When 11-year-old Ronald Gathece was placed on antiretrovirals (ARVs) after being diagnosed HIV-positive, medical staff did not monitor his reaction to the treatment. But the side effects had been so bad that the young boy had contemplated suicide.

Swaziland has yet to act on a 2006 World Health Organization (WHO) recommendation to alleviate health worker shortages through task-shifting and according to the Ministry of Health, the failure to do so is compromising scale-up of the antiretroviral (ARV) programme.

At the recently concluded International AIDS conference in Vienna, Austria, there was an emotional call to eradicate Mother to Child Transmission (MTCT) of HIV. Participants were particularly charged when Austria, which hosted the conference, presented their progress, noting that MTCT has been virtually eliminated, recording about two to three cases a year. It's the same scenario in developed countries like the US, UK and Canada. There was also progress reported in a few African countries like Botswana.

The Police Action Committee on Aids (PACA) has developed a work plan to mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS among policemen.The coordinator of PACA, Alex Okeke, a commissioner of Police, said the strategic plan will help to reduce the number of new infections among policemen including their identified secondary target audience between 2011 and 2013.

Youth Sport and Child Development Permanent Secretary Teddy Mulonga has warned that the use of half-baked peer educators is retrogressive and that organisations involved in the practice should stop.

Five United Nations humanitarian agencies are rushing medical supplies and other materials to northern Cameroon, where the country’s worst outbreak of cholera in six years has already claimed at least 155 lives. Cholera drugs, oral rehydration salts,...

DURBAN, 3 September 2010 (PLUSNEWS) - Striking public health workers in South Africa have virtually shut down King George V Hospital, a referral facility in the port city of Durban, KwaZulu-Natal Province, which specializes in caring for and isolating patients with multidrug-resistant (MDR) and extremely drug-resistant (XDR)-TB.

JOHANNESBURG, 2 September 2010 (PLUSNEWS) - Public sector strikes in South Africa have become so common in recent years that people are asking if plans should not be put in place to prevent the disruption of HIV and tuberculosis [TB] treatment, and prepare health workers.

Tuberculosis remains a major public health problem. Approximately 1.7 billion people worldwide are infected with TB, with 8 million new cases and 3 million deaths per year. It is estimated that 35 million people will have died of TB by the year 2020....

In April 2008, the African Ministers of Health – in preparation for the Bamako Ministerial Forum on Research for Health – adopted the Algiers Declaration that expressed their commitment to reinforce national research systems for health. During the Ba...

MANZINI, 3 September 2010 (PLUSNEWS) - Swaziland has yet to act on a 2006 World Health Organization (WHO) recommendation to alleviate health worker shortages through task-shifting and according to the Ministry of Health, the failure to do so is compromising scale-up of the antiretroviral (ARV) programme.

By the time Thandi Khumalo* brought her seven-month-old daughter to the Red Cross Children’s Hospital in Cape Town, help came too late. The infant had developed acute diarrhoea and kwashiorkor, a condition caused by severe protein and calorie deficie...

JOHANNESBURG, 3 September 2010 (PLUSNEWS) - A new, accurate, easy-to-use test can diagnose tuberculosis (TB) - including drug-resistant strains of the disease - in less than two hours. It has the potential to save thousands of lives in developing countries, where current tests are often unreliable, take weeks to process, or are simply unavailable.

While an estimated 880 000 people – most of them young children – die each year of malaria in the developing world, we may underestimate the potential effects of continued DDT use on future generations. In South Africa, as in several other developing...

SAMBURU, 31 August 2010 (PLUSNEWS) - In the remote and rural district of Samburu, northern Kenya, where paved roads are scarce and motorised transport hard to come by, reaching the mostly pastoralist and nomadic inhabitants with HIV/AIDS services requires an unusual approach.