The Cabinet statement announcing the go-ahead for an antiretroviral roll-out plan on Friday August 8th came during a fortnight which saw health workers, researchers and activists despair and then rejoice as debate around treatment for HIV/AIDS once again grabbed media headlines.
The Medicines Control Council (MCC) is threatening to de-register Nevirapine unless further studies and appropriate documentation can show its efficacy in the prevention of mother to child transmisssion of HIV. Glenda Grey of the Peri-natal HIV Research Unit at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital argues that enough evidence has already been presented.
Days before South Africa signed its outstanding agreement with the Global Fund to release money to projects in KwaZulu-Natal, a senior advisor in the Fund, Vinand Nantulya, explained that further delays would jeopardise the funds.
Preparation for the roll-out of a state-funded antiretroviral treatment programme requires not only careful co-ordination, but a rigorous debate on how much money should be spent on the programme and where it will come from. by Dr. Nicoli Nattrass
This week South Africa added three all-important signatures to the document authorising the Global Fund to release a multi-million Rand grant to combat AIDS, TB and Malaria. The recipients are the Enhanced Care Initiative in KwaZulu-Natal, loveLife and Soul City.
South Africa is on the brink of introducing anti-retroviral (ARV) medication in the public health sector. One of the major challenges is how to ensure adequate delivery of these drugs within existing infastructures. Dr Peter Barron, the Director of the Initiative for Sub District Support (ISDS) of the Health Systems Trust, argues that we must have a national ARV programme, but cautions that we have to do it right.
I've been in this Envoy role for just over two years. The issues related to the pandemic ebb and flow, but remain much the same --- care, prevention, treatment, stigma, discrimination, gender, orphans, leadership --- they all continue to reverberate, unceasingly, as we struggle to overcome HIV/AIDS.
Researchers believe they have studies that can avert the potential de-registration of nevirapine.
Thembi Zungu is a senior nurse living with HIV in Port Elizabeth. She disclosed her status in 1996 after living in denial for five years. Her decision met with mixed reaction from her nursing colleagues. Thembi says she did so because she has witnessed too many nurses dying from HIV-related illnesses without anyone acknowledging this.
The MCC says it is within its rights as a regulatory authority, just like America'€™s FDA, to demand access to all information collated during the Uganda HIVNET 012 study on the efficacy of Nevirapine in order to support the continued registration of the drug for PMTCT in South Africa.
The future of the use of the prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission drug, Nevirapine, as a single intervention administered to mother and baby during labour and at birth hangs in the balance.
August is women'€™s month and Health-e spoke to one of South Africa'€™s most celebrated women, Dr Mamphele Ramphele, medical doctor, activist, anthropologist, the first black female vice chancellor of a South African university (University of Cape Town) and now one of four managing directors at the World Bank. She stressed the enormous challenges that confront women, especially in the face of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
More health workers are dying and getting sick, and patient loads are rising, as the HIV epidemic becomes an AIDS epidemic.
I am deeply honoured to be able to join you today at the opening of the South African AIDS Conference, on behalf of the South African Government and as Chairperson of the South African National AIDS Council.
Unless a solution is found to the impasse over nevirapine, government may have to use other drugs to treat 80 000 women on its prevention of mother-to-child programme.
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