Findings from South Africa’s most recent Antenatal HIV Sentinel Survey show that more than a quarter (27.5%) of pregnant women in the country are living with HIV. This rate is still high, but it shows a decrease from the 30% prevalence recorded…
Some people fear sharing their HIV status with a partner or someone they want to date will lead to rejection. In a conversation about dating and living with HIV, Yanga Gceya who has been living with HIV for 2 years,…
By Chris Bateman, Freelance Journalist With HIV positivity among urban transgender women in South Africa estimated at 46%, it is becoming increasingly urgent for healthcare workers to undergo sensitivity training. A transgender woman is a person who was assigned the…
Public health facilities in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) face a shortage of health workers; there are limited pick-up points for HIV treatment; and key populations continue to face hostile attitudes from healthcare workers and a lack of privacy. These are just some…
By Chris Bateman, Freelance Journalist Only two-thirds of children in South Africa getting treatment for HIV are virally suppressed. Viral suppression is a measure of how well antiretroviral (ARVs) drugs reduce HIV viral load. A high HIV viral load suggests…
Glenda Gray, South African Medical Research Council South African-born Professor Hoosen “Jerry” Coovadia, renowned academic and prominent anti-apartheid activist, passed away on 4 October. As a paediatrician I was privileged to know and work with him over two decades. Prior…
Written by Dave Chambers for Jive Media Africa, research communications partner to GIFT A South African innovation designed to screen for inflammation associated with HIV infections and improve women’s sexual and reproductive health has been manufactured and has entered its…
Access to TB prevention treatment and antiretroviral (ARV) medication is about to get easier in South Africa. People will soon be able to get a range of HIV services from pharmacists with special training. South Africa’s HIV treatment programme is…
“Most of the times when I, or a friend, went to a clinic the healthcare workers didn’t want to help us because of the way we smelled or how we looked,” Chantel Sampson recalls. In 2018, the 42-year-old lived on…
If couples test for HIV together, will it improve uptake of health services? A couples-focused intervention aimed at promoting couples’ HIV testing and counselling has found that it will. Igugu Lethu, a joint study between the Human Sciences Research Council…
Although South Africa has come a long way in treating HIV, considerable challenges remain in closing the gaps to reach the UN 95-95-95 target by 2030. The aim is to have 95% of all people living with HIV to know…
Dhirisha Naidoo remembers the “look of HIV” vividly. She saw it on a daily basis when she was a nurse at a mission hospital in Durban just out of college in 2004. “People were usually very thin, skin and bone,…
Fully financing the HIV response in Africa to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030 will save millions of lives and improve economic outcomes. But governments must act immediately. That’s the message from new research and analysis conducted…
Black women living with HIV continue to experience forced sterilisation at South African public health institutions, the Sexual and Reproductive Justice Conference heard at Diep in Die Berg, in Pretoria, on Wednesday Organised by the Department of Social Development, the…