Health e News
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From Sunday (1 July) the ban on smoking in public places was enforced. Smoking is now only allowed in specially designated areas that do not take up more than 25% of the public space and are separated from the non-smoking area by a solid partition. Kerry Cullinan reports.
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The Western Cape has announced its intention to expand significantly the anti-retroviral drug programme to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV. This move is in sharp contrast to the national Department of Health’s slow roll-out of the mother-to-child prevention programme which is limited to pilot sites around the country – most of which have yet to get underway.
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Health minister Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang this week addressed the United National General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS in New York. She said singling out the issue of anti-retroviral drugs was undermining the efforts made by many developing countries in dealing with pandemic. This is the full speech she delivered to the assembly.
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Always outspoken, World Bank managing director Dr Mamphela Ramphele, has made made it clear that South Africa needs to articulate its AIDS plan to the world, not only via the health minister, but also the president. This AIDS plan should, according to Ramphele, include anti-retroviral treatment for those living with the disease. Health-e caught up with her on a recent visit to Cape Town where she received an honorary doctorate from her alma mater, the University of Cape Town.
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In this feature we hear from a young Mosotho woman who agreed to tell her story of how she discovered she was HIV positive, because she knows all too well how she was helped by other people who have spoken out about HIV/AIDS.
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The health and social development ministers will be among South Africa’s official delegation to the UN’s special session on HIV/AIDS which begins in New York on Monday. South Africa’s participation in the forum takes place against the backdrop of a newly released UNAIDS report which acknowledges that the epidemic can be contained, but paints a bleak picture of the present situation.
University medical schools are revising their curricula in an effort to produce doctors who are as at home in rural clinics as urban hospitals. In order to attract a wider cross-section of students from all population groups entry levels are to be lowered, but the exit criteria for graduates will remain the same.
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Although an independent nation, the kingdom of Lesotho, surrounded on all sides by South Africa, is heavily dependent on its wealthier neighbour for jobs and foreign revenue. Like so many other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, any development gains Lesotho might make are likely to be wiped out by the impact of HIV/AIDS on the tiny kingdom. In this first in a series of several features on HIV/AIDS in Lesotho, we focus on the silence and stigma that dominate the epidemic.
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“There was no such thing as non-risk work on an asbestos mine”. These are the words of Professor Tony Davies, former director of the National Centre for Occupational Health who is now retired but works with volunteer groups in the Northern Province to help former asbestos mine employees gain compensation for the various asbestos-related diseases that are ravaging their destitute communities.
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The Cape plc court case has captured world headlines, but workers at other, now defunct, asbestos mines in the Northern Province are struggling to gain compensation for the work that has crushed their health.
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The traditional music that migrant workers bring with them from their rural villages to hostel life is being used as an effective weapon to deliver HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention messages to men living in single sex quarters on the mines and in the inner city. The initiative is run by the African Culture, Music and Dance Association (Acumda) in conjunction with the Gauteng Health Department. This is the third and final part of this series.
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Two leading business figures, Clem Sunter of Anglo American and Peter Doyle of Metropolitan Life, are alarmed at the slow and ill-informed attitude by the business sector towards the presence of HIV/AIDS in our society.