In certain hospitals the shortage of doctors has led to a three-fold increase in the infant mortality rate. This statistic can be reversed easily in those hospitals that are sufficiently staffed and adopt a team approach. In this audio report we hear some views about whether the community service programme for doctors is working as a means to redress the shortage of doctors in rural areas.
The anti-retroviral therapy programme being offered free of charge to adults in Khayelitsha, Cape Town by the Western Cape government and Medecins Sans Frontieres aims to show that it is possible and economically sensible to treat people living with HIV/AIDS.
Advocacy and activism are two skills that rural doctors might need to develop if they hope to be able to offer decent healthcare to patients. This was the message delivered by Dr Trudy Thomas, the former MEC for Health in the Eastern Cape, in one of the keynote addresses delivered to the conference of the Rural Doctors Association of South Africa (Rudasa) last weekend. She said that the promise of the Reconstruction and Development Programme of 1994 had largely been betrayed by budget cuts and a lack of political will to transform and extend health care to the country's poor and rural people.
A Genetic Birth Defects Conference hosted by the Department of Health heard yesterday that limited resources at public hospitals meant that children with Down Syndrome were often refused heart surgery.
Delegates at the International Conference on Birth Defects and Disabilities in the developing World have called for the establishment of a Medical Genetics Advisory Board to ensure that human rights are respected as genetic testing and counseling becomes available.
Business should view HIV/AIDS as a tax which could add 7-8% to the cost of doing business, and work to minimise exposure to this "tax". This is according to Professor Alan Whiteside, director of the Health Economics and HIV/AIDS Research Division of the University of Natal.
Around 90% of HIV positive pregnant women in the Western Cape should have access to anti-AIDS drugs to prevent them transmitting the virus to their babies by early next year. The Cape Town Unicity and provincial government have agreed to make funds available to extend the prevention programme to a further nine sites by April next year.
A two-year pilot project aimed at encouraging hospital and clinic patients to go for HIV tests has managed to almost triple the demand for tests at the four test sites.
Few would disagree that there could be a more worthy winner in the health category of the Shoprite Checkers/SABC 3 Woman of the Year than Veronica Khosa, or Mama Khosa as she is known in the Gauteng community of Mamelodi.
Female condoms can be re-used up to seven times and still meet international safety standards, according to a recent study.
The only anti-retroviral treatment programme offered in the South African public health sector is available in Khayelitsha, Cape Town. In this second feature on the pilot programme being run by Medecins Sans Frontieres and the Western Cape provincial government, we focus on the all-important role of the patients' support group. It is in the support groups that patients have the chance to talk about possible side effects and other issues related to consistent adherence to the drug regimen.
The only public health programme in the country that offers anti-retroviral therapy to adults living with AIDS is operating in Khayelitsha, Cape Town under the auspices of the international human rights organisation, Medecins Sans Frontieres. In this, the first of a series of features, we hear from one of the doctors and a patient involved in the programme.
Scientists need to take into account that worm infestation could compromise the success of a potential AIDS vaccine as is the case with established vaccines against viral diseases such as cholera and tuberculosis, local researchers have warned.
World Health Organisation (WHO) representatives will visit South Africa next month to assess whether the country qualifies for the hugely reduced multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) drugs being made available.
Pupil enrolment in Grade One in KwaZulu-Natal has plunged by 20% over the past four years - and experts believe a key cause is the direct and indirect effect of HIV/AIDS on already poor households
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