Health e News
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Treatment Action Campaign leader Zackie Achmat has received the prestigious Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health Human Rights by the Washington-based Global Health Council. He was awarded it jointly with Dr Frenk Guni, the former director of the Zimbabwe Network of People living with HIV/AIDS. The award carries U$20 000 prize money. Achmat received U$10 000 of which half was donated to TAC. The award was accepted in Washington on behalf of Achmat by TAC’s women’s health programmes co-ordinator Nonkosi Khumalo. Click to read the full speech.
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Some 4000 Free State children will take part in a study to test the HIV rate of South African children.
Government sets aside R500-million to for increases in allowances and salaries for rural healthcare workers.
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Many religious organisations have long been silent on the issue of HIV prevention, instead addressing the pandemic by offering care to those already infected or support for orphans. Those that do tackle prevention tend to promote sexual abstinence and steer clear of condom promotion. By Abbie van Sickel.
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Less than half the African countries that promised to remove taxes on bed nets have done so.
Seven years after it was first drafted, the National Health Bill ‘€“ intended to guide the transformation of health services ‘€“ is still with the state law advisors.
Up to 150 women out of 100 000 die annually whilst still pregnant, during labour or shortly after giving birth in South Africa. That is the finding of a report published recently by the national Department of Health and that follows three years of monitoring and collecting data on the patterns of maternal deaths. Khopotso Bodibe reports.
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Holo Muchangwe Hachonda IV of Zambia is a young man with a very huge mission. In 1997, while still a teenager, he formed an organisation with the express aim of working in the field of sexual and reproductive health rights and HIV prevention. He has worked extensively with churches, schools and NGOs in Zambia to promote young people’€™s rights to access sexual and reproductive health information and services. In recognition of his efforts to reach out to the new generation, he was recently awarded an AMANITARE award. This award is presented to an individual or organisation that has made a meaningful contribution to women’€™s health and rights in Africa. Khopotso Bodibe of Health-e News Service, spoke to this visionary young lad and discovered that issues he confronts daily in his work are the same problems South Africa is plagued with.
According to the World Health Organisation some 130 million women around the world have suffered due to female genital mutilation (FGM). Every year two million girls and young women are subjected to this practice that survives despite efforts taken in many of the countries involved to try to eradicate it. While the practice continues in sub-Saharan Africa, some of the Arab peninsula and parts of the Far East, these are not the only regions affected. Emigration to from these areas to Europe, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand is challenging these governments to find a solution to FGM as it is now practiced in these countries. Khopotso Bodibe of Health-e News Service, reports.
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Government is under increasing pressure to provide anti-retroviral drugs to people with HIV. In developed countries, the drugs have resulted in babies born with HIV now reaching university. But what about South African children with HIV?
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Over 40 000 people in some of the country’€™s poorest villages and towns have flocked to “grant registration jamborees” being run countrywide to help poor parents to get childcare grants. Kerry Cullinan reports.