2008

A healthier future: Mail & Guardian Online - November 21, 2008; Belinda Beresford; Rarely in South Africa can a minister have come to power carrying such a weight of expectation as Barbara Hogan. Her first major public speech at the Aids Vaccine Conference in Cape Town in October was greeted with enthusiasm, and even international delegates speculated about the bright future that seems to lie ahead a
A steady erosion: Mail & Guardian Online - November 21, 2008; Belinda Beresford; HIV is thought to have a kill rate of close to 100%, higher than even the notorious haemorrhagic diseases such as Ebola. But, unlike such virulent attackers, HIV kills its hosts through a steadily attrition of the immune system, giving ample time for new infections to occur. The result is a slow-burning epidemic steadi
ARVs: Hogan acts: Mail & Guardian Online - November 17, 2008; Belinda Beresford And Linn Davis; The news that the Free State health department could run out of anti-retroviral drugs by January is significant, not for the apparent lack of management it reveals, but because of the response by the National Department of Health. Insiders say that once informed that the HIV-positive patients in the Free State could be
Safe babies, threatened mothers?: Mail & Guardian Online - November 5, 2008; Belinda Beresford; The most basic way of preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV appears to cause resistance to one of the key anti-HIV drugs in women more than six months after they give birth. Previous studies had suggested that this would not happen. This new research finding means that tens of thousands of women may be taking
SA pioneers HIV+ transplant: Mail & Guardian Online - October 30, 2008; Belinda Beresford; Two HIV-positive South Africans have received transplanted HIV-infected kidneys -- the first time in the world that a positive-to-positive transplant has occurred. The operations were performed in September at Cape Town s Groote Schuur hospital by specialist surgeon Dr Elmi Muller. The two male recipient patients each
Broadcasters take aim at Africa's four-letter fiend: Mail & Guardian Online - October 30, 2008; Guy Berger: Converse; Here is a good news story about the fight against HIV/Aids: it s about African broadcasters aligning their power to make a difference. The African Broadcast Media Partnership (ABMP) -- representing media houses broadcasting across 35 countries around the continent -- has chalked up several successes since its inception
On track to deliver: Mail & Guardian Online - October 13, 2008; In September 2000, 189 world leaders attended the Millennium Summit at the United Nations and made a commitment to address the world s most pressing development needs by 2015. Leaders pledged to eliminate gender inequality, environmental degradation and HIV/Aids, and to improve access to education, healthcare and clean
Crimes of the great denialist: Mail & Guardian Online - September 27, 2008; Zackie Achmat: Comment; On September 20 2008, as South Africa s newly acquired Gripen fighter jets took off from a local air show to parade across Cape Town skies, residents would awaken to one of the most remarkable days in the political history of the republic. The Mbeki-Pahad monolith had collapsed. The decision by the ANC to recall Presid
TB breakthrough a challenge to govt: Mail & Guardian Online - September 25, 2008; Belinda Beresford; South African researchers have shown that deaths among people co-infected with HIV and TB could be more than halved by starting antiretroviral therapy earlier, adding further pressure on government to improve treatment for both diseases. If the government adapts its treatment guidelines in line with the findings -- whi
Search for success: Mail & Guardian Online - September 18, 2008; Salim Abdool Karim; One pregnant woman in 100 had HIV in 1990; today it is almost one in three. Every week thousands more South Africans become infected with the virus and at present about 5,4-million people in this country are living with the virus. Despite having known about the virus for almost 30 years we have yet to find a way to cur
Jury still out on Aids infection levels: Mail & Guardian Online - September 10, 2008; Belinda Beresford; The huge variation in levels of HIV infection among pregnant women across South Africa was clearly demonstrated in the latest government report on the state of the epidemic. Finally released last week, the national HIV and Syphilis Prevalence Survey for 2007 showed that HIV prevalence among women across the country ran
TB overshadowed by HIV/Aids: Mail & Guardian Online - August 29, 2008; Imke Van Hoorn; HIV/Aids is about sex; TB is about sputum, said Dr Francois Venter, the head of the HIV Clinicians Society, at a debate held in Johannesburg this week on the challenges of fighting tuberculosis (TB) in South Africa . Venter, who is also the head of HIV management at the University of the Witwatersrand s reproductive h
Travel restrictions add to HIV stigma: Mail & Guardian Online - August 27, 2008; Nosimilo Ndlovu; Restrictions prohibiting HIV-positive people from obtaining visas or permits to travel or work abroad adds to the global stigma around HIV. Christo Greyling, the global adviser for World Vision s faith-based partnerships for HIV/Aids, can testify to this reality. Greyling has been living with HIV since 1985 and since 1
Growing our own food: Mail & Guardian Online - August 26, 2008; Nosimilo Ndlovu; Salaminah Motsoagae (23) is a single mother who lives in an informal settlement in Orange Farm, Gauteng. She lives with her mother, who is a domestic worker and the only income earner in the family. Rising food prices have put a financial strain on Motsoagae s family, leaving them with less money than before to buy foo
Enabling people with HIV: Mail & Guardian Online - August 21, 2008; Nosimilo Ndlovu; Companies are recruiting HIV-positive people for state-funded learnerships designed for the disabled in order to boost their employment equity ratings. The practice has been strongly criticised by Disabled People of South Africa (DPSA) and the Commission for Employment Equity (CEE). DPSA chair Muzi Nkosi said: If
Making headway: Mail & Guardian Online - August 13, 2008; The 17th International Aids Conference swung into action in Mexico last week. Eight years -- and four conferences -- ago, South Africa s erratic policies on the disease entered global consciousness when the International Aids Conference was held in Durban. This year, at the 17th International Aids Conference in Mexico,
Discovery won't pay for the snip: Mail & Guardian Online - August 12, 2008; Belinda Beresford; South Africa s biggest medical aid, Discovery Health, refuses to pay for voluntary male circumcision, even though last week s International Aids Conference in Mexico affirmed that it is the most effective intervention against HIV infection in adult men. The next biggest schemes, Bonitas and the Government Employees Med
Aids hits white-collar workers: Mail & Guardian Online - July 28, 2008; Andrew Gillingham; The HIV infection rate in South Africa s workforce has stabilised at a very high level, but the death rate is beginning to climb. Sin Dennis, managing member of Litha-Lethu Consulting, says South Africa has one of the highest levels of infection in the world, even though awareness levels among the workforce have increa
Making HIV testing less painful: Mail & Guardian Online - July 28, 2008; Andrew Gillingham; One key to increasing HIV testing is to incorporate such testing as a part of a broader lifestyle screening covering several potential health threats. Judith Bester, general manager of Aganang, says HIV is not a moral issue, but a health issue. We do not go into the workplace from a specific HIV angle but rather from a
TB gets trickier: Mail & Guardian Online - July 8, 2008; Belinda Beresford; Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang led the singing of Happy Birthday at the opening of the first South African Tuberculosis Conference this week, while Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) activists stood quietly by holding low-visibility protest signs about government health policy. A brief hesitation among the 2 000
HIV -- cheaper to treat: Mail & Guardian Online - July 3, 2008; Ian Sanne**; Failure to properly manage HIV/Aids strategies for employees has led to some workplace programmes being closed down because audits have revealed unacceptable costs. Individual companies, communities and the South African economy are under threat if companies do not initiate expertly managed, independent and outsourced
HIV/Aids barometer: June 2008: Mail & Guardian Online - June 11, 2008; Aids-related deaths in South Africa : 2 505372 at noon on June 11, 2008 Finetuning treatment in Lusaka -- The Zambian government has begun treating people living with HIV earlier, a move intended to reduce deaths and medical complications resulting from the disease. According to national antiretroviral (ARV) treatment
HIV/Aids barometer: June 2008: Mail & Guardian Online - June 4, 2008; Estimated Aids-related deaths in South Africa : 2 498 738 at noon on June 4, 2008 Nearly three-million people in the developing world are now on drugs to prevent their HIV infection becoming Aids, two years after the original deadline to reach that figure was set by the World Health Organisation. The struggle to get an
HIV/Aids barometer: May 2008: Mail & Guardian Online - May 28, 2008; Estimated worldwide HIV infections: 2 492 091 at noon on May 28, 2008 Helping the victims of Burma s catastrophe: While most of the local and international aid workers in Burma are scrambling to meet the immediate needs of 2,4-million people left stranded by Cyclone Nargis, several organisations are working to ensure t
The right to fight with HIV: Mail & Guardian Online - May 22, 2008; Belinda Beresford; A trumpeter, a combat training specialist and a personnel clerk took on the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) in court this week over the military s policy on HIV-positive soldiers. The South African Security Forces Union, Sipho Mthethwa and two other applicants known only as TCM and ZSM applied to have lift
HIV/Aids barometer: May 2008: Mail & Guardian Online - May 21, 2008; Aids-related deaths in South Africa : 2 485 451 at noon on May 21, 2008 Tackling low condom use: In Swaziland the mystery of why people refuse to use condoms is slowly being unravelled. Aids activist and health motivator Hannie Dlamini and the National Emergency Council on HIV/Aids (Nercha) hope to get to the bottom of
HIV/Aids barometer: May 2008: Mail & Guardian Online - May 14, 2008; Aids-related deaths in South Africa : 2 478 812 at noon, May 14, 2008 War on condoms: Muslim leaders in Kenya s North Eastern Province have resolved to campaign against the promotion of condoms as a means of preventing HIV. The decision was made after a meeting on the theme of Islam and Health , attended by more than
HIV/Aids barometer: May 2008: Mail & Guardian Online - May 7, 2008; Aids-related deaths in South Africa : 2 472 172 by noon on May 7, 2008 Bare life: The reality TV show Imagine Afrika, about to begin its second season, pits 12 young Africans against some of the most serious problems facing their continent, including how to tackle the HIV/Aids epidemic. The show first hit the airwa
Probe into dodgy 'immune booster': Mail & Guardian Online - May 3, 2008; Sello S Alcock; Cosatu and the ANC Women s League have climbed into bed with a trio of business people punting an untested immunity booster pack for HIV/Aids sufferers and who are being investigated for fraud. Imuniti Holdings, founded by Jan Gouws, John Ellis and Hans Wessels, was listed on the Johannesburg Alternative Stock Exchange
HIV/Aids barometer: April 2008: Mail & Guardian Online - April 30, 2008; Aids-related deaths in South Africa : 2 465 536 at noon on April 30, 2008 Bare life: Harsh living conditions and the onset of the cold rainy season in Kenya are making it increasingly difficult for HIV-positive people displaced in the recent post-election violence to stay healthy, according to health workers in the cam
Sindi, my hero: Mail & Guardian Online - April 27, 2008; Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya; It was Sunday around noon in 2003 when two voice messages in quick succession made it clear I needed to get to my cousin Ndo s house in Mapetla urgently. Sindi, Ndo s younger sister, was gravely ill. She had been diagnosed with HIV a few years earlier and things looked bleak. Yet on that day she refused to be taken to
HIV/Aids barometer: April 2008: Mail & Guardian Online - April 23, 2008; Estimated worldwide HIV infections: 2 458 892 at noon, April 23, 2008 Twenty years into the pandemic people are looking for new ways to live with HIV and for some alternative medicine has become part of the answer. This year the TsaBotsogo Community Development and Training Centre, based in Dobsonville, Soweto, took 30
HIV/Aids barometer: April 2008: Mail & Guardian Online - April 16, 2008; Estimated worldwide HIV infections: 2 452 252 at noon, April 16, 2008 Collaboration: Two global research organisations dedicated to designing a vaccine against HIV -- the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) and the Centre for HIV/Aids Vaccine Immunology (Chavi) -- have signed an agreement to work together to a
SA behind the times on HIV treatment: Mail & Guardian Online - April 14, 2008; Belinda Beresford; South Africa s inadequate public sector anti-HIV treatment has been highlighted again this week with the release of expert guidelines on antiretroviral therapy in the region. The guidelines released by the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society (Hivsoc) are likely to be adopted by the private sector and are in line wi
HIV/Aids barometer: April 2008: Mail & Guardian Online - April 2, 2008; Aids-related deaths in South Africa : 2 438 978 at noon on April 2, 2008 Unsuccessful: Becky Mugisha* had been ill with a hacking cough for three months before she was admitted into one of Kampala s tuberculosis (TB) wards. It was her second bout with the disease. As a person living with HIV, she was used to taking mul
HIV researchers starved of cash: Mail & Guardian Online - March 31, 2008; Belinda Beresford; The South African Aids Vaccine Initiative has received another crippling blow: two government bodies have failed to provide promised funding since early last year. The Sunday Times reported last week that cash-strapped Eskom had withdrawn R15-million of funding for the flagship project. It has now emerged that the Depa
HIV/Aids barometer: March 2008: Mail & Guardian Online - March 26, 2008; Aids-related deaths in South Africa : 2 432 331 at noon on March 26, 2008 Rise in TB linked to HIV: Efforts to combat the spread of tuberculosis in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been slowed by the problem of TB patients also infected with HIV, local health officials said. The disease [TB] is on the i
HIV/Aids barometer: March 2008: Mail & Guardian Online - March 18, 2008; Aids-related deaths in South Africa : 2 424 770 at noon on March 18, 2008 HIV major factor in rising child deaths: Mothers and children in South Africa are dying in alarming numbers. Far from being on track to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of reducing child mortality by two-thirds, the country is among onl
HIV/Aids barometer: March 2008: Mail & Guardian Online - March 12, 2008; Aids-related deaths in South Africa : 2 419 055 at noon on March 12, 2008 Extending lives: A study conducted in Uganda and published this month in The Lancet has found that home-based ARV therapy provided by trained lay counsellors could be the best option for HIV-infected people living in remote, rural areas.
Tackling HIV in the workplace: Mail & Guardian Online - March 11, 2008; Surika van Schalkwyk; Critics estimate that businesses, and thus the country s economy, are losing millions of rands each year to HIV/Aids. Research shows that between 10% and 40% of the country s workforce is infected with the virus, although no exact figures are available. Worldwide millions of HIV-positive people are actively contributin
HIV/Aids barometer: March 2008: Mail & Guardian Online - March 5, 2008; Aids-related deaths in South Africa : 2 412 421 at noon on March 5, 2008 Slow start: Much excitement greeted last year s opening of Quality Chemicals, the first manufacturer of antiretroviral (ARV) medication in East Africa, but six months later the production lines are idle. The factory, which cost about $38-million
HIV/Aids barometer - February 2008: Mail & Guardian Online - February 20, 2008; Aids-related deaths in South Africa : 2 399 134 at noon on February 20, 2008 The first microbicide to reach the final phase of testing has failed to prevent HIV transmission, researchers announced this week. Testing of the microbicide, Carraguard, was carried out over a three-year period on 6 000 women in South Africa
WHO: We failed on TB: Mail & Guardian Online - February 9, 2008; Belinda Beresford; The marriage between tuberculosis and HIV must be recognised and treated as a union of social -- and not medical -- diseases if the goal of eliminating tuberculosis in humans is to be achieved, says the head of the World Health Organisation s Stop TB Partnership. Marcos Espinal was speaking at a symposium in Cape Town
Red Cross's missing millions: Mail & Guardian Online - February 2, 2008; Niren Tolsi; Millions of rands of international donor funds intended to be used by the Red Cross Society in KwaZulu-Natal to provide succour for children debilitated by HIV/Aids have disappeared. A damning independent audit by KPMG Services, commissioned by the British Red Cross Society (BRCS), which has been funding the �200 000-a
Thinking out the box: Mail & Guardian Online - January 27, 2008; Belinda Beresford; Taking the plug-and-play concept to a new dimension, high-tech laboratories on wheels are appearing in remote areas of South Africa . Togatainers are designed to counter the problems of accessing lab tests that are crucial in responding to the HIV/Aids epidemic. Developed at Toga Laboratories in Johannesburg, the Togat
HIV/Aids barometer - January 2008: Mail & Guardian Online - January 23, 2008; Estimated worldwide HIV infections: 2 372 580 at noon on January 23, 2008 Guesswork: No sign advertises the availability of voluntary HIV counselling and testing (VCT) at the family planning centre in Port Sudan , a busy transportation hub in Sudan s Red Sea state. It is one of only three sites in town offering these s
A setback in the quest: Mail & Guardian Online - January 7, 2008; Belinda Beresford; A vaccine against HIV infection is one of the holy grails of research -- and is proving almost as elusive. Late 2007 saw clinical trials of the world s most advanced HIV vaccine, by pharmaceutical company Merck, brought to a premature end. Not only did the candidate vaccine fail to protect people against HIV, it might

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