Botswana in 2017. The then nationality, immigration and gender affairs minister Edwin Batshu told MPs that Bushiri was “too demanding”. Batshu indicated that the government slapped Bushiri wi...

EGYPTIAN VILLAGE WHERE MOSQUE WAS BOMBED HAD BEEN WARNED.

CAIRO (AP) : Elders of a village in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula where militants killed 305 people in a mosque had been warned by Islamic State operatives to stop collaborating with security forces and to suspend rituals associated with Islam’s mystical Sufi movement, security officials and residents said. The latest warning came as recently as a week ago, telling villagers in Al-Rawdah not to hold Sufi rituals on Nov. 29-30 to commemorate the birth of the Prophet Muhammad, according to residents and the officials who work for security and military intelligence agencies operating in Sinai. Local operatives of the Islamic State group’s affiliate in Sinai consider Sufis to be heretics who should be killed. Ahmed Saqr, an expert on the Sinai insurgency, said militants had publicly identified the mosque, which also serves as a Sufi center, as a target months ago. He wrote on Saturday in a Facebook post that the selection of the Al-Rawdah mosque as a target “raises questions about tho...

THOUSANDS OF FAKE COVID-19 VACCINES HAVE BEEN SEIZED IN SOUTH AFRICA & CHINA.

File photo - Interpol Secretary-General Jurgen Stock Image: africanews. Lyon, FRANCE: Police have seized thousands of counterfeit coronavirus vaccines in South Africa and China and have made more than 80 arrests after a criminal network selling fake jabs was uncovered, Interpol said on Wednesday. In South Africa, police officers found 400 ampoules of fake vaccines, equivalent to around 2,400 doses, at a warehouse just outside Johannesburg. A large quantity of fake 3M masks was also found and police arrested three Chinese nationals and a Zambian national. Police in South Africa seized hundreds of fake COVID-19 vaccines and made several arrests following a global alert issued by INTERPOL. In China, police successfully identified a network selling counterfeit COVID-19 vaccines, raided the manufacturing premises, resulting in the arrest of some 80 suspects, and seized more than 3,000 fake vaccines on the scene. The investigation was supported and coordinated by Interpol’s Illicit Goods ...

A MODEL SOLD HER VIRGINITY FOR $3 MILLION TO THE ARABIAN BILLIONAIRE.

A model claims she has auctioned her virginity for nearly $3million (£2.2million) - and says it is a 'dream come true' for her. Giselle, 19, who is based in the US, says she decided to sell her virginity through the notorious German-based website Cinderella Escorts. The agency claims the highest bidder was a businessman from Abu Dhabi, with a bid of 2.5m Euros ($2.9m/£2.2m), while a Hollywood actor was said to have made the second highest bid of 2.4m Euros ($2.8m/£2.1m). Giselle says she will use the money to pay for her college fees, buy a new house, and go traveling around the world. Watch the Video below: The model said: 'I am happy to have decided to sell my virginity through Cinderella Escorts. 'I would never have dreamt that the bid would rise so high and we would have reached 2.5million Euros. This is a dream come true.' Giselle said she was 'shocked' by the outrage against women selling her virginity, describing it as...

Kioo17 Journal

Search This Blog