The Treatment Action Campaign held a picket in Cape Town recently, protesting the Western Cape's government selective implementation of its mother-to-child HIV/AIDS prevention programme. Jo Stein reports.

According to the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), the recent announcement by Western Cape Minister of Health Nick Koornhof that the mother-to-child prevention of HIV/AIDS programme would be rolled out to five new areas next year may be little more than an election ploy.

Regular virginity testing is seen as a solution to HIV/AIDS. But for the majority of virginity testers, assessing virginity has nothing to do with whether a girl's hymen is intact. Many testers also not see virginity as an absolute state. There may be "grades" of relative virginity. One virginity tester from Zululand reported recently on his technique for testing boys.

Developing countries like Cambodia are following the Thai example and implementing successful 100% condom use programmes for commercial sex workers. But some argue that the approach discriminates against commercial sex workers. Jo Stein reports

In South Africa, there is no co-ordinated national policy specifically targeting the sex industry to prevent the spread of HIV infection. But such a policy may be less appropriate for South Africa than for other developing countries. By Jo Stein.

With their panties scrunched up in their hands, the girls laying in a row on the ground of a township football stadium range from five to 22 years old. The virginity tester, whose job it is to determine whether the girls are still virgins, uses the same pair of gloves for all 85 girls. Certificates are exchanged, at a cost of R5 each, for all but the three of the girls who "failed" the test. This is a scene described by University of Natal anthropologist, Suzanne Leclerc-Madlala who points out that regular virginity testing is gaining growing public support as an AIDS prevention strategy in South Africa, especially in KwaZulu'€“Natal.

There is little doubt of the urgent need to involve citizens in community development. But current labour legislation discourages, rather than encourages, volunteering in South Africa. Non-governmental organisations operating on shoestring budgets cannot afford to employ additional staff and need all the voluntary help they can get.

There is little doubt of the urgent need to involve citizens in community development. But current labour legislation discourages, rather than encourages, volunteering in South Africa. Non-governmental organisations operating on shoestring budgets cannot afford to employ additional staff and need all the voluntary help they can get.

"The future of surgery '€“ and medicine in general '€“ is not in blood and guts, but in bits and bytes," says University of Cape Town Prof of Cardiothoracic Surgery Ulrich Von Oppell.Von Oppell recently spent seven months at the University of Leipzig which, in his opinion, has one of the most up-to-date robotic theatres in the world. Apart from increasing surgical control and precision, robotic surgery makes possible new surgical procedures which could never be done by the human hand. JO STEIN reports.