Health e News
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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.
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Scientists would describe the Ramothwalas and the Leons as “discordant couples”, which means that one partner is HIV positive and the other HIV negative. But how much discord has the virus brought to their lives?
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A group of HIV positive women from Khayelitsha in Cape Town have found a unique way to tell and preserve their life stories and to give the epidemic a face.
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Dr Loveness Kaunda, Dean of Students at the University of Cape Town, is one of a handful of South African leaders prepared to talk openly about HIV/AIDS. Here she shares the story of her younger brother and how his death affected her family.
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Last month marked a turning point in the South African government’s response to the AIDS epidemic as the Cabinet approved the final draft of the Operational Plan for Comprehensive HIV and AIDS Care and Treatment. As the stage is now set for the roll-out, new challenges are looming for many sectors of society. The business community is one of these.
While there are no formal surveys, guesstimates are that about 22 percent of South African university undergraduate students are HIV positive. In this special report we investigate how tertiary institutions are dealing with the epidemic.
Three months after the government’s delayed authorisation of the release of the Global Fund grants into South African AIDS, TB and Malaria projects, the money has still not reached its destination. The problem? According to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the government has to make a formal request before the institution can make the money available.
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Talita Thekiso is one of two volunteers who received her first dose of the Modified Vaccinia Ankara (MVA) vaccine at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, in Soweto on Wednesday. The MVA vaccine is based on sub-type A of HIV, a strain of the virus which is predominant in east Africa. Health-e met Thekiso at the hospital.