As the government-appointed task team on AIDS treatment works towards its end of September deadline, Health-e takes a look at what antiretroviral drugs mean to people already taking them. In the first of two parts, Justice Edwin Cameron talks about his experience of living with AIDS and six years on anti-retroviral therapy.
Buyiswa Gcwabe is a mother of seven children and has AIDS. She is a member of the Treatment Action Campaign and is among the first group of 25 people to receive antiretroviral treatment funded by the TAC. Health-e travelled with her to her first appointment with the doctor who will monitor her treatment.
Not everyone who is HIV positive needs antiretroviral therapy. Dr Khwezi Matoti runs the AIDS clinic at the Guguletu Day Hospital and explains when antiretroviral drugs become necessary.
The Treatment Campaign Action has launched the "Treatment Project" to provide antiretroviral drugs to its most needy members. For each TAC member on ARV therapy, a non-TAC member who needs the life-prolonging drugs will be treated. Some 110 TAC members have died from AIDS related illnesses between March and July this year alone.
Treatment Action Campaign chairperson Zackie Achmat has started antiretroviral therapy but lives with the guilt of having access to the life-prolonging drugs while fellow South Africans wait for the roll-out of ARVs in the public health setor.
A group of Guguletu youth some victims of domestic violence and some affected by it say the government should put harsher punishment to perpetrators of rape, women and children abuse. National Adolescent Friendly Clinic Intiative 's Sbongile Pilane and his peers all adolescent are trying to make change to thousands of other youth in their township educating them about their sexual rights and prevention of HIV/AIDS. Thandeka Teyise spoke to the youth asking them their views on domestic violence.
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