Antiretroviral therapy in South Africa seems set for a revolution with a new drug combination that is highly effective and involves only one pill a day that is smaller than an aspirin. Dr Michelle Moorhouse, one of South Africa’s top HIV clinicians explains.
Public service has become synonymous with blind loyalty to the political head and those who are the most loyal bureaucrats become the most powerful as intellectual honesty and competence fly out the window, writes Fareed Abdullah.
Having reported with many journalist colleagues on the darkest days on former President Thabo Mbeki and his health minister Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang’s distressing, fatal and quite mad HIV-denialism, the latest saga around social grants did bring back a sense of déjà vu.
As the South African National AIDS Council nears completion of the next National Strategic Plan on HIV, TB, and STIs, lofty ambitions for positive outcomes are in place. However, what provinces and districts are expected to measure in order to track implementation and incremental steps toward these goals is—at this point—completely absent from the NSP.
As we move towards the release of South Africa’s latest National Strategic Plan for HIV/AIDS, TB and STI’s it is important to celebrate the successes achieved since the end of AIDS denialism and the introduction of a revitalised AIDS response in 2006, writes Russell Rensburg.
Evidence has shown that prisons are a key battleground in the fight against HIV and TB.This means that any HIV and TB plan that doesn’t address the drivers of HIV and TB in prisons will fall woefully short of achieving its goals. And sadly, the latest draft of the NSP, with its inadequate prison-focused interventions, looks set to do just that.
No HIV plan or response will be wholly successful if it does not candidly address the context in which sex work takes place, and do so from within a human rights framework, write Marlise Richter, Thuli Khoza and Katlego Rasebitse.
South Africa’s new National Strategic Plan on HIV, TB and STIs presents a unique opportunity to start correcting the rudderless management of community health workers in the South African public healthcare system, writes Sasha Stevenson.
A key ingredient to ensuring our response to the AIDS and TB epidemics is effective, is having a workable plan. To that end, consultants and experts are working furiously to make sure South Africa has a new National Strategic Plan to take us through to 2022.
Sex work is fully criminalised in South Africa. This means that anyone who buys sex, who sells sex, or who helps facilitate a sex-work transaction can be prosecuted, writes Marlise Richter.
This year marked the 21st International AIDS Conference held in Durban – 16 years since this conference was last held on South African soil in 2000, writes Ishtar Lakhani.
The US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) should end its anti-prostitution pledge, writes Marlise Richter.