Health e News
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.
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In Sub-Saharan Africa, teenage girls are five times more likely to be infected by HIV/AIDS than boys, according to UNAIDS figures. In South Africa, one third of all babies are born to mothers under 19 years of age. The South African Schools Act guarantees the right to education for all children up to the age of seven to eighteen. This includes girls who become pregnant whilst still at school.
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August is women’s month and Health-e spoke to one of South Africa’€™s most celebrated women Dr Mamphele Ramphele, medical doctor, activist, anthropologist, the first black female vice chancellor of a South African university (University of Cape Town) and now one of four managing directors at the World Bank. She said while women have much to celebrate this month, enormous challenges still remain, especially in the face of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
She has dominated news headlines for the past four years and is undoubtedly one of the most controversial members of the cabinet. But who is Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang?
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Treatment Action Campaign chairperson Zackie Achmat has started antiretroviral therapy but lives with the guilt of having access to the life-prolonging drugs while fellow South Africans wait for the roll-out of ARVs in the public health setor.
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South Africa is on the brink of introducing anti-retroviral (ARV) medication in the public health sector. One of the major challenges is how to ensure adequate delivery of these drugs within existing infastructures. Dr Peter Barron, the Director of the Initiative for Sub District Support (ISDS) of the Health Systems Trust, argues that we must have a national ARV programme, but cautions that we have to do it right.
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I’ve been in this Envoy role for just over two years. The issues related to the pandemic ebb and flow, but remain much the same — care, prevention, treatment, stigma, discrimination, gender, orphans, leadership — they all continue to reverberate, unceasingly, as we struggle to overcome HIV/AIDS.
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I am deeply honoured to be able to join you today at the opening of the South African AIDS Conference, on behalf of the South African Government and as Chairperson of the South African National AIDS Council.
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Health-e News Service will be webcasting the plenary sessions of the South African AIDS conference in Durban from August 3-6, 2003.