Community health workers (CHWs) are an essential link between communities and the often confusing health-care system. There are about 70,000 of them countrywide. They do a myriad tasks: visiting and assisting frail people at their homes, educating people about HIV and TB, and much more. But their conditions of employment are beset with problems.
Barbara Maregele
News | 9 July 2014
This week we cover the availability of generic drug-resistant tuberculosis medication in Khayelitsha, a worldwide anti-corruption campaign taken up by Corruption Watch, a parents’ camp hosted by Equal Education, and an upcoming school infrastructure reform conference.
Michelle Korte
News | 3 July 2014
Emasithandane home, founded in 1994 in Nyanga, currently looks after 39 children, most of them HIV infected and affected. 20 years later, it is still going strong despite financial constraints.
Bulelani Ngovi
News | 14 April 2014
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
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
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
“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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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