Health e News
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To a great extent old people have been left out of AIDS education, but a project in Khayelitsha is changing this. Stanley Mcengwa is 65- years old and one of the peer educators who teaches the elderly about HIV/AIDS. He says at first he was scared of HIV/AIDS but he has learnt that HIV is just like any other disease.
About 120 old-age pensioners from Khayelitsha are trying to help their children, grandchildren and communities to better understand HIV and AIDS. The pensioners are trained by the organization, Neighbourhood Old Age Homes (NOAH), in a pilot project that enables senior citizens to take messages of prevention and care to their households and onto the streets. Health-e spoke to some of the grandmothers at the NOAH centre in Khayelitsha.
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The South African National Defence Force this week launched Project Phidisa, a programme aimed at providing treatment, including anti-retrovirals, to army members known to be ill with AIDS-defining conditions. The service will also extend to their families.
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Safe sex or no sex, that is the message that Ntsiki Mazwai is preaching whenever she’s on stage as a musician or poet. She is among many artists and actors who are including messages about HIV/AIDS in their performances.
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For the ANC three important events will mark this year: the third democratic national election, the tenth anniversary of democracy and the 60th anniversary of the ANC Youth League. But there is a fourth important event ‘ one that the ruling party’s election manifesto failed to mention over the weekend ‘ and that is the AIDS treatment roll-out plan, expected to kick in later in the year. With this in mind, Health-e News takes a look at the President’s election manifesto launch last Sunday.
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In our first Living with AIDS feature for 2004, Health-e sobered up some revellers at a New Year’s eve party and reminded them of the reality of HIV and AIDS. Here, they reveal their thoughts and hopes on what needs to be done to address the issue this year.
Contrary to popular belief, female genital mutilation is taking place in South Africa. At the National Conference on Gender Based violence in November, Magistrate Tshifiwa Maumela of Mutale District in Limpopo Province said that the practice was no longer something that took place only north of our borders.
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In our last Living with AIDS feature for 2003, Health-e looks back at what has been a momentous year, culminating in the Cabinet’s approval of a Care and Treatment Plan for people living with HIV and AIDS.
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Babalwa Cekiso is a HIV positive mother, a member of the ‘Bambanani’ women’s group and project manager of the University of Cape Town’s Memory Box Outreach Project. This month the project launched a book, ‘Long Life… Positive Stories’, which documents, in works of body art and text, the lives of the 13 women of Bambanani. Babalwa explains that the Memory Box project was inspired by a similar initiative in Uganda and that it helps HIV positive people to disclose their status as well as explain what it is like to live with HIV.
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While HIV and AIDS is a condition that still strikes fear among many people, developments in medical, scientific and social sciences research communities over the last few years have helped to change perceptions. HIV and AIDS can be a manageable and treatable condition. That is the thrust of a new book: ‘Still Everybody’s Business’, published by insurance group, Metropolitan.
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Dr Kgosi Letlape, head of the South African Medical Association and Executive Director of the Tshepang Trust, said one of the most effective ways of dealing with HIV and AIDS is the formation of partnerships. Dr Letlape was speaking at the launch of an antiretroviral treatment site at the G F Jooste hospital in Cape Town. The initiative is being piloted in conjunction with the Nelson Mandela Foundation that handed over R5-million at the launch ‘ the first donation from the 46664 campaign.
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Good nutrition and traditional or complementary medicines feature prominently in the government’s HIV and AIDS treatment and care plan approved by Cabinet last week. The plan provides for the roll-out of life-prolonging antiretroviral medicines for people living with AIDS. Khopotso Bodibe of Health-e News Service spoke to members of the AIDS Treatment Task Team to find out why the emphasis on food and traditional medicines.