World Aids Day celebrations call for urgent steps to deal with disease

December 1, 2008 Yemen celebrated World AIDS Day along with the rest of the world. The celebration included a number of events and activities to increase awareness about the fight against AIDS.

“Leadership” has been chosen by the World AIDS Campaign as the theme for World AIDS Day 2007 and 2008. This theme will continue to be promoted with the slogan “Stop AIDS. Keep the Promise.”

According to Dr. Abdul-Hamid al-Suhaibi, Director of the National AIDS Program, the number of cases detected and officially registered by 2008 September had reached 2,493. 

However, experts believe that 20 cases go unreported for every case officially recorded. Dr. al-Suhaibi also showed that the number of HIV/AIDS cases has increased during the last five years, compared with just 151 cases recorded in 2002. 

Voluntary counseling and testing centers may reduce the spread of the AIDS virus, which threatens the whole world - including Yemen. Around 14 voluntary counseling and testing centers have been opened in Sana’a, Taiz, Ibb, Dhamar, Hadramout - Mukalla, Hodeidah during 2008, and currently preparations are underway for the opening of seven new centers next year.

Media outlets and journalists in Sana’a have participated in raising awareness and reducing the social stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA), especially women, by announcing support from media associations for people living with HIV/AIDS. 

Voluntary and independent associations are trying to highlight the issues of PLWHA and their social, legal and economic problems, to alleviate the social stigma and discrimination against them, and to raise awareness about this disease.

To address this issue and other related ones, Sana’a University has again embraced a large medical conference for allergy and immune system diseases to call for the establishment of a medical center for allergy and immune system diseases at Sana’a University.  

A massive national campaign to vaccinate women in the childbearing age against the dreaded disease of maternal and neo-natal tetanus was given a high profile start in Mosaimeer district in the Lahej Governorate. Bilharzia was also targeted in a four day national campaign treating around 680,870 boys and girls between the ages of 6 and 18 in 1774 schools as a part of the third phase of this campaign to rid 32 districts in Sana’a, Ibb, Lahjj, Sa’ada, Hodeidah, and Shabwa of bilharzia.

2008 began with the publishing of the statistics of the National Polio Immunization Campaign, which was conducted from 15 to 17 December 2007. The campaign was organized as a preventive measure in all 333 districts of the 22 governorates to cover a rate of 95 percent, the best and highest coverage amongst all 2006 & 2007 campaigns. 

Yemen is classified as the Arab country with the highest prevalence of Hepatitis B, with about 25 percent of the population infected, according to a study published in the Yemen Doctors Club website. Consequently, the University of Science and Technology Hospital (USTH) held a two day medical conference to discuss new developments in liver and G.I.T disease research.

The 19th Scientific Graduate Research Conference held in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of Sana’a University brought to the surface many effective studies by researchers of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at Sana’a University.

Drugs are unlike other consumer goods in that they are crucial to public health, and as such they cannot simply be treated the same way as other commodities with respect to regulation. 

About 178 pharmacies were recently raided in the Capital Secretariat, Aden, Ibb, Hodeidah and al-Baidha governorates. In the country’s capital was home to the highest number of counterfeiting facilities- 73, according to the Ministry of Public Health and Population. 

Yemen’s rapidly growing population, currently estimated at 22.3 million with 670,000 new Yemenis expected in 2007, presents a serious challenge. In response, the Secretariat General of the National Population Council launched an awareness campaign on reproductive health and family planning in a number of secondary schools in the Capital Secretariat. 

Moreover, more facilities are needed. Minister of State and Mayor of the Capital Abdul-Rahman al-Akwaa, opened eight medical complexes in four districts of the Sana’a governorate- Al-Sab’een, Azal, Al-Thawra, Bani Al-Hareth- at a total cost of YR601 million and 705,000. 

Minister of Public Health and Population Abdul Karim Rase’a said that the Ministry allocated YR 5 million to carry out an urgent plan to reconstruct the health-care sector in Saada during 2008-2009.

At a time when world attention is consumed by the financial crisis, a far more pressing crisis deserving greater attention should be brought to the forefront. This is the crisis of global hunger, which kills a child every 6 seconds, said the Executive Director of the World Food Program, Josette Sheeran.

“On this day, we remember those who have lived with the ache of hunger, for too long . . . and who now need our help even more,” Sheeran stated in his address at World Food Day, October 16. 

Between 12% and 13% of people living in the developing world have some form of disability, according to estimates by the World Health Organization (WHO). To decrease the number of disabled among future generations and to alleviate the present situation, a medical conference dealing with spinal column injuries and neurosurgery is being held in the Sana’a Sheraton Hotel.

All countries in the world, including Yemen, celebrated World Thalassemia Day as a day of human cooperation in fighting this disease. “Together to live with hope and overcome pain” were some simple words repeated by patient children who were attending the celebration.

Long before the MTN (Mobile Telephone Networks) tent opened, throngs of people queued outside to stake their lives on people they will never meet – people who donate their blood freely and without reward. The MTN tent was launched by the deputy-minister of the Curative Medicine sector in the Ministry of Public Health and Population, Dr. Ghazi Ismail, to celebrate the World Blood Donor Day. 

At least YR 1.1 billion is spent annually on breast-milk substitutes when the prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding (0-6 months) in Yemen fell from 18 percent in 1997 to 12 percent in 2003, according to a presentation showed at a press conference held at the UNICEF office in Sana’a, to mark World Breastfeeding Week.

Vice-President, Abduh Raboh Mansor Hadi, attended on Tuesday a ceremony launching a national campaign for supporting cancer patients, staged under sponsorship of the President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The campaign is organized by the National Corporation of Combating Cancer under the slogan “There is Still Hope for Life”.

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