
Medical Scheme Offers Cash Back For Healthy Food
Discovery, the medical and life assurance provider, has launched a new healthy eating initiative, in partnership with Pick n Pay for members of its Vitality programme.

Discovery, the medical and life assurance provider, has launched a new healthy eating initiative, in partnership with Pick n Pay for members of its Vitality programme.

While the Free State Health Department maintains that last November'€™s moratorium preventing about 15 000 new patients from getting antiretroviral treatment has been lifted, patients and civil society organisations paint a different picture.

Less than 600 patients have started antiretroviral treatment since the Free State province lifted the moratorium on treatment and the waiting list of 15 000 grows daily.

Despite a health crisis in the Free State caused by a funding shortage, the provincial health department has granted 160 health workers who are members of the ANC-aligned National Education Health and Allied Workers'€™ Union (NEHAWU) paid leave for six months to do election campaigning for the ANC.

The humanitarian medical aid agency, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), has reported an increase in rape cases reported to its various clinics in South Africa and worldwide. MSF recently released a report detailing the nature of cases patients present their aid workers with.

First Aid is a very well known and important procedure in society. But, Mental Health First Aid is something new in this country. It was imported from Australia where it was developed. South African experts identified the need for this program as a result of rising numbers of cases of patients with mental illnesses.

The National Health Department has for the first time taken firm steps against vitamin seller Matthias Rath by confiscating consignments of his flagship multi-vitamin VitaCell in Durban and Cape Town and opening criminal cases for his alleged contravention of the Medicines Act.

A lecture given at the 16th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) held in Montreal, Canada, recently highlighted the extent to which Antiretroviral therapy (ARV) has become central to today'€™s attempts to prevent HIV infection.

Apart from the physical, psychological and emotional pain that comes with being raped, survivors still deal with being stigmatised and cast out of their families and communities. A report by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reveals that sexual abuse victims, especially in countries facing humanitarian crises, do not receive emergency medical attention.

The AIDS epidemic in our country, over more than 10 years, has had sadly many more downs than ups.

MOMBASA:(PlusNews) - A shortage of free female condoms in public hospitals in Kenya's Coast Province is compromising the ability of women to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.

The latest edition of the HIV Treatment Bulletin contains a report on two studies calculating the excess number of AIDS deaths in South Africa resulting from a delay in governmental roll-out of highly active ARV treatment (HAART) and in preventing mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT).

Thousands of Zimbabwean refugees in South Africa have been displaced after an order by the Department of Home of Affairs for them to vacate a field in Musina where they have been living for several months.

Going to the dentist is not a pleasurable experience for some. It'€™s even worse for those who are experiencing severe pain from HIV-related oral infections. We take a look at how one'€™s good oral health can deteriorate due to HIV infection.

NAIROBI:(PlusNews) - Exactly one year ago, Kenya's President Mwai Kibaki and his erstwhile rival for the presidency, Raila Odinga, signed an agreement that created a government of national unity, ending two months of election-related violence during which more than 1,000 people were killed. The effects of that violence are still being felt.