The health department and striking doctors returned to the bargaining council yesterday (wed)after the affected parties reached an agreement on Tuesday night to immediately halt illegal strike action which started two weeks ago at various hospitals.
Doctors at Soweto'€™s Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital are the latest to join their colleagues in various parts of the country in a protest action over low pay and poor working conditions.
JOHANNESBURG: (PlusNews) - Customers who come into Matseliso Lebakae's shop in Maseru, capital of Lesotho, to buy nutritional supplements, can also browse for an employee or handyman services.
Public sector doctors are preparing for a national strike should government fail to table satisfactory salary proposals at today'€™s (Friday 24th) crucial bargaining council meeting.
BRAZZAVILLE: (PlusNews) - Seated at his cluttered desk in the offices of Congo's National AIDS Council (CNLS), Franck Fortuné Mboussou is a very happy man. In a country where barely 10 percent of the female population has ever been tested for HIV, the organisation finally has enough money to buy a mobile testing unit.
GULU: (PlusNews) - People living with HIV in Uganda's northern region are facing critical shortages of essential medicines.
Dr Paul Onek, director of health services in Gulu District, said supplies of malaria, tuberculosis (TB) and antiretroviral (ARV) drugs had all run out.
"We last received TB drugs in January for only 400 TB patients."
When ANC President and likely president of the country, Jacob Zuma, allocates Cabinet posts, he should try to reward competence not cronies.
Studies conducted in Durban, Johannesburg, Cape Town and Soweto show that there is a higher HIV prevalence rate amongst men who have sex with men.
Drug resistant HIV resulting from the collapse of Zimbabwe'€™s health system will undermine success of South Africa'€™s HIV/AIDS programme, according to Health Minister Barbara Hogan.
As from April, children under the age of five will receive free immunisation against pneumococcal diseases, which cause infections such as pneumonia, as part of the government'€™s revised Expanded Programme for Immunisation (EPI).
Health issues feature prominently in all political parties'€™ election manifestos '€“ an indication that our sickly public health system is a great concern to voters.
In a rare debate, political parties made public their stance on a range of issues relating to the treatment of AIDS and HIV prevention. Fears emerged that the current global economic crisis will have an impact on how South Africa responds to the epidemic in the future.
Patients in the Free State were recently denied AIDS treatment because of a lack of funds. But the National Treasury'€™s new allocation towards the province'€™s HIV and AIDS expenditure for the 2009 '€“ 2010 financial year, which begins in April, is R83 million short. Now the province'€™s head of health is already talking about restricting access to antiretrovirals.
National Treasury'€™s insufficient budget allocation to the Free State for the 2008-2009 financial year and the provincial Department of Health'€™s failure to raise emergency funds to cover the short-fall have had a direct impact on patient care.
The controversial moratorium imposed by the Free State Health Department on the provision of anti-retrovirals (ARVs) to new AIDS patients, has hit patients and their families hard.
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