“Horrific numbers”

The South continues to be the nation’s center for the ongoing HIV epidemic — it has the highest death rate from HIV/AIDS, and Georgia has the third highest number of infections in the region. The reasons? “[A] social stigma surrounding the disease; poverty; lack of insurance and access to care; and no Medicaid expansion in most Southern states.”

“We in the South have these horrific numbers,’’ said Dr. David Malebranche of Morehouse School of Medicine. “The HIV epidemic is squarely based in the South.’’

Georgia currently has more than 58,000 people living with HIV.

Give yourself a gift

A gift of immunization certification from APhA! It’s your last chance this year: Sunday, December 2, from 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m at the GPhA Education Headquarters in Sandy Springs.

GPhA members get a huge discount — it’s only $349 for the course, which gets you not only the APhA certification, but (if you complete both the self-study and classroom work) a whopping 20 hours of CPE credit.

Check out GPhA.org/2018immunization for the details and sign up today!

Community pharmacy: Ready for your close-up

The good folks at the National Community Pharmacy Association have released their 2018 Snapshot of Community Pharmacy — in the form of a two-minute video.

How many offer MTM services? Home delivery? Hospice? Find out in the snapshot at NCPAnet.org. (The full digest is available to NCPA members.)

When seconds count

Got patients who want fast pain relief? Turns out that regular Tylenol pills actually dissolve faster than “Rapid Release gels.” (Johnson & Johnson says that the gelcaps are “rapid release” compared to conventional gelcaps, not to tablets.)

“A horrific illness”

A cure for sleeping sickness was approved by the European Medicines Agency, meaning it will finally be deployed in Africa.

The disease, also called human African trypanosomiasis, is transmitted by tsetse flies. The protozoan parasites, injected as the flies suck blood, burrow into the brain. Before they kill, drive their victims mad in ways that resemble the last stages of rabies.