Medecins Sans Frontieres' (MSF) flagship antiretroviral programme in Khayelitsha is taking strain and has been forced to put patients on waiting lists as nurses and doctors struggle to cope with the growing demand.
Ambiguous statements by political leaders about HIV/AIDS could cause massive damage to the response to the pandemic, Dr Donald Dickinson an Associate Professor at Wits Business School has said.
The South African Security Forces Union filed court papers against its employer, the South African National Defence Force, this week. The union seeks to challenge five SANDF policies which it says discriminate against HIV-positive soldiers.
Despite the existence of interventions to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission, the number of AIDS orphans also infected with HIV is increasing in the country.
HIV-positive people living in Graaff-Reinet and surrounds are dying as they wait for the long-promised arrival of antiretrovirals, leaving hospice workers in the Eastern Cape town to care for the dying patients and the children they leave behind.
'Miracles' have been taking place at Mofolo Hospice with the arrival of anti-retrovirals as patients admitted on the brink of death leave the in-patient unit on their own two feet.
Hospice workers become the voice of the vulnerable, supporting those at the end of their lives.
With the introduction of antiretroviral medicine, many of hospice's patients now have cancer not AIDS.
The townships' terminally ill get dumped in unprepared rural homes.
The spread of HIV /AIDS, particularly in KwaZulu-Natal province, has seen an increase of patients who receive home-based care from different hospices in the province.
Hospitals send patients that they can no longer do anything for to hospices. Often, such patients are about to die. Nonhlanhla Nyembe was one such patient, but amazingly, she's still alive.
The much talked about Johannesburg-based Zuzimpilo Medical Centre is experiencing difficulties in meeting its target of enrolling 1000 people on ARV treatment before the end of the year.
This week is Hospice Week in South Africa. To mark this, we look at the work of a few hospices. When it first set up in Mofolo, Soweto, in a corrugated iron structure nine years ago, Mofolo Hospice had only two nursing sisters and less than 40 patients. Today, the centre has a staffing complement of 20 and over 500 patients in its books.
Hospice care does not just end with tending to the health needs of the sick. While following a home-based care-giver from the Mofolo Hospice in Soweto, it's evident that care-givers often deal with social problems of their patients.
Brooklyn Chest Clinic is unable to cope with the increase in patients with multi-drug resistant (MDR) and extreme drug resistant (XDR) tuberculosis, and Western Cape health workers are calling for patients to be treated in the community.
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