Health e News
- ///Health
A children’s centre formed 12 years ago as a school for farm workers’ children in Boksburg, on Gauteng’s East Rand, is gradually being forced to rise up to the challenge of more social problems, including HIV and AIDS.
It is natural that people will only discuss personal matters with people that they feel comfortable with. That is why HIV peer educators in the workplace are important both to educate fellow employees and to help management respond better to HIV and AIDS. But results of a year-long survey show that they often work under challenging circumstances.
Over-crowding and long queues are part of daily life for Diepsloot residents seeking primary health care at the Johannesburg informal settlement’s O.R. Tambo clinic. And staff shortages are the main fuelling factor.
Gloria Vena has given up swatting the flies gathering around her face. Her eyes seem empty and distant as she stares out the front door of her house, the back of her neighbour’s rickety shack a few steps away from her makeshift front door.
Thulani Shezi’s New Germany Road settlement is one of about 500 shacklands in the eThekwini metro, and it only had a few portable toilets and a distant tap before the ablution block was built two years ago.
Residents in Diepsloot and Orange Farm struggle to get basic services such as clean water and sanitation.
- ///Health
Health-e News Service welcomes the decision by Dr Matthias Rath to withdraw his defamation case against the agency, employees Anso Thom and Khopotso Bodibe and freelancer Siviwe Minyi (case number 11681/05) and to pay our legal costs to date.
- ///Health
We pick up on the story of Vhuthamo, a shelter for orphaned and vulnerable children in Orange Farm, south of Johannesburg that we visited last week. After three years of existence, the centre faces closure because the authorities have failed to register it as a home.
In Drieziek 6 ‘ Orange Farm, 60 km south of Johannesburg, not one household has running water, let alone a toilet.
- ///Health
One of the social impacts of HIV is to rob children of their parents, families and homes. However, some communities and organisations are coming together to take care of affected children. Vhuthamo Home in Orange Farm, south of Johannesburg, is one haven for such children in the country.
Health Department Director-General Thami Mseleku has been appointed as the Registrar of Medicines at the Medicines Control Council (MCC) as a stop gap measure to avoid any further delays in the registration of medicines.
- ///Health
At age 70, many would consider themselves too old to continue working. Let alone as a campaigner to get people tested for HIV. But that’s what retired nurse Dorothy Mosaka put away her uniform to do.