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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's like putting a man on the moon. They believed and knew they could do it. We believe and there is a firm scientific conviction that a vaccine against AIDS will be developed." Dr Walter Prozesky, the driving force behind South Africa's effort to find an AIDS vaccine, speaks this with "firm conviction".
If there were such a title, thirty-something Salim and Quarraisha Abdool Karim would be South Africa'€™s "first couple" of HIV/AIDS research.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Bongani Khumalo responds well to causes. From the South African Council of Churches, the Red Cross, the South African National Men's Forum which he founded, "to inculcate responsible behaviour among men", to Deputy Chief Executive at Eskom where he was responsible for restructuring and transformation, Bongani Khumalo is a committed to causes.
President Thabo Mbeki'€™s controversial AIDS review panel meets tomorrow (Mon 3 July) for a second and final time, but insiders describe the body as having been a waste of time and money.Government has said that the panel -- which brought together 33 international experts including "dissidents" who do not believe that HIV causes AIDS '€“ will cost it R2-million of taxpayers'€™ money.
There are five key reasons why the HIV/AIDS epidemic is so rampant in South Africa, according to co-convenor of the 13th World AIDS Conference, Jerry Coovadia.
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