Advocacy and activism are two skills that rural doctors might need to develop if they hope to be able to offer decent healthcare to patients. This was the message delivered by Dr Trudy Thomas, the former MEC for Health in the Eastern Cape, in one of the keynote addresses delivered to the conference of the Rural Doctors Association of South Africa (Rudasa) last weekend. She said that the promise of the Reconstruction and Development Programme of 1994 had largely been betrayed by budget cuts and a lack of political will to transform and extend health care to the country's poor and rural people.

The only anti-retroviral treatment programme offered in the South African public health sector is available in Khayelitsha, Cape Town. In this second feature on the pilot programme being run by Medecins Sans Frontieres and the Western Cape provincial government, we focus on the all-important role of the patients' support group. It is in the support groups that patients have the chance to talk about possible side effects and other issues related to consistent adherence to the drug regimen.

The only public health programme in the country that offers anti-retroviral therapy to adults living with AIDS is operating in Khayelitsha, Cape Town under the auspices of the international human rights organisation, Medecins Sans Frontieres. In this, the first of a series of features, we hear from one of the doctors and a patient involved in the programme.

Earlier this week the Lovetrain was launched in Cape Town as part of the national loveLife campaign to prevent sexually transmitted diseases and HIV among South African teenagers. The campaign, funded by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the South African government is the largest initiative of its kind in the country. It's aim is to halve the number of HIV infections among South African youth within the next five years. But what are young people themselves saying about the challenges they face socially and sexually?

This audio report looks at the impact of the AIDS epidemic on migrant workers from Lesotho who are retrenched and sent home from the South African mines.

The cost of anti-retroviral therapy as well as the complicated logistics that are involved in administering it have been cited as reasons why it is impossible to implement a national programme of this kind in South Africa. However, others argue that not only is anti-retroviral therapy manageable, even a long patients from poor backgrounds, it offers people hope, an important ingredient in the response to HIV/AIDS. This audio report airs different views on the pros and cons of anti-retroviral therapy.

Dr Mamphela Ramphele is one of five managing directors at the World Bank in Washington. On a recent visit home to South Africa she spoke out about the need for African governments to value intellectual rigour, the need for incentives for skilled professionals and the value of investing in anti-retroviral treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS

In this feature on "Living with AIDS" the World Bank's Dr Mamphela Ramphele speaks about the merits of loans to combat HIV/AIDS. Sue Valentine spoke to Dr Ramphele when she visited South Africa last week and asked her as a medical doctor and as a South African, how she felt about South Africa' s response to HIV/AIDS.

In this feature we hear from a young Mosotho woman who agreed to tell her story of how she discovered she was HIV positive, because she knows all too well how she was helped by other people who have spoken out about HIV/AIDS.

Although an independent nation, the kingdom of Lesotho, surrounded on all sides by South Africa, is heavily dependent on its wealthier neighbour for jobs and foreign revenue. Like so many other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, any development gains Lesotho might make are likely to be wiped out by the impact of HIV/AIDS on the tiny kingdom. In this first in a series of several features on HIV/AIDS in Lesotho, we focus on the silence and stigma that dominate the epidemic.

The African Culture, Music and Dance Association (Acumda) is using its access to the hostels of Gauteng to run a joint project with the province's health department. Although Acumda started out as an organisation to promote traditional music and dance, it has proved an ideal vehicle to communicate key messages about HIV and AIDS to the thousands of men who live in the hostels of Gauteng. This is part two of a three-part series.

The traditional music that migrant workers bring with them from their rural villages to hostel life is being used as an effective weapon to deliver HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention messages to men living in single sex quarters on the mines and in the inner city. The initiative is run by the African Culture, Music and Dance Association (Acumda) in conjunction with the Gauteng Health Department. This is the third and final part of this series.

Researchers Nabisa Jama and Mzikazi Nduna work for the Stepping Stones programme at the Medical Research Council. In this package we hear about the materialistic undertones to many adolescent sexual relationships and the gap between what boys and girls understand by love.

June 5, 2001 marks the 20th anniversary of the AIDS epidemic. In this package, we hear some personal reflections from the man who is at the forefront of the global effort to combat the disease, Belgian, Peter Piot, the executive director of UNAIDS.