The health department and the SA Bureau of Standards have been caught with their pants down. Clinics have run out of condoms, while the Department of Health claim they have received no requests for additional stocks from the depots that supply the clinics.
Treatment Action Campaign chairperson, Zackie Achmat is often in the news. Most recently he made the headlines for importing a quantity of cheap, generic anti-retroviral drugs from Thailand. It was a deliberate act, calculated to show that access to affordable treatment is possible. But who is the man behind the political campaign, what motivates him and how does he feel about living with AIDS? SUE VALENTINE reports.
Child survivors of rape are being denied access to anti-AIDS drugs following a move by Mpumalanga Health MEC Sibongile Manana to bar rape volunteers from storing or dispensing the drugs on Nelspruit and White River hospital premises. ANSO THOM reports.
Entering the gates of Luhlaza High School, the oasis of green spinach and buffalo grass bordering the entrance is in stark contrast to dusty and windswept Khayelitsha on the far side of the fence. Encouraged by her love for the environment, science and biology teacher Elizabeth Le Tape started the Luhlaza Environmental Club last year.
Mpumalanga MEC Sibongile Manana has set her sights on another successful non-governmental AIDS organisation, this time ordering an investigation into the Mpumalanga Project Support Association'€™s (MPSA) operations. ANSO THOM investigates.
Parents generally are still not advising their children about sex '€“ despite the fact that unprotected sex can kill their children, thanks to HIV/AIDS.Most new HIV infections take place amongst youngsters between the ages of 15 and 20. If the current infection rates continue, statisticians predict that 50% of all 15-year-olds could die of AIDS-related diseases. Kerry Cullinan reports.
Almost half of South Africa's 15-year olds will become infected with HIV during the course of their lifetime. And the probability of die before the age of 60. But it is important to unpack these frightening figures in order to make sense of them. Jo Stein reports
Six months after five major pharmaceutical companies and the Joint United Nations Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS) declared their intention to make HIV drugs more affordable to poor countries, South Africa has yet to express formal interest in entering negotiations.
New research provides direct evidence that anti-retroviral drugs can prevent HIV infection after sexual intercourse. This research comes amid a series of controversial decisions regarding the provision of AZT to rape victims in South Africa. The new national guidelines for HIV care launched on Tuesday (24th October) deny the use of anti-retroviral drugs to rape survivors but the Western Cape will provide AZT to rape survivors nonetheless. Jo Stein reports.
We are all the losers as political parties cynically exploit HIV/AIDS to win votes. Kerry Cullinan reports.
Treatment Action Campaign chairperson Zackie Achmat has been both condemned and praised for smuggling cheap medicines into the country as part of his organisation's challenge to drug companies. ANSO THOM tries to find the person behind the controversy.
Lucky is not a word usually applied to people living in wind-swept Khayelitsha. Yet this is how Pumeza Bikwe and over a thousand other mothers feel, thanks to a unique health programme that may have saved their babies'€™ lives.
Experts believe "the benefits outweigh the potential adverse effects" in the use of antiretroviral drugs to prevent mother to child transmission of HIV.
In this week's feature on "Living with AIDS", we take a look at the fuss surrounding a generic version of the patented drug, fluconazole, which was imported illegally from Thailand recently as a protest action by the Treatment Action Campaign.
While politicians and health economists debate the cost implications of offering mother to child treatment programmes, health workers face HIV positive men, women and children on a daily basis.
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