Health e News
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Buyiswa Gcwabe is a mother of seven children and has AIDS. She is a member of the Treatment Action Campaign and is among the first group of 25 people to receive antiretroviral treatment funded by the TAC. Health-e travelled with her to her first appointment with the doctor who will monitor her treatment.
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Next week in Nairobi, researchers from Africa and beyond will attend the International Conference on AIDS and Sexual Transmitted Diseases in Africa (ICASA). Chairperson of the conference, Dr. Malaki Owili, says African governments must provide treatment and care for HIV/ AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. The ICASA meeting runs from September 21st to 26th, 2003.
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‘Letting them Die ‘ How HIV/AIDS prevention programmes often fail’ by Catherine Campbell is a compelling and honest account of why a well-funded intervention in a mining community failed. She spoke to Health-e News.
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Antenatal surveys have been conducted by the Department of Health since 1990. An internationally recognized tool for estimating the magnitude, growth and spread of the HIV epidemic over time, the latest South African survey reveals that 5,3- million people are living with HIV or AIDS in this country.
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The Sexual Rights Campaign, launched in the year 2000 and spearheaded by the Women’s Health Project in Johannesburg, is now in the final stages of being finalised into a complete Sexual Rights Charter. The run-up to the authorisation of the Charter took the form of workshops and stake-holder forums across the country, the last of which was held in Cape Town in November last year, to educate men, women and the youth about sexual rights, how to ensure and attain them.
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The Medicines Control Council has given Boehringer-Ingelheim, manufacturers of Nevirapine, a further six months to submit data to avoid the de-registration of the drug as a single prevention in the transmission of HIV from mother to child.
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In last week’s “Living with AIDS”, Bongiwe spoke about her struggle to disclose her HIV status to her parents. A fear of rejection keeps her silent. This week we explore how parents’ attitudes affect their children.
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Bonga is a 27 year-old young woman from Motherwell, Port Elizabeth. She has been living with HIV for the last four years after being gang-raped by four men in Johannesburg where she came looking for a job. Since then, Bonga has wanted to tell her parents about her infection, but her fear of rejection has stopped her.
Gender inequality contributes to South Africa’s high levels of violence, hampers economic development, places strain on our health care system and is fuelling the AIDS crisis.
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Not everyone who is HIV positive needs antiretroviral therapy. Dr Khwezi Matoti runs the AIDS clinic at the Guguletu Day Hospital and explains when antiretroviral drugs become necessary.
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The Treatment Campaign Action has launched the “Treatment Project” to provide antiretroviral drugs to its most needy members. For each TAC member on ARV therapy, a non-TAC member who needs the life-prolonging drugs will be treated. Some 110 TAC members have died from AIDS related illnesses between March and July this year alone.
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The responsibility to implement life skills classes falls on teachers, even if they don’t have capacity do so. Although teachers agree that there’s a need for this education, those who are not specialised guidance teachers often feel ill-equipped to implement it. This is where community support groups have a role to play. In this audio report, teachers and youth clinic counsellors talk about the challenges they face.