Between 5% - 15% of the South African population has ever tested for HIV. This is despite the fact that testing services are widely available in the public health sector. A recent pilot study in KwaZulu-Natal has shown that South Africans would rather test themselves than go to a clinic.

NAIROBI: (PlusNews) - A disappointing allocation for global AIDS programmes in the United States budgetmeans African governments will have to step up their own funding, say activists.

GARISSA: (PlusNews) - In 2002, one bus per day connected Garissa, in Kenya's North-Eastern Province, with the capital, Nairobi, and not a single case of HIV had been reported in the region.

MASENO: (PlusNews) - "I knew the danger I was putting my child through but I did not want to arouse any suspicion and I complied with my husband and his mother's demands," said HIV-positive Eunice Omulo, 33, who lives in Maseno, western Kenya. Against the advice of the hospital, she bowed to family pressure to give her baby solid food at just three months of age.

WITBANK: (PlusNews) - After a demanding training session on the soccer pitch, the entire Black Aces football team has squeezed into a small, stuffy room at the club's headquarters in Witbank, a town northeast of Johannesburg, South Africa, for training of a different kind.

This is the last of two conversations with married men about why they seek other partners outside the confines of marriage, even when it puts them at risk of contracting HIV. This week we meet J, as he would like to be known for purposes of this report.

A new book, the Virus, Vitamins and Vegetables, documenting the South African government's controversial response to the AIDS epidemic was launched in Durban and Johannesburg, recently.

South Africa's HIV/AIDS treatment programme is short of funds, yet the ANC wants to restructure the health system with a very costly National Health Insurance scheme.

DURBAN - KwaZulu-Natal was making huge strides in controlling multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB and extensively-drug resistant (XDR) TB, but a staggering 50 to 60% of patients were dying while they are awaiting diagnosis which takes between four and six weeks.

It'€™s that time of the year when a lot of us will be sniffing, coughing and even sneezing. Doctors say getting the influenza vaccine in April, will go a long way in preventing respiratory infections.

Home-based care, even for patients with drug-resistant tuberculosis, is working well at a pilot project in Khayelitsha started in late 2007.

With virtually all KwaZulu-Natal health facilities registering cases of extensively drug-resistant TB, the multi-million rand international research facility will be well placed to find research subjects.

Pope Benedict XVI is in Africa this week (17th-23rd March) on his first trip to the continent as Pontiff and is already angering AIDS activists with his anti-condom stance.