And the dead shall walk the Earth
If you hear a sharp crack like a seal breaking, or the sudden blast of a thousand trumpets, maybe you should not get out of bed. Only two days after his sudden demise, the guy in the last post is back outside the Garden Centre with an eye patch, waving cars towards empty parking spaces. The dead are walking the Earth!
Or, perhaps more likely than the end being nigh, he was never dead in the first place. Good for him. The lesson to take from this is: before proclaiming somebody dead, check their pulse. Still, I wonder whether to now give him only 1 rand as opposed to the usual 2 to watch my car, seeing as he can only keep one eye on it?
Yesterday was Heather's, the office manager's, last day. Now I'm all alone in the office, boo hoo. But not for so long. Because lo and behold, I've hired a reporter! She's a young, black, award-winning science journalist from Zimbabwe and due to start in January. I agonised over whether to hire her or this other Zim guy who is older, super experienced and very probably more qualified to do MY job than I am. But my superiors agreed with me that this it might cause tensions and so Deborah it is.
We've also found a new sales person, I hope, and heaven knows I need a new office manager to come in soon because who else will re-stock the coffee jar? Woe woe!
I've another bloody deadline coming up in less than two weeks' time. It will likely largely be about the science ministerial that took place in Cairo at the very end of last month. Egypt is really hot right now, it seems, in terms of locating meetings there. Pity that it's at the other side of the continent.
I'm going to go to the African Union summit of presidents, kings and heads of state in January. It will be in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and I hope to be able to corner Gadafi and probe him on Libya's science policy. Now that would be a scoop!!! Seriously, they're quite big into science at the mo I hear. haha.
On to more serious things. I heard on TV last night (although I was dozing so I might have gotten this wrong) that 50 per cent of young South Africans today will have contracted HIV before they reach 60. Either 'contracted' or 'be affected by' whatever that means. I can't remember. But fact is, it's a bleak picture that is revealed today on World Aids Day. In 2005, 30 per cent of pregnant women were infected. Antenatal clinics are the key source of HIV/Aids status info, and this is also why data on male infection is pretty unreliable.
A household survey the same year showed that the national prevalence was around 11 per cent. BUT the testing was voluntary and just under half the sample refused to take the test. Of course, infection rates are heavily skewed towards the black population. The Western Cape, where I live, has the lowest prevalence, whereas KZN on the eastern coast has the highest. Prevalence amongh Africans was 13.3 compared to among 0.6 among whites.
The estimated prevalence among South Africans is 12 per cent amongh men my age, and 33 among women. The UN and the WHO have their own estimate that about one fifth of South Africans aged 15 to 49 are infected. And a second look at mortality figures in the past few years show that in 200-2001, HIV caused the deaths of over 50,000 south africans aged 15-59.
Luckily, it seems that the government is finally sorting itself out on HIV/Aids, sacking the useless health minister and putting old wives tales back where they belong - outside of government. Question is, whether it is too late.
More on the AIDS survey: http://www.avert.org/safricastats.htm
Or, perhaps more likely than the end being nigh, he was never dead in the first place. Good for him. The lesson to take from this is: before proclaiming somebody dead, check their pulse. Still, I wonder whether to now give him only 1 rand as opposed to the usual 2 to watch my car, seeing as he can only keep one eye on it?
Yesterday was Heather's, the office manager's, last day. Now I'm all alone in the office, boo hoo. But not for so long. Because lo and behold, I've hired a reporter! She's a young, black, award-winning science journalist from Zimbabwe and due to start in January. I agonised over whether to hire her or this other Zim guy who is older, super experienced and very probably more qualified to do MY job than I am. But my superiors agreed with me that this it might cause tensions and so Deborah it is.
We've also found a new sales person, I hope, and heaven knows I need a new office manager to come in soon because who else will re-stock the coffee jar? Woe woe!
I've another bloody deadline coming up in less than two weeks' time. It will likely largely be about the science ministerial that took place in Cairo at the very end of last month. Egypt is really hot right now, it seems, in terms of locating meetings there. Pity that it's at the other side of the continent.
I'm going to go to the African Union summit of presidents, kings and heads of state in January. It will be in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and I hope to be able to corner Gadafi and probe him on Libya's science policy. Now that would be a scoop!!! Seriously, they're quite big into science at the mo I hear. haha.
On to more serious things. I heard on TV last night (although I was dozing so I might have gotten this wrong) that 50 per cent of young South Africans today will have contracted HIV before they reach 60. Either 'contracted' or 'be affected by' whatever that means. I can't remember. But fact is, it's a bleak picture that is revealed today on World Aids Day. In 2005, 30 per cent of pregnant women were infected. Antenatal clinics are the key source of HIV/Aids status info, and this is also why data on male infection is pretty unreliable.
A household survey the same year showed that the national prevalence was around 11 per cent. BUT the testing was voluntary and just under half the sample refused to take the test. Of course, infection rates are heavily skewed towards the black population. The Western Cape, where I live, has the lowest prevalence, whereas KZN on the eastern coast has the highest. Prevalence amongh Africans was 13.3 compared to among 0.6 among whites.
The estimated prevalence among South Africans is 12 per cent amongh men my age, and 33 among women. The UN and the WHO have their own estimate that about one fifth of South Africans aged 15 to 49 are infected. And a second look at mortality figures in the past few years show that in 200-2001, HIV caused the deaths of over 50,000 south africans aged 15-59.
Luckily, it seems that the government is finally sorting itself out on HIV/Aids, sacking the useless health minister and putting old wives tales back where they belong - outside of government. Question is, whether it is too late.
More on the AIDS survey: http://www.avert.org/safricastats.htm
posted by Linda at 10:37
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