Health e News
- ///Health
Combined TB and HIV infections are causing complications, with hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal seeing increasingly unusual presentations of TB, including TB-meningitis, mental retardation from TB and fits, according to KwaZulu-Natal Health MEC Dr Zweli Mkhize. Kerry Cullinan reports.
- ///Health
Only about $41-million of an estimated $2,5-billion used on HIV/AIDS research globally, is spent on finding a vaccine for Africa. The need for more money to be injected into research in Africa as well as partnerships with African scientists were among the issues raised at the African AIDS Vaccine Programme’s conference held outside Cape Town. Anso Thom was there.
- ///Health
Despite scientists’ optimism about the possibility of developing an AIDS vaccine, the world is “not ready” to make and distribute such a vaccine should it become available soon, according to Seth Berkley, president of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI).
- ///Health
Researchers from different parts of the country agree, households affected by AIDS tend to be much poorer than those which are “unaffected”. However, the silence about the disease has made it extremely difficult for researchers to document the extent of this damage and therefore to highlight the steps government needs to take to prevent these households from slipping ever deeper into poverty. Kathryn Strachan reports.
- ///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.