Helen Zille

Premier Helen Zille and the National Minister of Health, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, officially opened the new Khayelitsha Hospital on 17 April 2012.

The 240-bed medical facility will provide support to the surrounding primary healthcare facilities to ensure that patients receive care at the lowest level of entry into the healthcare system. In future, if required, there is a design potential to expand to 390 beds.

The hospital provides quality healthcare to approximately 500 000 to 1 500 000 people in the Khayelitsha area. It is expected to lighten the load of the overburdened GF Jooste and Tygerberg hospitals.

It's been a roller coaster of a year in HIV and AIDS. AIDS turned 30 in 2011, and with new evidence of the effectiveness of HIV treatment as prevention, experts are increasingly talking about "the end of AIDS". At the same time, however, funding for HIV has become ever more uncertain, jeopardizing efforts to put new, life-saving science into action.

IRIN/PlusNews brings you 10 HIV-related stories that made headlines in 2011:

AIDS turns 30 - The first case of HIV was reported in 1981, and 2011 was a year of reflection on the growth of the epidemic and progress made in the fight against it.

For the first time, the global AIDS community is talking about stopping the AIDS within a couple of decades – and it seems possible.

After years of toying with a baby’s preventative alphabet – A for abstain, B for be faithful and C for condoms – we finally have some grown-up options.

While modest, this array of new weapons against HIV gives us a fighting chance to stop the virus. The little arsenal goes like this:

The world is talking about stopping the Aids virus within decades – and it is not simply a pipe dream but a very real possibility. After years of toying with the alphabet – A for abstain, B for be faithful and C for condoms – we finally have some grown-up options.

While modest, this array of new weapons against HIV gives us a fighting chance to stop the virus. The weapons in the arsenal are:

* Successful antiretroviral (ARV) treatment makes HIV-positive people with undetectable viral loads virtually non-infectious. This means that if we get as many HIV-positive people as possible on ARVs, it will have a massive impact on lowering HIV transmission.

Heartening HIV/Aids statistics, holding up the promise that the world and particularly sub-Saharan Africa may be turning the corner against the disease, emerged in a UNAids report this week.

Almost overshadowed by the imminent Cop17 climate change conference in Durban, and by a spat involving DA leader Helen Zille who has argued criminal prosecution for reckless sex adventurers, marked reductions in the HIV/Aids toll are most welcome.

Premier Helen Zille’s proposal to have the practice of unsafe sex with multiple partners by men criminalised is misguided and will not solve help address the ongoing HIV transmission, Aids activist organisations have said.

Addressing a wellness summit held by the provincial Department of Health this week, Zille said while many believed South Africa had emerged from the era of Aids denialism under Thabo Mbeki, it had in fact sunk even deeper into denialism.

Premier Helen Zille is so worried about the spread of HIV and its cost to the government that she wants men who have multiple sexual partners and refuse to use condoms to be charged with attempted murder.

Zille told a wellness summit hosted by the provincial health department in Newlands yesterday that it was time the government shifted its exclusive focus from treating diseases to preventing them and promoting wellness.

But Aids activists slammed Zille’s remarks as “careless and misleading”, warning that criminalising HIV/Aids infection went against international guidelines and would create an incentive for people not to get tested.

For the first time, the series of Milestones in a Global Campaign for Violence Prevention Meetings is hosted in Africa by the World Health Organization (WHO). The fifth Milestones Meeting convenes leading public health experts from around the world in Cape Town, South Africa, to share the latest scientific knowledge on preventing violence-related death and disability.

Globally, violence takes the lives of more than 1.5 million people annually. The Western Cape Department of Health, on behalf of the Provincial Government of the Western Cape, initiated a Burden of Disease Reduction Project in 2007. This project was a collaborative effort amongst the Department, academic and research institutions in the province.