Clinics in Umlazi, Durban have launched a new "Men and Maternity"programme offering couple counselling classes to men and women expecting babies. The programme aims to encourage men to take more responsibility for their children, improve maternal health and offer better services at antenatal clinics.
In this feature we hear from a young Mosotho woman who agreed to tell her story of how she discovered she was HIV positive, because she knows all too well how she was helped by other people who have spoken out about HIV/AIDS.
The health and social development ministers will be among South Africa's official delegation to the UN's special session on HIV/AIDS which begins in New York on Monday. South Africa's participation in the forum takes place against the backdrop of a newly released UNAIDS report which acknowledges that the epidemic can be contained, but paints a bleak picture of the present situation.
It is one month since the Gauteng province started its mother to child HIV prevention programme. Since May 16, pregnant women on the East Rand of Gauteng have responded enthusiastically to the provincial government's offer of free nevirapine to prevent HIV positive women from transmitting the virus to their babies.
Although an independent nation, the kingdom of Lesotho, surrounded on all sides by South Africa, is heavily dependent on its wealthier neighbour for jobs and foreign revenue. Like so many other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, any development gains Lesotho might make are likely to be wiped out by the impact of HIV/AIDS on the tiny kingdom. In this first in a series of several features on HIV/AIDS in Lesotho, we focus on the silence and stigma that dominate the epidemic.
Magalane Moela is 72-years old. She was born in the south-eastern region of the Northern Province and began working on an asbestos mine when she was in her early twenties, much older than many of the other widows in the area, some of whom started working for the mines from as young as six. She is one of many former asbestos mine employees trying to get compensation for the debilitating disease of asbestosis.
"There was no such thing as non-risk work on an asbestos mine". These are the words of Professor Tony Davies, former director of the National Centre for Occupational Health who is now retired but works with volunteer groups in the Northern Province to help former asbestos mine employees gain compensation for the various asbestos-related diseases that are ravaging their destitute communities.
The Cape plc court case has captured world headlines, but workers at other, now defunct, asbestos mines in the Northern Province are struggling to gain compensation for the work that has crushed their health.
Medical personnel from across Africa will soon be trained on the "latest HIV/AIDS treatment options and bring the highest standard of care to patients" at a clinic to be built at Uganda's Makerere University and funded by the Pfizer Foundation. The Kampala clinic, which is expected to open by the end of the year, will train at least 80 doctors per year in the latest AIDS treatment techniques. One of the goals of the clinic will be to put more patients under anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment and use diagnostic technology to monitor them and determine what kind of ARV treatments would be appropriate for Africa. Health-e reports.
Gold mining companies may pay employees with AIDS two years' full pay as part of an ill-health retirement package, Anglovaal CEO Rick Menell told the World Economic Forum's Southern Africa Summit yesterday (Thursday, June 7).
The pilot programme to supply the anti-retroviral drug nevirapine to pregnant women at 18 sites around the country is going ahead, but painstakingly slowly. Kerry Cullinan takes a critical look at the rocky road the roll-out process has travelled.
The traditional music that migrant workers bring with them from their rural villages to hostel life is being used as an effective weapon to deliver HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention messages to men living in single sex quarters on the mines and in the inner city. The initiative is run by the African Culture, Music and Dance Association (Acumda) in conjunction with the Gauteng Health Department. This is the third and final part of this series.
The African Culture, Music and Dance Association (Acumda) is using its access to the hostels of Gauteng to run a joint project with the province's health department. Although Acumda started out as an organisation to promote traditional music and dance, it has proved an ideal vehicle to communicate key messages about HIV and AIDS to the thousands of men who live in the hostels of Gauteng. This is part two of a three-part series.
Two leading business figures, Clem Sunter of Anglo American and Peter Doyle of Metropolitan Life, are alarmed at the slow and ill-informed attitude by the business sector towards the presence of HIV/AIDS in our society.
Sundays in hostels around Gauteng are inevitably filled with music and dance as migrant workers relax over the weekend. For staff of the African Culture, Music and Dance Association (Acumda), Sunday is a working day on which they will visit a designated hostel to hold music and dance competitions for the best performance that speaks about HIV and AIDS. In this three-part series, Sue Valentine spent a day with the Acumda programme at the Khutsong Hostel in Carltonville listening to a variety of messages about HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention as well as care and support. This is part 1.
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