While activists, big business, government and HIV/AIDS groups squabble about whether anti-retrovirals should be dispensed in the public health sector, a pilot project in Guguletu, Cape Town, has quietly gone ahead, successfully treating 150 people in a primary health care setting. Anso Thom of Health-e News Service reports.

Busi has been too weak to get out of bed for the past two months. Her tiny eight-month-old baby, Nomsa, hangs limply in her listless arms. Even crying takes too much effort. Her home-based carer changes the sheets, which are streaked yellow with diarrhoea. She asks Busi'€™s mother how she is coping, but the mother shrugs and turns away so that we cannot see her tears. Five small children turn their worried faces towards us. "AIDS is not spoken about here," whispers the carer in warning, as I prepare to interview Busi.

One lingering look and Bongi and Elliot knew they wanted to be together. But later, their love disintegrated as lies, infidelity and a retrovirus played on their frailties and fears.

Groaning under the weight of HIV/AIDS, KwaZulu-Natal's hospitals provide other provinces with a preview of what they can expect as their epidemics mature. Kerry Cullinan reports.

West Africa, the poorest region in the world, is preparing to treat 400 000 HIV positive people with anti-retrovirals within the next three years. This translates into anti-retroviral access for at least one-third of the people in the region in need of treatment. Currently, some 10 000 people in West Africa have access to anti-retroviral treatment.

Positive. That'€™s the only way to describe the attitude of Dr Liz Floyd, Gauteng'€™s head of HIV/AIDS, to the province'€™s campaign against the disease over the past year.

White South Africans know less and worry less about HIV/AIDS than other race groups, while young people are more likely to accept having sex in exchange for money.

Since its launch on World AIDS Day two years ago, the Diflucan partnership between the government and the drug company, Pfizer, has brought relief to thousands of South Africans. By Khopotso Bodibe.

While rape survivors country-wide are supposed to be able to get free anti-retroviral drugs to protect them from HIV, the programme is far from easy to implement. Kerry Cullinan reports.

Non-governmental organisations are providing sterling service when it comes to the provision of Home-based care for people living with HIV/AIDS says Dr Fareed Abdullah of the Western Cape Department of Health. In this report we talk to patients who benefit from the Red Cross Society'€™s Home-based Care Project in Khayelitsha.

In a move that could be viewed as another positive step towards the roll out of anti-retroviral treatment for HIV positive adults, activists have reviewed their December 1 deadline and have agreed to give Government until the end of February to adopt a national treatment plan.

South Africa's Medicines Control Council will have to wait until the end of the year for a report from the United States which will guide its decision on whether to review the registration of nevirapine for the prevention of mother to child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV.

Almost every promise made by rich donors to stop the rampant devastation malaria is causing in Africa has become a piece of paper on a shelf, according to Jeffrey Sachs special advisor to United Nations Secretary General Koffi Anan.