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.
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.
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.
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).
Researchers Nabisa Jama and Mzikazi Nduna work for the Stepping Stones programme at the Medical Research Council. In this package we hear about the materialistic undertones to many adolescent sexual relationships and the gap between what boys and girls understand by love.
June 5, 2001 marks the 20th anniversary of the AIDS epidemic. In this package, we hear some personal reflections from the man who is at the forefront of the global effort to combat the disease, Belgian, Peter Piot, the executive director of UNAIDS.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Drug giant Pfizer has extended its offer of free diflucan (fluconazole) to HIV/AIDS patients in 50 of the least developed nations as well.
Despite research findings that 30% of SA children under six are Vitamin A deficient, the Medicines Control Council has failed to fast track the registration of the life-saving supplement. Poor co-operation between the MCC and the Department of Health along with unnecessary stalling has allowed tens of thousands of children to continue to suffer Vitamin A deficiency in this country, a condition that has seen thousands die because their immune systems are compromised. Health-e investigates why Vitamin A needs to be distributed as a matter of urgency.
A recent conference has called on the church to play an important and meaningful role in educating people about HIV/AIDS as well as offering much-needed support to people who are infected and affected by the virus.
When the Minister of Health delivers her budget speech in Parliament today (Tuesday, June 5th) it is expected she will give the go-ahead for provinces to administer Nevirapine, the drug that helps prevent HIV positive pregnant women from passing the virus on to their babies. However, as Kerry Cullinan reports, the announcement has been all too slow in coming.
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