HIV

Our Kind of People

In Our Kind of People, novelist Uzodinma Iweala reflects on the damaging misconceptions which shape the way the world sees HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Joshua Maserow

News | 7 April 2014

Beyond HIV: How we die in South Africa

Reports published this month by Stats SA and the Medical Research Council (MRC) provide interesting information on how South Africans are dying.

Nathan Geffen

News | 1 April 2014

South Africans living longer but drug-resistant TB a threat

Two government reports published in March show that the nation’s health is improving dramatically, but more people are getting sick from forms of tuberculosis that are difficult to treat.

Nathan Geffen

News | 31 March 2014

Are sugar daddies bad for your health?

“Sugar daddies destroy lives” say billboard adverts in Kwazulu-Natal in big bold black and red letters. The same message is echoed in radio adverts played across the country.

Nathan Geffen

Opinion | 11 March 2014

Mother and daughter: alive, productive and healthy on antiretrovirals

Nandipha Madolo, from Khayelitsha’s Litha Park, has experienced much in her life, with HIV playing a major part. She watched her brother die from meningitis due to HIV. Her HIV-positive husband abused her. Her youngest daughter contracted HIV, and Madolo found out that she too was HIV-positive. But today Madolo has a healthy daughter, a steady job, and she is a public speaker.

Mary-Anne Gontsana

News | 29 January 2014

AIDS medicine stockouts put thousands at risk

South Africa’s anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment programme is often hailed as one of the most important public health successes. It is the world’s largest ARV programme, with over two million patients initiated on treatment. But it has serious problems: many patients often go without medicines because of stockouts.

Koketso Moeti

News | 28 November 2013

Having a different HIV status to your partner

Lindiwe Kameni was ill in 2004. “I was in Jo’burg when I fell sick, and I tested HIV-positive”, she says. She told her husband her HIV status and things started to change.

Odwa Funeka

News | 28 October 2013

HIV vaccine: some progress, but we’re not there yet

While antiretroviral drugs against HIV are getting more effective and allow HIV-positive people to live longer, the ultimate prize is to find a way to cure people of the virus, the best hope being a vaccine.

Kerry Gordon

News | 9 October 2013

When the solution compounds the problem

In April 2012, the Eastern Cape Department of Health (ECDoH) put in place a moratorium on the appointment of healthcare workers to vacant posts at facilities throughout the province. This moratorium was instituted in an attempt to control the chronic overspending that was pushing the department deeper into financial crisis each year.

Daygan Eagar

Opinion | 11 September 2013

A Tale of Rural Health

The failing healthcare system in the Eastern Cape affects everyone: urban communities, migrants from Gauteng and Cape Town too sick to work anymore or returning home to retire, and healthcare workers who don’t have the medicines, equipment and a functioning referral system, to offer the care their patients need.

Marije Versteeg

Opinion | 11 September 2013

Study shows circumcision reduces HIV in “real-life” conditions

A South African study demonstrates for the "first time the effectiveness of male circumcision, in real-life conditions in curbing the spread of HIV", says its lead researcher, Bertran Auvert.

Michael Rautenbach

Brief | 5 September 2013

Are we ready for universal breastfeeding in South Africa? A response to Vuyiseka Dubula

Vuyiseka Dubula’s opinion piece published in GroundUp raises some important issues concerning the promotion of breastfeeding in South Africa. Vuyiseka is correct: breastfeeding is much safer than formula feeding.

David Sanders, Tanya Doherty, Debra Jackson, Ameena Goga

Opinion | 12 August 2013

Are we ready for universal breastfeeding in South Africa?

The government is discontinuing the provision of free formula milk at public health facilities. This policy is intended to promote exclusive breastfeeding for all mothers, including those living with HIV.

Vuyiseka Dubula

Opinion | 30 July 2013

Cameron to African leaders: End stigma against gays

This is an edited transcript of a speech by Judge Edwin Cameron on 28 June at the UNAIDS/LANCET Commissioners Dinner in Malawi. Cameron criticised stigmatising laws that hamper the response to HIV.

Edwin Cameron

Opinion | 2 July 2013

HIV patients still waiting for easier-to-take drugs

Patients with HIV in South African public clinics have to take at least three separate pills once and maybe twice daily. But in the private sector, as well as in the United States and Europe patients have for years been able to take their HIV treatment as one pill once a day.

Mary-Jane Matsolo

News | 10 April 2013

Popular HIV magazine show back on SABC 1

New season, new presenter, same time, same channel. Education and health television programme Siyayinqoba Beat-It! will air its first episode of season 8 next week Thursday on SABC 1 at 1:30pm.

Mary-Anne Gontsana

News | 27 March 2013