Just days before the new National Strategic Plan (NSP) on HIV and AIDS, TB and STIs is due to be implemented on the 1st of April, the entire staff of the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC) has been fired, leaving no one in the SANAC Secretariat to deliver on the plan.
HIV is mostly a sexually transmitted infection, yet many people shy away from expressing sexuality or speaking openly about the very fact and act that may result in HIV infection. But that could change if Phindile Sithole-Spong, a young Johannesburg-based woman has her way.
Despite being a major childhood killer, the plight of children with Tuberculosis has largely been ignored.
Breast cancer patients who are overweight or obese are at an increased risk for recurrence of the disease, according to a new study.
The Gauteng Health Department says decentralising TB treatment will help address the number of treatment defaulters the province currently has.
With only one lung as a result of tuberculosis, Thabo Mwale is a man on a mission. He wants to protect others from going through the same experience he did.
New research has shown that second-hand smoke is even more dangerous than previously thought. A team of researchers led by Dr AK Rajasekaran of the Nemours Centre for Childhood Cancer Research found that a key protein involved in cell function and regulation is stopped hampered by a substance present in cigarette smoke.
Eighteen years after contracting tuberculosis, Thabo Mwale still suffers from the damage caused by the infection as he now has only one functional lung.
The new National Strategic Plan on HIV/AIDS, which comes into effect on April 1st, will prioritise young girls and women in its HIV prevention efforts. The Plan will also resuscitate the school-based HIV testing campaign, whose introduction fell flat on its face last year.
In 2010, the tobacco industry made US$6 000 in profit for each death caused by the products they sell. This is according to The Tobacco Atlas, Fourth Edition, and its companion website TobaccoAtlas.org, which were recently unveiled by the American Cancer Society and World Lung Foundation at the 15th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health.
Former president and Nobel laureate FW de Klerk, had a close brush with cancer in 2006 and is lending his support to Be Cancer Aware as they launch a campaign to increase public awareness of colorectal cancer.
In her latest report, the US Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, raised serious concerns over the influence that tobacco companies'€™ advertising campaigns may have on young people.
Musa Ernest Nkoko is a 52-year old ex-miner with multi-drug resistant (MDR) tuberculosis. He lives in KaShoba in the Lubombo region of Swaziland with his wife and five children aged between 9 and 27 years. Co-infected with HIV, Nkoko says he has been on treatment for MDR-TB for the last four years. The disease has diminished Nkoko'€™s lung capacity and rendered him too weak to do any work, and he and his family relies on his wife'€™s income as a part time cleaner.
The world is watching the stand-off between the Australian government and big tobacco over plain packaging with great interest. Late last year the Australian government passed a new law that will remove all branding from tobacco-product packaging, but big tobacco don'€™t want to budge and is now taking the Australian government to court over the new law.
The little girl squirms and tries to break free from the adults pinning her down, her terrified eyes as wide as saucers and her screams muffled by the tube they are trying to thread down her throat.
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