Container AIDS labs could work across Africa

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) -

A South African company's idea to convert shipping containers into high-tech AIDS laboratories should be copied across Africa, an executive for its U.S. medical equipment supplier said Tuesday.

A lack of quality laboratory services in the world's poorest continent hampers the battle against HIV/AIDS, with the sub-Saharan Africa region hardest hit by the global pandemic which kills millions each year.

"I think its a very exciting concept and I think it is one that can be replicated across Africa," Krista Thompson, general manager for global health at Becton Dickinson, told Reuters on a site visit to Gugulethu township near Cape Town.

Gugulethu is the site of the first containerised AIDS laboratory from Toga Labs, a private South African molecular.....continued below

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diagnostics laboratory. BD supplies equipment to the lab.

With its multitude of tin shacks, poor water supplies and limited electricity access, Gugulethu is typical of poor settlements across Africa.

Established in 2004, the Gugulethu lab provides testing for about 4,500 people on antiretroviral drugs, and is one of 10 operating in South Africa.

Africa's strongest economy has one of the world's highest AIDS burdens with an estimated 1 in 5 infected out of a population of 47 million.

"Its very important for the use of drugs to have good diagnostics and laboratory services to go along with that. First we need to know who to treat and then we need to know whether the treatment was working or not," Thompson said.

Des Martin, a director at Toga, told Reuters: "You can't have antiretroviral programs without laboratory support, its dangerous. So this provides the means for people who live very far away to have standard of care on their doorstep."

He said diagnostics could be extended to include tests for tuberculosis, diabetes and other diseases.

The United States President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief was supporting another five planned container labs in South Africa, two in Malawi, two in Zambia and one in Liberia, Martin said. Each fully equipped lab costs in the region of $250,000 (152,000 pounds).

The Gugulethu lab, run by a medical technologist and an administrator, processes an estimated 11,000 blood samples a year, Martin said.

"We believe this is a model for the developing world in resource constrained settings," he said.

(Reporting by Wendell Roelf)

Kwa hisani ya kp

(1)Dar yazidi kupendeza hili ni jengo la NMB Dar-es-salaam zamani foreign branch kona ya barabara ya Jamuhuri street na Azikiwe Avenue.










(2)Hili ni jengo Benjamini Mkapa tower wakati wa magharibi linavyoonekana sie tuliotoka Dar muda mrefu tunaweza kupotea.Picha kwa hisani ya Issamichuzi blog

picha 1(1) Jackson career record sales tally is believed to be more than 70 million.He also received 13 Grammy award
(3)4)Jackson c.Rowe gives custody of the children to Jackson.He also had a third child by an unknown woman.There was an outcry in november2002 when he was pictured dangling his young son ,Prince Michae 11 out of Berlin Hotel

(2)

(2)In may 1994 Jackson married Lisa Marie presely,Daughter of singer,Elvis,They separate after 9 month with Presely latr saying she was”Not proud’of marriage

(1)Tributes were left at the O2 after Jackson's death

Jackson fans gather at O2 arena

Michael Jackson impersonators are among the crowd
Michael Jackson fans from all over the world congregated at London's O2 arena, where the star had been due to begin his run of 50 concerts on Monday.
Fan sites and Facebook groups had been encouraging fans to bring candles and flowers for the vigil.
About 600 people visited the venue, adding messages to a wall of tributes and conducting Jackson sing-a-longs. Others sat in quiet contemplation.
It was a "light-hearted, celebratory" mood, says BBC reporter Michael Osborn.
Fans held a minute's silence at 1830 BST to mark the time when the doors to the concert would have opened.
"I've come here to celebrate his life and I want to feel a bit closer," Alison Pyman, 27, from Cleethorpes told the BBC.
"We've been reminiscing and sharing memories with everyone. When more people arrive there will quite a party atmosphere."
Thirty-one-year-old Jesper Hauton was one of the fans who had been expecting to see his hero on stage.
"We should have been going to the concert but we're standing here instead," he said. "It doesn't make any sense."
Mr Hauton, who lives in Copenhagen, Denmark, will be in London for a week, having bought tickets for the first five of Jackson's 50 comeback shows.
"We're here for grieving, but the main thing is a celebration of Michael," he added.
'Last masterpiece'
Following Jackson's death on 25 June, floral tributes, cards and messages have been left outside the O2.
Another London location where a shrine to the singer has built up is the Lyric Theatre in the West End, home of Jackson tribute show Thriller Live.
Jackson's string of This Is It shows completely sold out shortly after going on sale in March.

Tributes were left at the O2 after Jackson's death
The singer told fans that the concerts would be his final performances in London.
Following his death, footage of his rehearsals in Los Angeles just days before he died was released.
While no concerts are currently scheduled to replace Jackson's performances, organisers are discussing the possibility of staging a show using the production for the This Is It concerts.
"I think at some point we'll show Michael's last masterpiece, This Is It, to the world," AEG president Randy Phillips told Billboard.
Phillips added that 29 August - which would have been Jackson's 51st birthday - would be an ideal time for the event, but he was unsure if it would be ready in time.

BEST-SELLING AUTHOR McCOURT DIES

BREAKING NEWS

Best-selling author McCourt dies

Author Frank McCourt
McCourt contracted meningitis while being treated for melanoma

Frank McCourt, author of best-seller Angela's Ashes, has died of cancer in a New York hospice.

The 78-year-old Irish-American writer was suffering from meningitis and had recently been treated for melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer.

Angela's Ashes, a memoir of McCourt's childhood in Ireland, sold millions of copies and won the Pulitzer Prize.

Before the book's 1996 publication, McCourt was a New York high school teacher for 30 years.

Quoted by the New York Times newspaper, Susan Moldow of McCourt's publisher Scribner said the cause of his death, on Sunday afternoon, was metastatic melanoma.

'Epic of woe'

Born in New York, McCourt travelled to Ireland during the Great Depression with his parents at an early age.

Angela's Ashes provides a graphic description of his childhood in abject poverty in the slums of the Irish city of Limerick.
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Frank McCourt had a wonderful way of bringing his past to life

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Described by its author as an "epic of woe", the book was made into a Hollywood film in 1999 starring Emily Watson and Robert Carlyle.

The BBC's Matt McGrath, an admirer of Frank McCourt's work, says it shone a light on a dark period of Ireland's social history.

His other works include 'Tis and Teacher Man, which both draw on his later life in New York.

WITH CORTESY OF BBC-LONDON

JACKSON'S CONTRIBUTION TO MUSIC

JACKSON'S CONTRIBUTION TO MUSIC
Michael Jackson

Music journalist Paul Gambaccini looks at the impact Michael Jackson, who has died aged 50, had on the music world.
Michael Jackson had two musical peaks: the first with The Jackson 5. Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown, ordered his producers and writers to come up with three number ones to launch the group and they actually had four number ones with their first four singles.

They were the template for the boy bands that followed - The Osmonds, who already existed as The Osmond Brothers, copied them.
Michael reached his second peak with Quincy Jones with the trilogy of albums of Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad.

Thriller, interestingly enough - since it is the best selling album in the world - is likely to remain so because people now get their music from the internet, so its unlikely that any album will even sell 50m again.

These were great achievements artistically as well as commercially, and Michael was the first of the great American male video stars in the US.

I Want You Back was the record that bowled over the US - for an unknown kid group to go to number one was pretty amazing and people were asking who was this 11-year-old guy who could dance so well and sing so vibrantly.


When it came to putting on a live show he paid attention to every detail and executed his ideas brilliantly. He is still to me the best showman ever
We subsequently learned that their father had been drilling them for years and so they weren't as new as we'd thought, but nonetheless everyone was impressed by Michael and he instantly became a world star.

Billie Jean was very important as it was the song that was the first great American video. There had been great British videos, particularly The Boomtown Rats' I Don't Like Mondays and Bohemian Rhapsody, but Billie Jean made it de rigueur for American artists to make videos as well and that changed everything.

Thriller also spawned that famous video which so many people have bought as well as seen.

When he did the Moonwalk with Billie Jean on the Motown 25 special on TV he won an Emmy award. It was something that looked impossible - he practiced it so much. He learned from Fred Astaire and James Brown and it was something that caught the fancy of people around the world.

I had a conversation with the late John Peel and he agreed that even though Michael Jackson's style of music wasn't his favourite, he was the greatest showman in pop history.

He was not necessarily the greatest record maker and not the best writer because he didn't write many of his hits, but when it came to putting on a live show he paid attention to every detail and executed his ideas brilliantly. He is still to me the best showman ever.

As the years and decades go by, people forget or disregard personal problems. To use the example of an earlier music legend who went his way - Judy Garland - we nowadays just think of the great songs and films and we don't think of her drug problems.

And within a few generations, Michael Jackson will be a great recording artist and that's it. There won't be more than a footnote about the scandals.