
ARV Moratorium had devastating effects in Free State
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.

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.

While the Free State Health Department maintains that last November'€™s moratorium preventing about 15 000 new patients from getting antiretroviral treatment has been lifted, patients and civil society organisations paint a different picture.

Less than 600 patients have started antiretroviral treatment since the Free State province lifted the moratorium on treatment and the waiting list of 15 000 grows daily.

Despite a health crisis in the Free State caused by a funding shortage, the provincial health department has granted 160 health workers who are members of the ANC-aligned National Education Health and Allied Workers'€™ Union (NEHAWU) paid leave for six months to do election campaigning for the ANC.

The humanitarian medical aid agency, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), has reported an increase in rape cases reported to its various clinics in South Africa and worldwide. MSF recently released a report detailing the nature of cases patients present their aid workers with.

The National Health Department has for the first time taken firm steps against vitamin seller Matthias Rath by confiscating consignments of his flagship multi-vitamin VitaCell in Durban and Cape Town and opening criminal cases for his alleged contravention of the Medicines Act.

The AIDS epidemic in our country, over more than 10 years, has had sadly many more downs than ups.

Thousands of Zimbabwean refugees in South Africa have been displaced after an order by the Department of Home of Affairs for them to vacate a field in Musina where they have been living for several months.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) issued an urgent press release this week stating that the Dutch section of the organisation has been expelled from Darfur.

At the first ever African Sex Workers'€™ Conference held in Johannesburg recently, sex workers called on governments to recognise their needs in their plans to respond to the AIDS epidemic.

A threat of more infectious diseases, a drug-resistant AIDS epidemic and malnutrition could add to Zimbabwe'€™s current cholera woes, says humanitarian medical aid agency, Doctors Without Borders.

Zimbabwe's humanitarian crisis continues to rapidly deteriorate, causing appalling suffering, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warn in a report released this week. The organisation'€™s medical teams have now treated almost 45,000 people, an estimated 75% of the total number of cases in the current cholera outbreak - and the crisis is far from over.

Pia Engebrigtsen worked for 2 months as a nurse in Zimbabwe's Masvingo province during the country's cholera outbreak, in which MSF has so far treated more than 45,000 people. Here she shares her story of death, heartbreak, survival and saving lives against all odds.

Most hospital and clinics in the Free State have still not started treating the more than 15 000 people waiting for their anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs, however the national health department has given the assurance that drugs will now start arriving at all 28 sites.
A five part series that was aired on Morning Live in the run up to World AIDS Day explores the lives of ordinary people who deal with a life that seems to get more complicated every day. EVERYDAY HEROES. How do they make ends meet and make healthy choices? How have they managed to keep their families together and healthy? What lessons have they learned in the process? What can we learn from them?