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
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
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
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
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,
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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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