Health e News
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Mavis Mtandeki is utterly convinced of the importance of talking to her children about sex. ‘We can’t hide just because our parents didn’t want to talk about sex.’ Mavis and another parent, sex educator and clinic nurse share their thoughts on talking to children about sex.
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An initiative, aimed at striking a balance between the need to sustain and conserve the natural medicinal plant resources and the growing demand for products from traditional healers, will be launched in Mpumalanga at the end of this month. ANSO THOM reports.
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The Gates Foundation will now devote at least two-thirds of its $21 billion charity fund to third world healthcare. “The worlds poorest two billion people desperately need healthcare, not laptops,” he reportedly said to the dismay of America’s business community. Jo Stein reports.
An epidemic of trauma is killing South Africans and draining public health resources at a rate second only to AIDS. But trauma is yet to become a priority public health issue within the Department of Health. Violence and alcohol are the main culprits causing trauma in our country. Jo Stein reports
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Rapid HIV tests, which allow you to get your HIV test result within a few minutes, should be in use country-wide within the course of next year. But only those rapid tests used in government health facilities have been properly evaluated for reliability. Quality control of the other brands on the market is not yet assured. Jo Stein reports
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Entering the gates of Luhlaza High School, the oasis of green spinach and buffalo grass bordering the entrance is in stark contrast to dusty and windswept Khayelitsha on the far side of the fence. Encouraged by her love for the environment, science and biology teacher Elizabeth Le Tape started the Luhlaza Environmental Club last year.
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Treatment Action Campaign chairperson, Zackie Achmat is often in the news. Most recently he made the headlines for importing a quantity of cheap, generic anti-retroviral drugs from Thailand. It was a deliberate act, calculated to show that access to affordable treatment is possible. But who is the man behind the political campaign, what motivates him and how does he feel about living with AIDS? SUE VALENTINE reports.
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Treatment Action Campaign chairperson Zackie Achmat has been both condemned and praised for smuggling cheap medicines into the country as part of his organisation’s challenge to drug companies. ANSO THOM tries to find the person behind the controversy.
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Almost half of South Africa’s 15-year olds will become infected with HIV during the course of their lifetime. And the probability of die before the age of 60. But it is important to unpack these frightening figures in order to make sense of them. Jo Stein reports
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South Africa has six times the number of very low birth weight babies than developed countries but there are more low birth weight babies born in the Western Cape than in other provinces. The Western Cape department of health is introducing “kangaroo care” as the preferred method of treating low-birth weight babies after research at Tygerberg Hospital showed the method reduced infant mortality and saved the hospital R1-million a year. Jo Stein reports
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The growing number of women who smoke and have become addicted to nicotine was among the issues highlighted at the public hearings held by the World Health Organisation (WHO) last week as a precursor to this week’s negotiations leading to a Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
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In early 1999, Sister Thulisiwe Luhabe sent in an anonymous blood sample of her own blood to the laboratory at the hospital where she worked because she suspected she might be HIV+. The test result confirmed her suspicions. Two years later, after successful treatment for TB, Sister Luhabe is more motivated than ever to share her knowledge of HIV with her patients.