Warts are benign (not cancerous) skin growths that appear when a virus infects the top layer of the skin. Viruses that cause warts are called human papillomavirus (HPV). You are more likely to get one of these viruses if you cut or damage your skin in some way.

Wart viruses are contagious. Warts can spread by contact with the wart or something that touched the wart.

Warts are often skin-colored and feel rough, but they can be dark (brown or gray-black), flat, and smooth. ….more

The College of Medicine, a constituent College of the University of Malawi, has academic staff vacancies in the departments under the School of Public Health and Family Medicine; and the faculty of Medicine. Applications are invited from suitably qualified candidates to fill the positions indicated below: See attached here advert University of Malawi

‘There is insufficient knowledge regarding dengue and chikungunya fever among community members and healthcare workers.’ This is the conclusion of a new paper from tanzania. Unfortunately, the paper is restricted-access, so many of us will never learn more than the abstract below.

Knowledge and Practice Regarding Dengue and Chikungunya: a cross sectional study among Healthcare Workers and Community in Northern Tanzania

Debora C. Kajeguka, Rachelle E. Desrochers, Rose Mwangi, Maseke R. Mgabo, Michael Alifrangis, Reginald A. Kavishe, Franklin W. Mosha and Manisha A. Kulkarni

DOI: 10.1111/tmi.12863

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/tmi.12863/full

ABSTRACT

Objective: To investigate knowledge and prevention practices regarding dengue and chikungunya amongst community members, as well as knowledge, treatment and diagnostic practices among healthcare workers.

Method: We conducted a cross-sectional survey with 125 community members and 125 healthcare workers from 13 health facilities in six villages in the Hai district of Tanzania. A knowledge score was generated based on participant responses to a structured questionnaire, with a score of 40 or higher (out of 80 and 50 total scores for community members and healthcare workers, respectively) indicating good knowledge. We conducted qualitative survey (n=40) to further assess knowledge and practice regarding dengue and chikungunya fever.

Results: 15.2% (n=19) of community members had good knowledge regarding dengue, whereas 53.6%, (n=67) of healthcare workers did. 20.3% (n=16) of participants from lowland areas and 6.5% (n=3) from highland areas had good knowledge of dengue (?2 = 4.25, p=0.03). Only 2.4% (n=3) of all participants had a good knowledge score for chikungunya. In the qualitative study, community members expressed uncertainty about dengue and chikungunya. Some healthcare workers thought that they were new diseases.

Conclusion: There is insufficient knowledge regarding dengue and chikungunya fever among community members and healthcare workers. Health promotion activities on these diseases based on Ecological Health Mode components to increase knowledge and improve preventive practices should be developed.

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Best wishes, Neil

Let’s build a future where people are no longer dying for lack of healthcare information – Join HIFA: www.hifa.org  

‘The 56-year-old inpatient is scared and worried. His physician has told him the swelling in his right calf that brought him to the hospital may be caused by an “agent” or “pathogen,” but he is confused. An “agent” sounds like a person, and a “pathogen” sounds like “psychopath.” When the physician returns with the diagnosis, cellulitis, and says it is an “inflammation of the skin and subcutaneous tissues,” the patient is further confused and flummoxed about deciding whether to stay in the hospital for antibiotic treatment or receive a prescription and rest at home…’

‘Only 12 percent of U.S. adults are highly proficient when it comes to health literacy, which is the capacity to understand and act on medical information…

‘Killian and Coletti [http://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/2017/03/pfor1-1703.html] argue that physicians should make use of the Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit, published by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), to protect patients’ dignity and autonomy, manage the legal risks of misunderstandings, comply with accrediting bodies’ regulations, and improve patient safety and health care outcomes…

‘AHRQ also advises that to communicate clearly, physicians should:

• Greet patients warmly. Receive everyone with a welcoming smile, and maintain a friendly attitude throughout the visit.
• Make eye contact. Make appropriate eye contact throughout the interaction.
• Listen carefully. Try not to interrupt patients when they are talking. Pay attention, and be responsive to the issues they raise and questions they ask.
• Use plain, nonmedical language. Don’t use medical words. Use common words that you would use to explain medical information to your friends or family, such as stomach or belly instead of abdomen
• Use the patient’s words. Take note of what words the patient uses to describe his or her illness and use them in your conversation.
• Slow down. Speak clearly and at a moderate pace.
• Limit and repeat content. Prioritize what needs to be discussed, and limit information to three to five key points and repeat them
• Be specific and concrete. Don’t use vague and subjective terms that can be interpreted in different ways.
• Show graphics. Draw pictures, use illustrations, or demonstrate with 3-D models. All pictures and models should be simple, designed to demonstrate only the important concepts, without detailed anatomy.
• Demonstrate how it’s done. Whether doing exercises or taking medicine, a demonstration of how to do something may be clearer than a verbal explanation.
• Invite patient participation. Encourage patients to ask questions and be involved in the conversation during visits and to be proactive in their health care…’

The full article is freely available here: https://wire.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/medspeak-can-shut-down-effective-communication-patients

Best wishes, Neil

Let’s build a future where people are no longer dying for lack of healthcare information – Join HIFA: www.hifa.org  

This WHO resource on Monitoring and Evaluating Digital Health Interventions provides step-wise guidance to improve the quality and value of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) efforts in the context of digital health interventions, also commonly referred to as mHealth or eHealth interventions. This Guide is intended for implementers and researchers of digital health activities, as well as policy-makers seeking to understand the various stages and opportunities for systematically monitoring implementation fidelity and for evaluating the impact of digital health interventions. …more

‘Gauteng as a village of 100 people’, GCRO’s latest Urban Data Gallery application, is an interactive animation that presents Gauteng as if it only had 100 residents. Who are these people? What are their life circumstances? What are their beliefs and opinions on key issues?

The urban setting in our animation is reminiscent of Gauteng. The square is surrounded by buildings and scenes from around the Gauteng City-Region. The figures in the square suggest the gender and racial diversity of Gauteng in a non-‘representative’ manner. In this interactive realm, the 100 animated ‘villagers’ roam around and each represent 1% of the 30 000 respondents in GCRO’s Quality of Life IV (2015/16) survey. In this fun and informative visualisation, users can explore the answers to a series of questions from the 2015/16 survey through five interactive scenarios. Each scenario has five variables that a user can select. You can discover where people in Gauteng would prefer to live; how worried or happy they are; or even whether they think South Africa is a failed state or not. Click these or a host of other questions and your selection changes the way in which the 100 villagers cluster and interact with one another, reflecting the results from the Quality of Life survey. In other words, the villagers are proxies for the survey data, where you, the user, can choose what results are shown from a set of themes and questions….here

While more than 10.3-million households in South Africa, or 60.6%, have access to a flush toilet, more than 4.3 million households still rely on pit latrines. And at least 409,881 households have no sanitation whatsoever, according to Stats SA .

But a KwaZulu-Natal company, Sanitation Solutions, with branches in other provinces, has come up with a water-saving ceramic flushing toilet that could be the answer to sanitation problems in rural and peri-urban areas.

The Lali Loo derives its name from the Xhosa word ilali ,which means a village. The loo can be used where there is no sewerage infrastructure. ….more

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Mouth ulcers — also known as canker sores — are normally small, painful lesions that develop in your mouth or at the base of your gums. They can make eating, drinking, and talking uncomfortable. Women, adolescents, and people with a family history of mouth ulcers are at higher risk for developing mouth ulcers.

Mouth ulcers aren’t contagious and usually go away within one to two weeks. However, if you get a canker sore that is large or extremely painful or if it lasts for a long time without healing, you should seek the advice of a doctor.

What triggers mouth ulcers?

There is no definite cause behind mouth ulcers. However, certain factors and triggers have been identified. These include:… Read more

CITATION: Community Health Worker Programmes in the WHO African Region: evidence and options – policy brief

by Nana Twum Danso, Uta Lehmann, Jennifer Nyoni et al.

World Health Organization, Regional Office for Africa, 2017

23 pp. 1.0 MB

http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/254739/1/9789290233558-eng.pdf

‘The purpose of this policy brief is to inform discussions and decisions in the World Health Organization (WHO) African Region on policies, strategies and programmes to increase access to primary health care (PHC) services and make progress towards universal health coverage (UHC) by expanding the implementation of scaled-up Community Health Worker (CHW) programmes. This brief summarizes the existing evidence on CHW programmes with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa and offers a number of context-linked policy options for countries seeking to scale up and improve the effectiveness of their CHW programmes, particularly with regard to needs such as those of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the three countries that were the most affected by the 2014–2015 Ebola Virus Disease outbreak.’

KEY MESSAGES

There is unanimity in the literature that CHW cadres and programmes have enormous potential in strengthening health and community systems at the interface that is now increasingly identified as community health systems. The key foundational elements of successful CHW large scale programmes are:

(a) Embeddedness, connectivity and integration with the larger system of health care service delivery, the health workforce and community governance, as opposed to functioning as stand-alone or short-term interventions;

(b) Cadre differentiation and role clarity in order for the scope of work and accountability responsibilities to be clear, to minimize confusion, and to manage the expectations of the formal health system and community members;

(c) Sound design, based on local contextual factors and effective people management. Specifically, evidence confirms that CHW programmes will fail unless CHWs are provided:

– initial and continuing training commensurate with their roles;

– regular, skilled and supportive supervision;

– adequate and appropriate incentives and compensation, whether monetary or other types;

– prospects for career development and progression.

(d) Ongoing monitoring, learning and adapting, based on accurate and timely local data to ensure heir optimal fit to the local context, since one size does not fit all.

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Best wishes, Neil

Let’s build a future where people are no longer dying for lack of healthcare knowledge – Join HIFA: www.hifa.org  

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Perhaps you bent the wrong way while lifting something heavy. Or you’re dealing with a degenerative condition like arthritis. Whatever the cause, once you have low back pain, it can be hard to shake. About one in four Americans say they’ve had a recent bout of low back pain. And almost everyone can expect to experience back pain at some point in their lives.

Sometimes, it’s clearly serious: You were injured, or you feel numbness, weakness, or tingling in the legs. Call the doctor, of course. But for routine and mild low back pain, here are a few simple tips to try at home…..more

Portia Lekgoto faced a dilemma: how to take her three-year-old daughter to a doctor without missing a day of work while waiting in line at one of only two public health clinics in the South African shantytown of Diepsloot.

She decided to take her daughter to Quali Health, a new private clinic that a friend had told her about. While she had to pay R250 for the visit, she finished the consultation by mid-morning.

“I am going to now drop my daughter off at her granny with the medication we have been given and then I will go into work,” Lekgoto, 34, said at the clinic. “This place, the staffs are friendly and it’s nice and clean. I’ll definitely come back.”…more

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A condition that affects how your body uses energy in the form of glucose from food, diabetes can be successfully managed through proper self-monitoring, medication and lifestyle changes. People with diabetes have a high level of glucose in their blood, which can be caused by either too little insulin being produced by the pancreas or the body not accepting or using the insulin it produces, or a combination of both.

People with diabetes need to keep their blood sugar levels within a healthy range. Blood sugar levels are controlled through diet, physical activity and, for some people, a combination of medication and insulin injections.

Understanding Insulin

Insulin is a hormone your cells need to store and use energy from food, and it is responsible for getting glucose into your cells. If you have diabetes, insulin is not able to do its job. Meaning, glucose is unable to get into your cells, which causes it to build up in your blood. High levels of glucose then circulate through your body, damaging cells along the way.

Types of Diabetes….more

What is high blood pressure?

Johannesburg – The deviant conduct threatening the African National Congress’ survival has become deeply entrenched and is no longer the exception, according to documents prepared for its June policy conference. Arrogance, factionalism, and corruption were no longer aberrations requiring “tactical interventions”, but had become dominant tendencies in the movement. This is contained in a draft document, which is part of policy papers to be released on Sunday. The ANC acknowledged there was a “social distance” between its leaders and their constituencies….more