Disaster

As we celebrate our achievements of the first decade, we are dedicating ourselves within the health sector to ensuring that the fruits of the second decade exceed those of the first.

HIV/AIDS is holding back economic growth and putting a massive strain on workers in some of the world's poorest nations, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has said.

ZIMBABWE'S corporate sector needs to take serious steps to help workers access anti-retroviral drugs to ensure the sustainability of the country's fight against the HIV and Aids pandemic, analysts say.

Although antiretroviral treatment (ART) has been widely available in the so called developed world for the better part of the past decade, the possibility of getting treated for the life threatening HIV-disease in a developing country was far beyond the reach of the majority of people living in the developing world, despite their disproportionate burden of the disease.

Sunlight and fresh air are beginning to enter the dark and dirty room of domestic violence, exposing it as one of the hidden sources of the world's AIDS crisis.

The Freedom of Expression Institute has come out in full support of advertisements made by Marie Stopes South Africa in regards to its abortion services. This results from a complaint lodged by the African Christian Action Group (ACAG) with the country's advertising watch-dog the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa (ASASA) that by using the words safe and pain free, Marie Stopes was deliberately misleading the public and therefore contravening the Code of Advertising Practice.

Clinics across Cape Town are again running out of drugs and sending large numbers of patients home without medicines for diabetes, asthma, hypertension and other life-threatening illnesses. In some cases, as occurred 18 months ago and was reported for the first time by the Cape Times, patients are being given small IOU slips with descriptions of the medicines they are owed, instead of the drugs on which their lives depend.

Thirteen people in the Eastern Cape have died from cholera and more than a hundred had to be treated in hospital for the disease after a recent outbreak. The provincial government has promised the affected communities emergency medical resources to stop the spreading of the disease

Six premature babies have died in hospital after being fed contaminated nutritional drips. A seventh infant is fighting for its life at the Pelonomi Hospital in Bloemfontein. The Free State Department of Health has launched an investigation into the incident.

This paper is one of a series of papers commissioned by the Regional Network for Equity in Health in Southern Africa (EQUINET) for a programme of work with Oxfam GB on Equity issues in HIV/AIDS, Health Sector Responses and Treatment Access in Southern Africa. This programme of work seeks to inform the policy debates and advocacy that have grown around health sector responses to HIV/AIDS in the region. This paper reviews the equity challenges and concerns related to access to HIV/AIDS programmes in South Africa, with a focus on antiretrovirals. The information contained in the paper was gathered through a literature review of local and international publications, grey print and personal communication with key stakeholders.