"I gave birth to an HIV positive baby who should have been saved. That was my experience, the sad one, and I will live with it until my last day." -Busisiwe Maqungo, supporting affidavit for the Treatment Action Campaign.
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) goes head-to-head with the Health Minister in the Pretoria High Court on 26 November over her apparent failure to implement a national programme to prevent mothers with HIV from passing the virus on to their babies. In this package of three stories, Kerry Cullinan sketches the context of the court case and summarises the different positions taken by TAC and the Health Ministry.
"Public pressure for a cure and for quick solutions, while understandable, could contribute to hasty decisions to assuage the sentiments of the public with extremely negative consequences." - Affidavit from Dr Ayanda Ntsaluba, Director General of Health
Matthew Damane is 26 years old and lives in Khayelitsha, Cape Town. In June this year, with his CD4 cell count down to 138, he decided to take up the offer of free antiretroviral therapy as supplied by doctors working for the international non-government organisation, Medecins Sans Frontieres. It's been almost six months since he started taking the drugs and he is delighted with the results. The Khayelitsha drug therapy programme is one which is highlighted by the Treatment Action Campaign in its latest call on government to seriously consider rolling out a national antiretroviral therapy programme.
Two of the country's most powerful figures in health yesterday crossed swords at the Health Summit over whether government should investigate providing anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) to people with HIV/AIDS.
The Treatment Action Campaign says the benefits of antiretroviral therapy far outweigh the risks and has called on delegates at the National Health Summit to begin to examine how such therapy can be made available to South Africans with AIDS through the public health service. by Tim Dodd
The crowd of children, aged between 10 and 14, is deeply absorbed in the task of depicting the things that they like about themselves and their world. Their world so far has not afforded them much pleasure. Every child has watched either both parents or their mother die of AIDS. After their parents died, they lost their homes and now all live in a rundown, two-roomed house in Waterfall, near Durban, called Agape.
JOHANNESBURG - The absence of anti-retroviral drugs in the public sector had led to the misconception that nothing was being done by government for people with HIV, Dr Nono Simelela, head of government's HIV/AIDS Directorate told the Health Summit yesterday (Mon).
For most South Africans anti-retorviral drugs are unaffordable from private doctors and unavailable through the public health system. Like all drugs they have side effects, but taken under correct medical supervision they can be life-saving.
Wednesday, November 14th was observed internationally as World Diabetes Day. To some people the day doesn't bear any significance whatsoever, but to others like Michelle Kannemeyer, a travel and tourism student at Cape Technikon, the day has greater significance. Michelle Kannemeyer is 18. When she was eleven months old she was diagnosed with diabetes. Doctors refer to this disease in children and young people as Type 1 diabetes. To survive for the past 17 years, Michelle has been on a strict programme of insulin injections because her pancreas cannot produce insulin naturally. In this audio report in Sesotho and English, Michelle speaks about life with diabetes and how she copes with it.
Dr Nigel Hoffman and Dr Clare Hoffman are a husband and wife team who've worked at Rietvlei Hospital in the Eastern Cape for the past 14 years. However, as the number of patients with HIV/AIDS has increased, so their "cure rate" of patients has decreased. A demoralising situation for doctors who wish to heal their patients. In a context of grinding poverty and the absence of anti-retroviral drugs, all they can do is treat the illnesses they see and offer palliative care. More recently, the option of Nevirapine for pregnant woman has become available, but because of the need to have an AIDS test and the stigma related to the virus, woman are reluctant to access the programme.
For doctors who qualified in the 1970s or 80s, the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS in South Africa in the past 10 to 15 years has left many of them ill-equipped to respond to the needs of patients with HIV or AIDS. In an effort to solve the problem, the South African Medical Association (SAMA), has been running three-day courses for General Practitioners in various parts of the country. At one of these courses in Cape Town, the association invited Elaine Maane, Provincial Co-ordinator of the National Association of Persons Living with HIV and AIDS (NAPWA), to talk about how people with AIDS want to be treated by doctors.
The widespread presence of STIs in South Africa is one of the driving forces behind the spread of the Aids epidemic. If sexually transmitted infections are treated correctly, the rate of new HIV infections can be halved. Contrary to general expectation, the best place to go for effective treatment of an STI is a public sector clinic. The private sector has a poor track record when it comes to successfully treating STIs. At a recent workshop in Johannesburg, doctors and researchers met to find ways to improve the private sector's peformance when it comes to treating STIs.
A frequently asked question by those who might consider volunteeting to be part of the Phase One trials to test for an AIDS vaccine in South Africa is, "how will this benefit me?" Keletso Mmoledi, a Research Nurse and Co-ordinator of the Aids Vaccine Research Unit at the Chris Hani-Baragwanath Hospital, talks about some of these benefits. This report is in Sesotho.
In 1998 the Department of Education started a sex education pilot programme in public schools to teach young people about the dangers of unprotected sex and the need for responsible sexual behaviour. In South Africa, statistics show that the prevalence of HIV/AIDS is more rife among the youth from age 15 to 25. Last year, the Department of Education formally introduced the Sex Education Programme, as part of the Life Skills Project in schools. Harry Gwala High School, in the Western Cape is one of the few schools that is implementing the project. This audio report in Sesotho and English.
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