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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
We are all the losers as political parties cynically exploit HIV/AIDS to win votes. Kerry Cullinan reports.
Experts believe "the benefits outweigh the potential adverse effects" in the use of antiretroviral drugs to prevent mother to child transmission of HIV.
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.
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.
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.
South Africa has six times the number of very low birth weight babies than developed countries but there are more low birth weight babies born in the Western Cape than in other provinces. The Western Cape department of health is introducing "kangaroo care" as the preferred method of treating low-birth weight babies after research at Tygerberg Hospital showed the method reduced infant mortality and saved the hospital R1-million a year. Jo Stein reports
The growing number of women who smoke and have become addicted to nicotine was among the issues highlighted at the public hearings held by the World Health Organisation (WHO) last week as a precursor to this week's negotiations leading to a Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) has challenged pharmaceutical giant Pfizer to take action against it for defying their patent on Fluconazole and importing the generic version from Thailand at a fraction of the cost of what it is being sold in South Africa. ANSO THOM reports.
There are many men in South Africa who have sex with other men but don't consider themselves "gay". In the absence of funding for research, the extent of HIV infection among homsexual men in South Africa is largely unknown. But recent research conducted by the Triangle Project in Cape Town shows that risk-taking behaviour among gay men in the Mother City is alarmingly high. Jo Stein reports.
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