SOUTH AFRICA: "Is there a virus in the house?"
15 July 2008 (PlusNews ), Hidden behind the high walls that surround most middle-class suburban homes in South Africa is one of the largest and most marginalised black, female workforces in the country.
http://www.plusnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=79265
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SOUTH AFRICA: Bev White: "They have looked after us and it's our duty to look after them"
15 July 2008 (PlusNews ), Bev White, a business owner and mother of one, started a support group called Living Positively at Home for employers of HIV-positive domestic workers after her child's nanny, Thandi, was diagnosed positive three years ago. She talked to IRIN/PlusNews about her experiences.
http://www.plusnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=79266
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SOUTH AFRICA: WANTED - 4,000 doctors
14 July 2008 (PlusNews ), With more South African doctors now working abroad than in the country's ailing public health sector, the government needs to start aggressively recruiting health workers from other countries, according to a non-profit recruitment organisation.
http://www.plusnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=79241
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SOUTH AFRICA: New improved PMTCT brings challenges
11 July 2008 (PlusNews ), Prince Mshiyeni Memorial Hospital, just outside the port city of Durban, in KwaZulu-Natal Province, has one of South Africa's busiest maternity wards. About 1,200 women a month give birth here, of which about 40 percent are HIV-positive, according to figures from the antenatal clinic.
http://www.plusnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=79212
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GLOBAL: AIDS spending breaks records, but needs more focus
8 July 2008 (PlusNews ), HIV/AIDS funding to low- and middle-income countries reached a record level in 2007, according to a new report by UNAIDS.
http://www.plusnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=79150
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SOUTH AFRICA: TB treatment programmes failing
4 July 2008 (PlusNews ), TB cure rates in South Africa have remained stubbornly low – about 60 percent nationally, but less than 50 percent in many districts. A number of studies presented at the national TB conference in Durban this week looked at some of the reasons why South Africa's programme is failing.
http://www.plusnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=79107
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SOUTH AFRICA: TB plan has a gap between talk and action
3 July 2008 (PlusNews ), Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang opened South Africa's first national tuberculosis (TB) conference this week with some welcome good news: her department is to acquire technology that will reduce the time it takes to diagnose drug-resistant TB from as long as four months to less than a week.
http://www.plusnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=79084
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SOUTH AFRICA: Drug-resistant TB demands new approaches
3 July 2008 (PlusNews ), The increasing number of South Africans contracting drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) demands a radically different approach than the current policy of isolating patients in specialised facilities for long periods. This was the message of several presentations at the first national TB conference, held in Durban this week.
http://www.plusnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=79086
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SOUTH AFRICA: Is there a better way to say "opportunistic infection"?
2 July 2008 (PlusNews ), After more than a quarter of a century of the AIDS pandemic, there is an extensive lexicon of jargon associated with HIV infection, but this has not made it any easier for doctors to communicate with their patients.
http://www.plusnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=79063
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SOUTH AFRICA: Three-Letter Plague
1 July 2008 (PlusNews ), Everyone knows the story of how HIV/AIDS treatment finally became available to ordinary South Africans. It is a tale of science and reason pitted against denial and superstition, of a long struggle in which AIDS activists eventually prevailed over politicians.
http://www.plusnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=79023
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SOUTH AFRICA: Government awards ARV tender
27 June 2008 (PlusNews ), The awarding of a new tender for antiretroviral (ARV) drugs by South Africa's health department will mean important savings for the state's treatment programme, already the largest in the world and still growing.
http://www.plusnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=78986
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SOUTH AFRICA: Care-givers also need shoulder to lean on
18 June 2008 (PlusNews ), About 100 home-based care workers were expected at a recent one-day workshop by the South African Depression and Anxiety Group (SADAG) in the small farming town of Heilbron in Free State Province.
http://www.plusnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=78801
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AFRICA: Mind your language - a short guide to HIV/AIDS slang
18 June 2008 (PlusNews ), HIV has hit our lives, our families, our economies; it also shapes the way we talk. IRIN/PlusNews looks at how the virus and its impact translates into everyday speech from the streets of Lagos to the townships of Johannesburg, and finds that despite the billions of dollars spent on positive communication strategies, the word on the street remains decidedly negative.
http://www.plusnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=78809
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SOUTH AFRICA: TAC prevails over Rath
13 June 2008 (PlusNews ), "Comrades, we won!" shouted South Africa's Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) founder and long-time HIV/AIDS activist, Zackie Achmat, outside the Cape High Court in Cape Town on Friday.
http://www.plusnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=78739
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SOUTH AFRICA: HIV and depression - something to talk about
10 June 2008 (PlusNews ), Temba* had watched a string of friends and family die from AIDS-related illnesses before he himself tested positive for HIV in 2004. Convinced he was next, he kept his status to himself and lay awake at night contemplating suicide.
http://www.plusnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=78675
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SOUTH AFRICA: Thokozile Mdaki: "If you talk, you feel healed"
10 June 2008 (PlusNews ), Thokozile Mdaki, 43, has been going to Ekupholeni Mental Health, a South African nongovernmental organisation with a centre in Katorus, a Johannesburg township, since 1996. She relies on the counselling and support group meetings she attends there to deal, not only with being HIV-positive, but with the trauma of being raped and of multiple bereavements as a result of the disease.
http://www.plusnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=78677
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SOUTH AFRICA: Denis Matwa: "HIV was something of gay, white men...not for myself"
6 June 2008 (PlusNews ), Denis Matwa, 36, has turned his life around since he discovered he was HIV-positive eight years ago. At one time a heavy drinker and womaniser, he became an AIDS activist and is now involved in an intervention by South Africa's Medical Research Council targeting "sugar daddies" - men who are at least five years older and materially better off than their casual partners.
http://www.plusnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=78619
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SOUTHERN AFRICA: Understanding infidelity
5 June 2008 (PlusNews ), "Multiple, concurrent partnerships" has become the latest catchphrase in the HIV/AIDS lexicon. It refers to the practice of having more than one sexual partner at the same time, which experts say is a key driver of Southern Africa's devastating HIV/AIDS epidemic.
http://www.plusnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=78602
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SOUTH AFRICA: HIV a factor behind obesity?
4 June 2008 (PlusNews ), While public health experts in South Africa spent much of the last decade focusing on controlling infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and eradicating malnutrition, the growth of another public health crisis has gone almost unnoticed.
http://www.plusnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=78569
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SOUTH AFRICA: Current HIV treatment models not good enough
3 June 2008 (PlusNews ), More than 400,000 HIV-positive South Africans have begun antiretroviral treatment (ART) since the government launched its programme in 2004. But this impressive-sounding figure still only represents one third of the estimated number of people in need of treatment, and that number is expanding by an additional half a million people every year.
http://www.plusnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=78545
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