It was groundhog day for the South African government at the 16th International Aids Conference in Toronto this week, when a display of salad ingredients drew attention to the more controversial aspects of the national responses to HIV/Aids. The South African government stand was invaded by Treatment Action Campaign activists, some lying on the ground to symbolise South Africa’s Aids dead.
South African researchers and doctors are worried that a new law intended to protect young men from death or mutilation as the result of circumcision may weaken the potential use of circumcision to curb the spread of HIV.This month President Thabo Mbeki signed into law the Children’s Act, one of whose clauses bans circumcision of male children under the age of 16.
Leaders in Lesotho have embarked on a revolutionary strategy to reduce the spread and the impact of the HIV/Aids epidemic: test everyone for the virus. It is hoped this will counter the widespread human tendency to consider HIV to be someone else’s problem — confirmed by a South African survey released last year.
Come up and see my coloured toilet rolls on a string, said the southern grey hornbill to his mate. That wasn’t all he was offering. The Johannesburg Zoo had recently installed a state of the art hornbill love nest on a pole. Tricky to get there –at least until they installed a ladder. It made a hornbill feel, well … horny.
In a statement released on the second day of the United Nations Special Assembly on HIV/Aids in New York, the African Civil Society Coalition on Aids accused the negotiators of the three countries of a ”remarkable display of bad faith” in failing to support targets of universal access to treatment, care and support agreed on by the African Union heads of state last month.
Tine van der Maas, the Aids ”healer” accused of indirectly causing last week’s Aids-related death of Nozipho Bhengu, also provided nutritional support and treatment to Yfm DJ Fana Khaba, known as Khabzela. Khabzela stopped taking anti-retrovirals and died as a result of Aids at the age of 35 in January 2004.
Politician and Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille and journalist and rape activist Charlene Smith faced the Constitutional Court this week in a legal battle that could have important implications for the right of privacy. The case is the final episode in a protracted struggle over De Lille’s biography, penned by Smith.
People have been surprised to learn that the new leader of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), Sipho Mthathi, is a woman and HIV-negative. Mthathi has been in her job for almost seven months but she has only been propelled into the limelight now because of a fight with the government, which wants to exclude the TAC from a key United Nations meeting.
Clinical trials are pulling in up to R2-billion a year into South Africa, yet researchers fear the industry may be compromised by the slowness of regulatory authorities to approve, or reject, potential trials. The issue was thrown into relief by an incident in the United Kingdom, when six clinical trial subjects ended up in intensive care after being injected with a part mouse, part human monoclonal antibody.
The Minister of Health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, distanced herself from a controversial herbal "remedy" for HIV/Aids that is taking KwaZulu-Natal by storm, and which she had reportedly endorsed. Ubhejane Immune Booster hit the news recently when Tshabalala-Msimang reportedly recommended use of the substance.