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THE recent report by Statistics SA emanating from last year’s General Household Survey offers welcome respite for Gauteng’s public health system. At the same time, results of this study table some of the hurdles the province still has to negotiate to attain a world-class and seamless health system that will benefit all the residents of Gauteng.

According to the research, 67,4% of respondents in the province said they were very satisfied with the services provided to them during their most recent visit to health facilities and 19,6% said they were somewhat satisfied. Just more than 7% said they were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied.

CAPE TOWN A local doctor has developed a pill bottle that uses cellphone technology to remind patients to take their medicines and warns them if they are about to take an extra dose by mistake.

There have recently been a number of media reports that Boeringer-Ingelheim's application to the Food and Drug Authority of the USA for the registration of Nevirapine was withdrawn due to irregularities and deficiencies related to the HIVNet 012 trail in Uganda. (This was the first field study that demonstrated the efficacy of NVP to reduce mother to child transmission). The irregularities and deficiencies relate to documentation procedures and DO NOT relate to any of the substantive findings on both the efficacy and safety of NVP. Included in the full text are press statements made by WHO/UNAIDS, CDC, Boeringer Ingelheim, National Institute of Health (USA) and the Elizabeth Glaser Foundation. They all essentially state that NVP still works and is still safe.