Have you ever spoken to your children about sex?How should parents broach the subject of sex with their children? These and other questions were posed to a selected group of famous parents in South Africa. KERRY CULLINAN reports.
It is impossible not to notice how thin Feroza Mohamed is. The several layers of clothing she wears fails to protect her frail and disease-ridden 27-year-old body from the Highveld winter. Mother of six-year-old Ismail, Mohamed arrived at Nkosi'€™s Haven, in December - HIV positive, destitute, shunned by her Muslim family and three months'€™ pregnant. Nkosi'€™s Haven is a Johannesburg shelter for HIV positive mothers and their children.
When Nokubonga Ntzimela lost her patient'€™s card for the local clinic, she was scared to go back, fearing that the nursing sisters would shout at her.Ntzimela'€™s experience is perhaps unusual from other 16-year-olds in that she visited the clinic at least once. Surveys show that most adolescents avoid public clinics because they are concerned about being chastised, embarrassed or rudely treated by clinic staff.
If South Africa had given HIV/AIDS the same attention as we did to hosting the Soccer World Cup, we could have saved millions of lives, ANC Women's League president Winnie Madikizela Mandela told some 3 000 people in Durban yesterday at an international march to demand cheaper HIV/AIDS drugs.
For many young people, resigned to a life with few opportunities and a future without promise, sex is one of life'€™s few pleasures. But their lack of faith in the future means that many are not bothering to practice safe sex.
Although there is no cure for HIV/AIDS it is easily preventable. You can only get HIV if you get infected blood or sexual fluids into your system. To infect someone, the virus has to get past the body'€™s defences such as the skin and saliva.
Extreme poverty and not HIV/AIDS is the world's biggest killer and the greatest cause of ill-health and suffering, President Thabo Mbeki told some 12 000 delegates at the opening of the13th world AIDS conference in Durban.
Overall, at least 3.5 million South Africans are already infected with HIV, a disease for which there is no cure. The best case scenario predicts six million South Africans will be HIV positive in 10 years'€™ time.
Indigo storm clouds are mounting on the horizon as we go into the Mthembu family home in Manguzi. We are just a few kilometers from the Mozambique border and the sandy soil suggests we'€™re also not too far from the coast.
With the prospect of tens of thousands of HIV positive people in its district needing medical help in the next few years, the tiny, 300-bed Hlabisa Hospital has turned its attention to encouraging people to care for terminally ill relatives at home.
Despite the fact that state hospitals cannot afford to care for those dying of AIDS, government'€™s failure to work with non-governmental organisations is undermining volunteer home-care projects in KwaZulu-Natal. Over the past six months, Sinosizo, a home-based care organisation started by the Catholic Church, has closed its operations in the entire Western Region '€“ including Hammarsdale, Shongweni, Inchanga and the inner west.
It is death rather than renaissance that draws the foreign press to Africa. But where are the ethics that protect HIV/AIDS sufferers from unscrupulous journalists?
Professor Hoosen "Jerry" Coovadia used to be a draw-card speaker at anti-apartheid rallies. Yet today he finds himself at odds with the very democratic government he fought so hard to install over its HIV/AIDS policy.
The red ribbon pinned to his windbreaker is the first thing you notice. Then the wide smile, the huge, deep-sunken eyes and his incredibly frail body. Nkosi Johnson (11), touted for many years by the media as one of the longest HIV survivor in the country, is ill.
Professor Hoosen "Jerry" Coovadia used to be a draw-card speaker at anti-apartheid rallies. Yet today he finds himself at odds with the very democratic government he fought so hard to install over its HIV/AIDS policy.
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