17 May 2002

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Realising women’s rights over their bodies

Values like freedom, equality and democracy are hollow concepts for women who still are subject to the control of others when it comes to their reproductive rights. The parliamentary Health Portfolio committee held hearings recently to take stock of the implementation of a key piece of legislation passed six years ago, the 1996 Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act. In this audio report by Sue Valentine, health professionals, social workers and researchers speak about the impact the legislation has made in the past five years.
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Midwives suffer abuse from anti-choice colleagues

Midwives at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital who work at the Termination of Pregnancy Unit live under threat from certain colleagues and community members who oppose their right to offer a legitimate service to women who wish to have abortions. Elizabeth Serobe who started working at the unit in 1996 says she and fellow midwives who assist with terminations of pregnancy are often called "child killers" or "murderers" by their colleagues. Serobe says such antagonism will not deter her from doing her job.
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Mother to child transmission – a one in three chance

"Without the intervention of anti-retroviral drugs, a caesarean section or the substitution of breast milk by other supplements, the risk of a pregnant woman with HIV passing on the virus onto her baby is not 100 percent." This is according to Steve Andrews, a doctor who works exclusively with people infected with AIDS, at the Brooklyn Medical Centre in Cape Town. Dr Andrews says a positive pregnant woman has a one in three chance of transmitting HIV to her baby. In this audio report we meet Ms X, a mother of two who stays in KTC township in the Western Cape. She is HIV positive and has two children who were born five years apart. Her eldest child is nine years old and has HIV, the second is five years old and is negative. As she told Khopotso Bodibe, Ms X says had she known that she was HIV positive, she wouldn't have chosen to have children.
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Care givers need support too
Living with AIDS Programme 77

Care givers who form the backbone of home-based care programmes for people sick with HIV/AIDS need support and encouragement as well. In this audio report, experiences from a Soweto AIDS care and counselling group are shared with care givers working in Nyanga, Cape Town. Ideas are exchanged on the responsibilities that people attending the support groups can assume so that the staff don't burn out.
Read More » Care givers need support too
Living with AIDS Programme 77

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