African Health Sciences, Vol. 6, No. 1, March, 2005, pp. 2

EDITOR’S CHOICE

James K Tumwine

Code Number: hs06001

I am pleased to introduce this first issue of 2006.This year we have started important developments with African Health Sciences. One: African Health Sciences is now freely available online, courtesy of extenza on the following website: < http:// www.extenza-eps.com/ >. When you access the website, please click on ‘browse’ and then look for African Health Sciences. Click on to it and you will reach our site in green colour.You can then click on the issue of African Health Sciences you would like to read.The pdf files will then appear and there you are!

The second exciting news, as you might have already noticed, we are pilot testing the idea of African Health Sciences being printed and inserted into MERA (Medical Education Resource Africa) which has a circulation of over 12 500.This will enable African Health Sciences to reach at least 12 500 readers especially in rural areas in Africa. So as we make Africa Health Sciences freely available online it is important for us to keep it accessible to people without internet access.And these are still the majority in our content. It is for this reason that our partnership with MERA is a very exciting development.

In this issue of African Health Sciences, we bring you a diverse selection of articles form the African continent. Ochieng and colleagues from Kenya describe disease progression among Kenyan children and parameters used to monitor this. Ovuga from Uganda describes the burden of alcohol use in the Uganda Police in the capital Kampala. One in 5 respondents met criteria for alcohol use disorder while 26% met criteria for alcohol use problems.The authors call for measures to provide services for those affected and launch preventive programmes.

The article by Adamson Muula from Malawi reports on a very important topic: condom sexual and sexual abstinence talk in the Malawi parliament. Members of parliament had negative attitude to extra- and or/premarital sexual intercourse, condom promotion and use. They preferred sexual abstinence to condom use.Another paper on medical legal issues is the study on mob justice from Tanzania. Over 200 men (age 15-60 years) are reportedly murdered by mob justice yearly in Dar es Salaam the capital of Tanzania.The alleged offences include theft,murder, and violation of customs or religious beliefs. Most of the victims were stoned (49.6%) or burnt (48.1%) to death.

The article by Okello from Uganda’s Lacor hospital is an important landmark on upper GIT endoscopic findings in adolescents. Most patients had been referred for epigastric pain. However 51% had normal findings while 27% had either duodenal ulcer or gastritis.

The other articles cover storage of antimalarials in Tanzania; anti cancer properties of several Uganda plants species; tropical idiopathic gangrene; fetal haemoglobin; neurological infections in Nigeria; the management of medical waste, and the nationality and training of medical doctors in Malawi. Quite an assortment! We hope we have catered for your appetite.

Finally I wish to thank all our editorial staff, the authors, reviewers, consultants and our partners for the excellent work you do for African Health Sciences.We thank you very much for the voluntary spirit and for your dedication and commitment to providing high quality information to our people.

James K Tumwine,