Informant38

Medical Notes:

World TB Day March 24

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At least fifteen Bushmen have died suddenly of unknown causes this year in New Xade resettlement camp and three remain in a critical condition. The deaths come as British Baroness Jenny Tonge and other peers insist in the House of Lords that the evictions have benefitted the Bushmen.
Gaseitsiwe Gaorapelwe died very suddenly after spots appeared all over his body. After being tortured by wildlife guards in 2000 for hunting, he said to a Survival researcher, ‘Who will look after my children? The government is killing me.'

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"I took the precaution," Pearson reported, "of hiring my own interpreter, so I was able to hear exactly what some of the 200 bushmen and their families who had recently been forcibly resettled in a camp at New Xade were saying. I heard them describe it as a place of death, where they had nothing to do but drink, take drugs and catch Aids. Many of them felt that they had been evicted because Debswana wanted their land for its diamonds ... I, for one, came home more convinced than ever that a great injustice was being done."
He might have added that Debswana was being assisted by Hill and Knowlton, the public-relations company famous for the unsavoury nature of its clients. It advised the Chinese government in the wake of the Tiananmen massacre, set up lobby groups for the tobacco companies and coached the girl who told the false story about Kuwaiti babies being thrown out of incubators that helped to launch the first Gulf war.

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GlaxoSmithKline has begun distributing one of its main HIV/AIDS medicines tagged with a tiny electronic chip, as part of an effort to fight counterfeiting.
The group, which is the world's largest producer of AIDS treatments, said on Thursday that radio frequency identification (RFID) tags would be placed on all bottles of Trizivir shipped in the United States.
The tagged bottles of Trizivir -- a three-in-one combination pill -- will begin appearing on pharmacists' shelves in mid-April.

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To some, it is a recreational intoxicant with milder health side effects than alcohol. To others, it is a moral scourge that Americans should "just say no" to. To still others, it is medicine, and the [San Mateo, CA]City Council on Wednesday night approved the first Peninsula measure on marijuana that regulates where it can be grown and how people can get it for medicinal use.

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The state has filed a motion seeking to dismiss a San Diego County lawsuit that challenges a decade-old law permitting in California the use of marijuana for medical purposes.
The attorney general's office filed the court documents Tuesday. In them, the state contends county officials simply "disliked" the law and that there was no legal reason for the court to consider the lawsuit.

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Many depressed patients who didn't get better on one medicine were able to overcome their crushing dark spells with another, according to the largest study ever of treatments for America's top mental health problem.
Up to one-third of those who added or changed medicines recovered. When viewed with earlier results, the new findings mean that roughly half the people who suffer from serious, long-term depression can get over it — not just improve their symptoms — with adequate medication.

Infomercial news is consistently a great source of good cheer.
We can predict assume the study in question was financed by the companies marketing the drugs. As was the journalist who wrote the story. But the good news is priceless, and free to the reader.
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The right to safe water must be enshrined in international law and policed by the United Nations if millions of people are to be spared death from want of water or from water-borne diseases, activists told governments and business at international talks ending Wednesday.

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Young women under 45 years old diagnosed with early breast cancer have a higher risk of dying from the disease than older patients, scientists said on Thursday.
"The younger the woman, the poorer the chance of survival," said Dr Vincent Vinh-Hung, of University Hospital in Brussels.

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In a rare show of co-operation, Israel conducted the tests for bird flu on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.
A spokeswoman for the Israeli agriculture ministry said it was "highly likely" the birds in Gaza had died of the H5N1 virus.
She said initial tests had only confirmed the presence of the H5 part of the strain and that it was not yet known whether the birds had been infected with H5N1 or a less deadly virus.

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With four African countries stricken by avian flu - including one with a human infection - UN agencies and African leaders have called for sweeping measures to contain the deadly virus, notably the need to come up with funds on the world's poorest continent.

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Bird flu likely would be detected in the United States this year, federal officials warned Monday as a top UN official said efforts to fight a pandemic in Africa were hamstrung by a lack of money.
Migratory birds are increasingly likely to bring ashore avian influenza to the United States and would be subject to increased monitoring under government plans to reduce the risks of a viral wildfire, Interior Secretary Gale Norton, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt told journalists.

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Mexico's agriculture ministry denied rumors in U.S. commodities markets on Thursday that a case of H5N1 bird flu had been found near the U.S. border.
"We are free of highly-pathogenic bird flu," Jose Angel del Valle, the ministry's animal health director, told Reuters.

and, tying yesterday's theme with today's:

Australia has bombed and sank a North Korean freighter caught smuggling heroin into the country three years ago, saying the military exercise should serve as a warning to Pyongyang to halt its rogue trading in drugs and weapons.