Two homeopaths holding top positions in the organisation that regulates the conduct of all South African homeopaths are being investigated for apparent fraudulent qualifications. This is the latest scandal to hit the Allied Health Professionals Council of South Africa, a government-established statutory body.
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/ 7 February 2006
Changes in sexual behaviour seem to be behind the dramatic drop in HIV prevalence in Zimbabwe, according to researchers. There has been an almost 50% decline in HIV prevalence in some groups in Zimbabwe as people delay when they first have sex and cut down on casual partners, according to their research.
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/ 28 October 2005
”There is total disregard for the well-being and safety of our people [in Khayelitsha] who are being used as guinea pigs,” declared Smuts Ngonyama, head of the presidency in the African National Congress. No, Ngonyama was not speaking about the activities of the Rath Foundation, which has been undermining the government’s HIV/Aids treatment programme.
Three-year-old Elihle Xulu shrieks with delight when he sees his mother, Nompumelelo, in the clinic’s garden. She kicks a soccer ball for him and he runs panting after it. Then he plants himself on the swing: "Push! Push!" he calls. The little boy’s exuberance is still like a miracle for Nompumelelo, who feared she might never see her son grow up. Both she and her son are living with HIV.
KwaZulu-Natal has the most tuberculosis cases in the country, but hospitals are fighting a losing battle against deadly multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB). Although cases of MDR TB have increased dramatically at King George V hospital, not enough resources are being allocated to fight the disease.
HIV has completely changed the face of South Africa’s tuberculosis epidemic, with tuberculosis (TB) patients today being young, sicker and often with unusual presentations of TB, according to health experts. In downtown Durban, health experts are pioneering treating TB and HIV together.
While schools are under pressure to distribute condoms at schools, not one of the 12 African countries represented at a high-level meeting in Durban is doing so and most education officials felt this would be inappropriate. A number felt that schools should nonetheless help sexually active secondary-school students to get access to condoms.
In the past decade the best-equipped hospital in Africa, the new Inkosi Albert Luthuli central hospital, has been built in Durban, along with almost a third of the KwaZulu-Natal’s 366 clinics. In addition, two new district hospitals are being built in the eThekwini area. Yet the province is critically short of doctors and nurses to tackle the highest rate of HIV/Aids infections in South Africa.
According to the Medical Research Council, 40% of deaths in 2000 of those between the ages of 15 and 49 were Aids-related. Each year, the percentage increases as the epidemic matures. But communities are still not talking about HIV and Aids.