Millennium Development Goals

The Mvula Trust's mission is to improve the health and welfare of poor and disadvantaged South Africans in rural and peri-urban communities by increasing their access to safe and sustainable water and sanitation services. Our strategy is to support the development of good practice in the sector by testing and advocating sustainable models for cost effective delivery and management.

A commentary by David Patient- Person living with AIDS since his diagnosis with GRIDS back in March, 1983.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a country in possession of economic growth will find the health of its citizens improving. But almost uniquely, South Africa's growing financial strength has been accompanied by a fall in key indicators of health. The tie between health and wealth has held true for most of the world, and for as long as there appear to have been economists to notice it. Wealthier countries tend to be healthier at least until they start to encounter the diseases of affluence such as obesity. In South Africa, and some other surrounding countries, this link has broken. South Africa's Gross Domestic Product per capita has increased by an average of 3% per year for the last decade. Yet the most obvious indicators of health are falling. The easiest way to get snapshot of a nation's health is to look at key indicators: life expectancy at birth, maternal mortality and infant mortality. These are such fundamental markers that they were written into the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which South Africa signed in 2000.

Rarely in South Africa can a minister have come to power carrying such a weight of expectation as Barbara Hogan. Her first major public speech at the Aids Vaccine Conference in Cape Town in October was greeted with enthusiasm, and even international delegates speculated about the bright future that seems to lie ahead at last for South African healthcare. Her speech was reminiscent of one of those games where one has to bash crocodiles on the head as they pop up apparently randomly through holes in the floor. Politely, and without naming names, Hogan took a baseball bat and bashed all the major crocodiles on the head: Matthias Rath and his vitamins, for instance. Most of all she asserted the fact that HIV causes Aids.

Health Systems Trust publishes its
13th edition of the South African Health Review
PRIMARY HEALTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA: A REVIEW OF 30 YEARS SINCE ALMA ATA

HIV/AIDS funding to low- and middle-income countries reached a record level in 2007, according to a new report by UNAIDS.

South Africa must do more to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS amid rising child deaths and over one million children orphaned by the disease, the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) said Wednesday.

Seven developing countries in Africa and Asia will be the first to take part in a new global health campaign aimed at directing aid more effectively at the basic needs of poor countries, Britain said on Wednesday.

The European Union is failing to prioritise health and education in its plans for spending aid in poor countries, according to a new study, which also found that the EU appears to be using development aid to promote Western political and commercial interests, rather than to alleviate hardship. Alliance2015, a coalition of anti-poverty networks, contends that the EUs lack of focus on health and education will put the achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals in jeopardy.