A grim picture has emerged of the eating patterns of South African children with more than 72 percent of those who took part in a survey surviving on a daily diet of only sugar and maize. Anso Thom reports.

Universal access to Highly Active Anti-retroviral Therapy (HAART) will become an inevitable reality in South Africa over the next three to seven years, according the South African Health Review. Anso Thom reports.

CAPE TOWN - AIDS activists from around the world have been invited to join South Africans on April 27 and 28 in civil disobedience and protest campaigns should Government fail to implement a national treatment plan.Speaking at the opening of the International Treatment Preparedness Summit in Cape Town, Treatment Action Campaign chairperson Zackie Achmat called on delegates from 67 countries to picket outside South African embassies.

Between six and nine million people in developing countries currently urgently need anti-retroviral treatment while in reality only between 230 000 and 300 000 have access to these drugs, according to a report by HealthGAP, a US-based human rights group.

Although South Africa has no '€œpolicy as such'€ to provide anti-retrovirals to people living with HIV/AIDS, it was relying on the private sector to advise it on the implications and complications of such a programme.Speaking at Parliament'€™s health committee meeting this week, Minister of Health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, said her department needed to be clear about what it wanted to do.

Preventable, treatable and curable diseases such as tuberculosis, pneumonia and thrush, for which there are often free or cheap drugs, are causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of HIV-positive people, the United States based Treatment Action Group (TAG) has revealed.Speaking at the Treatment Preparedness Summit recently held in Cape Town, TAG executive director Mark Harrington said that treatable and curable opportunistic infections were responsible for the deaths of most people infected with HIV/AIDS. Anso Thom reports.

Investigations into the introduction of a national anti-retroviral programme for South Africans living with HIV/AIDS are far advanced and recommendations are close to finalisation, it was announced in this week'€™s budget documents. Anso Thom reports.

CAPE TOWN - KwaZulu-Natal should receive the much disputed U$11,4-million (R92,5-m) from the Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria by April and this time around the province will have the full support of the national health department, according to Health minister Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. Anso Thom reports.

CAPE TOWN - The cost of a state supported anti-retroviral programme in its most expensive year could be below R10-billion and still be highly effective, according to calculations by Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and researchers at the University of Cape Town (UCT).

Drug companies are continuing to sell anti-retrovirals at hugely inflated prices in South Africa with some branded drugs selling for up to eight times more than generic versions available worldwide but that are not yet manufactured locally.

The sharp increase in multi-drug resistant tuberculosis in South Africa can be attributed to the loss of Directly Observed Treatment Short-course Strategy (DOTS) workers to the more lucrative field of caring for people living with HIV/AIDS, health department officials admitted this week. Anso Thom reports.