A LEADING AIDS activist who is infected with HIV has embarked on an AZT strike, vowing not to accept the treatment until it is available to all who need it. Zackie Achmat, the founder member of the Treatment Action Campaign, said he felt that taking the treatment would be ethically wrong when the majority of South Afri
A MOTHER has blamed Justice Minister Penuell Maduna for allowing the gang accused of raping her daughter to walk free because the girl died of AIDS before their case could go to trial. They treated my child as if she was a dog, Dinah Lerumo, 40, of KwaMhlanga, northeast of Pretoria, said this week of the justice system
FEBRUARY 1959 and the wind of change is blowing through Africa. Two doctors, an American and a Belgian, find themselves in Leopoldville soon after the first pro-independence riots in the capital of the then Belgian Congo. However, the political unrest is of little concern to the doctors, Arno Motulsky and Jean Vandepit
The Sunday Times, South Africa - November 14, 1999
WE ARE all living with HIV/AIDS. The virus is in our communities and will affect all our lives. Today about 33,4 million people worldwide have HIV/AIDS. About a third of those infected are between the ages of 10 and 24. Nearly 11 million Africans have died from the disease and a further 10 million are expected to die b
The Sunday Times, South Africa - November 14, 1999
Tanya Accone
THE HIV virus is claiming the lives of thousands of children around the globe. Fortunately, most AIDS organisations recognise education as a fundamental prevention tool and see the Internet as a key way of getting in touch with young people. Avert is one such organisation (www.avert. org/young.htm). Its site looks at s
According to the Department of Educations education policy on HIV/AIDS, an estimated one in eight of the countrys sexually active population those over the age of 14 is now infected. Experts warn it will worsen the projected shortage of teachers, affect their ability to teach, increase infection rates among pupils, cha
Makgoba s rejection of Virodene as being without scientific integrity is significant - not least because it comes from a credible black figure. The miracle cure Virodene was finally dismissed as nonsense this week. As CAROL PATON writes, the drug has exposed what can go wrong when political agendas obscure important sc
THE ANC has called for the rigorous and compulsory registration of medical waste generators following this week s HIV scare in Elsies River. Provincial ANC leader Ebrahim Rasool accused premier Gerald Morkel s government of dragging its feet and failing to implement recommendations made by a task team 10 months ago.
TEACHING women to make sex enjoyable for their husbands could reduce the rate of the spread of AIDS, an activist told shocked delegates at the 11th Africa AIDS summit, held in Zambia . Grace Njekwa, of the Alangazi National Association of Zambia, said sexually satisfied men were less likely to stray from the marital be
In an apparent revision of statistics released in May, the Zambian government this week admitted that half of the country s 10 million people would die of AIDS and 80 000 of the 400 000 babies born each year were HIV-positive. In its first estimate, the health ministry said about 20 percent of all adult Zambians were H
It s 9AM on Monday and the Minister of Health, Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, is ticked off. As members of the SA delegation trickle in to their first meeting in Kampala, she reprimands them, one by one and regardless of rank, for being late. They slink in, mumbling yes, minister . It s the first day of their visit to
FRIGHTENING official and independent studies show that one in every five adult Zambians is HIV-positive, and that within the next six years life expectancy in the country will drop dramatically from the present 57 years to 37. Adults make up nearly 46 percent of Zambia s population of 10,2 million, but many of the yout
HIV carriers will continue to spread the virus until doctors can offer a feasible treatment, a leading AIDS expert has predicted. People rejected an HIV test because, if it was positive, they regarded it as a death sentence, said Dr Keith Scott, who will visit Cape Town next month to participate in a complementary heal
WHEN he was just four months old, Sipho was abandoned in the Durban railway station toilets. The HIV-positive baby was taken in by Janelle Lee Mulholland and her family in the Durban suburb of Hillary. But yesterday, the heartbroken Mulhollands, who had grown to love the latest addition to their family, had to bid the
A WOMAN who was stabbed with a bloody syringe in a suspected revenge attack has been sentenced to six months of living hell while she waits to hear if she is HIV-positive. Christa de Jongh van Arkel believes she was attacked for helping put an armed robber behind bars. Since the attack, terrifying flashbacks of death t
FOUR top South African medical researchers say the government is wrong in claiming that the use of anti-AIDS drugs to prevent mother-to-child transmission is unaffordable. Their study, published in the prestigious British Medical Journal this week, shows it is more expensive to deal with children infected with the viru
WHEN voters go to the polls on Wednesday, however they conceive their actions and translate these into preferences, they will share one premise: my vote can make a difference. This is the emotionally and politically empowering assumption underpinning democratic elections. Between April 1994 and June 1999, South African
WHEN voters go to the polls on Wednesday, however they conceive their actions and translate these into preferences, they will share one premise: my vote can make a difference. This is the emotionally and politically empowering assumption underpinning democratic elections. Between April 1994 and June 1999, South African
FAULTY condoms secretly recalled by the Department of Health in July were still being distributed in two provinces this week. About 40 million SABS-approved Kenzo condoms were recalled after tests showed that one in four were faulty. The recall netted only 4,7 million of the Indian-manufactured condoms, according to a
CONDOMS are manufactured worldwide but most factories are in India , Malaysia , Thailand and China , where latex rubber and cheap labour are available. In a New York Times article, a British condom quality consultant said: The industry is a jungle.
CONDOMS are one of the cornerstones of the government s AIDS plan and one of the most effective ways of reducing the rate of 1 500 new HIV infections a day. But flaws in the Health Department s condom management and distribution threaten the anti-AIDS campaign. Last year millions of Kenzo condoms were secretly recalled
A NATIONAL teacher shortage is on the horizon following a dramatic decline in student enrolments at training institutions. Enrolments have halved since 1994 at some colleges, universities and technikons and experts say the shortage will hit schools in two years time. The decline is attributed to several factors: poor p
SOUTH Africa s biggest hospital, Chris Hani Baragwanath, in Soweto, has been given the green light by the government to distribute AZT to pregnant HIV-infected women. The anti-AIDS drug, shown to reduce transmission of the virus from mother to child by more than 50 percent, will be given to the hospital free of charge
THE government has refused to provide AZT treatment to pregnant women infected with HIV despite being offered the drug at the cheapest price in the world for the past two years - 70 percent of the price charged in the US and Britain. In that time, 120 000 babies have been infected with HIV. The lives of half these babi
Sunday Times, South Africa - Sunday, April 25, 1999
Carmel Rickard
JUDGE Edwin Cameron, who stunned South Africa by disclosing he had AIDS this week, heads the list of four judges whose names have been sent to President Nelson Mandela by the Judicial Service Commission for a decision on who will fill the vacancy in the Constitutional Court. The others on the alphabetically ordered lis
Sunday Times, South Africa - Sunday, April 25, 1999
Prega Govender
TEACHERS and pupils infected with the AIDS virus are being encouraged to come out of the closet by talking about their HIV status at school assemblies. This comes amid a call by Health Minister Nkosozana Zuma for AIDS to be made a notifiable disease and a Gauteng High Court judge s disclosure this week that he has AIDS
Sunday Times, South Africa - Sunday, April 25, 1999
Prega Govender
NEARLY a quarter of the students surveyed in a random AIDS test at Durban-Westville University are HIV-positive. A shocking 88 of the 385 students who took the saliva test were found to be HIV-positive - and 65 of the 88 are women. At an urgent meeting of the university council last Saturday, it was unanimously agreed
Sunday Times, South Africa - Sunday, April 18, 1999
Andre Jurgens
HEALTH Minister Nkosazana Zuma s refusal to give HIV-positive pregnant women a drug that could save their babies is to be challenged in court. The minister is condemning thousands of children to death by refusing to make the drug AZT available to their mothers in state hospitals, said the Pan Africanist Congress s nat
Sunday Times, South Africa - Sunday, April 18, 1999
Laurice Taitz
AIDS activists are outraged by an announcement by the Minister of Health, Dr Nkosazana Zuma, that people who are HIV positive are to be forced by law to disclose their status to close relatives and sexual partners. Plans to make AIDS a notifiable disease were announced by Zuma on Friday after a two-day meeting of healt
Sunday Times, South Africa - Sunday, April 11, 1999
Gillian Anstey
MISS Universe Wendy Fitzwilliam, of Trinidad and Tobago , jetted into South Africa on Friday for a week-long visit to help raise funds for the charity AIDSlink. I hope the people of South Africa embrace
Sunday Times, South Africa - Sunday, April 4, 1999
Prega Govender
WHEN seven-year-old Sibongile saw Baba, her 62-year-old neighbour, standing in the doorway of her house, she trustingly invited him inside. She knew the old man well - she used to play with his four grandchildren in the sand. But while she sat at a table in her one-roomed house, happily drawing figures on a piece of pa
PROFESSOR Malegapuru William Makgoba has been uncharacteristically out of the spotlight since moving to Cape Town and taking over the reins at the Medical Research Council three months ago. The outspoken and provocative professor, who stirred up a hornet s nest after his position as deputy vice-chancellor of Wits Unive
Sunday Times, South Africa - Sunday, March 14, 1999
Laurice Taitz
RESEARCHERS who have claimed a major AIDS breakthrough this week defended their decision not to inform Dr Nkosazana Zuma, the Minister of Health, before going public, saying they did not want to be seen to be enlisting her support. Medunsa Professor Wim du Plooy said it would have been unethical for them to go straight
Sunday Times, South Africa - Sunday, March 7, 1999
S'Thembiso Msomi
ONE in two pregnant women tested at a Durban clinic are infected with HIV/AIDS. According to the shocking results of an ante-natal survey sponsored by the United Nations Children s Education Fund (Unicef) almost half the young women tested at the Cato Manor clinic are infected with HIV. Durban South Central mayor There
Sunday Times, South Africa - Sunday, March 7, 1999
ONE in two pregnant women tested at a Durban clinic are infected with HIV/AIDS, reports S THEMBISO MSOMI. According to the results of an antenatal survey sponsored by the United Nations Children s Education Fund, almost half the young women tested at the Cato Manor clinic are HIV-positive. Durban South Central mayor Te
Sunday Times, South Africa - Sunday, February 28, 1999
Laurice Taitz
THE government has angered AIDS activists by refusing to change its stance on the provision of drugs to pregnant women despite recent findings that 15 out of 100 babies could be spared HIV infection - at a cost of less than R400 each. The findings were made during United Nations-sponsored perinatal transmission trials
POLICE investigators are to ask a court to compel two Italian men, one of whom allegedly held a teenager as a sex slave for more than a month, to undergo AIDS tests after she tested HIV positive. In a move directly challenging the Constitution, which allows for freedom of choice, Alberto Lorefice Campanile, 57, of Pumu
Sunday Times, South Africa - Sunday, February 14, 1999
Charmain Naidoo, New York
SOUTH Africa has placed an order for 1,5 million female condoms in its fight against AIDS, unwanted pregnancies and the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases. The order is part of the manufacturing company Female Health s multiyear contract with the United Nations Joint Programme on AIDS ( UNAIDS
IN A prison cell, a 34-year-old man waits for AIDS to claim his life - 120km away, a 20-year-old woman also waits. The young woman will appear in the Pretoria High Court, where she will come face to face with the prisoner - the man she will identify as the one who gave her the killer virus and one of five men who raped
Sunday Times, South Africa - Sunday, February 7, 1999
Gillian Anstey
ATV presenter and former Mr South Africa , Dr Michael Mol, was sewing up a patient s finger at Pretoria Academic Hospital when blood splattered into his eye. It was just a routine procedure, a simple incision. But blood in the eye means possible AIDS, said Mol. A week later the patient tested HIV positive and Mol began
Sunday Times, South Africa - Sunday, January 31, 1999
Laurice Taitz
INTERNATIONAL AIDS activists are threatening to boycott a major conference to be held in South Africa next year because of the government s refusal to give the drug AZT to HIV/AIDS-infected pregnant women. The threats have been contained in anonymous e-mails sent to convenors of the 13th World AIDS Conference.
Sunday Times, South Africa - Sunday, January 31, 1999
Natalie Kammies
NURSES at Khayelitsha hospitals are used to the heartache of discovering that their patients are HIV-positive. But nothing could prepare them for two pregnant 14-year-olds who tested positive for the deadly virus. The nurses are from Michael Mapongwana hospital which is one of two hospitals in the area where the AIDS d
A PREACHER has asked the tribal chief in his area to tell him of people who refuse to allow their daughters to undergo virginity testing. The Rev Agrippa Stuurman, 27, the head of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Ixopo in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, sounded this warning during a meeting with the chief recently.
Sunday Times, South Africa - Sunday, January 24, 1999
S'Thembiso Msomi
RESIDENTS have begun fleeing a Durban township where hostilities have reached boiling point between HIV-positive people and those accused of killing an AIDS victim last year. The small township of KwaMancinza, near KwaMashu, made headlines at the end of last year when a mob assaulted HIV-positive Gugu Dlamini after she
Sunday Times, South Africa - Sunday, January 24, 1999
MEDICATION means AIDS is an illness under control, for now. These words of Nigel Wrench in his article A pot of lucky charms that sugars the pill (January 17) help break a silence threatening the fabric of our society.I have HIV. I am 36 years old and AIDS is a daily reality in my life. I try to grapple with and under
Sunday Times, South Africa - Sunday, January 17, 1999
Landiwe Dlamini
A YOUTH club in Ermelo, Mpumalanga, is tackling the spread of HIV and AIDS by reintroducing virginity testing. Of 200 teenagers already tested in Ermelo and the nearby township of Wesselton, 196 were virgins, said John Mabaso, the chairman of the Vukuzakhe Youth Club. The teenagers volunteer to be tested and we reward
Sunday Times, South Africa - Sunday, January 10, 1999
Bareng-Batho Kortjaas
BARELY a month after the murder of an AIDS educator, her close friend and fellow activist is receiving death threats. Gugu Dlamini, 36, was killed by a mob because she is alleged to have degraded her community by confessing that she had the AIDS virus. Now her friend Musa Njoko is living in fear after receiving threate
Sunday Times, South Africa - Sunday, January 10, 1999
Ramola Talwar Badam: Mumbai
BOTH husband and wife have the virus that causes AIDS, but only one of them can afford the fistful of daily drugs that is the best treatment for the disease. The wife, who refused to be named for fear of being ostracised by her neighbours because she carries the deadly HIV virus, said she never hesitated to give up her
Sunday Times, South Africa - Sunday, January 10, 1999
Natalie Kammies
DR SAADIQ Kariem is a relieved man because staff at two Cape Town hospitals will no longer have to stand by helplessly and watch the slow death of HIV-positive babies. Kariem, head of the Western Cape s AIDS programme, this week launched a pilot project to treat pregnant HIV-positive women with the drug
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