Health e News
- ///Health
Philipp Krebs, a Swiss-born artist who has lived in Cape Town for the past five years, creates unusual and extraordinary public works of art using balloons. In a project called Umbono, a Xhosa word that means vision, Krebs uses larger than life balloons to create awareness and educate people about safe sex and HIV/AIDS. Khopotso Bodibe went to view the Umbono exhibition, and filed this report.
- ///Health
The Children’s Team from the South Coast Hospice in Port Shepstone have some 200 children on their books – children who have either been orphaned because of AIDS or who need support because their parents are HIV positive. In this audio report, we visit the home of a family of three on the lower south coast of Kwa-Zulu Natal who live in a tiny, one-roomed shack. When the caregivers give the 13-year old boy a memory box to decorate, he paints his dream – a colourful, five-roomed house for his mother, his sister and him.
- ///Health
Care givers who form the backbone of home-based care programmes for people sick with HIV/AIDS need support and encouragement as well. In this audio report, experiences from a Soweto AIDS care and counselling group are shared with care givers working in Nyanga, Cape Town. Ideas are exchanged on the responsibilities that people attending the support groups can assume so that the staff don’t burn out.
- ///Health
In the previous “Living with AIDS” feature, staff at the De Beers-Botswana diamond mining corporation, Debswana, spoke about the antiretroviral treatment programme offered by the company. In this audio report, some of the peer educators involved in educating their colleagues about HIV/AIDS and possible treatment options speak about the challenges they face.
- ///Health
Government officials glibly talk about “home-based care” to keep terminally AIDS patients from depleting hospital resources. But setting up this care in poor communities is hard and slow, even when organisations have resources.
- ///Health
As government and the Treatment Action Campaign meet in the Constitutional Court, HIV positive mothers and AIDS experts celebrate the effect of Nevirapine in preventing mother-to-child HIV transmission.
- ///Health
How should photographers depict the HIV/AIDS pandemic? In this audio report, award-winning photographer Gideon Mendel talks about his recently launched book, “A Broken Landscape – HIV/AIDS in Africa” and how his approach to taking pictures of people living with HIV/AIDS has changed over time. The book represents almost nine years work and includes photographs taken in Uganda, Tanzania and South Africa.
- ///Health
Botswana has one of the highest prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS in the world – 38,5% of the country’s 2 million people are HIV positive. In the face of these potentially devastating statistics, government and business have introduced a comprehensive response to the impact of the disease. One notable example is the prevention and treatment programme offered by the Debswana diamond mining corporation. Health-e visits one of their mines.
- ///Health
The long-awaited report on a comprehensive social security system for South Africa was released for public comment this week. Social Development minister Dr Zola Skweyiya acknowledges the need for a basic income grant and urgent measures to assist the orphans and those living in dire poverty. But he cautions that Government does not have the money or the resources to tackle this alone. He spoke to Health-e.
- ///Health
A global initiative, formed to mobilise society in the fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, has launched a campaign to force countries to drop import taxes on treated mosquito nets in an attempt to control the malaria epidemic. The initiative aims to hold governments accountable to commitments made in the Abuja Declaration signed two years ago, in which African states promised to reduce the costs of mosquito nets and insecticides. South Africa is one of several countries which has yet to make good on its promises. Anso Thom reports.
Problems of overcrowding and long queues could soon be a thing of the past with the addition of a R500 million new wing to Umtata General Hospital and 800 new posts for doctors, nurses and support staff. The complex is due to be finished in May says Mahlubandile Mageda, spokesperson for Eastern Cape Health Department.
- ///Health
It will take a decade before a vaccine against malaria, described as one of the greatest causes of misery in endemic countries, is developed, according to Dr Regina Rabinovich, director of the Malaria Vaccine Initiative. With between three and five million cases per year and three deaths every minute (mostly children), the need for a malaria vaccine is as urgent as one to prevent HIV infection. ANSO THOM reports.