Politics

An estimated 200 000 South Africans living with HIV and AIDS are in urgent need of anti-AIDS drugs, but supply is not keeping up with demand. And, despite good nutrition being an essential pre-requisite for starting anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment, only a fraction of HIV and AIDS patients are receiving the supplements and food parcels.

SA is falling far short of the AIDS treatment targets set by the United Nationss HIV/AIDS agency, UNAIDS, and the World Health Organisation (WHO), according to a new report released yesterday by the agencies.

Deputy health minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge dispenses with pomp in favour of problem solving.

At least 100,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in Tanzania will receive anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) free of charge by the end of 2006, Prime Minister Frederick Sumaye announced on Thursday.

Long waiting lists for anti-retroviral treatment as a result of shortages of health staff and drugs means Aids patients across South Africa are losing out.

Age offers little protection against AIDS children are often the disease's unwitting victims.

KZN MEC Peggy Nkonyeni has increased the budget of the province's emergency services by almost 30%, but says it is still not enough to meet demand.

In scaling up antiretroviral treatment (ART), financing is fast becoming less of a constraint than the human resources to ensure the implementation of the programmes. In the countries hardest affected by the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) pandemic, AIDS increases workloads, professional frustration and burn-out. It affects health workers also directly, contributing to rising sick leave and attrition rates. This burden is shouldered by a health workforce weakened already by chronic deficiencies in training, distribution and retention. In these countries, health workforce issues can no longer be analysed from the traditional perspective of human resource development, but should start from the position that entire societies are in a process of social involution of a scale unprecedented in human history. Strategies that proved to be effective and correct in past conditions need be reviewed, particularly in the domains of human resource management and policy-making, education and international aid. True paradigm shifts are thus required, without which the fundamental changes required to effectively strengthen the health workforce are unlikely to be initiated.

Kenyan anti-poverty activists have joined their counterparts in southern Africa in a campaign designed to make the voices of the continent's poor heard by leaders of rich nations when they meet in Scotland in July, for the G8 summit.

UN Children's Fund (Unicef) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have appealed to development partners to increase their efforts to prevent and fight malaria, the main child killer in Mozambique.