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African Woman and Child Feature Service

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Health

Crooked Herbalists Trick Users with Conventional Medicines

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Scientists and a section of the herbalists are raising a red flag over the rising cases of high doses of conventional medicines being added to herbal products for them to have a high therapeutic value that attracts many customers.

Some of the people who have been using such products are now dashing back to doctors soon after the side-effects associated with the high doses start to manifest.

 

Kenyans embrace the mentally ill, but….

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The main reasons why people stigmatise the mentally ill is because they link the disease to madness or lunacy, a curse or demonic possession, says Dr Kitazi, Superintendant of Mathari HospitalWhen Prof David Ndetei rewinds his memory to 20 years ago on how mental illness was handled, he can afford a smile. At that time, stigma was at its peak and mistreatment of the mentally ill and disabled persons was the order of the day.

Forward to present, the situation is much different. Psychiatrists like him say society is finally beginning to understand that mental illness is treatable or manageable and those affected can be productive members of the society.

 

Legal gaps to blame for the suffering of mentally ill

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“What we fear most is patients who have recovered from their mental illness suing us for testing them or allowing someone else’s to test them when they were mentally unsound and could not consent to such interventions,” says a nurse at Mathari hospitalMedical personnel dealing with the mentally ill and disabled persons are finding it difficult to test them for HIV and AIDS or manage those who are HIV positive for fear of being taken to court.

According to nurses who deal with this class of patients, the law does not empower them to take consent on behalf of the patients before they are tested or put on drugs. Without legal backing, they are at a loss on how to start or force mentally ill patients who are HIV positive to take the antiretroviral drugs.

 

High depression among women blamed on gender roles and violence

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Cases of anxiety and depression disorders, the two leading mental illness, are on the rise among women leaving in some African countries, thanks to the current difficult economic times, gender roles and violence.

Findings of a recent study done at Kenyatta National Hospital by African Mental Health Foundation and which may strongly reflect what is happening in other African countries shows that 42 percent adults and 41 percent children who went to the facility were diagnosed with depression.

 

Maternal Mortality still kills more women than Malaria in East Africa

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every minute a woman dies in complications related to pregnancy and childbirthMaternal mortality, a well known women killer in the world has received recognition in the international and national forums but unfortunately it has continued to claim more lives.

Every year about half a million women lose their lives as a result of complications due to pregnancy or childbirth, yet this can be changed with proper intervention.

This is the story of women who have died of maternal mortality and whose story needs to adequately told.

For one who has not gone through maternal mortality can know its depth. And those who know are usually silenced by their early deaths as in the case the wife of a Member of Parliament in Uganda whose wife bled to death.

 
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Call for Papers for the Media & Diversity Journal

The Media and Diversity Journal is a research-based and peer-reviewed quasi-academic journal published three times a year in the months of April, August and December. It is published by the University of Nairobi’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and the African Woman and Child Feature Service.

The Media and Diversity Journal (MDJ) is inviting submissions for its special issue on Identity and Conflict planned for December 2010.

Find out more on the MDJ and the Call for Papers

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