When Agnes Nyamayarwo'€™s son, Peter, was four years old, he discovered from a boy at his school that his mother was HIV positive."This boy warned the other children not to share Peter'€™s food because they would get AIDS from him," says Nyamayarwo."I felt very bad that he heard it from school. We think we are protecting them [by not telling them about our HIV status] but somehow they get to know
The Birth to Ten study in Johannesburg is one of the biggest and longest running studies of child health and development world-wide. The study suggests that while poverty in itself does not make for maladapted children, violence has extremely damaging psychological effects. Jo Stein reports
In the latest South African Airways advertisement the airline talks about the one thing that gives it more pleasure than flying South Africans to a foreign destination: flying them home. "Because the grass may not always be greener on the other side," the narrator says.This is a concept that young community service doctor Colin Wittstock can relate to.
Living with AIDS is a weekly audio feature which can be heard every Thursday on SAfm radio on the programme, "AM Live" at 6.45am. It's presented by Sue Valentine.
Within the space of less than a year, a doctor has managed to turn a Mpumalanga hospital and its clinics into one of the jewels of the public health care system. ANSO THOM reports.
"Never give up. No, never give up. Never, never, never give up. No, never give up." Swaying and clapping in unison, the women of Mzinoni outside Bethal seem to draw strength from singing before dispersing to visit their patients.
After Mercy Makhalemele disclosed that she was HIV positive, she lost almost everything. But she fought back and is now presenter of a TV series that offers practical advice to people living with HIV/AIDS. Kerry Cullinan reports.
Mpumalanga women in Bethal have banded together to visit bars and shebeens on a daily basis to arm their community against the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Anso Thom joined them during one of their campaign visits.
According to the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), the recent announcement by Western Cape Minister of Health Nick Koornhof that the mother-to-child prevention of HIV/AIDS programme would be rolled out to five new areas next year may be little more than an election ploy.
The Treatment Action Campaign held a picket in Cape Town recently, protesting the Western Cape's government selective implementation of its mother-to-child HIV/AIDS prevention programme. Jo Stein reports.
In South Africa, there is no co-ordinated national policy specifically targeting the sex industry to prevent the spread of HIV infection. But such a policy may be less appropriate for South Africa than for other developing countries. By Jo Stein.
Regular virginity testing is seen as a solution to HIV/AIDS. But for the majority of virginity testers, assessing virginity has nothing to do with whether a girl's hymen is intact. Many testers also not see virginity as an absolute state. There may be "grades" of relative virginity. One virginity tester from Zululand reported recently on his technique for testing boys.
Developing countries like Cambodia are following the Thai example and implementing successful 100% condom use programmes for commercial sex workers. But some argue that the approach discriminates against commercial sex workers. Jo Stein reports
With their panties scrunched up in their hands, the girls laying in a row on the ground of a township football stadium range from five to 22 years old. The virginity tester, whose job it is to determine whether the girls are still virgins, uses the same pair of gloves for all 85 girls. Certificates are exchanged, at a cost of R5 each, for all but the three of the girls who "failed" the test. This is a scene described by University of Natal anthropologist, Suzanne Leclerc-Madlala who points out that regular virginity testing is gaining growing public support as an AIDS prevention strategy in South Africa, especially in KwaZulu'€“Natal.
Large numbers of children as young as seven years old can recognise product logos and names - even for products they don'€™t use such as cigarettes, snuff and beer.This, says Dr Krisela Steyn of the Medical Research Council, is all the more reason why the new tobacco control legislation should impose strict controls on the advertising of tobacco products and their logos.
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