About 200 000 traditional healers serve at least 70 percent of South Africans who consult them regularly. Health-e News Service looks at new legislation that will soon regulate this industry.

The largest representative survey of South African youth aged between 15 and 24 shows that by the age of 23, one in five South African youth are HIV positive. The research also confirms findings from the government's 2002 ante-natal clinic survey as well as the HSRC survey of 2002 that HIV prevalence in this age group appears to be stabilizing.

More than 60 percent of youth who tested HIV positive in the largest survey ever of South Africans aged between 15 and 24 said that they believed that they were at low risk of contracting the virus.

The largest representative sample of South African youth ever conducted has found that almost one third of sexually experienced women reported that they did not want to have their first sexual encounter and that they had been coerced into having sex.

Although one in 10 South African youths aged between 15 and 24 is HIV positive, 96 percent of 15 year olds are HIV negative.