The pilot programme to supply the anti-retroviral drug nevirapine to pregnant women at 18 sites around the country is going ahead, but painstakingly slowly. Kerry Cullinan takes a critical look at the rocky road the roll-out process has travelled.
Gold mining companies may pay employees with AIDS two years' full pay as part of an ill-health retirement package, Anglovaal CEO Rick Menell told the World Economic Forum's Southern Africa Summit yesterday (Thursday, June 7).
New research shows that HIV positive mothers who breastfeed their babies are more likely to die than those who use formula milk.
Government'€™s failure to prevent mothers from transmitting HIV to their babies means that South Africans should get down and start such programmes themselves, says Pan Africanist Congress MP Patricia de Lille.
The need for doctors to act ethically in the day to day practice of medicine was emphasised by Dr Wendy Orr at the World Congress of Family Doctors being held in Durban this week, while another speaker lambasted government for failing to address problems in rural healthcare.
There is a strong ethical and legal case to be made for euthanasia and patient-assisted suicide in South Africa according to one of the papers delivered at the World Congress of Family Doctors being held in Durban this week.
Doctors meeting at the World Congress of Family Doctors in Durban have commmitted themselves to ensuring that affordable anti-AIDS drugs become available to the world'€™s poor '€“ not just to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission, but also as treatment for those living with the virus.
The family physician is best placed to meet the holistic health needs of patients. This was the message of the US Surgeon General speaking at the first day of the World Congress of Family Doctors which is meeting in Durban this week.
A recent report suggests a strong link between domestic violence and the high prevalence of HIV/AIDS among South African women. All too often women who are HIV positive choose to stay in abusive relationships because they need financial security or because they fear no one else will have them. In other instances, women run the risk of contracting HIV from being raped or from abusive husbands who are more likely to have extra-marital affairs. Kerry Cullinan reports.
The Treatment Action Campaign plans to intensify its campaign to pressurise government to extend its prevention programme against mother-to-child-transmission of HIV. TAC wants government to offer HIV positive pregnant women access to the anti-retroviral drug Nevirapine at 18 sites countrywide.
The South African government and the Treatment Action Campaign might have emerged victorious from the Pretoria High Court, but this does not mean that cheap anti-AIDS drugs will suddenly be available to all South Africans who need them. As Kerry Cullinan reports, the Medicines and Related Substances Control Amendment Act does not challenge patent rights and the pharmaceutical giants retain a 20-year hold on the production and pricing of anti-retroviral drugs.
Nevirapine, the drug that has cut HIV transmission from mothers to their babies by up to 50% in clinical trials, has finally been registered for use in South Africa. This paves the way for the health department to make good its promise to issue the drug free of charge to pregnant women at 18 pilot sites countrywide.
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