In certain hospitals the shortage of doctors has led to a three-fold increase in the infant mortality rate. This statistic can be reversed easily in those hospitals that are sufficiently staffed and adopt a team approach. In this audio report we hear some views about whether the community service programme for doctors is working as a means to redress the shortage of doctors in rural areas.

Advocacy and activism are two skills that rural doctors might need to develop if they hope to be able to offer decent healthcare to patients. This was the message delivered by Dr Trudy Thomas, the former MEC for Health in the Eastern Cape, in one of the keynote addresses delivered to the conference of the Rural Doctors Association of South Africa (Rudasa) last weekend. She said that the promise of the Reconstruction and Development Programme of 1994 had largely been betrayed by budget cuts and a lack of political will to transform and extend health care to the country’s poor and rural people.

The only anti-retroviral treatment programme offered in the South African public health sector is available in Khayelitsha, Cape Town. In this second feature on the pilot programme being run by Medecins Sans Frontieres and the Western Cape provincial government, we focus on the all-important role of the patients’ support group. It is in the support groups that patients have the chance to talk about possible side effects and other issues related to consistent adherence to the drug regimen.

The only public health programme in the country that offers anti-retroviral therapy to adults living with AIDS is operating in Khayelitsha, Cape Town under the auspices of the international human rights organisation, Medecins Sans Frontieres. In this, the first of a series of features, we hear from one of the doctors and a patient involved in the programme.

This audio report looks at the impact of the AIDS epidemic on migrant workers from Lesotho who are retrenched and sent home from the South African mines.

In this feature on “Living with AIDS” the World Bank’s Dr Mamphela Ramphele speaks about the merits of loans to combat HIV/AIDS. Sue Valentine spoke to Dr Ramphele when she visited South Africa last week and asked her as a medical doctor and as a South African, how she felt about South Africa’ s response to HIV/AIDS.

Dr Mamphela Ramphele is one of five managing directors at the World Bank in Washington. On a recent visit home to South Africa she spoke out about the need for African governments to value intellectual rigour, the need for incentives for skilled professionals and the value of investing in anti-retroviral treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS

The African Culture, Music and Dance Association (Acumda) is using its access to the hostels of Gauteng to run a joint project with the province’s health department. Although Acumda started out as an organisation to promote traditional music and dance, it has proved an ideal vehicle to communicate key messages about HIV and AIDS to the thousands of men who live in the hostels of Gauteng. This is part two of a three-part series.

Sundays in hostels around Gauteng are inevitably filled with music and dance as migrant workers relax over the weekend. For staff of the African Culture, Music and Dance Association (Acumda), Sunday is a working day on which they will visit a designated hostel to hold music and dance competitions for the best performance that speaks about HIV and AIDS. In this three-part series, Sue Valentine spent a day with the Acumda programme at the Khutsong Hostel in Carltonville listening to a variety of messages about HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention as well as care and support. This is part 1.

June 5, 2001 marks the 20th anniversary of the AIDS epidemic. In this package, we hear some personal reflections from the man who is at the forefront of the global effort to combat the disease, Belgian, Peter Piot, the executive director of UNAIDS.

While the heat of public attention has been focused on government and its response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the business sector has been slow to come to terms with the potential impact of the disease on people and how to pre-empt it.