The lure of foreign currency combined with tough working conditions and poor salaries is contributing to the exodus of South African nurses from our health services. The BBC recently reported that South Africa rates second after the Philippines as top supplier of nurses to the UK. Health-e visited the Eastern Cape to find out more about the shortage of nursing staff.
In the remote villages of Limpopo and Mpumalanga, an innovative pilot project on gender and AIDS awareness offers rural women an opportunity for empowerment.
Huge staff shortages and weak primary care are the two most pressing problems in the Eastern Cape health system, but there are signs of improvement in provincial management.
In this feature we journey to the village of Maupye in Limpopo to meet a young boy we first met three years ago when exploring the reality of children orphaned as a result of AIDS.
The largest representative sample of South African youth ever conducted has
found that almost one third of sexually experienced women reported that they
did not want to have their first sexual encounter and that they had been
coerced into having sex.
More than 60 percent of youth who tested HIV positive in the largest survey
ever of South Africans aged between 15 and 24 said that they believed that
they were at low risk of contracting the virus.
The largest representative survey of South African youth aged between 15 and
24 shows that by the age of 23, one in five South African youth are HIV
positive. The research also confirms findings from the government's 2002
ante-natal clinic survey as well as the HSRC survey of 2002 that HIV
prevalence in this age group appears to be stabilizing.
Although one in 10 South African youths aged between 15 and 24 is HIV
positive, 96 percent of 15 year olds are HIV negative.
The largest survey ever conducted amongst South African youth shows that young women are bearing the brunt of the HIV and AIDS pandemic with one in 4 women aged between 20 and 24 testing HIV positive, compared to one in 14 men of the same age. The survey, conducted by the University of the Witwatersrand's Reproductive Health Research Unit and commissioned by loveLife, shows that by the age of 23, one in five young South Africans is HIV positive.
With serious staff shortages and a rural population of up to 65 percent, bringing health to the people of the North West Province is no easy job.
Plagued by poverty, drought, inadequate access to basic services and huge inequities, Limpopo faces enormous hurdles in bringing health to its 5,8-million inhabitants.
South Africa has one of the highest incidences of rape in the world. In many cases, rape survivors do not press charges because of pressure from friends and family. This is the story of 19-year old Zoë who was attacked and raped by her ex-boyfriend last year in December in Uitenhage.
South Africa is among 10 hotspots of multi-drug resistant TB identified by the World Health Organisation and at Durban'€™s busiest TB treatment clinic, rates of MDR TB have more than doubled in the past three years.
An unconventional approach to health provision at the Medicins Sans Frontieres first rural HIV/AIDS programme in Lusikisiki has yielded impressive results.
In Part Two of our focus on rape in the Eastern Cape we hear about the actions communities can take to break the silence about sexual offences and help police to prosecute suspects.
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