Mechanical failures as a contributing cause to motor vehicle accidents South Africa.

Over the past decades motor vehicles became the primary mode of transportation in developing countries. At the same time an improvement in automotive engineering and manufacturing as well as the phenomena of urbanisation have resulted in more vehicles spending more time on the road at higher speeds. Invariably this leads to driving scenarios where safety critical manoeuvres have to be performed that rely on the mechanical condition of the vehicles.

Vitamin C supplementation reduces the incidence of postrace symptoms of upper-respiratory-tract infection in ultramarathon runners.

This study determined whether daily supplementation with 600 mg vitamin C would reduce the incidence of symptoms of upper-respiratory-tract (URT) infections after participation in a competitive ultramarathon race (> 42 km). Ultramarathon runners with age-matched controls were randomly divided into placebo and experimental (vitamin C-supplemented) groups. Symptoms of URT infections were monitored for 14 d after the race.

The impact of AIDS on blood transfusion services in South Africa.

The escalating incidence of AIDS in the African population will result in the occurrence of substantial numbers of transfusion-transmitted cases of AIDS. This can theoretically be controlled by using only blood from low-risk groups for the transfusion of cellular products, and using blood derived from the high-risk section of the community only for the production of plasma-derived products that can be virally inactivated. In the South Africa context, with its dichotomous first world and third world population, this will require certain steps which contravene various norms generally accepted by the blood transfusion discipline in Western Europe.