The battle for AIDS treatment is getting escalating with the TAC intensifying its civil disobedience campaign on the one hand and government buying media space in newspapers to do damage control on its confusing position on the protracted AIDS debacle on the other.

The sign-off on the proposed NEDLAC Framework Agreement with government, business, labour and AIDS community on a National HIV/AIDS Prevention and Treatment Plan still remains a bone of contention. In an effort to force government back to negotiations on the plan and to secure its commitment to it, the Treatment Action Campaign has mobilised 600 of its members nationally to participate in a civil disobedience campaign, scheduled to take place tomorrow '€“ Human Rights Day. Khopotso Bodibe of Health-e News Service spoke to one of the expected participants in the campaign and filed this report.

Universal access to Highly Active Anti-retroviral Therapy (HAART) will become an inevitable reality in South Africa over the next three to seven years, according the South African Health Review. Anso Thom reports.

A grim picture has emerged of the eating patterns of South African children with more than 72 percent of those who took part in a survey surviving on a daily diet of only sugar and maize. Anso Thom reports.

Preventable, treatable and curable diseases such as tuberculosis, pneumonia and thrush, for which there are often free or cheap drugs, are causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of HIV-positive people, the United States based Treatment Action Group (TAG) has revealed.Speaking at the Treatment Preparedness Summit recently held in Cape Town, TAG executive director Mark Harrington said that treatable and curable opportunistic infections were responsible for the deaths of most people infected with HIV/AIDS. Anso Thom reports.

Although South Africa has no '€œpolicy as such'€ to provide anti-retrovirals to people living with HIV/AIDS, it was relying on the private sector to advise it on the implications and complications of such a programme.Speaking at Parliament'€™s health committee meeting this week, Minister of Health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, said her department needed to be clear about what it wanted to do.

Between six and nine million people in developing countries currently urgently need anti-retroviral treatment while in reality only between 230 000 and 300 000 have access to these drugs, according to a report by HealthGAP, a US-based human rights group.

CAPE TOWN - AIDS activists from around the world have been invited to join South Africans on April 27 and 28 in civil disobedience and protest campaigns should Government fail to implement a national treatment plan.Speaking at the opening of the International Treatment Preparedness Summit in Cape Town, Treatment Action Campaign chairperson Zackie Achmat called on delegates from 67 countries to picket outside South African embassies.

Possibilities of adoption for a child infected with HIV depend on nothing more than compassion, as opposed to a primary need to have a child or give a home to a child who deserves to grow in a stable family unit. In the following report by Khopotso Bodibe, we hear that more and more social services organisations have come to realise that placing HIV positive children in adoptive homes can be a futile attempt.    

Health Minister, Dr Manto Tshabalala Msimang said the money from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria would be distributed by April in South Africa. Sixty percent of the overall amount globally will go to Africa and while she did not disclose the total of the grant, the minister gave a breakdown of how it will be distributed in this country. She said the loveLife prevention campaign will receive about R32 million and that government'€™s HIV/AIDS and TB programme as well as the Lubombo Spatial Development Initiative would both receive about R54.4 million each. Futher funds would be distributed to the Soul City education programme that will receive about R19 million and R91 million would go to KwaZulu-Natal.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria allocation for South Africa will be received by April the Minister of Health, Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang announced recently. Africa will receive 60 percent of the funding and South Africa fell within this ambit. The minister also explained the process of applying for funds. Thandeka Teyise compiled this report. This audio is in isiXhosa and English.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that about 80 percent of the world'€™s population uses traditional or herbal medicines and South Africa is amongst these countries. It has taken over six years for the government and traditional healers to come up with a mutually agreeable plan to formally recognise traditional healers. Thandeka Teyise, of Health-E News Service, spoke to Phillip Khubukeli, a traditional healer who has been part of the process. She asked how close the parties were in terms of reaching an agreement and when the final draft of the Traditional Healers Bill could be expected.

The uncertainty around whether long-awaited HIV vaccine trials scheduled for the first quarter of this year will eventually take place in South Africa, appears to have been cleared up. That'€™s if a consultative workshop hosted by the Medicines Control Council (MCC) last Friday (21-02-03) is anything to go by. At the workshop, attended by pharmaceutical company representatives, clinical researchers, scientists and ethicists, the MCC unveiled a draft document of guidelines and ethics for anticipated HIV/AIDS Vaccine Trials. Khopotso Bodibe attended the workshop and filed the following report.